The Foreigner Read Online Free Page B

straightening up. The water tasted like chlorophyll, and I choked a little as I drank it.
    Mr. Carcinet put his hands in his pockets and sat down again. "I’m sorry, Emerson," he said. "I’m sure this is a shock." He sighed. "It might console you somewhat to know that the property in Taiwan is already in your name, at least. Your mother was a detail-minded soul. If you like, I can check into the value of your equity. I’m sure it’s—you could say—substantial."
    I shook my head, mute. "It’s not the
money,
" I managed to say, inadequately. And it really wasn’t the money. It was driving my mother to the grocery store each week; to the bank every other week; repairing her sinks; preparing her tea; presiding over her monthly mah-jongg game; washing her hair in the kitchen sink every third Friday. Vacations spent squiring her around Niagara Falls, New York City, Yosemite. The Statue of Liberty. The pale veined parchment of her arm against the hospital bed, trailing clear tubes.
    Mr. Carcinet offered me a hard fruit candy from a tin, but I wasn’t hungry. He picked one out himself with his long, flat fingertips.
    "Now part of the reason I called you in here, Emerson, is to ask if you have any idea where your brother is. I sent him a letter a couple of weeks ago at the Taipei address your, ah, mother provided, but I have not received a reply, and there is no phone number or e-mail."
    "I don’t know where he is," I said dully. "I got a postcard from him last Christmas, but there wasn’t a return address. I think he’s still in Taipei. The address my mother gave you should be current. I don’t have a number for him."
    "And there is no other way of contacting him? Relatives? Friends?"
    I thought about this. There was my mother’s brother, of course, whom I had never met. After my mother died, I had called him at the number in her address book, but my Chinese was so poor that the person on the other end had hung up on me. I didn’t know any of Little P’s friends.
    An idea, only half-articulate, took shape in the dull recess of my mind.
    "I could go," I said.
    Mr. Carcinet rolled the candy from one cheek to another.
    "Go where?"
    "To Taipei. I can arrange time off from work next month. I’ll track him down. Maybe I can get him to come back with me. At least long enough to settle the estate."
    He tented his hands again. "That may be unnecessary. If you can get a valid address for him, most of this can be accomplished through the mail."
    "Of course it’s necessary!" I shouted, startling him. I retreated and composed myself.
    "It is," I said bitterly, calmly, "necessary. My mother suffered over his absence. I suffered over it. All the relatives and friends we’ve asked to help him for our sake have suffered over him. Why shouldn’t he be inconvenienced, just once, even if it is too late to make amends?"
    Mr. Carcinet’s eyebrows went up in a gesture that I couldn’t interpret. He placed his fingers on either side of his bony nose and smiled, his lips parting in a brief, startling glimpse of red.
    "You’re anticipating me, Emerson. This brings us to the other part of the will. Your mother requested that her ashes be repatriated to Taipei, with your father’s to be disinterred and brought over at a later date. If you were to go to Taipei to find Peter, you could discharge your, ah, responsibility to her at the same time."
    My mother had been cremated. I had been keeping her in a wooden box on the living room console.
    "All right," I said, faltering. "I’ll take her with me."
    Tears welled up in my eyes as I considered the prospect of being left behind. I was reminded of the day we had taken my father to Daly City, to be cremated. The cemetery had had a vast acreage of tombstones and crypts and mausoleums, all lined up in neat rows divided by paved avenues with signs, Avenues A, B, C, like a lost city in a book. The columbarium itself was a glassed-in summer-house with heavy drawers of ashes laddered up the walls,