The Dissident Read online

  “I’m thinking about this week,” Cece told Joan firmly. “I’m not thinking any further than that.”

  “You’re going to have a full house. I can’t believe I just said ‘full house,’” she added. “Clichés are insidious.”

  Cece sighed happily. “We’re going to be packed to the gills.”

  3.

  WHEN SHE GOT HOME FROM JOAN’S, MAX WAS SITTING ON THE FRONT step with Jasmine. They were just back from the freeway, splattered with paint—although the clothes Jasmine was wearing didn’t seem appropriate for outdoor work. Her jeans were so tight that Cece wondered how she could climb the scaffold, and she was wearing a sleeveless pink T-shirt with the words “Baby Doll” in rhinestone-studded cursive across her breasts.

  “Hi guys,” Cece said. She was holding two bags of groceries, and there were six more in the trunk, yet neither child got up to help her.

  “Hi Mom,” said Max. Jasmine stared at her knees.

  “If you could just—” Cece began, but Lupe was already at the front door, hurrying to take the bags. On the way back into the house, the house keeper stopped:

  “Maxwell—your lunch.” She didn’t acknowledge Jasmine in any way, confirming Cece’s suspicion that there was something going on between them. The first time Max had brought Jasmine home, Lupe had pulled Cece aside, with one of those urgent confidences she could never quite understand:

  “Missis, that girl…is from El Salvador.”

  “I know,” Cece said. “Max mentioned that.” Although she had employed Lupe for ten years as live-in domestic help, Cece realized that she didn’t know anything about El Salvador beyond the fact that it was troubled, and that America was somehow involved with those troubles. “Is she from the same region as your family?”

  But Lupe had shaken her head impatiently, as if Cece was missing the point. “No good for Max,” she said.

  “Lupe!” she said. “You don’t even know her.”

  “Missis,” Lupe said, “I know.”

  Whether Lupe meant that she did in fact know Jasmine, or that she knew Jasmine’s type, or whether the house keeper was simply repeating the last thing Cece said—a strategy she used when her English failed her—Cece had no idea.

  “We’re not hungry,” Max told the house keeper.

  “There are still some bear claws,” Cece said. “I was hoping you’d take them to your friends at the freeway.”

  At this Jasmine smiled. Today her eyes were hazel with streaks of yellow, like a cat’s.

  Max sighed. “They’re not our friends.”

  Cece returned Jasmine’s smile, although it had clearly not been for her. “They’re not great for your waistline—but they’re delicious.” She was trying to bond with Jasmine, but she wondered if it had sounded as if she were criticizing her figure. There was certainly nothing wrong with Jasmine’s figure, except perhaps that it was a little too much on display. “Not that you have to worry,” Cece said quickly. “I meant, ‘you’ as in ‘one.’ Or really, ‘me.’ I’m the one who has to worry.”

  “Mom,” said Max.

  Jasmine looked at Cece with a combination of alarm and disbelief. Her ears were pierced all the way up the sides; one long gold earring spelled out her name. Cece was struck by the difference between this girl and Olivia’s friends, who were only two years older, but had a completely different style. Tight and revealing clothes were “nasty” or “totally tacky.” The used or inherited T-shirts and jeans they favored showed off their bodies, but in a covert way. Olivia spent more money on lingerie than Cece did, and would often go to school with a black lace bra underneath her regulation white blouse. Cece had been concerned about it, and once even asked Gordon whether he thought they ought to say something, but Gordon had said that exhibitionism in an all-girls school was a way of trying on adult sexuality in a safe arena, and that it was perfectly normal.

  Jasmine said something to Max so softly that Cece couldn’t hear it.

  “I’ll come with you,” Max said.

  “Where are you going?” Cece asked.

  “I’m just going home,” Jasmine said.

  “Do you need a ride?”

  Jasmine shook her head. “I’m waiting for my cousin.”

  “I’m going over to Jasmine’s for a while,” Max said casually, as if he didn’t know that he had an appointment with his therapist. Cece didn’t want to mention the therapist in front of Jasmine.

  “Not this afternoon,” she said meaningfully.

  Max looked at Cece so blamefully that she started to get angry back. What had she done, except try to be friendly and offer the two of them a snack? “Help me with the rest of the groceries, Max.”

  Without looking at her, Max said, “Lupe’ll do it.”

  “Lupe will not—” Cece began, just as Lupe returned for the rest of the groceries.

  “For Livy?” the house keeper asked.

  “Yes,” Cece conceded. “We’re having a welcome-home dinner on Friday. Don’t forget,” she told Max. “For your sister and Mr. Yuan.”

  Max made a face.

  “Max?” said Jasmine. “Friday?”

  “Oh yeah.” Max turned to Cece: “We’re busy Friday night.”

  Cece tried to be patient: you didn’t gain anything by losing your temper. “Busy with what?”

  “A party,” Jasmine unexpectedly volunteered. “For my cousin Carlos’s birthday. He could drive Max home afterward.”

  “Oh, no,” Cece said. “Someone will take you after dinner, and then pick you up so that you’re home in time for curfew.”

  “Livy?” Max asked.

  “We’ll see.”

  “One o’clock, right?”

  “Eleven-thirty.”

  “I don’t want you to have to come pick me up,” Max said. “Since it’s far.”

  “Where is it?”

  Max began to speak, and stopped, conscious that he’d made a mistake.

  “Echo Park,” Jasmine said.

  Had Max asked her privately whether he could go to a party in Echo Park, Cece would’ve said no immediately, citing a recent article in the L.A. Times. Apparently the area was practically ruled by the local gangs who, on weekends, engaged in turf wars with one another. Of course she kept quiet now, because of Jasmine.

  “I can just stay at Jasmine’s,” Max said firmly, as if it was settled. “Since you don’t want me coming home late.”

  The reason Cece had been able to impress Joan with her laid-back attitude about sex was that she didn’t believe Max was actually having any. She’d assumed that Jasmine was using Max for what ever advantages he could provide—the swimming pool, the house, perhaps even the black Nissan Pathfinder, which Max had been slated to inherit before the incident with the gun—and that Max was deriving a parallel benefit from having such an obviously desirable girlfriend. The idea of a party followed by a sleepover at the house of Jasmine’s older cousin changed things; it was not something Cece was willing to consider.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Cece said.

  Max responded to this discouraging signal by pretending he hadn’t heard it.

  4.

  IT WAS A RELIEF TO STEP INTO THE DARK INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE. EVEN without air-conditioning, their house seemed to regulate itself perfectly. The stucco kept it cool in the summer; in the winter, such as it was, they barely had to use the heat. It had been built in the Spanish style, with a red tile roof and a long balcony across the second floor facing the driveway, grown over with dark pink bougainvillea. There was another balcony off the master bedroom in the back, from which a dressed-up, nine-year-old Olivia had once called out “Romeo,” and Maxwell, age seven (misunderstanding but thinking he was being included), had enthusiastically responded: “Polo!”

  Max had been too young to understand the difference between the rental in Westwood and the house Cece’s inheritance had helped them buy, but Olivia was not.

  “Are we rich?” she had asked, one of the first nights Cece had tucked her daughter into b
ed in her new room.

  “We’re comfortable,” Cece had said. “We don’t have to worry, which is nice.”

  In fact she sometimes wondered whether they hadn’t been, literally speaking, more comfortable in the old house. They had occupied the top half of a duplex in Westwood, a two-bedroom apartment that belonged to the university and was reserved for junior faculty. That house had been small, without any special style or luxury, and yet, especially recently, Cece had found herself missing it.

  It was the house where they had lived when the children were born, for one thing. It was the house where Gordon had written Manias and Obsessions, a book he now described as “immature” but nevertheless the one that had made his reputation and secured his position at the university. Writing it had also seemed to make him happy. Cece had not been working then, and no one had expected her to. When she took Olivia out in the stroller, neighbors would help her up and down the front stairs, which were steep and painted a handsome brick red. It was in that house, up those very stairs, that Gordon’s little brother, Phil, had appeared one day out of nowhere, and very soon made it impossible to imagine he hadn’t always been a part of their life.

  That was in the early fall of 1983. Olivia was two, and Cece was seven months pregnant with Max. It had gotten to the point that she couldn’t pick Olivia up, which was inconvenient. They’d been sitting on the beige wall-to-wall carpeting in the living room. She had been crawling after Olivia (getting up was too much effort), who was toddling resolutely away, when the doorbell rang. She remembered feeling embarrassed—a pregnant woman crawling on the floor—although no one could see her. She had hoisted herself up, expecting the UPS man.

  The man standing at the door was carrying a dirty green hiking backpack. He had light brown hair and a blondish beard. He was wearing wire-rimmed glasses with tape on one side, a madras plaid shirt, hiking shorts, and a pair of leather sandals. He was very tall and thin. At first she had thought he might be a homeless or a crazy person. (“I was homeless and crazy,” Phil had said later, when she told him that.) But even after he had showered and shaved, and put on clean clothes, she had not been able to find any resemblance to Gordon. She had looked through the little window in the door, and seen a perfect stranger looking back.

  “I’m Phil,” he told her. “You must be Cece.”

  “I don’t know you,” Cece had said, holding Olivia by the hand.

  “I’m Gordon’s brother, Phil,” he repeated. “I’m sorry not to have called first, but my flight got in too early.”

  He had brought them awala ponchos, a set of bowls made from stiff, hardened leather, and heavy wool hats it would never be cold enough to wear. He brought alpaca sweaters, and a brightly colored wooden mask of a bear that made Olivia cry.

  “The only choice was a bear or the devil,” he apologized. “I thought the bear would be better.”

  Cece had taken the bear away into the kitchen, using it as an excuse to examine Gordon’s brother unobserved. (She had once referred to Phil as Gordon’s “long-lost brother.” Her husband corrected her: “He’s not lost. We’re just not looking for him.”) Standing in the kitchen, she could see that unlike Gordon, Phil was losing his hair on top, that unlike Gordon he had strong, developed muscles in his calves and thighs. The hair on his arms was sun-bleached, and he was wearing two silver rings on his right hand. Gordon refused to wear even a wedding band because he felt that jewelry was feminine; since she’d never had any doubts about Gordon’s fidelity, Cece hadn’t insisted.

  She had noticed that Olivia stayed with her uncle in the dining room even after Cece went into the kitchen, an extremely rare demonstration of trust. She had sat on his lap, and dropped the delicate bowls one by one onto the floor. Phil had picked them up and given them back to her, so that she could throw them on the floor again.

  She made Phil a turkey sandwich and a bowl of soup; while he ate, he explained that he had been living with a girlfriend in the Bolivian rain forest. The girlfriend was a biologist writing a dissertation about leaf-cutting ants. She and Phil had lived in the jungle for six months, in a forest camp with Indians. The Indians had been involved in illegal logging, which Phil felt was their prerogative—since the land had been stolen from them in the first place—and which the biologist felt they had a responsibility to report to the local authorities. She and Phil had had a terrific fight, during which Phil had also been suffering from dysentery. When he arrived at their door, he hadn’t slept in four nights.

  “I don’t sleep well either,” Cece told him, uncharacteristically. She usually tried not to complain about her insomnia. Nobody liked to hear about someone else’s ailments, particularly psychological ones.

  “Really?” Phil said, as if it were a terrific coincidence. “When did yours start?”

  “It’s no big deal,” Cece had said, suddenly embarrassed. Then she had insisted that Gordon’s brother take a nap in their bed.

  When Gordon got home that afternoon, she had put her finger to her lips. He assumed Olivia was napping, and a sudden apprehension kept her from immediately telling him the truth. She waited for him to find Olivia, playing quietly with the bowls on the living room floor, and to notice the filthy backpack, slumped against the wall by the door, a relic from another world.

  “Guess who’s here?” she said, pretending a certain stupid cheerfulness.

  “Who?”

  What had she thought—that he would be thrilled? That nothing but geography had kept them apart? That their family would now simply grow by one member, just as easily as Olivia had climbed into the stranger’s lap and played with his silver rings?

  “Who?” Gordon had demanded, although by then he must’ve known. She remembered the look he had given her (as if it were her fault) and the way he had turned away from the bedroom, where the door was closed but not tightly shut, and the white noise machine was making its soft, sandy sound.

  “It’s your brother,” she had said. And even after Gordon didn’t respond—didn’t even change his expression, she was dumb enough to continue in the same excited tone: “Your brother Phil. He came this morning all the way from Bolivia.”

  5.

  AFTER PHIL MOVED TO NEW YORK, NEARLY TEN YEARS AGO NOW, THEY had talked intermittently. He preferred to call her, especially after he moved in with his girlfriend, Aubrey. Cece would have felt funny about dialing Aubrey’s number anyway. And so a part of her was always waiting. Sometimes it would be three times in one week, and then months would go by in silence. Recently, there had been a particularly long hiatus, and she had wondered whether their conversations might be finished for good. When he called the other day, it had been the first time in almost nine months.

  She had just finished dropping Max and Jasmine at the freeway and doing some errands. Another minute at the drugstore, another red light, and she would’ve missed him. She had come in the front door holding a bag of prescriptions (Gordon’s Lipitor, Max’s Serzone, Olivia’s erythromycin, her own Ambien, and Ptolemy’s insulin), but when Lupe came running from the kitchen, calling “Missis, Missis,” she had dropped everything she was carrying. She was always ready for another crisis with Max.

  “Merry Christmas,” Phil said.

  Her relief was so great that, for a moment, she didn’t say anything.

  “Do you know who this is?”

  “It’s August,” said Cece.

  “Wrong,” said Phil. “Hey, who’s August?”

  “I meant that you missed Christmas by about nine months.”

  “I’m a little late. As usual.”

  There was a pause. There were always long pauses with Philip. At first they were unnerving, and then you got used to them, and then phone conversations with other people started to seem artificial and rushed. Being on the phone was a plea sure for Phil, even apart from talking. Cece suspected he liked the attenuated intimacy of it.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Well, you’re not going to believe it, but…”

  “Phil!�
��

  “What?”

  “You’re—are you here?”

  “No,” said Phil. “I’m in Chinatown. The one in Flushing, not Manhattan: it’s more authentic.”

  In that one second, she had scheduled and prepared herself for a reunion. She was relieved and intensely disappointed at the same time.

  “I just came from a film production company,” Phil said. “They’re going to buy my play.”

  “Phil, that’s wonderful.” Outside, the automatic leaf blowers relentlessly whirred.

  “It’s almost seven figures. They were talking about a ‘big summer movie,’ what ever that means…”

  “Phil!”

  “That’s only if they make it, and they probably won’t.”

  “Don’t say that!” Cece said. “I’m so happy for you. You deserve it.”

  “Well, I’m not sure about that.” Phil sighed. “It’s a lot of money, though, and I could use it.”

  “Of course you deserve it,” Cece said firmly. “Tell me all about it. Is it a play I’ve read?”

  “No.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “It’s sort of hard—”

  “Tell me the title, at least.”

  “The Hypnotist—but the title might change. Cece, it’s so weird. It’s great, but I don’t feel great.”

  “You’re in shock.”

  “I don’t think that’s it.”

  “No?”

  There was a long silence. He was on a payphone; she could hear the line, clicking down their minutes.

  “Phil? What is it?”

  “Oh Ceece,” he said, using an old nickname. “Nothing, I don’t know. I think I might be breaking up with Aubrey.”

  Cece experienced a joyful feeling of déjà vu, like turning on the tele vision and finding an old favorite movie playing. She had been through so many breakups with Phil. She cradled the phone between her shoulder and her ear. “Oh no,” she said. “Philip, why?”