Across a Green Ocean

by Wendy Lee

  Now, Michael was just as hard to reach but for a different reason. He only had a cell phone, which Ling supposed was the trend among young people nowadays, but it caused more problems than if he had a landline. Strange how the more convenient technology made it to talk to people, the more difficult it was to find them. Ling had been trying to reach Michael for the past week; since Monday. She wanted his advice on what it meant when you went to a restaurant with a man and he paid, when you had long conversations with him and he listened intently, when at the end of your outings together, he gazed into your eyes and said he looked forward to seeing you again soon. In short, she wanted to know about dating.

  Ling didn’t know how much of an expert Michael was on this subject. Of course, in high school he had been oddly close to the Bradley girl, and once he had brought home a girl from college who wore a bowler hat. But certainly he was a better option for a confidante than Emily, and not only because Emily was so loyal to her father’s memory. Ling was afraid that Emily might start asking uncomfortable questions, or worse, think that her mother’s real motivation for calling was to ask when she and Julian were planning to have a baby. Children could be so selfish, thinking the world revolved around them.

  Every day this past week, when Ling had dialed Michael’s number, the message had gone to voice mail. She supposed he must be terribly busy, or else he would have called her back by now. Cut him some slack, Emily had said, and Ling had spent the past few days cutting it, whatever slack was. But now she picked up the kitchen phone and pressed the buttons, willing a human to pick up on the other end. We’re sorry, the mailbox is full, answered a voice that could never have belonged to a real person. The messages couldn’t all be from her, as she’d just called once a day. And besides, she had not actually left messages. She never liked hearing the sound of her own voice being played back, with its accented English even after almost thirty-five years of living in this country. The one good thing about cell phones, she supposed, was that she didn’t have to leave a message for someone to know she had called.

  She hung up and sat for a while in the kitchen, her fingertips cold. It was not unusual for Michael to let his phone go to voice mail or to not call her back for a few days, but for his mailbox to be full? This must mean other people were trying to reach him without success, that he wasn’t calling anybody back. To make sure she had heard right, she called again, and once more received the same, disembodied message. As if on their own, her fingers punched in the number again and again, until she forced herself to stop. She sat there clutching the receiver, as though it was the only thing grounding her.

  The last time she had felt this way was almost a year ago, when the hospital had called to tell her that her husband had had a heart attack.

  Han’s death had occurred quite suddenly at work. He had been a laboratory technician at a pharmaceuticals company in Trenton. Ling did not know exactly what he did—whenever he had tried to explain it, her mind felt overstuffed, like when she was first learning English—but she knew he cared enough about it to the point that he rarely took a day off. She remembered noticing the strain of his back through his shirts, worn thin from too much washing. He had been fifty-seven years old.

  By the time Ling had gotten to the hospital, he was already gone. It was heart failure, the doctors had said. She hadn’t believed them at first. Wasn’t heart failure caused by too much weight, too much food, too much drink, too much of everything? Her husband was as slim as the day she had set eyes on him, and he never touched alcohol or smoked a cigarette. He was the kind of person who got up at dawn to take a brisk walk around the block, and he went to bed at ten thirty every night, without a minute or two’s deviation. She wanted to tell the doctors this, as proof that there had been some mistake, but for some reason her English came out all twisted, and they were more interested in whether she needed to be sedated.

  When Ling called Emily’s cell phone to tell her what had happened, she added that she and Michael shouldn’t hurry to the hospital. Don’t you want us to be with you as soon as possible? Emily had asked. There was no point, Ling had said, since it was too late to say good-bye to their father, surprising even herself with her calmness. When Emily did arrive, Ling thought that her daughter looked like she was working too hard. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and her shoulder-length hair badly needed a trim. It also didn’t help that she had inherited her father’s dusky complexion, his wide-set eyes and generous mouth. Ling knew her daughter had more important things to worry about than her appearance, but surely a little makeup wouldn’t hurt. However, she knew if she mentioned this, Emily would respond tartly that she shouldn’t think all lawyers looked like those on television.

  Michael, however, took after his mother—tall and thin and pale, with delicate features and long, sensitive hands and feet. When he was young—perhaps because she knew there would be no more children after him—Ling treated him like a piece of porcelain. She picked him up whenever he cried, chose the best bits from her own plate to feed him, took care to leave on a night-light in his room. This irked Han, who thought she babied him, and he insisted that his son should grow up tough, as he had. How tough, Ling didn’t know, although she was aware that life in 1960s Beijing must have been difficult.

  At the hospital Michael sat with her quietly, holding her hand, while Emily flew about interrogating doctors, browbeating nurses, commandeering cups of coffee that no one wanted to drink. In that way she was her father’s daughter, capable and methodical, even to the point of lacking an imagination, Ling sometimes thought. But Ling could not be more grateful for her daughter’s help. Emily was the one who had made the funeral arrangements, organized the gathering at the house afterward, picked out a black silk dress from Ling’s closet for her to put on, even though she herself was wearing an old black knit thing that made her look like she was wearing a tube.

  After the funeral, most of the people who had come to pay their last respects were Chinese families from church or Han’s coworkers, the majority who were also Asian. The only white people in the room besides Han’s old boss and his wife were the Bradleys from next door—Mr. and Mrs. Bradley and their daughter, who now lived in Boston—and Emily’s husband, Julian.

  Most notable among the guests was the lack of relatives. Ling’s family still lived in Taiwan, and Han had no living relatives that Ling knew of. For the eulogy, Pastor Liu had only been able to say, Han Tang, beloved husband to Ling Tang, beloved father to Emily Tang and Michael Tang. Of course, Han had also been someone’s son and someone’s brother, but he rarely talked of his parents or siblings in Beijing, and Ling assumed that he chose not to tell her about his past. She knew her own childhood in Taiwan could not compare, where she had grown up the middle daughter out of three girls. The family had been a political one that had come over from the mainland in 1949, and so had been spared the twin ravages of famine and fanaticism. The children were cared for by housekeepers and maids rather than Ling’s beautiful, indolent mother. Because none of them were boys, their father largely ignored them. Occasionally, Ling felt the sting of her parents’ disinterest, but she had never known the pain of separation or persecution, like her husband must have.

  Not that you would have been able to tell what Han had suffered by looking at his picture at the funeral. Sitting on the mantelpiece in the living room, the framed photograph, which had been taken at Emily’s wedding, depicted a close-lipped, square-jawed man whose eyelids were beginning to sag with age, but whose stiff-bristled hair was still black. It occurred to Ling that if you looked around the room at its occupants, most of them immigrants, you would not be able to discern beneath their smooth façades what their previous lives had been like.

  Every time someone came up to offer their condolences to Ling, she grew more irritated, even sarcastic.

  He was a dedicated employee. . . . This was from Han’s old boss, whom Ling hadn’t seen in nearly ten years. Standing next to his faded wife, he didn’t look as imposing as she’d rememb
ered, or maybe he’d been diminished with age.

  He was a wonderful person to work with.... A female colleague, who appeared to be past retirement age but who was probably still working because she had no husband or children to support her.

  May God watch over him. . . . From one of the newest members of the First Baptist congregation, a young woman just arrived from mainland China, the cheap, shiny material of her clothes screaming fresh off the boat.

  We’ll miss having him next door.... Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, unctuous in their carefully pressed clothes. Mrs. Bradley had a green casserole dish tucked under her arm like a football.

  Ling directed Mrs. Bradley toward the kitchen, thinking fiercely all the while, You will not miss him. You never knew him. I never even knew him.

  She walked through the living room, making sure that drinks were topped and plates were full. The food laid out was a mixture of Chinese comfort foods—sticky rice with sweet sausage, lion’s head meatballs, soy-sauce chicken—mixed with more mundane meat loafs and salads. She’d never be able to eat it all, even if she made her children take some back home with them.

  Emily and Michael were in the kitchen, where the dishes that couldn’t fit on the dining room table had been placed. They were looking at one item in particular, Mrs. Bradley’s casserole dish. Michael lifted the lid, and he and Emily and Ling peered inside to see a lumpy red-brown concoction of beef and beans. At the same time, something wafted forth that stung the insides of Ling’s nose. An unaccustomed sensation overcame her, and it was a few moments before she realized that tears were forming in the corners of her eyes. She turned aside so that her children wouldn’t see her cry. Judging by the crinkled look on their faces, they felt it too. Phew, Emily said, and dumped the contents of the pot in the trash.

  Both of her children had offered to stay a few days after the funeral, but Ling knew that Emily was itching to return to work, and Michael probably wanted to be back in the city, too. They promised to visit more often, to take turns calling her so that she would hear from someone every day. To her surprise, they actually did this, at least for the first month or so, and then went back to their usual rare calls. During this time Emily also made several trips back to put her father’s finances in order. Once again, Ling was grateful for her daughter’s ableness. As far as she was able to understand these matters, there was no mortgage or debt that Han had left her to pay off, and there seemed to be enough in his pension plan so that she would be taken care of for the rest of her life. If she lived the way they always had, without a penny or a second wasted, she wouldn’t have to worry about a thing, or so Emily told her.

  Before they left, Ling had asked her children to take whatever they wanted of their father’s. Emily asked for the photograph that had been on the mantelpiece. She didn’t seem to recognize it until Ling told her that it was from her and Julian’s wedding. Ling had cut herself out of it, so maybe that was why it looked so strange. What Michael took Ling wasn’t sure, although he had spent hours looking through his father’s papers. Ling didn’t know why he was so interested, as most of them were legal documents. There was very little writing that had been personal, as Han was the kind of man who hadn’t seen the point of putting anything down on paper. His legacy was in the house he had paid for with his hard work, in the funds he had left his widow, in his children, and what they would accomplish with their lives.

  After Emily and Michael had left, Ling had packed her husband’s clothes and few possessions—the black comb he had used every morning, the alarm clock he had always set at night, even on weekends—into boxes in the basement. She was surprised by how little impact he had made within the house itself. She’d never noticed how much the rooms had been filled by her own things and the children’s. The hallway had rung with the sounds of their voices; the walls had shook when they’d slammed shut the doors to their bedrooms. Han had always been more of an afterthought, the kind of man who never made much of an impression when he entered a room, not even a room in his own house.

  The following year had passed quietly, and Ling was surprised by how much she missed her husband. Now she was too aware of herself, how it took longer for her to climb the stairs at night, the strange little pains that greeted her in the morning, the way her very bones ached after drinking a cold glass of water. Maybe things would have been different had she been in Taiwan, surrounded by relatives, but this was the path she had chosen. Han was the man she had chosen, and she would stay by her decision, and its consequences, even after his death, for the rest of her life.

  Outside the kitchen window the sun was setting, casting shadows that reached into the farthest corners of the backyard. With cold fingers Ling dialed Emily’s cell phone. Her daughter answered on the first ring.

  “Hi, Mom,” Emily said. “Is everything okay?”

  Ling was silent.

  “Mom.” Emily’s voice was worried now. “What’s happened?”

  Ling realized that the last time she had called Emily’s cell had been a year ago to tell her about her father. “Have you heard from your brother?” she asked.

  “Michael?” Emily almost sounded relieved.

  As if you had another brother, Ling thought.

  “I haven’t talked to him in a while,” Emily continued. “But you know how he is. It’s impossible to get ahold of him.”

  “He doesn’t pick up when I call him.”

  “Do you leave a message?”

  “No.”

  “Mom!” Now Emily was getting that exasperated tone to her voice. It usually happened whenever she talked to her mother, just not so early in the conversation. “It’s really annoying when you do that. Why don’t you just say you want him to call you back?”

  It would be impossible to explain to her daughter the different tightropes she walked with each of them when it came to calling them on the phone. “I never leave a message. He knows it’s me.”

  “Yes, who else would call multiple times without leaving a message?”

  “Well, today I could not leave a message, even if I wanted, because the mailbox is full. I have tried to call him all week, and he doesn’t answer. What does it mean?”

  “I think,” Emily said, “it means that he’s been busy at work all week and doesn’t want to be disturbed. I think it means he hasn’t had time to check his messages. I think it means he’s living a normal life.”

  “What if something’s happened to him?”

  “Like what? Mom, I know you think the city is a dangerous place, but it’s different from when you and Dad lived here.”

  “He could have an accident, and no one will know,” Ling persisted.

  “He must have friends who check up on him.” At this, Emily sounded a bit dubious. Not that Michael wouldn’t have friends; it was just that neither she nor her mother knew who they were.

  “I don’t know,” Ling said. “I have this feeling.”

  “Describe this feeling for me.” It was the lawyer coming out in Emily, thought Ling, in which she made everyone feel like they were on trial.

  “It’s a feeling that a mother knows when something is not right with her child. You will know someday when you have children of your own.” Emily’s pause told Ling that she had overstepped her bounds. She could picture her daughter on the other end of the line, probably still at work, her brow furrowed impatiently.

  “Mom, this isn’t about me. It’s about Michael.”

  “But it is about you. You’re his older sister. You should be looking out for him.” Even though she had come to realize her children were not that involved in each other’s lives, Ling hoped to appeal to her daughter’s sense of responsibility.

  “Fine,” Emily said. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll stop by his apartment after work, just to make sure he’s okay.”

  This was more than Ling had hoped for. “You will do that?”

  “How long can it take? Twenty minutes to get to the East Village, one minute for him to answer the door. Done.”

 
; Ling tried to hide her relief. “That would be a big help.”

  Emily’s voice softened. “Don’t worry, Mom. It’s probably nothing.”

  With all her heart, Ling hoped she was right.

  CHAPTER 2

  When her mother had called her, Emily Tang was still in her tiny office in Chinatown, a Styrofoam container of takeout sitting in the semicircle she had managed to clear on her desk. After she hung up, she regarded her dinner with a jaundiced eye. She’d had the same pan-fried noodles in a brown sauce from the greasy restaurant down the street almost every night this past week, but had ceased to taste it. Once upon a time, when she’d first come to the city from the suburbs as a wide-eyed college student, she’d thought Chinese takeout was charming, the stuff of a thousand romantic comedies involving single women in their well-decorated loft spaces. At home her parents had never allowed takeout, their reasoning being why buy Chinese food when you could cook it yourself? So she ate it in mall food courts with her teenage friends, after hours of trying on clothes and deciding everything made her look fat. Now, all she saw when she looked at takeout was monosodium glutamate and cheap immigrant labor, packaged in a nonbiodegradable container. She dumped it in the trash.

  There were few things more pathetic than someone sitting in their office after seven on a Friday night and eating bad takeout, but Emily had good reason to be working late. For the past month she had been involved in a case that would validate the choice she had made six years ago to give up a judicial clerkship in favor of a junior associate position at the immigration law firm of Lazar and Jenkins. Although immigration law had been part of Emily’s coursework at school, the first image it conjured up for her was the subway ads in which mustachioed male lawyers promised superherolike vengeance, or at least a few thousand dollars in damages. At the time, she was putting in twelve-hour days at the civil courthouse downtown, depressed by the parade of drug addicts, drunks, squatters, wife beaters, homeless people, and plain old crazies. She figured she would be better off dealing with immigrants, although she knew from her parents that they could be just as crazy.