The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  "I made those prawns just yesterday," said Sam. He thought of the American writer in his kitchen, her ease as she watched him cook, her careful eyes, her perception that never lagged no matter how much he told her. The inflection of her speech, which was sunny and American and sounded like home to him. Even though what she told him just before she left, about her husband's death, fell like a heavy weight. "I made them for the woman writing the article."

  "Ah, the woman!" They leaned forward.

  "Forget it," Sam said. "She's in a bad situation. Her husband died—"

  "A widow," clucked Tan.

  "—and there is some matter here in China over his estate." He stopped at the sound of an American voice behind him.

  "What are you guys talking about? That's some fast Chinese."

  "Hi," said Sam, turning. It was David Renfrew, one of the shifting crowd of foreigners he had met here. He had thought he would find friends among them, as they, like him, were outsiders, but so far he had not. "We were actually talking about prawns," he said. "Have you eaten?" It was a traditional Chinese greeting, but said in English, from one American to another, it had an agreeable irony.

  "Just did," David said. "I heard you were on TV last night. You're up for the cooking games."

  "Auditioning for the team," Sam said.

  "Good luck."

  "Thanks. Meet my uncles." Sam circled a hand around the table. "We were just going over what I should cook. David Renfrew, Jiang Wanli, Tan Jingfu. Jiang is a retired food scholar, Tan a retired chef. David is a banker."

  "Pleased to meet you," said David.

  "Pleased," they both murmured back in English.

  "So." David turned back to Sam. He still spoke little Chinese after all his time here, and didn't really try. That was typical. David had been here a bit longer than most, the average expatriate stay being only about two years, but he still lived the laowai life. With occasional excursions for variation, this generally meant shuttling between the office and the circuit of clubs and hotels and gyms and restaurants that were aimed at foreigners.

  "When was the last time I saw you?" David said. "Hold it, I know. That party at the Loft. Right?"

  "I think so." That had been one of those nights when Sam had gone out even though he hadn't really wanted to.

  "You know who else was at that party?" said David. "Her." He trained his eyes on someone across the room. "I saw her that night. She was a friend of someone I used to know. Damn, what's her name?"

  Sam leaned to the side in his chair to follow David's gaze. "Where?" he said to David, and then, "Oh, I know her." He recognized her short, tentative posture, her straight fall of hair. She worked in the Sun Building. He'd met her through a Dutchman who knew her there, a guy who managed a shipping company. Piet. What had happened to Piet? Gone back to Europe. Then he had seen this girl occasionally at parties. She seemed young, maybe a little naïve, but nothing about her had really caught his attention. "That's Xiao Yu," he said.

  "Xiao Yu! That's it. Thanks."

  "Do you know her?"

  "No. Well, I met her. At my friend's place. That was a while ago. Forgot her name." A possibility ticked across his precisely edged Teutonic features. "I'm not stepping on toes, am I?"

  "You mean her and me?" said Sam. "No."

  "Just asking."

  "We're barely acquainted." Sam sent a glance to Xiao Yu. "I mean, feel free," he said to David.

  "Thanks," the American said. "I will. Hey. It's been a long time, hasn't it? We should catch up."

  "We should," Sam said.

  "Call me. We'll have coffee. I'm at work all the time." David turned his smile on the uncles. "Nice to meet you," he said. Then he left.

  "Your friend?" inquired Uncle Jiang, and Sam nodded.

  "Did he want you to make an introduction to that girl?"

  "No," said Sam, watching David move away through the tables. "He met her before. He just forgot her name."

  Jiang raised one white eyebrow.

  But Sam had his gaze beyond his uncles, still on David. Now he was coming up behind her. She didn't see him. He reached a hand out to her shoulder. She started, and turned, and all the way across the room Sam could see the gladness in her eyes. She was so open to him. It made Sam sad. Why? She was no child. It was none of his business. He looked away. Maybe the feeling arose in him because of the American woman. He felt sorry for her too.

  "Let's go back to texture," Jiang prodded.

  "Good." Sam turned.

  "So far we have been talking about things that are cui, crunchy. Consider the spongy quality of intestines. Take the Nine Twists, the way they make the intestines into soup in Sichuan. And in Amoy they stuff them with glutinous rice and cook them and slice them cold with soy sauce."

  "Don't forget Hangzhou!" Tan put in. "There they stuff the intestine not only with rice but also with smaller and smaller intestines, so it slices into concentric rings. So clever."

  "Flavor rich, texture delicate," Jiang said with a sigh.

  Sam rolled his eyes. "Intestines are out."

  "You should consider," said Tan. "At least you should learn to make them. Hangzhou style. No cuisine has more richness behind it. Or more literary history. Of all the times you have visited Little Xie there, did he not show you?"

  "Not that dish," said Sam. He was in some ways closest of all to Uncle Xie, his Third Uncle—so called because he was the youngest of them. The best part of Sam's apprenticeship had been sweated through in Hangzhou, under the old man's displeasure and his tantrums and his praise. Xie had taught him many dishes, but not the intestines.

  "Xie could really make that dish," said Tan. "But your father did it best. Even better than Xie. Don't tell me he didn't show you."

  "He didn't," said Sam. Jiang and Tan still didn't grasp the fact that his father had taught him nothing. When Sam was small, Liang Yeh had gone to work and come home every day and then sat alone in his little study. He would read and let himself wander, staring at the wall while unspooling scenes from paintings and operas, movies, and the classics of art and philosophy. In his mind men fought with swords, leapt and floated in the air. He was often far away when the young Sam would walk into the room looking for him. His mouth would be loose and his hand a light flutter on his book. "Hey," Sam would say, and his father's eyes would bounce to him, surprised.

  To Sam as a child, this seemed merely like his father. But by the time he reached high school he understood that Liang Yeh was different. At games and other obligatory events, his mother, who had enough vitality for three people, managed to anchor all the interactions. Liang Yeh would stand apart, remote, attentive, his hands jammed for warmth into his layers of jackets and shirts. "How is it you Americans do not feel the cold?" he would say to the other parents—and that was if he spoke to them at all.

  But Sam was in China now. Heaven had given him the gift ofhis uncles. "I have been thinking," he said. "I am allowed to have three assistants at the banquet. What about the two of you and—you don't think Xie will be well enough to come, do you? I worry that he's not over his illness." For illness Sam used the word maobing, which literally meant "hair of an illness," showing his optimism that any indisposition would soon be over. "In which case I will just have two," he finished, "the two of you."

  They exchanged looks. "Nephew," said Jiang, "Xie is far beyond helping you cook. He is worse; to speak truly, he is gravely ill. Bing ru gao huang." The disease has attacked his vitals.

  "What?" Sam said. Sometimes the little four-character sayings went right past him. Chinese was a living web of references and allusions, a language that was at its best with short verse and metaphorical sayings. So much of the web of civilization was out of his reach that plain conversation often eluded him.

  Tan shook his head with a gravity that made the meaning clear.

  "That bad?" said Sam.

  "Yu shi chang ci," Jiang said after a moment, He's going to go away from this world for a long time.

  "I thought he was bett
er," said Sam.

  "A little," Tan answered. "For a while."

  "Then I have to go to Hangzhou," he said.

  Jiang nodded. His face was pale.

  "I was going to go after the audition."

  The interval of silence sent unwelcome recognition around the table. "Maybe that will be too late," said Jiang.

  "Then I'll go now."

  "Nephew," said Tan, "it is filial of you. But there is the contest. You must prepare. Xie would want you to do that."

  "True," said Jiang. "And even if you try to go, you may not get a ticket. It is almost National Day."

  None of that changed anything.

  "Stay and prepare," Jiang repeated.

  "Xie will understand," added Tan.

  Sam knew this was demurral and not truth. Jiang and Tan wanted him to go see Third Uncle. They expected it. But they had to counsel him not to, then later reluctantly agree when he insisted. "I'm going," Sam said.

  "Well," said Jiang, as if resigning. "Then ask him to give you a dish for the banquet. One of his specialties."

  "The pork ribs," said Tan. "Oh! Ruanyiruan," So soft. "The meat falls away in your mouth. He marinates them, then rolls them in five-spice rice crumbles. They are wrapped in lotus leaves and steamed for hours."

  "Soft as a pillow," said Jiang.

  "I could eat that right now," said Sam. "Okay. I'll start working on the ticket right away." His eyes wandered back to David and Xiao Yu. Where they had been talking was only a blank patch of wall. They were gone. Had they sat down? He scanned the tables, the waiters moving sideways through the aisles. No. They had left. He felt the twinge again inside him, the odd feeling he'd had before, the pleasantness of the hour with Maggie McElroy. Where had David and Xiao Yu gone? He kept thinking that the next time he glanced over he might find them standing there again, restored. But he did not.

  On his way to the office Carey had tried to settle on what he would tell Maggie. Too little would disrespect her, while too much would hurt her unnecessarily. He fiddled with what to do. Tell her the truth, of course, but only when she asked and only that part of the truth which pertained.

  He remembered, when he'd met her here in Beijing three years ago, being aware right away that she did not know. She has no idea, he remembered thinking. Matt never told her.

  Carey was not surprised. He would not have told either. So Matt had gone a little wild; so what? He'd pulled his reins in quickly enough, and by himself, too. Let it be, was Carey's feeling. He was a nice man, Maggie seemed like a nice woman, no need for them to suffer. Let them be as happy as they could. That's what he had thought. Now of course he half wished Matt had told her himself, so he wouldn't have to.

  Not that it was what Matt would have intended. Matt was a steady man, a man of rules; this Carey had seen about him from the first moment. He could still see Matt at the airport, with his hyper-organized luggage, his smooth, clean face smelling of the shave-soap provided on the plane. The man had force. His legal work was like that too, meticulous, powerful, unbending. He stayed with the rules. He was, Carey knew, exactly the type who sometimes had to break out.

  It was a pattern he had seen before. He guessed one in twenty were like Matt, good, hardworking guys who bolted their traces when they came to this place where everything was on offer, where a wild, clubby economy turned cartwheels around the power center of government, where any desire could be satisfied.

  "Let's go out," Matt had said at the end of his first day in the Beijing office, on his first visit, seven years before. That was the beginning. He had left even Carey in the dust, and Carey was known far and wide as a king of the night. They roamed from one pulsing spot to another on Sanlitun. After the crowded bars and the costume raves Matt would walk away and negotiate with the women who worked the clubs. Carey tried to tell him there were finer women to be had elsewhere, only marginally more expensive, women with something close to beauty, even class. A phone call away, come, let's go—No. Matt would go for the bargirl. And he would walk up to the African drug dealers too, relaxed, companionable. He'd ask them what was up, like they were in New York. Not a blink. They'd always tell him what they had, hashish, ecstasy, LSD. He bought hashish and rolled it with tobacco. That was where he drew the line. His restraint when it came to drugs fit with the other Matt, the married man, the one Carey had met at the airport. And that was the Matt who showed up at the office after their nights on the town—always on time, frayed but ready—and put in a full day's work. This impressed Carey. The man was a rock.

  But Matt started to feel guilty. On his second visit, later that same year, he came into Carey's office one afternoon and said he'd decided he should just go ahead and call Maggie now and tell her everything.

  "Have you lost your mind?" Carey remembered saying. "Why would you tell her?"

  "Because I tell her everything."

  "Things like this?"

  "I never did things like this before."

  "You tell her this and you'll change everything. Ask yourself—are you going to do it again? Is this going to be your new lifestyle?"

  "No! I feel bad already."

  "Then don't do it anymore. And don't tell your wife. She doesn't need to suffer." His hand strayed to the file he had been working on. The clock had been running on the client and he didn't like to stop. "It's okay, man," he added gently. "Everybody slips a few times."

  Matt had thanked him, and agreed that yes, this was the thing to do. "You'll have to find a new late-night companion," he joked, and Carey told him that would be no problem. At the same time, he was not surprised Matt had climbed back into himself, red-faced, so quickly. This too he had seen before.

  But two evenings after that, Matt buzzed him again, on his cell. It was late. The office was almost empty. Carey was ready to leave anyway. And there was Matt again, that same excited edge in his voice, saying, "I know what I said, but can't help it. Let's go out."

  "Okay," Carey said, feeling his own smile form. At moments like these Matt was as willful and open as a child. He acted on his needs. There was something almost like purity about him, an uprush from inside. Maybe it was because of this that Carey indulged Matt in those first few years, went out with him, shepherded him. They were two friends who knew each other only at this single crossing in their lives. The two men rarely spoke when Matt wasn't in China. The last year before Matt died they had not talked at all. And then he was gone. Carey was well aware of the fact that he had other friends he knew better. Still, it was hard to think of Matt now, this past year, without a bolt of sorrow.

  From outside his door he heard the tones of his secretary and beside her another voice—Maggie. The door opened and in came the widow, her walk slow, hyperconscious. She had changed in the three years. Her face, always too sharply arranged to be called pretty, had started its turn toward the elegant concavity of age. Her body looked ropier than he remembered, under loose, neutral clothes. Care and grief had her in a cage, leaving only her large eyes, which now burned with extra intensity, as if compensating for the rest of her. "How are you?" he said, uselessly, and rose to give her a hug.

  "Had better years," she said into his shoulder.

  They sat a few minutes talking. Their words made circles around Matt, remembering him, trying to laugh about him, talking about the shock of his death—"Christ, that's one phone call you never want to get," said Carey. After they talked about Matt he inquired elaborately into the comfort of her flight, and the apartment. She told him about her assignment. And then she noticed the file, which he'd laid out on the table between them. "You've seen this already," he said, "right?"

  "Zinnia showed it to me." She opened it. "Talk about being blindsided."

  "Me too," he said.

  She looked up abruptly. "You mean what you said before? You knew nothing about a child?"

  "No," he said, and repeated: "Nothing about a child."

  The way he said it hinted at more. "Then what about the woman who's named here as the mother? Gao Lan?"
r />   He exhaled. "Yes," he said. "Her I knew about." He watched her eyes widen and almost instantly glaze over, as shock was followed by humiliation. Tell her the truth.

  "What exactly do you know?" she said.

  "Just that it did happen between them."

  "Her and Matt."

  "Yes."

  "Was it at the right time?"

  "Yes. It was brief, though. I don't want you to think it was a relationship."

  "Why?" she said, her voice sharpening. "Does it count for less if it wasn't?"

  "No," he said.

  "Especially when there's a child."

  He raised his hands; she had him. But it did count for less. It would have been worse if Matt had actually loved this woman. He hadn't, and that mattered. Right now, though, Maggie couldn't see it. Understandably.

  "Tell me what happened," she said, and he did. He started with the night Matt met Gao Lan.

  Nice girl, Carey remembered thinking when he first saw her under dancing, roving lights. Pretty. But there were endless girls who were pretty. He knew that. Matt, still somewhat green in China, did not. He saw Gao Lan across the room and begged and pestered Carey until the two of them went over to Gao Lan and her friend and bought them a drink. To Carey it was boring. They were such ordinary girls. There were better girls elsewhere. But he could not get Matt to leave that night and go somewhere else.

  The way Carey told it to Maggie, he took his leave early and could only infer what had happened later. It was easier for him to convey it this way, even though it was not the truth. Actually Matt and Gao Lan had been the first to leave; they left together, and Carey saw them go. He could still see Gao Lan turning her perfect oval rice-grain face up to Matt as they walked to the door. She'd had a porcelain femininity that made her quite the opposite of Maggie, across from him now, angular, sad, intelligent.

  "Was it just that one night?" she asked. "Or did it happen more times?"

  "Only the one night." Carey couldn't be sure of that, of course, but it was what Matt had told him.

  That winter Matt had come to China twice. On the second visit Gao Lan called him, and what Matt told Carey afterward was that he had broken it off with her then and there. He didn't share any of the details, just said he didn't want to see her. Didn't want to talk to her.