The Love Wife (44 page)

BLONDIE / 
Perhaps it was selfish. I asked myself, sometimes, if my actions were selfish.

But then I would see Lan, or hear Lan. I would see her set a dish in front of Carnegie in so familiar a way I could cry. The girls said she knew all his favorite dishes now, that she made him something special every night, and just the way he liked it. I myself witnessed, one evening, how she stood at his elbow, her little belly bulging forward—waiting to see whether he liked some new fish.

Of course he loved it.

— You see, I know your taste now, she said, with that crooked smile of hers. — I can do everything the way you like. I know your taste.

LAN / 
In one way, yes. I knew his taste, yes. In one way, I could do everything he liked.

But in another way,
zhi ren zhi du bu zhi xin
—you can know a person, and know his stomach, but not know his heart.

I felt that.

CARNEGIE / 
So there we were: split, on most days, into two natural-looking households, but feeling distinctly halved. Missing quite keenly our true motley splendor.

My wife informed me I was not to call her Blondie anymore. From here on out, she said, she was Janie.

— You like me to say Janie, I say Janie, I said at first.

But then I said: — Blondie! Blondie, you are Blondie, dammit!

WENDY / 
It comes on a Friday afternoon right after school starts, a mailman brings it to the door himself. Or not a mailman exactly, this is a man with very short hair and what looks like a fish shaved into the back of his head. When I was younger, I probably would’ve asked him if it really was a fish, but now I know that even though people have things like that on their heads, you’re supposed to act like you don’t notice. In fact Lizzy would say that’s exactly why they have it, because they like making you uncomfortable, and I know she should know in a way. But still I think maybe he just likes fish. Because how do we really know? Lizzy would say she knows because she’s older, she just has that confidence. She says she knows all kinds of things now, pretty soon nothing will surprise her and then she’ll be an adult.

Says Dad when I tell him that: — I myself still hope to be surprised every once in a while, if only to keep me alive.

He is signing the fish man’s special electronic pad while he talks, he is saying,
if only to keep me alive.
Will I have to be kept alive one day? I am trying to figure out what that means when Dad says, Hong Kong!

That’s because the package was sent FedEx from Hong Kong. In the beginning Dad doesn’t know what it is, but then he finds it positively funny, he says, that this relative of Mama Wong’s who has held on to this thing for years suddenly had to send it rush.

— A piece of work, that one, he says. No doubt some deathbed request got him in gear.

He unwraps the book, which inside all the bubble wrap turns out to be three books, actually, with soft covers, all navy blue. They’re bound in thread along the side, and have these tall skinny labels stuck on what we would think of as the back, except that it’s the front, with these black Chinese characters going from top to bottom. Dad flips through the books looking at all the Chinese—there’s like no English anywhere. He looks at the way the pages work, it’s like each page is actually a sheet of paper twice as big, folded in half, so that the edge of each page is not an edge at all, but a fold.

And inside one book there’s a note sure enough, that says this guy the Hong Kong relative just finished promising some dying friend not to get caught with like debts or something.

CARNEGIE / 
‘With debts unpaid and promises unkept.’ The note went on:

And so here is your family book. It is the story of your mother’s family, going back 17 generations in Sichuan. Of course, she is the first generation where we write down the girls, lucky she is in it. Unfortunately, you are not in it, because you were adopted in the United States. Anyway you were not born yet when the book was updated. However your older sister will be happy to see her name, the only child in her whole generation.

WENDY / 
Dad puts that letter down and turns pale and sort of sweaty. Of course it is kind of hot out for September, we’re all hot, but he has little beads of water on him, as if he’s a car window and it is drizzling out.

LAN / 
Was something the matter? I came in to see.

WENDY / 
He hands her the letter, which she reads over and over, her whole forehead is like a lake full of frowns.

— Did you know? he asks her.

— My father said my mother ran away and then died, she says in this low voice, sort of between regular and a whisper. — Of, how do you say. Brain tumor. Long long time ago.

She’s pretty pale too, they’re like a perfect match.

— She swam to Hong Kong, says Dad. With a basketball under each arm. And from there this relative helped her. The same one who sent this book.

— Basketball?

— Two, says Dad. Two basketballs. One under each arm.

Nobody says anything for a while, and so I say: — Wow.

— And so what happened to the number-two husband? says Lanlan. Did she leave him too?

You can hear everything in the house that hums then. Like the fridge, and the radiators, and the timer that turns the living room light on.

— No, he died in an accident, says Dad. I always just assumed he was my father.

He cracks his knuckles.

— Adopted! he says.

— Who’s adopted? I say.

— Me, he says. How do you like them apples.

He looks strange, like one corner of his face got caught on a fish hook.

— How lucky! I say.

The sweat beads are getting bigger.

— Second choice doesn’t mean second-best, I say. It’s just how things happened.

— A joke, he says. Haha. A joke. Why didn’t my mother tell me? How could she not have told me?

LAN / 
He kept saying that. But doesn’t everyone have things they want to forget? It’s only natural.

WENDY / 
— And why did your father never tell you? he asks Lanlan. — Why did he tell you she was dead?

— Maybe he did not want to talk about such unhappy things, says Lanlan. We had so much unhappiness already. Maybe he thought I was not strong enough to know. And anyway, what use was it?

LAN / 
I said that because my family was from Suzhou, we were still
Suzhouren
. Even if my mother was from Sichuan, we were still from Suzhou. A very nice place.

We looked for my name at the end of the book, just to see it. And sure enough, there it was.
Lin Lan.

Then I began to feel strange too.

WENDY / 
Lizzy comes in so we have to explain the whole thing all over again, it’s like we have to convince her, she just can’t believe it. Meanwhile Lanlan stares and stares at the book like she sort of gets the characters but not what they mean exactly.

LIZZY / 
Dad was like the opposite. Shocked, but then inspecting the book. Asking for translation. Pointing things out.

— Is that where my name would be? he asked Lanlan. Right next to yours?

— Of course, we do not even know that everything in the book is true, said Lanlan.

— You are in denial, I said.

— Denial? she said. What means ‘denial’?

She put her hand on her potbelly. Her nails shone.

LAN / 
— Younger brother,
I said. Then I said it in Chinese.
Di di.

He put his head in his hands.

— At least you are not my real brother,
I said.
At least we are not like brother and sister, grew up together. It is just our names put together in the book.

CARNEGIE / 
And yet how much more natural, in the end, to be married to Blondie.

A joke!

WENDY / 
— I think it’s great you were adopted, I say again.

But no one says anything back, Lizzy is looking at the two of them and thinking who knows what.

— Don’t think anything, Lanlan says to Lizzy. Nothing to think about.

And she starts flipping through the book, reading all the characters like it’s the easiest thing now.

— Look how many sons were give away to other families to carry on their line, she says. Look! In this generation, only one family had sons, all the rest had to adopt a son from somewhere else. Maybe your mother didn’t tell you because so many families are adopt sons all the time. Who is going to carry on the family name if she does not adopt you, right? Really, she has no choice. Nothing to discuss.

— Maybe your mother didn’t tell you because she thought it would make you feel bad, I say.

LAN / 
— Chinese people try not to make people feel bad,
I said.
We try to talk about something nice.

CARNEGIE / 
— That was Mama Wong all right. Never one to say something that might make someone feel bad, I said.

WENDY / 
The sweat beads are like running down in little streams now. He’s this weird color I’ve never seen him turn before, and his face has that hooked look again and he sounds like he can’t talk.

LAN / 
My mother! I asked if I could see a picture of her, but no one answered, that’s how strange
Carnegie
looked. That’s how pale.

LIZZY / 
— Are you okay, Dad? I asked. Dad! Are you okay?

WENDY / 
Mom used to say that once when I was little I sat on the stairs with her and asked if she would die, and when she said that she would, I cried and cried and said I didn’t like dying and that if she died I would come and shake her and make her wake up. And when she said that might not work, but that there might be a heaven, she wasn’t sure, some people thought so, I said I would go and find her there, but how could I find her? And she said it would be easy because she would stand in the very most obvious place, all I had to do was think what the most obvious place would be. And I said, in the garden, and she said okay, it was a deal, she would meet me in the garden.

But now I look at Dad and think where am I going to meet him? We never said where we were going to meet, and so I shake him and shake him and say, Dad! You have to wake up! You have to wake up! You have to wake up! Dad! Dad! And his eyes do open but they look so weird especially compared to his eyebrows which look the same. And when he says, My medicine, it’s as if he is making his voice funny for fun, except that he’s not joking when he says, Call 911. Although he does also tell us to tell the ambulance not to stop at Dunkin’ Donuts.

— Tell them this time of day there are no more Munchkins anyway, he says.

And: — Don’t shake me please, can’t you see I’m already shaken?

And: — You’ll always be my peanut. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.

CARNEGIE / 
They say you can’t remember open-heart surgery, how could I possibly remember a thing? Maybe the ambulance ride, so much bumpier than you’d expect, and everything rattles, and it’s amazing how slow cars are to get out of the way, apparently, because what you feel is not how fast the ambulance is going but how often the driver hits the brakes, again and again and again, thank god the EMT is there to protect you, where did they get this driver? And how many unconscious patients must be jolted back awake by the noise of the siren! You know you’re still alive because it’s giving you a headache, and besides, you feel the urge to drive yourself. At least tell them the best way to go.
This time of day I wouldn’t take Route 2,
I say. Everything happening so fast and so slow, the snapshots already out of order: the face of the EMT, so much more interested than you’d expect, given how many emergencies he saw a day, I’d guess four or five, or was that wildly off? And Lizzy’s round face when they slid me like a pizza into a pizza oven. Lan’s thinner face and great posture. And Wendy’s face, the thinnest, how hard it was to believe she had been such a fat baby. How teeny she seemed, disappearing behind my huge feet, my enormous feet, teenier even than Bailey would’ve seemed, if Bailey were there, because Bailey would’ve been held up by someone, whereas there was Wendy on her own feet. Teeny. Though that wasn’t why soccer wasn’t her sport, it just wasn’t. Where was Blondie? I thought. Blondie. Bailey. All I could hear was Wendy’s child-sized voice, dwarfed by my sheet-draped feet. Asking, Should I tell Mom?

— Tell Mom, yes! I shout, as best I can with the oxygen mask already over my mouth. The rubble of an earthquake mounded on my chest. — Tell Mom to take care of you! I try to tell the EMT, in case she can’t hear me. — Tell her to tell her mom. Take care of her. Tell her.

— Relax, he says. Relax. Is this your first heart attack? Don’t try to talk. Just nod or shake your head.

I nod.

— Good, he says.

— I want to go back, I tell him. My son. I need to call my wife.

But he just says: — Try to enjoy the ride; I’m giving you a little something.

Maybe I really did remember all that, but could I have remembered the emergency room, people pounding on my chest and yelling yelling and more people running in and yes the decision yes to open my chest and yes massage my heart yes? Of course I was under, and yet I have an impression of it all the same, no doubt from movies and
M*A*S*H:
the klieg lights, the veins found, the sensors stuck on, and not to forget the dozens of extras, all crowding around, squeezing your hand, delivering their big line.
Okay, we’re moving you onto the table now. Just a pinch. This will be cold. You’re going to be okay. How’s the weather out there? You got to love the new tunnel.
A warm blanket; the cold cold O.R. The lights, the radio, the surgeon’s eyes behind his glasses, and everyone splattered by the end like a butcher.

Of course I didn’t see it, and yet I knew it later, vividly, the surprise was what my body knew—things it had never known before, my bruised and broken body, my pried-apart limbs; how punctured and be-tubed. Fluids in, fluids out, intake, outtake, meds and nurses, meds and doctors, visitors and dreams, all I could think was, I suppose I really am no longer young, to which Mama Wong said, Young! Of course not young, how could you be young! But you never grow up either! That’s how I know I brought you up Chinese and still you grow up American.