Alfred nodded. “Your father doesn’t know, but I do. Do you want to know?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes.”

Alfred told me that when he first moved to Vancouver to work in a Chinese restaurant he was depressed and abused by the owner. He was forced to work twelve-hour days with no time off for little pay while he boarded in a small room above the restaurant with three other men. He didn’t go outside because for fear of being caught. There were no books for him to read, and he was never alone. For an introvert like him, it was torture.

He had been there for about six months when he saw Mother come into the restaurant. She ordered a bowl of soup and kept looking towards the kitchen. Apparently, Cathy had told Mother where Alfred was. He requested a cigarette break, went into the dining room, gave Mother a surprised but delighted look, and motioned for her to follow him out back.

I imagined a worn, tired Alfred, a dirty apron wound around his skinny waist, a cigarette dangling from his thin lips, the wrinkles now deeper around his eyes. Mother, I envisioned, was wearing her high-heeled boots, since it was rainy and cold, and a wool coat with a fur fringe, clicking out the restaurant door and around the side.

“What are you doing here, Swee Hua?” Alfred asked.

“I’m leaving Canada. Do you want to come back to Asia with me?”

Alfred scoffed and lit his cigarette. “Don’t you think if I wanted to leave, I would have done so by now?”

“Maybe you haven’t thought it through. You wrote for a reason—to change the way the world works. Don’t you think our world, our culture, is worth saving?”

Alfred looked sharply at my mother. “Why are you here? Where is Ah Loy? Where are the girls?”

My mother drew deeply on her cigarette and looked up at the sky, tilting her head as if to pour the tears back into her head. “They’re not here. They’re better off.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, they’re still in Sparwood.”

“Are you leaving Ah Loy?”

The tears now flowed freely onto her face, smearing the heavy eye makeup she wore, trying to hide the sleepless nights she endured. “Yes.”

“Why, Swee Hua? Why?”

“Listen, I don’t have time to explain this to you. I’ve made up my mind. I can’t stay here in this dead, cold place anymore. I feel like I’m going crazy. I need to go home. Nothing you say will change my mind.”

“Okay, listen. I can’t stay out here long. Meet me at the Marco Polo tonight. Do you know it?” Alfred inquired.

Mother nodded. “I know exactly where it is.”

“Okay. Nobody knows me as Alfred here, and I’d like to keep it that way. Call me Wei when you see me.”

When Alfred finished work that night, he was exhausted, but he waited until everyone had gone upstairs or left to go to the mah-jong tables or bars down the street, and then he walked for a few minutes down Pender Street towards the Marco Polo’s neon sign. In the six months of Alfred’s sojourn in Vancouver, he’d noticed how much those bright lights had dimmed. When he’d first arrived, he was amazed at how vibrant and busy Vancouver’s Chinatown was. Now, a few flickering bulbs clung to the sides of the buildings like forgotten relics, waiting to die out. It was as if Chinatown were disappearing right before his eyes.