people to share these with.” While I objected to almost everything about Ray Lampert, in that moment I was able to really like him, to feel I knew him. His skin had the clammy sweet smell of my own father’s when he was drunk, and for a moment I missed my dad so intensely I became light-headed. The night my mother had been arrested, they didn’t let us go to the ER with him, maybe because he was so drunk. The squad car, my mother handcuffed inside, drove off; the ambulance, my father recumbent inside, glided into the dark, sirens like the call of a robotic whooping crane; and I assumed that Gabby and I would stay in the house. We had been alone in the house so many times, I didn’t even think about it, and I was horrified when I understood that we were going to be taken, against our will, somewhere else.
We were driven to some lady’s house in Torrance. She was a retired nurse with a mastiff named Cookie. We stayed with her for three days and no one came to get us. Why didn’t he come then? He could have waltzed in, flashed his photo ID, and legally claimed our lives. But he didn’t. What did he do during those days? Did he sit in our empty house and think about things? What did he decide?
After the first seventy-two hours, we were moved to another house, this time in Inglewood, a house full of kids, the oldest of whom was named Renaldo and who stole my pajamas. I was involuntarily extremely attracted to him, and I can still viscerally recall what it felt like to be that mad and humiliated and turned on at the same time. I found out later that Aunt Deedee tried to come get us in those first three days, but she didn’t have the right paperwork to prove she was related to us, and she had to wait until our detention hearing. But at the detention hearing, dear old Dad suddenly showed up. And the judge had to decide who to put us with: him or Aunt Deedee.
What did she say? What did she dare say in front of him, to his face? Had she seen the bruises on Viv’s neck? Had she noticed the way Gabby flinched when someone moved too quickly? I imagine him getting redder and redder—he was always angriest when he was ashamed—and blurting out, “This is bullshit, Your Honor, this is fucking bullshit.” He was like an eighteen-year-old who one day woke up in a thirty-five-year-old man’s completely fucked-up life. Whatever she said, it was enough. The judge awarded her custody, and set a jurisdictional hearing where my father would have a chance to defend himself and regain custody. But he never showed up at the court date they set, and I had not seen or heard from him since. I knew that if I did see him now, he would take one look at me and know that I was gay, and his shame and disgust would ignite in a whoosh, and all the love that had ever been there would be gone.
Bunny was lucky to have Ray as a dad. That’s what I was thinking when Ray’s phone rang. He checked the number. “Shit, I gotta take this. Business.”
I was surprised that business should take place at what must be past ten o’clock at night, but more surprised when he picked up the phone and began speaking in what I could only guess was Mandarin. He spoke a few phrases of greeting and then spoke in English again, all in a happy, reassuring, genial tone even as his face remained frighteningly blank and intense. The result was like bad dubbing in a movie.
“Very soon, yes. So grateful for your business. As always. Yes, old friends. Hahaha, yes. No, I sent them to your office. Cassie sent them. I’ll double-check, but I’m certain she sent them. All right.” He followed this with a few more phrases in Mandarin, then hung up, and without looking at me dialed again.
“Cassie, did you send Mr. Phong the blueprint files? Uh-huh. Did the wire transfer go through? Yeah, go ahead and send them, he’s waiting on them. Sorry to wake you up. All right. Catch you later, doll.”
And then he hung up and looked at me and giggled like a teenager. “I cannot possibly begin to tell you, Michael, how deeply fucked I am.”
“Is that right?”