On Gold Mountain Page 41

  In some families this scenario would be unbelievable, but not for the Sees. Eddy, even at his most disheartened, would often say, “Family’s family. We still have to stick together.” Or, if he’d had a disagreement with Ming, he might say, “He’s my brother. And you really only have your family.” Though he certainly never absolved Ming, Ray, or Bennie—and though none of them ever socialized again the way they had when Ticie was alive—it was inconceivable that Eddy would start a long-term feud with his older brothers, just as it had been inconceivable for Ticie to leave him behind in China. The others may have divided Ticie’s physical estate, but Eddy had received her one true legacy—her love for the family and her belief that her children were stronger together than apart. Family—and this included his full brothers and sister as well as his half-brothers and half-sisters—meant everything to Eddy. Family always came first, no matter what the personal cost.

  CHAPTER 18

  FIRE

  1947–50

  IN 1947, Fong See turned ninety and went into the hospital to have his gallbladder removed. Before the surgery, the doctor said, “I don’t think you’re going to make it. As a precaution, you should take care of your personal affairs.” See-bok didn’t like this advice one bit! He decided he would show that doctor by living through the operation. Then, after the surgery, while Fong See was still recuperating in the hospital, the doctor came in and said, “You’re not going to live much longer.” Now, for the first time in his life, See-bok tried to think about what would happen if he died, but he found it nearly impossible. Instead, he considered how very much alive he was.

  Despite his brush with death, he looked much younger than his age. He had always been a slim man. With each passing year, whatever excess fat had been on his frame melted away until he appeared to be just bones with skin stretched tightly over them, giving him the appearance of someone fifteen or twenty years younger. He walked with a shuffle, keeping his feet firmly planted on the ground, but his carriage was still proud and upright.

  He was far from being disengaged from the world about him. He was vigilant about business. He had sources who reported to him on the goings-on about Chinatown, Los Angeles, and the world. He was the master of his home, keeping a tight hold on the activities of his children and Ngon Hung. He also kept tabs on the children of his first family—all of them in middle age, all of them married, all of whom he saw in relation to himself. Ming was learning how to be a patriarch; he fulfilled his familial obligations even when they made him unpopular with his brothers and sister. (See-bok remembered how he, too, had learned to accept responsibility and make sometimes unpopular choices for the family.) His second son, Ray, was doing what See-bok had hoped to do himself: make a reputation in the white world. (It troubled See-bok that he had no relationship with this son, but what could he do? The boy would not visit or call, as was his responsibility.) Fong See didn’t know much about Bennie, except that he was a good boy who obeyed his older brother.

  Eddy. Now here was someone Fong See liked. Eddy came to visit almost every day. He had relationships with his younger half-brothers. He taught them how to repair things, how to put furniture together, how to fix their cars. He talked with those boys, kidded them, teased them. And Sissee was a good daughter. He could see this in the way she was raising his granddaughter Leslee to be a good Chinese daughter with proper manners. His second family? Those seven children were still too immature to have opinions that mattered. They were too young to be doing anything interesting. His youngest son, Gary, was only two; his eldest daughter, Jong Oy, had married and moved away.

  Finally, there was Ngon Hung. As Fong See lay in his hospital bed, he thought about his Number Three wife. He realized that he had come to care about her in his own way. It was not the western idea of love, by any means, because in truth Chinese women were nothing to care about. Throughout his entire lifetime, girl babies in China had been abandoned at birth, sold as servants, prostitutes, and concubines, or matched into marriage with men they had never seen before. Women—Chinese women—lived to care for their husbands and have sons. Ngon Hung had fulfilled both of these duties. She was passive, submissive, and obedient; she had given him four boys and three girls. He concluded she had been a good wife all these years.

  He thought, What will happen to Ngon Hung when I am gone? Who will look after her? My boys are still young, and she is inexperienced. Fong See reached for the phone and called Mr. Ogden, the attorney who had handled the separation from Ticie. The next day Mr. Ogden came to the hospital to consult. “You should marry Mrs. Fong in this country to make sure there is no confusion about your estate when the time comes,” Mr. Ogden said.

  A justice of the peace was found and brought to the hospital. Fong See was propped up in bed. Ngon Hung—forty-two and old beyond her years—stood at her husband’s side. Within minutes, Fong See and Ngon Hung were married according to the laws of the State of California.

  For now, Fong See kept the rest of the details of his will a secret. Besides, he had no plans to die yet. He still had to get through his honeymoon.

  On October 10, 1947, Anna May Wong, the aging screen goddess, slipped her arm through Ray’s, tilted her head to his ear, and whispered. She wanted to leave. She was tired of talking to people, tired of shaking hands, tired of standing in high heels for the last two days. She wanted to go up to her room, and she wanted him to come with her. Ray shook her off. “I didn’t bring you two thousand miles to give you free drinks,” he said. “Go get some coffee. Come back in a half hour and do your job.” Anna May stared at him for a minute, turned, and wobbled away.

  Why had he brought her to Chicago? The dancing girls would have been enough. Edith and the rest of them looked cute and demure—if a bit clumsy—as they glided across the platform around his furniture pieces. They didn’t have big tits like the girls in the other booths, but the buyers thought they were cute, and ordered like never before. He’d brought Anna May along as a novelty, but after the last couple of days he wished he’d left her back in Los Angeles for her brother to look after. Last night, she had even proposed to Ray. “Divorce Leona. Marry me. It will better both of our fortunes,” she’d said. Ray had to admit that Anna May had a head on her shoulders as far as money was concerned, but that didn’t mean he wanted to divorce his wife and marry an actress!

  He put these thoughts aside and focused on the business at hand. After the family partnership had split up, Ray and Bennie had formed See-Mar of California with Morris Markoff, the lamp manufacturer. Now Ray and Markoff were at the Drake Hotel in Chicago to introduce their line to the Furniture Mart. The booth was crowded, as it had been since the doors to the hall opened two days ago. The samples for next January were selling well. Better yet, the local media had made several appointments for interviews.

  How could Ray have guessed that he would be making this kind of money? Hand over fist, was how he liked to think of it. He tried never to brood about Ming, Sissee, and Eddy. Why should he? They were so stuck in the past. Ming hung around the store, turning into an old man. Sissee and her husband did good deeds all over Chinatown. And Eddy? What had happened to Eddy was too bad, but business was business. If Ray’s father had been right about anything, it was that you couldn’t let family stand in the way of your achieving the American Dream.

  Business, Ray loved it. He got a kick out of posing for photographers, doing interviews, meeting people. He delighted in watching the look on the face of some skirt from the Times when he told her about designing furniture for Bob Hope and Walter Brennan. He loved it when he could take the wood left over from his war contracts and turn it into table/lamp combinations. He enthused in his descriptions of See-Mar of California, which manufactured lamps and occasional pieces.

  It seemed as if the entire See family had been in the lamp business in one way or another, practically from the beginning. Years ago, Ray’s mother had gotten his father out of the underwear business by making lampshades out of China silk. Decades later, Ming still sold lamp
s by drilling through the bottoms of Chinese vases and wiring them. Even Eddy did his bit as the one man in Chinatown who could fix anyone’s broken lamp. Now Ray was designing lamps in truly unique designs: Mongolian horsemen, T’ang horses, chess pieces, and heads of Greek gods; a column lamp with hand-carved acacia leaf; a modernized “candlestick” in green, black, or red; a Chinese woman in flowing robes and sashes carved from a “tablet” of alder. His lamps had interesting shades in China silk, rayon, or tropical cotton prints of the kind he had designed for D. N. & E. Walter in the past.

  The idea of function in domestic furniture intrigued Ray. As a result, many of his tables held recesses for cigarettes, hors d’oeuvres, record albums, and magazines. Others had built-in spaces for glasses, ashtrays, even radios. He’d designed a blond wood coffee table in the shape of a Chinese ideogram. Each corner sported a rectangular box for growing plants—“always an attractive note in a room,” noted one reviewer. The base of one of the most popular lamps held a pot for a live philodendron or a more durable plastic one.

  Ray was a long way from the Chinese antique business. While what he made wasn’t junk, you couldn’t call it art either. “Nothing wrong in no-good product so long you make money,” his father used to say, ordering the boys to bury brand-new ginger jars in manure to “age” them quickly. His father had been a genius when it came to fooling customers, Ray had to give that to him. He remembered how his mother and sister had spent afternoons “antiquing” baskets fresh off the boat with that smelly mixture of asphalt and turpentine. Those “antiques” had made a tidy profit, just as the lamps were easy money. When his salesgirls talked about teak and ginger finishes, Ray knew that a finish was all they were. Using cheap wood, he had incorporated marble, latticework, and walnut-burl overlays to create what many interior decorators were calling “unique surprises.” Make a handsome product from inexpensive materials, and it will always sell. And his did—to Barker Brothers, Widdicomb, Stickley Brothers, and Lord & Taylor.

  Anna May came back holding a newspaper. She looked sober, too sober. He hoped she’d done nothing embarrassing. When she reached him, she flipped open the paper to a headline that read, FIRE RAZES L.A. FURNITURE PLANT, WATCHMAN KILLED. Her pale skin and trembling hands told him who owned that factory.

  Ray didn’t read the full story until he was on the plane heading back for Los Angeles. Eleven fire companies, with twenty-one pieces of equipment, had battled the blaze for hours. After the flames had been extinguished, firefighters had found the body of the night watchman. Ray looked at the photograph of the ruined building and shuddered. The article estimated a $25,000 loss on the structure alone. Ray knew the real value lay inside. From what he could see, all the machinery, as well as the plant-lamps, chess-lamps, table/lamp combos, and all their matching shades, had been reduced to ashes, as had all of the occasional pieces. He pulled out a pad of paper, made some quick calculations, and tallied the figures. The loss looked to be in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars.

  Ray began making plans. Today was October 10, 1947. If they could lease space quickly, they might be able to get in new equipment by the end of the week. If they got to work right away, he might be able to ship in sixty days. If the new line could be out the door by December 10, he could still take advantage of the Christmas rush. No one ever bought furniture in December, but shoppers—fatigued and loaded down with packages—often sought refuge in the furniture sections of department stores to rest on sofas, chairs, and ottomans. They would come back after the holidays to buy for themselves. All he had to do was get the merchandise made and shipped. If everything went well, See-Mar would end up bigger and better than ever. These were, Ray acknowledged, a lot of ifs.

  From Los Angeles airport he took a cab down to the industrial section of town. From the outside, the building didn’t look badly damaged. The brick walls still stood, although they were smoke-stained and the windows had blown out. Ray heard someone approach and stop next to him. He turned to see an old Chinese man as frail as a dried leaf, wearing a gown down to the pavement. His hands were tucked up into voluminous sleeves. It took Ray a few moments to recognize the wizened stranger as his father. They hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in years.

  “What are you doing here?” Ray asked.

  “Now you borrow money from me,” Fong See said.

  Ray appraised the old man who’d deserted his mother so long ago. Ray felt himself begin to shake with years of pent-up anger. His voice, when it came, was low and hoarse. “Not from you, not ever.” Ray crossed the street and stepped into the gutted ruins of what had been the first material realization of his freedom. He never spoke to his father again.

  On January 21, 1948, just three months after the fire that gutted Ray and Bennie’s factory, another tragedy struck the family. While Ming was off spending the night with Sunny Rockwell, the woman who sculpted in the alley behind the store, his wife, Dorothy, probably drunk, fell asleep in bed with a cigarette. The house caught fire and burned to the ground, killing Dorothy. Unable to find Ming, the police called Eddy, who went straight over to the house and identified Dorothy’s charred remains. When Ming arrived in the early-morning hours, he “went to pieces.” In shock, he stared blindly, numbly, at the fireplace that still stood in what was otherwise a few inches of ashes. Ming was too upset to answer the questions posed by the firemen and the policemen.

  Ming had to stay somewhere. There wasn’t enough room at Dragon’s Den for another person, and he wasn’t close enough to Bennie or Ray to be taken in by them. Sissee was the best choice, the only choice, Eddy reasoned, because Ming was going to need a woman’s compassion to get him through his mourning. So Eddy drove his older brother to the Leong house on Ivadel, where Sissee and Gilbert had taken up residence since returning from Memphis. Ming—silent in his grief and guilt—was put to bed in the upstairs sewing room.

  All through that day and night, the family came and went. They tried to talk to Ming, but he wouldn’t speak. They rehashed the history of the See brothers. All but Bennie had strayed from their wives. Ray and Leona had a marriage in name only. Stella and Eddy had patched things up. Ming and Dorothy had been another story. The family knew he was having an affair with Sunny. But he had fooled around for so long that no one had reproached him for it until now. “If Ming had been with her, it never would have happened,” Stella said angrily. “He had a responsibility.” Through all of this, Sissee was a rock—providing coffee, tea, and snacks to her brothers and their wives, shutting off comments such as Stella’s with an abrupt “We’re going to forget about that. We’re going to forget about that for Ming.”

  During the following weeks, Sissee was moved to action in a way she never could have been for herself, insisting that they all work to help Ming erase the fire from his memory, for he truly had fallen apart. His hair seemed to go white overnight. He had the shakes. When he spoke, his normally even voice was broken by a stutter. Close friends tried to comfort him: “No one can blame you. Dorothy treated you like a rat.” Through all this, Mama Leong never questioned the fact that Sissee had moved Ming into the house. Mama Leong never lectured or complained. She simply allowed Sissee to care for her brother.

  On a morning in May—four months after Dorothy’s fiery death—Ming was still living with the Leongs. Sissee and Ming—quiet, as he had been since that night in January—sat together in the kitchen sipping coffee and listening to Bernice, Sissee’s sister-in-law, tell a story from work.

  “My boss said, ‘We have coffee cake and coffee for breakfast. What do you eat?’ I said, ‘Coffee cake and coffee.’ ‘Gee,’ he says, ‘I thought you Chinese just ate rice.’” Bernice, who’d been the first Asian hired by Western Auto, laughed and Sissee giggled along with her. “They’re all Midwesterners,” Bernice went on. “They’ve never seen someone like me before.”

  “I’ll bet they haven’t,” Sissee said.

  “Then they say, ‘Your English is quite good.’ I say ‘Well, it ought to be. I was born here
.’” Again they laughed, knowing that they could look at this stuff either as discrimination or just as a joke. Bernice glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to go. I don’t want to be late.”

  Sissee walked her sister-in-law to the door. She paused to watch Bernice drive away, then walked down the hall to the kitchen. Ming, without a word, went back upstairs where he would remain until Sissee called him for lunch. She straightened up the kitchen and the butler’s pantry, then poured herself another cup of coffee, went back into the dining room, and picked up the newspaper to peruse the classifieds. Sissee relished these quiet mornings after the other Leongs had left and before she began her daily chores.

  The house on Ivadel was perfect for the extended Leong family. The upstairs had five bedrooms separated by a central hallway. Three of the bedrooms held family units: Mr. and Mrs. Leong in one; Sissee, Gilbert, and Leslee in another; and Elmer and Bernice in yet another. The other two bedrooms were occupied by Gilbert’s single siblings, Margie and Ed. There was also the sewing room, where Ming was staying, which frequently doubled as an additional bedroom for Leong houseguests.

  Sissee and Gilbert, who was apprenticed to an architecture firm, had little privacy. They shared a common bathroom with the rest of the family; they shared their bedroom with Leslee. Their communication was circumspect. In China, custom would have dictated that all of their conversation be conducted through servants. But in the United States, Sissee and Gilbert had no servants to act as go-betweens. Instead they followed the next level of proper marital etiquette: “Ascend the bed, act like a husband. Descend the bed, act like a gentleman.” During the day and at any time in front of the family, no kissing, no touching of any kind, no sweet words of affection were permitted. It was a careful, impersonal way to live, one that was insisted upon by the ever-righteous Mrs. Leong.