The law doesn’t stop with death. It reaches far beyond the grave, for years, entangling the survivors in bureaucratic hurdles that make the challenges of pre-death seem like a cakewalk. Mimi tells the others, “We have to divvy up his stuff.”
“Divvy?” Carmen says. “You mean, like take?”
Amelia says, “Shouldn’t we let Mom . . . ?”
“You see how she is. She’s not even here.”
Carmen rears up. “Can you stop solving problems for a minute? What’s the hurry?”
“I’d like to get things done. For Mom.”
“By throwing out his stuff?”
“Distribute. Each thing to the right person.”
“Like solving a big quadratic equation.”
“Carmen. We have to take care of it.”
“Why? You want to sell the house out from under Mom?”
“Like she’s going to be able to take care of it by herself, in her state?”
Amelia puts her arms around them both. “Maybe those things can wait for now? We only have a little while to be with each other.”
“We’re all here now,” Mimi says. “It could be a long time before that happens again. Let’s just get it done.”
Carmen shakes free of the hug. “So you’re not coming home for Christmas?” But something in her tone is as good as a signed confession. Home has gone wherever their father went.
CHARLOTTE CLINGS to a few token things. “This is his favorite sweater. Oh, don’t take the waders. And these are the slacks he wears when we go hiking.”
“She’s fine,” Carmen says, when the three of them are alone. “She’s managing. She’s just a little weird.”
“I can come back in a few weeks,” Amelia offers. “Check in. Make sure she’s okay.”
Carmen faces Mimi, pre-enraged. “Don’t even dream of putting her in a home.”
“I’m not dreaming anything. I’m just trying to take care of things.”
“Take care? Here. You’re the compulsive one. Knock yourself out. Eleven notebooks filled with report cards on every campsite we’ve ever stayed in. All yours.”
THE THREE OPERA HEROINES hover above a silver plate. On the plate are three jade rings. On each ring is a carved tree, and each tree branches in one of time’s three disguises. The first is the Lote, the tree at the boundary of the past that none may pass back over. The second is that thin, straight pine of the present. The third is Fusang, the future, a magical mulberry far to the east, where the elixir of life is hidden.
Amelia stares. “Who’s supposed to get which one?”
“There’s a right way to do this,” Mimi says. “And a dozen wrong ones.”
Carmen sighs. “Which one is this?”
“Shut up. Close your eyes. On the count of three, take one.”
On three, there’s some light grazing of arms, and each woman finds her fate. When they open their eyes, the platter is empty. Amelia has her eternal present, Carmen her doomed past. And Mimi is left holding the thin trunk of things to come. She puts it on her finger. It’s a little big—gift from a homeland she will never see. She spins the endless loop of inheritance around on her finger like an open sesame. “Now the Buddhas.”
They don’t understand her. But then, Amelia and Carmen haven’t been thinking about the scroll for the last seventeen years.
“The Luóhàn,” Mimi says, butchering the pronunciation. “The arhats.” She rolls the scroll out on the table where their father used to tie his trout flies. It’s older, stranger than any of them remembers. Like someone has been reworking it with colors and ink, from the world beyond this one. “We could take it to an auction house. Split the money.”
“Meem,” Amelia says. “Didn’t he leave us enough money?”
“Or Mimi could just take it for herself. That would be enlightened.”
“We could give it to a museum. In memory of Sih Hsuin Ma.” The name sounds hopelessly American in Mimi’s mouth.
Amelia says, “That would be beautiful.”
“And we’d have tax write-offs for life.”
“Those of us who are making money.” Carmen sneers.
Amelia rolls up the scroll in her small hands. “So how do we do that?”
“I don’t know. We should get it appraised first.”
“You do that, Mimi,” Carmen says. “You’re good at getting things done.”
. . .
THE POLICE give them back the gun. They own it, technically, by virtue of inheritance. But none of their names is on the permit. No one knows what to do with it. It sits on the buffet, huge and humming through the wooden crate. It has to be destroyed, like the ring that must be thrown into the volcano’s caldera. But how?
Mimi steels herself and takes the crate. She bungees it to