The Emperor of Gladness

Grazina arrives home in an ambulance. She is more disoriented than usual, and Hai suggests they watch an old home video she has of Easter dinner with her family. They are interrupted by Lucas’ arrival along with a counsellor, who reveals they are here to move Grazina somewhere safer. A trembling Grazina begs “Sergeant Pepper” to help her as she doesn’t want to leave, even as a furious Lucas attempts to force her to go; she claims she has been making up her illness all along.

When Grazina asks her son to stop ridiculing her and calling her names, the counsellor stops and advises Lucas to regroup. On Hai’s whispered instructions, Grazina begins throwing salt and pepper shakers and shooting finger guns, and Lucas and the counsellor, who leave in a hurry, with Lucas threatening to return with the cops. After they leave, Hai asks Grazina if she truly has been making up some of her memory loss; she gives no response except an almost imperceptible smile.

April arrives, and even weeks after Lucas and the counsellor’s visit, they don’t return. Grazina seems to be getting worse; Maureen is relieved to discover that the lump in her breast is benign; and Mr. Vogel returns, instructing BJ to fire someone in a fury since she hasn’t done so yet. He decides on whom, and BJ is left to break the news to the HomeMarket crew that Sony is being let go. The others are shocked and try and figure out how they can keep Sony on by giving him each some of their shifts; however, Sony bolts for the door. BJ doesn’t let Hai leave until he finishes ringing up some orders, after which Hai immediately calls Aunt Kim. She realizes he is headed to Vermont, telling Hai that she has been writing Sony letters pretending to be his father. In a recent one, she invited Sony to come up there and work with “Uncle Minh” if he wanted to.

Hai cycles around until he finds Sony, who reveals that he’s going to see his father. Hai breaks the news to Sony that his father is dead; in response, Sony punches him, before revealing that he already knows.

Hai protests Sony hitting him, with the latter asserting he had to make a statement somehow. He reveals to the stunned Hai that he already knows about his father’s death, having read about the accident online; the news article is also in Sony’s file at the group home. However, Sony is determined to find the diamond trapped inside his father’s hand. To Hai’s question why he hasn’t done so earlier, Sony confesses that once the letters from his “father” started coming, he just went along with the story.

Hai tries to dissuade Sony from going, but in vain; he then decides to accompany his cousin instead. Hai has to take Grazina along with him as well, as it is too risky to leave her behind. When they break the news to the HomeMarket crew, BJ commissions a catering van for Sony as repayment for him having gotten fired, and asks Maureen to tag along as well.

They pick up Grazina and set out for Vermont. They stop at Springfield on the way for BJ to drop off an audition tape with a scout she knows, revealing this was her plan all along. When it gets dark, the group is forced to stop for the night. All the motels they try are full, so they spend the night at an empty barn they find instead. Hai gives Grazina her pills before bed and shares his stash with Maureen. That night, Hai dreams of a ship like Noah’s ark gliding through the trees in the field outside; in its way, a pig comes by whistling “Silent Night.” Hai sings along before speaking to the pig, apologizing to the different members of his family for letting them down. Hai is awakened by the morning light and Sony telling him that he was mumbling sadly in his sleep.

The group sets out again for Brattleboro and finds the park where Sony’s father veered off the trail. Searching through the park, they come across a small, charred circle of grass with a seared headrest in the centre. An emotional Sony speaks to the headrest, addressing his dead father and confessing how much he misses him. The group tries to console him, but Sony breaks away, frantically searching for the diamond in his father’s hands. The others help him half-heartedly, but they are all unsuccessful.

Hai reflects on how he later learned that Sony’s father was never a soldier; he simply worked in the laundry room in a US Army base, and his injury was merely from a grenade pin stuck on a soldier’s belt loop that snagged on his watch as he was proceeding to wash it. In the present, Hai tells Sony that he can go home now. The group drives back home with Maureen singing on the way.

When Hai and Grazina get back home, they find a notice on the door—a notice from Hartford County Family Services, informing them that they would be escorting Grazina to Hamilton Home the next evening at four. A downbeat Grazina spends the rest of the day watching television with Hai.

Grazina wakes Hai up in the middle of the night and asks to go to a diner together to get some coffee. As they eat, Hai watches Grazina slip away again, asking incoherent questions. In a moment of lucidity, she wonders if she was ever a good mother, and Hai reassures her. Grazina consoles him in turn when he gets teary, divining that he misses his mother.

As Hai prepares to ride the scooter on the way back, he is alarmed by the ground beneath him appearing to melt and slip away. However, Grazina points out that it is a wave of salamanders that are dashing across the parking lot—on the “Big Night” every spring, when the weather starts to warm, they rush into a pool of water to procreate. Hai and Grazina stand together for an awe-filled moment to watch the salamanders.

Grazina’s music wakes Hai 20 minutes before social services are scheduled to arrive. Although she is lucid, she pretends she is a young girl again, calling Hai “Sergeant Pepper.” Hai plays along, “trying to pretend their pretending was real” (382). They go out and ride on the scooter, pretending that they’ve finally made it to America.

Hai spots the patrol cars in the distance, and they slowly make their way back to the house. Crying again, Hai tells Grazina that he wishes he could take her somewhere else, but he doesn’t have “anywhere.” As they approach the house, Hai spots Lucas. Grazina quickly whispers to Hai that she has hidden money in a cookie tin in the house and asks him to take it as payment for getting her across. She asks if she will see him again, but immediately grows confused. A security guard from Hamilton House, who has accompanied Lucas, stops them, ushering Grazina into their van.

Hai makes his way into town and even though it is his day off, sits outside the HomeMarket. Sony, who is covering a shift for Maureen, eventually spots him. Hai gives Sony a wad of cash—Grazina’s money from the house, in addition to everything in his account that he had emptied the previous night. There is enough for Sony to bail Aunt Kim out as well as put down a deposit on an apartment for them. An overjoyed Sony rushes inside to tell the HomeMarket crew what Hai has done for him. Hai crosses into the next lot and climbs into a dumpster in the courtyard, contemplating how waste is proof of time having passed. His phone rings; it's his mother calling, asking when the semester ends and when he will be back home.

Two years later, Russia will get his sister, Anna, through rehab, and it will work this time. Wayne will move back to North Carolina and start a smokehouse. Maureen will undergo a mastectomy when the growth returns, but malignant the second time; she will recover at her brother’s place in Ohio and go on to live a long life. Aunt Kim and Sony will move into an apartment in Manchester, and both work at a restaurant while Sony studies at night to become a docent. BJ will become the manager at a HomeMarket in the airport while also partnering with another wrestler to become the New England Regional Women’s Tag Team Champion. Grazina will pass away seven months after moving into Hamilton Home, and in five years, no one from the original HomeMarket crew will be left at this franchise.

In the present, from inside the dumpster, Hai tells his mother that he is dissecting a corpse. He describes the experience for his mother as she listens on in awe. Afterwards, he confesses to her that he is scared of the future, and she tells him not to be: “Life is good when we do good things for each other” (396). Feeling a wave of love for his mother, Hai tells her, “Tu esi mano draugas” (396). He imagines that he hears many hogs, from somewhere deep inside him, screaming as they’re being dragged into the emperor’s butchery.