The Wangs vs. the World

by Jade Chang

  Saina had seen projects like this in New York—hospitality art, she and her friends called it. The ButterBeen Collective, who talked their way into a pop-up sit-in at the New Museum, which just involved teaching knitting and serving cookies, or the Shum twins, who offered “residencies” to donut shops at their gallery in Chelsea. How many times did people have to prove that anything could be art before we could finally admit that very little was actually art?

  Theoretically, Saina understood it. Art was engagement, art was simplicity, art was an outgrowth of its time, and they were living in a moment in which service jobs were the fastest growing sector of the economy, so it made sense that artists would want to examine the actions that made up those jobs. They were in a period of new domesticity, where women had begun caring about making their homes perfect again—as far as she was from being a suburban housewife, Saina knew that she couldn’t deny her similarity to these women—and this was a valid way to critique the shift.

  But, really, she couldn’t get over the fact that this was as far as their ambitions reached. It all seemed so needlessly ladylike. “‘I’ve made a very, very large meal, enough for multitudes, and I’d like you all to eat it with me! My creation satisfies your hunger.’ ”

  “Do you want a bite?” Leo held out a fallen slice, a hunk of crust soaking in a puddle of blueberry ooze, topped with a miniature plastic fork. Plastic. This room had none of what she missed about her former existence. The openings full of wild things corralled into white-walled bunkers and set loose amid armies of perfectly polished stemware, row after row of wineglasses and champagne flutes that chimed against each other delicately, a rarefied twinkle that underscored every conversation. She missed the way the women dressed themselves like pieces of art—their clothes complex and not sexually attractive in an expected way, yet in the rewritten visual code of that world, all of those bubble dresses and harem pants and complicated muumuus became more desirable than some cinched-waist-boobs-out look.

  In this blazing bright room full of hopeful graduates, she felt deflated. Saina shook her head at the pie. Leo shrugged and forked it up himself.

  “Why are you even eating that? It’s gross.”

  “I’m hungry. We got here too late for the cheese and stuff.”

  They’d never had a fight before. Leo had never been annoying before. She watched as his lips, glistening with a sheen of sugary blue syrup, mashed against themselves, chewing up the art pie. An hour and a half ago, those lips had been on her nipple.

  “Why’d you get so weird?”

  He stopped chewing and looked at her. “When?”

  “You know, in the car.”

  “Let’s not talk about that now.”

  “Why not? Who cares about these people?”

  “I thought you did.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  They looked at each other, not speaking.

  “Look,” said Saina, “I know we just got back together. It’s not that I’m dying to have a baby right now, okay? Don’t worry.”

  “That’s not it. I—”

  “Are you worried about Grayson? Because that’s over, you know. I’m here with you, not him.”

  “No, Saina, listen—”

  “Hi, Saina Wang?” Winged eyeliner, tangled black hair, flowered babydoll dress, and Doc Martens. Despite herself, Saina liked her.

  “Hi.” Saina offered a hand. The girl took it and squeezed it.

  “Thanks, but I actually want to see your other hand.”

  She felt Leo suppress a laugh next to her. “What do you mean?”

  “The ring! Sorry, I’m such a dork. Vogue’s like my bible. I read that story? The one about your engagement ring? I’m obsessed. Can I see it?”

  Saina fluttered her empty left hand. “Sorry. It’s kind of like the way you’re never supposed to knit a guy a sweater or get your girlfriend’s name tattooed on your arm. Never let Vogue do a story on your ring. We’re not engaged anymore.”

  “No! Are you serious? No! But you guys were, like, royalty. Was he a dick? Do we hate him?”

  “It’s fine. Really.”

  It was strange to think of herself as someone who might be speculated about, but back in college she had been just as breathless over the details of her professors’ lives, of the lives of the already successful artists who had graduated just a few years before, thinking mistakenly that knowing was the same as belonging.

  They turned away from the girl’s disappointed face and ran straight into Saina’s friend Gharev, the program head who had invited her to speak. He wedged himself between the two of them and clasped Saina in a hug. He pulled back, hands gripping her shoulders, and shook her enthusiastically. “Brilliant! You were brilliant! Amazing time play. Empathetic anxiety! The anxiety of influence! Oh, you had me sweating bullets!” He paused to pluck a plastic glass of half-drunk wine from a table nearby. Saina was pretty sure it wasn’t his. Swirling it, he sipped. “This wine is shit! Next time I see you, you’ll come to my place in Red Hook, I’ll pour you something good. I just got a case of Zin from one of those bonkers new biodynamic vineyards where they have to bury a ram’s horn at midnight—you know Zin’s back, right? It’s amazing. Smooth. Like velvet! Like tits! Velvet tits!”

  “Who is this guy? I love this guy!” Leo clapped Gharev on the shoulder of his sleek black jacket, laughing. “Look at him. He’s like a CIA operative.”

  “Oh my god.” Saina dropped her voice. “Gharev. Are you rolling?” His pupils were huge and he still hadn’t let go of her arm.

  Gharev grinned. “Just high on life, baby, high on life.” Across the room, a student beckoned him. As he started moving, he shouted back at them. “We did get some real coffee, though.” He waved vaguely towards a side room, where two bearded men in bow ties and heavy canvas aprons were pouring slow streams of steaming water through glass funnels balanced on a wooden board. “It’s amazing! It has a nose!”

  Saina and Leo looked at each other, laughing.

  “It has a nose!” she said, tweaking his.

  Leo swirled an imaginary glass of wine, lifting it up and sucking air through his teeth. “Ah, complex. There’s a brashness, but under that do I detect a hint of . . . wistfulness? Yes, a supple wistfulness with notes of cayenne and joy. And Band-Aids.”

  “Oh, I love it when they say that things taste like Band-Aids.”

  “And dirt. Though, to be fair, a lot of things do taste like dirt, in a pretty good way.”

  “You’re such a farmer,” she said, smiling at him. “I’m still mad at you, though. But we can talk about it later.”

  He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it once, twice, three times.

  She downed the last inch of her mediocre wine. Whee! She was a little bit drunk.

  The problem with her, with her friends, was that there was nothing really serious to worry about. No war. No famine. The world might be filled with catastrophes, but none were poised to intrude in their lucky lives. The concerns of her father’s generation were so much more vital. More global. Saina and her friends might travel the world, but no one lived or died on what they did—having an art gallery in Berlin was not the same as fighting an army of Communists.

  Worrying, Saina realized, was a luxury in itself. The luxury of purpose.

  A life predicated on survival might have been a better life in so many ways. Who cared about artistic fulfillment when your main concern was finding enough food to eat? And, Saina was positive, she would have excelled at finding enough food to eat, no matter what the environment. The hallmarks of twenty-first-century success, at least in her world, were all so abstract. Be a Simpsons character! Give a TED talk! Option your life story!

  Each time she thought she’d achieved it, the center slipped away and some other gorgeous abstraction became the only thing to want.

  三十六

  New Orleans, LA

  WHEN THEY drove off from the diner leaving his father and Barbra and Nash standing there in the street, Andrew was
all exhilaration, which lasted as long as it took to turn the corner. Faced with an empty street, he felt confused again, ragged and unsure. Next to him, Dorrie’s lips curled up in a long, slow smile. He couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark sunglasses, but he knew that she was looking at the road, and not at him.

  “So what are we going to do now?” he asked. “Am I just going to live with you?”

  Dorrie lifted an arm to wave at some tourists in a passing streetcar who had lifted their cell phones to photograph her car, her hair whipping around her face. Finally, finally, she turned and looked at him through her opaque lenses. “Let’s not think about that,” she said, smiling again.

  And so he hadn’t. For a while, it wasn’t hard. Being with Dorrie meant always being in motion. Forty-eight hours sped by like a joyous montage from some romantic comedy that he wanted to watch as much as the next girl.

  Dorrie, leading him by the hand into a tiny cobblestoned courtyard set with battered turquoise tables and cane chairs. Dorrie, tearing apart the long baguette in front of them, slathering each piece with soft pale-yellow butter and feeding it to him, kissing his lips as he chewed. Dorrie, insisting that he drink his coffee black, then finally relenting and pouring in a long ribbon of cream and then adding two, three, four rough cubes of sugar, letting him feed her a spoonful of the crunchy, bittersweet dregs at the bottom. Him, following her out of the courtyard, eyes full with the delicious view of her bare thighs patterned from the woven seat.

  Him, leaning back after having sex for the third time ever, head sinking in her plush pillows, thrilled that he’d gotten to watch her back arch and eyes flutter closed. Her, picking up an abandoned goblet of wine and taking a sip, leaning over to dribble a blood-red stream from her mouth into his. Them, again.

  Dorrie, slipping past the concierge at Hotel Monteleone with a wink, taking a twenty-dollar bill out of Andrew’s wallet and handing it to the attendant who brought them a pile of towels. Dorrie, napping in the shade by the side of the rooftop pool, a smile on her face, not even waking up when her arm dropped off the green chaise and her long, thin fingers touched the concrete. Him, listening as she breathed, wondering if maybe this was the beginning of things.

  Him, standing on the balcony of a double-gallery house holding something in a martini glass, leaning down so that Dorrie could whisper into his ear. The Democratic nominee speaking on the slice of big screen visible through the window, his right arm a metronome. Dorrie, turning and laughing, red-rimmed lips wide open, as the host of the party tugged an Obama T-shirt over his suit. Everyone, getting drunker. Him, sitting alone on the couch, surrounded by party debris, reaching up and letting Dorrie pull him out of the house and into the night.

  And then the shiny pop soundtrack screeched to a halt. Andrew opened his eyes. Oh, it was bright. The world was too bright. And hot. He kicked off the blanket and groaned, rolling towards Dorrie.

  “Good morning.”

  She looked at him. She was sitting in bed with a platter of fruit and a newspaper. Freckled fingers picked up a section of kiwi and put it in her mouth.

  “You just passed out last night. That wasn’t very nice, was it? Doesn’t make a woman feel very desirable.”

  Andrew closed his eyes again. Groaned. Rolled back over. Why was this happening?

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  He heard the clatter of a plate on the side table and then a second later Dorrie was straddling him, her tiny nipples pushing against her ribbed wifebeater, the rest of her in a pair of little-boy underwear. On the bureau behind her, Andrew could see framed photos. There were a few of Dorrie and a nearly identical brother—he was ten years gone, dead of an overdose—and one old-fashioned wedding photo. The rest were all Dorrie in a bandanna and T-shirt surrounded by black and brown children with huge white grins, all of them framed by concrete huts and actual grass shacks.

  She cocked her head, still looking at him.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  “No, I’m not. But I am extremely sexy.”

  Andrew laughed. Shook his head.

  “No, you are, you are! You’re gorgeous.”

  She reached over and picked up a strawberry. Pulled the top off. Flicked it at him and popped the berry in her own mouth. Andrew scooped up the wet blob of fruit and put it on the nightstand.

  Dorrie reached over again and picked up a banana.

  “You’re not hungover at all?”

  She shook her head. He tried again.

  “Do you think Barack Obama has a chance? Could he really win? That would be pretty amazing, right?”

  Dorrie nodded and peeled the banana in three swift strokes, dropping the skin on his chest. Suddenly, he was scared. There was a queasy undercurrent of not-rightness to the whole thing that swelled up like a hot air balloon inside of him.

  She held the pale fruit aloft like a dagger, squeezing so that its flesh oozed out between her fingers and sent a low, nauseous perfume into the room.

  “Honey, I just want to jam this down your throat,” she said, sweetly.

  Her other hand was on his shoulder, holding herself steady, holding him down.

  “Dorrie?”

  “Mm-hm?”

  “Why did you like me? At the wedding? What made you like me?”

  Disdain. Anger. Fear? She was hard to read.

  Andrew laughed, uncomfortable. “I mean, besides my devastating good looks.”

  She lowered the banana slowly. Dropped it and smeared the mush of it on her bedspread.

  “That’s gross.”

  Dorrie’s eyes weren’t olive anymore. Now they were blue. An icy blue so pale that it made her look almost blind. Why wasn’t she saying anything?

  “Seriously, why?”

  Still nothing.

  Andrew tried again. “I know why I liked you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. You’re different. I mean, I know that sounds kind of shallow, but it’s true. You’re . . .” How could he tell her that she was not the kind of girl he ever would have met at college? There probably weren’t even any guys like her at college. You were supposed to see the world when you were young, right? Well, Dorrie was definitely the world. She was an adventure. Did girls like it when they were called adventures? He wasn’t sure.

  “I’m what?”

  The photos in their frames behind her caught his eye again. “I wouldn’t have guessed that you were such a do-gooder.”

  She glanced back. Shrugged. “It was a phase. I’m a lot more utilitarian now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Have you studied Malthusian theory yet?”

  “No.”

  “It’s okay, you don’t need to. It’s brutal and misinformed. But on a much lesser level, I kind of believe in it now. If your village needs a white person to come in and teach you how to dig a well, maybe you don’t deserve to last another generation.”

  “So why all the pictures?”

  “I’m a sucker for cute kids.”

  Andrew shook his head. “I have to warn you, I’m not very good with snark.”

  He laughed encouragingly, but she didn’t respond. Oh god, why had he said that? That was so stupid. What was snark, anyway?

  And then, in a half second, no warning at all, she stuck her banana-glopped fingers in his mouth and flopped down on top of him, nestling her head in next to his ear.

  “Do you like it?”

  Well, he didn’t not like it. Andrew sucked dutifully, moving his tongue along the tips of her fingers. Dorrie wriggled on top of him, grinding her hips into his.

  “Wait,” said Andrew, struggling to push her off. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  She sat up again.

  “Seriously, why?”

  Andrew didn’t even know why he kept asking. He usually just let stuff like that go, but if she couldn’t tell him, well, if she couldn’t tell him, then she couldn’t possibly be in love with him, right?

  “Dorrie?”

  Not
hing.

  “Well?”

  Nothing.

  “This isn’t really good for my self-esteem here. Nothing?”

  Nothing.

  Until “Turn over and I’ll show you.”

  “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She bared her teeth at him, and then, tender, soft, she reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, brushing his cheek with her knuckles as she drew her hand away.

  “I don’t like this anymore.” He didn’t even know that those words were going to come out of him, but once he said them, they were truer than anything else he could have said.

  “Aww, honey, what do you mean? We’re having fun here.”

  “No.” Andrew shrugged her off. She was so light, actually. There was so little to her. “I’m not having fun. I thought you—”

  “You thought I loved you?”

  “Yes!” No. No, he hadn’t. He never thought it, but in trying to convince himself that it wasn’t necessary, he’d hoped it, and that was almost as true.

  “Oh come on, you’re young, but you’re not a baby. You can’t possibly think that love works like that. You wanted to fuck and I gave you an excuse.”

  “No!” Andrew flung his legs off the bed and then stood up. “I didn’t! I mean, I did, but not like that! I explained it!”

  He had to leave. What was he doing here with this stranger? He started picking up his clothes and shoving them back in his duffel.

  “Andrew! You don’t have to go.”

  “I’m not handcuffed anymore, so . . .”

  There. He could be sarcastic, too. Or ironic. Or whatever.

  He continued packing up, going to the bathroom to retrieve his toothbrush and moisturizer, unplugging the cord of his cell phone and winding it up carefully before he looked in her direction. Sitting there on the bed, eyes wide, skin luminescent, she was perfection. He could put down his bag and just stay. She’d love him eventually.

  “You’re really leaving?”

  “Unless . . .”

  If she just said one nice thing, just made one gesture towards him, just showed him something, he would stay.