The Wangs vs. the World

by Jade Chang

  From that joining on, everything about the evening was fun. Leo was warm and inquisitive; Barbra, wry and observant in a way Saina couldn’t remember witnessing; Grace lit up under Leo’s attention, describing the potential horrors of the local high school. Graham tucked them in a corner of the restaurant and kept their votives afire and their wineglasses full, bringing them treats from the kitchen that he insisted were mistakes on the part of his incompetent chef and, at the end of the night, dancing Grace across the empty dining room floor as Cat Stevens played.

  When they finally left, every star in the sky was out, shining as hard as it could on them, and Grace and Barbra were actually leaning towards each other, giggling about something.

  Her sister turned around. “So,” she said sweetly, “when are you guys gonna get maaawied?”

  “Grace! C’mon. Don’t be embarrassing!”

  “What’s embarrassing? You love Leo! We love Leo!” She swayed a little on her heels. Oops. Someone should have been watching Gracie’s glass. “Leo. Leo! Leo, let me tell you, you’re so much better than Saina’s last boyfriend. He was super-hot, but he was kind of a dick.” Grace clapped a hand over her mouth and looked at Barbra. “Sorry! Sorry! It’s true, though!”

  Saina tensed. Every time Grayson came up—and she tried to make sure it was as rarely as possible—she imagined Leo imagining them together that morning, a postcoital shame that had never quite dissipated.

  But Leo let his dimples show and was about to say something as Grace talked over him, drunk. “Also, your babies will be so cute! Mixed babies are the cutest!” She shot Barbra a look, not noticing as Leo winced. “It’s true! They are! C’mon, Leo! Don’t you want to see what it would look like if you reproduced?” She stopped abruptly and looked down at her shoes. “Oh! I have to tie these.”

  They were all quiet for a moment, and that was beautiful, too. The night was both liquid and crisp, delicious and dark, the leaves rustled wildly in the trees. And then Leo was tugging her gently by the elbow, leading her away from Barbra and Grace, who had headed towards the car. The silence extended onward, but Saina didn’t notice until she realized abruptly that it should terrify her. Finally, Leo said, “Actually, I should probably tell you something. Saina, I do have a child. A daughter.”

  Time stopped. Space collapsed. Every star shut down. There. There was the catastrophe she’d been waiting for.

  “Before you say anything, I know. It’s bad I didn’t tell you,” he said.

  “But why? Why not? I wouldn’t have cared!”

  “I don’t know! It was stupid! I was scared to! The first real thing you told me about was how your fiancé knocked up this girl and left you, so I didn’t really think that I should lead with that piece of information. What was I supposed to say? And then everything was so good, and it’s not like I meet a million amazing girls up here.”

  “So you just wanted to hold on to me because you were worried that no one else would come along?”

  “No! No. I wanted to hold on to you because I fell for you.”

  “And how long were you going to keep it a secret?”

  “It was never the right time. When we got back together, I was going to tell you, but at first it was . . . it was just so good that I didn’t want to mess everything up, and then you were worried about your speech, and then your family was coming, and you were stressed about that. You’ve had a lot to deal with, and I didn’t want to be the guy adding to it.”

  “So I’m the delicate flower who can’t handle anything?”

  “No! No. I was trying to be considerate. I was trying to be a gentleman. Okay, I hear myself. I know. It sounds so stupid now.”

  “Do you see her?”

  “My daughter?”

  “Of course your daughter!”

  A long pause. “Not right now.”

  Suspicion pulled at her. Why not? What did Leo do? Was this becoming one of those stories where the perfect man turns out to be a murderous imposter?

  “Since when?”

  He sighed, long and heavy. “Since a few months ago.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her mom and I got in a fight about stupid shit.”

  “What.”

  “What?”

  “The stupid shit. What was it.”

  “She and I had started hooking up again and I guess she thought, you know, that since we had a kid together, and we were sleeping together, that it was going to be happy families.”

  “And then?”

  “I met you. That day. At Graham’s restaurant.”

  “And then she wouldn’t let you see your kid? That’s crazy.”

  “I know! She’s crazy.”

  “I hate it when people say their ex-girlfriends are crazy. It’s so fucking misogynistic.”

  “Saina, life is messy, okay? It’s not . . . things don’t just fall into place for everyone.”

  “Why are you saying that to me? You think I don’t know that? Hello, you were there when we read that article, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but shit happens in your life and it becomes a story in a glossy magazine. That doesn’t happen for other people. Shit happens in my life and it just sucks. Nobody writes an article about it.”

  “You think that makes it better? No. No. That just makes it all so much worse. It’s like living in a tiny village where you know that everyone’s talking about you, but it’s all of New York City.”

  “But I do live in a tiny village. And the only reason I’m still here is because this is where they live.”

  “Why don’t you have any pictures of her? What’s her name? How old is she?”

  “I have a million pictures of her!” He took out his phone and swiped at it, scrolling past photos of him and Saina laughing together at a barbecue and astride his tractor. “Her name is Kaya, and she’s three.” He thrust the glowing rectangle at her.

  “Oh. She’s really, really cute.” Seeing these photos of a chubby little girl who could only be Leo’s, Saina felt unaccountably sad. Is this what would happen forever afterwards now? Would every man she met have some sort of secret progeny who would expose him as an asshole? The future felt dead and unthinkable.

  “I don’t know, Leo. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t do anything. Just think about this for a minute, okay?”

  “Did you hide pictures of her in your house because of me?”

  “No! I don’t have pictures of anything in my house!”

  It was true. Leo’s house was spare and undecorated, a reaction, he said, against the chaos of his childhood. His childhood. How could an abandoned child abandon his own?

  “Saina, don’t be mad at me just because you feel like you’re supposed to be.”

  “I’m not! That is so condescending—”

  “Look, I didn’t get mad at you when I was supposed to—”

  “You mean when you walked in on us? You did get mad! I tried to apologize and you never texted me back.”

  “Grayson was living in your house! How understanding did you expect me to be?” He stood facing her for a long minute, and then added, quietly, “And when you told him to leave, what did I do? I just took you back. Just like that.”

  She didn’t know how to respond to that. It was true, but it wasn’t fair! He couldn’t think it was the same thing.

  Grace broke into their silence. “Guys, I’m really sorry, I know you’re fighting and personally I think it’s really dumb, but—”

  “Grace! We’re having a serious conversation.”

  Instead of speaking, Grace handed Saina her phone.

  “What are you trying to show me?”

  “An email. From Daddy.”

  Saina focused on the screen.

  Do not be worried. I should tell you that I am in the hospital. Many things have happened that are too difficult to explain here. I am okay.

  She turned back to Grace. “That’s it? That’s all he says? What are we supposed to do with that?”

  “Saina, wha
t is happening? You’re scaring me,” said Leo.

  Drawing Grace towards the car, Saina closed ranks.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s clearly something!”

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  “Saina, tell me. Is your dad okay? What’s going on?”

  She stopped walking and let go of Grace’s hand. “It doesn’t concern you anymore, Leo. I can’t do this again. I don’t hate you, okay? I just think it’s better if we stop seeing each other.”

  “Seeing each other? We’re not seeing each other, Saina. We’re—”

  “We’re nothing. I have to go.”

  She felt Leo falling away from her, a stuffed animal dropped from the claw of one of those games she used to play at Chuck E. Cheese—so much concentration, so many tokens, and no matter what, the prize never made it to the chute, just tumbled away at the very moment she thought it might be secured.

  四十五

  Beijing, China

  MOST OF THE TIME, Andrew didn’t think about his father that much. There was hardly ever any reason to. But from the moment he’d gotten that weird email confession from China, the insistent tug of anxiety that Andrew usually directed towards girls centered itself instead on his father. That tugging had kept him awake through the entire flight from Atlanta—where he’d run off the bus, almost forgetting his duffel bag—to Beijing, and now that he’d landed, now that he was actually in China, probably about to figure out what was going on with his father, it had only gotten harder to ignore. The only thing he could think of, the only thing that might make him feel better, was fried rice.

  It was one of his favorite pastimes, really. Andrew loved consuming platters of fried rice doused in chili oil in giant bites, preferably with an oversize serving spoon. Warm, fluffy bite after warm, fluffy bite, each one piled high with once-frozen peas and carrots, golden bits of scrambled egg, and plump, glistening pieces of shrimp.

  Eating like this, he could never get full. There was no point of satiation; there was only the act of bringing spoon to mouth, of taste buds and heat receptors leaping to action to take in each bite, feeling flavor and warmth spread across his tongue and down the back of his throat. The sameness of each bite, the repetition of the spooning and the chewing, helped calm him. It didn’t even have to be good fried rice. He was eating out of a take-out box from an airport place that was like a Chinese version of Panda Express—just as terrible and just as delicious—sitting on a bench next to the baggage claim, waiting for his sisters. Hopefully this was the right baggage claim. There were three China Air flights coming into Beijing from New York at around the same time, so Andrew figured he’d start waiting at the earliest one.

  With every bite, a few grains dropped off the heaping spoonful as it made its way into his mouth. Andrew started to like the skittering noise they made as they fell back on the Styrofoam shell.

  There should be a German word for that sound. That was a good idea; he should remember to work it out—something riffing on all those tiny, leftover-floss-in-the-teeth-type things that there could be German words for. He was going to have to start coming up with some stuff that wasn’t so Asian soon. Especially if, well, what if he did stand-up in China? Did that even exist? His doing material about being a minority wouldn’t go over that well here. Even the guy emptying the trash was Chinese.

  “Andrew!”

  With a shout, he was being hugged from both sides and the take-out container slid dangerously down his lap.

  “Guys!” He squirmed his arms out of the pile of sisters so that he could embrace them. They smelled like airplane food and other people’s perfume, but they also smelled like home.

  “Ew, Andrew! What are you eating? That looks gross!” Grace couldn’t believe that her brother was downing a giant pile of fried rice for his first meal in China. Shouldn’t they be having, like, Peking duck or something?

  Andrew squeezed her tighter. “It’s kind of gross, but I’ve been eating donuts and beer for the past few days, so it’s actually delicious.” When they finally let go of each other, he couldn’t hold the anxiety down any longer, trying to sound casual as he asked, “So, guys, are we worried?”

  Saina pulled back. It had been almost a year since she’d seen both of her siblings at the same time. They looked back at her, anxious, and she remembered the mom feeling that she hated and missed. “About Dad?”

  They nodded.

  “Yes and no? I’m not sure, you guys really know as much as I do. I only talked to him for a minute before some nurse came in.”

  “Do you think Dad really got into a fight?” said Grace. “I can’t even picture him jogging.”

  Andrew thought that was kind of unfair. “He plays tennis.”

  “Yeah, but tennis is more like a country-club activity. He plays tennis and goes on people’s boats. That’s not exercise.”

  Saina laughed. “I don’t think it was a boxing match! He said he was okay, though, but he seemed to want us to come, so who knows.” And then, as much as she had been trying not to think about Leo at all, he came back to her mind. Had he called? She reached into her bag. “I forgot to turn my phone back on. Maybe Dad called.”

  Grace was surprised. “You got international calling?”

  “It’s still on my phone from when I was in Berlin.”

  “Isn’t that expensive?”

  The truth was, she didn’t really know. It could have been, but all those bills were deducted automatically from her checking account—phone, Internet, cable, car insurance, house insurance, water, gas, electricity, garbage, membership to the gym that had no branches outside of Manhattan, the CSA that she had only picked up twice, and, embarrassingly, phone, Internet, and cable for her long-sold apartment. She’d tried to cancel them, but the customer service person seemed much more determined to keep her than she was to leave. “Well, we still have to be able to communicate somehow, right?” she replied, guilt making her voice sharp. Frugality was a new thing, and none of them knew quite how to handle it.

  “It’s just kind of weird that you’re still acting like we’re rich,” said Grace, angrily.

  “He-ey,” Andrew broke in. “So, uh, did I pick the right baggage claim?”

  His sisters were silent for a moment, and then Saina relaxed against Andrew. “You’re still the sweetest.”

  “What do you mean?” He knew exactly what she meant, of course, and knew that his sisters would be looking at each other now, smiling. He checked. They were.

  “Don’t worry,” said Grace. “We still love each other.”

  “Wait! Here’s the real question: Where’s Barbra?”

  “Her passport was expired.”

  “No!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, poor Babs. So what’s she doing now? Is she all alone in your house, Saina?”

  Yes, Barbra was alone in her house, with the keys to her rickety Saab and her friend Graham’s phone number in case she needed anything. It had been strange leaving someone else in the house that she’d spent the last few months hiding in and obsessing over. When they were saying goodbye, a thought had struck her.

  She’d asked Barbra, “Isn’t it weird?”

  “Zen yang?”

  “That you’re here. I mean, when you were growing up in Taiwan, would you ever have thought that you’d end up spending time alone in a farmhouse in upstate New York? When I bought the place, they told me it was built in 1902. I bet that first farmer would never have expected that some Asian lady would end up in his house.”

  Barbra had looked at her for a moment, confused. “But you are also some Asian lady.”

  Oh god, she remembered thinking. How could I be so obtuse? “You’re right. I guess it felt . . . different? But you’re right. That’s dumb. It’s the same thing.”

  Unexpectedly, Barbra had laughed. “Who knows where we end up in a life? Could be anywhere. Even some farmhouse. Some Asian lady.”

  Her phone dinged. Emails, a voicemail, five texts. S
he clicked on the texts first.

  917-322-XXXX

  I’m dying here Saina.

  917-322-XXXX

  Have you read it yet?

  917-322-XXXX

  Check your email.

  917-322-XXXX

  ?

  917-322-XXXX

  Where are you?

  Even though she’d deleted his number from her phone, Saina knew with a sick plunk that it was Grayson. That was his pattern. Their pattern. They would argue, and then Saina would turn off her phone and go to yoga or go for a walk or have drinks with friends, and Grayson would thrash around in his studio until he couldn’t take it any longer and then she’d turn her phone on to find eight missed texts and twice as many missed calls. Each time it flattered and embarrassed her. She tapped the email icon, waiting for it to load, her breath shorting in her lungs.

  What was Saina doing, buried in her phone? Grace poked her. “Did Dad call? Or Leo?”

  “No . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t . . . I’m not really sure. Wait a sec, let me look.”

  Sometimes when Grace was with her siblings, she wanted to hold on to them, to make sure that they couldn’t get away and have lives that didn’t involve her. “Well, did he email?”

  Andrew turned to her. “Leo! I forgot about the boyfriend. Grace, did you meet him?”

  Grace looked at her sister as she spoke. “Yeah. I thought he was so cool. And nice. And easy to talk to. Grayson’s better-looking, but Leo’s definitely a better person. Uh . . . except that Saina broke up with him.”

  “What? Why?”

  Saina was still buried in her phone, so Grace answered for her. “Because he has a kid.”

  She’d accidentally clicked on an email from her friend Lotte, inviting her to Montauk for the weekend, and she was still waiting for the email from Grayson to load when Grace’s response sank in. It wasn’t untrue. She broke up with him because he had a kid. Seriously, was everyone going to have a kid? She looked up at Andrew.