The Expatriates (27 page)

S
HE
HAS
SAT
through several sessions on adopting, started to process the paperwork, and otherwise gotten things rolling. And today she is meeting David for lunch to talk about what she had brought up at Clarke’s party. Nothing too emotional—she e-mailed him to see if he would be free, and he replied. They agreed to meet at the sushi restaurant in the mall that houses his offices. Twelve thirty. His secretary e-mailed her an evite, which made her wonder how much Pansy knew. Probably all. Maybe Pansy was the girl. She was pretty.

Hilary showers, gets ready. A purple shift, a chunky silver bead necklace clasped around her neck. She wants to look professional, accomplished, a woman who can handle becoming a single mother. Sam drives her into town. She hasn’t been in town in days, and she looks at all the efficient people striding around with purpose and drive. They carry briefcases or peck away at iPads in the coffee shops. They huddle, speaking urgently, or talk to the air on Bluetooth headsets curved around their ears. She has opted out, but she doesn’t know when that happened, when she gave up the chance to become one of them.

It’s partly the money in her family. While it doesn’t seem as much these days, compared with all the hundreds of millions being minted by young men in tech, it’s always been enough to know she doesn’t have to work. After she got married, it wasn’t as if she felt passionate about her job in PR, so it seemed natural to quit, to be able to travel with David on his business trips and wait for the family to start to form.

Except it hadn’t. And then David was gone too. And now she’s trying to find who she is in the midst of all that she is not.

She is early to the restaurant and sits down, orders green tea, peruses the menu. She sees David at the hostess station, pretends not to until he sits down.

“Hi,” he says awkwardly.

“Hi,” she says. “Thanks for coming.”

“Probably overdue,” he says.

She gives a surprised laugh. “Yes, probably,” she manages. She studies his familiar face, trying to find the difference in him, now that he is no longer with her.

They talk about mundanities, the weather, what they will order, until they have sorted all those things out, called over the waiter, given him their desires. Then they pause.

“So,” she says.

“Yes,” he replies. “I know. You say your piece, and then I have something I need to share with you as well.”

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath.

“I want to adopt Julian. You know this. I’m sorry I brought it up in such an abrupt way and at the wrong place, but I was emotional at the time. I still am. It’s a big decision.” He is listening to her, with a kind look on his face.

“And after you left, I didn’t know what had happened. David, I want you to know I don’t understand what you did, but I don’t hate you and I don’t blame you. I don’t think you were happy, and I wasn’t that happy either. We were just coasting, seeing what would happen, and then you pulled the plug. Right?”

He nods.

“But I’d really like for you to support me on Julian. I really want this, and I think you might owe it to me.”

He clears his throat as the waiter pours his Diet Coke. “Hilary, I want to apologize to you. I should never have done what I did in the way that I did.”

She nods.

“I don’t know why I did, but I was feeling like I didn’t have much to
lose, and I wanted to do something that I wanted to do instead of what I was expected to do, which I had been doing for so much of my life, and I was kind of sick of it. I thought, if not now, when? When am I going to live my life? I didn’t want it to slip away without my noticing.”

“Okay,” she encourages.

“So I was a total bastard and just dropped out. And a coward, because you deserved much better. You deserved an explanation and a respectful way out of our marriage, and I didn’t give that to you.” He looks down at his drink, takes a sip.

“And I want to tell you that I’m fine with your adopting Julian. You can put me down. I actually don’t even know what I want my role to be yet, so we’ll work it out later.”

The waiter sets down trays with salads and miso soup. Hilary starts to sip at her soup.

“But there’s something else,” he says. “Something I need to tell you that is going to be very difficult for you, and I wish it weren’t.”

He pauses, visibly nervous.

“Things happen that you never imagine, and I never . . .” He stops. “I’m worried you’re not going to hear me out.”

Dread washes over Hilary. “What do you mean?” she manages to ask.

“I never meant to hurt you. But I met this girl and . . .” He stops, unable to go on.

“Are you in love?” she asks. “Was it before you left?”

“No, no,” he says. “The girl is not the thing.”

“Then what is?”

At this crucial point, their main courses arrive—dishes filled with colorful sushi. He waits until they are alone again.

“Well. I guess I have to tell you that this girl is pregnant.”

It’s almost as if Hilary can hear the whistling of the bomb coming through the air and then landing, BOOM, right next to her. She feels as if the wind has been knocked out of her. She cannot breathe.

David looks at her, tries to grab the hand that is holding on to the
edge of the table as if she might fall down without it. She clamps down even harder, not giving him anything to hold on to.

“Hilary? I’m so sorry. I didn’t want it. I didn’t even think it could happen, with our history, and I didn’t think. I mostly took precautions too.”

She shakes her other hand in front of his face to stop him from talking any more. She can’t listen to any more words from him. She feels as if she is going partially deaf from the pressure building up in her head. The ambient noise of the restaurant disappears—all that remains is David’s face, with his mouth grotesquely large, saying unsayable things. She breathes in and breathes out, as if this will save her life.

“Please,” David’s enormous mouth is saying slowly. “Please say something. I’m so sorry.”

Hilary closes her eyes, to escape briefly into oblivion. She breathes in and out again.

“Okay,” she manages to say. “Okay. Just give me a second.”

David looks worried.

“You know,” she says, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so concerned in our entire life together.” But what he’s said is still unfolding in her mind, and she goes silent again, trying to understand all the ramifications.

“So she’s pregnant, and she’s going to have the baby?” she says.

He nods. “I think she is. I didn’t tell her what to do, not that I could have.”

“No,” she says.

Silence.

“What’s her name?” she asks.

“Mercy.”

“How did you meet her?”

“At a bar.”

“Original,” she says.

He shrugs his shoulders helplessly. “It just happened that way.”

“And does she work? What does she do?”

“She doesn’t work. She’s between jobs.”

“So is she living with you? Are you supporting her?”

He looks uncomfortable. “No, I haven’t really seen her much since she told me. We definitely don’t live together.”

“What?” Hilary is outraged. “She’s having your baby, and you haven’t seen her since she told you? What’s wrong with you?”

“It was such a surprise,” he says. “I’m just figuring out what I should do. I told her to tell me whatever she needed, and I’m covering all the costs, of course.”

“Why is she having the baby? Is she older?”

“Not at all. She’s young, like twenty-seven.” He understands what it sounds like. “She’s smart. She went to Columbia, and she’s American, Korean American, actually.” He means, she’s not some young bargirl.

“So why is she having the baby?”

“I don’t know!” He throws up his hands. “As if I would ever be allowed to ask that question! You can’t ask that question either, of all people!”

“How far along is she?”

“She said the baby’s due at the end of October, so I think around halfway. It all happened really fast.”

“So she doesn’t have a job, and she’s young. What is she going to do?”

“I have no idea,” David says. “I really don’t. I did not plan for this.”

Looking at David, uncomfortable in his dark suit, sitting in front of her, suddenly Hilary pities David. She pities and despises him.

“Well,” she says, “you’ve gotten yourself into a situation.”

He grimaces. “You sound just like your mother when you say things like that,” he says. Then, “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hilary says. She is still digesting the new reality. David will not stand in the way of her getting Julian. David has gotten a woman pregnant and will have a baby.

“Is she going to keep the baby, like raise it? She’s so young.”

“I have no idea, Hilary!” he says, exasperated. “I really have no
idea. I haven’t spoken to Mercy in weeks. This was all a big shock to me too.”

“Don’t you think you should?” she says. “Speak to her, I mean. You should be a good guy.”

He pauses. “That’s what she said too, that I should be a good guy.”

“ ’Cause it’s true. Don’t regret anything. Don’t do anything you’ll regret later. Be stand-up.”

“I’m trying to be, Hilary,” he says. “I was just trying to figure out who I could be, and then this happened, and it’s been screwing with me. I didn’t even have a few months for myself.”

“You’re not asking for sympathy, are you?” she asks, incredulous. “Please tell me you are not asking for sympathy.”

“No, no, of course not,” he says. “But . . . fuck it.” He picks up his chopsticks and starts to eat. She stares at him for a moment, and then does the same. You have to eat to live, right? This is what goes through her mind.

T
HROUGH
THE
CHURCH
, her mother gets Mercy a job. One of the women she has befriended has a small shop in Tsim Sha Tsui where she sells Korean antiques, and she hires Mercy to help her out. Mercy takes the MTR to Tsim Sha Tsui every morning now and emerges into the crowded streets of Kowloon to make her way to the shop, in the basement of a small, run-down shopping mall. Their customers are tourists, mostly Americans, so the woman, Mrs. Choi, is pleased to have Mercy there to talk to them. She pays her a nominal amount, but she brings them both lunch every day, and Mercy is happy to have somewhere to go.

Is it really so easy? She has slipped into another life entirely, in the same city, in the same time. But here there is no pressure, there is no expectation. Nobody knows who she is, nobody knows what happened the past year, and she feels, hopefully, that even if they did, she would be forgiven, because it took place in another world. She still hasn’t told her mother about G, but it seems so other, so foreign, she feels that even if she did, her mother wouldn’t be able to understand. So instead she just lives in this new world, where everyone is Korean and no one expects you to go out and party and have a boyfriend, an amazing job, and a glamorous life. Here lives a different kind of expat. Mrs. Choi’s kids, two boys, went to local school, and one graduated from Hong Kong University and one is at City U, local universities. They didn’t have the money to even think about studying abroad, she said. Mercy has met them once or twice, when they came by the store. They are a little younger than her, but nice,
shy. They speak fluent Cantonese and Korean, but their English is a little halting, inflected with a Hong Kong accent. She can tell she is exotic to them, sophisticated. They treat her respectfully, as if she is much older. What Charlie would be like if he hadn’t gone to Columbia, she thinks.

It is June, and it is hot. She is starting to get bigger but is not ungainly yet. The rattle of the air conditioner in the shop is their constant background as Mrs. Choi watches Korean dramas on her laptop in the back office. Mercy sits up front, on a rosewood stool, waiting for customers.

This is where she is when she gets the e-mail.

Her blood freezes. Margaret Reade.

She shuts off the phone, reflexively, and slides it into her pocket.

Can’t be.

She gets the phone out and checks again. Yes, Margaret. The subject line is blank.

She gets up and tells Mrs. Choi she’s going to get a soy milk and does she want anything? The answer is no, so she takes the escalator up to the street level. She wants to find a quiet corner to read the e-mail. She walks to a distant corner where there is a dusty jewelry shop and a hair salon, both not open yet. She sits on the low ledge. Heart pounding, she opens the e-mail.

Dear Mercy,

You must be surprised to hear from me. I’m surprised to be writing. I haven’t seen or talked to you since Seoul. We have no news on G, although Clarke and I go regularly to check in. It is still very difficult, and my heart has been forever broken.

I’m not writing for any bad purpose. I’m just writing. I don’t really know why. I haven’t found a way forward yet. I wonder how you are doing. I have to be honest. I don’t know if I want you to be doing well. I don’t know if I could think that was fair.

But I am living my life. Mostly because of Daisy and Philip. They are doing okay.

I watched a documentary on texting and driving. In it, a young man killed someone’s son because he was distracted at the wheel. The dead boy’s father checks in with the man who has killed his child, and in the film, the man reads a letter that the father has written him. It was so beautifully written, and the father was so loving and forgiving, and I just cried and cried. Maybe this is why I’m writing you. I don’t know. Maybe this is just a hand lifted up to see what is out there.

Margaret

Mercy can tell that this e-mail was written hastily. She reads it again. She doesn’t know what she was expecting, but it was not this. She has no expectations of Margaret or Clarke. There is no rule book for relationships between people with their type of history. She knows she is expected to disappear, but she doesn’t know if she’s allowed to be happy or successful or whether she’s supposed to live the rest of her life in repentance. She feels that the life she has now is acceptable, with the small pleasures she has recently acquired, but she can also see how a few years down the line, she might not be so tentative with her own right to happiness, how time might blunt her guilt even more. This is growth, she thinks, but it is still painful.