face.
    Having said her piece, Del stroked Scootie, scratched behind his ears, and murmured 
appreciatively to him:
    ‘Oh, him a good fella, him is, my cutie Scootie-wootums.’ After a while, Mother Phan 
got up from her chair. She went to the television and turned it off.
    She went to the Buddhist shrine in the corner, struck a match, and lit three sticks 
of incense.
    For perhaps two or three minutes, the survivor of Saigon and the South China Sea 
stood staring at the shrine, inhaling the thin and fragrant smoke.
    Del patted Tommy’s hand.
    At last his mother turned away from the shrine, came to the sofa, and stood over him, 
scowling. ‘Tuong, you won’t be doctor when want you be doctor, won’t be baker when want 
you be baker, write stories about silly whiskey-drunk detective, won’t keep old ways, 
don’t even remember how speak language from Land of Seagull and Fox, buy Corvette and 
like cheeseburgers better than com tay cam, forget your roots, want to be something never 
can be... all bad, all bad. But you make best marriage any boy ever make in history of 
world, so I guess that got to count for something.’
    By four-thirty that afternoon, Tommy, Del, and Scootie were back in their suite at 
the Mirage.
    Scootie settled in his bedroom to crunch dog bis-cuits and watch an old Bogart and 
Bacall movie on television.
    Tommy and Del consummated.
    Afterward, she didn’t bite his head off and devour him alive.
    That evening at the reception, Mr. Sinatra called Mother Phan, ‘A great old broad,’ 
Mai danced with her father, Ton got tipsy for the first time in his life, Sheila Ingrid 
Julia Rosalyn Winona Lilith answered to three other names, and Del whispered to Tommy, as 
they did a fox-trot, ‘This is reality, tofu man, because reality is what we carry in our 
hearts, and my heart is full of beauty just for you.’
    




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