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  Love,

  Helen

  Beneath the tip of Helen’s pen, June’s smug cat had undergone a transformation. She had drawn only his face and given him fine long hairs, a flesh pink nose, and warm gold eyes. His expression was sad and benevolent, as if the cat had once been human. June liked the picture very much but neglected to write and thank Helen when she returned to college.

  “You talk to Helen, okay?” Her uncle caught the wheel and turned sharply into a subdivision of Spanish-style houses with red-tiled roofs. “Tell her to study. To work hard,”he said as they pulled into the driveway of his home. “You be a good influence on her, I know it.”

  Helen and Gerard came downstairs to offer their greetings. Helen’s long hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was taller than June expected, very slender still, with light brown skin. She spoke in a quiet, whimsical way and apologized for her mother, who was tired and had already gone to sleep.

  “What do you think of this house?” her uncle asked.

  “It’s very nice,”June said, looking around.

  “Not as nice as your parents’ house, right? Your parents’ house much bigger than this?”

  “It’s not much bigger.”

  “We clean a lot,”Helen mused, “but the house never looks clean.”

  “Oh, it’s fine,”June said. “You have a very nice house.”She wasn’t exactly lying. Given the fuss that was always made over how much her uncle struggled, the house itself, with its stucco walls and cathedral ceiling, was much grander than she had expected. But the house was just like her uncle’s van, a good, respectable structure ruined by the clutter inside. Someone in the family was an incurable pack rat and could not bear to throw anything away. An old computer sat on top of stacked chairs in the front hall, extra tables jutted out in front of doorways, and every flat surface—countertop, table, mantel, shelf—was crowded with papers, boxes, and unending bric-a-brac. June glimpsed ceramic figurines, a brass swan, teacups, dusty bottles of whiskey and cognac, vases stuffed with artificial flowers, and jars filled with sesame candy, coins, and seashells. Things too were in the most unlikely places. Lamps stood on cookie tins in the living room, her uncle’s shirts hung from the handlebars of a treadmill, a mattress set rested against the dining room table, paper towels were stored inside the fireplace, and books had been inserted between the balusters of the stairway.

  They gave her a can of Coke and invited her to watch television with them. June sank down onto a battered couch that had lost its cushions. She could feel a bar and springs beneath her. Helen joined her on the couch, her uncle watched from the kitchen table, and Gerard continued to hover awkwardly in the middle of the family room. Once a skinny boy, he had become tall and stout, and his thick arms dangled softly at his sides. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself and put one hand in his pants pocket.

  “Gerard, aren’t you going to sit?” June asked.

  Gerard smiled, his lips pressed close together. It was a smirk, but he also seemed genuinely embarrassed.

  “He has a poor back,”Helen said.

  Her uncle perked up at this, and he began telling June the whole story. A year ago, Gerard began to have back pain and their doctor told him he had a herniated disk from all those hours of sitting in a bad chair in front of his computer. “He sat like this,”her uncle said, tipping forward in his chair.

  “Oh, that isn’t good,”June said.

  “Or he sat like this.”Her uncle crossed one leg beneath him and pretended to type furiously in midair. “You have to sit with both feet on the ground, you see, Gerard?”

  “Okay,”Gerard said with a note of annoyance.

  “We bought him an expensive chair.”Her uncle pointed to an empty box in the middle of the room with a shiny black office chair pictured on it. “The doctor said he should do exercises for his back. And he should pick up things like this.”Her uncle squatted on the floor and demonstrated how to lift a heavy object.

  “Have you been feeling better, Gerard?”

  Gerard smiled at June with twisted lips. “Not really.”

  “He likes to stand now instead of sit,”Helen said.

  “Only seventeen years old!” her uncle sighed.

  At midnight, her uncle dragged the mattress and box spring out of the dining room and stacked them on the living room floor. “Don’t worry, I clean it for you,”he said, and he proceeded to wipe down the entire set with a damp towel.

  “That’s okay,”June said, but it was impossible to stop him. He reminded her of her father, who could be obsessive about cleaning and often woke everyone up with his vacuuming. June waited for the mattress to dry before putting on the sheets, and then Helen and Gerard wished her good night and went upstairs to bed.

  From where she lay, June could see the dim light of the kitchen and hear a clock ticking somewhere in the foyer. Her uncle was still awake, eating a midnight snack and listening to a Mandarin pop song on the radio.

  Helen didn’t seem to have changed much from the tenyear old girl June had known. She was still serious and shy, and she gave June an impression of thoughtful sincerity. If anything surprised June, it was how calm and centered she seemed.

  The biggest change had occurred in Gerard, not Helen.

  June remembered he had been a hyper, crazy kid. In all the group photographs of their two families, there was always an adult hand pressing down on Gerard’s shoulder, an almost rabidgleam in his eyes as he crouched, ready to spring away. June and her sister had taken their younger cousins and brother to the Baltimore Aquarium one day, and when they went to the cafeteria for lunch, Gerard loaded as much food as possible onto his tray—pizza and fried chicken, a hamburger with French fries, a grilled cheese sandwich, a chocolate doughnut. Everyone except Helen had laughed at him, and June made him return most of the food, but Gerard didn’t understand why what he’d done seemed so funny to them.

  Soon after her cousins returned to Los Angeles, June found a photograph of herself holding her cat that had been left out on her desk. Someone had drawn pointed fangs on the cat, and June herself had been given blue pimples and two horns sticking out of her head. A caption scrawled below read “THE FAT GANG.”Her brother laughed out loud when she showed it to him, but he said he wasn’t responsible. “It must have been Gerard,”he told her. June felt rather vexed by Gerard’s prank. She had always been sensitive about her weight. She wasn’t fat for an American, just fat for a Chinese. So now the American diet had wreaked its havoc on Gerard as well ...

  She dozed off and woke up again in the middle of the night to find the kitchen light turned off and her uncle at the top of the stairs shaking something out. It looked as if he were straightening a pillowcase, or maybe he was exercising, she couldn’t tell in the darkness, but his movements were as frantic as ever, and she wondered if he would ever go to bed.

  In the morning, when she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at a large oil painting on the wall of a lurid, industrial Venice. The domed buildings were infernally lit, lapped by dank green water, and a small pudgy man gazed up at a tiny, ineffectual moon. June couldn’t help but smile. Her parents had bought similar stuff at a sidewalk art sale, and she had upset them one day when she took all their ugly paintings down and hid them in the basement.

  On her way upstairs to take a shower, June passed by the kitchen and said hello to her aunt, who looked up from the batter she was mixing and gave her a slight smile. Her gray sweater vest looked oddly familiar to June, and it was a bit of shock when she realized that the vest was something her sister had worn in high school. Her uncle had over the years called up her father to ask for their old, spare clothes, and June’s family had gone through their closets, weeding out all the things that no longer fit or were out of fashion and then sending these in a box to Los Angeles.

  Gerard came out of the bathroom, and June noticed he had not flushed the toilet. She couldn’t stop herself and said in a light, bantering voice, “Gerard, can’t you flush?”

 
; “What?” her uncle said, appearing around the corner. “He didn’t flush the toilet? What kind of person are you, Gerard?”

  “Sorry,”Gerard muttered.

  For breakfast, they ate a fruitcake her aunt had made by substituting olive oil for butter because Gerard was on a diet. The doctor had said he needed to lose twenty pounds and also that his cholesterol was too high.

  Helen asked june how long she was going to stay with them, and June replied she was leaving early the next morning. Everyone was shocked by this news, and her uncle especially seemed disappointed. “I thought you will be here the entire week,”he said.

  “I’m meeting a friend in San Diego,”June said. “Didn’t my father tell you?”

  “Why you get your father to call me?” her uncle said. “Don’t you know you can call me yourself?”

  “I thought it would be easier if my dad called you,”June said, feeling embarrassed. She had to admit that it didn’t make much sense asking her father to be the intermediary, but whenever she spoke to his side of the family she felt they didn’t understand exactly what she was saying. Even with her father, she often had to raise her voice and repeat herself to get her meaning across. But the fact that her father was unable to communicate clearly to his own brother about the length of her stay made June suspect the problem wasn’t a language barrier at all — that her father and uncle and their entire side of the family just didn’t pay attention, slightly deaf to the world and to each other.

  Her uncle now revealed to them his plan for the day. He had to make his rounds and could drop them off where they liked and then pick them up in a few hours.

  “You have to work on Saturdays?” June asked.

  “How do you think I make any money?” her uncle said, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. “Every day I have to try.”

  “What do you want to do?” Helen asked June.

  “Let’s go to the beach. It’s gorgeous outside.”

  Gerard let out a whining hum.

  “What’s wrong, Gerard?” June asked.

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “Why not? Don’t you ever go to the beach?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Gerard paused. “I have sensitive skin.”

  “He’s afraid of sunburn,”Helen said.

  “But I’m paler than you,”June said, putting her arm next to his. “We won’t go for too long. And you can put sunblock on.”

  Helen and Gerard went upstairs to get ready, and her uncle took June aside. “You talk to Helen, okay?” he said, and June nodded.

  It was low tide at the beach, and people were climbing over rocks to look at the shallow pools that had formed. June sat on the sand with her cousins and took the sunblock out of her bag, passing it over to Gerard, who did nothing but stare at it. “Don’t you want to put some on?” she asked. “I thought you were afraid of getting burnt.”

  “Here, Gerard,”Helen said, and she took the tube from him and squeezed a dollop onto each of his arms. Gerard began to spread it slowly in a straight line with one finger, and June felt exasperated just watching him. He was like a child and could do nothing for himself. “You have to rub it over your entire arm,”she told him. Helen helped Gerard spread the lotion across his arms and massage it into his skin, and when they were done, June asked Helen if she wanted to go look at the tide pools. They left Gerard behind, drawing patterns in the sand with a stick he had picked up.

  June wasn’t wearing sturdy shoes, and she tread carefully over the slippery rocks, listening to the crunch of barnacles beneath. Helen was a few feet ahead, bent over one of the small pools left from the receding tide. When June caught up with her, she saw Helen holding a purple starfish in her hand. One of its arms had broken off.

  “Is it alive?” Helen asked. “I won’t take it home if it’s alive.”

  The starfish didn’t move at all when June held it. There were traces of a jellylike substance along its arms where it had clung to a rock. June thought it should be less brittle if it werealive,that it should give way some, but she wasn’t sure. “Shouldn’t it be able to regenerate the missing arm?” she said.

  An older woman wearing a yellow T-shirt paused to look at the starfish they were holding. “Do you think it’s alive?” Helen asked her.

  “Alive or dead,”the woman said, “you don’t want to take that thing back with you. Starfish have a really bad smell out of the water.”

  Helen reluctantly put the starfish back into the tide pool. She looked chastened, though June knew she wanted to take the starfish home. They followed the woman over the rocks and located a cluster of starfish—whole starfish—brilliant and still, along the underside of a rock. One of them was bright orange, the color of a tiger lily.

  A seagull hopped and fluttered along the shore, dragging Helen’s starfish in its beak. It did a little dance in the air, as if it were trying to lift itself up, but the starfish slipped from its beak and fell into the water. The seagull flapped down to retrieve it.

  “Seagulls eat starfish?” Helen asked.

  They watched the seagull snap up the starfish, trying several times to get a proper hold. It eyed June and Helen for a moment before spreading its wings, flying only a short distance before it dropped the starfish again. The starfish fell from a spectacular height, bouncing off a rock. Immediately a large wave came in, flooding it over.

  “We should go back,”June said, worried that the tide was coming in. Helen nodded, and they climbed back over the rocks. From a distance, they could see Gerard standing and poking at something with his stick.

  “Does Gerard have any friends?” June asked.

  Helen hesitated. “Not really.”

  “It just seems like he can’t do anything by himself. Why is that?”

  Helen shrugged. “I guess he’s used to us doing everything for him. My mom still cuts his toenails.”

  “What?” June laughed.

  Helen smiled. “We must seem odd to you.”

  June thought about her own family, and said, “Not that odd.”

  “I feel bad for him,”Helen said. “My parents are always worrying about him. He’s not sure of himself, I think. At least my parents gave me a little more space. I was expected to help out and do things.”

  “Are you two close?”

  Helen reflected for a moment. “Maybe when we were younger. I remember he used to wear this jacket of mine that he loved. But the kids at school made fun of him for wearing a girl’s jacket, so he stopped.”

  As the three of them walked back into town, June studied Gerard with curiosity. His parents’ love had made him soft, dull, and useless, yet he would always be dear to them no matter what. Such love was a curse and a blessing. For who else in the world would ever love Gerard so blindly?

  “Gerard,”June said. “Tell me something about yourself.”

  He shrugged, half smiling.

  “What is it that you really want?” she asked him. “What do you like doing?”

  “I don’t know. I like to be on my computer, I guess.”

  “You’re just like my brother. You like to play games, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What is it about the games you like?”

  He gave her a shy smile, looking embarrassed. “It’s fun, I guess.”She felt him shrinking under her gaze, his lips pressed close together and his hands in his pockets. This inquisition of hers was evidently causing him pain, and she stopped herself.

  They had agreed to meet her uncle in front of a large discount store. The window displayed child mannequins with pale brittle hair and glass blue eyes that held a sad clairvoyance. The tan of the children’s skin had flaked off to reveal a whiteness underneath, and their curved arms floated awkwardly in front of them, their heads tilted sideways in wonder.

  As June and her cousins were early, they wandered inside the store and ended up in the pet department. There were no cats or dogs to look at, just a few tanks of fish and some hamsters in a cage. June
wanted to leave, but Helen had stopped in front of a display of bettas sitting in little plastic cups lined on a shelf. She stared at the fish for a long time, and June wondered whether she wanted to buy one. The fish were iridescent though faded, like wilted peacock feathers, each one breathing heavily at the bottom of its cup.

  A salesman approached, and Helen asked how long the fish could live in the plastic cups.

  “Oh, a long time,”the salesman said. “In the wild, they live in tiny pockets of water just like these cups.”

  Helen hesitated. “It just seems like they’re unhappy.”

  The salesman held up a mirror to one of the fish, and immediately its gills flowered. “You see that?” he said. “You put two of them together, and they’ll end up killing each other. They’re Siamese fighting fish.”He grabbed a plastic bag from the workstation and filled it with a little water from a nearby tank. “I kid you not,”he said, twisting the bag shut, leaving the salesman had instructed her to do. Then she untied the bag and poured the fish into the bowl. She and June watched the betta, its first stunned reaction to being immersed in another world, and then its recollection of itself as it wriggled through the water. In just a few minutes, its color changed, and June was struck by the vivid red flame curving in the water. The fish swam in its own glass world, rising and falling, trapped in a monastic dream of blue and clear stones.

  They went out to a Chinese seafood restaurant that night. June’s aunt pulled disposable chopsticks out of her purse for them to use, as well as plastic straws, so that none of them would have to place their lips against their glasses of water.

  “This is really expensive,”Gerard said beneath his breath as he studied the menu.

  “It’s okay,”her uncle said. “June’s here, and we want to give her a nice dinner.”

  “Mom’s food tastes better.”

  “Don’t worry so much, Gerard,”June said. Her aunt glanced over at her, and June realized she had misspoken. Her aunt had never warmed to her and no doubt thought her untrustworthy, glib, and overly Americanized — all of which was true. She must have noticed June staring at her sweater vest earlier that day because she had changed into a striped gray blouse with a low, frilled collar. With her tight poodle perm, her aunt was more somber and confident, less flashy and naive, than when she had married June’s uncle and come to live with him in New Jersey. The first time the newlyweds visited June’s family, her aunt had worn a flimsy polka-dotted dress, her lipstick a shade too bright and her frizzy mass of hair pinned back with a plain brown barrette. June’s mother later observed that this new wife was a sloppy dresser—had they seen her slip hanging from the bottom of her dress? At night, her aunt had worn large, thick glasses that made her look even younger, more forlorn. She spoke little and stayed in her room whenever she could, keeping her distance from them all. Perhaps she sensed the entire family judging her.