May We Be Forgiven

vanishing sunset against the deepening blue; the outlines of the old thick trees, full with bright fresh leaves, the surprising, gentle tickle of a breeze, and it somehow feels so good to be alive.
    I breathe deeply.
    “It’s like when we were kids,” she says. “We’d eat dinner early, before Dad came home, and then sit outside and wait for the Good Humor truck—my favorites were Strawberry Shortcake or Chocolate Éclair.”
    “We weren’t allowed ice cream from the truck,” I say, suddenly remembering. “My mother thought that was how children got polio.”
    Tessie is working the yard, sniffing everything, bushes, the daffodils, lilies that are pushing up through the dirt; she pees a little here and a little there.
    “She’s really well trained,” the woman says. “She doesn’t seem the least bit interested in going in the street.”
    “She hates the street.”
    Mr. Gao, the owner of the Chinese restaurant, pulls up to the curb in a Honda SUV with the name of the restaurant on the side.
    I go down to the car. Mr. Gao is at the wheel, and his wife sits beside him, holding the heavy brown paper bag filled with dinner—the inside of the car smells delicious.
    Even though she could easily hand me the bag through the window, the wife gets out of the car. She is wearing her Chinese hostess dress. “Ding-dong, delivery,” she says, pretending to ring an invisible doorbell.
    “How have you been?” I ask.
    “Good,” she says. “We no see you in long time.”
    “I’ve been busy. Who is minding the store?”
    “Mr. Foo, the headwaiter. He has been with us a long time.” She glances up at the house. “Nice place.”
    “Thank you,” I say, as I take money out of my wallet.
    I pay her, and she hands me the bag and then dips both hands in her side pockets and pulls them out, fists clenched.
    “Pick a hand,” she says.
    I tap her right hand; she turns it over and opens. Her palm is filled with the white mints with the jelly center that they have at the cash register. “Trick-or-treat for you,” she says.
    “Thanks,” I say, popping one in my mouth. She pours the rest into my hand—they are kind of sweaty-sticky.
    The woman is hanging back, high up on the lawn, near the door, as though she doesn’t want to be seen.
    “Come visit soon,” the woman from the restaurant says.
    “I will, and thank you.”
    I watch as they drive off, and then turn back towards the house. The woman has already gone inside and is in the kitchen, looking for plates and silverware.
    While we’re eating, she asks if I’ve ever stolen anything.
    “Like what?”
    “Like anything?”
    “No, but it sounds as though perhaps you have.”
    She nods.
    “Okay, so what’s the biggest thing you’ve ever stolen?”
    She stops to think for a moment and takes a bite of her moo-shu roll-up; cabbage and soy sauce squirt out. “A thirty-seven-inch plasma TV,” she says, still chewing.
    “Under your coat?”
    “No, in a rented car; I had to have it; I’d lived with a thirteen-inch for so long—no remote. It was time to get with the program.”
    “Do I need to worry that the real reason you came here is because you’re casing the joint and you and your boyfriend are going to come back later with a U-Haul and clean me out?”
    She looks up. “Oh no, I don’t steal from people, only stores. I would never take something from someone I know.”
    “Do you know me?”
    “You know what I mean, an individual as opposed to a corporation.”
    We finish eating, and then she neatly packs up the leftovers, puts them back in the brown bag, and tucks it into the fridge.
    “Time for cookies,” she says.
    “Would you like some tea?” I ask.
    “More wine,” she says, cracking a fortune cookie. She opens one and then another and another, each time apparently not pleased with the result, until, finally, the fourth fortune reads, “Your Good Fortune Starts Now.”
    She feeds cookie bits to Tessie until I say no more: otherwise she’ll get a tummy ache.
    We retreat back to the sofa and watch more television, and I find myself thinking that I now understand what the perfect use for TV is—it gives people who have nothing in common something they can do together and talk about: it gives us familiar territory. I have a new respect for what George used to do, how television binds us as Americans—we are what we watch.
    “Soon I have to go,” she says.
    I nod. I’m not thinking about sex, but apparently that’s part of the