Irresistible Impulse by Robert K. Tanenbaum Page A

not doing homework. This is a felony. This is felony stupid , Lucy! You realize what could have happened to you?”
    “Yes. I said I was sorry. I’ll never, ever do it again.”
    “You bet your—you bet you won’t, my girl! Now, this is what’s going to happen. This weekend, instead of you going ice skating with Janet and Marie, and instead of having a sleepover—”
    “Mom-mm!”
    “Don’t you dare ‘Mom-mm’ me! Don’t you dare! Instead of doing those nice things, I was saying, you and I are going to be locked in a room together working on this math business, and we will not come out until you are on top of long division.”
    “What about your clients? What about the twins? ” asked Lucy in a snotty tone that made Marlene want to wring her neck. She gritted her teeth and glared at her daughter. The child looked away in shame, for Lucy was aware of Mr. Tranh watching them and sending rays of Confucian disapproval, which for some reason had a more powerful effect on her than her mother’s ire.
    “I will take care of that,” said Marlene tightly. “Daddy can handle the twins with Posie, and the clients will just have to look out for themselves. You are not going to fail in school. I may have to kill you, but you are not going to fail. Now, put on your coat. I’m going to take you back to school.”
    Marlene got up, her heart pounding, her mind grappling with a confusing mix of anger, fading fear, and burgeoning guilt. She shuddered and went over to the counter.
    “Thank you, I … am glad you helped my daughter,” she said to Tranh, speaking slowly and distinctly.
    Tranh smiled and nodded. “Is okay. I like … I like her … and I foud … feeled …” He shrugged and threw his hands wide in a gesture of frustration. This gesture, however, attracted Marlene’s attention to what was in one of his hands, which was a worn paperback book with a dirty white cover and red lettering on the spine. Marlene had a similarly worn copy of just that book on her bookshelf at home, had owned it for over twenty years. She gestured at it and said, in French, “Monsieur, I observe you are reading Baudelaire. Is it also the case that you speak French?”
    Tranh’s face was at first blank with amazement and then curiously transformed: a wiry intelligence appeared to flow into it, as from a pump. “But of course I speak French, Madame. I am a Vietnamese, am I not? And I was five years a student in Paris. But I am astonished to find that you do as well. Although it is less remarkable, one supposes, than that your daughter speaks Cantonese. I have heard her speak it on the street. This was how we communicated, you see.”
    “Of course,” said Marlene. “As for me, I was four years with the Mesdames of the Sacred Heart, who insist on accomplishment in French.”
    “So I have always understood,” said Tranh, smiling broadly. “But surely they did not insist on Les Fleurs du Mal . Surely you proper young ladies did not read, let us say, Métamorphoses du Vampire under the watchful gaze of a nun.”
    “I am afraid we proper young ladies did much worse than that, monsieur; at least I did. My four hundred blows were unusually vigorous, I fear. And you may regard my daughter to prove it to yourself: we are two of a kind. It is the wages of sin.”
    “Come, Madame, it is not as bad as that. She is a brave girl, if overly proud. But you have warmed her ears, and I doubt she will repeat the offense.”
    “One hopes,” said Marlene. She looked at her watch. “A pity, but we must go.”
    Tranh inclined his head and intoned, “ Horloge! dieu sinistre! effrayant, impassible, dont le doight nous menace et nous dit, Souviens toi! ”
    Marlene laughed, “You have it, my friend. Oh! I have forgotten to pay you for the child’s soup, and for the phone call.”
    She reached into her purse, but Tranh held up his hand and said, “Dear Madame: I had not had a real conversation in five years; I had not had a conversation in French