The Expatriates (23 page)

“Yes,” the receptionist says. “You are lucky to have only one.”

Someone just called her lucky. Tears pool in her eyes, blurring her vision as she signs the credit card slip.

I
N
HER
STUDIO
. She is hidden. She has been here every morning this week. Outside, traffic sounds, people’s voices.

Clarke’s party is imminent. Priscilla has earned whatever exorbitant fee she is probably charging and has done everything, as promised. At some point, she figured out who Margaret was, and her dealings with her changed. She became softer, never got exasperated when Margaret didn’t return e-mails or failed to make a decision. She took over and did everything. She started e-mailing Margaret directions, like had she found a dress, did she want to book a hairdresser or makeup, and when Priscilla didn’t hear back, she would just e-mail that she had booked one for her and that they would be at the house at this time. For this reason, Margaret now loves Priscilla.

Now that Clarke knows about the party, now that it’s no longer a surprise, there is even less pressure, and she has even shifted the question of whether David Starr should be invited over to Priscilla via e-mail. So, Priscilla crisply informed her later, an invitation went out per Clarke’s wishes, but David has not RSVP’d yet. Hilary has RSVP’d and called to ask if she could bring a friend, another woman. Of course, Margaret said fine. Apparently David is still out on his midlife crisis, something that may solidify into reality. Margaret views all this with the dim, myopic view of someone watching slow sea creatures through a thick glass, creatures in another world, where emotions run high and people behave badly, as if they have all the room in the world to make bad decisions and they won’t be punished for
them. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and she’s the creature behind the glass, watching normal people behave normally.

She asked Priscilla to coordinate with the children about doing something for Clarke, a speech or a song or some sort of entertainment, and apparently they have something planned. She has given Priscilla whole ownership of the party, not feeling bad because she knows now that Priscilla knows about the situation.

Clarke’s parents flew in a few days ago and are staying at a small hotel in Stanley. They have been to Hong Kong once before, after her mom left after her extended stay, and they filled in for a month or so, getting the children’s lives back on track. They are nice, from a small town an hour out of San Francisco, but they were overwhelmed by Hong Kong—all the foreign food and the maids and the taxis—and they were not much help. They went to a round of parent-teacher conferences on their behalf when Margaret couldn’t make it out of Seoul and Clarke was on a business trip, and they tried as hard as they could, but they are limited. They have decided to stay a few days, and then leave. They don’t want to be too much trouble. Margaret told her own mother she didn’t need to come, that it would be better if she came another time.

Margaret slips into the bath with her headphones on and plays music so loud it shudders through her head. This is the closest she can get to the comfortable numbness she craves.

Dr. Stein has asked her to make friends. To do things with people, to get close and share intimacies.

Friends. What an odd concept. She had them before, of course, but in her old life in California and through her children. When she moved to Hong Kong, being involved with the kids’ school made her busy and made it easy to meet other women. There had been a flurry of coffees and lunches, a few walks and girls’ nights out. It was so easy that she was lulled into thinking she had lots of friends. And in a way, she had, in the way that doing a favor for an acquaintance and
sending a thoughtful e-mail segued into friendship. If you call someone a friend, they’ll become one. Something like that. Since everyone had live-in help, getting someone to go out with you for dinner was easy. It was so easy that the women often organized girls’ trips to other countries, like forays to Vietnam to buy art and get embroidered linens and lacquerware or to Bangkok or Seoul to get skin treatments. She did not do anything like that, but she had seen how she could have gotten there in a few years, when her kids were older.

Dr. Stein, her face small and concerned in the reduced Skype window of Margaret’s laptop, said, “Go out for lunch. Take a walk. Work. Do something.”

Margaret assented but then realized she had no idea how to get back into work mode or whom she would reach out to to have lunch. She never even got back to the Litchfield people on that spec project her friends had sent her way. She had zero desire to call someone to have lunch. The truth is that once you have three kids and a husband, you don’t really need friends. She didn’t, at least. They were a perfect unit, a self-sufficient ecosystem, like those green plants in glass spheres that produce oxygen and water and feed themselves forever in a perfect balance of waste and sustenance. Until fate came down with a giant, destructive swipe and shattered it forever.

But friends. Back to the point.

“How do I do that?” she asked Dr. Stein.

“You’ve been out a few times to lunches and things, right?”

“Yes, but those have been more”—she searches for the word—“general. I could leave when I wanted.”

“You need to make connections with people. You have Clarke and Daisy and Philip, but you need to go outside as well.”

“Why?”

“You need to start living as normal a life as possible. Live as though it’s normal, and slowly it will become so.”

Who would she call? Frannie Peck? Hilary Starr? Any of the
well-meaning class mothers who dropped off food and ferried her kids to the birthday parties and soccer games she couldn’t face? Can’t she just stay here in this room that has become her sanctuary?

Even as she sinks lower into the too-rapidly cooling bathwater, she knows she cannot. The children are at home, Clarke too. She forgot to tell Essie that the washer repairman was coming, and Essie may deny him entry and cost her the appointment fee. There is a FedEx package to be picked up that will probably not make it to the door. She forgot to call to make the appointment for Philip’s haircut, and he will be shaggy for the party. And she has to make friends.

Life presses on her from all angles, and she is not ready to accept it.

When she emerges from the bath and puts on clothes, she feels fortified, a little, as if she has acquired a small buffer for what is to come. Which is Clarke’s party. An onslaught of friendly strangers, eager to connect and gladhand and drink and breathe unwelcome intimacies into her ear. These are the people she is supposed to be friends with, the people who will give her normalcy and support.

Back home, Margaret moisturizes her skin and walks around naked to let her skin dry so she won’t stain her new dress. She bought it last week in town, a gossamer purple shift with silver sequins, knee length, a bit flapper. When she pulls it out, Clarke whistles.

“Great dress,” he says.

She smiles. She wants this to be a good night for him.

“Are you excited?”

“It’ll be fun,” he says. “Thank you.” He is almost dressed, knotting his tie. “Are Daisy and Philip ready?”

“I’ll go check.” She goes downstairs, pulling on a thin cotton bathrobe. She had bought it outside her little flat, and the memory of that moment, alone, purchasing this item, stays with her as she descends the stairs. She finds Daisy wrestling with a blow-dryer, a new development for her growing girl.

“You want help with that?” she asks. Daisy nods, and she stands
while Margaret combs out sections of her hair and dries them smoothly. She looks at her daughter in the mirror, her arms and buttocks thickening ever so slightly—a sign of the impending storm to come.

When Daisy was six, a scrawny girl with twiggy limbs, she had been into gymnastics. Once she sprang into a handstand and a shower of glitter, sequined barrettes, and pink plastic beads fell out of her pockets. Margaret was filled with wonder and gratitude that this strange unicorn being was hers. Having a girl meant sparkling rings and fake jewels twinkling from every crevice of your house, the chemical smell of nail polish, the high, sweet pitch of her voice. She loved it so much, and she sees the end of this era coming—the chaos waiting to erupt onto Daisy’s skin, the scramble of hormones to make her moody and silent. She aims hot air at her daughter’s hair and wishes for time to stop, for just five minutes. She closes her eyes to stop tears.

“Mom,” Daisy says. “Mom.”

Margaret opens her eyes.

“Mom, don’t.”

It’s a plea. She can see that Daisy needs her to be steady, to give her ballast.

“It’s okay, darling,” she says. The hot air blasts onto her hand, feeling almost like a burn. She shifts the blow-dryer. “Do you want French braids?”

“I’m not six, Mom,” Daisy says. “I’m just going to wear the new headband I got.”

“Okay.”

She goes to check on Philip, who’s reading a book on his bed.

“Do you know what you’re going to wear?” she asks.

“It’s fancy, right?” he says without looking up.

“Yes, so a collared shirt and a blazer, please. Long pants.”

“It’s so hot out, Mom!”

“It’s your dad’s fiftieth, Phil. I’ll find you a good shirt.” She goes through his shirts. Many don’t fit anymore. “You are growing so fast,” she says. Next to Philip’s drawers are G’s clothes, untouched.
She leaves them alone. She picks out a shirt and hands it to him. “Get dressed,” she says.

She goes back upstairs.

“How do you feel?” she asks Clarke.

“Old.”

“You look good.”

“Thanks.” He pulls her in for a kiss. “Hey,” he says, releasing her and looking at her face. “We good?”

“Yeah, we’re good,” she says. Working on good.

“Mom!” she hears from downstairs. “An airplane’s gone missing. Turn on the TV.” Daisy does have a highly attuned ear for disaster. Maybe Courtney’s mother, from that benefit lunch, was onto something. This is a change wrought by what happened. Before, Margaret had been surprised by her children’s lack of empathy or understanding. When she had wept at a news story or while watching a documentary, they had asked her why she was sad if she didn’t know the people or if just one person had died. Their smooth, guiltless countenances had struck her speechless.

She and Clarke turn on the television but can’t find anything—just soccer matches and financial talk. They go to the computer and read of a Malaysian plane that never arrived at its destination.

“Oh, no,” she says. “Those poor families.”

“It’s just disappeared,” Clarke says.

They pause, and then they silently agree to move on. This is how it is, Margaret thinks, when it’s not about you or your family. You have a horrified moment, your eyes fill, you say a silent prayer, but it’s possible, even likely, that you will smile in the next hour. But now she feels grateful for the disaster slipping past her, leaving her unscathed. These are the small mercies she waits for now.

H
ILARY
HAS
INVEIGLED
Olivia into being her date for Clarke’s party.

“Think of it as charity,” she said. “I really don’t want to go by myself.”

“Why are you going at all?” Olivia asked.

She doesn’t know why. She feels like going out, she supposes, having been a hermit for several weeks.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But tonight I want to put on a pretty dress and go out and have a glass of wine.”

“You expats have so many of these parties,” Olivia said. “Welcome parties, going-away parties. It’s like you never left college.”

They are getting ready together in the bathroom, Olivia having brought over her clothes and a bottle of champagne. Hilary is playing music, trying to get in the mood.

“So, you know,” she says, “I’m going ahead with the adoption. With Julian.”

Olivia pauses from applying foundation. “Oh?” she says. “That’s great. How about David?”

“I’m going ahead without him, but I think I’m going to list him as a father. I think he won’t mind.”

“Really?”

“Well, I was going to have an agreement that he’s not responsible at all for Julian. I just need him so they look favorably on the application.”

Olivia raises an eyebrow. “You seem to have a surprisingly good opinion of David, considering all that’s happened.”

Hilary can’t explain it, but she feels certain that he won’t make a fuss. He’ll yield to her on this.

“Are you ready for it?” Olivia asks. “He’s not a baby, so it won’t be the crazy change that is, and you won’t have all the hormones, but it’s still going to turn your world upside down. And schools! You have to get him into school! He’s going to have to get fluent in English very fast!”

The talk of Hong Kong schools always turns rational women into hysterics.

“That’s a ways down the road,” Hilary says mildly.

“Oh, you don’t know,” Olivia says. “Everyone wants ‘the best’ for their child.” She makes imaginary quote marks around the phrase. “You get crazy. People get crazy.”

“Well, I have to make sure it goes through first. There’s a lot that needs to happen.” Hilary looks at Olivia. “Are there websites you go on?” she asks. “Like websites where people ask questions or for advice, stuff like that?”

Olivia considers. “Not really,” she says. “There are a few groups on Facebook, if that’s what you mean, and there are a few local sites where people go, but I don’t spend much time on that stuff.”

Hilary hesitates. “It’s funny,” she says. “I’ve been spending a lot of time online, because, you know, nothing to do, and I’ve been on these expat-forum sites. People talk about their helpers or their jobs or other things.”

“Why on earth do you read about strangers’ lives?” Olivia asks.

“It feels a little bit like living vicariously,” Hilary says, embarrassed. “Like having a conversation with someone, and you don’t even need to go out.”

“You could be at a lunch but be in your pajamas.”

“Exactly! It can be kind of addicting. But the weird thing is that someone on one of these forums knows about me and Julian and wasn’t so kind about it.”

“About you? Really? Hong Kong is too small. It’s disgusting. What did they say?”

“That I was trying him on like a dress. That I was shopping for a child.”

Olivia turns to Hilary. “Hilary, there are always going to be trolls. Especially on an Internet forum! What do you care what some anonymous coward says about you?” She turns back to the mirror, sweeps on blush. “The best thing about getting older,” she says, “the absolute best thing, is that I don’t give two hoots what anyone thinks about me.”

“Come on!” Hilary protests.

“Okay,” she allows. “I am working toward not caring one bit. I am on that path, and I am getting far along. I know you are too.” Olivia’s eyes meet Hilary’s in the mirror. “Who cares?” she says. “It’s all about them, not about you. They’re motivated by jealousy or spite or their awful lives. It has nothing to do with you. Nothing.”

“I guess,” Hilary says doubtfully. “It seemed very personal.”

“They’re awful. The best thing anyone can do is just live her own life. You do that, and they should do that.”

“It made me feel bad,” Hilary says, almost childishly. Her eyes tear up.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Olivia says. She sits down. “What can I say? There are awful people in the world.”

“I know,” Hilary says.

They sit in companionable silence.

“Well,” Olivia says, “I’m with you. I’m here to help you. Whatever you need.”

“Thank you.”

They continue to get ready. Hilary remembers what her mother once said: You feel one age, and you see another in the mirror. She recalls nights in college, getting ready with her girlfriends before a frat party—not so different. What’s staring back at them, two middle-aged
women, is somehow foreign to her, although she thinks they might look better than they did when they were chubby college coeds.

“So who’s going to be there tonight?” Olivia asks.

“The usual,” Hilary says. “The TASOHK crowd. I’m sure there’s very little overlap.” TASOHK means ultra-American, soccer mom and corporate dad.

“Oh, good,” Olivia says. “No one I know.”

“You’ll be slumming it with the suburbanites.” Hilary laughs.

“Any handsome ex-football players?” Olivia muses. “I knew I should have married an American.”

“Be prepared. There are going to be hundreds of them tonight.”

“I’m ready,” Olivia says.