Brothers

My father died of cancer in his late sixties, not long after he’d retired. It came on quick, and within six months of the diagnosis he was gone. It was a shock to the whole family, especially our mother, who was hoping to have him around the house for another 20 years. But the greater shock came later, when we hired a locksmith to get into his safe and discovered that it was filled with letters from Vietnam. Turns out my sister and I had a half-brother that we never knew about.

The letters were from our half-brother’s mother, Mai, who’d apparently met our father in a restaurant in Saigon during his tour of duty. Despite the language barrier, they’d immediately fallen in love, and after a brief courtship, Mai was pregnant. With the help of a translator, my father told her that he’d do everything he could to remain in Vietnam, even go AWOL if he had to, but Mai insisted that she’d rather raise the child alone than risk him getting arrested or killed. Still, our father faked an illness in order to be there for the boy’s birth, whom they named Chau, and while holding him in his arms my father promised that he would return as soon as the war was over. Knowing him, I’m sure he had every intention of making good on his promise, but while he was waiting for a peace agreement to be signed, he met my mother, who knew how to turn a head. They married shortly thereafter, and in less than nine months, along came my sister. Two years later I followed, and from then on my father led a fairly uneventful life as a husband, father, and small engines repair shop owner.

Uneventful from the outside anyway, but hidden deep within his heart, and later, his work safe, he harbored a secret. The first letter arrived in 1985, roughly a decade after the end of the war. Mai was very cordial, and asked no questions about why my father hadn’t returned. Instead, she told him about her life, which turned out all right under the circumstances. I mean, I don’t know much about Vietnamese culture, but I can’t imagine that being an unwed mother, pregnant by a man who helped tear the country apart, put her on anyone’s A list. She wound up marrying a neighbor boy, apparently not much of a looker, but someone she’d known her whole life and who’d had a crush on her since childhood. He raised Chau as his own, and did everything he could to ensure the boy had a proper upbringing. Money, however, was always a struggle for them, which was why Mai had decided to write to my father. Apparently, my half-brother was something of a genius and had been offered a scholarship to attend a prestigious prep school, but it only covered tuition, not the room and board. She was hoping my father would be willing to help out as much as he could.

To be honest, I appreciated how up front she was about things—no beating around the bush—and I suspect my father appreciated it too. At any rate, in the second letter she thanked him for the money and promised to send copies of Chau’s report cards whenever they came along. Soon, however, she was writing to my father two or three times a month, and it was clear from what she said that my father was writing her back, and in a tone that was far more than cordial. Their correspondence lasted for twelve years, at the end of which my father received a certified letter from Mai’s lawyer, regretfully informing him that Mai had passed away.

“You know, I think I remember that,” I said to my sister, referencing the postmark on that final letter. It was a few days later, after we’d had a chance to absorb some of what we’d read, and more importantly, when we were no longer in front of our mother, who, needless to say, hadn’t taken the news very well. “Yeah, that was when Dad said he needed some time to himself, and then just disappeared for a couple of weeks. I thought maybe he and Mom were getting a divorce, but it must have been this.”

“You think he went to the funeral?” she asked.

I shrugged—I hadn’t thought of that. “Of course, the question now is what to do about it?”

“What do you mean?” she asked me, in a dangerous tone. “What is there to do about it?”

“Well, we could try and contact Chau.”

“And why would we do that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Because he’s our brother, and his father just died.”

“Listen, little bro. This is already fucked up enough as it is. Mom’s in tears over this, and I ain’t too happy about it either. He always told me he’d named me May after his favorite month, and now I come to find out it was after his former lover. Not to mention there’s the question of our inheritance.”

“What inheritance?”

“Mom’s house.”

“Which Dad clearly stated in his will goes to her.”

“All right, what about your gym? Didn’t Dad invest in it when you were first getting started?”

I shook my head. “He’s not going to want a part of my gym.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about this guy other than what’s in those letters. I’m telling you, bro, you need to leave this alone. You’re too old to still be wanting a brother. It’s time to grow up and accept the family as it is, which it turns out wasn’t as good as any of us thought.”

I got why my sister was bitter about me wanting a brother. All throughout our childhood, whenever I was pissed at her, I’d say, “I wish you were a boy.” And I also understood why she was so upset that our father lied to her, and why she would want to protect our mother from further heartache. But I refused to agree with her about Chau. I believed there was enough in those letters to give me a sense of who he really was, and the picture I got was of a smart, fun-loving guy who would want to know that he’s still got family out there, no matter how far away. A part of me also felt like this was our father speaking to us from beyond the grave. After all, he knew his days were numbered. He could have destroyed the letters when he’d had a chance, and we never would have found out about Chau or Mai. I believed in my heart of hearts that he wanted us to know—in fact, I believed that if he’d been able to summon the courage to tell us while he was still alive, he would have done so. And so, after talking it over with my wife, who was also a big proponent of family, no matter how you came by it, I decided to see if I could track him down.

#

The email I sent to Chau’s work address was short. I told him who I was, why I was contacting him, and that if he wanted to get back to me, that’d be great. His response was fast—literally within the same hour, which surprised me, if only because of the time difference. I’d purposely sent the email at a time when I thought he’d be asleep, that way I wouldn’t just sit by my computer waiting for him to reply; and yet there it was, as soon as I got done teaching a class. Turns out that he’d known nothing about me either, nor that his mother had been in contact with our father for all those years. In fact, his mother had told him that his father had died in the war, a few days after holding him in his arms. He said he was sorry for my loss, and encouraged me to write to him again, which is exactly what I did.

We began sending each other emails once or twice a week. I told him all about myself—about my wife and two kids, the gym I owned, and how I never missed a Vikings game—and he did the same, telling me about his wife and daughter, his job in finance, and his passion for golf. Some of what we wrote was lost in translation, like when I said, “I whip my clients into shape,” and he asked if I actually used a whip. And try as I might, I never could quite understand what he did for a living—it just sounded like he spent all day moving money around. We also exchanged pictures of ourselves and our families, including our parents. He wasn’t much to look at—the mixture of Caucasian and Asian hadn’t come out well—but his wife and daughter were attractive, and as for his mother, well, I could see why my father had fallen for her. As for me, he made fun of my “gigantic” muscles, and told me that he cried when he saw the picture of our father: he looked just as his mother had described him.

Then, after a time, we ran out of things to say to each other. Our emails became more and more infrequent, spreading out across weeks, then months, until finally they stopped altogether. As much as I would have loved for something more to come of it, in the end our connection to each other was slim. He and I were two different people, living different lives in different parts of the world. Sure, we were brothers, but just barely. And maybe my sister was right all along. Maybe I did need to grow up and accept our family as it was.

And then one day, out of the blue, I received a call: it was from Chau. He told me right off the bat that he didn’t have much time to talk, but wanted to let me know that he was coming to the States on business in a couple of weeks, and was hoping that we could meet. He said that he’d pay for everything, money was no object, he just really wanted to get together with me in person. Right away all sorts of objections began popping into my head, most notably the fact that he was only coming as far as L.A., whereas I still lived in Minnesota, the state I grew up in. I had a job and a family and other obligations to consider, it wouldn’t be easy to just up and leave on such short notice. But when I heard his heavily-accented voice through the receiver calling me “brother” and telling me how much he longed to have some family back in his life, all those objections flew right out the window, and I knew that I had to make it work.

#

Chau looked exactly as he did in the picture he’d sent me, except for a neatly-trimmed goatee, which he claimed was the latest trend amongst the business elite in his homeland. When I first met him at the hotel, I stuck my hand out for a shake, but instead he pulled me in for a hug. He held the hug for longer than I felt was warranted, until I reminded myself that this was my brother whom I’d never met—we had nearly three decades of hugs to make up for. It was in that same spirit, one of brotherly love, that we headed off to a nearby bar to catch up on lost times.

We mostly continued the conversation we’d begun online, bringing each other up to speed on what had happened since we’d stopped writing to each other regularly. He told me that his daughter had recently been accepted into the same university in Hong Kong that he’d gone to, and was planning on majoring in international relations, and I mentioned how my son was getting ready to try out for the varsity wrestling team. Then, as we were ordering our second round, one of the TVs in the bar ran a public safety announcement about guns and how you should always lock them up in a safe, and that got us talking about what had brought us together.

“Did you say it was in his work safe that you found my mother’s letters?” Chau asked. I should mention here that his English was great, better than my own as far as grammar went, and in that sense, it was also a little formal. For example, he didn’t use contractions, preferring to say “I am” instead of “I’m” and “cannot” instead of “can’t.” Of course, as I’ve already mentioned, he had an unmistakable Vietnamese accent, although whenever our waitress came round, he’d affect a kind of indistinct American accent that sounded a lot like Matthew McConaughey in those car commercials he did, which made it hard for me not to laugh; I think that was the point.

“Yeah,” I said, “but by the time we opened it, it was in our mother’s basement. He didn’t want to part with it, said it was an antique. God, I still remember lugging that sucker downstairs. I told him he should have emptied it first, but he just said there was nothing in it but some old paperwork. That was the closest I ever came to finding out about you until we hired the locksmith.”

“So tell me about my father.”

“I think I pretty much summed him up in my emails. He worked sixty hours a week fixing people’s lawnmowers and whatnot, liked action films as long as they didn’t involve war, and spent most of his weekends tied to the TV watching football with me and my sister.”

Chau smiled and shook his head. “No, brother, I am not asking you how he spent his time. I want to know what he was like—as a father.”

He had me there. I’d been reluctant to mention anything about that in our exchanges, afraid that I might upset him. But he’d flown me all this way, perhaps just to get an answer to this very question, and so I figured I owed him that much.

“He was good, a good father. Firm but fair. He taught me almost everything I know, everything of value anyway. He taught me how to shake a hand, how to ask a girl out, how to manage my emotions when things weren’t going my way. He’s why I became a trainer, why I own a gym. I still remember the first time I beat him in a game of one-on-one—that’s basketball, in case you—” Chau waved me off; he knew. “He told me he was proud of me, and gave me a hug. And then he spent every evening after work practicing so it wouldn’t happen again.” Chau laughed, and I did too, though I was also beginning to choke up a little. “He’s also the reason I’m here, why I’m sitting here with you. When I saw your mother’s letters in the safe, I just had this gut feeling that he would’ve wanted me to contact you, tell you what became of him, tell you that he never forgot you.” And at that I began to cry for the first time since my father had died, and soon Chau joined me. We must have looked pathetic to the other customers, two grown men crying like babies, but we didn’t care. We’d lost our father, after all.

When we finally managed to pull ourselves together, we looked at the clock and saw that it was late. I offered to pay our tab, but Chau wouldn’t have it, and pulled out a wad of cash the size of a fist. Then we shared a cab back to the hotel, said good night, and went to our rooms.

#

The next morning, while Chau was in his meetings, I went down to the hotel gym and ran a few miles on the treadmill, and after a shower, took a taxi over to the Getty Center to stare at art. Honestly, one painting or sculpture looks the same as any other to me, but my daughter was into it, and she insisted that I go and report back to her what it “felt” like to stare at the art in person. As I told her later, I didn’t get any feelings from it, except maybe from the statue of Hercules, mostly because I was pretty sure that I could take him in a workout.

From there I went back to the hotel and waited for Chau to finish. We then went on a bus tour of the city—his idea. He didn’t strike me as the touristy type, but he seemed to enjoy himself, and took pictures out the window the whole time. It was only when we got back to the hotel bar that he showed me these pictures, which weren’t of the Hollywood sign, or the Los Angeles Theater, or any of the other famous landmarks. Instead he’d taken pictures of women. These women weren’t necessarily the most attractive, nor were they wearing anything particularly risqué. They did, however, have one feature in common, a feature which Chau voiced after I’d seen them all.

“I have a special place in my heart for white women.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“I would like to sleep with one.”

The comment came as a shock, though I immediately wrote it off as a fantasy, like the threesome that I wouldn’t mind having with my wife and one of my clients. “Sure,” I said, “what with your dad being white, I can see that.”

He laughed and punched me in the shoulder—something he must have seen Americans do on TV and wanted to try out for himself—because he was definitely unpracticed at it and struck me way too hard. “So you will help me in this endeavor?”

“I’m sorry, what are you asking me?”

“We still have the whole night together. I would like you to take me to a brothel.”

“Well, there aren’t any here,” I answered quickly, beginning to panic. “And besides, you’re married.”

“What is the saying? What stays in Vegas, stays in Vegas? And that is where the brothels are.”

“Well, not right in Vegas. On the outskirts, somewhere.” Truth be told, I had no idea where they were, I’d just read something in a magazine once that brothels weren’t allowed to set up shop inside of Clark County, where Las Vegas was. It wasn’t something I’d ever looked up, I swear. “Just so I’m understanding this correctly,” I said, “you want me to take you to a brothel near Vegas so you can sleep with a prostitute, a white one.”

He smiled. “Yes.”

“I don’t know, man. Why didn’t you…you’ve been to America before, right? I think you said that in one of your emails. So why didn’t you go then?”

“I am too nervous to go alone.” And just like that, he put his arm around me. “But we are brothers. This is what brothers do for each other. We help each other to make our dreams come true.”

“Okay, but you understand that I can’t participate, right?”

“Yes, you are married to a white woman. There would be no need.”

I didn’t argue the point. I was still trying to wrap my head around the whole scenario.

“Well, we’d need to rent a car first. And we’ll need the name and address of one of these places.”

“Not to worry, I have taken care of everything.” He said this like it was just another business transaction, like he was just shuffling some more money around. Then he called the bartender over for another drink.

I stared at him, at Chau, and suddenly I felt like I was being used, like the whole reason he’d brought me out here was so I’d go with him to a brothel. At the same time, I couldn’t see how to get out of it. Like I’d told Chau, our father had taught me a lot, but he’d certainly never prepared me for something like this. And besides, the more I thought about it, wasn’t I also using Chau to fulfill my own fantasy of having a brother?

“What about you?” the bartender asked me.

I threw back what was left in my glass and held it out to him. “A shot of something—anything.”

#

As soon as we were done with our drinks, Chau had the car brought over and we left. He did all the driving; the rental was in his name, and besides, I was already too drunk. We didn’t say much along the way. He had the radio on and was singing along to the music, while I stared out the window at the desert, wondering how I’d gotten myself into this mess. Mostly, I was going over how I planned on behaving once we arrived at the brothel, so I didn’t do anything stupid that might jeopardize my marriage. My plan was to sit at the bar and drink as slowly as possible until Chau was finished—probably just one or two whiskey sours, what with how excited he was. Then we’d be back on the road, his fantasy fulfilled, and that would be that.

And that’s roughly how it went, though the details do add a bit of color. When we got there, Chau went straight into his Matthew McConaughey accent, acting like he was a regular at places like these, though I could see the sweat forming on his brow. The mistress led us into the lounge and had all the girls who weren’t currently occupied line up for him, and right away he chose the whitest amongst them. With her red hair and freckles she looked Irish to me, but her accent was all-American—maybe she was faking it too, as I suspected she’d be doing soon enough. She asked Chau if he would like a “tour” of the premises, and off they went while I bolted straight for the bar. I’d made it very clear when we walked in that I was just here for moral support, even raising my voice to nearly a shout so that everyone in the whole place could hear me. It was a slow night though, so one of the girls came over and started talking to me, just polite conversation, asking me how I wound up here with this foreigner. I gave her the short version—my dad’s letters, contacting Chau, the business trip to meet. She seemed interested, so we kept talking. I also kept drinking. I’d managed to hit that sweet spot where you know you’re drunk so you start making an extra effort to be fully aware of what’s going on around you. I knew exactly where I was, what kind of clothing the girl was wearing, and the effect it was having on my libido, and so, for the most part, I kept my eyes on the bar in front of me, and only looked over at her when it seemed impolite not to do so.

It couldn’t have been more than five minutes later that Chau strode up and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Done already?” I asked.

“I need more money,” he whispered into my ear.

“More than what you have?” I asked, thinking about the wad of cash that he pulled out every time he went to pay for something. “What is it exactly you want her to do with you?”

“Please, for your brother,” he said. “I shall pay you back when we return to the hotel.”

I glanced at the girl I’d been talking to, who was pretending like she wasn’t paying any attention to us.

“Well how much do you need?” I asked Chau, and again, he whispered into my ear. “Jesus. All right, well, let me go to the bathroom and think it over.”

Actually, there wasn’t much to think about; I hadn’t come all this way just to disappoint him. But there was no way in hell I was putting it on my credit card—my wife handled the finances—and unlike Chau, I didn’t carry all my money around like a high stakes gambler. Instead, when I traveled, I hid most of it in a strap on my thigh, sort of like a garter belt but with a pocket sewn onto it. It was something that I’d made myself, and it worked great, in so far as I was able to carry around as much as I wanted without having to worry about being mugged. The one flaw in the system was that any time I wanted to get at it, I had to pull my pants down. Hence the trip to the bathroom.

“Well,” I said to myself in the mirror, as I was counting out hundreds, my blue jeans resting around my ankles, “you wanted a brother.”

After giving Chau the money, I went back to the bar and ordered another drink. The girl I’d been talking to was still there, along with another one, who wanted to talk to me about my work. Apparently she was interested in getting stronger and especially wanted to tighten up her core, which from what I could tell wasn’t too bad as it was, but I knew what she meant. I gave her a few pointers, actually several, and got so caught up in our conversation that when my phone rang I just pulled it out of my pocket and answered without thinking about it.

It was my wife.

“Where are you?” she asked; she must have heard the commotion. A new guy had arrived and was really making a ruckus, talking loudly, nervously.

“I’m at—” and then I caught myself. I didn’t want to lie to her, but at the same time I knew that I had to be very careful about how I phrased things; and so, after thinking it over, I said, “Chau wanted to sleep with a white woman, so he had me take him to a brothel outside of Vegas. I’m sitting at the bar, waiting for him to finish.”

“Say what?”

I repeated myself verbatim.

“Is this some kind of joke?” my wife asked.

I didn’t know how to get through to her, so I handed the phone off to Candy, or at least that’s what she was calling herself. They talked for a couple minutes—she assured my wife that I was behaving like a gentleman, a chaste gentleman, and then she handed the phone back.

“Isn’t Chau married?”

“Yes, dear. And I reminded him of that, but it didn’t seem to register.”

She was silent for a moment. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it one bit.”

“To be honest, hon, I’m not too keen on it myself.”

“Then why didn’t you say no?”

“I don’t know, I just—”

“Look, just get out of there as soon as you can, and we’ll talk more about this when you get home,” and then the line went dead.

“Everything all right?” Candy asked me.

I nodded, and put the phone in my pocket. “About as well as you’d expect.”

#

Chau returned fifteen minutes later, wearing a smile as wide as the ocean that separated our homelands. On the drive back to L.A. he told me everything, getting quite specific too, though to be honest, I was hardly paying attention. I know that it was probably something real brothers did all the time, sharing their intimate moments in graphic detail with each other, but I wasn’t in the mood for it. The joy of having a brother had worn off by now.

The next morning, Chau bought me breakfast, then drove me to the airport. As I was getting my bag off the back seat, he came around and gave me a hug.

“You are the best brother that a brother could have,” he said.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, patting him on the back.

“We must do this again sometime.”

“Maybe not the same thing though.”

He laughed. “No, I have fulfilled my fantasy.”

He gave me another hug, a lot like the first hug he gave me, the one when we first met. Then he held me at arm’s length and looked me squarely in the eyes. I know I said that he’d sent me pictures of himself, and of course I’d just spent the last couple of days in his company. I’d seen his skin, his hair, the clothes he wore, and I’d noticed how small he was compared to myself. But I’d never really looked at his eyes, not really anyway. Now I saw them properly, saw them for what they were.

They were my father’s eyes.