Wicked (1)

1 Month Later, AUGUST 1986.

The duck pond in Demarest, New Jersey, was Victoria and Liu Shifu's special place. They would come here two, three times a week after breakfast just to sit and feed the ducks and Canada geese. Shifu would go across the street to the deli and buy a loaf of bread, and they'd waste away the morning, tearing up slices and throwing the pieces into the water. It was very peaceful here, and Shifu always said this place calmed him down. But sitting next to him on their usual park bench this morning, Victoria Liu could tell that her husband wasn't calm— not really—and that made her very nervous.

Out of the corner of her eye, Victoria could see her husband glancing back at the pay phone at the edge of the parking lot again.

Shifu tossed out the bread in his hand and looked at her. 'You want me to get the blanket from the car. To sit on."

"No, thanks. I'm fine."

"You sure? I'll go get it."

"No, I'm fine. Shifu."

"Okay." He was looking at the pay phone again.

Smoothing the short blond hair at the back of her head, Victoria tried not to let on that she thought anything was wrong. But there was definitely something the matter today. Not that Shifu couldn't be genuinely sweet. Most of the time he was very attentive to her and courteous to a fault. He really worried about her, and he cared about her, and sometimes no gesture was too extravagant to make her happy.

When they first met, she had been working as a secretary at a trucking company and he was working on the loading docks. For him, it was practically love at first sight, and he pursued her relentlessly, sending her flowers every single day until she agreed to go out on a date with him. Victoria was thrilled by the attention, but she was afraid to get involved with him. She knew that her Italian-American parents would not approve of him simply because he wasn't Italian. But Shifu could not be dissuaded, and the flowers kept on coming, every day a new bouquet on her desk. Eventually she gave in and agreed to go out with him on a double date, but she told her parents he was Italian and Shifu played along with the ruse because he said he loved her. It was months before Victoria confessed to her parents that Shifu was actually Chinese and they met for the first time.

Tossing pieces of bread into the water, Victoria smiled to herself, thinking back to those days when Shifu was thin and bashful and always so sweet and thoughtful.

She also remembered when Tiffany, their oldest daughter, was born and how sick she had been. The baby had developed a kidney infection, and Shifu stayed up all night, night after night, sitting next to the crib with his hand on Tiffany's back to keep her warm, watching her breathe, cleaning up her spit-up, changing her diapers.

Victoria brushed away a tear from the corner of her eye. She had a lot of precious memories of her life with Shifu. They'd had some very good times together. She sighed, and then her smile started to fade. They'd also had some not-so-good times....

There were the times when things weren't going Shifu's way, times when he could be a major bastard. After twenty-five years of marriage Victoria knew instinctively when things weren't right with Shifu. She could smell it on him. In her mind there were actually two Shifu's— the good Shifu and the bad Shifu—and she had a terrible feeling that she was sitting here with the bad one.

Today it wasn't obvious which Shifu he was. Of course, it never was—not until it was too late. Even the children could be fooled sometimes because he was tricky. He hid his moods. He could be furious about something, and you'd never know it. He would sit on his anger for weeks; then suddenly, out of the blue, he would fly into a rage, scream and yell for hours on end. And when the bad Shifu went into one of his tirades, the best thing to do was to stay out of his way. But that never worked well for Victoria. The children were generally spared the full treatment, but with her it was different. Whenever he got started, she had to sit and listen and take it. Or else. She knew first-hand what the consequences of walking away from him could be.

Victoria blinked and touched the bridge of her nose, recalling the third time it was broken. She quickly removed her hand and took a slice of bread out of the bag and started to tear it, fearing that he might figure out what she was thinking.

Over the years she'd tried to forget or at least rationalize the awful things the bad Shifu had done to her, but she couldn't bring herself to live a lie. It was hard to forget scars you saw in the mirror, hard to forget waking up from a sound sleep in the middle of the night with a pillow held over your face, hard to forget coming out of the shower and finding your husband crouched in the bedroom, holding a gun on you. No, she could never forget, and she could never rationalize. But by the same token she'd never bring any of these things up again. She didn't dare.

It was like asking Shifu what he did for a living. She knew he was into currency exchange because calls came into the house at all hours from all over the world. She knew he had business associates here and there because he'd leave the house to go meet with them. But she didn't know any of the particulars, and she didn't want to. If Shifu got up at three o'clock in the morning, put on his shoes, and went out, she pretended to be asleep. If he told her anything about any of the people he was involved with, fine. But she didn't ask any questions. She never did. She knew better. She knew her husband was no angel, but he did provide for his family, so she didn't ask questions. You were just asking for trouble from the bad Shifu if you did.

She tossed more bread into the water and sneaked a glance at her husband. He was looking over his shoulder at the pay phone again. He was making sure that no one used it in case someone beeped him and he had to make a call. God only knew what he would do if some poor bastard came along and tried to use his phone.

Suddenly Shifu's beeper went off, and the startled ducks at Victoria's feet darted back into the water. Shifu uncapped the beeper from his belt and looked at the readout. This toy was his latest fascination. He'd been unhooking the answering machine at home ever since he'd gotten the beeper, and he never went anywhere without it. He even wore it around the house.

Shifu got up from the bench and started for the pay phone.

"Who is it." she asked. She really didn't care who it was. She just wanted him to stay with her and feed the ducks, the way they used to.

He looked down at her. "It's John." He was wearing his dark glasses.

"Oh." She nodded, then turned back to the ducks as he went off to make his phone call.

Shifu never used to make phone calls from here. The duck pond used to be sacred. It was their time together, the place where the good Shifu could recharge his batteries. At one time they used to come here every day, it seemed. They'd go out to breakfast, then come here, hold hands, feed the ducks, not talk. It was always calm and serene, and Shifu was always at his best when he was here, always so polite, so considerate. When the weather turned chilly, he'd put out a blanket for her to sit on, another one for her lap, and a pillow for her back. He did worry about her. He really did. He worried about her too much. That was the whole problem.

Shifu was obsessed with her. He wanted to know where she was at every moment. He wanted her home with him. For the past few years she'd worked at Dial-America, a telemarketing company. At first it wasn't much of a job, but she'd worked her way up to supervisor, and she was really enjoying it. It was the first job she'd had since she was single, and she felt good about herself again. But Shifu hated her having that job. He told her to quit, tried to browbeat her into giving notice. He snooped around the building and spied on her through the windows.

Then one night, when he picked her up from work, he happened to see one of her co-workers walking out of the building with her. The man meant nothing to her, he was just someone she worked with, but when she got into the car, Shifu was wearing his dark glasses. If she didn't quit the job immediately, he stated flatly, something bad would happen to her ''friend." She knew he meant it, so she gave notice the next Friday. That had happened six weeks ago.

It was hard for her to decide whether this insane jealousy came from the good Shifu or the bad Shifu. It was probably a little of both, she suspected. He did love her—she had no doubt about that—but it was a warped kind of love.