The Best American Short Stories 2016 by Junot Díaz

Author:Junot Díaz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

4

Trees were different in New Jersey, bigger, more colorful. The train had rolled past houses with single-car garages, three-block downtowns, stores with awnings, even an official town clock. Pat had said on the phone to look out for the green Beetle, and he spotted it when he got off in Warwick, the only car in the lonely parking lot with its lights on. Two little girls sat in the backseat, watching him.

“These are my daughters. Lynette and Cynthia. Say hello to Sam.”

“Hello,” the children chorused.

Sam’s brain was flipping through the possibilities. Who were these children? Was this a setup? Pat didn’t wear a wedding ring; she had agreed to the date. Should he get out of the car before her husband returned and kicked his ass all the way back to Brooklyn?

She put her hand on top of his. It was small and warm, clammy with sweat.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier. I didn’t know how. My husband, Harry, well, my ex-husband, he passed away.”

“I’m so sorry.”

The girls were silent.

“It was almost a year ago.”

Only? Almost? “I’m sorry.”

Pat clapped her hands together and turned on the ignition. “I couldn’t get a sitter for tonight,” she said in Cantonese.

Sam looked at her, then toward the backseat.

“They don’t understand,” Pat said. “Their father was jook-sing, Chinese but born in America.”

“Oh?”

“We met in Queens.”

“Oh.”

“Are we going for pizza?” one of girls asked. “Do you like pizza?”

“I love pizza,” Sam said, switching back to English, even though eating cheese gave him stomach cramps.

At Romeo’s he wished they were in the city, where there were other Chinese, and later he would feel that he had backed down too easily, that he should’ve gone back inside and let the waitress know they couldn’t mess with him. He wondered if, in not doing so, he had let Pat down.

Pat drove them to another pizzeria and they ordered a pie to go, brought it back to the house, and ate it at the kitchen table. The girls drank sodas, Pat and Sam beers. The scene at Romeo’s receded, somewhat. Sam was surprised at how large the house was on the inside. The ceilings were tall, and the fluffy shag carpet clean and warm. The kitchen was twice the size of his rented room, and the windows faced a tree-filled backyard. He walked around the living room full of hanging plants and children’s toys and looked at framed photos on the fireplace mantel. The jook-sing husband was in some of them, and Sam noted that he wasn’t too tall, although he was good-looking, with hard, chiseled features and wiry hair. The girls took after him.

There was a picture of Pat and the jook-sing husband smiling in front of a small Christmas tree strung with so much tinsel, it was if the tree had metallic hair. They wore matching red plaid pants. Had this been the jook-sing husband’s last Christmas? He didn’t look sick. Sam looked at his deceased competition—for now he had put himself into the running—and Pat began to take on a new shape, that of a steely, vulnerable survivor.

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