A Free Life (19 page)

"We're a radical group," Dick said, "so lots of people are against us."

"I don't give a fuck about what they think of us." Sam thrust a bundle of rice noodles into his mouth. "Do you know when Tibet will be open to tourists?" he asked Nan.

"I have no idea."

"I hope I can go there next year. I've been trying to get permission from the Chinese consulate, but every time those bureaucrats turn me down."

"You must be on their list," Nan said.

"I'm a crazy Jew, on every government's list."

"Including zer U.S.?"

"You bet. My FBI file must be able to fill a whole cart. I'm an enemy of authorities."

Bao broke in, "If you go to China, you know what happen?"

"I know, some undercover agent will put a bullet into the back of my head and the government will claim I committed suicide."

They all cracked up. When lunch was over, Sam paid for everyone. "I make more than the three of you put together," he said, refusing to go Dutch.

It was getting cloudier and looked like rain. As they were saying good-bye at a street corner, Sam embraced Nan and gave him a loud smack on the cheek. Nan was surprised and a little embarrassed. Dick Harrison wrote down his phone number for Nan and said he might send along some poems too. They promised to see each other again.

Nan and Bao headed for the subway station. "Sam is really fond of you," Bao said, and squinted at Nan.

"Come now, I'm not gay. I'm drawn to women, can't stop thinking about them."

Despite that unsettling kiss, Nan was quite moved by their meeting with Sam Fisher, in whom he had seen the free spirit of a poet who wasn't afraid of anything or anybody, a complete individual. Nan hadn't read Sam's poetry, but he liked his personality. If he were gay, he wouldn't have minded seeing Sam more often.

Bao told him more about Min Niu. Min had been an English major at Hunan Normal University. He wrote to Sam to express his admiration for his poetry, and then a relationship developed between them through correspondence. As his sponsor in the United States, Sam helped him get his visa and even paid tuition for him at NYU. Min came and lived with Sam, working as the manager of his home. In fact, he also cooked for Sam and sometimes served as his secretary. Bao had once eaten dinner in Sam's apartment, and Min had made four dishes and a large bowl of soup within an hour. And everything he cooked that evening was delicious. Sam also paid Min a decent salary.

Nan was impressed, saying, "What a lucky fellow Min Niu is."

"I think you can replace him if you want." Bao winked at Nan.

"No, I'm dying to work for a pretty woman poet as famous as Sam Fisher. Do you happen to know anyone?"

"What makes you think I'll provide the information gratis?"

They both laughed. An old woman walking by turned to look at them. They stopped laughing and went on chatting about the poetry world in New York.

PINGPING phoned Nan at Ding's Dumplings and begged him to come back immediately. She had bickered with Heidi and was thinking of moving out. What had happened was that Nathan couldn't find his new calculator and suspected that Pingping had taken it upstairs for Taotao to use. Heidi went up and asked Pingping, "Do you have Nathan's calculator?" "No," Pingping said. She took Heidi to Nathan's room on the second floor and found the calculator lying on the windowsill behind his desk. Then she told Heidi to her face that however poor she was, she wouldn't steal.

Her words rendered Heidi speechless, for she knew that was true. Many times Pingping had come upon banknotes and coins when laundering their clothes, and without fail she had given the money back to Heidi, sometimes even thirty or forty dollars. Yet as Ping-ping's boss, Heidi wouldn't apologize and just went away without a word. That angered Pingping more, and she planned to quit, though she hadn't mentioned it to Heidi yet.

Nan told her on the phone not to think of moving out right now, because Taotao couldn't find a better school. They could not afford to leave Woodland until the school year was over. "I'll come back soon, all right?" he said to her.

" How soon?"

"I've got to make arrangements before I go back. I can't just leave without notifying my boss."

"All right, come back as quickly as you can."

For a whole afternoon Nan was absentminded at work and even nicked his fingertip while dicing a cucumber. He was angry with Heidi, who seemed to have mistreated Pingping because he wasn't around. Probably she feared that his wife and son might stay at her home forever, so she created some difficulties for them to chase them out.

Toward the end of the day, Nan told Chinchin that he wouldn't come for the rest of the week because there was an emergency at home and he had to go back. His fellow workers all thought he was just taking a few days off and would return the next week. He wanted them to think that way too, since he wouldn't burn his bridges.

But he decided to quit his job at New Lines. He didn't enjoy the editorial work and was afraid that sooner or later, Bao would ask him to translate his entire memoir if he continued editing the journal.

The next morning he went downstairs to explain his decision to Bao. As he was approaching the door of their bedroom, he heard Wendy berating her boyfriend. She sounded furious today. "You're just a sponge!" she cried.

"Don't cawl me that!" yelled Bao.

"You live like a parasite. I can't stand you anymore. Get out." "It's just couple dollars."

"A couple of dollars? I only get seven hundred a month from Social Security, but you spent more than two hundred on alcohol, not to mention the phone bills you ran up. How dare you call that amount just a couple of dollars?"

"But you have rent money."

"That goes to the mortgage. Stop arguing with me. I've made up my mind and want you to move out." "Okay, okay, I go out your house." "Good. Bring your gay friend along." "Damn you, Nan not gay!" "Don't tell me that. I know what he is." "You don't want to marry me no more?"

"I'm sick of you. You've just been using me to get a green card. I can't help you with that anymore. Get out."

"Okay, I don't carry old bag like you," he said calmly.

Nan knocked on their door. He was incensed by Wendy's remark and glared at her. She was taken aback by his fierce eyes and turned to the bay window. Outside, a few blackbirds were fluttering on the crown of a sycamore, and one of them was holding a strip of toilet tissue in its beak. Nan noticed a reddish patch rising on Wendy's cheek. She used to be friendly to him, and he had helped her repair the front door and put up the picket fence in the backyard, but all of a sudden she had begun bad-mouthing him. This hurt him to the quick.

"I'm going home," he told Bao. "You mean for good?"

"Yes. My family has some trouble, and I have to go back without delay."

"Well, I'm going to move out soon. Sick of this rotten cunt." He pointed at his girlfriend.

Nan glanced at Wendy, who didn't understand Bao's curse. Then the two of them talked briefly about the journal. Bao hadn't gotten the funding for the next issue, so this might be the time for Nan to leave after all. In his heart Nan couldn't help but despise Bao. If he was going to become an artist, he would be a different type. He'd be a self-sufficient man first. Now it was high time for him to start his life afresh. New York wasn't a place for a man like him; he had to return to his family and struggle together with them.

ON THE PHONE Pingping hadn't told Nan the whole story, which involved Taotao and Livia as well. A few days earlier the two children had been doing homework together in the kitchen while Pingping was outside the house, fixing the lid on the wooden trash bin. The girl and the boy were quite close by now, and Livia often claimed that Taotao was one of her best friends, though he still wouldn't join her pals when they were over. Several times Pingping told her son not to get too attached to Livia, yet the boy couldn't help but turn ebullient whenever the girl was around. Heidi didn't like Taotao that much, though she admitted he was bright and handsome. Bending over the trash bin, Pingping hammered two nails into the holes on the hinge affixed to the lid, then opened and shut it a few times to make sure it was no longer loose. The job done, she turned to go back into the kitchen. But then she overheard the two children and stopped to listen.

"I just don't think he'll come back," Livia said in a serious tone of voice.

"That's not true. My dad is just working in New York."

"Tell you what, grown-ups always lie."

"My dad isn't a liar."

"How do you know he isn't?"

"My mom told me so."

"He lies to your mom too. He walked out on both of you, that's what I heard." "You're a big liar!"

"Don't be mad at me. I don't want you to lose your dad just because I don't have my dad." "You're not my friend anymore."

"C'mon, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I just told you what my mom and her friends said."

Pingping stepped in and said to the girl, "They're just buncha miserable rich ladies, have nothing else to do. They just want everyone else have bad luck."

Livia gasped and winced. Pingping went on, "Don't believe that kinda crap. Nan is learning to be chef. Don't you eat the wonton he cooked?"

"I did. It was delicious, better than anything I ate in any Chinese restaurant." Livia seemed to relax a little. "He's away just for short time."

"He told me so too," Taotao added. "He said we'd open our own business in the future."

Livia dropped her eyes, misting up. She said to Pingping, "My mom's friends all say you and Nan split up. My mom is afraid you'll stay with us forever. To be honest, I won't mind." That was true. Livia was fond of Pingping, who was the only one who had contradicted Dr. Hornburger's prognosis that the girl wouldn't grow taller than five feet. Even her mother believed that Kraut.

"They just gossip," Pingping said. " Nan won't walk out from Tao-tao and me. He's good man."

Despite saying that, Pingping got more agitated than ever. She could see the logic behind the rumor. What if Nan hit it off with some woman in New York who could win his heart? Wouldn't he start an affair and then abandon Taotao and her? If this happened back in China she might not be devastated, because she was a complete person there and could do anything by herself. But here she depended on him for many things, and Taotao needed him as his dad. Indeed, before they had decided to immigrate, she had even planned to divorce Nan after they returned to China, where she would raise their child by herself. That was why for years she had been determined to make money. But in this place she couldn't live separately from Nan, and at all costs she must hold the family together, to give Taotao a safe, loving home. What's more, recently she somehow could no longer bear the thought that Nan might go and live with another woman. She knew she'd get jealous like crazy if that happened. So now she must have him back. The longer he stayed in New York, the more trouble might start.

NAN came back and talked with Pingping, who agreed they shouldn't rush to move out. To their amazement, Heidi had made up her mind to dismiss them, although she would let them stay another half year. She said, "I'll need someone for house-sitting this summer anyway. But after August I won't be able to use your help anymore. Are we clear about that?" Her face was wooden. The Wus thanked her for offering them the extended period.

Nan wondered if he should return to New York, but decided not to, now that he could cook like a professional. He called Howard to apprise him of his decision. His boss said he understood and would send him his last week's pay. That moved Nan, who had never thought he could get the wages.

That night he and Pingping went to bed together, but he found all his condoms punctured or cut by scissors. "That must be our son's doing," she said, tittering.

Nan didn't reproach Taotao, realizing that the boy must have resented his absence from home. He smiled and said to his wife, "How could he understand sex? I knew nothing about it until I was thirteen."

"Here children reach puberty earlier. He has read some small books on biology and knows a lot about how babies are made."

"Still, it's too early for him to be so interested."

"It doesn't matter, as long as we love him and raise him well."

He said no more and went on making love to Pingping, who soon began to come. But she dared not scream for fear of waking up their son. She murmured tearfully while licking Nan 's chest, saying she couldn't live without him. If only she could keep him home forever!

The next day Nan began to look through job ads in the Boston Globe and World Journal. This time he wanted to be a cook. Two Chinese restaurants interviewed him, and the Jade Cafe in Natick hired him as a sous-chef. He was to start the following Monday.

PART THREE

ONE DAY in the early summer of 1991, Nan came across an advertisement in World Journal for the sale of a restaurant in Georgia. The asking price was $25,000; the owner claimed that its annual business surpassed $100,000, more than enough to make a decent profit. "Perfect for your family," the ad declared. Nan brought back the page of the newspaper and showed it to Pingping. They talked about it late into the night.

For months they had been thinking about where to go. Should they stay in the Boston area? Or should they migrate to another place where the cost of living was lower?

By now they had saved more money, having worked nonstop without spending a penny on rent for the past three years. They had two CDs in the bank, $50,000 altogether. Yet even with this much cash, they still couldn't possibly buy a home or business in Massachusetts, where everything was expensive. Nan earned ten dollars an hour at the Jade Cafe; wages like that wouldn't qualify him for a loan from the bank. He'd heard that some Chinese restaurants in Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama were quite affordable. Nan had been following newspaper ads, which seemed to confirm that. After working at the Jade Cafe for four months, he was already an experienced cook.