It was no big deal to add Lan to the security tour. Harder was adding her to the sex-talk list. Not that we had to do birth control; she had to know about birth control, she was from China for chrissakes. But AIDS was not the subject in the East it might be.
BLONDIE /
We tried to get her to see the same gynecologist, Dr. Mark, to whom we’d sent Lizzy.
— It won’t cost anything, we assured her. It’s completely covered by that health policy we bought you.
CARNEGIE /
We thought she might go because such a visit would be preventative; she had the idea that American doctors did nothing to strengthen you. That they preferred to see people get sick, so they could charge big fees to cure them.
Her interest in Dr. Mark, all the same: zilch.
BLONDIE /
— Isn’t that Dr. Mark your friend? she asked.
As if we were trying to trick her somehow.
CARNEGIE /
And what to do now about her coming home with her clothes torn? A torn blouse. A torn skirt. Her beautiful new backpack had to go to the shoemaker to have its strap fixed. No sign of bodily harm, though, besides, one day, a red ear.
And one day, a bruise on her forearm.
— I bang myself somewhere, she said. Maybe on the door. Maybe on a chair.
— Which was it? we asked. The door or a chair?
— I don’t pay attention to such things, she said. No marginal utility.
And another day: — No big deal. I bang my arm all the time.
And another: — This is America. I do not have to make report to you.
LAN /
I didn’t mind Shang’s fits. His secretary said she’d never seen anyone more able to calm him down. I suppose because he did not shock me. Shang was terrible, but I knew how to handle him.
It was
Carnegie
I found strange. Such a nice man, such a kind man, but I could not understand him. For some other story, he kept saying. I was meant for some other story. But what other story?
Shang and I were working on the business plan
. Tweaking it,
he said. We had one investor already, but our second guy dropped out.
We needed to replace him. That was our next step.
WENDY /
Sometimes Shang doesn’t pick her up himself. Sometimes he sends his driver, who is Chinese Chinese, like from China, and tallish, with this carefully combed hair. He drives the black car but the top is never down, and he drives extra slow, like he’s giving this zoo tour. It’s like there are no animals so he has to drive slow, slow, slow, hoping to find some. Then the car stops and the driver gets out and opens the door for Lanlan. He waits for her to climb in and like arrange herself. Then he closes the door after her, and taps on the window, and gives her this smile. He has a wide mouth like a frog’s, and these beautiful eyes with a soft glance, once it landed on me and it was like a butterfly you didn’t want to disturb. It was like something you wanted to stay on your shoulder for a while even if it only picked you because it matched your shirt.
Sometimes he drives her home too, he brings her all the way home instead of leaving her at the post office. You get the feeling he isn’t supposed to do this. He looks both ways, then taps on her door and opens it slowly. He gives her his hand to help her out, and sometimes he helps her up the walk. They walk slow, slow, like old people. Sometimes he carries her coat for her, or her shoes. Or her purse. He hangs her purse around his neck, not to be funny but just to carry it, like it’s convenient and he doesn’t care if he looks like a Saint Bernard. Once she shuffles up the walk in a pair of men’s slippers, who knows what they were doing in the car. Anyway she doesn’t give them back. For the next couple of weeks we see her in those men’s slippers, which are cracked brown leather and way too big for her.
So that now Lizzy says he’s the one Lanlan really loves.
— Not that she would admit it, she says.
— Why not? I say.
— Because it’s hard, she says. Sometimes you don’t even want to admit it to yourself.
— Does that mean you miss Derek? I say. But won’t admit it?
— What about Lionel? she says. Do you love him?
— I think we’re just friends.
— You can think whatever you want, she says. That doesn’t make it true.
BLONDIE /
One day Lan forgot to put a diaper on Bailey.
Another day she complained he did nothing but cry, only to discover—that is, we discovered together—that a child at the playground had put seeds in his ears.
— She’s in love, said Gabriela. People in love are psychotic. They have no judgment and cannot be relied on, as I remember all too well.
Yet another day Lan scolded Bailey for getting paint on his clothes: —
Do you know what I wore when I was your age? Do you?
— It’s her inner child, said Gabriela. Inside she is still a motherless girl without enough food, clothes, heat, anything. It’s hard for her to see your children grow up with so much. You can’t blame her, in a way.
— You’re right, I really can’t blame her, I said.
But yet another day I found Bailey crying, and Lan holding a spoonful of soup to his lips.
— You eat, she said. Good soup!
— Hot! he cried, his face turned away. Hot!
— You know, one day I will not feed you anymore, she said. And under her breath she muttered: —
Xiao Huang Mao
.
Little Yellow Hair.
— Is it hot?
I picked Bailey up and tested the soup. If Lan was surprised by my appearance, she didn’t let on.
— Ow! I cried.
Lan dumped a sippy cup out in the sink.
— The potatoes, I said calmly. Potatoes really hold heat, you know.
— If you like it cooler, I will make it cooler.
— Please do, I said. Because potatoes are not like rice. You may not have realized. Rice doesn’t hold heat the way potatoes do.
— Potatoes hold heat, said Lan. They are not like rice.
— Please be more careful.
— If you like me be more careful, I will be more careful.
CARNEGIE /
Then came The Bathwater Incident.
— Bailey was crying, reported Blondie. That water was just too hot.
— Are you sure he wasn’t throwing a tantrum?
— The water was too hot. I felt it.
— Did you tell her not to use such hot water?
— I told her.
— And?
LAN /
I said:
— If you like the water colder, I will make the water colder.
CARNEGIE /
For what it’s worth: I did not sneak up on anyone. Yet as I ascended the textured steps of Lan’s spiral staircase to have a word with her, it is conceivably true that I did not announce myself as unmistakably as I might have. An easy matter, in running shoes.
And so it was that, her door being ajar, I came upon Lan visiting with a man not Shang. They were sitting at her kitchen table, talking earnestly, then laughing, then talking earnestly again, in a dialect I did not recognize.
LAN /
Shandongnese.
CARNEGIE /
She was not wearing Shang’s fancy clothes. She was wearing her own clothes, and no makeup.
LAN /
Why should I dress up for the driver?
CARNEGIE /
Her hair was braided, in pigtails; the ends bristled, brush-like. How girlish she looked! How utterly unself-conscious and animated and beautiful. I watched as she unwrapped a bunch of flowers—they were bundled in paper towels—then began to work a rubber band off their stems.
— No no, said the man, producing a pocketknife.
But as it happened the rubber band stretched and stretched against the knife blade and would not cut. Lan wanted to take over; the man insisted the knife would work; still the band stretched; until finally he tried the blade against his finger, and sure enough drew blood.
Aiya!
They laughed and laughed, barraging each other with gay heckling foolery.
How I wished I could make her laugh like that.
And yet—to witness, for once, such rightness. To be so happily jealous! How natural she and this man seemed together; how right, and how lucky. They seemed the start of a happy story whose denouement featured baby carriages and PTAs.
WENDY /
He carries a cricket in a cricket gourd inside his coat, so that you hear this chirp as he walks by. And he lets us see it if we want. He puts it under a lightbulb to warm it up if it’s cold, so it sings.
LAN /
He was like my father that way. My father used to carry a cricket in a gourd sometimes. Just like that, in his coat pocket.
WENDY /
Also Uncle Su plays the violin.
LAN /
His English name was
Jeb. Jeb Su.
His Chinese name was Su Jiabao.
WENDY /
One day he brings his violin to show us. Lanlan won’t play even though she says she knows how, but she cries and cries when he plays, maybe because he does like the sappiest things. Another day he brings an
erhu,
and that makes her cry even more, it reminds her so much of her father she says, even though the songs Uncle Su plays are all northern. It is hard to explain how she knows that but she says she does, right away, from the sound. The Suzhou songs being like everything else from Suzhou, more delicate and refined. And his technique—well, he isn’t exactly Ah Bin, she says. Ah Bin being this famous
erhu
player who was like this blind beggar or something, and not exactly from Suzhou but almost.
LAN /
He was from Wuxi, a town not far away.
WENDY /
Uncle Su comes by on his bicycle and rides Lanlan around, she sits on the back rack with no hands. Just balances there, comfortable as can be, leaning back with her feet crossed while he pedals. She says it’s easy, in China everyone can do it.
— You’re in love with Uncle Su! says Lizzy. Face facts, you are!
But Lanlan says she isn’t. Because he is a citizen but has no future, she says. Because he has
old way of thinking.
BLONDIE /
I had so enthused about quitting and my new life that I was embarrassed to admit now how the days had begun—when did this start?—to drag on. I began buying books on self-esteem—itself a sign of low self-esteem, according to Gabriela.
One failed to work out; one failed to keep one’s endorphins high. One failed to arrange for the child care required for one’s self-care.
One failed to raise happy children. How much more upset I felt now about, say, Wendy’s having to eat lunch alone, or Bailey’s licking everything. How much more defeated by Lizzy’s refusing to have anything more to do with drama.
— You have a gift, we told her. You need to honor that. Don’t you see?
But she said no, she didn’t see.
And what about singing? Wouldn’t she like to try singing lessons?
— If I sing at all, she said, it will be with Russell’s band.
— Do they need a vocalist?
— No, and I’m not going to ask them to ask me, if that’s what you’re thinking.
All kids have issues. That’s what my book group said.
Still, there were days when I could not get out of bed. Days when the light bars of the morning imprisoned me.
When I was working, all I heard were the voices of women who had chosen to
focus on what really mattered.
Now all I heard were the voices of people who went back to work.
I would have had a nervous breakdown if I had stayed home.
You can only drive so much car pool.
How many times can you answer What’s happening? with Nothing much—?
I wondered if what I had really needed was a sabbatical. Why hadn’t Porter offered me a sabbatical?
I thought I might do something volunteer. Then maybe something more—if I could. What with the weak economy, I’d heard a lot of women were having trouble getting their old jobs back.
So there I was, being interviewed by someone I had hired. Being told by someone I had hired that I just wasn’t what they were looking for.
Would that happen to me? I never would have thought so, but when I heard Porter had replaced me, I did wonder.
I was surprised that I didn’t want to garden all the time; I’d always thought I could’ve gardened night and day. I was surprised, too, that I hadn’t fallen into something else—riding, or potting, or painting. I was surprised that my deepened perceptions of the world hadn’t coalesced into a passion.
How I had wanted—longed—to be swept away. But whatever notes it was that passion played, I had to conclude that they were not mine.
Though whose idea was it, that one should be passionate? Interesting? Full of the sort of idiosyncrasy that made one feel—and others believe—that one had bravely flouted society and stayed true to one’s inner self?
Gabriela thought I should give myself more time.
— A couple of months, she said. What’s a couple of months? You’re still slowing down. You’re still unwinding.
But I did not believe it was a matter of time.
Janie, runt of the litter.
I found myself curious about things Zen—all that emptying. A perfect passion for the passionless. And in any case, I was still doing yoga during Bailey’s nap. I didn’t feel I could use Lan to baby-sit when he was awake anymore. But when he was asleep, I liked to try and sneak in a class. For fashionable or not, it was something I could say that I loved—that peace. It was a touchstone.
WENDY /
Mom is at yoga and Lanlan is outside doing the goat when he comes so that the first thing he does is get butted by Tommy. Lanlan laughs with her hand up to her mouth and her shoulders scrunched up, and for a minute it almost seems like maybe he’s going to laugh too. Because it’s funny, the way that goat sneaks up and gets him right in the behind. You can see how surprised he is because he never comes to the house and maybe didn’t realize we had a goat until ouch! it got him, I know how it feels, like you got poked with a broom handle only sharper. I’m in one of the apple trees, the one with the big long limb that goes right down to the ground, you can walk up the whole thing like an entrance ramp to the upstairs of the tree if you don’t lose your balance on any of the knobbies. So I can watch him do what Dad calls the That Damned Goat Dance. He kind of hops and trips away and reaches back with his hand and arches and twists, trying to look at his own rear end which makes him look like a person turned into a cartoon, you can practically hear people laughing, and if it was Dad he’d be making a big snorty noise and shaking his fist and laughing too. And probably singing, this is exactly the sort of time when Dad sings something like: