Read Online The Natural Laws of Good Luck by Ellen Graf - Free Book Online Page B

out of the discarded vitamin display rack found in an alley behind the grocery store. There was also the treadmill with handlebars just right for hanging up the garden hoses. Some of his finds were not as useful, such as the four VCR players dysfunctional for reasons mysterious even when the wiry insides were taken out and splayed on the workbench, or the twelve random hubcaps with no matching wheels. There were microwave ovens, televisions, lawn mowers, electric knives, and computers that refused to work despite the fact that they had “seemed very, very good” sitting on the curb. We soon had a VCR that did sometimes work, a porch glider that glided but clicked loudly and had no cushions, and a moldy office chair that wet the bottom of whoever sat on it from a spongy upholstered reservoir.
    Garage sales were exciting to Zhong-hua for the bargaining opportunities. Once, among the hemp rope, sump pumps, and jigsaw puzzles, Zhong-hua found a small black Chinese teapot with gold dragons swimming through blue clouds. In China, an item priced at two hundred yuan can be bargained down to twenty yuan. The teapot with four cups was two dollars.
    â€œOne dollar OK, not?”
    â€œNo, it’s two dollars. The price is marked, sir.”
    â€œI think one dollar maybe enough. This teapot small.”
    â€œNo, I said two dollars.”
    â€œThis teapot very old. I give you one dollar.”
    â€œIt’s a pretty teapot, and it costs two dollars.” The woman stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at him.
    â€œToo expensive! I don’t need.” Zhong-hua turned and strode decisively back to the car. As we drove away, he said, “Very good teapot. I really want, but price no good.” He lost out on great deals because he was sure he could cut the already fair price in half with the psychological warfare of skillful bargaining. Just as often he was successful and sped away waving to the bewildered seller, who had just sold a fifty-dollar refrigerator for six dollars or a hundred-dollar table saw for sixteen. One day he picked up a tiny gold pin from the table marked “Free Stuff.” I thought it was an angel but on closer inspection saw it was a chubby Cupid aiming his arrow, a flying baby. From then on, he fastened this gold Cupid to his collar before leaving home for any reason.
    Zhong-hua said that in China a wife is a man’s “left hand.” He adjusted to having a willing but unreliable left hand. It washed clothes but didn’t fold them, planted seeds but didn’t weed, put tools away but not in the right place, crushed garlic but to a lumpy rather than a creamy paste, and strained against big wrenches but rarely could budge them. He was my right hand. When my husband arrived from China, I was working on a commissioned burial urn of solid black wonderstone with a sculpture on the top of the lid. When I agreed to take the job, I had not thought through how I would carve the inside of the bowl without expensive electric tools. So far, I had succeeded only in creating a shallow impression big enough to hold a few cigarette ashes, not the ashes of an important person’s bones.
    Zhong-hua watched me sitting on the ground holding the stone globe clamped between my feet. I flaked off black slivers with a one-inch chisel. He wore that versatile poker face. There were gradations of the poker face: the don’t-bother-me-or-talk-to-me poker face, the irritated poker face, the exhausted poker face, the I-have-no-idea-what-you-just-said poker face, and so forth. This one was the I-think-you-are-in-big-trouble-and-really-needsome-help-from-someone-a-little-smarter poker face. That night he didn’t come to bed until three in the morning. I awoke to aStone Age bowl just deep enough to inspire a vision of true containment. He had done it with willpower and a regular half-inch electric drill bit, a mallet, and a stone chisel. Tedious hours of chipping and boring