by Wendy Lee
“You love your job.”
“Not anymore.”
“What about that case you’ve been working on?”
“The client died after the detention center refused to give him medical care. I just found out yesterday.”
“Em, I’m so sorry.” Julian tried to make a move toward her, but she couldn’t help recoiling, and he stayed where he was. “But you can’t quit. Your clients need you.”
“No, they don’t. They can find anyone who’ll be willing to walk them through visa applications, if they have the money.”
“Then what about you, what the job means to you?”
“I don’t like the way it’s been affecting our marriage or who I’ve become. I need some time to figure out what it is that I want.” She hesitated. “So do you.”
“I know what I want. It’s you—us.”
“It’s not that simple. Maybe for you the answer is having children, becoming a parent. And if that’s your answer, you deserve someone who’s willing to give you that.”
“Emily,” he said. “What are you trying to say?”
“I think,” she said, “that we need to spend some time apart.”
“You mean more than we have been lately?”
She tried to ignore his implication. “Yes. I think that I need to move out. At least for now.”
He sighed. “I knew it. You never liked that house.”
“It isn’t about the house.” She forced herself to steady her voice. “It’s never been about the house. It’s how I never feel like I belong there. I mean”—she paused and then tried to laugh—“even the chairs fit the living room more than I do. I never feel like I can be myself there.”
“You never tried. You aren’t there half the time.”
“And you’re there all of the time,” she couldn’t help pointing out.
“Fine, you don’t like the house. We’ll find somewhere else to live. We can move back to the city if you want. . . .” He trailed off when he saw the look on her face and swallowed. “Okay, I get it. You need some space.”
“My own space.”
“But where?”
“I haven’t thought about it. I can’t stay here.” The moment she said it, Emily knew it to be true. The day before she had turned to her childhood home, when she felt she had nowhere else to go, but in the light of morning she understood it was only a temporary solution.
“Emily, will you reconsider this? Can we talk—”
“We are talking.” Emily looked down, picking at the comforter. “I don’t know what else there is to say.”
“Okay,” Julian said. “We want different things. But most people find a way to work it out.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think we can. We don’t know how. Maybe it’s been too easy for us. We’ve never had to struggle for anything together, against anything, except our parents’ expectations, maybe. And that’s not enough to keep two people together.”
“You may have given up, but you don’t get to make that decision. This isn’t a case you get to close.”
She looked up. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like you’re treating our marriage like one of your cases. You’ve gathered all your evidence and you’ve made your argument, and you won’t listen to anything the other side says. You’ve never listened to what I’ve had to say. But you know what? In real life, that’s a pretty selfish way to behave and a pretty shitty way to treat someone.”
She bowed her head, knowing that a lot of what he said was true. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it. She reached for him and pressed her face against his neck. Its scent reminded her of the last thirteen years of her life.
Automatically, his hands moved, warm, underneath her shirt, and she let him pull the shirt over her head, stroke her until her body rose to meet his. The places he touched her were all places that she had once, as a teenager in this very room, wondered if she would ever feel comfortable enough to show another person. They rocked back and forth on her narrow twin bed, but it was a desperate coupling, and when it was over, both of them knew it hadn’t been enough.
As they lay there in her narrow twin bed, Emily remembered the first time they had slept together, in college, after the screening of his awful activist film. They lay tangled in his extra-long flannel sheets, listening for the sound of his roommate returning.
“What did you think?” Julian had asked.
“About what?” Emily panicked. She had nothing to compare the quality of the sex to, having only slept with precisely one other boy her freshman year.
Julian grinned. “About my film.”
“I think,” Emily said, “that you’re going to be a great filmmaker.”
It wasn’t necessarily that she believed that was true, even if she could view the film objectively, without herself in it. It was more that she believed in him; maybe she was even beginning to believe in the two of them, together.
Now, in her childhood room, she turned away while Julian got dressed. At the door, he stopped, and for some inexplicable reason hope rose in her, although she didn’t know for what. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “Can I switch these with you?”
She nodded toward the top of the dresser, where the keys to his car lay. Julian made the exchange, and then he was gone. In a moment, Emily went to the window, in time to see the silvery flash of the Bimmer as it pulled out of the driveway, turned the corner, and disappeared from sight.
While she took a shower, Emily thought about what she would say to her mother, who she knew must be waiting for her. She didn’t know if her mother and Julian had exchanged words, if there was anything he could say that would explain her behavior. She wasn’t sure how to explain it herself, except that it had left her feeling so numb that she could barely feel the water against her skin.
As she headed downstairs, she could hear her mother on the phone with someone in the kitchen. She paused in the hallway to listen to the conversation.
“I don’t care what people think about me and Pastor Liu,” her mother was saying, probably to one of her church friends.
Pastor Liu? Ling thought of the slim, stooped man that she had always thought of as elderly, though she supposed he must be around her mother’s age. The last time she’d seen him was at her father’s funeral, and he had been exceedingly kind, although she didn’t know how else someone in his position should behave. Was there something going on between her mother and the pastor?
Her mother had hung up, so she went into the kitchen. “Who was that?” she asked.
“Beatrice Ma. You remember her, the one with the four grandchildren?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“She was telling me what she heard at church this morning, how the Wang son—you remember him, right? He was in your mock trial class—has done something terrible, completely disgraced his family. . . .” Her mother finally seemed to catch on to Emily’s mood. “Emily, what is going on? Are you and Julian still fighting? Is that why he came here this morning? Why did he leave so soon?”
Emily burst into tears.
They were sitting at the kitchen table, finishing up the leftovers from last night’s takeout for lunch. Emily had cried until she felt so lightheaded, she’d had to hold on to the edges of her chair. Her mother had made her eat something, brewed some tea, but that offered little solace. Emily lowered her head and pressed the center of it against the slightly sticky tabletop. No amount of cleaning could remove the patina of spilled baby food, family dinners, and, lately, dust from disuse.
“Oh, Emily,” her mother said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not going back.”
“Emily,” her mother said, “I don’t know if that is a good idea. You know you can stay here as long as you want. And it is good to go away for a while, if you have to. Sometimes, after a fight, the only thing you can do is leave. I know this too. But, eventually, you have to go back. Because, no matter what, that is your home, and that is your family.”
; Emily recalled her mother’s hand waving from the window, underneath the shadows of the trees as the car sped away down the street. Her mother, coming home without any explanation as to why she had been away for so many hours; her father, holding her for so long without a word.
“You came back,” she said.
“Yes,” her mother replied calmly. “I did.”
“Where did you go that day?”
Her mother seemed to consider her question. “I went into the city, to Chinatown. I had lunch. Then I took the train back. That’s it.”
Emily knew something more must have happened, but she asked instead, “Why did you want to leave?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That I was a bad mother to you and Michael. Your father and I fought about it the night before.”
“I remember,” Emily said, surprised to realize that she did. She could recall that she had been awakened that long-ago night by voices. She had thought it was a bad dream, as she’d had many of them as a child, and forgotten about it the next morning. “What did Dad say to you?”
“Nothing important. At least, nothing worth remembering now. What was important was that I felt like leaving, but I didn’t.”
“Was it because of us? Michael and me? If you didn’t have us, would you have left Dad?”
“But I did have you two.”
Emily sighed in frustration. “But what if, Mom? You can’t tell me that you’ve never considered the alternatives to your life. What if?”
“What if,” her mother snapped, so uncharacteristically that Emily was taken aback. “What if I had never come to this country? If I had never met your father? Moved to this house? What if you or Michael had died when you were a baby? None of this happened, and now your father has left me.”
“He didn’t leave you,” Emily pointed out, before realizing what her mother meant. Her mother wasn’t talking about infidelities, of running away, but the ultimate betrayal of death, of being left behind to live the rest of her life alone.
“I don’t want . . .” her mother said, as if struggling to find the words, “I don’t want you to be like me.”
“I won’t be,” Emily said, thinking, Oh, if only you knew how much I try not to be like you.
“What I want is for you and Michael to be happy, to have families of your own.”
“We will.”
“I don’t think so, if you leave Julian. And what for? Just because he wants children and you don’t.”
“How did you know that?”
“Julian told me at Christmas, when you and Michael stayed home and we went to church together. He told me he was afraid you would not change your mind. That this would be a problem for you two.”
Although she was a little disturbed that her husband had chosen to confide in her mother—as if her mother could do anything about it—Emily said, “Well, he was right.”
“Are you sure?” her mother asked. “Emily, are you sure you don’t want to have children?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I don’t know. How can Michael be sure that he’s gay?” It was a rhetorical question, but Emily regretted posing it when she saw the confused look on her mother’s face.
“But now you will be alone,” her mother persisted, “and so will Michael.”
“Actually, Michael has a boyfriend.” Emily figured she might as well come clean about everything she knew. “That’s how I found out Michael was gay. When I went over to his apartment Friday night, his boyfriend answered the door.”
“Michael and this boy live together? Is he the roommate?”
“What? There is no roommate.” Too late, Emily recalled the lie she had told her mother. “His boyfriend lives uptown. His name is David. He’s a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” her mother echoed.
“Yes, but the point is that Michael has someone who cares about him. He’s going to be fine.”
“Do you think,” her mother said after a moment, “that maybe Michael is gay because I used to dress him in your clothes when he was a baby?”
“What? Mom, don’t be ridiculous. Of course that has nothing to do with it.”
“I just think,” her mother said, “that it is somehow my fault. That you don’t want children because of what happened to your doll.”
“What doll?”
Her mother hesitated. “The one that I broke.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Mom, did it ever occur to you that the way Michael and I turned out has nothing to do with the way we were raised? That we’re now adults and responsible for our own thoughts and feelings?”
“Maybe,” her mother replied, but she didn’t sound too convinced. Perhaps, Emily thought, her mother wanted to know that she had some measure of influence in her children’s lives, to keep them close to her.
“In any case, not wanting to have children has nothing to do with you or Dad. And really, it has nothing to do with Julian either. It has to do with me, and figuring out what it is I want. Can’t you see that?”
Her mother nodded slowly, although Emily could tell that she hadn’t changed her mind about what direction she felt her daughter’s life was heading in—straight down, as far as she was concerned. But it looked like she wasn’t going to argue with Emily about it anymore, at least for today. That was really all Emily could ask.
Just then, Emily heard the phone in her pocket beep. Taking it out, she saw that she’d missed a call. She glanced up to see her mother staring at her and could tell that her mother was dying to know who it was.
“It isn’t Julian.” The look on her mother’s face shifted a little. “It isn’t a secret boyfriend, either. There isn’t anyone else, in case you were wondering.”
“Oh.” Her mother almost looked disappointed.
“I have to leave in a little bit, okay, Mom?”
“Where are you going? Aren’t you going to stay here?”
“I can’t. You have your own life, I don’t want to get in the way. Like this morning, you didn’t go to church because I was here, right? You could have gone without me.”
“I didn’t want to leave you by yourself.”
“Then you could have woken me up and we could have gone together.”
“You were too tired.”
Emily felt like throwing up her hands. It was like arguing with a child; every excuse her mother was giving sounded like she was trying to hide something. Probably, judging by the snippet of conversation she had overheard that morning, that something had to do with Pastor Liu.
“Mom,” she said gently, “I think it’s good that you have a lot of friends from church. Even male friends. You do have male friends there, right?”
“Um, yes,” her mother said. “There’s Mr. Tsai, Mr. Chao . . .”
“If you wanted to be more than friends with one of them, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.”
A look of horror crossed her mother’s face. “Oh, no! They are married.”
“Well, if they weren’t married. You keep on saying that you’re afraid of Michael and me being alone. But it’s been a year, Mom. You don’t have to be alone, either.”
“Emily, we are talking about your marriage,” her mother said firmly, and Emily knew that was the extent to what she was going to get out of her mother about what was or wasn’t happening at church. “Where are you going to stay?”
“In the city.”
“With friends?”
“Maybe.” Although as Emily said it, she had another, better idea. “I’ll call you after Michael comes back, Mom. Maybe the both of us can plan to come out and spend a weekend with you?” She paused, recalling the three of them together in this house last year, quiet and slow-moving, as if shell-shocked.
“Yes,” her mother said quietly. “I would like that.”
Since she had brought so little with her, Emily was able to get ready to leave quickly. Up in her room, she made the bed so neatly that you couldn�
�t tell someone had slept in it the night before, or that that morning it had been the site of whatever was the opposite of consummation. She picked up the keys, said good-bye to her mother, and pulled out of the driveway. Once on the road, she started to feel better and looked forward to getting back into the city. There were two people she needed to see before the day was over.
CHAPTER 8
Ling stood in the driveway, her hand raised to wave good-bye to Emily. She only lowered it when the car had vanished around a curve. A couple of hours ago she had been surprised to hear a car pull up to the house and to look out the window to see that it was the maroon Buick she had driven so many years ago. For a moment she thought that time had been turned back, and she would see her younger self emerge from the car, in a pantsuit and permed hair. But it had been her son-in-law, and Ling realized that Julian and Emily must have switched cars. Apparently, they had switched back before he had left.
Although she knew there was still a lot that Emily hadn’t told her, this was the most Ling had ever heard about her daughter’s marriage. They were not much for discussing things in the Tang family, Ling had come to realize. Maybe if she’d told Emily what her own marriage had been like, her daughter would be more forthcoming. But now there was no point; Emily seemed to have made up her mind about leaving Julian. Perhaps someday she would reveal more, but for now, Ling would just have to have faith that her children would solve their own issues.
For example, Michael and his issue, if you could call it that. After she had left Emily and Julian to talk upstairs, Ling had gone down to the living room, where she’d had to sit down on the sofa to absorb the fact that her son, her sensitive little boy, liked other boys. How could that be? Michael had never showed any inclination for fashion or interior design, and his room had always been the picture of slovenliness. Wasn’t that the opposite of what gay people were like? She had no idea, aside from what she saw on television. No family she knew had a gay son, or daughter, for that matter. There was that boy in church, Carl Cheung, whose voice soared higher than any of the sopranos; that was suspiciously feminine, wasn’t it? But who knew what that meant?