“Your heart’s not in it anymore.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Again, you told me you wanted out.”
“You made it sound like I didn’t have a choice.”
“The last couple days have been tense for all of us. We may have said things we didn’t mean.”
“Oh, so now you’re taking back what you said?”
“You’re going to Paris tonight.”
“You know what I mean.”
“One thing I’ve always asked of you is honesty.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“No? Then how was your job interview?”
I’ve been pacing, circling the car, but now I stop and just stand there. I don’t speak. I can’t speak.
“Remember, Holly, my family is the most important thing to me. I make it my mission to ensure their constant safety. And so yes, after our little spat the other day, I talked to one of my friends over at the FBI and requested a surveillance team be put on my children.”
“How did you know about my interview?”
“How do I know anything, Holly? How do I know when Islamic terrorists are planning to make a hit, or there’s a three-car pileup along an obscure highway just outside of Munich?”
“You have my phone tapped?”
“Holly, if you want to resign your position as my children’s nanny, that’s your choice. But I ask that you stay until we’ve found a suitable replacement.”
“What—another undercover assassin?”
“Let’s just say someone more dedicated.”
“Fuck you, Walter. I’m more dedicated to those kids than you are. I love them like they’re my own.”
“That’s a little too overdramatic, even for you. Besides, what are you trying to say? Are you saying you love them so much you wouldn’t leave them alone with your sister while you went to a job interview at your brother-in-law’s firm?”
“They were in no danger and you know it.”
“No, Holly, what I know is that all of us are in danger. In one way or another, each and every one of us needs a guardian. And right now my focus is making sure my children do not lose theirs.”
“But you’re going to replace me.”
“If it comes to it.”
“So I’m fired?”
“It’s not that easy, Holly. Really, we should talk about this in person.”
“And what about Marilyn? What convenient lie will you tell her this time?”
“I’ve never lied to my wife. She knows about your background. She knows that’s the reason I picked you.”
I ask sardonically, “So she knows the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”
“She knows as much as she needs to know to be happy.” He pauses. “By the way, I’ve changed your flight for tonight.”
“What?”
“You’ll be hitching a ride on a cargo jet going to Europe. Completely under the radar. You won’t even need a passport.”
“Why so secretive?”
“Because after the trouble in Vegas I wouldn’t be surprised if Alayna Gramont now has your face on file. She’ll probably have a bulletin out at all the airports for a single Asian woman of your age flying alone.”
“You think she can actually do that?”
“You really have no idea how powerful Roland Delano was, do you?”
“Okay, so now what?”
“Now we terminate this call. I have a meeting in five minutes, and you need to ensure my children remain safe. Do you think you can handle that?”
Thirty
My mother doesn’t feel like cooking. She doesn’t feel like going out either, so we order pizza from a place nearby. Medium pie, half mushroom, half pepperoni. The mushrooms are for my mother; the pepperoni for me.
We sit at the kitchen table and eat our slices in silence. My mother doesn’t even turn on the stereo in the living room, which is odd. The only sounds besides our chewing are the clock ticking and the refrigerator occasionally kicking on and off.
Finally, after five minutes of this unnerving quiet, I say, “Go ahead and ask.”
“Ask what?”
“How the interview went.”
“How did it go?”
“Pretty sucky.”
My mother doesn’t respond. She continues working on her already half-eaten slice, holding it up to her mouth with two hands, taking almost petite bites. She has a thoughtful look on her face but doesn’t speak, doesn’t even look at me, until she’s finished the slice and sets the crust down on the side of her plate and then dabs her mouth with a napkin.
“I’m very proud of you, you know.”
“Mom, please don’t.”
“Why can’t a mother tell her daughter she’s proud of her?”
“For starters, the mother in question never once told her daughter that before.”
My mother’s expression is one I’d expect to see had I just slapped her across the face. “That is not true.”
“Oh really? Then when—when have you ever said those exact words to me?”
She stares at me for a long moment, just stares, and then slowly she lets her gaze fall to the table. In a soft voice, she says, “I never did tell you girls about the camps.”
Now it’s like I’ve been slapped—my entire body goes rigid for an instant, the blood draining from my face. In all my twenty-eight years my mother has never once talked about her time in the internment camps, even when Tina and I had begged her, because we felt it was something she should talk about, something to help exorcise those terrible demons.
I don’t speak and just watch her, listening to the clock ticking, to the refrigerator once again shutting itself off.
“You have to keep in mind I was just a child at the time, only two years old. I don’t even remember what it was like.”
My mother’s parents came to the United States in 1939. My mother was born just a year later, making her a legal American citizen. This little I know.
“But my parents remembered. They could never force themselves to forget. Growing up, it was one of those things I knew they thought about but would refuse to speak of.”
After World War II, my grandparents wanted to change my mother’s name to something more American. But by that time my mother was eight, still an only child but at an age where she could make her own decisions, and she stubbornly made them keep it. This little I also know.
“The War may
