His ticket back to the real world. : The intern came back in, smiling nervously at Rossiter. 'Chief Engles told me to tell you to pick up your fax nOW.'
Rossiter grinned, but there was no humor in it. 'Tell him to...' He trailed off, shook his head. 'Never mind. I'm coming.' He placed the printout in the top drawer of his desk and turned down the intensity light on his screen.
No, he wouldn't talk to Engles. :
Regs or no regs, this one he would keep to himself for a while.
Sue wanted to talk to her grandmother following dinaer, but immediately after eating the old woman silently left the table and disappeared into her bedroom.
'Is Grandmother feeling all right?' Sue asked.
John shrugged.
Neither of her parents answered. ' Sue finished her rice. '
In the restaurant, both she and John cleared tables, cleaned, did dishes, but at home such chores were woman's work, and after dinner John followed his father out to the living room to watch TV while she stayed to help her mother. She would have objected to this sort of blatant sexism long ago, but this was really the only time she ever got a chance to talk to her mother one-on-one, and she acquiesced to this unfair division of labor for that reason alone. The truth was, she felt closer to her mother at these times than she did at any other. Doing dishes, working in the kitchen, they were no longer mother and daughter but coworkers, equals. Their roles here were clearly defined washer and dryer, alternating and they could talk more freely than they could otherwise, the animosity which sometimes marked their relationship in the presence of others absent.
It was Sue's turn to wash and she grabbed a dishrag from the wooden rack on the side of the cupboard and squeezed Dove into the sink before turning on the water.
Her mother seemed preoccupied, staring silently out the window at nothing, and Sue found herself wondering if her grandmother had said anything to her about the cup hugirngsi. She wanted to ask, and she started to say some thing, but then she looked at her mother and found her self unable to continue.
The sink filled up, soap suds billowing upward like bubble clouds, and Sue dumped the chopsticks and forks in before pushing the faucet over to the other half of the sink for her mothers's rinse water.
They worked in silence for a while.
Sue found herself thinking about her mother, about her father, and she coughed politely. Her mother looked over at her, and she almost backed down, but then she forced herself to go on, to ask the question that she had so often tried to ask before. 'Do you love Father?'
Her mother's face registered no response, no surprise at the question.
She rinsed a dish and began to towel it dry. ''We have a very good marriage.'
Sue gathered her courage, pressed on. 'But do you love him?'
'Yes, I do.' Another dish. Rinse. Dry.
Sue stopped washing, wiping her hands on her jeans, looking over at her mother. 'Did you..' always love him? Did you know when you first met him that you loved him?'
Her mother was silent for a moment, her small hands continuing to towel a dish even though it was already dry.
'I grew to love him,' she said finally.
'Do you--' 'Wash,' her mother said. 'I am not in the mood to talk.'
Sue nodded. Her mother looked old to her all of a sudden, and that frightened her. She could see her grand mother's face in the patterns of wrinkles beginning to form around her mother's mouth and eyes, and at the same time she could see the bone structure of her own face beneath those wrinkles. Sue realized, in a way she hadn't as the birthdays had come and gone, that her mother was pushing the outer envelope of middle age and that she herself was no longer young.
It was a depressing realization, and it left her feeling strange. She began washing the rice cooker, scraping the sticky rice off the metal side of the container with her fingernail. i Her mother picked up another plate, dried it, and there was something in the slow, deliberate nature of her movements that made her seem frail and vulnerable.
It hit Sue then.
The cup hugirngsi could kill her mother..
Or her father. Or John. Or even her grandmother. None of them were immune.
Sue looked again at her mother and, for the first time, she realized how much she loved her and cared about her. About both her parents.
Her whole family.
E If this were a scene in a movie or a TV show, this would be the point where she turned to her mother, said 'I love you,' and hugged, all problems solved, all past conflicts forgotten.
But hers was not one of those fictional families, and Sue handed the rice cooker to her mother without speaking and started scrubbing the chopsticks.
After the dishes were done, Sue sat for a few moments between her father and brother watching Entertainment Tonight, then excused herself and walked down the hallway to her grandmother's room.
She opened the door slowly. Her grandmother was lying on the bed, left arm over her face, covering her eyes. The curtains and shades were drawn so that not even a hint of the dying daylight could sneak in, and both lamps were turned off, the only illumination coming from behind Sue in the hallway. The room smelled even more strongly than usual of herbs and Chinese medicine..
'I am tired,' her grandmother said, and the old woman's voice, quiet and weak, barely above a whisper, confirmed her words.
A bolt of fear flashed through Sue, a sudden irrational feeling that her grandmother was seriously ill and dying, but she pushed that feeling aside and stepped into the room. She swallowed. 'Do you want me to close the door?'
Her grandmother shook her head, not taking the arm away from her face.
'It is all right.'
'I need to know about the cup hugrngsi.' l Now there was movement.
From underneath the arm, Sue saw white eyes looking at her. With a soft grunt of exertion, her grandmother sat up, swinging her thin wrinlded legs over the side of the bed. She closed her eyes hard, squeezing them shut, then opened them and looked at Sue. 'I am glad you are finally ready.'
Sue felt flustered. 'I don't know what I'm supposed to be ready for. I don't know if I'm ready for anything. I just want to know about the cup hugirngsi. ''
'You believe.' Her grandmother studied her.
She nodded. 'I believe.'
'I am tired. I have been thinking on this today, trying to gather my strength, testing myself?' She paused, blinked, and Sue noticed for the first time how her grandmother's eyes looked like her own, truly almond shaped, wider than John's or her father's or even her mother's.
'I am old, I am weak, and I do not know if I can right this tse m I think perhaps that we should leave.'
Sue knelt down on the floor in front of her grandmother. 'I thought you said it was our responsibility to stop it ..... Her grandmother did not respond.
'It is different this time, isn't it?' Sue's voice was a quiet as her grandmother's. She studied the old woman' face. 'It is different than it was back in Cuangxun.'
Her graadmother sighed, nodded. 'The cup hugirn is no longer afraid.
People have forgotten it, people not believe, people do not know how to right it. The cu hugirngsi is wise or it is foolish or perhaps it is just vair but it is ready to make its presence known. After all thi
-time, after all these centuries, it has decided that it is tire, of hiding in the shadows and. living on the outskirts c human society, behaving like a scavenger. It wants to come out in the open.' ' 'What does that mean?' Sue asked. There was a colic, tigh mess in the pit of her stomach.
'It, no longer,ints to be fed. It wan
Verde.
I: Her grandmother..shtti?' Yes, she said, but Su could tell from her tone of voice that the old woman di not believe the monster's influence would stop at that. boundaries of the toma.
Sue licked her lips. 'I saw trees today that had bee killed by the cup hugimgsi. ''
