The Wangs vs. the World (7 page)

“Oh, you know. How is Dad always?”

“He almost cried when I talked to him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cried. Like actual sadness tears.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing! I couldn’t. I felt weird even hearing it.” They were quiet for a minute. Andrew picked up Emma’s heel and tapped it lightly on the wall. How could girls walk in those things?

“Andrew.”

“Huh?”

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“I guess it just doesn’t feel real. Out of nowhere Dad just tells us that everything’s gone and he wants to go back to China to reclaim our ancestral lands or some bullshit? That he doesn’t have enough money left for ASU tuition? How does any of that happen? I know we’re not billionaires, but he always said, you know—”

“‘Be happy that Daddy is rich man.’”

“Yep. So what the hell now?”

“Wait, he didn’t tell me that he wanted to go to China. That’s insane. He’s never even
been
to China,” said Saina, sounding surprised.

“Well, you know, he always said he wouldn’t go back until he could do it properly. But, yeah, it was on the message he left—I haven’t actually talked to him yet—”

“I have a whole conversation with him and he doesn’t tell me, but he leaves you his master plan on a voicemail?”

“Maybe he’s getting real Chinese in the face of adversity. I
am
the firstborn son.”

“But not the first
born.
”

“XY trumps XX.” Saina laughed and he felt that old relief. Before he could make another joke, something to keep her from sounding tense and worried, she spoke.

“Hey, Andrew, do you want me to pay your tuition? Look, I have my whole trust, everything that’s vested so far anyways, it’s not tied up with the bankruptcy as far as I know. And I still have money. I mean, you know, I made a good amount of money. So I could if you wanted.”

Stay at college. Let Saina deal with Dad. Pay her back when he could get at his money, if it still existed. It probably didn’t exist anymore. Whatever, pay Saina back when he earned some money. Make up with Emma. Do some more open mic nights. Decide to be in love with her. Maybe even try an open mic in L.A. some weekend. Fall in love with her. Write more material. Who knows, he could already be in love with her, and he wouldn’t know unless he stayed. And then
sex,
sex with Emma.

“Oh wait, here’s Grace calling again. She’s going to go crazy if we don’t talk to her already,” said Saina. “Hold on, let me merge calls.”

Andrew heard a beep and quickly shut down his Emma fantasy.

“Saina!” It was Grace, at her Gracie-est. “I’m
so
annoyed. Why haven’t you been picking up? Where have you been all day?”

Before Saina could respond, Andrew leapt in. “Did the king of the Watusis drive a car?”

“Andrew! How come you guys are talking to each other already? How long have you been on the phone without me?” demanded Grace.

“Barely at all,” said Saina. “Like, two minutes.”

“Well, why did you call each other first?”

“Gracie,” said Andrew. “Aren’t you going to answer?”

“No! I’m mad.”

“Then how do we know it’s you?” he teased.

“Fuck you, Andrew.” She really was mad. Grace always jumped to the angriest place without warning. She was capable of conjuring up a fury that felt like a living beast—a palpable, pulsating thing that crouched next to her—and the only way to stop it from appearing was to head it off with lightness.

“Language, language,” he said. “Now: Did the king of the Watusis drive a car?”

“No,” pouted Grace. “He was a savage. A noble savage.”

“
Bzzzt!
I’m sorry, that is not the correct answer. You may not enter.”

“Okay! Fine! Yes. He drives a specially built 1954 Pontiac.”

“Thank you very much, Bunny Watson.”

This was how he wanted them to remain, the careless, carefree brother and sisters that they had always been, that they had made themselves be. As long as they could do that, maybe nothing was different, maybe everything wasn’t ruined.

“Poor Gracie. Andrew, stop torturing her,” said Saina.

“This is brotherly love in action, yo. No torture.”

“Guys,” said Grace. “They’re on their way to pick me up. What should I do?”

“Stall!” said Andrew and Saina together, jaunty. It was their old routine, born of a hundred, a thousand, summer afternoons spent piled on the slipcovered couches in the media room, shivering in the air-conditioned house, hypnotized by the whirr of the film projector. That’s what L.A. kids do on sunny days: shut the doors, crank the air, pull the shades, dim the lights, and pop in the movies. For the three of them, it was a pile of old Katharine Hepburn movies in metal film canisters that Andrew found the year their mother died. All three of them could reenact the licorice gun scene in
Adam’s Rib,
knew every insult in
Woman of the Year,
and used the research questions in
Desk Set
as passwords. The films had been stacked in the dusty crawl space under the stairs and were marked
PROPERTY OF BREEZY MANOR
. Andrew pictured Breezy as a sexy sixties dollybird sort of lady until Saina told him that a manor was a house and that it was probably what the last owners had called their house.

“What is
wrong
with everybody? Saina! Andrew! Why aren’t you guys upset? Do you just totally not care about this? We’re. Poor. Now.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Andrew. “Saina’s still rich.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“She hasn’t had the Talk,” said Saina.

“Dudes, I’m sixteen. I know how babies are made.”

“Not that one, the money one,” said Andrew.

“Wait, did any of you actually get a birds-and-bees talk?” asked Saina.

“I think that’s what moms do,” said Grace. “Babs isn’t ever going to give us the Talk.”

“I don’t know, girls, maybe she’s just dying to be asked. Maybe all she’s ever wanted to do is explain the wonders of menstruation to you both.”

“Gross, Andrew. Stop,” said Grace. “Will you both just be adults for a minute? What talk? And what money? Saina, why do you have money? Do you mean, like, besides from your art and stuff?”

“It’s the seventeenth-birthday talk. Dad takes you to the Polo Lounge and tells you about your trust, and then you sign something that says you won’t get to touch it until you’re twenty-five,” said Saina.

“Actually, Dad took me to the Palm,” said Andrew. “You know, steaks. And he let me drink a martini.”

“If he’s going to wait, why not wait until we’re eighteen?” asked Grace.

“I guess he figured seventeen was old enough. You have to sign before you actually turn eigh—”

“Wait,” interrupted Grace. “How
much
money?”

Andrew waited for Saina to answer. She took a moment, and then said: “Two million at twenty-five. And then it was going to be another five million when we turned thirty-five.”

Suddenly, Andrew felt sick. Hearing Saina say the number out loud made it crunch in his head.

Seven. Million. Dollars
.

Holy fuck
.

Somehow, he had kept himself from thinking about that number. In the abstract, he’d actually found it a little embarrassing, to be due seven million dollars just for being the product of his father’s sperm. “I’ll earn my own way,” he might have said, knowing that the money would still be there and everyone would just think he was even cooler and more honorable for turning it down at first. But now, to lose seven million dollars without having done anything wrong—one day to have it and the next day not—it just wasn’t
fair.

He could have been rich. And so what if he hadn’t earned any of it? He was
going
to be rich. He
was
going to be rich. No more.

Grace wasn’t saying anything. Neither was Saina.

“Guys,” said Andrew. “We’ll be cool, yeah? Gracie?”

“That was a lot of money,” she said. “And I didn’t even know I had it.”

九
Helios, NY

“BABY, YOU OKAY OUT THERE?”

Oh. Right. Grayson
.

“Are you coming back to bed?”

She’d have to get him out before the family got there.

“Saina, baby—I’m cold here without you! Come in and get snuggly.”

Now. It would be easier if she did it now. They would feel the stink of him if she waited too long, and her siblings would look at her in that new way they had, like they couldn’t understand why her life had stopped being amazing but didn’t want her to know it. They hated Grayson now. Andrew—sweet, peacekeeping Andrew—had responded to Grayson’s betrayal by asking her: “Am I supposed to come to New York and beat him up now? Because I will if you want me to. I really will.” And Gracie had offered to bomb his Facebook fan page with mean comments, offered it so seriously, like a battle tactic, that Saina had laughed and incurred further Gracie wrath on Grayson’s behalf.

Would he go?
Saina was half afraid that he wouldn’t. Half hoped it, too. He’d shown up on her doorstep a week ago carrying a rucksack stuffed with rumpled T-shirts, offering up a fistful of wildflowers that he’d picked off her front lawn. Even before she heard the knock, Saina knew it was him. She’d felt it: a quickening, a shimmering, a pitched battle between her red and white blood cells and then
boom boom boom
—his closed-fisted pounding. Her wineglass squeaked against itself as she set it down, its molecules crowded tight, the liquid inside turning to blood, then vinegar, then back to an organic local blend. That glass had held together, but she’d fallen, fallen out of her carefully molded resistance and—hair down, bra off, legs splayed—into him.

It was over fast. Afterwards, Saina had half slumped against the leather chesterfield, looking up at the raftered ceiling, blinking as Grayson buried his face in her neck. “You still smell the same,” he’d said, lips against skin. She’d blinked again. The ceiling needed work, but it was hard to find someone willing to leave the beams undisturbed.

Grayson had let himself go slack against her, taking the weight off his own knees. His arms tightened around her shoulders and he’d fallen damply against her leg.

There was a place in sex that emotion didn’t quite reach. No matter how great the betrayal, how intense and inflamed the anger, how long the separation, there was a place that was just bodies fitting into each other—unquestioning, uncomplicated. Easy. It felt so easy to lie here, joint and groove. Maybe they should do this. Make a new life in the Catskills. It would be far enough from the people they’d messed up being. Grayson could share the little barn that was going to be her studio, or maybe he could have it and she’d take the attic, with all that good light.

Easy.

Easy?

Is that what Grayson thought?

Did he come here thinking that it would be this easy? His head felt greasy against her clean skin and his three-day beard pricked her neck. He hadn’t even bothered to clean himself up for her, probably came straight from Sabrina’s bed. What kind of beds do mattress heiresses sleep in? Saina had pictured Sabrina lying atop an impossibly high pile of satiny mattresses, her golden hair fanned out across a mound of pillows, Grayson leaping off the top and landing at Saina’s door. And he’d known that all he had to do was knock.

“Is this what you thought?” she’d asked, furious. “That you’d show up at my door and I’d just welcome you with open legs? Do you really think you’re that irresistible?”

He’d stared at her a minute before replying, “Saina, what the hell.” Just like that. Flat. No affect.

She pushed him off of her and then reached over to tug his jeans up. “Get dressed,” she said. “I don’t want to see you like this. God, you haven’t even
said
anything to me yet!”

And then Leo, her Leo, had walked in through the still-open door with another bunch of flowers—picked from his
own
front lawn—walked in, seen them, and turned right back around. Saina jumped up, thanking god that she was wearing a skirt and not a pair of pants that would probably be swamped around her ankles, and grabbed his arm before he could get through the doorway.

“Nothing happened,” she said.

“I think that is probably false.”

“It’s not just anybody, Leo. It’s Grayson.”

“That’s even worse. Underwear.”

“What?”

“You don’t have any underwear on.”

Saina felt nauseous. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I can see it on the ottoman thing.”

Defeat, lacy and pink. “Okay.”

Grayson broke in. “Saina, baby, who is this? You’re dating someone else already?”

She turned to him. “
Dating
someone else already? How long did you expect me to wait, Grayson? Until you guys had another baby? You got someone
pregnant
already, and you didn’t even wait until we’d broken up!”

Her former fiancé was already lounging on the rug, as comfortable as if he’d built the place himself, leaning back on one elbow, pants kicked aside, indigo eyes staring straight up at her, unfazed.

“I’m not going to be part of this,” said Leo. He opened his hand and dropped the flowers. Fragrant, obedient, they beheaded themselves on Saina’s salvaged-wood floors.

“That’s it?” said Saina, not sure if she was in despair or not. “That’s how you leave? No him or me, no fight, nothing?”

“You’re not wearing any underwear. How could this possibly turn out well?”

Saina swallowed the very slight urge to make a threesome joke and took a step towards Leo. Battered wool shirt, mended and torn work pants, old leather lace-up boots, faded leather belt with a worn brass buckle that could have brought in a few hundred at her friend Dahlia’s boutique on Ludlow, fingernails scrubbed scrupulously clean the way, she’d learned, that farmers’ always are.

And then she looked over at Grayson. Paint under his nails, always. Even if he hadn’t touched a canvas in weeks. Hair cut by a Lower East Side stylist who required a password to make an appointment (last she’d heard, it was “seventies bush”). Striped boxers from Paul Smith, which even she thought was a needless expense. Yes, Grayson was an asshole. But he’d left Sabrina on a stupid pile of mattresses in the city and come back for her, for Saina. He had.