“Mother, Father,” Nancy said, “this is Rob MacKenzie.”
Mrs. Chen’s face remained wooden as he shook her dry hand. Dr.
Chen’s clasp was bony and frail. “Mr. MacKenzie,” he said, in heavily accented
English, “I understand you are a friend of my daughter’s. What is it you wish
to speak to us about?”
He looked at Nancy. She bit her lip, then nodded. “Dr. Chen,
Mrs. Chen,” he said. “Nancy and I—” He paused, aware of the poorly hidden
hostility on their faces. “We were married yesterday.”
The starched politeness on their faces slowly turned to horrified
comprehension. Nancy’s mother began to babble hysterically in Chinese, her
voice rising and falling, the words incomprehensible to him but her meaning
painfully clear. “Use English, please, Mother,” Nancy said. “My husband does
not speak Chinese.”
“Why have you done this?” her mother shrieked. “Is this how an
obedient daughter pays back her parents?”
“You insisted that I marry Kim,” Nancy said. “You gave me no
choice.”
“And you would prefer this—” Mrs. Chen looked at Rob with venom
in her eyes. “—this
stranger
, to one of your own kind?”
“He is a man, I am a woman. Does that not make us the same kind?”
“What do you know about him?” her mother demanded.
“I know that he is a good man.” Nancy reached out a hand to Rob
and he squeezed it, hard. “I know that I love him.”
“Love!” her mother spat out. “Look at him! His clothes are cheap
and they fit poorly, his hair is too long, his shoes are worn out. You believe
he loves you? Fool! What he loves is your money!”
“Excuse me,” Rob said, “but I’d like to clear something up. I
don’t give a damn about your money, Mrs. Chen. I love your daughter. All
that matters to me is seeing her happy.”
“And you think she will be happy, living in poverty with you?”
He squared his jaw. “I know I’m probably a big disappointment as
a son-in-law,” he said, “but I’m hoping, for Nancy’s sake, that you’ll accept
her decision to marry me.”
“Nancy is a foolish child,” her mother said, “and I will never
accept you as my son-in-law.” She turned on Nancy. “Have you thought about
your children? They will be neither one race nor the other. Are you prepared
to deal with that? Are you prepared to deal with the way people will look at
you, walking down the street together?”
“Mother, we love each other. What is so wrong about that?”
“What is so wrong? You tell me. How will I explain this to Kim?
How will I explain to his parents that my daughter has chosen to marry a white
man instead of their son? You have disgraced your family.” She stood up
abruptly, so that she was at eye level with Nancy. In a voice as unrelentingly
rigid as her spine, she said, “I can no longer acknowledge you as my daughter.”
Nancy gasped, and her face lost all its color. “Mother!”
“Hey,” Rob said, “wait just a minute. Don’t you want to think
this over, before you do something you’ll regret?”
“There is nothing to think about. Please leave my home, Mr.
MacKenzie, and take your wife with you.”
Throughout the woman’s tirade, her husband had sat silent. “Dr.
Chen?” Rob said. “Are you telling me you’re going along with this craziness?”
All three of them turned to the doctor. “Father?” Nancy said.
Dr. Chen’s face had gone pale, and he looked as though he’d aged a
decade in the past ten minutes. “I have no choice,” he said, “but to agree
with my wife.”
The silence was overwhelming. “Fine,” Nancy said. “I’ll pack my
things.”
“No,” her mother said. “You will take nothing with you.”
“But my clothes. My books—”
“You have a husband now. Let him buy you new ones.”
Nancy stared at her mother in disbelief. And then she raised her
head. “Rob,” she said, “I believe we have been dismissed.”
As he stumbled behind her to the door, her mother’s voice followed
them. “Some day,” she shouted, “you will thank me!”
His homecoming marked the beginning of the greatest challenge
Danny Fiore had ever faced: winning back the woman he loved. Both of them
tottering on uncertain legs, they performed a guarded
pas de deux
,
circling each other like wary beasts as alternating shades of trust and
distrust shimmered in the air between them. While Casey remained cool and
apprehensive, Danny served his penance.
His was not the kind of gaffe that could be smoothed over with
flowers or candy. The hurt went too deep for such trivialities. For the first
time in his life, Danny set aside his ambitions and put his marriage ahead of
his career. He spent every spare moment with Casey, watching old movies,
playing Monopoly, going through family photo albums. He cooked and vacuumed,
carted clothes to the Laundromat, scrubbed the floors and the dishes and the
toilet. When she came home from the Montpelier with swollen feet, he massaged
them, brought her warm water to soak them in. He took her to the movies,
dancing at a succession of blues clubs, to several off-off-Broadway musicals.
They took long walks in Central Park, where they bought roasted chestnuts from
a sidewalk vendor and fed bread crumbs to the pigeons.
And they talked. About their marriage, about the baby they’d
lost, about the mutual feelings that had drawn them together in the first
place. She told him what it had been like to nurse her mother through terminal
cancer, and he told her what it had been like to see his mother walk out of his
life and never return. They opened up to each other with an unprecedented
intimacy, and gradually, like a broken limb, the pieces of their shattered
marriage began to knit back together.
They went home that year for Christmas, hitching a ride with an
acquaintance of Rob’s, a Columbia student who took them all the way to
Farmington. It had been three years since they’d last visited, and there were
changes, not all of them pleasant. There was an obvious coldness between
Colleen and Jesse, although both seemed to care deeply for their young son.
Casey’s father had aged considerably. The hair that had remained jet black
into his fifties was slowly turning a silvery gray. He had remarried in
October, to a family friend named Millie Trudeau, and Danny knew how difficult
it was for Casey to see another woman so comfortably ensconced in her mother’s
kitchen
.
He had been saving money for months, and his Christmas gift to
Casey was a small but tasteful diamond ring. He’d never given her an
engagement ring, just the gold wedding band, and it had been eating at him for
years. Casey understood the significance of the ring. Tears welled up in her
eyes, and that night, the last barrier between them crumbled.
His wife’s family had always done their best to make him feel like
he belonged, but the truth was that he was an outsider with no understanding of
these people or their way of life. The two days passed with agonizing
slowness, and he was immensely relieved when the visit ended. After Christmas
dinner, they caught a ride back to Boston with Travis, and spent Christmas
night in Southie, tucked snugly into one of Mary MacKenzie’s spare beds.
They returned home the next day to an ashen New York, groaning
under a heavy burden of snow and sand and slush. They’d only been gone for
four days, but already the cockroaches had mounted a territorial campaign, and
Freddy Wong had shut off the radiators, turning the water in the toilet bowl
into a solid chunk of ice. While Rob went downstairs to talk to Freddy, Danny
took Casey by the hand and led her to the bedroom, where they huddled together
beneath the covers and waited for the apartment to warm up to its normal
fifty-eight degrees.
“This isn’t fair to you,” he said, his breath hovering in the air
above his head. “You shouldn’t have to live like this.”
“I’m not complaining,” she said. Then amended it: “Well, not
much, anyway.”
“It’s a rotten life,” he said bitterly.
She brushed a strand of hair away from his face. “I knew what I
was up against when I married you.”
“I’m not sure I can do it any more.”
Her hand, still hovering in the vicinity of his face, froze.
“What?” she said. “What are you talking about?”
He threw aside the covers and got up out of the bed. Paced six
steps across the room and picked up the framed photo of her mother. He studied
it for a minute, then set it back down and turned to her. “All I’m doing,” he
said, “is beating my head against the wall. We’ve been here almost three
years, and I can’t get arrested. At what point do I face the fact that it
isn’t going to happen? At what point do I tuck my tail between my legs and go
home? Do you have any idea how tired I am of hearing, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll
call you.’?”
She sat up and wrapped the quilt around her. “I had no idea you
felt this way.”
He leaned against the dresser and folded his arms. “It’s been
coming on for a while.”
Still wrapped in the quilt, she slid off the bed and crossed the
room to him. She opened her arms and folded the quilt around both of them.
“Danny,” she said, “please listen to me. There is nobody out there who can do
what you do with a song. You have a God-given talent, and it would be a crime
for you to waste it.”
“And it’s less of a crime,” he said, “for me to put you through
this hell?”
“I’m a grown woman, Danny. I’m with you because this is where I
choose to be.”
“It’s not just you,” he said. “I’m tired. It wasn’t like this in
Boston.”
“Did you think it would be easy?”
“I guess I didn’t really believe it would be like this.”
“You have too much passion in you to settle,” she said. “You’d
end up regretting it. That’s not what you want. It’s not what I want for
you.”
He pulled her closer beneath the quilt. “This isn’t the response
I expected from you,” he admitted.
“How do you know success isn’t around the next corner? How would
you know you hadn’t quit a month too soon? Or a day? Or even an hour? You’d
spend the rest of your life wondering.”
“But what about the sacrifices?” he argued. “We’re living like
animals here.”
“Everybody has to pay their dues.”
“I’m tired of paying. And I’m tired of you paying.”
“Then take some time away from it. Allow yourself to do something
else for a while. But don’t give up. The time will come when somebody
recognizes your talent. Trust me.”
“Why is it that you keep on believing in me when I can’t even
believe in myself?”
She smiled and said, “Masochistic tendencies?”
***
When Rob tiptoed into the apartment at two in the morning, he
found Nancy hunched over a textbook at the kitchen table. She smiled up at
him, but her smile didn’t hide the dark circles beneath her eyes. “What are
you doing up so late?” he said, bending to kiss her. “You should be asleep.”
“I will sleep later. This is the only time I have free to study.
Was your evening pleasant?”
He grimaced. “Don’t ask. Rick Slater’s starting to get on my
nerves.”
She rested her chin on her palm and studied him quizzically. “You
do not like this man you work with?”
Rob opened the refrigerator and took out a can of Dr Pepper.
Sitting down across from her, he popped open the top. “It’s not a matter of
liking him. He’s a talented musician. But he has a nose problem.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Nose problem?”
Rob took a drink of soda. “He’s a cokehead. Among other things.
When the last set was over tonight, the drummer practically had to carry him
off stage.”
She looked worried. “This does not bode well for your future,”
she said.
“Not if we can’t keep him upright.” He slid the textbook away
from her, turned it around and riffled through a few pages. Frowned, and
checked the cover of the book. At two in the morning, she was studying
advanced chemistry. He slid the book back across the table. “How’s the job
going?”
Nancy sighed. “Terrible,” she said. “I felt so stupid tonight.”
“Come on, Nance, you’re about as far from stupid as it gets.”
“I am very good at academics,” she said. “But as a waitress, I am
afraid I’m a dismal failure.”
“What happened?”
She tapped her pencil on her notebook. “With academics, I have
always taken my time. It is difficult to be thorough if one is hurried, and a
physician must be thorough above all else. But a waitress must be all things
to all people, all at the same time. I believe this goes against my natural
inclination. I am by nature a tranquil person.”
“And you’re going to make a wonderful doctor.”
“Perhaps.” She smiled ruefully. “But not a good waitress.
Tonight I gave a pu-pu platter to a couple who had ordered Kung Pao Chicken,
then served hot and sour soup to a gentleman who had asked for egg drop. I
spilled a glass of water in a woman’s lap, and forgot to give another couple
their bill. I’m afraid that my tips tonight were a reflection of my
capabilities.”