by Lucy Tan
“No,” Qiang said. “Because even if you don’t marry Wei, our parents will never let you marry me.”
“But what about what I want? I have a say in this.”
“Tell me the truth. Would you be happy with me?”
“Yes,” she said. With that one word, she felt relief flow from his body into hers. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again, as if to make sure she really was there.
“If that’s the case, will you come with me?”
“Come where?” Lina asked, but she knew that he meant everywhere. He was inviting her to join him and the rest of his ragtag family in their nomadic lifestyle. She remembered the sights he’d described in his letters to her and pictured herself writing the same kinds of letters back to her family. She remembered his promise of traveling with her and Wei one day. We’ll go to Africa. And Spain, and America. Maybe they could still travel together, but at the end of the night, instead of returning to Wei’s bed, she would return to Qiang’s.
“Yes,” Lina said.
They stood smiling at each other, astonished at the possibility of this: a revision of the ways they’d thought their lives might happen.
“Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll run away and not tell anyone. I’ll talk to Brother Gao about—”
“Wait a minute,” Lina said. “No. I could never do that to my parents.”
Qiang stepped back from her. “But that’s the only way! We’ll come back in a few years, and by then there will be nothing they can do about it. They’ll have to recognize us as married.”
She shook her head. “You’re not making sense.”
“You’ll be safe, I promise—if that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t have any business in the darker end of things. I don’t fight anymore. I promise you—”
“Stop, please. If we do this, we have to do it my way. I can’t go with you without my parents’ consent. This isn’t like sneaking off in the middle of the night and coming home before morning. Just let me talk to them. I can change their minds.”
“No,” Qiang said. “That’s not going to work.”
“Qiang.” Lina started to laugh. “Listen to you! Sometimes I wonder how someone so smart…think about it. Running off with me and not telling your parents—could you do that to them? To your brother? You plan to take me with you and leave them behind? Provide for me and not for them in their old age? What kind of son would you be then?”
Qiang pressed his lips together and looked down at his feet, away from her. That’s when she remembered that this man was not anything like Zhen Zhiwei. He was not a person whose strengths lay in planning ahead. Lina was asking a lot from someone who lived according to no strict schedule, who wanted to go where the next gust of inspiration took him. In a moment, he could change his mind. She took his face in both her hands and made him look at her. “We’ll be okay,” she said. “The hard part will be over once you tell your parents and I tell mine. I’m going to talk to my dad first thing in the morning, and you have to do the same. Hao ma?”
He stared at her, the whites of his eyes shining blue against the lightening sky. He looked terrified.
“It’s the only way,” she said.
Finally, she felt his head move—a nod. She kissed him one more time, and then let go. She turned to go back into the house.
When the door was shut behind her, she leaned up against the wood, breathing in deeply. She thought, I want to remember this moment. The touch of it, the smell of it. This is the moment when the rest of my life is about to start. Finally, she moved to the window again to see if he had gone and found he hadn’t. He was still standing there, looking toward the door she’d shut.
16
By the time Wei woke up, Lina was already out of bed. In her place was a towel still damp from freshly washed hair. On the floor, a tangle of tops and skirts that had been considered and tossed aside. He heard her voice on the phone in the next room; it held the breezy tone she used when she was not in the mood to talk but did not want to be rude. “No, not yet, Susan…Yes, not bad…We’re doing the Expo today. I’m not sure when, but you’ll see me soon enough…All right. Tell them I said hi.”
She came back into the room and closed the door. “You’re up,” she said, seeing Wei. “Sorry, did I wake you?”
She had been out with Qiang when Wei got home the previous evening. He’d been ready to make up with her, but she didn’t get in bed with him until midnight. By then he was too tired to attempt the delicate act of apology. He was surprised, now, to hear her speak to him as though the argument had never happened.
“Was that Susan?” he asked.
“Yes. Tian a, that woman drives me insane. You know she’s only calling because she’s bored. She seems to think everyone else’s life’s purpose is to keep her entertained.”
Wei sat up and reached for his glasses. “If you want to spend time with your friends, I’m sure Qiang won’t mind being left alone for an afternoon.”
Lina walked over to the window to part the curtains. “Please. I hate that woman. I put up with her because I like the others. I’m sure she feels the same way about me.”
“No,” Wei said, reaching for her. “They’re probably a sad bunch down there without you. Probably ran out of things to talk about.” He caught her around the thighs and tried to pull her onto his lap but found he had overestimated the extent to which he’d been forgiven. Lina twisted away. “Don’t wrinkle,” she said, adjusting her blouse. “I just ironed.”
Well, that was all right. He would spend the day making things right with her. He would even do his best to smooth things over with his brother, whom he still did not trust but whom he knew he must welcome into their lives—for both Lina’s sake and his own.
The five of them, ready for breakfast and waiting for the elevator, were dressed as though they were heading in five different directions. Sunny was the only one who looked prepared for the Expo. Beneath her plastic sun visor, her face was ghosted with sunscreen. She carried a backpack that had a bottle of water in every side pocket, and her body tilted forward against its weight. Karen looked as though she were on the way to a rock concert, her face obscured by turquoise cat’s-eye sunglasses. The hem of her frayed tank top just barely grazed the tops of her shorts. Wei, out of weekend habit, had put on a golfing polo, and Lina was dressed as if for a fancy brunch. Qiang was wearing the same jeans and T-shirt he’d worn the day before. Despite the contrast in their attire, Wei noticed a similarity between his brother and wife. They both had the spent, airy quality of people who had enjoyed themselves too much the night before. People who had the luxury to linger for hours in front of the TV, a bag of sunflower seeds split between them. Why hadn’t he seen it before? Qiang and Lina were both entitled and had never doubted for a moment they’d be taken care of. They were the kinds of people who blamed others for the things that went wrong in their own lives. He envied them that; he had always been the opposite sort, the type to believe that he was personally responsible for everything.
In search of solidarity, Wei laid his hand on Karen’s shoulder. She raised her glasses to look up at him, grazing his stomach with the back of her head. He loved her best like this, when her thoughts and actions still carried the weight of sleep. When afternoon came, there was music and makeup and sometimes she’d come tearing in and out of his study like a wild raccoon. Wei smoothed the hair on the top of Karen’s head. It had long ago lost its baby softness. Each time Wei picked up her ponytail, he felt surprised by its thickness and weight. This was her mother’s hair. How could such a thin neck hold it up? It made Wei want to hit the brakes on life. Hair like that—it demanded a kind of responsibility he wasn’t ready to let his daughter have.
Wei suspected that he wasn’t parenting correctly, but the thought of figuring out the correct method was too overwhelming. It made him feel the way he did every time he read the news—helpless in the face of things that were moving too fast for him to understand, let alone react to. Sometimes h
e felt as though she were the one managing him—“managing up,” as they called it at work. When someone lower on the totem pole did this, it was a good thing, a sign of ambition and competence. At home, it was probably something closer to manipulation. But he liked being watched by his daughter like this. Parents around the world studied their children for potential, teased out their talents, patched up the weak spots in their minds and souls, compared them to their peers. Did children evaluate their parents like this—not for potential, but for achievements? Unlike the previous generations, whose collective growth had been stunted by the Japanese occupation and the civil war, the members of his generation had left China for education, not for gold or railroad jobs or other false promises of wealth. Chinese nationals of his age could claim that they had done it on their own, and there was so much to come. They were still at the peaks of their lives.
“Dad,” Karen said sweetly as the elevator dinged open, “you have white hairs growing in your nose.”
“Hush,” Wei said, and he nudged her inside.
They had only just sat down to breakfast when Wei’s phone rang.
“Hey,” he said uncertainly, stepping away from their table. Chris never called when Wei took the day off unless he had to. The idea that he could not handle any given situation by himself was a hit to the man’s pride.
“Hey. Rumi just pulled out.”
“Pulled out of what?”
“The show. They were supposed to be the sponsor for the Pitch challenge this week but they sent me an e-mail saying they don’t want to be on the show.”
Wei felt his scattered thoughts align like iron filings around a magnet.
“What? Why?”
To be featured was free publicity. Rumi Electronics was one of Medora’s biggest Asian clients, and no client had ever turned down free publicity before.
“They didn’t say. It could be nothing, but I thought you should know. Plus, well…the film crew is coming in a few hours and we don’t have anything to shoot.”
Chris was not going to ask him straight out to come in—it was implied. If the show didn’t have a sponsor, Wei would have to call in a favor somewhere. And knowing the show’s director, there would be several other questions that would need to be answered before the day’s filming could continue.
“We could cancel,” Chris said. “Or I could try to figure something else out.”
“No,” Wei said. “Let me think about what to do on the way over.”
As he hung up, his brain branched off to work on three problems at once: how to handle the precarious relationship with Rumi Electronics, whether there were any other clients he could talk into being on the show on short notice, and how he would break the news to Lina that he had to go to work.
“Listen,” he said once he returned to the breakfast table. “I’m going to need to meet you at the Expo. I just have to stop by the office first.”
Lina set her spoon down, but her face did not seem to register his words.
“One of our sponsors just dropped out,” Wei explained. “They’re filming today without a concept for the episode.”
Karen sat up. “They’re filming today?”
“This is Qiang’s last weekend,” Lina said. “He’s leaving on Monday.”
“I know, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
He could tell by her silence—the way she let his last words linger, that admission of impotence—that she knew he was telling the truth but that she was still going to punish him for it.
“It’s all right, Lina,” Qiang said.
“I’ll try to make it later in the day,” Wei said. “If I can finish up this afternoon, I’ll meet you all before dinner.”
But Lina had decided the conversation was over and returned to her poached egg. She cut a divot into its side, speared the freed piece of egg white with her fork, and pressed the flat edge of her knife against the rest of the egg so that the yolk bled free. All five of them watched as it flooded her plate.
“Well,” Karen said suddenly. “If Dad doesn’t have to go, I shouldn’t have to go.” She pursed her lips, behind which lurked a smile.
“You’re going,” said Wei and Lina at the same time.
“Why?”
“Because it’s important,” Wei said.
“Why?”
He wanted to make a point about national pride, about progress, about China finally being the country that all the others looked to as a land of wealth and opportunity. Tell her that this was their chance to play host, to show off and celebrate their heritage by putting on the grandest pavilion of all the sixty-some pavilions at this year’s World’s Fair. But he also knew that saying these things would not help his case with Lina.
“Don’t you want to see the Italian pavilion?” he asked instead. “I heard they have a Prada handbag exhibit.”
“And I’ve heard the Spain pavilion has a thirty-foot robot baby that talks and moves like a real one,” Sunny put in.
Wei felt a pang of sadness for Sunny. Of course she was eager to go. She had probably already told her friends and family that she would be attending the World Expo. He’d read in the news that there were some folks from the countryside who had spent their life savings on a trip to Shanghai to attend the event.
“See?” Lina said. “Even Ayi wants to go.”
Karen groaned and slid down in her seat until half of her body was hidden beneath the table. “What do I want to see a baby for? I’ve already been to Italy, and Prada’s right down the street. It’s too hot outside. I want to go to work with you.”
She blinked at Wei and widened her eyes. Managing up, he thought again. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Lina.
“Fine,” Lina said finally. “Stay home. Or go with Dad, whatever. Come on, Qiang, let’s go. The driver’s waiting.”
She gathered her purse and stood, her breakfast uneaten. There was a moment of silence while Qiang finished spooning yogurt into his mouth. Then he rose too and cleared his throat.
“See you later,” he said, and the two of them left the booth.
Wei was prepared for the derailed TV episode to have caused a commotion in his office. But he was not prepared for the commotion to have spilled out into the lobby. The usual polish and serenity of Plaza 66 was lost to the chattering of the contestants loitering in the reception area. A white backdrop had been set up, as had the umbrella reflectors, but most of the film crew were gathered along the windows, flirting with makeup artists.
“Hi,” Chris said, appearing from behind Wei. He sounded more relaxed than he had on the phone. “We had nothing else to do, so we’re shooting publicity photos down here. Dash wanted natural light. I think the lobby people are about to kick us out.”
“Hi!” Karen stepped in front of Wei and extended her hand. “Chris, right? I know your name from the e-mails—Dad always has them open on his computer. I liked your vacation pictures. Are you on the show too?”
“Ah…” Chris took her hand limply.
“Chris, this is my daughter, Karen. And this is our ayi, Sunny. Did you get my e-mail? Did the abstract make sense?”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “I found a couple of junior copywriters hanging around with nothing to do so I gave it to them. They’re coming up with a new script.”
“Good, good.”
“Dad!” Karen pointed behind him. “That guy looks just like you. I’ve seen him on the show but in person he’s even more like you. Can I get a picture with him?”
“Can you get a—” Wei turned to see his on-screen self standing several meters away in front of the plaza’s glass elevators. But before Wei could answer, Dash appeared next to him.
“Boss Zhen!” His bleached hair was gel-free today and swept across his forehead in feathery wisps. “Is this your little girl?”
He turned to Karen and smiled down at her. “Hello, beauty, I’m called Dash.”
“Dash is the show’s director,” Wei explained.
As quickly as she’d decided she liked
Chris, Karen assessed Dash’s blond hair, Chinese face, and Man U jersey and shrank from him. “Can I get a picture with the guy who plays my dad?”
“Listen to that American English!” Dash laughed. “I should cast her in something. Would you like to be on TV?”
Now he had her attention. “For what?”
“For what?” he imitated, rounding out the r like an American. “There are lots of things. Lots of possibilities for American-born Chinese. Stand over there, beauty, let me think about it. I’ve got to talk to your dad.” Karen backed away and wandered over to Sunny.
“She’s got your eyes, Boss,” Dash said. “Great kid. Look, I know you said you wanted limited involvement in the show, but there are some thematic matters only us foreigners understand, eh? I want to go over today’s concept before we begin. There are some things I have in mind…”
Wei had always been proud of the fact that once he set his mind to something, focus came naturally. It was only a matter of clicking into gear. Once he did that, the rest was easy—the conferences, the reports, the snap decisions and sudden inspirations. He moved through sales meetings like he was playing the lead role in a campy musical, each number a song and dance designed to support the narrative he had prepared for his clients. But today, he couldn’t turn down noise the way he was usually able to. Beneath Dash’s chatter and Chris’s questions, he heard Lina’s voice from their fight the night before. You like to pretend that everything you do is for us, she had said.
When the commotion finally subsided and filming began, Wei shut himself in his office. He stood before the window and peered down at Nanjing West Road, not seeing the people, only the road and the buildings beyond. It had never crossed his mind, who he was doing it for. He had to admit that he derived pleasure from solving little emergencies like the one he’d faced today. But he also knew that it was just another way of doing what he’d been doing since high school—performing exercises to test his power and potential. But he was a grown man; it was a little late for potential.