If You Lived Here by Dana Sachs Read Free Book Online Page B

yes, then,” I say, offering one last invitation for him to change his mind.
    Martin sets his hand on top of mine. “Say yes,” he tells me. “I was about to give up hope,” I whisper.
    Martin’s voice is almost inaudible. He says, “Me, too.”

    4 ‌
     

    Xuan Mai

O
    ne Tuesday, after I finish selling the lunches, I get Marcy to watch the register. “I gotta make a phone call.”
    “Take your time.” She goes to the counter and pulls out a heap of diagrams she has stashed in a drawer for moments such as this one. She’s taking a class in quilting.
    My purse hangs on a hook behind the kitchen door. I unzip the change pocket and pull out a business card from among the coins. Yesterday, one of my lunch customers, Captain Weatherbee of the Wilmington Police Department, scrawled a name on the back of his card. Hannah Ellis. And her phone number.
    For a moment, I hold the card, looking at the rough handwriting, the scuff of the pencil marks on the ivory paper. Then I pick up the phone and dial.
    “Hello?” The voice sounds old and feeble.
    “Hello. Yes. Uh, I’m looking for Hannah Ellis. You Hannah Ellis?” “That’s me, duckie.”
    Who’s duckie? “My name Mai Pham. Captain Mark Weatherbee give me your name.”
    “You need a picture?” “That’s right.”
    “Come on over this afternoon. Say, about three o’clock. I’m at 417 Nun Street, downtown. I can’t hear too well on the phone, so come on over and we’ll talk. ’Bye.”
    She hangs up before I can say another word. “Marcy,” I call out, walking to the front of the store. “I got errands. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”
    Marcy’s abandoned her quilt and now sits paging through a Real Simple magazine, the cover of which shows a scratched metal bucket with azaleas stuck in it. People live in America for this? “Okay,” she says. She doesn’t look up.
    Gladys appears from down one of the aisles. “Mai, tell her she’s mak-ing me miserable,” she says in Vietnamese.
    “You tell her, Gladys,” I pull my keys out of my purse and step out into the heat.

    Hannah Ellis’s house is a pale green cottage set between two larger homes. The tiny front yard consists of two flower beds, divided by a path down the middle. Spring roses fill the beds, their blossoms in shades of pink and yellow. An elderly woman, not much bigger than some ten-year-olds, sits in a flowery housedress on a rocker on the porch. I stand on the sidewalk looking up at her.
    “You my three o’clock?” Her voice sounds stronger than it did on the phone.
    I nod.
    Hannah Ellis gestures with her hand for me to come up. “Can’t even see you down there, duckie.” I walk up the path. “Where you from? You Chinese?”
    It isn’t a very promising question from a person I plan to commission to draw two portraits, but I push myself up the stairs anyway. Hannah Ellis lifts her hand to shake. Her fingers feel like brittle sticks in mine. “Vietnamese,” I tell her. “Vietnam. My name Mai Pham.”
    She chuckles, rocking her chair back and forth as if it were exer-cise, then motions for me to sit in an armchair beside her. “Well, welcome to America, I guess.” I perch on the edge of the chair while Hannah Ellis reaches over to a TV table on the other side of her rocker, pours two glasses of iced tea, and hands one to me. “Now, why are you here?” she asks.
    Because I have nothing, and if I lose my belief in the spirits, I’ll have even less. “I need pictures,” I say.
    “What kind of pictures?”
    I take a sip of the tea. “Captain Weatherbee say you can make pictures.
    Like in court. I just tell you about the person and you make picture.”
    Hannah Ellis runs her hand around the wet sides of her glass, then dabs her forehead with the moisture. “It’s damn hot, but I feel sick if I stay in the house too long,” she says. “Besides, sometimes a breeze comes up and I can smell my roses.” She glances at me. “I imagine it gets pretty hot over there in