The Love Wife (11 page)

— You mean you agreed?

I stopped rowing. The boat rocked.

— I didn’t agree, exactly. I just, you know.

— You know what?

She didn’t answer.

I pushed the oar handles into my lap, so that the blades lifted like wings from the water, dripping. The boat rocked some more; the current nosed at it, nudging it clockwise. Lizzy woke and began to cry. Jane cuddled her.

— What if she had held you to your word? I asked. What if she hadn’t relented? Would you have taken the money and married someone else?

— Of course not, she said.

— Then why did you agree?

— I’m an agreeable person.

— How can you not have told me?

— She said you knew.

Was that true?

You can’t trust that Blondie.

I watched her jostle Lizzy and rummage in the diaper bag, and decided not to say more. Our wedding night, after all. The water; such stars as there were; the moon. I lowered the oars to the water and let go. The blades splashed and caught, my left handle driving in toward my waist, my right swinging away.

— I’ll warm up the bottle, I offered.

We had a portable bottle warmer that recharged in the microwave, one of a panoply of nifty items that had recently filled our lives. All you had to do was crush it, to generate heat.

The warmth felt good. The air smelt of a campfire somewhere. From far away, across the water, came the surprisingly clear sound of people arguing.

The plan had been to leave Lizzy with her regular sitter, Zoren. But when Zoren, just our luck, developed an appendix, we decided not to leave Lizzy with her aunts. Seeing as how she knew them but not well, and was in the middle of stranger anxiety.

— We need to find someone we can trust her with besides Zoren, I said.

— We do. But first have a look at your daughter.

The moon shone on her sleeping face. Her face was not as perfectly circular as it had been that very first time I held her; still, her eyes seemed freshly inscribed. She had eyebrows, but no brow bone as of yet. Her chin too was more of a location than an actual feature. By day her cheeks were identifiable by their pinkness; at night they were yet one more idea we had about her face. Her bangs stuck up stick-like, softly bristly. Her mouth was still tiny—way too small for a grown-up spoon. How pure she was; it seemed to me that there was nothing left in the world that could be described as pure, only this child. These days when I picked her up, she still nestled her head into my shoulder and kissed me—
mmma!
And curled up her legs. How I loved that, the way she picked up her little legs, so high her knees approached her belly button. I loved the way she curled her feet up like shrimp and turned them in toward each other. A ball of life she was, still; more ball than forked stick. So much in life fell short of its billing—but a child, a child! How extraordinary her lashes! And what was her skin made of? In the moonlight it appeared a semisolid, something just poured. She was asleep again.

— Are you happy?

I volunteered that it felt odd to be wearing a ring.

— You know, this evening is not as romantic as it could be.

You really think you can trust that Blondie?

I rowed. My wife, settling Lizzy back in her Polarfleece nest, came and nestled herself in her own nest by my feet, amid our sleeping bags. She undid the frogs of her dress, revealing a distinctly bordello bra.

— Ah, she said. That’s better. Don’t stop rowing.

And so it was that she was half naked when we were set upon at the campsite by wild bears who turned out to be friends as well as Blondie’s sibs and Gabriela.

Lizzy was up the rest of the night.

BLONDIE / 
Later, the gifts were of two sorts. There were practical items like cookie jars and toaster ovens, mostly from his side, and Asian selections, mostly from mine. There was a trivet made from the character for ‘long life,’ a Japanese lantern, an Asian-fusion cookbook; a feng shui manual, a set of rice bowls, two pairs of zebrawood chopsticks, and a bamboo desk fountain. I loved all of these. The Chinese things from his side were harder to be enthusiastic about—a pair of baroque jade carvings, complete with ornate rosewood stands, for example. An elaborately embroidered tablecloth, too big for any table we owned. Happily, there were more simply embroidered pillowcases too, and an amazing grain of rice, onto which had been inscribed an entire Tang Dynasty poem. This came with a stand and magnifying glass.

CARNEGIE / 
Mama Wong indeed gave us the million dollars she had promised Blondie, only with the new stipulation that it be used for an investment property we would manage and own jointly with her. But that wasn’t the only surprise. Doc Bailey, with the blessing of the other Bailey children, was inspired to give us the summer house.

— No no no, we said. It’s the family house. We can’t accept it.

Doc Bailey, though, had real support.

— Don’t worry, we’ll all visit, said Peter cheerfully. We’ll bring our dogs and expect to be fed and never leave. You’ll just take care of it.

How to respond to such largesse?

5

Nothing’s Plenty for Me

WENDY / 
She doesn’t need much, but she does carry an umbrella if it’s sunny, to make sure she doesn’t get tan.

— In America it’s good to be tan, we say.

But Lanlan wants to be pale anyway. This Indian summer starts almost as soon as she comes so that she does not put her umbrella away until practically October.

— I am not American, she says.

It’s just a little beige fold-up umbrella, and she only uses it around lunchtime. Still we think it’s weird.

— Would you want to be? says Lizzy. American, I mean.

— No no no no, says Lanlan, smiling. Too many beeps here. Other times she says: — This is not my home.

— But would you want it to be your home?

— Better to want nothing, she says. Then nothing means nothing.

She puts her finger up when she says stuff like that, it’s like the finger is talking instead of her.

LAN / 
In Chinese we say
wu ai
—without love. That it is better to be without attachment. Just as it is better to do things—
wu wei
—without effort.

That is how my father used to talk. Like a Daoist monk.

WENDY / 
How can you do stuff without doing it? That’s what we say in the beginning, but after a while we sort of get it or at least Lizzy does.

LIZZY / 
Because it was like so true! Like I could see that if I tried to get some guy, it just messed things up. It was better to go with the flow.

WENDY / 
— Better to want nothing, says Lanlan again, her finger up. — Ask for nothing. Expect nothing.

— But how can you want nothing, I say. I mean, how can you just decide?

— Of course you can decide, says Lanlan.

She tucks her hair behind her ear. We are sitting outside under the apple trees, me and Lizzy in the sun, and Lanlan in the shade. She has to wear a sweater because the ground is cold, and in the shade the air is cold too. It’s not like being in the sun, where the air is warm.

Lanlan is in the shade but she stretches her neck up at the sky anyway, and closes her eyes. Her neck is long and beautiful, Lizzy says it’s nice to be kissed on the neck, so probably if I were a man I’d kiss her there. But would she want to be kissed? Or would she decide to want nothing?

— Do you miss Shandong? I say.

— I miss Suzhou, she says.

Her eyes are still closed but not like she’s sleeping, more like she’s channeling some kind of message from the sky. Like she’s reaching up to it and it’s reaching down to her through the branches of the apple tree.

She says: —Suzhou is my
lao jia
—my hometown.

— But when you go back to China, won’t you go back to Shandong? says Lizzy.

— Hard to say, she says. It all depend.

— Does that mean you’ll go to Suzhou?

— Move to Suzhou very difficult.

She opens her eyes then, and I’m sorry we made her do that. Not that she acts bothered, but it’s like we interrupted the sky, and now her neck is normal. I pull my own neck up to see if I can do that. Close my own eyes so my eyelids turn red, and straighten up my back.

— But why? says Lizzy. I think you should just go.

— Cannot just go, says Lanlan.

— But why not?

Lanlan tickles me under the chin, which is how it is that I open my eyes and see that the sky has gone away for her, and that there’s this sadness coming down.

— First of all, I would need a job, she says. Not to say a
hukou
—sort of like a residency permit.

— So get one, says Lizzy.

— You have to know somebody, says Lanlan. Not just somebody. Somebody—how do you say?—have influence.

— To get a job?

Lanlan nods.

— You can’t just apply?

Lanlan shakes her head.

— Do you know somebody with influence?

— I know no one, she says.

— So where will you go back to?

— It all depend, she says.

Her voice is all quiet like then, and wanting to want nothing.

BLONDIE / 
I loved Lan’s simplicity, but some things drove me crazy.

The umbrella was one thing.

The other was that she hardly ate. She would not set a place for herself at the table—we had to do it every night.

WENDY / 
— Which is fine, Mom says.

But the way she says it we know Dad’s going to have to say something soon.

— No wonder she is so thin, Mom says. I hope she eats at school. Or perhaps she eats at night?

And that’s right, I’ve seen her. She eats putting the food near her mouth, then taking it away, then bringing it close to her mouth again and maybe finally beginning to chew. Sometimes she cries. Eating makes her cry, but very quietly, so you almost can’t hear her, you can only see her cry and when she’s finally chewed something, put her head in her arms. One day I ask her why she cries. But she says she doesn’t cry.

— I saw you cry, I say. You were crying when I came in.

— How can you trust what you see, she says. You only have two eyes.

And I say: — Aren’t two eyes enough?

But she says no, not enough, not nearly.

— Do you understand? she asks me.

And when she asks that her eyes fly away to the door as if she’s making sure there’s no one there, or as if that’s where the other world is, in the hall, where it can hear us talking.

— I saw you, I say. I know I did. I did.

— All right, she says then. I cried. What does it matter?

— It does, I say. Because it means you’re sad sometimes.

She looks at me.

— I think you are Chinese, she says. Very care about other people.

Then she tells me a story she says her
ayi
told her a long time ago, about this baby who got killed by accident by the servants.

— One day, you know, they are feeding her, and what happens? The
ayi
put the chopstick too far inside the baby’s mouth, and poke a hole here.

She shows me by putting a finger inside her own mouth and poking in the way back.

— Of course, since all the way in back, nobody can see. And so the baby cry cry, but nobody know what is make the baby cry until one day the baby die.

— The baby died? I say.

— The baby die, and then the doctor look inside and find hole.

— Those chopsticks must have been pretty sharp, I say.

— Sharp, she agrees.

— I can’t believe they didn’t find the hole until the baby was dead.

— Hole is hard to see, says Lan.

— Are you going to die? I ask. Suddenly I think of that, I don’t know how.

— No no, says Lanlan, and kind of half shakes her head.

— But you have a hole no one can see?

Lanlan smiles her smile.

— You are a real Chinese girl, she says. See not only with your eyes but with your heart.

Sometimes when it gets dark out we catch crickets. We hold a candle outside a cricket hole, and when the cricket comes out to see the light, we nab it quick. Lan hums. Nothing is baggy on her, her clothes looks like they’re on a Barbie doll. Nothing wrinkles and she never has bare feet. Mom is the opposite, she loves bare feet and clothes she could sleep in. She would never in a million years wear Peds like Lanlan does, the beige kind that are like little stretchy stockings just for your feet. But that’s what Lanlan wears, she’s not the same as us. Just like the crickets all look the same to us but not to her, Lanlan sees things that we don’t.

— See the legs, she says. How strong. See the lines on the head, how straight they are.

Or: — Look how beautiful this head here, that little gold in the middle.

She says every fall people used to travel from all over to Shandong where her great-aunt lived to buy fighting crickets, but that there are also beauty crickets and singing crickets. She looks over the crickets from our yard.

— This kind of cricket creep like a tiger, fight like a snake, she says. This kind charge like the wind.

Her favorite kind is the kind that
listens for sound, looks for the enemy.

— That is smart cricket, she says. Ambush enemy instead of using brute force. That cricket is real Chinese.

We put the crickets in the cages and tickle them with those skinny paintbrushes you use for crafts and stuff. But we can’t get them to fight.

— Beep! Lanlan tells them. Beep!

I tell them too: — Beep!

But nothing happens.

— Typical American crickets, she says. Too much automatic make them lazy.

She teaches Bailey stuff too. Like she’s trying to teach Bailey to walk by standing him up and clapping her hands and opening her arms to get him to walk to her. He mostly waves his arms and maybe takes a step but then falls down plop. She tries again anyway.

— You watch, she says. He will learn.

Some days we make kites, beautiful kites, with bamboo frames you can fold up, or that you can attach to each other. Flying them is like flying a pile of plates, except that they go up even when there’s hardly any wind at all. Or else we do cat’s cradle, which Lanlan says her
ayi
used to say brings rain. Lanlan knows how to do all kinds of things with string, like she loops it around her five fingers in a special way and says that’s a snake, then pulls so that it comes off and says that’s the snake’s skin coming off. And we do paper play too, that’s fun. Lanlan can make lanterns and all kinds of other things, like swans and goldfish and seals and flowers, she can even make balls out of paper, Bailey loves those. She blows them up and he shmushes them. If you give her scissors she can make your silhouette, or flowers, or a lantern, or a boat with a fisherman, or a house with animals and people playing instruments.

— Beep! she says when she’s done. — Automatic! Wow.

Mom wants to get special paper for her to use, but Lanlan says she cannot use special paper. She likes scraps, wrappers we were going to throw away, pictures from magazines.

— It’s part of her art, says Dad.

— Survivor art, says Mom. It has to be one part scrappiness.

— She doesn’t pick and choose, says Dad. She makes.

— She makes you realize making do is a kind of making, says Mom.

— She needs nothing, says Dad.

Dad says he is going to make a movie of her hands, making these things.

— Her hands are amazing, he says. The way they move is so beautiful.

And that’s true. Her fingers fly around, all except her pinkies, which she holds a little ways away—up in the air like, so you never forget how pretty her nails are.

Mom wants Lanlan to teach her something. Like how about embroidery, she says, Suzhou embroidery is so famous.

But Lanlan says embroidery is one thing she cannot do.

We teach Lanlan stuff too, like how to pick apples, and how to make apple crisp. Lanlan doesn’t eat a lot of the crisp but she does eat some, and says that she likes it, forget that she spits out all the apple peels.

Mom says this is what cultural exchange is about, when we’re older and don’t have a baby in the house we’re going to host some exchange students like her family did for sure.

BLONDIE / 
— I am happy anywhere, said Lan. I am not picky.

— 
I got plenty of noth-ing,
she sang.

She seemed to have picked the singing business up from Carnegie, although she didn’t make up words the way he did. Instead she learned them from tapes she played on her tape player; we had supplied her with a voltage converter. She sang Chinese songs, too, sometimes—so quietly you could barely hear her. And yet the girls were humming them now. For instance, this song about
moli hua
— jasmine.

CARNEGIE / 
The words were something like, How beautiful, how fragrant, I’d pick you except that I’d be pricked.

Also she sang this little number about road-building, and another called ‘Rely on the Helmsman While Sailing the Seas.’

BLONDIE / 
Mostly she listened to tapes for school. She was taking English as a Second Language and studying very hard.

CARNEGIE / 
Ah, but her independent study: Broadway 101.

Not that she would ever go so far as to ask to borrow a cassette. But anything we left on her doorstep would disappear immediately and reappear a few days later. We thuswise introduced to her
The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls. Porgy and Bess, Fiddler on the Roof.
We begged her to tell us if we could get her something special, and one day, finally, she relented.

— Tchaikovsky, she said.
Swan Lake.

She listened. We asked again.

— 
La Traviata,
she said.
Aida.

I unearthed my old opera-class tapes for her.

BLONDIE / 
— A good sign, he said.

He thought this even though Wendy said the sad songs made Lan cry so hard, it was scary.

— A sign of life, he said.

Sometimes he would hum a little of one thing or another. She would nod and look down.

CARNEGIE / 
Such was the sign of life.