The Man With No Time

“Her purse, too, right?” he asked.

“Of course,” Eleanor said. “And her wallet, and all the money in it.”

Horace returned to the fray, using his right hand to drive home points and, occasionally, to wave inarticulately in the direction of heaven. When he hung up he looked as tired as he had the first time I'd seen him that morning.

“She could tie a knot in a tree,” he said. “Nothing is simple. Should she leave her purse? Should she call the neighborhood security guard? Should she send the plumber out and hide in a closet? How do we know someone else won't come along and rob the house? Everything has to be turned inside out, held up to the light, weighed in the hand, bitten, and once all that adds up, it's time to argue about it. When I was growing up I thought everyone was like that. I thought that was how people figured things out. When I went to junior high school it took me most of the class period to answer the first question on my first multiple-choice test. I was looking for the trick, the double-cross, the sucker punch. Jesus, no wonder I've lost my hair. I failed the written part of the driver's exam four times because I was too busy searching for the hook to answer the questions. It's a miracle I can drive today.” He fell heavily into his chair.

“She's had a lot of trick questions,” Eleanor said levelly, although I knew she agreed with him absolutely.

Horace shook his head from side to side. “Oh, sure, sure. Bad luck all the way. Treachery on every hand. And after Daddy died she managed to get out of China and wind up in America years later with two grown kids and two grandkids, one of whom is a boy, and she owns property all over the place, more safety-deposit boxes than I've got dresser drawers, and she's finally got a plumber of her own. She hasn't exactly ended up like Auntie Shih, has she?”

“Okay, Horace.” Eleanor glanced at me. “Auntie Shih got her back broken during the Cultural Revolution,” she said. “Some ham-fisted farmer was helping her with self-criticism and didn't know how strong he was.”

“They're going to clear out?” I asked Horace.

“They're probably gone already,” Horace said tightly, “What the hell does he want?”

I looked at my watch and yawned. “Nothing to do till five,” I said.

Eleanor reached over and put her hand politely over my mouth. “Yes, there is.” She got up and stretched. “Clear your plates, please. I'm tired of servitude.”

“What's to do?” I asked her, knowing what she was going to say.

“Well, Uncle Lo's in Las Vegas. Let's go talk to Mrs. Summerson.”

“Yes, who is it?” she said, peering pale blue at us through glasses that were not only thick but dusty.

“It's Eleanor Chan.” Eleanor pulled me forward. “And a friend.”

“Eleanor, dear,” Mrs. Summerson said, fumbling with the lock on the screen door. “What a treat to see you, not that I can really see you, I'm afraid. How are the children?”

“The children,” Eleanor said, momentarily thrown. She absolutely cannot tell a lie without preparation.

“Your little boy and girl,” Mrs. Summerson said, all blue eyes though the lenses. “Twins, aren't they?”

“The twins, yes,” Eleanor said, “well, no, they're not mine. They're my sister-in-law's.”

Mrs. Summerson peered at her for a moment as though she'd forgotten what she was going to say next, but then her face cleared. “Of course,” she said, “you're their aunt, aren't you? I vow, I'm losing my mind completely.” She waved a hand in front of her face, dispelling the fumes of confusion. “And look at me, keeping you standing here on the step like a pair of orphans. Please, come in, come in.”

She opened the door and then turned away from us and led us into the dim hallway, which smelled simultaneously of old sachet and cooking oil. As she retreated I heard her say, “Pansy is the mother, of course. Whatever is the matter with you?”

Mrs. Summerson was as tall as I was and had better posture. Her hair was white and cut bluntly, in a way that brought to mind the Chinese rice-bowl haircut. There was, in all, something indefinably Chinese about her in spite of her height and her big hands and fair skin and ice-blue eyes, something Asian in the way she held herself and in the way she walked, as though she were living in a climate much hotter than that of Southern California, and energy were something to be conserved. I could almost hear sandals slapping, and for a moment I remembered the old woman in my dream, the old woman with Lo's face.

“. . the parlor,” Mrs. Summerson was saying. “Right there, dear, to the right, you remember. Tea in a twinkling.” Eleanor and I went through a wide archway into the parlor, and Mrs. Summerson padded off toward the kitchen, saying to herself, “How nice this is.”

“She's gotten old,” Eleanor said wistfully, looking around the familiar room. We could have been in Canton. Chinese artwork was everywhere: fine old watercolors of clouds and mountains and bamboo and horses hung on the walls. Ivories and bronzes, smooth with touching, nestled close on shelves. The Three Ancients, ceramic and brightly colored, stood close together like gossiping old men, offering their blessings on the house. Above the fireplace hung a large black-and-white photograph of a plain wooden building set into a level, dusty field. The horizon was featureless. Lined up in identical uniforms in front of the building, which I had been told was a missionary school, were perhaps seventy Chinese children. They stared patiently into the camera, not hiding behind the photographic smile of the West. In the lower right-hand corner of the photograph, in white ink, was a date: January 10, 1942.

Next to the photograph was a framed embroidered sampler that said MY HANDS ARE FOR MY FELLOW MAN. MY HEART IS FOR GOD. Stitched below these lines were four lines of Chinese that, Eleanor had explained to me on the day of the twins' hundred-day party, meant the same thing. She'd spoken as an expert, since she'd done the embroidery when she was eight years old.

Eleanor had once lived in this house.

“I am a servant of the Lord,” Mrs. Summerson sang from the kitchen. “His wishes I attend.” Her voice was low and resonant, and it carried well. It had carried through churches and schools all over the face of China for almost twenty-five years.

Eleanor was staring at the sampler as though it were several miles away. Then she let her gaze wander over the room and down to the carpet. She listened to Mrs. Summerson sing, her eyes downcast, eight years old again and abandoned in Los Angeles.

“How long since you were here?” I asked.

“Same as you,” she said to the carpet. “Um, no. You've been here more recently.” She went to the sampler and straightened it. Then she untucked her shirt and ran it over the surfaces of some of the carved objects. She picked up a little ceramic statue of Christ, robed in incongruously bright Chinese gold and red, and blew on it. “She really can't see,” she said. “This place was never dusty.”

“No help?”

“Mrs. Summerson doesn't believe in help.”

“Well,” I said, “she's got the Lord.”

“You've got it backward.” She put the little Jesus down and went to the large photograph of the children and drew her sleeve across the glass. “Mrs. Summerson is the Lord's servant.”

“We're all the Lord's servants,” Mrs. Summerson said. “If only we knew it.” She pushed a jangling three- wheeler tea table into the room, lifting the back edge to roll it in front of her, and I hurried around to take it from her although she looked strong enough to carry it one-handed. She regarded me in a kindly fashion through the magnified eyes that made her glasses look like a dime-store joke. “So,” she said as I positioned the table in front of the small rosewood sofa, “this is your young man.”

“What a sweet thing for you to say,” Eleanor cooed. “Especially about an old codger like Simeon.”

“He looks young enough to me, dear,” Mrs. Summerson said, smoothing her big hands on the front of her skirt. “Young and vigorous. Lots of good hard work in him.”

“And that's where it'll stay,” Eleanor said. “Inside him.”

“The way you young people talk.” Mrs. Summerson bent forward and peered at the tea table to see whether she'd forgotten anything. “Jam, sugar, rolls, cream-do you take cream or milk, dear? — well, never mind, we have both, lemon, butter. The tea is Darjeeling. Please sit down. When I was married my husband and I never bantered back and forth like that. Of course, we were serious people. Too serious, I dare say. Still, it was a good life.” She sat at one end of the sofa, tucking her skirt under her legs. “You remember Dr. Summerson, don't you,