by Gish Jen
And when she laughed again, he said, “Hattie.”
And, “Don’t laugh.”
To which she replied, “I’m just trying not to cry, Carter.”
And when he put his sandwich down, and wiped his hand, and took her hand for a moment, she accepted it. And when she got an offer at a far-off lab, she accepted that, too. And when a job opened up in his department, he let her know right away.
“This is just right,” he said. “You go away and then you come back. Perfect.”
Hattie made the shortlist; her job talk was a hit. But then Guy LaPoint began to call Hattie Carter’s mistress; and when the department chair sought out people’s opinions, as he liked to, Carter did not speak up for her.
The job went, in the end, to Guy’s protégé.
“I thought you were going to help me.” By special dispensation, Carter and Hattie were actually talking, for once, out loud on the phone.
“People thought it was true,” said Carter.
“But it wasn’t.” Hattie fingered the nubs of her bedspread. “People see what they see, Hattie. You know that. What they’re primed to see.”
“But I’m not your mistress.”
“There was no use insisting.”
“Because we are construing creatures, you mean?” she said.
“Hattie.”
“Because our brains can’t be stopped from editing out the ambiguous and unexpected in favor of the ‘predicted’ and ‘coherent’?”
“Insisting would have only further reinforced what they thought, Hattie. Moved it into their cortical storage. You know that. Once there’s an established mental framework …”
“Don’t people ever change their mind?”
“Hattie.”
“What would it have cost you to say something, Carter? You have tenure.”
“Hattie.”
“Did you really just not want to piss Guy off? Is he that dangerous?”
“Hattie, stop.”
“I know. I never have understood these things.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“And why shouldn’t you see by the light of your interests, right? It’s how we’re made. As the Chinese say, ‘If it has milk, it’s the mother.’ ”
“Miss Confucius. Stop.” He sounded as though he were sixteen again, and upset over his guitar. “Stop.”
“You said you would do everything you could,” she said.
“I did,” he said. “Stop. I did. I promised.”
She stopped.
“El Honcho thinks I’m in love with you,” he said.
“Does he.” She closed her eyes.
“I don’t see what more I could have done,” he said.
• • •
The blue car bumps down the driveway; Sarun and Sophy emerge from the trailer to greet the driver, a buxom woman in a flippy red dress. She looks like a magician’s assistant, but no—she’s the magician: From her trunk she produces a computer monitor and a keyboard. A printer, a hard drive. Cables. Everyone is smiling.
“A present!” says Sophy later. “Can you believe it? Someone was giving the whole setup to the church, and they, like, thought of me right away!”
She and Sarun have used computers before, as some of their friends in their old town had them, and the library did, too. But to have their own!
“We’re going to have e-mail!” Sophy twirls and dances, her face turned like a daisy to the sky.
She is especially excited about hearing from her sisters. Not that Sophan and Sopheap haven’t been writing letters, they have. However, the letters have been short and not very interesting. Their e-mails, Sophy hopes, will say a lot more.
And sure enough, when she reports back in a few days, it is to say that her sisters are writing about all kinds of stuff—what they’re wearing, and what their foster parents are like, and what they think of the other kids. And how much they wish they could IM but how that’s not allowed. They can’t even do that much e-mail, really, because they’re limited to ten minutes per kid per day, and though the foster parents don’t read every single thing, they can.
“So there’s a lot they can’t write,” concludes Sophy, sitting in Hattie’s kitchen. “Like how much they want to get out of there. They can’t write that.”
Still, her eyes shine. No smirky commas today; Hattie feels her own spirits soften and lift.
“You can’t believe what Sopheap is eating,” Sophy goes on. “They have, like, eggs every single day. Like boiled eggs and scrambled eggs and egg salad. For a change they have peanut butter—she says she’s just waiting to get a peanut butter omelet for breakfast.”
Sophan, meanwhile, is living in a pasta palace—meaning, like, spaghetti, tortellini, fettuccini, ravioli! She signs her name Sophani! As for Sophy, she, in turn, tells them about Annie, and about Sarun, and about the trailer, and about how cold people say it gets up here in the winter, though it might not anymore because of global warming. That’s if it doesn’t get colder instead, which it could also, people say, she’s not exactly sure how, but it could. Also she tells them what happened with their dad’s back, and how much she misses them, and how much she likes the church. Because the church up here is not like the church down where they are.
“Like I told them how there’s all this great food,” she says. “Not just pasta and peanut butter. And great stuff to do.” And what she’s learning in Bible class—she writes about that, too. The Good News. “It’s hard to get by e-mail, I think,” she goes on. “But maybe they will one day. Like all of a sudden it’ll just click. That’s what Ginny says.”
Hattie stands to make coffee—setting the kettle on the stove and turning the gas to high, but then lowering it so flames don’t start lapping up campfire-style; some adjustment’s off.
“Do you mind if I pray before my cookie?” Sophy asks Hattie’s back. “Because we were just talking about that at church—how some of us are shy about praying in public. I know this isn’t public, really. But I’m trying to practice.”
“Of course, you can pray,” says Hattie. “Did I ever tell you my mother was a missionary? We prayed before every meal.”
“In China?”
Hattie nods.
“Except she was American, right?”
“Yes.”
“So you prayed in English?”
“Yes.”
“Cool.” Sophy slips off her flip-flops so she can knead Annie’s tummy with her feet; her toenails are all purple now. “I mean it would have been okay if you prayed in Chinese, too. Either way. I’m just glad.”
“Because you’ve been worried, haven’t you? That maybe I’m not with Christ.” Hattie starts to pour hot water over the grounds in the paper cones, only to run out. She refills the kettle partway and sets it back on the stove.
Sophy nods. “We were talking in Bible class about how important it is to keep a wall around our belief. Like how the devil goes looking for weak spots, and how fast the wall can fall, and how important it is to know, like, where our gaps are.”
Gaps. Walls.
“Well, I’m Christian,” Hattie says, still standing. “And my mother’s family are as God-fearing as they come. Lots of ministers and deacons. The women all sing in the choir.”
“Do you go to church?”
“I do. I go to the Unitarian church every Sunday, just about.”
“What about your mother?”
“Was she with Christ, you mean?”
Sophy nods.
“Yes. But, you know, my mother eventually found that she could not go on converting people. And I guess I inherited some of her feeling that we could not rightly go on thinking that my father’s whole family and most everyone else we knew were going to hell as they deserved because they refused to accept God’s pardoning grace—that baptism was the only door to a sanctified life. It was just so hard to believe God could really have set things up that way. As if all that mattered was whether or not they were with Christ—as if that were more important than the peopl
e themselves, and if they were good.”
Sophy’s face is blank, as if stuck between thoughts; the kettle whistles.
“Does your church teach that, too?” asks Hattie, turning. “That your mom and dad and brothers and sisters are all damned?”
Sophy bestirs herself enough to scratch Annie around her ears. “Ginny says that we can forgive and turn the other cheek and stuff, but that we can’t be soft on salvation.”
“And that you need to steer clear of your family?” Hattie pours. “That they’re gaps?”
“Yes.”
Hattie pours a bit more.
“So did she stay a Christian?” asks Sophy.
“My mother?”
Sophy moves Annie’s head up and down.
“She did.” Hattie places the mugs on the table, sits, then thinks ice—it’s warm out, after all—and stands again.
“Did she believe in God and pray?”
“She did.”
Hattie puts the ice in a bowl; it shines invitingly. Still, Hattie is surprised that Sophy immediately accepts some. Maybe her parents drank iced coffee in Cambodia? Or is her acquaintance through Dunkin’ Donuts? Who knows where she’s learned what she’s learned.
“Did she believe in Satan, and in heaven and hell, and in the second coming?” Sophy goes on.
“She believed in them as allegories. Do you know what that means?” Hattie sits.
“It means she didn’t really believe.”
“She did, Sophy.” Hattie’s voice rises like a gym teacher’s, more emphatic than she would have anticipated. “She did believe. She was a good woman. God-fearing.”
“Did she make you pray?”
“No. She believed it was our choice.” Hattie’s own ice cracks loudly.
“And if you made the wrong choice?”
“She believed in universal salvation. Do you know what that means?”
“It means she didn’t believe in salvation by faith through grace.”
How hard Ginny’s been working! A certified teacher, who never could find herself a job, people say. But now here she was, it seems, teaching with a vengeance.
“She did believe in salvation by faith through grace,” Hattie says. “She just didn’t believe that that was the only path to salvation. She believed God’s pardoning love extended to everyone.”
“What about ‘I am the way and the life’?”
“You mean John 14:6. ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me’?”
Sophy nods.
“I don’t know, but I am going to guess that she would argue that ‘by Me’ God doesn’t mean by way of Christian faith, but by way of Christ’s sacrifice—that it is as a result of his sacrifice that everyone ‘cometh unto the Father.’ ”
Sophy is quiet.
“You know, churches are smart,” Hattie goes on. “They know their parishioners. A good pastor listens carefully, and then works hard at giving his flock what it needs. And don’t you find that? That the church gives you something you need?”
Sophy nods.
“They understand you and serve you. Include you. But let me ask you. Do you actually believe in God, or do you just like the church?”
Sophy waggles her head. “I try to believe.”
“What about karma and reincarnation? Do you believe in any of that Buddhist stuff anymore?”
“Sort of. Reincarnation for sure. And grace is kind of like good karma.”
“Except that one you earn and the other is a gift from God.”
“I guess.” Sophy hugs herself, crossing her arms under her breasts.
Has Hattie pushed too hard? She drinks a little.
“Oh, but I forgot.” Hattie gone batty! “Do you still want to pray? Because I’ll pray with you. It’s okay. We can say grace.”
But Sophy does not want to pray anymore. Neither does she want a cookie when Hattie pushes the plate toward her.
“ ‘Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank,’ ” Hattie recites softly.
Sophy uncurls.
“I’m not a gap in your wall,” says Hattie. “Do you remember how Daniel kept his window open? Keeping his own faith? I’m just keeping my window open, like Daniel.”
Sophy has her silver flip-flops on. “God has a plan for me,” she says. “I believe that.”
“Is that what Ginny told you?”
Sophy heads straight to the slider. Her flip-flops make no noise as they hit the floor but they do smack smack smack as they hit her feet. She leaves the screen door half open behind her.
First the cell tower and now Value-Mart! A Value-Mart rep’s been invited to a select board meeting, but it is not clear what for; the town has no leverage over their project. Still, on Value-Mart Day, as they call it, people jam Town Hall. The floor fans roar as if with the outrage of the people in front of them; the people themselves, though, sit stony and stunned.
“All the zoning ordinance says is that ‘any prospective enterprise must be adjacent to and contiguous with existing town businesses,’ ” says Greta, grim. “It says nothing about the size of the enterprise or its nature.”
Her mouth is tight, as is Hattie’s; four or five rows behind them, Carter, too, Hattie can’t help but notice, is all but lipless. Who can believe Value-Mart could have gotten this far? When there’d been so much controversy over even an inn that it had had to close its doors? And who would have dreamed that the inn’s owner would go offering the thing to Value-Mart, much less that Value-Mart would want it?
But open a new exit off the interstate, and what do you know—the world’s rolling in. Everyone’s seen the renderings: a concrete box taking up an entire acre, it seems, and many more acres paved over for parking. Hattie pictures the cars in their spaces—a very different lineup from the one before her now: so many concerned citizens, sitting, in the heat and humidity, with their thighs V’ed—their legs making for a kind of zigzag if you look down a row at lap level. Everyone is sweating, Hattie included; she cools her fingers on the metal struts of her chair.
Road Budget. A review of the town library hours. Discussion of a proposed new stop sign at the corner of Cat and Dog Streets. As Jim Wright’s left town, Judge Lukens is subbing in until they can name a replacement chair; he moves through the agenda with dispatch, his reading glasses a small glinty interruption of his large, focused face.
“Next—Introduction of Value-Mart,” he says.
The Value-Mart rep stands. An older man with a close-cropped beard, he talks so glowingly of the jobs Value-Mart can bring Riverlake that though most people remain cross-armed, Beth, Hattie sees, tilts her head one way then the other; and she’s not the only one wavering. Why doesn’t Neddy Needham stand up the way he did at the cell tower meeting? Whose town is this? he should be demanding, with dignified passion. Answering, with heat, Not yours, sir. Not yours!
So far, though, this meeting is more desperation than glory.
“This a done deal?” asks Jed Jamison.
The rep smiles. “Well, we do, of course, require a number of permits from the state,” he says. “Environmental, septic, traffic, and so on.”
“Have you filed for them?” asks Hattie.
“We have.”
Silence.
“You need any permits from town?” Judy Tell-All’s eyelashes are spiky as ever, but her manner is not.
“We need a conditional-use permit,” the rep concedes. He has the app right in front of him. “So far as I know, though, we are in compliance with the ordinance as written.”
Murmurs. Can an interim zoning ordinance be passed? Greta sits forward. No urging Hattie to talk today; Greta simply throws her braid back and raises her own hand high.
“I’m wondering if you know anything about a lawsuit going on north of here,” she says—standing, uncharacteristically, almost before she is called on. “As I understand it, the town tried to rework their zoning ordinance
against Value-Mart, only to find the legality of the entire state statute from which their power derives being challenged.”
Now it’s Judge Lukens sitting forward; he cups his good ear.
“Ah, yes, I have heard about that, ah, lawsuit,” says the rep.
“Is it not true that regardless of how the ruling goes, our neighbor is in trouble? Is it not true that even if the court rules in its favor, the legal fees stand to bankrupt the town, and that Value-Mart is banking on that? That they know they can force the town into mediation, and into making concessions that way?” Greta does not sit immediately the way she normally does, but stands swaying an extra moment instead, like a bull that could charge.
“Well, I don’t know that we’re banking on anything, as you put it.” The rep shuffles a little to the side, as if to stay clear of trouble. “For that you’d have to talk to the legal department.”
“But you did take the town to court,” puts in Neddy Needham at last. He does not raise his hand, but simply stands as Greta sits, as if taking her place. Jill Jenkins, next to him, looks up admiringly; and indeed, it is hard not to notice, not only how much weight he’s lost, but how his voice has deepened, and his air of command. Some people are calling him “Ned” now, instead of “Neddy,” and it isn’t just Jill Jenkins, it seems, who’s registered the change: For there sits Carter in a hot square of window light, studiously immersing himself in the intricacies of the agenda. Never mind that it is only six lines long; he scowls at it as if at a federal science budget.
“I, myself, did not personally do anything,” says the rep.
“You took the town to court,” repeats Neddy. “With a willingness to bring down the whole zoning ordinance if you had to.”
People look up hopefully, but Neddy stalls out, failing to attain any great oratorical height. It is Jill Jenkins who leaps to her feet like a madwoman.
“I find that outrageous!” she cries.
Chaos erupts. Lukens calls for order; Greta elbows Hattie. Before she can figure out what she might usefully interject, though, Carter raises his elegant hand.
“I see that there is one more item on the agenda,” he says coolly. “A review of the policies of the Riverlake waste management district.”