What We Were Promised

by Lucy Tan

  Wei had thought a lot about what he would wear for his brother’s arrival. He wanted to look as close as possible to Qiang’s memory of him as a country boy, which meant dressing casually. No slacks, no ironed shirts, and definitely not the watch he’d bought through Nicholas, which was now locked away in the safe. What had he been thinking, buying one for Qiang? The last thing he wanted was for Qiang to see that he had grown into the type of person his brother had always suspected he’d become, someone who announced his salary by wearing it on his wrist. Prince Wei.

  The name came back to him with a shudder. Qiang used to taunt him from up high in the trees as Wei passed below with his friends. Prince Wei! Wangzi! Where are you going? Don’t you know you have exams to slay, princesses to impregnate? Do right by your people, give us a smile, give us a wave! Wei had been a favorite in the community and Qiang never let him forget it. He was at the top of his class, a student who was smart and well rounded, the kind of smart that was easy for parents to appreciate. He was also the son of Zhen Hong, a farmer by birth and staunch supporter of the revolution. Zhen Hong was proof that if a person was humble and hardworking, he might one day have a son who could embody success.

  It was hard to represent the collective hopes of a village without wanting to be what everyone else wanted him to be. Despite himself, Wei had acquired a taste for the village praise. Qiang seemed the only one who could see this truth about him, and looking back, Wei realized that was largely what accounted for the distance between them. Qiang’s teasing made Wei more self-conscious than he let on. He was embarrassed by his desire to be celebrated, and his brother was a reminder of this ugly need.

  There was one occasion in particular that Wei remembered—the summer evening that he met Lina for the first time. He had just been admitted to Fudan University and his parents had decided to throw him a party. Up until then, he had considered marriage in very general terms and given little thought to the girl who was to become his wife. He had trouble imagining himself married. When he thought of the word wife he could only picture his mother, and none of the girls he’d met came close to fitting the role his mother played in the Zhen household. The women he knew talked too much and changed their minds too often. They sought others’ opinions indiscriminately and didn’t think before speaking. He’d told himself that when the time came to marry, if Lina didn’t seem like a good fit, he’d simply lay out his reasons for not agreeing to the match. His parents were reasonable people. He’d make them understand.

  But then came the moment Lina appeared. He couldn’t remember what they had said during that exchange, but it was the first time in a long time that he’d felt unprepared. He’d thought he’d seen everything their small town could offer, had skipped ahead in his mind to the other cities he’d live in, the university he’d attend. And then, in front of him, was this girl with her startling eyes and loosely braided hair, the ends of which she fingered absentmindedly. He had trouble meeting her gaze, but she had no trouble staring at him. It was an act of appraisal. She seemed to be asking, Do you live up to your reputation? Wei was immediately drawn to the challenge in that stare, and her strange mix of innocence and maturity made him understand for the first time how a young woman could grow into a wife.

  Later that night, he had played basketball with his friends and Qiang while Lina watched from the sidelines. He could feel the heat of her stare the whole time. After the game ended and her parents picked her up, Qiang finally said what he’d been thinking all night. Look at you, pretending not to care! I know the only reason you wanted to play basketball tonight is to show off. Otherwise, you’d be back at the party lapping up all that praise.

  Wei had been annoyed with Qiang all through the game—he was a faster, more agile player than Wei, and guarding him that night was more difficult than it usually was. He knew that Qiang was showing off for Lina too. It wasn’t uncommon for his brother to pick a pretty girl and follow her around for a while. Considering the way Qiang had been whispering to Lina that night, it looked as though he had made her his next target. But it would be no use to make fun of Qiang. Qiang wasn’t vulnerable to embarrassment for the simple reason that he could freely admit to wanting to attract the attention of a certain girl. Unlike Wei, he was not held back by pride.

  Wei turned from his brother and spoke to his friends: You know what? I think I want to keep playing. Let’s switch things up. Zhong, I got you this time. The other boys reorganized themselves. It was as Wei had planned—because a few of their number had already gone home, Qiang became the odd one out. Sorry, kid, Wei said. He watched his brother’s face grow dark as he understood what Wei had done. For years afterward, Wei would think about that moment and wonder where Qiang had gone after he’d left them that evening. If he had stayed the night of the party, and if Wei had been making more of an effort to include him in his own circle of friends all along, would things have turned out differently? Would Qiang have been adopted by Wei’s crowd rather than by a band of miscreants who valued neither honor nor education?

  When the door to his bedroom opened, Wei flinched. Lina came in, her face flushed with heat from the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Lina untied her apron and flung it on the floor. “Are you nervous?”

  “A little,” Wei admitted.

  Lina caught his face between her hands. “He found us. We can stop wondering where he is now and whether he’s alive. What could be better than that?”

  He knew she was right, but it didn’t stop him from feeling that the stakes were higher than ever. Last week, before the adrenaline of Qiang’s phone call had worn off, he’d been worried about whether they would recognize each other after so much time apart. Now, he was worried their reunion would remind Qiang of the reasons he’d left in the first place. Wei didn’t know how to be the kind of brother Qiang needed. He had never known how to withhold judgment or project the right balance of patience and understanding. What made him think he could do it now?

  “Zenme le,” Lina said, and she guided his head toward hers for a kiss. Her way of saying, Stop thinking. But when she kissed him a second time, and her top lip lingered against his bottom, Wei knew that the kiss wasn’t just for his sake but for hers. He reached under her shirt; his fingers met the warmth of her back and ran up the valley of her spine. Lina stripped off her T-shirt and revealed a bra fringed at the top with lace. Giving birth had widened Lina’s hips and left her skin rosier than it had been before pregnancy. In her twenties, her skin had been marblelike—beautiful but cold. He preferred her flesh as it felt now. The exaggerated heft of her breasts and swell of her ass seemed more substantial, somehow more human than her body had been when they first married. It almost begged to be touched. She led him over to the bed and sat him on the edge of the mattress. Leaning her weight on one knee, she swung the other over him and pushed down on his chest until he was lying flat. Wei ran the side of his thumb along her thigh.

  It wasn’t unusual for Lina to want sex suddenly now, but it hadn’t always been this way. In the beginning, he had been the one to coax it out of her. On their wedding night, she’d lain faceup, her arms straight on either side of her body, as though she were in a coffin. She’d been uninterested in any form of touch. Looking back, it made sense; this was in the month before they were to leave for America. Of course she would feel distant from him, this man who was about to take her away from her parents. So he didn’t push her; he knew instinctively that the only thing he could do was wait. For twenty-three nights, he slept on his side, one arm draped over her stomach. It wasn’t until they were in Philadelphia that she let him have her for the first time. And even then, it had taken a while to earn the slow giving-in of her body. But that had made the experience even more precious; he loved discovering her sexuality with her, loved that his touch was transforming her. Even her laughter during sex seemed to come from her entire body. And when they were done, when she lay against him with her thighs still vibr
ating, he wrapped her up in the bedsheets and held her cocooned while she metamorphosed back into herself.

  But it had been years since then, and somewhere along the way Lina had learned how to pleasure herself. Now, when she came toward him wanting sex, her eyes held a look of total control. That he couldn’t predict these lustful moods unnerved Wei a little, but what upset him more was that he seemed to have very little to do with their genesis. He was merely filling the void without creating it. Of course, he was grateful for the fact that they still wanted each other (his friends’ marriages were falling apart in irreparable ways), but there was something unsettling about it. It was yet another area of his life where he had lost control.

  Lina got up, went to the door, locked it, and came back to him. She pulled on the drawstring of his pants, even supported his lower back with one hand as he lifted his bottom so she could slide off his briefs. Then she moved on top of him, her body arched, looking for the spot she was now an expert at finding on her own. Her eyes were half closed, and even the position of her head gave away the fact that she was somewhere far away—somewhere Wei would not be able to get to.

  He felt himself starting to shrink. No way, he thought. He flipped over so that she was on her back, but when he tried to reenter her, his knee slipped off the edge of the mattress. He fell, barely catching himself with the ball of one foot. A tingle went through his right thigh and calf—the phantom pain of a near injury.

  When he looked up at Lina, her eyes were open. He had taken her from wherever she had gone. And hadn’t that been what he’d wanted? For her to look at him with the kind of recognition and tenderness that he saw in her face now? But when he was inside her again, the feel of her hands on his back was different. The urgency was gone, replaced by encouragement and love.

  He couldn’t do it. Encouragement and love were not what he wanted in the moment—they felt too much like pity. She wanted to be somewhere else? Fine. He’d let her go. He’d rather her not see him at all than see him like this, his full weight unsteady on one arm, soft from years of office use. He slid down to the floor, put his head between her legs, and stuck to the things he knew how to do.

  * * *

  The lamps were off. Light flowed from the closet doorway, pleated with shadows, like a spread dress. Wei shut his eyes again and rolled over onto his back. He was overwarm, sweating. Real sleep was a kind of magic, wasn’t it? Lose awareness for a little while and wake to see the world you left at a tilt-shift. In the dark, he refamiliarized himself with the room. The kelp hanging from the bedroom door handle became a shirt of Lina’s. The tuft of grass peeking out from behind one leg of a console was a hairbrush. When a blow-dryer came on in the bathroom, Wei sat up. He watched how Lina’s silhouette made the shapes on the carpet move.

  Finally, he got up and walked to the bathroom, where she was bent over at the waist in a cream-colored slip.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “About fifteen minutes,” she said. Only that long? He felt cheated. He placed his hands on her hips to pull her toward him, but she straightened up and out of his reach.

  “Get dressed. It’s almost seven.” Lina gave him a chaste pat on the chest and slipped out the door, leaving him alone in the bathroom, inhaling what was left of her shower steam.

  Wei took a quick rinse, dressed, and went out to the dining room. He was startled a second time to find the ayi there, bringing out dishes from the kitchen. Secretly, he held this against Lina, the complication of adding another person to the household. His wife was circling the table in a coral-colored dress, touching this dish and that, moving them until they fit together just so. The meal was composed of both home-style dishes and Shanghainese cuisine. At the end of the table was a plate of Chinese broccoli, which must have been one of Sunny’s creations, because Wei could not remember Lina ever having made it. But the rest of the food were her recipes. The whitebait soup, starchier than those made by the restaurants back home, was a specialty of Lina’s. She had topped it off with fresh cilantro, which looked particularly green beside the shrimp dish. Next to that was chopped lotus filled with sticky rice, its honeyed glaze catching the light from the chandelier. Arrayed around the main dishes were patterned saucers for collecting shrimp shells and flounder bones, and dainty bowls good for only a few mouthfuls of soup. The table was being set in the showy Shanghainese way, which made Wei uncomfortable, but he let it go. Lina was right. Cooking was an act of love and creation, and what better way to show Qiang how much they loved him than by presenting him with a feast? Wei was about to give his compliments when Lina looked up and frowned.

  “Why aren’t you dressed?”

  “I am dressed,” he said. “I’m just not dressed up.” And then: “Why are you dressed up?”

  “I’m not,” Lina said, more softly, turning her attention back to the dishes. “Put on some real pants, at least.”

  So she was nervous for Qiang’s arrival too. Wei was moved; she hadn’t put this much effort into preparing a meal since the last time they’d hosted a lunch for the women in Lanson Suites.

  “Where’s Karen?” he asked.

  “She’s downstairs with the Canters. Tutoring the boys.”

  “She’s coming back for dinner, right?”

  “She should be here any minute.”

  This summer, Karen had been spending more time with the Canters, an American family who lived a few floors below them. Since transferring to a boarding school in the States, she’d lost the playmates she’d had in Shanghai and could not afford to be picky about company. The age difference between Karen and the Canter boys made them unlikely friends, but Karen could be persuaded to spend time with them as long as everyone involved considered it tutoring.

  Sunny came up from behind him. Her feet made next to no noise as she shuffled past in her slippers, carrying a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. When Lina asked Wei who he thought they should hire as an ayi, he had named Sunny because he’d always admired the woman’s work ethic. But he hadn’t given the question much thought; now that Sunny was here, he decided that she was a little too quiet. He wasn’t sure he’d like having her in the house all the time.

  “What are you doing?” he asked Lina as she took the whiskey from Sunny. A store of these bottles was kept in the bar to be used as emergency gifts for clients.

  “It’s a special occasion.”

  “There are good Chinese liquors in the cabinet. How do you know Qiang drinks scotch?”

  “How do you know he doesn’t?”

  Her hair had been ironed into a dark flag that hung over her face. She picked at the seal on the box.

  “I just think it’s kind of showy,” Wei said quietly.

  “You think you’re so much better than your brother that you couldn’t possibly enjoy the same kind of liquor?”

  Perhaps the question was meant to tease, but it came out barbed. The doorbell rang.

  “He’s early,” Lina said with a start. She performed a last visual sweep across the table and said to Sunny, “Start stir-frying the pork.” Then she disappeared into the kitchen and Wei was left by himself. He took a breath, walked to the entranceway, and opened the door.

  Wei blinked; before him stood one of the uniformed lobby guys. The floral scent of the hallway filled his nose.

  “Lao ban, the dry cleaning Taitai dropped off yesterday.”

  “Oh. Thank you,” Wei said. He accepted the clothing and closed the door.

  Lina appeared, wiping her hands on her apron, wearing a wide smile.

  “Oh,” she said when she saw the dry cleaning. She took the clothing from Wei, separated one plastic-covered hanger from the rest, and handed it back to him. “Here, put these on. I don’t know that you have any other pants that are freshly ironed.”

  Rather than argue, Wei returned to his bedroom to change. At least doing so would pass the time.

  When the doorbell rang again, he strode toward it more calmly. He dragged one hand through his hair while he opened the door with the
other. But this time, it was just Karen standing there, chewing on the ends of her hair.

  “What happened to your key?”

  “I forgot it,” she said, wounded. He was rarely gruff with her, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  “Well, be more responsible.”

  “Why does it matter? It’s not like no one’s home.” She sulked off to her room.

  Wei shut his eyes briefly, thought about opening the whiskey early. The sound of Lina’s footsteps came from around the corner, then stopped when Karen passed. He saw his wife’s reflection in the mirror hanging in the dining room—an unreadable expression appeared on her face. But before he could guess at what it meant, she caught him looking at her and quickly brought her face back to neutral.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. He wanted to say Are we okay? but didn’t. Her eyes landed on his chest and stayed there. The kitchen fan went on and they heard meat hitting the wok with a crackle.

  “Taitai,” Sunny called, but Lina did not seem to hear.

  “The table, the food—everything looks great,” Wei said, and Lina returned a faint smile. He reached for her, and for a moment, she leaned her body against his.

  “Taitai!”

  “What is it?” Lina asked. Sunny’s response was inaudible over the stir-fry. “Zenme le?”

  Together, she and Wei moved into the kitchen. “I think someone’s knocking at the door,” Sunny said, nodding toward the service entrance connected to the kitchen.

  Lina walked over and wrenched it open. Standing there, wearing the shadows cast by the harsh overhead light of the laundry hall, was Zhen Zhiqiang.

  11

  “Lina,” Qiang said, grinning. She moved back and he stepped inside to set his bag on the floor. Then he turned to Wei. “Ge.”

  Many synapses fired simultaneously, and suddenly Wei’s physical memory of his brother overwhelmed him. He remembered the stifling warmth of Qiang’s body against his under winter blankets. The way Qiang smiled over his shoulder as he left a room and his slow, loping walk. And that expression! He’d forgotten how cheerful his brother’s demeanor was.