Exhausted in America, Hong-My Basrai [grave mercy TXT] 📗

tear or a single heart, keeping them all dangling like deflated balloons from her child-like fingers.
Frustrated by her helplessness, Merry decided to step out anyway. Perhaps I might find Agathe walking back from the metro station, runs her thought. A walk to the bakery would relieve Merry from this agitation and self-incrimination. Agathe had come to her in the last days of Saigon. She was to stay at the at the Cité Universitaire in Choissy-le-Roi, a ten-minute metro ride from Merry’s apartment but had to forfeit the live-in residence for the lack of funding once communication with their family was cut off after Saigon was lost.
Soon the older sister found herself fighting the wind and rain, driven by her wind-powered umbrella along the glistening street from Jordan Boulevard towards Avenue de la Tunisie where her favorite Boulangerie Jean was located. She kept looking up for Agathe despite the whip-lashing wind storm. She pushed open the glass door of the warm, lighted bakery with relief, and was greeted by the wonderful scent of freshly baked breads rich with butter and yeast and sugar.
And there stood he, Lam of the past in long trench coat buttoned up to his chin, his handsome face clean-shaven and showing only a thin, fainted mark of a mustache, and under his arm a morning edition of Le Monde.

“Bonjour Merry. What a nice surprise.” He said, and there was a pleasant surprise in his dark eyes that made her heart throbbed with pain. Involuntary she put her hand to the wildly dancing life engine of hers, then realizing her gesture, quickly said, “God! You startle me,” covering her track.
He extended his right hand with long and thin fingers to her, continuing, “Comment ça va?”—how goes thing?
She gave him her handshake limp and cold like a dead fish, mumbling, “I’m just fine,” and almost fainted from the shock of his warm and vigorous flesh holding on to one end of her extremity, giving it his warmth, resuscitating it from a state of dormancy to its current agony—caressed as it was never before caressed, held as it was never before held, prisoner of a wonderful encapsulation.
“Sorry for the cold hand,” she said as if on cue, not knowing what she was saying.
“Poor girl. Let me warm it for you. Why are you out in such weather? Hungry?”
She blushed, thinking he was hinting at her plumpness. “No, no! Not at all.” She managed to utter and as soon as the foolish words tumbled out of her mouth, she hated herself for her clumsiness. Not at all what? Not at all cold or not at all hungry? But he only laughed, showing white rows of teeth, lips stretching wide. His nostrils flared out and she looked up to the cavities shyly, seeing dark hair inside it, noticing a mole on one bulbous lobe.
“How’s Agathe?” he inquired. And she felt deflated. Of course, that’s who he was after. He had not been visiting since the day her sister had gone out with her latest boyfriend, Van, the youngest son of a late Vietnamese ambassador to France, now a fortuneless immigrant as any other lost sons of the South.
His mentioning Agathe waked up Merry’s sense of purpose. She withdrew her hand from Lam’s grasp and murmuring a soft, “Oh! I forget that I need to bring some bread home for breakfast,” avoiding to answer him.
But he did not let her off easily. He followed her to the glass display case, commenting, “What a nice big sister you are. Going out in the cold to bring breakfast home to the lazy Agathe.”
Merry ordered a baguette although she had wanted two, fearing his judgment on her calorie intake. And abandoning her favorite croissant idea altogether, she paid and said goodbye to him, trying a cheery tone, repeating what she had heard Agathe mouthing expertly to her male friends, “To tomorrow. Tata.”
She escaped the bakery like a fleeing convict, forgetting to pop open her umbrella and only remember the rain when the water sprinkled her wet. Her steps retraced the familiar path home and carried her along unseeing, her mind reeling from the event. She rushed headlong home without stopping by the corner paper stand to pick up her weekly Paris Match.
Like all Parisians she survived on daily actualities and paperback novels. She absolutely had to be informed of the latest development or mishap in the lives of anybody of royal blood or fine pedigree. She got her quota of cheap romances to pass away her free time, but what engaged her mind were the historical novels through which she learned about important people around the world. Merry’s mind wrapped tightly around the inner stories of the historical celebrities with fascination. The fact that a Corsican boy of obscure origin rose up to be the world’s emperor convinced her that one’s fortune could be positively altered by life’s circumstance and ambition. She was separated by a grander path in life only by the accident of birth, born a commoner. But who knew, she might one day be selected to head a state, or president of a company, or, why not, this was a closer possibility, a woman business mogul owning pharmacies in all seven continents.
Years later, she gave to me one such book that had belonged in her bedroom, Josephine, Napoleon's Empress.
But that morning, she was so flustered up she came home empty-handed. Walking in with a single baguette and drenched from head to toe from the cruel beating of the April shower, whom did she find but the wretched Agathe in the kitchen, nursing a steamy cup of coffee and nibbling dry biscuits salvaged from the cupboard.
Seeing Merry’s poor state, Agathe whistled gaily and quipped, “You are that devoted to hot baguette?”
Merry roared, “Where have you been last night?”
“In Van’s warm arms. Where else?” Agathe said matter-of-factly, offering her sweet smile. “Coffee?”
“Do you happen to think about our parents when they find out that their unwed daughter slept with a man, giving away her honor?” Merry spoke from the bathroom, taking off her blouse, bra, and peeling out her woolen skirt and panty hose, methodically turning them right side out as she took each layer off.
Not hearing a reply she poked her head out, calling, “Agathe, you hear me?”
“Oui. Tu m’emmerdes. I’ll be an old-maid like you if I do not let any man honoring me.”
“Agathe!” Merry gasped.
“Wake up, sister. C’est la vie. You’ve got only one life to live. Don’t live for others.”
Saying these last words, Agathe stretched like a cat and yawned, “I’m going back to bed. I have a whole night program ahead of me. Van and his group will take us out to watch La Bohème if you care to join. Ah! By the way, that Vince of yours called ten minutes ago. He said he will be here next week to go over the wedding plans. To tell you the truth, the guy spooks me with his tight-wad attitude. I’d rather tie knots with l’Avare himself.”

4.

It was not the grandest wedding but she was nonetheless married at the mairie and blessed with a Catholic Mass in the historical Cathedrale Notre Dame de Paris. She never once looked back to her dreamed man again. After meeting for the last time that rainy day, she had asked herself, “What shall I do? Wait for a few more years for the guy to notice me?”
When she asked Agathe that same question, the girl had given her a quizzical look that plainly indicated to Merry that the reconsideration was the indicative of a deranged mind. Agathe also said, “But I would not marry the Vince guy in a million years. What’s the hurry sister; you’ve got only one life. Enjoy it. Why ruin everything by shackling up with a single male?”
Then the light-hearted sister of hers waltzed around, grasping Merry by the waist and twirling her as if she was only a spin top, singing:

Des yeux qui font baisser les miens
Un rir' qui se perd sur sa bouch'
Voila le portrait
sans retouch'
De I'homme auquel j'appartiens
Hold me close and hold me fast

The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose

Realizing then that she had to make up her own mind and that, unlike Agathe who could yank out of life’s hand what she wanted for herself, Merry could only choose what life offered her and work out the rest, conceding all the steps of the way. Vince was her best bet, and she would stick with him.
Lam’s image in her mind was forever put away with her single years’ belongings, like the poster of E.T. that had meant so much to her and other knick knacks, all boxed and stored in the dark storage of her new home in Caen soon after the marriage.
It was funny how she thought of the extraterrestrial’s wimpy, gentle eyes now with resentment. She was almost glad when Vince tossed away the poster still rolled up—together with other discards, into the common dumpster of their street. That way, she did not have to ever explain it to him.
The love that Merry hoped from her marriage was quickly chilled by the icy winds bearing down from the open sea. Her faith in the power of love was contested by the greater power of daily economy and it was lost in the attempt to budget and balance each franc, scrutinize every single bill, and wrangle who brought in the family income and consequently, who should be doing the house chores and changing the baby’s diapers.
Or perhaps, she had not charmed love enough to retain love’s magic. Perhaps she had imagined it too perfect—two persons holding hands walking through the gloomy and trash-littered avenues of life, leaving behind their path rose petals and singing birds, the way they had left the marble steps of the cathedral to run—oh so happily—into the back seat of their rented limousine, waving to family and friends who tossed handful of rice grain at them and blowing farewell kisses before embarking on their one-week honeymoon in Greece.
Even Agathe had stared incredulously at her when in full white bridal gown, Merry had walked up in dainty, heeled steps up the church aisle in the guiding arm of her newly immigrated father, an exquisite figure slender as a sliver of white moon leaning delicately on what seemed like the majestic velvety wing of a white-breasted eagle.
What a moment to remember.
She had woken up from the powerful powders sprinkled in the midnight summer of her girlhood too soon and yet, too late. Her firstborn, a daughter, was already two; too late to break away without destroying another life.
Since eighteen, since the day Merry had stepped on France’s soil and left behind her native Vietnam, the shy daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ta had learned to cope with the hostile environment of the academic world in a strange land. What gave her courage to forge an independent and successful life was the determination to make her parents proud.
“You are our