The Wangs vs. the World (48 page)

“Honestly, Saina, I don’t get it either. It’s all I’ve been thinking about and I don’t have any answers yet. Fear, probably. I didn’t want to lose either of you. I still don’t.”

“I didn’t realize that I came across as some horrible person who would refuse to date a man with a child.”

“Not everyone wants to be a stepmother. But, listen, it wasn’t just that. Okay, this . . . god, I’m embarrassed to even say this.”

“What?”

“I think part of me didn’t want to come across as that guy, you know?”

“What guy?”

“Saina.”

“What?”

“You know, that guy. The black guy who’s a deadbeat dad. With a baby mama in every town.”

“Are you serious? Why would I even think that? You’re an organic farmer!”

“Okay, that’s not the only thing. I think I was also afraid, and to be honest, I still am, afraid—”

“Of what?”

“That you’ll convince me to sue for visitation or something and I’ll lose her forever. Leah’s family is in Quebec. If I piss her off, she could take Kaya up there and hide out from me.”

“You could have explained that to me!”

“I know.”

“Leo, you are so good, and so generous, and so caring, but I think that sometimes you don’t want to let anyone else be those things.” She waited. She listened to him breath and think. She willed herself not to speak in the long silence that followed, but in the end, she broke down. “Hey, so is your daughter the reason why you shut down when we were in the car before the Bard graduation thing?”

“You noticed that? Of course you did. Yeah. It didn’t seem like the best time to bring it up.”

“But you wanted to.”

“I did.”

“I thought you were just freaked-out that I talked about babies.”

“Oh no, no. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even thinking about that.”

“Do you know what I was thinking about?”

“Hmm?”

“How you lost your birth mom’s picture. How you didn’t know what your family looked like. And that if you had a baby, maybe you would.”

“Oh, Saina. Come home, will you?”

“Is Helios home?”

“No, but I am.”

“Leo.”

“I am. And you are.”

She was quiet until it felt like she’d been quiet for too long, and then, “Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

After Saina hung up the phone, she stood in the hallway for a moment with her eyes closed. It was comforting being in the midst of such a din, becoming invisible in a way she realized she never had in America.

Had she just un-broken-up with Leo? She had. She had. It meant that she would meet Kaya and accept that someone else had already done the good work of anchoring him in the world.
Was that okay?
It would have to be, at least for now.

Without even realizing it, Saina was smiling to herself. If she walked back into the banquet room now, Andrew and Grace would definitely know that something had happened. Stalling, she scanned her emails. There was a new message from Xio, the curator who had written to her months before, asking her to propose a project for the new Beijing Biennial.

Dear,Saina,

How are you?I know we already try,to inquire if you are interested?Although I do not hear you back,now I try for second time,because,we have a confirmed artist from Israel who have many visa problems,so he cannot participate any more.Perhaps I askasecond time and have a better reply?I hope so!We think this is a verygood opportunity.This is not nonsense just to promote friendship,to give opportunity for banquet.It isofficial Biennial.We work with top museum in many country: Dubai,Russia,Portugal,Uruguay,and more.

Addendum:Please excuse my poor English!My assistant is not here today so I write for myself!

Hope stabbed at her. She hit reply and wrote:

Xio—

So lovely to hear from you again, and big apologies for not getting back to you much sooner! Believe it or not, I am actually in China right now, not far from Beijing, and would love to set up a time to meet and discuss possibilities! Are you free this week?

Send.

And then, without letting herself think about it, she pulled up Grayson’s email and hit reply. Typing quickly, she wrote:

I can’t love you anymore.

Send.

Saina was still standing in the hallway, knowing that she had stayed away long enough to be noticed, when Bing Bing grabbed her hand.

“It. Is. Time to. Go. The hos. Pital. Call. They. Say to. Come. Now.”

四十九

THEY WERE running blind through the long hospital corridors, past the ward of wounded, past the newborn babes, Bing Bing bringing up the rear carrying, of all things, a thermos printed with an image of Barney the dinosaur. It was nighttime again. In each of their three hearts was pure panic. Pulses stampeding, they approached the door to their father’s room just as a doctor was walking out. He looked up at them, weary.

“You’re Mr. Wang’s children?” he asked, in Mandarin.

They nodded. “What’s happening?” asked Saina.

“He had another small stroke. We’ve stabilized him and we’re monitoring his vitals. We’ve given him some medication so he may be—”

Grace cut in. “But what does that mean?”

Andrew looked through the window into his father’s room. His stepmother had arrived. She was lying on top of the covers, her body folded around his father’s, their hands entwined, the tips of her stockinged feet touching his, a pair of dumplings wound in hospital sheets. They looked beautiful like that, his shrinking parents, lying nose to nose. A sudden fear raced through him, and he pulled Grace by the arm. “Let’s talk to the doctor later, come on,” he urged.

Their father and Barbra both looked up. “Ah, Andrew will know. Who is the Viking?”

“Dad, what are you talking about?”

“He is very confused,” said Barbra, clutching his hand tighter, her eyes not leaving his face. “He was okay, but now he keeps asking about the Viking.”

Andrew knelt by the side of the bed. “Dad, do you mean Leif Eriksson?”

Charles beamed. “Yes! Very smart boy. Always very smart, very good. But everybody wrong, they are not the ones who discover America. Not Vikings. Not Christopher Columbus. He discover nothing!”

“Okay, Dad.” What was happening? It was like his father was drunk.

“Je chuang je me ne me chou? Shei gei wo mai yi ge chou de chwang?”

“Hou le la,”
soothed Barbra.

“Dad. Baba.” Grace crouched uncertainly at the foot of the bed. She wanted to crawl onto the mattress, but there wasn’t any more room.

“Grace, Meimei.” Charles looked at his daughter. “You are very smart, too. You know that love too much is okay. That is the best thing in life. Love too much.” Charles looked up as Saina came into the room. “Jiejie!” There was something he had to tell her; there were things he had to make sure all of his children knew. “Sai-
na.
My beauty. Oh yes.”
No. That wasn’t it.
The words weren’t traveling correctly between his heart and his head.

“I should get the doctor back,” said Saina. The five of them fit into such a small space. She squeezed in closer. “Should I?”

No one answered.

“Dad, you’re acting kind of weird. Is it the medication? Do you feel okay?” asked Andrew.

There it was
. It wasn’t advice; it was gratitude. “Thank you for giving me a good life,” said Charles, to his children, to his wife whom he had known since she was almost a child. “A beautiful life.” It was becoming harder to focus, and even as his body lay calmly on the bed, his mind skipped frantically above, trying to keep its grasp on the moment. He looked at them, each one of them, locking eyes, and felt a sudden panic. “Daddy doesn’t want to die. Life is too much fun! Always new thing in life!”

Barbra looked at him, tortured. Grace wailed and Andrew put his arms around them all, pleading with his father, “Don’t die. Don’t die. Just don’t! Don’t do it.” Saina got up and ran into the hallway, calling out for the doctor.

Something serious was happening. She was so scared, his daughter.

He had always wondered what would happen after death, and now he would find out. What if death was just a perpetual state of dying? A never-ending fall into a blank forever?

The children. Saina, Andrew, Grace. His wife. Barbra. Their lives unfurled in all directions, skipping out from his hospital bed like pebbles across a lake, all magic and light, bouncing from water to air and back again as he sank under the cold, cold surface. Cold in here. Too many blankets. He must say something to them. Why had they put him in such an ugly bed?

There were other things that he knew. The Indians were just a tribe of early Chinese people who took a long walk across the Bering Land Bridge and ended up in a New World. The true Americans were Chinese! It was too bad it had taken him so long to remember that.

Charles struggled to hold on to the receding world, to the knowledge that his loves, the four of them, were all around.

Love burned bright white in him.

A glow, aglow.

The world began to slip from his grasp.

Earthquakes. Floods. Infidelity. Betrayal. Failure. The fields burn and the next harvest is assured. The world destroys itself and we rebuild it. The destroying is as important as the rebuilding. There can be as much joy in the destruction as the rebirth.

Three. He had three children, blue, green, yellow, each one a pulsing thing.

A glow, aglow.

He had Barbra, another heart outside his own heart. Red.

A glow, aglow.

They still lived. They leaned in over him now and pressed their bodies against his, warm living things. They talked, but he couldn’t hear their words, couldn’t understand what there was to say even though he remembered, still, that words were important to alive people.

His heart was in his skull now. Somehow the hospital had switched the two organs, so that his brain pulsed in his chest and his heart beamed in his head, controlling everything, sending signals out to the rest of his earthbound self. All his life his heart had been trying to get up there, to take its true place at the top of his body, and now it was to have only the briefest of reigns.

The only logical solution was just to do everything while you were alive. He had done so much. Yes! He had discovered an entire land. Yes! America was his. Yes! The whole green land! Yes! China had always been his, and now he had America, too!

The heart thought and the head beat.
Boom, boom!
Yes, yes!

Charles Wang feels something brush against his face.

Something hard and bright.

The same brightness that started in his heart and traveled down to his brain. He’s about to let it overtake him when he thinks the best thought again: He has discovered an entire land! He can knock down the world and discover it anew!

Charles’s eyes fly open and he sees his children and his love, the entire spectrum of light, arrayed in front of him. They peer down at him and he sees nothing but love love love in their eyes, love that pings out to the heart in his head. Their eyes widen and all his infinite selves are contained within those glistening dark globes.

A doctor in a white coat appears now behind them.

Now, he has to speak now, before there are machines and medicines that put everything back in its place. He has to rebuild himself before the doctor does it for him.

His thoughts are lucid, but it is a struggle to form the words and force them out. They push against each other, each word a fat and slippery thing, until only the important ones remain. And then, finally, the three words he most wants to say wriggle their way through the net and land at the feet of his waiting family.

As Grace and Barbra weep and Andrew clutches his hand and Saina gestures at the doctor to hurry, he smiles at them and watches their faces bloom with relief. He smiles again and pings back their love as hard as he can while also focusing on speaking the truth that he has known for so long, the truth that will make the whole world theirs.

“Daddy discovered America!”

He leans back, triumphant, exhausted. Later, they will learn how to rule the New World but for now, this is enough. This is everything.

Acknowledgments

THANK YOU . . .

To Marc Gerald, for seeing the future from the very first page.

To Sasha Raskin for sending the Wangs abroad with such aplomb; Kim Koba and Jaime Chu for keeping them brilliantly on track; and Juliet Mushens for saying the words that won me over.

To Helen Atsma, for being such a perfect combination of wise, insightful, funny, understanding, and very, very cool and for making this a much better book. And also to Taryn Roeder, Liz Anderson, and Lori Glazer for your PR and marketing genius; David Hough, for your kind attention; Larry Cooper, for taking this to the finish line; and Naomi Gibbs for all your help along the way. But, really, to everyone at HMH—especially Lauren Wein and Bruce Nichols—for your love of the Wangs.

To Jennifer Lambert and Juliet Annan, for your early enthusiasm, your editing expertise, and for bringing the Wangs to Canada and the UK.

To my first, best readers: Krystal Chang, Keshni Kashyap, Bill Langworthy, Lauren Rubin, Lauren Strasnick, and Margaret Wappler for pointing out my crucial mistakes in the most helpful of ways. I never would have found my way home without the six of you. And also to Akira Bryson, Christy Nichols, Steph Cha, Eric Lin, Charles Yu, and Amanda Yates Garcia for reading later versions and answering my many questions. I am really lucky to be surrounded by so many fellow writers and artists, who do such good and true work.

To my many friends who always believed—with little proof or evidence—that I was working on something worthwhile, for your buoying presence.

To Dave Makharadze for helping me figure out how to bankrupt the Wangs; to my workshop at Squaw Valley in 2010—especially stalwart leader Geoff Shandler—for being the first to get behind Charles Wang; to the fine people of Writ Large Press for ninety days of insanity and, along with Binders, giving these pages their first stage; to Elizabeth Chandler, for giving me a place to land; and to Jack Erdie for the spark.