by Wendy Lee
The train had reached the station, and Emily disembarked along with a few other late commuters. Everyone else was heading in the other direction, into the city for a night out. Just the thought of it was exhausting to her; she wanted nothing more than to get into bed. She had little difficulty in locating her car in the lot, a Buick in an unfashionable shade of maroon that was older than she was. It was her mother’s first car and had been handed down to her when she was old enough to drive, then transferred to Michael when he got his license, and then reclaimed when she’d moved to the suburbs. When she started using it again, she found that it was like a time capsule. Wedged in the backseat was the cushion her mother had sat on because she was too short to see over the wheel; the glove compartment was stuffed with mangled cassette tapes from Emily’s teenage years; and underneath the floor mats were mummified French fries that must have come from Michael’s tenure. In a fit of perversity, Emily decided to keep everything the way it was. She felt driving a car like that was the equivalent of giving the finger to all the SUVs she encountered on her neighborhood streets.
As she pulled into the driveway and parked behind the Bimmer, she saw a light on in one of the upstairs windows. She hadn’t realized it was so late; Julian must have gone to bed. She opened the front door and walked softly into the kitchen, which gleamed with stainless steel and polished tiles. Emily herself never spent much time in here beyond brewing a cup of coffee for her travel mug, but this was Julian’s domain. He had chosen the ecologically sustainable bamboo for the cabinetry, and the recycled glass for the backsplash. The meals he cooked were elaborate, requiring visits to multiple farmers’ markets, even trips into the city for specialty items.
When she checked the bottom oven, she saw that Julian had left dinner for her, as was his habit. She knew that most people would appreciate this gesture from a spouse, but she was starting to feel oppressed by Julian’s culinary zeal. Tonight appeared to be some kind of Moroccan stew, judging from the colorful blend of chickpeas and peppers. To prove that she had tried it, Emily dipped a finger into the sauce and licked it; it was rich with tomatoes and saffron. She covered the dish and put it in the refrigerator. Maybe she’d have it for dinner tomorrow, provided she got back early enough.
She passed through the living room with its massive fireplace at one end, the ceiling crisscrossed with rough-hewn beams that dated, the real estate agent had assured them, from the original structure built in the late 1700s. The aesthetic in this room was more appropriate to that time period: a pine Dutch Colonial sideboard, straight-backed Shaker chairs whose very angles spoke of openness and honesty. Julian had spent days at yard sales and local antique stores, looking for this kind of stuff, usually on weekdays when Emily was at work. He had loved the idea of buying a house that had a history, although Emily was quick to point out that it was a history that belonged to neither of them, hers being Chinese and his a mix of German and French. If it bothered her so much, Julian had said, why didn’t she get one of those scrolled and lacquered cabinets or a delicately carved rosewood table from an Asian import store in the city? Yeah, Emily had replied, that would go over real nice with the cherry end tables and Windsor chairs. Instead, she insisted on buying their couch, which was large and shapeless and upholstered in soft gray corduroy, and was absolutely brand-new.
Upstairs, Julian was already in bed, a book lying facedown on the comforter. For a minute, Emily gazed fondly at him, the shape of his biceps beneath the worn T-shirt he liked to sleep in; the tufts of light brown hair sticking up all over his head. His hair was starting to thin on top, which endeared him to her further. It was at these times that she was so overcome with love for her husband that it seemed impossible that she could refuse him anything.
When she slid the book out from under his hands, he stirred.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I saved your place.” Behind her back she inserted a coaster into the middle of the book, approximately where she thought it had been open to. Then she slipped under the covers, snuggling up to him.
Julian made a face.
“What? You used to like the way I smell,” she said.
“You smell like the train.”
She brought a sleeve to her nose. “True.” She began to unbutton her shirt.
“That’s more like it,” he said, and buried his nose in the damp cleft of her bra. “Mmmm. Emily sweat.”
“Gross,” she said, and pulled away from him.
“How was your day?” he asked.
“Hectic. Oh, get this.” She told him about Gao Hu’s medical report. “Can you believe this kind of thing happens, in this country? Sure, maybe the gulags of Russia or Chinese labor camps or something, but in America?”
“Em,” Julian said. “You’re starting to sound scary. Right-wing scary.”
“You know what I mean.”
He put a hand on her thigh but appeared too tired to move it up any farther. “It’s almost midnight. You don’t want to work yourself up about this, or else you’ll never sleep.”
“I guess you’re right. I need to go into the office tomorrow, too.”
“One of those weekends, huh?”
“Sorry, baby.” She threaded one hand through his hair and gave an experimental tug.
“Don’t,” he said. “There isn’t any more where that came from.”
She bent and kissed the top of his head. “There’ll always be enough for me.”
After a moment, he asked, yawning, “Anything else happen today?”
“I found out that my brother’s gay and has gone off without telling anyone where.” She paused. “Those two things are not related.”
Julian looked more awake. “Really? Maybe he’s at some gay retreat.”
Punching his arm, she said, “I’m serious. He went away without telling anyone who cares about him—my mom, me, his boyfriend. . . .” She hugged her elbows to herself. “I met his boyfriend for the first time today. I can’t believe my little brother has a boyfriend.”
“How old is he now?”
“Twenty-six.”
“That’s old enough to be in a relationship. But given my memory of a certain someone’s reluctance to get married, I would say that settling down early doesn’t run in your family.”
“I did too want to get married,” Emily protested. “I just didn’t like the way you went about asking me.”
“What did you want, for me to do it in public?”
“Oh God, no. You know my coworker, Rick? He proposed to his wife by sending a singing telegram to her workplace when they were like twenty-two or something.”
Julian laughed. “I guess it turned out all right for him.”
“How so?”
“He has three kids, right? Sounds like she eventually forgave him.”
She shook her head. “Three kids. It sounds so . . . archaic. I can’t imagine what that must be like.”
“Can you imagine what one would be like?” Julian asked quietly.
Another step, and she would be falling into the very thing she had dreaded for so long; a discussion that would have plenty of emotions and heated words, but no right or wrong answers, and possibly no final decision. She tried to speak slowly, rationally.
“Julian, I thought we decided on this a long time ago. When we first got married.”
“People change, Emily.”
“Only if they don’t have the guts to stand for what they believe in. Do you remember how you used to say that population growth was out of control, and you were the last person who wanted to contribute to it?”
“Emily,” he said. “I was nineteen when I said that.”
“Have you even asked yourself why you’ve changed your mind? Maybe this is some kind of midlife crisis you’re having. Maybe you’re just looking for something you can finally be good at.” She regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them, wished she could draw them back to where her darkest, and most truthful, feelings lurked. When she was tired, it was harder for her to keep them from sl
ipping out, especially in front of her husband. She knew that their fourteen years together wasn’t an excuse, as well as the fact that Julian would probably forgive her. She just couldn’t help it.
“I know that you don’t think much of what I do,” Julian finally said, “but I’m not going to fail at being a parent.”
“Julian.” She put her hands against the sides of his face. “You’re not a failure. You make all this”—she indicated the large, comfortable bed they were in; the solid oak furniture; the house and the yard beyond—“possible. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“Most days it is. Most days I don’t think about it at all. But other days, I drive down this street, I open this door, and I think, what does it all mean? Why bother having all this, of coming here in the first place, if this is all we’re ever going to have?”
“That was your decision, not mine. I never asked to move out here.”
“You’re hardly here, anyway.”
She got up from the bed, bracing herself. “I can’t talk about this with you. Not now.”
“There’s never a good time for you to talk. You’re always at work. I come home, and there’s a message saying that you’re going to be late again. Now you’re not even here on the weekends. You probably spend more time with Rick than with me.”
He had started to raise his voice. “Hush,” she said.
“Who’s going to hear, the neighbors?” This was impossible. They lived a half acre away from the next house, which sometimes worried Emily, who had always lived within shouting distance of neighbors, even if she didn’t care to associate with them. “Even if they could, I don’t care. What I care about is what’s going to happen to us.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to us.”
“Right,” Julian said, and there was an edge to his voice that she had never heard before. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
They stared at each other across the expanse of the bed, neither of them speaking or even moving. Emily grasped for words, but for the first time, she didn’t know what to say to her husband that would bring them back to an equilibrium, to where they were supposed to be. Then, as if surfacing from underwater, she heard her phone going off in her purse. Julian heard it too.
“If you get that . . .” He left the threat unfinished.
Emily grabbed her purse and went downstairs, briefly glancing at the unfamiliar number before picking up. “Hello?”
“Hey,” came a young man’s voice against a thumping backdrop of party music. “This is Edison Ng. I think I know where your brother might be.”
CHAPTER 3
Every travel website Michael Tang had looked at that summer had advised him not to go to Qinghai Province.
One of the poorest and least populated provinces in the country, where political prisoners are sent to work in labor camps.
The provincial capital typifies the worst of modern China: polluted, industrial, without aesthetic merit. You are better off going straight to Tibet.
Qinghai isn’t the armpit of China—that distinction most likely goes to Hubei—but it certainly comes close.
Still, this is his destination, as he sits on a hard sleeper train from Beijing to Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province, in the northwest of China. It would have been much quicker to have taken a flight, but Michael wants to save money, and besides, he thinks that this way, he can see some of the country.
It turns out to be the most mind-numbing twenty-four hours he has ever experienced; physically numbing as well, for although the dark-green bunks are sparsely padded, they still feel like concrete to sleep on. Michael has the top bunk and feels like the main attraction in a hearse. During the day, the people who sleep on the upper bunks come down and sit on the bottom bunk, three per side, staring at one another like participants in a bad expressionist play. There are tiny hunched grandmothers, mothers holding infants, men in cheap rayon suits. People’s Liberation Army soldiers, dressed in olive-colored uniforms, sit at small tables beneath windows on the other side of the aisle, playing cards. Despite the signs that indicate no smoking, every male seems to have a lit cigarette, so the train car is filled with a faint bluish smoke that smells like burning trash.
When Michael looks at the other people on the train, he sees nothing in their faces that reminds him of himself, or his parents, or even the recent immigrants he has seen on the streets in Chinatown. Most of those immigrants are from coastal areas and not the interior of the country, but still, these seem like a difference species of people—blunt, impassive, totally devoid of hope for a better life. They are, in a word, peasants.
Dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, he realizes that he stands out as a foreigner, even if his facial features more or less resemble those of the people around him. None of the other men, even though their clothes are of poor quality, are so casually attired. Also, no one else seems to have a backpack, although many do have large, square red-and-blue-striped plastic bags stuffed with everything from melons to DVDs. Michael recognizes these bags, filled with fake designer purses and sunglasses, from the vendors on the street corners in New York City. They must be the internationally designated receptacle for pirated consumer goods.
Despite his appearance, or perhaps because of it, no one speaks to Michael. He supposes it is just as well. Like Emily, he does not know how to read or write in Chinese; unlike her, he also does not know how to speak it, although he understands some of the phrases his parents used to toss around, usually having to do with it being time to eat, time to sleep, or time to go outside. Things that a five-year-old, or a dog, might understand. Periodically, he catches someone staring at him unabashedly, as if trying to read a fortune told on his face instead of his palm. At first, Michael looks away, but when he gets tired of it, he returns the stare until the other person drops their eyes. They seem to exhibit no embarrassment in doing this, and Michael comes to understand that staring is not considered rude in this culture. He also realizes that it doesn’t mean the person is interested in whatever they are looking at. It’s just something to see, to pass the time.
There’s nowhere else to go on the train, other than the stinking latrine with its metal squat toilet. Once, Michael thought to stand in-between the cars, to try and get some fresh air, but came upon a woman holding her infant son over the gap, with his pants pulled down. She was whistling a tuneless song, and as she did so, the child began to urinate, not only into the gap but also all over the corridor. Michael turned around and went straight back to his seat.
So, still jet-lagged, he sits next to the window and looks out of it, the landscape passing by as if in a dream. It seems like days, but, in fact, has been just one since he’s left the bustle of the modern airport in Beijing, stayed overnight in a nondescript hotel, and made his way to the crowded railway station where it appeared as if refugees were trying to get on the last train out of the city, but which he suspected was simply an ordinary day in the Chinese capital.
Since then, fields of grasses topped with yellow blossoms have given way to some of the most inhospitable-looking vistas he has ever seen: slopes covered with dun-colored rock, dry riverbeds that appeared as if they have been without water for the last hundred years. Sometimes the train track runs alongside a road, upon which an ox, followed by a farmer, trudge, both so covered with dust that they are nearly indistinguishable from the ground they walk on. Mud houses the same color as the landscape appear and disappear back into their surroundings. When there are more than several houses, apparently they are enough to be considered a village, and then the train stops. People open their windows and buy packages of dry noodles, tea eggs, bottles of water, and cigarettes from the vendors outside. When they are done with their purchases, they throw the wrappers and bottles back out the window. The sides of the tracks are littered with trash, often providing the only spot of color in the otherwise monochromatic scenery.
Also, along the whitewashed mud walls, are large Chinese characters written in red, sometimes ending with an exclam
ation point. They look as if they are out of another time period, probably some kind of propaganda. Go back! Michael imagines them saying, in a private message just for him. This is a mistake! You won’t find what you’re looking for!
What, or rather who, Michael is hoping to find at the end of his trip is a man named Liao Weishu. This is the name signed at the end of a letter that Michael discovered among his father’s things after the funeral. At that time, he had no idea what of his father’s he should take. His mother had been so hopeful, offering old clothes that would never fit him, since he was taller and skinnier than his father had been; or accessories, such as cufflinks and tiepins, that could only be worn ironically. He recognized a navy-blue suit jacket that was the only one he remembered his father ever wearing, the collar stiff with hair oil, and the lining in the armpits discolored from perspiration. The jacket was so narrow that Michael imagined anyone who wore it must have perpetually hunched shoulders, constricted by fabric as well as other things.
Finally, he asked to go through his father’s papers and chanced upon the one item that didn’t look like it was some kind of financial document (these he’d leave to Emily to sort out): an envelope that was addressed to his father. The postmark indicated it had been sent about a month before his father’s death, from someplace in China that he had never heard of and didn’t think he knew how to pronounce. Then his mother had come into the room, and he had put the letter in his pants pocket, where it stayed unopened for another nine months. Sometimes he would think about it, and be satisfied enough to simply know it was there, and then he forgot about it altogether. The only reason he’d rediscovered the letter that following June was because David had wanted Michael to go with him to the wedding of one of his closest female friends. Michael had taken out his sole good pair of pants and had come across the letter again.