The Refugees

Arthur Arellano meets Louis Vu at Brodard’s Vietnamese restaurant in Orange County, California. Louis introduced Arthur to Vietnamese food, and Arthur has grown a real taste for it. Arthur allows Louis to stash his stock of bootleg, high-fashion products in his garage as a way of repaying a debt to Louis’s father. Arthur, however, feels conflicted about swindling people. As he listens to Louis’s philosophical justifications for his trade, he has the nagging feeling he is forgetting something.

Arthur’s life fell apart due to his gambling addiction. His wife, Norma, left him after he gambled away their bungalow in Huntington Beach. Shortly after, Arthur was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis, which meant he needed a liver transplant. His illness brought Norma back to him. Before his transplant, Arthur fantasized about being a better person after the surgery. He initially wanted to know about the person whose liver he would receive, but he ultimately decided to leave the air of mystery intact. A chance error by the hospital a year after Arthur’s life-saving surgery revealed that Arthur’s new liver came from Men Vu, an elderly Vietnamese man who was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Arthur, unaccustomed to Asian ethnic surnames, assumed Men must have been Chinese.

Arthur felt obligated to find and thank Men’s surviving family members. After attempting to contact the hundreds of people with the surname Vu in the Orange County phonebook, Arthur eventually found Louis, a man claiming to be Men’s son. They agreed to meet up in Fountain Valley, a nearby suburb that Arthur always admired.

Back in the present, Arthur remembers he forgot to bring home the dry cleaning. When Norma gets home, she is displeased. In bed that night, she chastises Arthur for his childish behavior and for never doing anything nice for her. Arthur tries to blame it on his liver. Norma sends him out to sleep on the couch.

After an uncomfortable night on the couch, Arthur takes his medications, including antidepressants, and calls his brother, Martin. He thinks of asking Martin if he can sleep at his house but changes his mind. Their father, Arturo (Big Art), started a landscaping company that Martin inherited once Arthur’s gambling addiction proved he was too unreliable. Arthur works as an accountant out of a home office in Martin’s backyard. Arthur is secretly jealous of Martin’s affluence. At work, Martin asks how things are between Arthur and Norma; Arthur lies and says that they are fine. Martin is concerned and tells Arthur, “You know Nor­ma talks to her ped­i­cur­ist, who talks to Elaine, who talks to her moth­er, who talks to me. I don’t even go look­ing for this, Ar­tie. I just hear it be­cause it’s out there” (65).

Arthur has dinner with Louis at Louis’s apartment, where he is staying the night; Louis has food delivered by the son of a Vietnamese widow who cooks for bachelors. Arthur says that even though he dislikes his brother, he would be willing to donate parts of himself to save him if he had the opportunity. Louis reminds him that this is impossible; the medications he takes to stop his body from rejecting the new liver make Arthur unsuitable as an organ donor. Arthur is secretly pleased by this fact, “feel­ing that his de­ci­sion to do­nate, be­fore he was told he could not, gave him a toe­hold on the mor­al high ground, the kind of real es­tate that Lou­is said could not be bought” (67). Louis owns several homes in Southern California, but he rents them out, preferring to live in a small apartment and plan his business ventures. Unlike Arthur, who fixates on his past, Louis ignores the past and fixes his eyes on the future. Arthur speculates that he is Louis’s only friend.

Arthur receives disturbing news the next day when he goes home to pick up clean clothes to take to Louis’s apartment after a frustrating day at work. Norma informs him that he had a call from a man named Minh. Arthur returns the call. Minh was Men’s son; the Vu family decided to contact the recipients of Men’s organs. Minh does not have a brother named Louis. Arthur is enraged. He drinks several shots of whiskey, the first alcohol he has had since the transplant. Norma says they need to go confront Louis; when Arthur remains adamant that he go alone, she calls him an idiot. He feels a jolt of pain in his liver as he goes to confront him.

Louis is surprisingly calm. Arthur accuses him of using Louis Vuitton, Louis’s favorite designer to pirate, as a pseudonym. Louis assures him that his real name is Louis Vu and that he is Chinese by ethnicity but Vietnamese by nationality. Arthur tells Louis to get his counterfeit goods out of his garage. Louis refuses, threatening to report Martin and his company for employing undocumented immigrants. Arthur leaves, frustrated, shaken, and saddened—he really did view Louis as a friend. When he gets back home, he stalls and looks at the illegal products crammed into his garage. Norma confronts him, and for once, he sees himself as she sees him: “offering nothing but empty hands” (74).