The Love Wife (42 page)

Blondie and Ariela and Renata tried to comfort him. I was surprised and touched to see him plant his large head, for a moment, on Blondie’s shoulder.

— This world can disappear like any other, said Blondie later.

Ariela nodded: — Grandma Dotie used to say that.

Everyone was quiet for a while.

Said Renata finally: — It’s amazing the fire didn’t spread.

Everyone agreed.

— Though it does make you feel a bit singled out, as it were, said Gregory.

— For misfortune? I said.

— What else, said Gregory.

But Peter disagreed: — Nothing like this has ever happened to us before. Do you realize that? How disgustingly lucky we’ve been?

— It’s globalization, said Gregory. Sooner or later we were bound to get caught in someone else’s mess.

— That trailer park, countered Peter. With no beach. Sooner or later there was going to be trouble.

— What are you saying? said Gregory.

— Are you suggesting, I said, that the beach should have been given to the town?

— You could’ve done that, said Renata. You could’ve given it to the town. It was your house.

But Blondie demurred: — It was and it wasn’t. The only person who could’ve done that, really, was Dad.

Doc Bailey, thankfully, appeared not to have heard. But Blondie’s sisters did, and her brothers, and no one disagreed.

Said Peter, returning doggedly to his point: — I’m just saying maybe we didn’t get caught in their mess. Maybe they got caught in ours.

More quiet.

The water lit up for a few moments, but beyond it, the woods held their dark.

— Was there insurance on the place? asked Gregory finally; and when I replied yes, he said: — Brilliant! Brilliant! I always told Peter you were brilliant!

— Where is the woman now? Renata wanted to know. That Sue?

— She’s in a center of some sort, Blondie said. Her child is in a foster home. They’re trying her on antidepressants.

— And what about poor pregnant Lan? asked Ariela. What’s going to happen to her?

— Now there’s a question, said Renata.

17

The Waiting Room

WENDY / 
Lanlan is back but Mom is leaving, as we know because of Mom and Dad’s talk. Honestly. Absolutely. Truthfully, they say.

Honestly. Honestly.

Lizzy imitates them: — Honestly, I never say anything honest. Honestly, I have no idea what I even mean.

— Lizzy, says Mom. Please. You are making a difficult situation even more difficult.

— Honestly, says Lizzy. I have never said one real thing in my entire life.

— Where did you learn to talk like that? says Mom. You know, sometimes I just wonder.

— Honestly, I learned it from you, says Lizzy. Honestly, listening to you say nothing my whole life just made me hear every single thing you weren’t saying.

— Great, says Dad. And what does Brazelton say to do now?

His cell phone rings, the tune this week is ‘When the Saints Come Marching In.’

— If you answer that thing, says Mom.

He opens the fridge door and puts his phone in the vegetable drawer.

— There, he says, shutting the door. — Are you happy?

She’s leaving. For another house, for a while, she says, just for a while. She is still going to take care of the garden here, and us too, of course, she’s never going to forget about us. We will always be her Wendy and her Lizzy, she says, we’re going to live with her half-time, she wishes she could stay.

If it’s just for a while, though, how come she says stuff like never and always? That’s what I want to know. And where is she going, and how long is a while, and what does that mean, ‘half-time’? But I don’t get to ask, thanks to Lizzy.

— You’re abandoning us, says Lizzy. Honestly, I always knew you would.

— I’m not abandoning anyone, says Mom.

— Honestly, that’s what mothers do, says Lizzy. They quit. First they try really really hard, and then they just quit.

— I’m so sorry you feel that way about mothers, says Mom. But it’s not true.

— I’m so sorry you’re my mother, says Lizzy. Honestly, I wish I’d gotten a different mother.

— Well, I’m glad I’m your mother anyway, says Mom, crying. — And, as my mother used to say, Be careful what you wish.

— I’m glad I got you for a mother, I say then. I don’t want Lanlan for a mother, I want you.

— That’s not true, says Lizzy. Honestly, you completely wish Lanlan was your mother.

— I used to wish it, sometimes, I say. But I’m sorry I did.

Says Mom: — It’s okay to wish things like that. I’ve wished all kinds of things too. We all have.

— Like that you had different children, right? says Lizzy. That I wasn’t so out there and that Wendy wasn’t so shy, that we were all more like Bailey. Isn’t that what you wished? Honestly?

— Honestly, begins Mom.

But then she doesn’t finish, she just starts crying all over again so that her face is pinker even than when she’s running and out of breath, and her eyes are bloodshot and swollen up and red-rimmed all around. You’re just surprised in a way that her eyelashes look pretty much like normal, only wetter, and that her hair does too, and her teeth.

BLONDIE / 
Honestly, I just wasn’t brought up to talk that way.

Honestly, to talk that way was to be a completely different person than I was.

Honestly, I needed to not think about anything for a while.

— Wendy, I said. I’m not quitting, do you hear me? I’m only going for a while, to try and figure things out. And even while I’m doing that you’ll come live with me three and a half days every week.

WENDY / 
— Is that what ‘half-time’ means? I ask.

— That’s what ‘half-time’ means.

— What are you trying to figure out?

— About Lanlan, stupid, says Lizzy. Honestly! Use your brain!

Lizzy says all this is happening because Dad wants Lanlan to move into the house now. He doesn’t want her to live in the barn anymore, like a servant.

BLONDIE / 
— This poor woman, he said.

— Think what your mother would say, he said.

— Think what she’s been through, and where she is now. All alone in a foreign country, and knocked up besides, he said.

CARNEGIE / 
For the record, I also said: — If you want her to stay in the barn, we can do that. Lan can absolutely stay in the barn.

I did say that in the end. I did give in.

BLONDIE / 
I said: — Honestly, she might as well move into the house.

I said: — To be honest, I am no longer playing.

I said: — Mama Wong won, that’s all there is to it. I quit. End of game.

WENDY / 
Mom is taking Bailey with her, that’s another thing.

— Bailey is too little for joint custody, says Mom. He can’t possibly understand what’s happening. Do you understand? It’s not that I love him more than you and Lizzy. He’s just littler.

— I understand, I say.

CARNEGIE / 
I could see that he was too little to shuttle between households, even for a while. I could see that a real father—like the real mother before King Solomon—would refuse to have his child split in two.

But where was King Solomon to award Bailey, therefore, to me?

— You always wanted him to be a Bailey, I said. More Bailey than Wong.

— And is that a surprise? she said. When not even you wanted to be a Wong?

I had to chew on that one for a while.

— If that meant being like Mama Wong, you mean? I said finally.

— What else could it mean?

— It could mean being like me, I said. Aren’t I a Wong? Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Am I not as much a Wong as my mother?

WENDY / 
Lizzy says first Lanlan burned down the other house and now she’s burning down this one too.

— I thought you liked Lanlan, I say.

— I do, I’m just saying, says Lizzy. Plus it’s not her fault the houses were ready to burn.

Gabriela had a breast cancer scare, that’s another reason all this is happening, Dad says. Gabriela’s going to be all right, she had a lump but they cut it out, the only thing is it’s reminding Mom how no one lives forever.

— Not that Mom is going to die anytime soon, don’t worry, he says. And neither am I, even if the doctor does see a bypass in my not-too-distant future.

— Hmm, says Lizzy.

What I can’t believe is that he said ‘breast.’ But maybe that isn’t even what he said, because Lizzy didn’t laugh or anything.

— I thought cancer was from smoking, I say.

— That’s lung cancer, says Lizzy.

— And what’s a bypass?

— Everybody old has that, says Lizzy. Practically.

— Not everybody, and you don’t even have to be old exactly, says Dad. But yes, a lot of people do have it, and the point is that Mom wants to feel she lived the life it was given to her to lead. That’s why she quit her job. That’s why she wants to feel like her house and family are her own.

— So what is Lanlan now? I ask. Is she still our nanny? Is she going to live with us forever?

Dad furrows his eyebrows so hard they look as though they might crash into each other, if Bailey was here he could call for the breakdown train.

— We can’t send her back, he says. Not while she’s in the process of having the conditions on her green card removed. As she can now that she’s a widow. Plus she has no job and no home and a baby on the way.

— What I mean is, Is she the love wife?

LIZZY / 
She heard that from Gabriela, there’s no way she figured that out herself.

WENDY / 
Our house is like so quiet in the afternoons now. Lanlan is there, but she’s quiet, almost like the way she was when she first came, only even sadder.

— It was all my fault, she says. It was all my fault.

She says that and everything about her is just hanging. Her hair is hanging, and her head, and her shoulders, and her hands, and her legs and feet too, she’s not even interested in what they have to say, seeing as how they’re obviously saying nothing.

—
 
Where’s your
qi
? I say—your life spirit.

She used to always like it when I talked to her in Chinese, and even now it makes her smile a little. But she doesn’t answer.

She only eats because of the baby, and she refuses to move into the house even though she can now. We try to bring her to go see Mitchell and Sonja’s girl across the street—she’s starting to walk, we say, you should go see!—but Lanlan hardly goes out, and when she does, she doesn’t even use an umbrella, she lets the sun shine right on her face. The only normal thing is that she cooks a little, still. Sort of in slow-mo, but at least she does it.

We don’t need a baby-sitter exactly, with Bailey gone most of the time and Daddy wanting to take care of Bailey himself when he comes, you’ve never seen him sit on the floor so much. But Lizzy and me hang out with Lanlan still, and fan her, and talk about America—stuff like how her child is going to be American, but she hopes not too American. We talk about what that means, ‘single mother,’ and how she is going to support the child. What kind of job she can get at her age, and whether Grandpa Bailey is really going to pay for everything.

Sometimes she’s afraid Shang will come get her.

Sometimes she wishes Shang would.

Sometimes she misses Uncle Su. She can’t see a single musical instrument without crying.

LAN / 
Ren qin ju wang
—
Both man and music have died.

WENDY / 
Sometimes she talks about how things were her fault, but also Dad’s and Mom’s.

LIZZY / 
And not to forget Mom’s family, with that beach they let sit there until the whole town went ballistic. Dad said they should have sold it.

— So why didn’t they? asked Wendy.

— Because Mom and Dad couldn’t sell it, and the Baileys couldn’t get around to it.

— I think they loved that house, and that’s why, said Wendy. I mean, they talked about it all the time, even if they hardly ever went there.

— They had their pictures all over the walls, I said. And no place else to put them.

— Hmm, said Wendy.

— Probably they could have found some other place, but it wasn’t going to be as great as what they remembered.

— Hmm, said Wendy again. So I guess they didn’t.

— Exactly.

— Meaning that they did love it? Sort of?

— Meaning that they weren’t exactly paying attention to anything else. Like to the town and the trailer park and everything.

— You mean, they were in their own little world?

WENDY / 
Lizzy looks surprised.

— Exactly, she says.

— That’s like me, I say. That’s how I know, because it’s like me sometimes. Which is okay, that’s what Mary Kay says.

Lizzy looks at me as if looking at me is finally as interesting as looking out the window.

— You’re not as bad as you used to be, she says.

Lizzy is sounding more like her old self these days, maybe because of Derek but maybe not.

— A boyfriend is just a boyfriend, she says. They can make you miserable, but they don’t turn you into a completely different person. You are who you are, you just talk about different stuff. And that makes you different in a way, but not completely different.

— Hmm, I say.

That same day Lanlan suddenly starts this program to think calm and happy thoughts. Because she thinks a calm and happy mother will make a calm and happy baby, she says, it’s very important. Also she looks at a picture of Sean Connery every day, so that her child will be handsome.

LIZZY / 
We were, like, seriously? But she believed it was going to work. She really did.

— And what if it’s a girl? I said.

But she said she knew it was a boy, because her tummy was pointy.

— What tummy, I said. You can barely see your tummy.

Also she craved sour foods, not spicy, she said, and could we tell she was pregnant from the back?

— No, we said.

— You see, she said. It’s a boy.

WENDY / 
— This is a great country, your kid is going to have so much opportunity, I tell her one day.

— Opportunity for what? says Lanlan.

But another day I find her sitting in a little patch of sun, like a cat.

— Who knows, maybe my baby will grow up and be a millionaire, she says. You know, some of my classmates from school have got some really good jobs already. So who knows what will happen, as long as Uncle Su doesn’t whisper in the baby’s ear. Tell him go back to China, help China become strong again. Tell him go back help China stand up to the U.S.

— Do you think he really might do that? I say.

— Yes, she says. Of course, either way, I would be very proud.

Lizzy says Lanlan is in love with Dad, maybe she wouldn’t mind becoming our real mother.

— Except that she’s not our real mother, I say. Mom’s our real mother.

— Obviously, says Lizzy.

CARNEGIE / 
One day I came in to find Lan in the kitchen, making eggs with soy sauce for breakfast. This was something we did all love but probably would not have picked; probably, given the heat, we’d have picked ice cream. Full fat, we were eating these days—half hoping, I suppose, that Blondie would discover this and move back expressly to stop us. Still, there, this morning, stood Lan, wet-haired, in shorts and a T-shirt, cooking. Her belly was swelling, of course, yet I could not help but notice that the greatest growth had taken place in her breasts. From over her shoulder, I expressed hearty enthusiasm for her eggs; and then finally, against my better judgment, kissed her. For how natural it did seem, there in the soft summer sun, to part her cool hair and lightly touch my lips to a triangle of her wet neck.