Loveboat, Taipei

by Abigail Hing Wen

  “Sorry about that.” Rick pulls me by the hand into the hallway.

  “It’s okay, I like her.” I really don’t think we need to hold hands all weekend, do we? I want to ask him about Yale and Williams, but now doesn’t feel like the time. “She’s so gracious. So positive.” The intimacy of her taking my arm, touching my cheek, talking about the give-and-take in relationships—such a contrast to arms-length Mom. “I love your whole family.”

  “Do you? Jenna says they’re loud and obnoxious.” He flushes. “Sorry. I—shouldn’t have said that.”

  Because he’s comparing us?

  “They are, I guess,” he adds. Protecting Jenna again.

  “What are you playing at, Rick?” Sophie snaps. She’s coming from the living room, Xavier in tow. Her mouth is pinched. I tug my hand from Rick, who blinks with surprise but thankfully doesn’t press the charade.

  “I couldn’t take another Jenna-bashing weekend,” Rick confesses. “Ever’s helping me out.” The gratitude in his glance makes me feel like he’s taking my hand back. “I owe you.”

  “They adore you,” I say. “Of course they’ll come around. You didn’t need me to do this.”

  Sophie pushes open the French doors, leading us to the sparkling blue pool surrounded by white lounge chairs. “They worship Rick. Hence the Jenna-bashing. You just saw the whole clan in universal agreement. Imagine the entire clan yelling obscenities and that gives you a picture of last summer. But this”—she pinches Aunty Claire’s package under my arm—“she bought this for her own wedding.”

  “Oh, please take it—” I shove it into her hands, but Rick’s already speaking.

  “I didn’t expect her to take it so seriously. Or invite the whole clan—”

  “You’re the only Woo boy! Of course she would!”

  “—but when Ever dumps me for a better man, the family will back off Jenna. They can’t say I didn’t try on Loveboat.” He grins at me, unfazed—everything’s going according to plan.

  Except that I can’t imagine that better man.

  “So Ever’s doing the dirty work because Rick doesn’t have the balls to stand up to his family.” Xavier flips a quarter through his fingers. “Why am I not surprised?”

  Rick’s eyes flash. “No one asked you—”

  “It was my idea,” I interject. “I’m happy to help.”

  Xavier catches his quarter. I brace for a barb, but he just pockets his coin and turns to Sophie. “Kade wants to show me his motorcycle.”

  “Oh, not that stupid bike.” She weaves her arm through his. “I still need to show you the roof terrace—”

  “Xavier, you coming?” Kade pokes his head through a gate at the deck’s other end.

  Sophie bites her lip as Xavier peels free. He saunters over with his hand in his pocket, as if he’s perfected a languid stroll out of defiance against those who’ve tried to hurry him along his whole life. I still don’t understand why he’s here.

  Sophie gives a small shake of her head, then tosses Aunty Claire’s package at Rick. “You better hope Jenna doesn’t hear about this. Not if you don’t want another—”

  “We’re in Taiwan. No one will tell her.” He presses the package back into my hands before I can protest further. “Aunty Claire wanted you to have it.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past Jenna to hire a private investigator,” Sophie says.

  “Don’t even start.” The growl in his voice has leaped five points on the Richter scale.

  “Start what? Talking about how whipped you are?”

  “Just because I try not to jerk my girlfriend around.”

  “Her insisting on a postcard and phone call a day is the very definition of—”

  “Shut up, Sophie! Just shut up and leave her alone for once! I’m sick of taking your crap.”

  Rick’s hands are in fists. Opposing linemen would have cowered from that glare, but Sophie swings her hair to her back, defiant. “And I’m sick of you coddling her like she’ll break if you sneeze!”

  I cling to my package, desperately wishing I could follow Xavier. But I’m with Sophie—why is Rick, so confident and self-assured in every other area of his life, the opposite with Jenna?

  Because he’s in love with her.

  Rick’s eyes stray to mine. His lips purse. He’d forgotten I’m even here.

  “You don’t know anything, Sophie.” He storms toward the mansion, nearly colliding with Aunty Claire, coming out with a tray of guava-mango shakes. He ducks around her and vanishes inside.

  “You children all right?” Aunty Claire sets the tray on a stone bench.

  Sophie swats at a mosquito on her arm. “You know us.”

  “Then you leave poor Ricky alone.” Aunty Claire places a hand on her swollen belly, uncharacteristically stern. “You keep giving young men a hard time like you do—” She glances around and lowers her voice. “And no one good will want you, Sophiling.”

  Ouch. Even my parents wouldn’t go that far. She’s joking, of course.

  But the transformation that befalls Sophie is shocking.

  She lowers her eyes. Two red spots burn on her cheeks while the rest of her fire goes out, as if Aunty Claire had sprayed her with an extinguisher.

  Aunty Claire’s not joking.

  Neither was the uncle about Sophie earning her MRS at Dartmouth.

  My family is controlling, but never talking about boys meant they’d never asked me to please them either. Sophie’s family is nontraditional in some ways, but uber-traditional in others, especially when it comes to marriage. No wonder Sophie’s so obsessed with finding a guy—for the first time, I feel a stir of pity for my glamorous roommate.

  “Why don’t you girls come help me with dinner?” Aunty Claire squeezes my arm. “Would you like to call your family first, dear?”

  “I called them this morning,” I lie, taking one of her shakes. God, I miss Pearl. I owe her an email. “But thank you.”

  “Sweet girl.” Aunty Claire strokes my hair with a fond hand as I fall into step behind Sophie, and it’s all I can do not to duck guiltily.

  20

  An hour and a half later, after bathing sticky slices of niángāo in beaten raw egg and carving radish flowers with Aunty Claire and Sophie (who carved ten to my three—how does she work so fast?), I search the mansion for Rick, peeking between the reclining leather seats in the basement movie studio and moving steadily through silk rug–lined hallways and up curved stairways to the rooftop garden, blooming with sweet-scented gardenias and a guava tree. The warm breeze blows my hair over my face as I look out over the city skyline, the skyscraper Taipei 101 rising lonely above it all. My body aches to make something of this view-to dance-but I turn around and head back downstairs.

  I knock on the oak panel of Rick’s bedroom door a second time, but there’s no answer. He must have gone outside. As I pass Xavier’s room, soft little moans and kissing sounds reach my ears through his door.

  “I did it for you,” Sophie murmurs.

  I can’t hear Xavier’s reply, but Sophie’s angry grunt follows, then the vehement scrape of a chair leg on wooden floor, as if they’ve pushed apart.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Her voice rises an octave. “You didn’t hold back with Mindy from what I hear.”

  “I just don’t think we should do this,” Xavier answers.

  More furniture scrapes the floor. A thud, like a book thrown down. Pages snapping. My feet have frozen to the silk runner.

  Then the door flies open. Sophie rushes out. Stops as her eyes fall on me. She tugs the straps of her orange-striped dress back onto her shoulders as his door slams, blowing her skirt between her legs.

  “You okay?” I ask, alarmed.

  “He’s a moron.” She yanks his earring from her ear. “I was so stupid to get involved with him.”

  “You don’t mean that,” I protest.

  “We’re through.” She hurls the earring at his door, which pings off and disappears under a grandfather clock. “I’m goi
ng to sit by the pool until dinner.”

  Kicking aside a pink bear, she pushes into her room and slams her own door—her carefully laid weekend plans chucked out the window. I raise my fist to her door as Xavier’s flies open.

  He’s shrugging a black shirt over his head. Track lighting glints off his tan chest. Through his doorway, the bed sheets of his four-poster bed are rumpled, covers turned back, orange backpack on the floor.

  As his eyes meet mine, he freezes. I wonder what picture of me he sees this time, standing frozen with embarrassment.

  “Ever. This isn’t what you think.” The absence of a smirk or mocking in his voice makes my stomach dip. Xavier the Player is much easier to face than Serious Xavier. “Sophie and I—”

  “It’s none of my business.” Skipping over the bear, I bolt for the stairs and down two at a time.

  “Ever, wait,” he calls, but then I’m out of earshot.

  Fifteen minutes later, I find Rick running through a bamboo-lined path in Tianmu Park, a few blocks from Aunty Claire’s. Dusk is falling, the sky violet streaked with pink clouds. The scent of camphor trees floats in the air and a gathering of men and women move beneath them in a tai chi dance, like monks in a Shaolin temple.

  Rick’s gray shirt, soaked in a vase-shaped bar down his front, clings to his chest. His body is locked as if he’s bent his entire will on outrunning his demons, whatever they are. Sheer determination, that’s how he became Boy Wonder.

  He catches sight of me and slows.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  Wiping his face on his sleeve, he jerks his head at the path.

  “Want to walk a bit?”

  A surge of nervousness. “Sure.” I fall into step beside him and we move down a stone path, shifting aside for a rickshaw to pass with a squeak of wheels.

  “Xavier was right.” Rick shoves his hands into his pockets. “It wasn’t fair to make you do this for me. I’m being a coward.”

  “I’m the one who offered.”

  “I just—need to get them to stop hating on her.” He slouches, fists plowing deeper. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come this summer.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I told you before. Rite of passage. I needed a break.”

  “From Jenna, too?”

  “No, of course not.” His eyes open wide. He shakes his head. “Yes. Yes, maybe.”

  “How’d you get together in the first place?”

  “She moved in next door in sixth grade. Her parents asked me to walk her to school and she started waiting for me after school, too. In high school, she’d drop by with snacks after football practices and I invited her to freshman homecoming. Been together since.”

  “Does she know how much your family dislikes her?”

  “Yes. I’ve tried to keep it from her, but it leaks out in little ways.” His thumb digs at the scars on his hand. “We’ve had some bad fights. Aunty Claire’s family was over one time when we were arguing and it naturally made the gossip circuit.” He frowns.

  “Is that why Sophie doesn’t like her?”

  “Not exactly. Things weigh on Jenna. Friend stresses. Grades. She’s an only child and grew up pretty lonely. Her parents travel a lot for work and expect a ton from her, and every bit of stress is like a stone she sews into her clothes—she hangs on to it all. Junior year she lost fifteen pounds. She came over every night and fell asleep in my bed while I did homework.

  “I was juggling school and football and Sophie didn’t like how much of my time she took up. I tried to encourage Jenna to develop interests—she used to volunteer at a children’s clinic but she dropped out. She only wanted to focus on her grades and me—I didn’t want that either.”

  “Your aunt said you’re transferring to Williams for her.”

  “I didn’t realize she knew.” His frown deepens. “Williams hasn’t finalized my transfer, which is why I haven’t said anything. Sophie doesn’t even know.” His gaze shifts to a bird in the grass, attacking the last of a pork bun. “I know my family’s upset, but it’s hard for Jenna to be on her own. She’ll be premed—”

  “Premed?” I cringe. “Her parents want her to be a doctor, too?”

  “No, she does. She wants to be a pediatric oncologist, working with kids with cancer—she’d be great at it. But uncertainty is hard for her. Your BS/MD program—she’d kill for that kind of certainty. Last year was hell. She applied to a bunch of those programs, got wait-listed everywhere.”

  I pluck a peach off a tree and roll its fuzzy roundness between my palms. And so this is why the transfer—Jenna needs solid, dependable Rick at her side as she navigates the stresses of college premed, all those stones she’ll be sewing into her clothes trying to get into med school. I don’t want to buy into his family’s Ivy League snobbery, but something feels wrong. Did he really need to give up Yale? I know nothing about surviving long distance, and maybe it’s excruciating. But Megan and Dan have made it work across six states. Williams and Yale are only a few hours apart. And what about football? Is he that afraid of losing Jenna?

  He’s still trying to peel those scars off his fingers. I touch his hand. “Were you with her when you got those?”

  His hand stills. “How could you tell?”

  “You do that whenever you’re thinking about her.”

  He balls his hand into a fist, as if trying to undo all those other times he’s given himself away. “Yes. It was an accident.”

  His voice is like a brick wall, keeping me out. Whatever happened, the memory has turned out a light in him. I let it drop.

  “Do her parents know?”

  His voice sharpens. “Know what?”

  “How depressed she is.”

  “No.” He drops his fist. “No, she’s not close to them. She made me promise not to tell. Her dad would blame her for being weak—they always told her not to cry growing up.”

  “They might not get it.” Would I feel safe telling my parents? “But you can’t carry her all by yourself.” I glance up at him. “You really love her, don’t you?”

  He expels a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, of course I do.”

  The peach is sour in my mouth. I toss it into the trash as we reach the park’s opposite gate, and turn to retrace our footsteps. The tai chi club comes back into view, on break, drinking from metal thermoses. A white-haired man distributes bo staffs to the men and women, who spin them like a field of windmills. We sit on a bench to watch and I extend my leg to one side and grab my toes, trying, with the familiar stretch, to re-center myself.

  “You told my family you’re going to Tisch.”

  Rick’s not letting me re-center myself. “Joking. Obviously.”

  “Were you? Because whenever you talk about med school, you look like you’ve permanently lost the Rose Bowl.”

  “Whoa, is that like the apocalypse?”

  He smiles. “Worse.” His grin fades. “It’s a real question.”

  I release my toes. “When I was little, I fell off my bike and gashed open my knee. My dad stitched me up, and said, ‘When you become a doctor, you’ll take care of it yourself.’

  “Every day, he’d come home from pushing his cart around the Cleveland Clinic, all deflated and smelling like antiseptic, and I’d run and hug him. He’d tell me about some surgery he’d glimpsed, or someone’s life a doctor saved, and how proud he was I’d be a doctor someday. The doctor he didn’t get to be. He didn’t say that last part, but I always knew it. And I was going to make his pain worthwhile and he wouldn’t be so defeated anymore.

  “When did you turn down Tisch?”

  “The day before I flew here.”

  “You could try calling them.” He sits up. “Explain you felt you had to.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “School doesn’t start for a month. Tell them you had family issues. That you didn’t think it was an option. You could take those dance and choreography classes. You’d live near Broadway—”

  “STOP.” I clamp my hand ove
r his mouth. He’s ripping open scars I’ve worked hard to let heal. “What are the chances another girl with my profile will drop out before September?” Another Asian American girl, if Marc’s right about quotas. “Less than zero. Besides, you’re giving up football for someone you love. So who are you to talk?”

  I release him and he bites his cheek. I still feel the bristle of his chin on my palm. His eyes are wide, as if I’d tased him. He’s paled under his tan.

  Then he looks away. “I don’t know.”

  After a moment, I say, “Med school’s everything I’ve worked toward. My parents, too.” All the meals Mom cooked while I studied into the night, covering my chores during finals, acting as my maid, Dad my chauffeur to my internship, all their worries over my applications because my future is their future. Paying my deposit and first semester’s tuition. They’d never ask me to pay a penny, not like Megan’s parents. I’m a Wong before I’m Ever, as much as Rick’s a Woo carrying his family’s name.

  A flock of birds sails overhead, the rush of wings stirring the hot air. We both need cheering up. As the tai chi group windmills their staffs in slow motion, I slide off the bench and approach the white-haired man.

  “Can we try?” I ask in not-too-shabby Mandarin.

  “Of course, little sister.” He offers one of his rattan staffs; the rest of his Mandarin is lost on me. I heft it experimentally, a plain, functional staff—five feet long, and an inch and a half in diameter, the wood splintering a bit at its tip. The familiar weight, so similar to my flag staff, is comforting.

  “You want to try tai chi?” Rick’s smiling a bit.

  “I’ve got a better idea.”

  I point the stick at his chest. A real smile breaks over my lips. All those hours with my flag team are about to pay off.

  “I challenge you to a duel. If I win, you stop moping around this weekend. If you win, you wallow all you want.”

  He blinks. One bear brow climbs into his forehead. “You’re not even in the elective.”

  “Humor me.”

  “I also happen to be the best stick fighter in the class. I’m a natural.”

  I sniff haughtily. “I’ll be the judge of that, Football Man.”