The Third Son (36 page)

But Yoshiko could not drive, so during the week, while I taught, my father stayed at the little house in Rapid City with Yoshiko and Kai-ming.

“All he does is watch TV,” Yoshiko whispered to me at night. “He can’t even understand what they’re saying. Doesn’t he have anything better to do? I’m working like a dog to take care of him and he just sits there like a king. I can’t stand on my feet all day when I’m pregnant.”

“We’ll go out to dinner. We owe him,” I said. “He helped both of us get over here.”

When summer came, we rented out our house in Rapid City and moved to a Northwood duplex on the University of Michigan campus. It was time to take the gamble of my life, to give up my professorship for a year in the hopes that at the end of the summer I might pass Michigan’s fabled qualifying exam and then use the year to write my thesis.

I needed to study even more. Hunching over my books in the library with the other Taiwanese was, however, out of the question. Since my little dinner with Wei-ta, they had stopped being friendly to me, and it seemed unlikely that studying the way they did would be effective in any case. Beck’s method of questioning had been the key to my quick mastery of the material in South Dakota. To replace him, I joined a study group of American students who took turns fielding questions. I still needed to work in Gleason’s lab, and I often returned home very late.

We invited Wen-chong over for dinner to meet my father. “Professor Hong is safe!” he said excitedly as I welcomed him into the house. “And his wife has been cleared to come to the US! I am so grateful to your father!”

“Ah!”

Wen-chong was in a good mood, and he conversed easily with my father, who was clearly impressed with Wen-chong’s tidy appearance and sophisticated Chinese.

Wen-chong sucked delicately on spare ribs in black bean sauce, wiped his mouth elegantly with his paper napkin, and told my father about our first trip to Fort Churchill. “Your son is a bold young man and quite an excellent engineer. It is so wonderful that you could help with his family’s immigration, and of course I so much appreciate your part in clearing Professor Hong’s name in San Francisco—”

“Who? What? Professor who?” My father chewed and waved his hand, wrinkling his forehead in annoyance. He swallowed a mouthful of lotus blossom tea. “I didn’t do anything. No one listens to me anymore. It was that American senator who called the Taiwanese embassy. Scared the daylights out of the Nationalists. That pig-faced friend of Kazuo’s got into big trouble with the party. Making up accusations, wasting people’s time and resources. Because of Kazuo! Kazuo should have been the one in trouble, but he’s so sly he managed to get himself out of it.

“As for Saburo,” he added irritably, “I don’t know why he has to take this PhD thing so seriously.”

That night in our bedroom, Yoshiko sat fuming as my father’s footsteps lumbered overhead on the second floor of our duplex. She panted a little; her belly protruded so much now that it brushed against the bureau as she leaned toward her mirror. She untied her scarf and threw it down on the bureau. “He takes every opportunity to shoot you down! And see, he didn’t help you or me or Professor Hong, after all! Senator Dickey did everything.”

I folded my tie and tucked it into a drawer. “He’s frustrated,” I said. “I’m too busy to take him around. It’s a long time to wait until after summer session.”

“Then he should hire a tour guide. You can’t just drop everything because he’s here!”

But sometimes I would stop studying early and go sit with my father in our little living room to keep him company. Time was passing, passing. Our study group’s meetings had accelerated in frequency from once a week to twice a week to daily. The qualifying exam was fast approaching. And then, come what may, there would be one month, and my father would be gone. The time to forge our connection was now. Perhaps that was why he was upset. He wanted to talk.

“Look at this!” He struck his brother’s airmail letter with the back of his hand. “What a democracy! They simply take the opposition leader and blackmail him. Thomas Liao’s sister-in-law is in prison and they’ve sentenced his nephew to death. It’s all because of the elections. They’re afraid Chiang’s son will look bad. What does it matter, when all the elections are fixed, anyway? It’s simply needless brutality.”

Was it still that way? “We don’t hear of those things here,” I said.

“Don’t be stupid. Chiang knows how to pander to the Americans and squeeze the Taiwanese at the same time. The Americans are so terrified of Communism they’ll see what they want to see and send Chiang all the money and guns he wants. For all they care, the Taiwanese people can go to hell.” He looked to the side, puffing his lips indignantly.

I changed the subject. “And how is Taikong?”

“Taikong!” He waved his hand dismissively. “Going to hell. Everything going to hell. Some kind of fishy business. What business is it of yours, anyway?”

Shocked and stung, I fell silent.

He drank his tea, the once-feared hands curled softly around the melamine cup. “Ah, Li-hsiang,” he called to the kitchen, “is this that oolong tea from Chicago?”

“Yes,” she answered. “It’s almost gone. We’ll need to buy more when we go this time.” She paused, then added pointedly: “If we can.”

My father ate a lot and contributed nothing. Yoshiko kept a weekly account of all our expenses, budgeting down to the nickel.

But this was my father. I couldn’t ask my own father to pay for his living expenses.

He took his tea to the couch and sat with a vinyl squeak, unfolding the
San Min Chen Bao
. I felt invisible in my own house, ever the errant child with my silly projects—the noisy toys, the radios, the PhD. When would I ever stop?

41

T
OM
R
EYNOLDS BURST OUT
of the Horace Rackham Amphitheatre, his face and neck flushed deep red.

I sprung up from my chair as the double doors closed behind him. I hadn’t seen him for weeks; he’d holed up in the library by himself, rereading one textbook after another.

“What happened?” I said. My voice caught. I had thought I was feeling calm.

He put his hand out vaguely, then rubbed his forehead. “Goddamn! I didn’t even know what they were asking me! Goddamn! I needed this degree. How am I going to repay all those loans?”

I watched him, horrified, speechless, my pulse quickening.

The doors opened again. “Chia-lin.”

Tom looked down, still rubbing his forehead, and shook his head. “Good luck.”

I stepped through the door. My heart was pounding, and as I turned down the aisle to the stage, I stumbled. It took me a moment to recover my gait.

I stepped up onto the stage. In the bright lights I floated, blind. My recent study sessions came together in a jumble of frantic thoughts, and the only thing that rose up clearly was that I could never face Yoshiko or my father if I failed. It was not only that we had already signed a year’s lease on the apartment and that the School of Mines had already hired someone to replace me for the year. Yoshiko would finally realize that she had misplaced her faith in me, and my father would be proved right. That I had wasted my time. That I should not have bothered.

I walked to the chalkboard slowly, as though I were on the deck of a rolling boat. I picked up a piece of chalk, and it slipped in the moistness of my fingertips, like the pencil slipping in my fingers the day of my entrance exam for Chien Kuo. My mother had sewn me my very first new pair of shorts when I passed. What would she do if I passed this?

“Mr. Tong. First question: How does a fuel cell work?”

My heart lurched against the front wall of my chest. In the three years of Beck’s grilling, in all the sessions with my study group explicating the most sophisticated theories in the electrical engineering world, fuel cells had never come up. I hadn’t thought about them since junior college.

I cleared my throat. I looked into the bright lights of the amphitheatre, seeing in the front row the five members of the jury, none of whom I knew. This was intentional, to avoid bias. Gleason’s imposing figure and Ni Wen-chong’s slight one entered through the rear exit and settled quickly into seats near the back, but they were here merely to watch and had no input into the jury’s decision.

“Fuel cell,” I said. And as the words left my tongue, I was twenty again, rattling around in a cattle car with my classmates, following Yi-yang as he walked his motorcycle down the sidewalk on Chungcheng Road, catching glimpses through a window of a girl I had met in an air raid.

“Fuel cell.” My voice quavered. All had been lost. I would be an electrician for my family’s company. I was a failure, rooted to the ground, to the practical world, my ear burning against the cool floorboards of my parents’ house.

Gleason shifted silently in his chair.

“Mr. Tong? Shall we proceed to the next question?”

“No.” I shook my head and turned to the chalkboard. “In a fuel cell, you have hydrogen, and you have oxygen, in separate compartments.” I drew an actuator. I was a child, drawing my fingertip through the wet concrete on February 28. I would be expelled.

But as I continued my diagram, my memories shrank back like shadows at dawn, leaving only the clear lines of white chalk against black as my hand moved across the board. The floor solidified under my feet, and my breathing loosened.

“Why so complicated? Could you put them in the same compartment?”

“No.” I paused. My confidence suddenly welled up into an impishness I had suppressed since middle school. “Well, you could,” I said, “but then something may happen.” I indicated an explosion with my arms.

The little audience laughed and I saw Gleason and Wen-chong whisper to each other. Gleason nodded.

I smiled. This was America.

W
E CELEBRATED AT
the Candlelight Restaurant on Route 14. Yoshiko and I had mountain trout, while my father ordered the most expensive item on the menu—New York steak, at $3.25.

“Hm.” He popped a piece of meat into his mouth. “We’ll see if it is the same in New York.”

Yoshiko glanced at me.

Kai-ming looked up from his malted milk. “When are we going?”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “In the afternoon.”

“Why in the afternoon?” my father said through his steak. “You should always start a trip in the early morning. We should leave as soon as possible.”

“I have some things to take care of,” I said.

My father stopped chewing and looked up at me.

There had been an edge to my voice. I knew the main reason he was happy I’d passed the qualifying exam: He was sick of being at home. He wanted to go on tour.

“F
OUR WEEKS’ VACATION?”
Gleason sat behind his desk, Wen-chong in the other chair, legs neatly crossed. Between them, on the desk, was a large stack of ionosonde data held together with a rubber band. Gleason frowned, rolling the rubber band off the stack. “It’ll be a stretch if you want your model used on the next launch, Saburo.”

Wen-chong looked sharply at me. “You could have told me earlier.”

“I have promised my father,” I said.

Gleason’s eyebrows wrinkled together. “Didn’t you say you could only afford a year at Michigan? Why would your own father want to jeopardize your PhD?”

I was silent. Wen-chong looked at the floor uncomfortably.

I don’t know why he has to take this PhD thing so seriously.

“Anyway,” said Gleason, waving his hand, “it probably won’t make any difference at the end of the year. No one has ever done their thesis here in a year. Even Linus Pauling spent three years on his at Caltech.”

W
E BARRELED
450 miles east to Manhattan, where we took a ferry to the Statue of Liberty, shopped at Macy’s, and ate sukiyaki. We drove five hours to Buffalo to float in the mist of Niagara Falls, and then to Chicago to eat Cantonese, Japanese, and Szechuan food. Then, Chevy trunk stuffed with dried mushrooms, pickled cucumber, preserved tofu, two gallons of Kikkoman soy sauce, and fifty pounds of Japanese rice from the Chicago Chinatown, we crossed 750 miles back over the Great Plains, taking in enough dairy cows to satisfy fifty Taiwanese politicians, so that my father could enjoy Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons.

My father stood, gazing anxiously at Old Faithful’s vent, camera poised. I watched him, reminded somehow of how we watched launches at Fort Churchill. I needed to get my new telemetry unit on that rocket in December. I’d been thinking it over while I drove, while I lay in bed at night. I would have to hit the ground at a sprint when we returned.

Yoshiko was sitting on a bench with Kai-ming a few yards behind me, and I went to join her, my back on fire with pain from the many hours sitting in the car.

“My doctor said I should take it easy,” Yoshiko said. Kai-ming lay curled up on the bench with his head on Yoshiko’s knee—the only part of her lap not occupied by her pregnant belly. He wore a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, and she took it off his head to fan him with it. “This is not easy. And the smell . . .” She shook open a lace-edged handkerchief with one hand and held it over her nose.