Typical American

by Gish Jen

  "How can we still cheat? What do you mean, don't worry?" She didn't seem any more able to have faith than to sleep. "Are you doing anything?"

  "Sure. I have ideas."

  "What kind of ideas?"

  Since when did she cross-examine him? He didn't like her tone; he thought he ought to train her the way he had Grover. Step one, remain unfazed. "Well, for instance, maybe we should take the addition off. Take the beam back out."

  "You said before you didn't think that would work."

  He hesitated, then smiled. Unfazed. Watching the fire from a distant bank. "I'm joking."

  She had no faith. To Ralph's mind, that was the main problem. Just when he was thinking, for example, that maybe he should call up Old Chao and find out what was going on at school, Helen spoiled his initiative, saying, "If you want to sign up to teach some summer courses, you'd better call right away. They're doing assignments now."

  "How do you know?"

  Helen blushed violently. "Janis told me," she said, though it was not Janis, actually, to whom she'd spoken, but Theresa.

  "Janis told you? Janis? And what did you tell Janis?"

  "Nothing." True enough.

  "Nothing?" Ralph glared at her. "And what is she going to tell Old Chao? Did you think of that?"

  "I didn't."

  "You didn't? But I think you did. You must have."

  Helen blushed again.

  "I know" said Ralph. "You think I don't know? You think I'm like Grover here, I know nothing? I know."

  "You can't just walk around training Grover forever."

  She showed him the bankbook then, and again the next day, and again a few days after that, trying to provoke a response.

  But it didn't work. "You think I don't know?" said Ralph. "I know."

  his back in the study. He gathered his fingers into paws, drew up his arms and legs. Grover eyed him quizzically.

  The phone rang.

  Ralph answered it, then lay back down.

  "Old Chao, asking me to come work" he volunteered when Helen poked her head in the door. He scratched his nose with one of his paws. "Inviting me."

  "So what did you say*"

  "I said no."

  Sometimes it seemed to Helen that the real Grover lay between her and Ralph, in the aisle between their beds. It was as if one of the magazines she used to keep under her mattress had escaped, except that this was no magazine; this was a man on the floor, reminding her that she could leave. Since when did she talk so much, Ralph had asked recently; she had shaken her head in answer, wondering at herself, thinking that ever since the addition got going, she'd had to. Or had breaking one enormous rule enabled her to break others? She could leave — she knew that now. Of course she never would. And yet how much more daring she'd become with that idea under her arm!

  Daring enough to tell Ralph about Grover?

  She debated whether she should, always ending with the same conclusion. Yes. She concluded that she had to. Her secret would come out sooner or later; paper could not wrap up a fire. It was only a matter of finding the right time and place. Ralph seemed to know already anyway.

  And yet night after night, she did not tell him. It was a question of the light. She simply could not imagine herself switching off the light and announcing into the dark that she'd had an affair. At the same time, she could not imagine making her announcement with the light on. She lay awake reaching her conclusions, mentally switching the light on and off, until she began to see other things. Once she saw Ralph with the dog. Grover's leash was red — she thought, the red string, then she saw herself, being

  *59

  taught to play dead. To heel. Of course. The wife should obey the husband; this, according to the Three Bonds of Confucianism. Still she shuddered.

  Another time she saw Ralph swinging something on a rope, around and around his head, like a lasso. She didn't know what it was at first; then she realized it was Grover, strangely shrunken. Stop! she tried to tell him. You could wrap that around someone's neck.

  Ralph turned to her. Yes, 1 could strangle someone, he said simply, continuing to swing. He approached her. I am that cold.

  How should I tell you anything* How*

  I am a man become fury.

  I'm going to turn the light on.

  I am a man become steel.

  I'm going to turn the light off.

  He moved closer, unhearing.

  She floated far above the forms as she filled them out, recalling (as she crammed her life into the small blanks and narrow lines) how she'd once hoped to go into real estate, like Janis. "It's a cinch," Janis had said. And what had she answered? Bu hui, bu hui — I'm not capable enough. Not wanting to offend her friend.

  Sheer politeness. Who would have thought anyone would really believe that about her? But now it appeared that many people did. By the end of the afternoon, she hoped at best to be a shopgirl in one of the department stores. Which wouldn't be so bad, as she told herself; at least she'd get a discount on everything.

  But though, what with the new war, the unemployment rate was supposed to be dropping, there were still enough women around for the stores to be picky. They could afford to have white women, who spoke English without accents. "You know, I shop this store quite often," Helen told a personnel clerk. Casually — not wanting to seem to be making a point. "I bought a lot of stuff here."

  z6o

  "Fabulous," said the clerk. "Would you like to apply for a charge?"

  She tried smaller shops — bookshops, stationery stores, gift boutiques. "Are you a gook?" someone asked her. "Gook?" she answered. She tried the five-and-ten.

  And she got Theresa to ask Old Chao to call Ralph again.

  "Little Chang! Old friend!" Old Chao said he had a favor to ask. He did not say anything about Ralph's having hung up on him before.

  Ralph listened apprehensively.

  Two courses for the summer, and what about his slot for the fall? Was he coming back? It was his slot, Old Chao emphasized. "We need you, we really hope you'll come back."

  "So Janis told you, huh," said Ralph.

  "What?" said Old Chao. "Janis?"

  "He lied to me," Ralph told Helen.

  "I've applied everywhere. You don't know how hard it is to find work."

  "He lied to me."

  "We can't afford not to work."

  "You know what we can't afford? I'll tell you what we can't afford."

  Helen braced herself.

  "What we can't afford," said Ralph, "is this house of yours."

  "What do you mean, my house?"

  "Your house," he insisted. "You just want to send pictures of it home to your family."

  "What are you talking about? I don't even know where my family is. How can I send them pictures?"

  "How lucky we are," he said, "to have our marriage and our family." And as casually as he might pick up a steaming hot bowl of rice, he tossed a brass vase out the living room picture window.

  ,

  to the newspaper. One night the gutters overflowed; water sheeted over the front of the house. "Like Niagara Falls," Ralph observed. "Our glorious honeymoon." Luckily, that problem turned out to be nothing more than a tennis ball lodged in a downspout. Another night, though, several roof shingles blew off. Helen found them the next day, scattered over the lawn like a giant's idea of fertilizer.

  "Why do we have so much trouble with roofs?" Ralph wanted to know.

  "We should do something soon," Helen answered. "Before it begins to leak."

  Ralph agreed. At last he realized something had to be done! They debated, concluding that they needed a professional. As they could not afford a professional, though, Ralph applied himself to finding a way of doing the work for less.

  "An old guy, trying to make a new start," he announced not too much later. "He just hopes we'll recommend him to other people if we're satisfied."

  "Perfect," said Helen, and he would have been, if only he hadn't stepped through a knot in the wood under the shing
les and broken his uninsured ankle.

  The fight Ralph and Helen had then broke them both. How was it that she went sailing, like a human version of their brass vase, out the bedroom window? Later, they were not quite able to fathom this themselves; they sifted through the facts with grave purpose. What were they yelling about before the burst of glass? And if their lives were their own, why couldn't they repossess this part? They put their minds to it. Yet neither one of them could remember exactly what had been said; the words had dissipated, leaving only charged air. Going up, going down — that had mattered. Her looking for a job. The house, certainly. They had argued in the kitchen a while; upstairs, Helen had turned on the radio to mask the noise. "The children," she'd warned. "Quiet." And when he could not keep quiet, she told

  him many things — that she thought about leaving him, that she wished she had not married him, that she knew herself wanted by other men. How much talk spilled out of her, a lifetime of talk. Yet did she mean what she said? Never before had she wielded words of such force; she spoke to hurt, but was amazed when she succeeded. She called him a failure, a failure, a failure; Ralph hurled her to the ground. She in turn threw a hairbrush at him, her favorite hairbrush, ivory white, with an embossed back. Having never thrown anything before, she launched it like a child — flung it, really — starting somewhere near her ear, so that it teased a few strands of hair before whirlybirding, surprisingly heavy and dangerous, toward Ralph. As it flew, she remembered he had given it to her; she was relieved when it smashed a picture instead of him. When he lunged forward, she was taken aback. Shouldn't he be relieved too? But he was not relieved. As someone warbled on the radio, Ralph's thumbs hooked themselves around her windpipe. His face looked strangely melancholy and sallow; his hands might have been candles, he might have been about to bless her like a priest on Ash Wednesday. When she should have stood up from the altar rail, though, he squeezed, almost courteously, as if he only meant to be holding her breath for her, and just for a moment. Still the room spun before he came to his senses and shoved her back away from himself, out of his murderous hands. He shouted then, like a parent, "Xiao xin!" — Be careful! But it was too late. Glass tinkled; she felt the impact afterward, the firm, cool glass, breaking through.

  you." Ralph said he was having difficulties. He removed the for sale sign from the lawn and sprinkled grass seed in the hole it left. He fixed the bedroom and picture windows, glazing the edges of the glass with care. He scrubbed the panes until his reflection shone in them, spotless.

  Meanwhile, Theresa packed. It was her duty, she told herself. She was in many ways Americanized, but in this respect she was Chinese still — when family marched, she fell in step. And wasn't this what she'd longed for? Reunification, that Chinese ideal, she could not eat an orange without reciting to herself, as she did at New Year's, quart jia tuan yuan — the whole family together. Her exile was over. Helen had called. Theresa wished it had been under different circumstances. Still — she was going home! She went on working. Already her suitcases bulged with items she'd accumulated; she was surprised how many of these there were. Pictures, books, pots, pans, a set of four blue-and-white bowls she hadn't needed but had bought for fun, a window fan, a baseball mitt, scarves. What a spendthrift she'd become! Three new skirts. A geranium. Would it get enough light in her bedroom at home? And how about the cats? Would they like it there?

  Enough questions; she taped a box shut. She'd made her decision. Now she should brace herself for a shock. For was there such a thing as a real returning? She knew better than to think so. One left; things shifted in one's absence; one returned to something else. Time frustrated all. There was no sneaking past its rough guard, even to get to one's own yard of intimacies.

  All the same, she braved a run at the border.

  "Welcome homer

  "Little Brother!" So thoroughly had Theresa prepared herself for alienation, that she was taken aback by the familiarity of Ralph — that bottlebrush hair, those stuck-on ears.

  "Older Sister!" Ralph clasped her hand with the sharp-eyed equanimity of a diplomat. "Come to save us."

  z66

  "That's not the way to talk" said Helen. The tone of this exchange, Theresa knew too. "Auntie Theresa!" yelled the girls. "Auntie Theresa! Yay! Auntie's home!" His tail drawn like a sword, Grover bared his teeth. "This is Grover," said Ralph. "Lucky," Theresa said, "that my cats are in a box." "Cats?" said Ralph.

  "I have two cats." Theresa smiled. "Mona and Callie." The girls bubbled. "Mona and Callie!" Ralph frowned; Theresa, turning, sighed. Grover growled.

  Ralph civilly requested first that the cats be renamed. Everyone agreed that since Theresa could now see the real Mona and Callie as much as she liked, the cats should go back to being plain cats. Named what, though? "You choose," Theresa told the girls; which was how the cats became Barbie and Ken, even though they were both girls.

  Ralph's second civil request — that the cats be confined to Theresa's room — was less easily granted. Though Mona and Callie both swore never to let them out, Barbie and Ken kept getting loose. One day there was a squabble in which Grover's nose got clawed; Ken lost a star-shaped patch of fur. Finally it was settled that the cats would have the run of the house, while the yard and driveway would be Grover's domain. Ralph built Grover a doghouse with windows and a hinged door. He staked the doghouse into the ground with three stakes, all he had. For the fourth corner he used a nail. Everyone was satisfied.

  Except what to do with the cats' litter box? Ralph wanted it in Theresa's room. Theresa wanted it in the basement. Ralph suggested that in the basement it might stink up his office. And so it was that the litter box landed up in the nook off the kitchen, where the love seat used to be.

  "I guess it's just as well," sighed Helen. "Who knows when we'll be getting a new one?"

  Everyone agreed. Theresa's salary was barely enough; they were economizing less stringently than before, but still had to watch their expenses. And what were they going to do with a love seat anyway? They had no use for it.

  That was until Old Chao started to come around to visit Theresa. "We're back together," Theresa told Helen. "Now he wants to marry me. But what about Janis? What about their children? I told him I can't. He says it would be more honest. But the honest thing would be to break it off. I even made him tell Janis. I was sure something would happen then. But no. Nothing."

  Helen hesitated. "She told me she's getting used to the situation."

  "Really?" Theresa considered, then said, "I tell you, I don't know what the point would be anyway. I'm getting old, you know, too old to have children."

  All the same, Old Chao would come, he couldn't help it; and she could not refuse him. Their visits were awkward at first. Old Chao and Theresa were stiff with each other, embarrassed in front of Helen. With time, though, everyone adjusted.

  "Old Chao's changed," Helen observed. It wasn't just that his ailments had all cleared up; or that he went to movies now, and baseball games. Out in the backyard, he planted strawberries with Theresa, it was true; also he grilled fish with her, and argued. Sometimes they ignored each other, sometimes played catch. Certainly he had never been so playful. But what Helen noticed most of all was something else, a small thing — that Old Chao did not monitor Theresa. Janis had kept an eye on him, of course — she seemed to take it for granted that husbands bore watching. Less obviously, though, he had watched her too, with a certain impersonal alertness; she might have been an experiment in progress. Never had meditative looks come over either of them, the way they

  came over Old Chao, sometimes, now. His face, which had always appeared smooth, seemed smoother still, in this new state; he almost reminded Helen of a monk — a man at some profound leisure. Was this what trust brought? Old Chao had turned into a languorous man. He rested more. He lazed.

  He sprawled across his bed in his T-shirt and undershorts. He worried the footboard of the bed with his toes, wishing he had a beer. He pictured himself downing a six-pack. He needed a
TV in the bedroom too, then he would be like Arthur Smith. He understood Arthur now, he thought; he'd like to have a gun himself. Arthur was like Pete the super, more pride than dignity. Which was better at least than no pride and no dignity — his own situation come fall semester. He pictured Old Chao, endlessly removing the last soda from the soda machine. How was it that he, Ralph, had turned out the sort of person who would find the machine empty?

  Ribbons of laughter rose like cooking smells from downstairs. So Old Chao had scored one. Then, worse — actual cooking smells. What was Helen making? Placing his hands on the shag carpet, Ralph walked himself off the bed some, closer to the door. He lowered his nose and sniffed. Something with ham in it. What? He sniffed again but could not make it out; there was a cat odor in the rug, he realized, past which it was impossible to discern anything.

  More laughter. Helen and Theresa's voices seemed to perch like sandpipers on the stalwart breakwater that was Old Qiao's.

  Was this his house? Legs still on the bed, Ralph sank to his elbows. Why was his wife cooking for another man? When he was teaching, Helen had sometimes helped him dress — how he loved to have her straighten his tie, tuck in his shirt so that it ballooned evenly all around! Sometimes she brushed his jacket free of hair and dandruff; he adjusted her worn quilt robe in return, tugging at the shoulders, buttoning the rhinestone buttons. The inside of her button flap was warm when he slid his hand in, her flannel pajamas warmer. And yet even at those moments, moments like these remained a possibility. These moments sprang from the others like frogs from children's pockets.

  He sniffed some more, an abandoned man. He put his ear to the door, down near the scuff marks. Now Theresa was talking, something about the hospital. Helen congratulated her. Old

  Chao whooped. Ralph wrapped his head in his arms, and hugged it, and wept.