— I don’t even like Reese’s peanut butter cups, says Dad.
— Oh, for heaven’s sake, Carnegie, says Mom.
— Nor do I care for Kit Kats, he says.
— Honestly! says Mom. You are my fourth child.
—
So sue me, sue me, what can you do me,
sings Dad.
I . . . a-a-ate . . . them.
His cell phone rings again, we can hear the words in our heads.
Ohh beau-ti-ful for spacious . . .
— Will you put that thing on vibrate, says Mom. And when Dad doesn’t answer: — Honey, please. Taking phone calls night and day is not going to help. If there are going to be layoffs, there are going to be layoffs.
— Thank you for that consoling insight, says Dad. It will bring me almost as much solace on a sleepless night as knowing the Great Greenspan saw this coming.
His phone rings again.
Ohh beau-ti-ful for . . .
— And may I just point out that I turned mine off even though I have that board meeting tomorrow, says Mom.
—Nobler than springtime, are you,
sings Dad then.
Sweeter than Kit Kats, are you . . .
But he shuts his phone off and hands it to Mom. She puts it in the glove compartment, closing it up with kind of a bang because it doesn’t work that great. Of course it falls back open again anyway, so she hits it again, only more gently, which works. There’s that click. Then she looks over her shoulder and says: — Your dad is a joker.
— Better a joker than a joke, he says back.
— And all because his mother named him Carnegie, Mom says. Carnegie Wong.
— Who was Carnegie again? I ask.
But Mom says: — Who else but Mama Wong would do such a thing? Honestly.
Dad says his problem isn’t just his problem.
— Don’t you think at some point in life everyone has to ask, Whose joke is this?
— No, says Mom.
— That’s because your family is from the Midwest where the eternal questions are, Is it going to snow? And, Is it going to rain? says Dad. Not to mention, Is it going to stop?
— The difference between us, says Mom, is that I can at least imagine a faith that’s not laughable.
Road sign. Road sign. They pop out of the fog like out of nowhere, then get bigger and bigger until they’re gone. Like
poof.
— Whereas belief in the SATs generally lasts 1.0 generations, agrees Dad finally.
— Aren’t the SATs that test Lizzy has to take? I ask.
The windshield wipers keep on wiping and wiping as if that’s their homework and they just have to do it.
The airport is big and washable, that’s what Lizzy says, every single surface is easy to clean because of all the people. People are dirty. They stick gum under the seats, they spill coffee, everything would get disgusting if it weren’t for chemicals.
— Our Lizzy, truth teller, says Dad, cracking his knuckles.
— Maybe you will be an investigative journalist.
— Journalists are liars, says Lizzy. All they are about is does it make a good story and the truth is not always a good story.
— Lizzy, says Mom. Please.
— No, don’t stop, says Dad. Just try to say what you have to say in a way people can hear.
— You mean, in a way Mom can hear, says Lizzy.
— Mom and me.
— Hmm, she says. And then she surprises everybody by saying it again, louder: — Hmm.
There are no shadows in the middle part of the airport, and that makes everything sound funny.
Mom’s bouncing Bailey and squinting at the writing on the screen. The diaper bag is swinging big and heavy behind her, it wouldn’t be so heavy except for the bottles and ice packs she has to lug around now that Bailey weaned himself out of nowhere.
— Of course, I knew one day would be the last time, she told her friend Gabriela on the phone. Gabriela was in Italy, but still they talked and e-mailed all the time. — But I mean, for him to wean himself. A bottle’s just a bottle. I wanted to keep him a little longer, that’s all.
She was crying.
LIZZY /
— Poor Mom, Wendy said.
But I said: — You see? She was never that close to us, even when we were babies. Not like she was to Bailey. Face facts, it was different.
WENDY /
Though maybe Mom is going to be exactly the same with Bailey as us when he grows up, that’s what I think. Maybe with Bailey she’s going to be like,
We’ll talk about it after supper, okay?
And,
I’m sorry, pumpkin, I know this was our special time, but this is the life of a working mother.
And maybe Dad is going to be like,
Tell me again, I’m listening, it just takes time to open a heart. Because first you have to stop. Like this.
And he’ll take a big breath.
Whew. Now tell me again, no laughing. What is it?
LIZZY /
Or maybe they won’t.
But anyway—the diaper bag.
WENDY /
— Can’t you lighten that thing up? Dad says.
But Mom says, squinting: — With what time? And you’re welcome to clean out the refrigerator while you’re at it.
So that Dad has only just taken the bag from Mom’s shoulder and is still mushing it into the mesh thingy under the stroller when she starts hurrying. Bailey is bouncing and her boobs are bouncing, and her white shirt is flying all around her like there’s a big wind, and she’s turning pink in the face. It’s like her lips and her skin are matching, so that her eyes are as blue as this special-effect laser beam.
— She’s here already, Mom says. Early! In the fog! Whoever would have thought she would be early?
— Early! we yell. Early! Her plane must have special instruments!
And we are running down the halls, running and running.
CARNEGIE /
Selected preconceptions, wholly inexcusable:
1. That she would have an unfortunate perm.
2. That she would cook better than Mama Wong but require education as to the horrors of cholesterol.
3. That she would be reliable.
4. That she would look half her age.
5. That she would mend.
6. That she would speak Chinese.
7. That she would eschew center stage.
8. That she would favor hot-water bottles.
9. That she would wear sweater vests.
10. That she would root for both sides of ball games.
She was indeed capable, as it turned out, of rooting for both sides of ball games.
And she did indeed speak Chinese. Mandarin, of course, as well as selected other dialects.
And she did indeed look half her age. No gray, and nary a wrinkle, thanks to that Asian predisposition toward subcutaneous fat. You could easily have taken her for a slightly older cousin of the girls, though I knew her to be forty-six. Seven years older than me, a year older than Blondie.
What a surprise, though, that she moved as arrestingly as she did. When we first spotted her—or what we at least thought was her, from her picture—she was proceeding along ho-hum with the stream of other passengers from California, headed past the arrival gates toward the public waiting area. A medium-tall figure in black, slim. Low ponytail, long neck, Modigliani-like shoulder slope.
There was a clog and ensuing backup; some geezer’s shopping bag had lost its bottom. Sundry people helpfully chased down the surprising array of rolling items, while others looked on. Lan alone began then to disappear, then reappear, slipping calmly through the confusion. Let others mill; she wove and sidestepped with quiet aplomb. Accustomed to crowds, it appeared. Disappearing, reappearing, disappearing, reappearing. Stopping just once, disconcertingly, to spit into an open trash can. A quick, perfect little shot; compared to expectorations I’d seen in China, this was positively elegant.
She disappeared again.
Then materialized out past security, a few yards from us. A plainish woman, neither pleasing nor displeasing. Face on the long side, eyes on the large side, nose on the flat side, mouth on the full side. High cheekbones, one on either side. Haggard, and yet somehow on the alert, as if in a war zone. Nothing dangled from her. How dangly everyone around her by comparison, how idiotically overaccessorized. And how she held herself; with what sweetly intimidating posture. There was nothing Chinese about it. Only Lan held herself this way, as if bent on disconnecting her head from her feet.
— Lan! we called. Lan!
She suspended, briefly, her travel.
What was it that crossed her face then?
Maybe she was simply jet-lagged. Maybe she was taken aback by Lizzy’s nose ring and tattoos, or by her blond hair. Or maybe it was the all-blond lineup of Blondie, Bailey, and Lizzy that surprised her. (It so happened that black-haired Wendy and I stood a little in back of the others.)
Later we learned too that though we’d sent her a picture of us, thanks to some semi-predictable postal vagrancy she hadn’t received it. In any case, there ensued some manner of small-scale system failure. You could see her hit
RESET
.
— How do you do, she said, a moment later, recomposed.
She clutched her purse as if it was full of contraband she had managed to sneak through customs.
— Welcome to America! How was your flight? we said.
— Hello, she said again. Smiling a smile we would soon recognize, a certain lopsided half smile.
— Are you Lan? I asked, suddenly wondering.
— Nice meet you. She bobbed her head.
Blondie resurrected her Chinese: —
Nin shi bu shi jiao Lin Lan?
Lan relaxed her grip slightly and said in Chinese: —
You speak Chinese!
—
I do,
said Blondie.
—
You speak very well.
—
I studied for several years in college,
said Blondie.
A long pause; Lan receded a bit. That half smile.
BLONDIE /
Perhaps I was supposed to say,
Nali, nali
—meaning ‘Where? where?’—when she said that about speaking well. That was the Chinese script, after all. Perhaps I should have denied being able to speak, or insisted I spoke badly, terribly, at most one or two words.
Or perhaps I should have said something that started with
you.
She had said something
you;
perhaps instead of starting with
I,
I should have answered, likewise,
You. You are too kind.
CARNEGIE /
— Don’t forget the blond thing, I said. A blonde speaking Chinese. That might have thrown her. Or maybe she thought you were putting yourself above her.
BLONDIE /
— Why in heaven’s name would I do that? I said.
CARNEGIE /
— I just know that’s what my mother would have thought, I said. She was very binary in that way. Always looking down on someone, or else convinced someone was looking down on her. As if all the world was a ladder to her, and we but poor climbers on it.
BLONDIE /
He said: — Lan might have wondered too whether she was a family member exactly—if by ‘nanny’ we didn’t mean
ayi.
A servant. And what did it signify that she was being brought over on a student visa when she wasn’t a student per se?
— But wasn’t that just the easiest kind of visa to get? I said.
She was dressed, in any case, all in black, like Lizzy, yet with entirely different effect. Everything Lizzy wore was torn or altered in some way—in-your-face clothes. Lan’s clothes, in contrast, seemed gotten together with care. Everything looked new—her thick nylons, and high-heeled, leatherette sandals; her narrow skirt, and V-neck sweater. The sweater was pointelle, with a flame-stitch bottom. The skirt matched. Neither fit very well. Even her undergarments seemed not quite hers—her bust preceding her in an odd way.
CARNEGIE /
A distinctly cold-war affair, that brassiere, suggesting advanced industrial engineering and projectile menace.
BLONDIE /
You could tell—even we could tell—that she was not exactly from Shanghai. You could tell that she was not even from a city proper, but from the outskirts of a city—the sort of town where people have more than they used to, but can hardly be called rich.
She appeared an inch or two taller than Lizzy, who was a good five-four. And yet how similar they seemed. All in black, as I’ve said, and willowy, though Lizzy was longer-waisted. Or no, maybe Lan looked more like Wendy—so I thought when Wendy walked up. Wendy hadn’t started developing yet. You could see, though, what a slender thing she was always going to be—a wonder to someone of my shape. Though shorter than Lan, she had similar torso-to-leg proportions. They both had too that shiny black hair.
Wendy, thankfully, was not wearing black. Wendy still wore, then, what I bought her. A flowered shirt, and flowered shorts. Flowered sandals. One thing good about her being a somewhat shy child was that she was, at nine, still mine.
Still mine, I say. And yet from the first moment I saw the three of them together, I thought they seemed, despite their differences, a set. Was that racist? Like kitchen canisters, I thought. S-M-L.
Carnegie and Lan chatted awkwardly by the luggage carousel. Then no one said anything. Then Lizzy said something and, amazingly, Lan smiled and said something back—about Michael Jordan, of all things, and about somebody else—a Yao Ming?—her manner surprisingly warm. There was another exchange I didn’t catch. How ringed, still, Lan’s person with vigilance; and yet her face, as she began to relax, flickered with quiet life.
— Such beautiful skin, you have, she told Lizzy. You must know how to eat. Have good water too.
Lan said this smiling gently, gesturing gently. Her movements like a murmur—not making a big positive point, as Lizzy always claimed I did. Lizzy in turn beamed, tilting her head down shyly, so that a roll of fat appeared under her chin. I hadn’t known she still had that roll of fat; suddenly I saw her, a toddler again, demanding I follow her around and around the patio.
I engine! You caboose!
— How clever you are. I can see by your eyes, clever, she told Wendy, a little while later. — People should listen to you.