What We Were Promised

by Lucy Tan

  “That must have been the last person,” said Qiang. “It’s past eleven.”

  To the right, an exit sign glowed. To the left, a cavern of black. They looked at each other and then laughed in disbelief. Qiang extended a hand to Lina and helped her off the ground. They headed deeper into the pavilion, past the office space, and stopped in front of a room lit with a rich scarlet glow.

  “Tian a!” Qiang said. “The British like their luxury, a!” They peered into a lounge with plush seating and a fully stocked bar backed by red glass tiles.

  “I don’t think this room is for employees,” Lina said. “It’s probably for special guests or sponsors.”

  “And troublemakers like us. What’ll it be, miss?” Qiang asked, ducking behind the bar.

  “Gin, I think.”

  Lina sat down on the couch and ran her fingertips along the leather and over the brass studs that lined the arms. She watched Qiang search the bar, opening cabinets and pulling out drawers. He came back with two drinks and put one of them in her hand.

  “The labels were all in English,” he said by way of apology. “I picked the one that looked most expensive.”

  Holding their drinks, they went back out to the office area and then ascended the stairs. Qiang stopped before he even reached the landing, and when Lina came up behind him, she saw why. Fifteen-meter-high walls were covered floor to ceiling with glittering nodes of light. As they walked closer, the illumination shifted, causing some parts of the walls to shine more brightly than others. The Seed Cathedral appeared to be inhaling and exhaling. Up close, they saw that the walls were not walls at all but thousands of acrylic rods. Encapsulated at the end of each one was a different species of seed, backlit by the light funneling down the entire length of the rod. Together, they created a pixelated viewing effect, a “wall” made of undulating planes of light. Lina felt as though she had walked into the diamond-lined stomach of a whale.

  “Fiber optics,” she explained to Qiang. “They’re powered by LED lights at the other end. During the day, the LEDs are off and the room is lit by natural sunlight instead.”

  “Are the seeds all different?” he asked.

  “Shi a, all sixty thousand species. There’s a seed bank in Britain that stores different varieties of seeds from all over the world so that they will never become extinct.”

  They walked around the room looking at spiky seeds, furry seeds, seeds the length of an eyelash and some as big as walnuts. She watched Qiang in profile. The lambent light played across his features as he circled the room. As she walked under the fiber optics, the anxiety she had felt from being alone with him was replaced by delirium. Or maybe that was from the drink.

  “What I love is that they’re made to mix with the world,” Lina said. “Some seeds have wings so they can be disseminated by the wind. Some are small enough to be swallowed by birds and carried far away.”

  “How convenient,” Qiang said. “If only humans were designed that way. Traveling would be a lot easier.”

  But they aren’t, Lina wanted to say. Humans are designed to stay in each other’s lives, not to float around unattached. They are designed for families, for commitment, for—but she wasn’t even able to finish her thought before she remembered her own family, and her stomach tightened.

  He raised his drink. “To our lucky explorations,” he said.

  Their glasses made a tinny, dry sound when they met.

  “You know what I just realized? The first night you came, when we drank that wine—that was the first time I had a drink with you. Your face was red as a lantern. I don’t think I would have guessed that would happen. Your brother’s face doesn’t get red.”

  He grinned. “You’re wrong. We drank together at your wedding.”

  At the word wedding, Lina was jolted out of her giddiness.

  “You barely count as having come to our wedding,” she said softly. “After that first gan bei, your seat at the main table stayed empty. I looked around for you and saw you over by the door talking to the aunties. The next time I looked, you were gone.”

  She hadn’t forgotten a thing, not the octangular room, the restaurant’s red and gold velvet wall hangings, the fish appetizers their families couldn’t afford, their parents beaming across the table at one another in celebration of their own lives joining along with their children’s lives. At one point, Wei had been bending forward in his seat to play with one of the neighborhood toddlers, so only the top of his head was visible. Overlooking, as always, what was immediately in front of him—the fact that Lina’s attention was elsewhere. She sat there as numb as she’d felt the entire day. The images of the others seemed to revolve around her while her eyes were anchored across the restaurant. It was centripetal, the way the rest of the night spun around the one moment she remembered the most clearly: the sliver of blue sky coming through the front doors as Qiang opened them and slipped through. Had he only looked back, she thought. Had he looked back at her just then, things might have been different.

  That morning, she had gone to her father. It was Fang Lijian’s habit to take a long walk every Saturday from his home to an adjacent town and back again. On the day of her wedding, he was surprised to see Lina up so early. Ba, let me walk with you. I have something to say. His face betrayed excitement; he was expecting her to share good news, some new detail in her and Wei’s plans for America, perhaps. And that’s why she could not make eye contact with him while she talked. She did her best to tell him what had happened to her in the time between graduating high school and coming home from college. She tried to explain without quite knowing herself how she had fallen in love with Qiang. He listened quietly without interruption and after she was finished, there was a minute in which he did not speak. Only then did she look into his face.

  It was worse than what she’d imagined. He looked not only disappointed but also full of sorrow and shame. That’s when Lina felt her own resentment flare up. What claim did he have on her life like this? What right did he have to be ashamed of her? She hadn’t done anything wrong; the only thing she was guilty of was changing her mind. I don’t care if you agree, she finally said. My life is not yours to direct as you please. But none of this needed saying; Lina knew it as soon as she saw her father bow his head. And Qiang—he wants this too? he asked.

  She’d thought he would be angry; she hadn’t expected this air of defeat. He seemed tired right down to his joints. More than anything, she told him. This is what we both want more than anything.

  By then, they were well past the borders of their own town and heading toward the Zhens’. You’re right, Fang Lijian finally said. Your life is not mine. You have the freedom to do as you please, and the worst thing I could do is take that freedom away—I understand that more than you know. I will talk it over with Zhen Hong. He looked straight ahead down the road, as if determined to face whatever hardship lay at the end of it. Lina suddenly knew that what she had set in motion was bigger than just herself and Qiang and Wei, bigger than her father’s hopes for her happiness. That’s when she remembered the debt her parents had once argued over when they discussed her marriage and her future.

  How much do you owe Zhen Hong Shushu? she asked her father then. What was the debt? Can’t it be repaid if I marry Qiang instead?

  Fang Lijian gave her a sad smile. That’s my business, not yours.

  And suddenly they were outside the Zhens’ home and Lina was sitting on a tree stump by the side of the road, picking at a scab on her ankle, waiting. Waiting. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. She was almost numb with fear and excitement when she saw her father come out of their home. Is it done? she wanted to know. Is it over? Instead of a straight answer, Fang Lijian had wrapped his arms around her in a hug. Oh, Lina, he said—his voice was tender and sad, but in his embrace she felt only relief. You’re confused, xingan. You’re nervous, that’s all. And that’s how Lina came to know that Qiang had not said a word to his family about her. It was as though she had dreamed the previous evening, as tho
ugh the most important night of her life had happened in her sleep.

  “Jie, you’re not mad, are you?” Qiang asked. “You know how I dislike family gatherings.”

  Here he was, twenty years later, pretending as though none of this had happened. “Especially weddings,” Qiang added. “I almost didn’t go to my own wedding.”

  Lina felt her tongue go dry in her mouth.

  “You’re married?”

  “Yes,” Qiang said, surprised at her surprise.

  Lina struggled to form her next words.

  “You’ve been with us for days now and you haven’t mentioned a wife. Do you have kids? Tian a, you have kids.”

  “No, no kids.”

  “Where is your wife now?”

  “Home in Kunming.”

  He was married. She didn’t know why she had dismissed the possibility before.

  “Why didn’t she come with you?”

  “I wanted to come alone.”

  She felt weightless, as if she had been catapulted into space. Had she imagined everything that had happened between them in the past week? The way he watched her, their sensitivity to each other’s movements in a room—those physical communications that had seemed so loud to her, so full of need. She’d felt sure that his wants and doubts matched hers and that when Karen sat between them in the backseat of the car, Lina wasn’t the only one to wonder what her daughter might have looked like if Qiang had been the father.

  “Who is she?” she asked.

  “Her name is Jian Yun. You met her once before.”

  “Cloudy.”

  “That’s right,” he said, surprised.

  Lina expelled a little breath that was almost a laugh. “So you’ve got a gangster wife too. I should have guessed.”

  Cloudy, with her bright lips and darting eyes. The girl whose image had haunted Lina through her college years, whom she’d tried to emulate, as if becoming more like Cloudy would bring her closer to Qiang.

  Lina had had no reason to assume that he would still be in love with her. It had pleased her, all these years, to think that he had not followed through on telling his family about them for both of their sakes, not just his own. But what if he hadn’t been genuine that night before the wedding? What if he’d never planned to leave with her at all? Qiang was staring past her shoulder at the wall of seeds, avoiding her eyes.

  “I never understood how you got away with the things you did when you were younger. Everybody in that family just let you do what you wanted. In and out the door, gone all night. It’s truly amazing that you and Wei could have come from the same family—”

  “What do you want me to say, Lina?” he said, his voice rising. “That I wish it had been you I married? Hao. I wish it had been you.”

  The whites of his eyes shone. She hadn’t imagined it—he still felt something. But this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He had finally said the very thing she had been waiting years to hear, and she didn’t feel any better. In fact, she hated him for saying it.

  “What right do you have to tell me that now? You have never taken a shred of responsibility for anything in your entire life. And now you’re an old man. I hope you can live with that.” She knew she was about to cry. She knew she should stop talking but she couldn’t. “We had a deal. You were going to talk to your parents and I was going to talk to mine. What happened between then and the wedding? Tell me that, at least.”

  She remembered being pressed up against Wei’s chest in those first cold Philadelphia months thinking about liminality—about that small span of time in which a threshold has yet to be crossed, when a person is readying himself for change, and any number of events can alter who he becomes. Maybe Qiang had woken up the day of the wedding, and instead of the first things he saw being his own hands, his own face in the mirror, he saw his mother placing a bowl of porridge next to his bed. Maybe the previous night, instead of going straight home, he had stopped to have a word with Brother Gao, and the man had filled his head anew with dreams about Shanghai. Maybe he had meant to speak to his parents, and the difference was that Lina had been willing to break her parents’ hearts for the first time in her life, while Qiang, in the end, had decided he could not break his parents’ hearts again.

  But now the question had come out before she was ready to hear the answer, and she regretted it the moment it left her mouth. She didn’t think she could stand it if he said what she feared. I didn’t love you enough was the answer she’d spent all these years dreading. It wasn’t any one deciding factor. I just didn’t love you enough for it to be worth it.

  Watching him standing there, his lips parted with no words coming out, Lina despised him for the power he had over her. She hated how much potential there still was for her to be hurt.

  “I’ve never been good at giving answers,” Qiang finally said. “But you deserve one. That’s the least of what you deserve.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “Just forget it.”

  Here was the other thing: The more she relied on him to tell her why he’d left her all those years ago, the more power his absence would have over her. He was married. She’d pictured him missing her all these years, but he’d moved on. She’d heard everything she needed to. “Are we done here?”

  He stepped toward her, but she held up her hand. “I don’t want to talk about this. I can’t talk to you right now. Please. Let’s just go.”

  As if on cue, the LED lights went out, patch by patch, like fireworks dying overhead. Soon, all that was lit was the red ru kou sign marking the exit doors. Lina walked toward it, her hands extended to avoid bumping into the walls of seeds. She could see the red gleam of the sign reflecting off the metal bar of the cathedral’s doors, anticipated its cool touch on her fingers. When she finally reached it, she leaned her full weight forward and pushed.

  She pushed again.

  18

  Sunny sat in the lower level of the lobby with her week’s salary held tight in her hand. Luosuo si le. What had come over her? The job was taking a toll, that was certain. Twelve hours a day with the Zhens for five days in a row, and suddenly she was confessing her life’s struggles to her employer. She had even brought up childbirth! Tian a, Boss Zhen probably thought she was looking for pity—no wonder he’d paid her early. She shoved the envelope of cash into her purse without counting it.

  I think I’m good at knowing whom to trust, Taitai had said when she hired Sunny. How naive Sunny had been. She thought Taitai had chosen her because she wouldn’t spread gossip about their family around Lanson Suites when what she had really been hired for was to help the adults keep their secrets from one another—to give Taitai the opportunity to flirt with Qiang in private and Boss Zhen the freedom to return to his work without having to admit that he was doing it to avoid his brother. There was so much in the household that went unsaid, hidden resentments and pleas for attention coloring their conversations as falsely as a bad accent. It made her miss her own family even more. They had their problems, but at least they were honest about them. At least they wanted to spend time together. Day after day, she watched the Zhens navigate conversations as they would a minefield. It made Sunny so anxious that she wasn’t sure how much longer she could last with them. Was this what she’d risked Rose’s job for?

  Some mornings, Karen would lay her head in Sunny’s lap and complain of uneasy dreams. In those moments, Sunny would feel something close to hatred for the kid’s parents. But when she let herself see them for who they were, she felt for them too. As she’d left the apartment that night, she’d caught sight of Boss Zhen, alone in the living room, glancing around as if unsure what to do with himself next. How in need of protection he’d seemed then.

  In her years of working as a housekeeper, she’d witnessed the dissolution of more than one marriage. For all his intelligence, Boss Zhen was a little out of touch with reality—he didn’t seem to know he was on the verge of being cuckolded. It was the busiest career men, the stoic and implacable ones, who had the most difficult
y when their personal lives were disrupted. She hoped he would work things out with Taitai. Boss Zhen wasn’t the sort to live well alone.

  It should have been easy to hate Taitai, but that was impossible too. The woman walked around the apartment in a white silk robe, hungering to be noticed. Sunny knew that there was nothing worse than feeling useless in a household, especially if your presence had once been so necessary. She remembered how it had felt to move back home after her husband’s death, how she, too, had invented ways to make herself useful. It was heartbreaking to watch Taitai convince herself that the family cared how the apartment was decorated, or where they went to dinner, or what she wore to lunch.

  Headlights swept across the lobby as the Mercedes came down the parking-lot ramp and pulled up outside the door. Inside the car, Little Cao lowered the music and greeted her with a nod. As she sank into the leather seats, she wondered if this was how Boss Zhen felt at the end of a workday—a sense of conflict rather than completion.

  “So,” Little Cao said, eyeing her in the rearview. “Are you going to tell me what you’re worried about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been a driver for a long time. I know exactly what it sounds like when someone gets into the car in a bad mood.”

  The last thing she felt like doing was humoring him, and yet she couldn’t ignore him completely.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not in any kind of mood.”

  Little Cao sighed. “Okay, don’t tell me. Sui ni bian. Drivers and ayis are supposed to be friends, you know. You’re not cleaning rooms with the other housekeepers anymore. Who are you going to talk to if not me?”

  If the Zhens’ secrets were now her secrets too, Sunny was reluctant to trust Little Cao. She didn’t know what kind of relationship he had with the other drivers or what secrets they shared about the families they worked for.