Em's Awful Good Fortune

by Marcie Maxfield

  PUDONG VS. PUXI

  Gee’s company sent us back to China, this time to look for a place to live. Modern apartments with killer views versus old-world charm. Convenience versus square feet. It’s like being on a game show. Only on House Hunters International, the couples always end up compromising—that’s because it was their idea to move to Lisbon or Buenos Aires. I’m being shanghaied, so I’m not so open to compromise. I want a nice apartment in a cool neighborhood with a great view, and it’s Jake’s job to make that happen.

  Gee and I are sitting in the back of the van, on opposite ends of the seat, each of us hugging our own window, watching the city unfold, our hands meeting in the middle, palms squeezing. It’s funny how holding hands without speaking can allow you to have two completely different experiences together. Just the physical act of intertwining fingers can mask divergent inner monologues. Probably Gee’s thinking, This is so fucking awesome, and I know I’m thinking, This is so fucking crazy. He shoulda been thinking his wife is a saint to consider moving to China with him, but, knowing Gee, he’s thinking about his job and how he has five hundred emails to answer so we need to wrap up this apartment-hunting thing so that he can get back to work. I’m wondering who my friends will be. Will I walk to the wet market, casually pass the bullfrogs packed in mesh bags, and buy those green beans that are as long as jump ropes? Will I be happy cooking? Will cooking fill the hours of the day that I used to spend working?

  We aren’t holding hands with Jake, but there is an element of hand-holding in his job description: make the lǎowài feel comfortable about moving to China; help them find an apartment, open a bank account; hook ’em up with cell phones and metro passes; teach them to carry their own toilet paper and watch out for cars, because pedestrians do not have the right of way; show them where the expat hospital is, just in case. Don’t forget to point out the Pearl Tower—that iconic, Jetsonian, “the future is now” landmark that flashes neon at night. Shanghai is touted as the Pearl of the Orient, and it does shine bright after dark. It’s a city made for vampires, but in the dull light of day, there’s a crumbling veneer of dirt, grime, and mildew.

  “Why does everything look so ravaged?” I wonder out loud. Most of Shanghai was built in the past ten or twenty years, so why does it all look so preternaturally old?

  “Accelerated decay,” Gee says. The result of harsh environmental factors, coal burning, and sneaker factories. Not just shoes, obviously. Purses, textiles, auto aftermarket, agrochemicals, disinfectants, furniture, pharmaceuticals … You name it, most likely some part of it is made or glued together in Shanghai. Everything for sale cheap in the States blowing toxic smoke out of chimneys in China. No regulations. You can’t call it deregulation because the Chinese have never even tried to keep the place clean. Our “sweet spot,” Gee says, is apartment buildings that have been built in the past two to eight years. Before two years, there’s off-gassing, glue and paint leaching, like a homegrown chemical spill, and after eight years, you deal with high-speed degeneration.

  “I wonder what that does to the body.”

  “What?” Gee responds, like he can’t quite make the cognitive leap from factories to flesh.

  “Accelerated decay,” I repeat. “I wonder how that impacts the human body.”

  “It’s only three years, doll. Besides, you’re not a high-rise,” he says, pinching my thigh for emphasis. I don’t say anything else. I’ve learned to keep my fears under wraps. He’ll just dismiss them anyway. But also, I’m hoping he’s right. That we’ll get a free pass for three years.

  Since we’ve been married, we’ve lived in five cities in four countries across three continents. And that doesn’t count the times Gee has moved overseas without the family, leaving me alone with a fulltime job and a kid or two. This is not a normal life. Maybe it sounds spoiled and petty not to be wowed by our good fortune, but in a way, the good fortune is all his. Every time we relocate, I quit my job; every time we return, Gee moves up a rung on the corporate ladder. It’s asking a lot of employees to uproot their lives and move to a foreign country. But that’s what Gee signed on for—he works in project management, and he goes where the job is, whether that means a few months on a cruise ship to Alaska or a year building an expo in Osaka. It’s asking more of me to tag along. In the past, this meant pulling the kids out of school and quitting my job; this time, it will mean shuttering my consulting business. Theoretically, I’m willing to do that, but so much rests on our ability to find a place that feels like it could be our home—clean and safe, convenient and comfortable.

  No, that’s not it—that’s not nearly enough. Our house in Los Angeles is all of that and more. It’s a 1950s postwar bungalow that we painstakingly renovated into an enviable hang. That’s the thing we do best, me and Gee: fix up places. I work in the design industry now, and Gee’s handy with a power tool. Our house is not grand but not shabby, pas mal, reasonably good: palm trees, kidney-shaped dipping pool in the backyard, friendly neighbors, and an unofficial off-leash dog park a few blocks away. On weekends, Gee fires up the grill and people come to chill. We have a life in LA, a good life, so in order for me to give it all up, an apartment in Shanghai will have to be way more than comfortable.

  Jake throws the wow at us big-time. Apartments so ritzy, I joke that Gee must be a big shot now. Maybe that’s why his jaw clenches so much on this trip. Gee’s worried about this gig in China, but not the in-China part—he’s worried about deadlines and budgets; he’s worried about nuts and bolts. And he’s worried that I might refuse to come, because this time I really am on the fence. I’m up there, swaying. Will she or won’t she?

  Jake is pushing Pudong, with its private elevators, marble floors, and gold-leaf powder rooms, so outrageously excessive I’m almost tempted to say yes just for the sheer, outlandish fun of it. For the social media bragging rights. You could roller-skate from the bedroom to the kitchen in a place this big. But we don’t have little kids, and a formal dining room that seats ten will just make me feel their absence more acutely.

  Anyway, Mina says we’ll like Puxi better. This is how she explained the difference between Pudong and Puxi: Pudong is close to the international schools, but Puxi has the culture and great restaurants.

  “You and Gee will be happier in Puxi,” she assured me. “It’s more authentic.”

  Such a polite way to say, Now that you’re empty nesters.

  Only we’re not really empty nesters. Our kids haven’t exactly moved out; they’re just not coming with us to China. They’re millennials. Rio is sort of in college, and Ruby is kind of working. They both have a revolving-door relationship with our house in Los Angeles; whenever one of them is in between jobs or schools or apartments, they move back home for a soft landing.

  “I’m worried about leaving them alone,” I tell Gee.

  “They’re adults,” he says, reminding me that we were on our own at their age.

  And it’s true. We were in our twenties when we met. We fell hard, like every love song ever made rolled into one. Birds chirping in surround sound, the earth moving under our feet, we had Love On The Brain. Six weeks later, Gee packed his bags and moved clear across the country.

  “Come with me,” he urged, standing so close you couldn’t slip a piece of paper between us. “It’ll be an adventure.” He was in cutoffs, hair bleached and spiky, wearing a ripped-up Slow Children T-shirt (that’s the name of the garage-punk band he roadied for), while I leaned into him, whispering, “Baby, please don’t go.” Years we spent trying to make a long-distance relationship work. I thought when I finally followed him to California that Los Angeles would become my new home—not just a home base or a place to store our things while we lived overseas.

  Puxi versus Pudong?

  I hold on to what Mina says like it’s solid science, because I need to trust someone and I’m not sure we can trust Jake. Don’t get me wrong, I like Jake; he’s chatty and easy to be with. But it feels like he’s hustling us, trying to fast-talk us into an
apartment we’ll end up being miserable in for the next three years. We chat in the van in between stops. He tells me how he met his wife during college in the States; they got married in Vegas and moved back to Asia to cash in on being Chinese and speaking English, but now his wife and kids are living with her family in Taiwan and he’s living alone in Shanghai, working. The lure of big bucks. So, in a way, we have similar lives. Global nomads. Although my guess is that Jake lives in a shoebox outside the city. I’m careful not to sound spoiled when turning my nose up at these over-the-top luxury apartments. I politely tell him that we don’t need so much space. I want something that will feel like home, not a game show. But more than that, I want something I don’t have in Los Angeles, which is urban life; I want to be able to walk out my door and stroll down the street to a café or a museum. If our nest is empty, I want our lives to be full. Maybe this will be a chance for me and Gee to reconnect. To find out if, when we strip away the kids or a bathroom remodel, we still have something left to say to each other.

  But Gee and I are just a file on Jake’s desk; he’s not concerned with our marriage. Jake has his own agenda—it’s more about doing business with his real estate buddies than finding us our dream apartment. Jake and his pals high-five each other as they shuffle us into elevators in half-empty apartment buildings, speaking Chinese all the way to the fifty-second floor. These exchanges are called guanxi, which officially means “relationships that facilitate business dealings.” In the States, we’d call them kickbacks.

  “Wow,” Gee says when he sees the view on our next stop. It makes me feel woozy. I close my eyes and dig my nails into my palms. Once, I was on a business trip in New York and got stuck in a hotel elevator for hours. It was crowded, too, everyone freaking out in different languages. At least it was glass; the entire hotel could see us suspended in air, so I knew we’d get out eventually. But these elevators are dark and small, and this is China.

  Gee leans over the balcony in amazement. “Look at the river, Em. I bet this view is spectacular at night.”

  “It’s a nice view, but then what?” I say. I don’t tell Gee it makes me nervous to be so high. Instead I say, “I feel like Jake is trying to slam-dunk us into Pudong.”

  “Yeah,” Gee agrees. “There’s nothing but high-rises in Pudong. It’s overbuilt and expat-friendly.”

  “That’s why they call it Pujersey behind its back,” I joke.

  I’m holding out for something charming. This is potentially the fourth relocation that Mina has handled for us. She gave me the lowdown on neighborhoods when she dropped off my visa and itinerary. Gee was already in China on an extended business trip. Mina stopped by our house on her way home from work. It was getting dark outside, and she looked worn out. I hear the company is moving hundreds of families for Gee’s project. We were sitting on stools at my kitchen table, a restaurant-quality, stainless steel–and–butcher block work surface. This is the table where we do everything: carve turkeys, blow out birthday candles, play backgammon, work from home, and sometimes work out our differences. It bears the nicks and stains of our lives. I mention our kitchen table because it’s something (else) I would have to leave behind, along with our kids and pooch, if I say yes to China. I know it’s just a table, but it needs to be noted that I wasn’t sitting in LA, thinking, Damn, I’ve always wanted to visit the Great Wall and see those terra cotta warriors.

  “You and Gee will like Puxi,” Mina said, as if she knows us—even though the three of us have never been in one room at the same time. She rattled off Puxi’s advantages like a travel agent: art deco architecture, museums, and restaurants. “It’s got everything,” she said.

  “Everything,” I repeated. Let it roll on my tongue. Tasted the sound of it. And immediately, sight unseen, I knew that was where we should live.

  Based on what Mina said, I have my heart set on the Former French Concession (FFC), on the Puxi side of the Huangpu River: storybook quaint; wide, tree-lined streets; boutiques and galleries; noodle shops and organic markets.

  Jake shakes his head doubtfully, as if finding us a nice place in the FFC will be difficult. Instead, he shows us some crummy apartments, cramped and boxy little flats that would be perfect for a grad student. I don’t even have to nix them; I can see Gee’s jawline sharpen—there’s that clenching again—when Jake tries to sell him on this complex by telling him how many of his coworkers will be living there, including his assistant. Gee’s ego doesn’t flare often, but this rankles him. And then Jake takes us to a building in the heart of the FFC that I nickname 4100 Cockroaches; I nix that one. When we suggest that he dig deeper, Jake says that maybe the FFC isn’t in our budget and I say, “That’s good to know, because I don’t want to move to China anyway.” That’s when Gee smiles. He likes it when I get tough, as long as he’s not the target.

  “Maybe we should look at a serviced apartment,” Gee suggests, “in case Em decides not to move to China.” He squeezes my hand tight as he says this.

  So Jake shows us a serviced apartment in Pudong, which is basically a bachelor pad with housekeeping. Functional and spotless. It has a bedroom, bathroom, couch, and TV, plus a kitchenette. Even a washer-dryer. It would be like living in a hotel for three years.

  “I could do this, Em,” Gee says. “You don’t have to come.”

  And I don’t. Nobody’s holding a gun to my head. But three years is a long assignment. I’m having a hard time being okay with making Gee live here alone, and I know how hard separation can be on a marriage. And my design consulting business isn’t nearly as lucrative as this opportunity for Gee, so it only makes sense that I should accompany him. Marriage is a partnership. That’s what partners do. I just wish his success didn’t always come at the expense of mine. That’s happened slowly, over time; the decisions I’ve made along the way have not always been considered and logical. Life is complicated. It’s not like he stole anything from me; it was more like a gift than a theft. I gave him my thunder, just handed it over. Here, take the remains of what I hold dear.

  “We’ll find something we love,” Gee promises. He’s talking about apartments. And then, really quietly, so Jake can’t hear, he whispers, “We just have to push back harder than they push us.”

  Here’s what I know: Jake may not care about whether I move to Shanghai with Gee, but he does care about pleasing his boss, whose name is Kimberly. And Kimberly, well, she doesn’t give a hoot about the status of our marriage either, but Gee’s company is her cash cow, and that makes Mina her boss. And Mina says we’ll like Puxi better than Pudong, and Shanghai has the good air, and what she doesn’t say, what she doesn’t need to say, is that it’s her job to make sure Gee’s company maintains the appearance of family values. That means keeping us together, as opposed to breaking up a marriage.

  ÇA NE MARCHE PAS — IT DOESN’T WORK

  I suck as a tagalong wife. The thought occurred to me as I was walking home late one night, so late it was nearly morning, the streets so quiet, the only sound was the click of my heels on pavement. Real heels, not sneakers or rubber soles like I wear in Los Angeles. We’re talking boots, buttery leather, the kind that pull up and hug your calf, soft and tight, almost second skin. Bought them during les soldes. The rest of the year, I walked around the Marais, nose pressed against shop windows, eyeing architecturally designed white shirts and handmade purses, making mental notes, waiting patiently for the sales to begin; that’s when Frenchwomen pounce. Only tourists pay full price. And I was not a tourist. I was not an expat, either. I was something in between: year two of a four-year overseas post—not long enough to speak proper French, but just long enough to know how to shop like a real Frenchwoman. In Paris, the best sales only come twice a year: January and June. Talk about pent-up desire.

  It was the wee hours, when all good wives are tucked into bed next to their husbands, and there I was, stumbling along back streets, my dress wrinkled, smelling like a wine-soaked ashtray. I was gonna pretend I sucked because I had no real homemaking skills, whi
ch is true, but that would be a skim-over. I wanted to slip it in on the sly, the whole thing about the poet. How I ran around with him during the day, drinking half a carafe of rosé at lunch, Côtes de Provence, then showed up at school late on the back of his moped. My kids waiting in front of the ivy-covered entrance on Rue du Ranelagh, Headmistress V. standing between them with an arm draped over each tiny shoulder. The three of them glaring at me.

  I wanted to gloss over my struggle to do the simplest household tasks, like how to work the appliances or write a check for eighty-five euros without needing a dictionary to spell quatre-vingt-cinq, which explains why I paid the electric bill and the gas bill in cash, scheduled a repairman in person, and spent an entire morning standing in line, as the salesman in the BHV appliance department asked questions and I repeated, “Ça ne marche pas” over and over, like some mad-housewife mantra. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and no, I can’t describe in French the exact malfunction: that it starts and stops and sputters, sometimes making a high-pitched whining noise; that other times it clunks and clangs so loudly, I’m afraid the neighbors will complain. All I knew how to say was, “It’s not working.” Ça ne marche pas. And you know we’re not talking about washing machines anymore, right?