On Such a Full Sea (32 page)

Liwei wants a full gym with weights and cardio, too, Betty said, fiddling with the combination wheel on her locker. Plus a romper room for the kids, for when it’s bad weather.

That would be fun for them, Fan said.

It will be, as long as everything goes the way it’s supposed to. The architect is drawing up plans. But I’ve been worrying about it. We’re going to have all the money we’ll ever need, but only when the deal goes through. Only God and I know how much we’ve spent in the last month! Many times more than we have, that’s for sure. There’s no reason why the deal shouldn’t happen, but every time I ask Liwei when it’s going to happen, all he says is that the lawyers are the problem. The lawyers! That they just keep bickering over the tiniest details.

Fan said that she’d heard him complain about that.

But you know what I did yesterday? Betty said. I thought, What could they be fighting about that’s so important? Liwei isn’t even going to run the lab anymore or have any say, he’s giving up all control, so what’s there to argue about? So I called a friend who works at the law firm we hired and asked her if she could find out what the remaining issues were and you know what she told me?

Fan shook her head.

She told me there were issues before but of course none now. I said, Why “of course”? Because the contract was agreed to more than a week ago, she said. Liwei apparently was in to sign it. Liwei didn’t tell me he did, but we were fighting a lot then and I can understand how it slipped. Anyway, my friend said now we’re simply waiting for the countersignature. But for some reason they’re taking their time. They don’t seem to be in any hurry. Of course, you don’t need to know about such things, but it’s all a little worrisome, don’t you think?

Fan agreed it was, to which Betty gave a great sigh, though in a strange way the corroboration seemed to make Betty feel a little better, too, and after she deposited her sneakers and toiletries in the plastic shoe bag she’d brought with her, she set the bag down on the narrow upholstered leather bench that ran between the polished wood lockers.

Could I ask you something? Betty said, taking Fan’s hands in hers.

Sure.

When you were out there, in the open counties, I assume you weren’t all alone, because that would have been too hard and dangerous, yes?

Yes.

But you must have felt very alone anyway, right? I know you left of your own free will but putting that aside, you must have felt at times that you’d lost everything. Your household and your clan and your friends. Your work in the tanks. The many other things you surely enjoyed. And of course, your Reg. All the things that had made you you, made you Fan, there was none of it. It was all gone, and maybe, in your mind, gone forever. Was it like that?

Fan didn’t immediately answer.

And when it was like that, Betty went on, her beautiful eyes disked wide and dark, it must have been frightening, so frightening. I can hardly imagine, but did you feel something else, too? Something on the other side of all that? I’ve been feeling very funny of late. It’s nothing like what you probably experienced but I can’t stop feeling it. I can only describe it as this amazing and cavernous emptiness I’m floating at the center of and that I found completely terrifying at first, like I wanted to die, but now I’m not so sure. There’s something about it that drives me crazy. Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I’m talking about?

We know any feeling, even if identical in physical sensation, can never quite tell the same story in another. Still, Fan did understand the feeling, though she told Betty she wasn’t sure, not wanting to say that she’d always had it, even when she was back in B-Mor, even when she held Reg’s hand tightly in hers while they were walking in the park. She was as free as she had believed, and always had been. Only in leaving was it confirmed.

Betty had wanted to stay out a little longer, maybe even take a ride somewhere, make it an entire girls’ day, but it was nearing dinnertime and Liwei would be anxious to get the evening meal going. With the project now essentially done and the pool and gym plans just now in development, he and Betty had more than ample time to devote themselves to those aspects of home life they considered vitally important, from the nurturing of Josey and the twins, to best environmental practices regarding their household’s resource use and waste, to of course what the family ate. Eating was obviously elementary, it was what people did most of in their day, literally taking in the world, and in this area Liwei took a particularly intensive interest, not so much from a gastronomic angle about how things should taste but rather with the idea that each of them—even the babies—should take part in the production of the meal, from the selection of the ingredients at the village market to the chopping and measuring and cooking (the babies given a strong whiff of everything, from ginger slices to cinnamon sticks, after which they’d sometimes cry), the idea being a holistic appreciation through mindful exertions that would result in the best chance for well-being. Frankly, it was often a bit of a circus, the meals never coming out quite right because everybody at every stage had to take her turn, and it was fortunate they still had enough helpers about to mop up the rampant messes, especially if Josey got ahold of the mixing bowl.

It was not difficult for Fan to see that these intricate domestic efforts Oliver and Betty were now directing themselves toward were a constructive means of siphoning off energies that might otherwise go toward arguing or stewing or avoiding each other in the big but now more compartmentalized house. And she assumed this: Betty was still in regular touch with Vik. As far as she could tell, they didn’t meet in person, they couldn’t possibly, for how busy and full the Cheungs’ house schedule was, and with the family being almost always together. But Betty had a second handscreen that slipped out of her handbag in the car and which Fan found beneath her front passenger seat and replaced, Betty zipping up her bag even as she drove. She was grateful that Betty had not divulged any more to her, too, as it would have dragged her anew into the ethical quandary that was finally rendered moot after the incident at the pool. For although she did not know him very well yet, Oliver was Liwei and Liwei was her blood and his pitiable position made her feel she still knew too much, her chest giving the smallest heave whenever just the three of them were together, usually after putting Josey on the preschool shuttle.

The funny thing was that Fan was spending much more time with Oliver than with her, perhaps to limit the chances that Betty, wine-soaked, might want to engage in a certain heart-to-heart, perhaps to figure out if she truly liked him, or could ever feel for him what she did for the others of the household back in B-Mor, that somehow remarkably uncomplicated love that one need rarely express or demonstrate. The Cheungs as well as their friends believed deeply in demonstrations, the minute-by-minute acting out and temperature taking of respect and admiration and devotion, though with Fan, Oliver seemed to be reverting to what he must have been like when he was back with the clan, the two of them now hardly much talking at all while they were busy in the kitchen, or listening to the architect explain the details of the newest plans, or watching Josey do her little-girl cartwheels across the shiny new street, her rear arcing higher than her legs.

He didn’t have to tell Fan he was enjoying or appreciating her company, for if he was or not, it didn’t seem to matter as much as his simply being with her, or if not near her, having a clear notion of where she was. It was enough for him to walk into Josey’s room and see them playing dolls, and he wouldn’t even nod or say hello, just noting it as part of how his people were lodged in the house. Nor had he spoken of what happened at the pool or did he seem to have noticed anything unusual about her after she came out of the water. For isn’t that what we like best about being in our household, having a picture of auntie and uncle up there in the garret, and cousins out in the front, and a brother and nephew across the hall, not having to dwell too much on who they are but instead pointedly feeling their array, the same sense our primordial predecessors must have had when returning at dusk and gazing up into the umbrella tree. It’s not always a perfectly wonderful feeling but it is ours, going forward and back.

Of course, where Fan was on Betty’s Lane will be viewed by some as a most unnatural version of our plan, given how swiftly (if sometimes not so smoothly) their realm was realized, and operated not via equally shared labors but through the pressured application of unbounded wealth; but we must point out, too, that at least Oliver and Betty had, in their exactingly purposeful Charter mode, thought everything through, selecting in and out the best and worst of our ways, which can only be to their credit, and our tradition does not naturally demand that they bear the consequences of such overreaching control. Most times nothing happens. People do get away.

And when they don’t, maybe it’s just the turning of the Earth, such that some bit of light plashes across their path too early or too late. For we think for Oliver and Betty it was like that. One day Oliver gathered everyone including the helpers to relate some disappointing news, namely that they could not yet go forward with the basement pool and gym project because of certain zoning restrictions, telling only Betty that it was, in fact, because the bank was reviewing their credit lines, which were now temporarily suspended. All Fan knew was that he somehow looked grayer in the temples, grayer in the cheeks, and although he’d position himself as ever in the middle of the kitchen chaos, he picked lifelessly at his plate, downing only his unsweetened iced coffees, one right after the other, generally appearing badly dispatched enough that Betty had begun to sneak extra cream and whey protein into the drinks, which fortunately he didn’t seem to notice. Each new day that passed, two of them, three, then five or six, without word from the law firm of the contract being signed seemed to increase the time he spent up in his study, saying he was going over their financial accounts, though of course the conclusion was always instantly the same. They were running low on money, and there was no money coming in. The last few pieces of furniture and decorative items and artworks were still being delivered morning and afternoon, but a telling sign was that their wrappings and packages were no longer being opened, Betty having instructed the helpers simply to leave them for now, that she’d do it herself later. In fact, Betty now often lingered up in Oliver’s study after bringing him something to eat, and it was soon left to Fan to decide what she and the kids and the helpers would do with their day, what they would eat, when they’d retire, even when they’d arise. Betty had had the helpers set up a cot in Oliver’s study so that he could simply fall asleep, usually near dawn, in something other than his desk chair, Betty herself often staying up with him. It was usually completely silent up there, but sometimes there’d be a fit of arguing in the middle of the night, loud enough to wake one of the twins. Most often it was midday when they’d finally come down, usually Oliver before Betty, as his thirst for his drink would rouse him.

But then one morning, just after Fan put Josey on the shuttle, they came down together, both showered and neatly dressed, Oliver in a crisply pressed shirt and flannel slacks and Betty, to Fan’s instant notice, wearing the outfit matching the one she had for reuniting with Reg.

We did it, Oliver said, raising his hands. Betty was covering her mouth.

The contract? Fan said.

Yes! they both said. It went through!

The helpers started hopping and clapping, and Fan did, too.

But then Oliver nudged Betty, and she gasped: And also Reg!

Fan didn’t know what to say.

Go up and change, Fan, Betty told her, tears in her eyes.

It’s a long drive to where he is, Oliver said. So let’s get ready. We’ll want to leave soon.

•   •   •

WHAT HASTY PREPARATIONS
we make for our future. Think of it: it seems almost tragic, the things we’re sure we ought to bring along. We pack too heavy with what we hope we’ll use, and too light of what we must. We thus go forth misladen, ill equipped for the dawn.

But not so our Fan. She wasn’t a prophetic one, as we know, or always ever ready, nor was she chosen, at last, to lead anyone but herself. For at every turn, whether she bore a full satchel or one slim or nothing at all, she stood resolved, her boldness not one that simply pushed her forward but rather fixed her, solid, on the very spot she found herself.
Where
you are
. Did this make her impervious? Heroic and wise? Not at all. She was as subject to chance and malice as the rest of us. She could only entertain hopes for the future. But we know very well that there was a quality about this rootedness, which, unlike the rest of us, she never bemoaned or fought or disbelieved, that every person who met her couldn’t help but recognize with a gentle trembling.

Betty accompanied Fan upstairs. Despite Oliver’s advice that they should soon get on the road—only he was going to go with her in the livery car, as it might end up an overnight or maybe two, with Betty staying back with the kids—she suggested Fan take a soaking bath, after which Betty said she would paint her nails and help her with her hair, which was still in a simple bob. Maybe they would get the curling iron out, or even give Fan a wave, one of the helpers likely having a box of instant perm. While the tub was filling (and seasoned with several scoops of Betty’s fancy lavender-scented salts), Fan packed a small overnight bag, a blouse and nice sweater and a pair of jeans Betty had recently bought for her. That was going to be all but Betty thought she should take along a few more outfits, in case they allowed her to see him through several days. So Pinah brought up a much bigger bag, this one with wheels, and after merely half filling it with the various options of what they’d laid out on the bed, Betty went ahead and larded on other pieces from Fan’s closet, leaving just enough room for a toiletries bag.

You never know what you’ll feel like, Betty said, telling her that even if it was only another day’s visit, she’d have plenty of choices for what she might like to wear. Really, who could tell until right then!