Triplines (9781936364107) (16 page)

Ed tilts his head. “I hope you did well.”

“Why?”

“Those are placement tests for junior high school. You're going to be tracked based on those tests.”

“Tracked.”

“You know: Gifted, Advanced, Regular, Dumbshit.”

“What?” Lenny says, alarmed.

“Yeah, and you can't get off it. It tracks you into high school, and your GPA gets added points if you're in the higher tracks so the higher tracks get into better colleges. I got fucked. So, I hope you did well.”

Lenny says that he rushed through it quickly to get to recess.

Ed raises an eyebrow. “Why did you do that?”

“I didn't know it was important!”

“Oh, man. You're going to be a dumbshit.” He laughs. “Just because you wanted to go play kickball!”

Lenny feels queasy.

His brother's goodbye is brief and uneventful. Mira and Lenny hadn't gone to his graduation, and no one had gone to Lenny's, including Lenny himself. He never gave his parents
the invitation, and he just didn't care. All these events make the end of the school year feel anti-climactic. When Ed leaves the house he hoists a heavy backpack over his shoulder, punches Lenny in the arm and says, “Catch you later.” Their mother kisses him. Their father shakes his hand, and Ed ruffles Mira's hair.

Then he walks out of the house and jumps into his friend's Mustang. They screech off, and that's more or less the last Lenny sees of Ed for years. The strange thing is that there doesn't seem to be much of a difference in the house. He was there so rarely anyway, that for Lenny the biggest change is his new bedroom in the basement, where it's cold and damp, but completely private.

The back door leads directly to the basement stairwell, so Lenny often leaves and enters the house without seeing anyone. Lately, though, his mother has taken over the kitchen table in the breakfast nook for her work and studying, so sometimes Lenny finds her late at night preparing for her realtor exam.

One night he comes upstairs and finds her studying, charts and graphs of home prices in front of her, and she brightens when Lenny appears. She asks him to join her. She shows him her test preparation books, and tells him she likes this because it involves so many different areas, like math, reading, and even art and architecture. The test is in a couple of weeks, and she feels ready. She says, “I never thought I would become a real estate broker.”

“You wanted to be a painter, didn't you?”

“Yes. Maybe I will go back to it eventually. What do you like to do?”

He thinks about the books, pamphlets and magazines,
and says, “I like to read.”

“Maybe you can be a professor.”

“Maybe.”

“I don't give you a lot of advice, but I will say one thing. Find what you love and do it well and keep doing it, and the money will follow. If I had followed that advice maybe I would be a famous painter by now.”

She touches his cheek. “I know you will do well. I can see it.”

“How?”

“Because you never give up.”

She kisses his forehead and tells him to go back to bed.

Sal has to go to summer school, but because Lenny has his days free, he cares for the crops, and he watches the plants grow taller and bushier, those with the premature flowers tagged as male—the tiny stalks and symmetrical knobs indicating their sex—appearing even larger and thicker. Sal wants to wait until the pre-flowering stage when the females begin clustering their new leaves, fully revealing their sexes, and then they'll decide what to do with the males.

Lenny studies the copies of the pamphlets as closely as Sal, and they debate the idea of fertilizing the females with male pollen to produce seeds for the next crop. Sal isn't sure if there will be another crop, and he still has plenty of seeds stored in his crawlspace. Although Lenny understands that female plants that don't make seeds are more potent, he keeps thinking about the future. Sal repeats a few times that growing in the woods is too hard. Lenny wonders about his attic and the backyard. Even though he doesn't know yet how complicated harvesting and drying is, and he has no
idea about selling, it's the notion that he, a kid, could grow something illegal, coveted and profitable that appeals to him.

A couple of the catalogs advertise seeds for sale, though he isn't sure how legal this is and worries about his parents getting in trouble. He considers using another address, maybe his elderly neighbor's, making sure he intercepts her mail.

Lost in thought as he returns home, he's startled to find a strange Korean man sitting on the front steps, smoking a cigarette. He stands up when he sees Lenny, ducking his head shyly, and asks in broken and barely understandable English something about whose house this is.

He has large bags under his sad eyes, and his teeth are crooked and tobacco-stained. A belt holds up oversized jeans. Lenny asks him whom he's looking for, and the man says “Yul.” Then he asks, “Are you Won Chul?”

That's Lenny's Korean name. He nods his head.

“I am Gil. Your…” He pauses, thinking of the word. “… uncle? I see you when you…” He lowers his hand to his thigh.

“You're my father's brother?” Lenny asks, not recognizing him.

He smiles and said he is.

He doesn't look like Yul, and because his parents had never mentioned a visit, Lenny is suspicious. He asks Gil to wait here while he calls his mother. Gil sits back down, and lights another cigarette.

Umee hadn't known Gil was coming, and tells Lenny she will call him back. After a few minutes his father calls, and asks to speak with Gil. Lenny hurries to the front door and
opens it, motioning him in and leading him to the kitchen phone.

He speaks to Yul in Korean, and Lenny hears his father's voice asking curt questions. Uncle Gil replies in a soft, apologetic tone, and after a few minutes, he hands Lenny the phone.

His father says, “Keep an eye on him until I come home.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just don't let him touch anything.”

“How can I do that?”

“Just do it,” his father says. “I will be home early.” He hangs up.

Lenny turns to his uncle, and they stand there awkwardly for a minute. Lenny offers him a drink, which he doesn't understand, so Lenny motions drinking with his hand and Gil grins. “Yes, yes. Thank you.”

Uncle Gil originally came to the U.S. on a tourist visa, which had expired years ago, and he's here illegally. He's in town now to ask his brother for a job.

Lenny doesn't understand much of what's going on, because unlike the conversations his parents have, which are often sprinkled with English, Gil and Yul speak quickly and without the same inflections. When Lenny asks his mother she tells him that his father is angry at this surprise visit and burden. “Your father always had to take care of Gil when they were younger, and he didn't like it.”

“What can Gil do, if he's here illegally?”

“Many Korean storeowners can hire him off the books.”

“How long will he stay with us?”

“Not long,” she says. “Your father won't let him.”

Gil smokes a lot, and Lenny often finds him sitting on the back steps, mashing out a cigarette in an old ceramic pot that quickly fills up with butts and matches. His English is limited to a few words, but they manage to communicate through gestures.

One afternoon Lenny asks him about his father, trying to find out what he was like as a kid. It takes a while, but Lenny finally conveys his question, and Gil sits and thinks about this while blowing smoke rings. He finally points to the house and makes a fist. “Abogee, daddy, uh…” He tries to think of a word, but shakes his head. Then Lenny gets an idea. He finds a Korean-English dictionary on his mother's bookshelf and hands it to Gil, who smiles. He flips through it and says, “Your daddy… tough.”

Later, Lenny's mother explains more. She and Gil have talked, and she learns that Yul used to punish Gil by making him lift a wheelbarrow and carry it across the yard. If Gil dropped it he wouldn't be allowed to sleep in the house.

“Where was their father? Their mother?”

“Your grandfather was never home. He was a smuggler.”

Lenny had forgotten about that, the stories of his grandfather smuggling opium into Korea. “And their mother?”

“I don't know. They don't talk about her very much. I think she was also hard on them. They were a hard family. You have to remember that about your father, how he is. It's all he knows.”

Lenny can't imagine his father as a kid, but he can see Gil as a child, because of the tentative and awkward way he seems to deal with everyone, including Lenny. Gil has trouble looking people in the eye. He talks to peoples' feet, mumbling in a low voice. But his timidity annoys Yul, who
barks at him, and Gil straightens his posture. Yul's tone is tinged with disgust whenever Lenny overhears him talking about his brother, and Lenny begins to feel sorry for Gil.

Handy with tools, Gil helps with a few household repairs, including fixing the garage door, which often sticks, and cleaning out the gutters. Yul inspects these the same way he inspects Lenny's yard work—Lenny notices a similar glimmer of hostility in Gil's eyes.

One afternoon Lenny hears them arguing in the garage. Gil's voice is characteristically quiet and subdued, but there's an edge to it, an insistence that angers his father, who speaks in clipped tones. Lenny doesn't know what they're saying, but Gil loses his temper, raising his voice.

Yul replies, and Lenny hears the garage door opening. His father storms back to the house, gathers Gil's bag and clothes, and throws them out the front door. His father then sits in the living room and turns on the stereo. Lenny goes outside through the garage and sees Gil picking up his clothes and packing them angrily in the small duffel bag. His face is flushed. When he sees Lenny he takes a deep breath, and lights up a cigarette. He asks, “Taxi? Bus? Where?”

“You can get one at the train station,” Lenny says, pointing beyond the church. “Train.”

Gil nods his head, understanding. He hesitates. He sticks out his hand to shake. “Goodbye,” he says.

“Goodbye.” Lenny shakes his hand, which is covered in rough calluses.

Gil inhales the cigarette, turns and walks down the street. Lenny never sees him again.

Umee passes the real estate broker exam, but continues to work as a receptionist and secretary while she trains with her boss. Yul, pleased for her, celebrates with a bottle of wine with dinner, imagining aloud that she will tap into the Korean market and then set up her own firm in New York, where rich Koreans will use her services to buy investment property.

But Umee quickly dismisses this, saying that all she wants is a good, steady job.

“No vision, no d-dreams,” Yul says scornfully.

“Like a candy store in the middle of nowhere?”

They are eating at the kitchen table, and the small radio on the shelf plays the local classical station. Everyone falls quiet as Yul considers this retort. The announcer on the station comes on in his soothing, deep voice, and Mira and Lenny exchange glances. They know they will be leaving the table any minute.

Yul says, “It would've worked if the economy was b-better and you did a b-better job.”

Umee then does something uncharacteristic. Lenny expects her to spit something back, or to shut down, but instead she puts her glass of wine carefully on the table and looks coolly at Yul. She says, “Blame me all you want. Everyone knows the truth.” She motions her head toward the kids, which surprises Lenny.

Yul reverts to Korean, his voice threatening. But Umee
isn't fazed. She shrugs a shoulder and replies. Her reaction also seems to confuse Yul, and when Mira and Lenny ask to be excused he waves them away. Yul and Umee begin to talk quietly in Korean, and the strength with which Umee handles her husband is so interesting to Lenny that he sits on the steps to the basement, the door closed, so he can eavesdrop. He doesn't know precisely what they're saying, but his mother seems to be laying out an argument slowly and carefully, bullet points for his father to consider. His father listens for a while and then replies in a tired voice. Lenny hears his father's chair scraping the floor as he leaves the table. He walks to the bedroom and closes the door.

Lenny emerges from the basement stairwell as his mother clears the table. He asks her what happened. She blinks rapidly, her expression disbelieving. She says, “I told him I hired a divorce lawyer. I want him to move out soon.”

Based on the advice in the pamphlets, Sal and Lenny harvest some leaves and growing shoots. Although the main goal is the final harvest, especially the buds, which is approaching more quickly that Sal had thought—the ideal weather, the swampy soil, and the strain of cannabis all contribute to this—Sal needs to sample some of the new growths for the potency. He dries the leaves in his oven when his parents aren't home, and rolls a joint. Because he's worried about the smell, he smokes it in the woods. He says, “I'd offer you some, but I think you're too young.”

“I think I should try a little.”

He hands Lenny the joint, who never smoked anything before, and because of his soft palate problems he has trouble inhaling without leaking air in through his nose. Sal
laughs at his difficulty, and finally Lenny holds his nose to suck in the smoke. It burns his throat, and he has a coughing fit.

“I know. It could be smoother.”

“People do this for fun?” Lenny gags.

“A bong would cool off the smoke, but the leaves are harsh. I'm going to experiment with curing, because that's supposed to help. Slow drying too.”

Lenny's eyes water, and he hands the joint back to him. “I don't feel anything.”

“You probably won't, not the first few times. I'm feeling it.”

Lenny studies him. He seems no different than usual. It occurs to him that maybe Sal is often stoned. They sit on the edge of the concrete run-off, a small stream of water splashing into the creek, brown and yolk-colored foam congealing near their feet. The sweetness of the marijuana covers up the rot smell of the swamp.