This waiting, this paperwork, this explaining and reexplaining—these made up Van’s job now. She hadn’t argued in court since Vijay Sastri’s case, and perhaps never would again. But she was more cautious than ever.
So that Saturday in February, she double-checked the Gupta file. Sunil had shown Van pictures of his recent wedding: him riding an elephant; the couple holding hands against a backdrop of yellow brocade drapes. Sunil’s bride, Madhu, wore a brilliant fuchsia dress, her neck and arms shining with gold. Something about her expression—the wide, uncertain eyes offset by the almost coy turn of her lips—kept Van’s gaze. Madhu was only twenty-two, ten years younger than Sunil. Was she ready to leave her entire family for Michigan, to join this man she hardly knew at all? Their marriage had been arranged, Sunil had told Van, and Madhu, meeting him for the first time in Mumbai, had giggled uncontrollably. As Van looked over their paperwork she wished she knew more stories about what her parents’ life had been like in Vietnam. Her father rarely talked about it. Her mother had mentioned vague snippets, still images: Van’s father forgetting his shoes at a friend’s house and walking home barefoot without realizing it; the color of a freshly opened papaya at an outdoor market. When Van pictured her parents in their early-married days, she liked to imagine them holding hands. Walking to a café in Saigon, sitting cross-legged on the ship out of Saigon, waiting in the noisy barracks at Camp Pendleton—surely, Van thought, they had held on to each other then. She hoped Sunil would hold tight to Madhu’s hand.
It was past seven when Van drove home through a flurry of snow, resolving to talk to Miles about going to China and Vietnam. They had planned a trip a couple years back, but a case at Miles’s firm had delayed it until the possibility dwindled away. Then it seemed like every time Van suggested they renew the plans, Miles would sigh about his workload. It almost reminded her of the excuses she, Linny, and her father had made when Mrs. Luong had talked about visiting Vietnam. She had gone back twice, fewer than most of her friends, but Mr. Luong complained that airfare was too high for two people, and that he couldn’t leave his studio when he was about to make a breakthrough. He kept that going for years, sometimes mentioning his concerns about flight safety. Then he moved into the basement, and that was that. And though Mrs. Luong had often asked Van and Linny if they wanted to see Vietnam, neither ever committed to it. Such a plan made Van feel nervous, foreign; she didn’t like the thought of being looked over by all her unknown relatives. Her mother had died before Van had ever seriously considered a visit.
Now was the time, Van decided. She and Miles. Her mother would have liked that. They would see Saigon and Hanoi, Shanghai and Beijing. They would talk about their families’ different stories of immigration. They would eat lychees, buy silk scarves, and try out their rusty Mandarin and Vietnamese. Maybe somehow it would all be the next step toward a baby.
When Van got home she found Miles asleep on the living room sofa, one arm trailing over the side, fingertips touching the floor. Even in this uncharacteristic state he looked graceful. He must have been exhausted, not to hear the garage door opening and closing. Quietly Van knelt next to him, reaching out to stroke his fine hair until he woke up. But she tripped over herself and bumped her leg against the glass coffee table. A thin ceramic vase fell over. She was relieved it didn’t break, though it did wake Miles.
“What are you doing?” he said, sitting up.
“Sorry.” Van touched her right knee. She knew by morning she’d have an eye-shaped bruise. “Hey, the weather’s getting kind of bad out there.”
“I thought it wasn’t supposed to storm tonight.” Miles checked his watch. “You were working pretty late.”
“I lost track of time. There’s this case I’m working on—”
“Deportation?”
She drew back at this. Miles knew they didn’t handle deportations at Gertz & Zarou. Vijay Sastri was still a sensitive subject between them, something neither of them brought up.
Miles said, “I’m starving.”
“There are some leftovers in the fridge.”
“I don’t feel like leftovers.” He stood up and Van followed him to the kitchen. He picked up the jacket he had left on a barstool and opened the door to the mudroom. “I’m going to pick up something from Saigon Garden.”
Van felt a sudden wave of panic. “I’ll come with you.” For an uneasy moment she was back in their last year of law school, unable to figure out how much he wanted her around. In those days, when Miles talked about going to a party, Van would tentatively ask, “Am I invited too?” To which Miles would say, “Do you want to be?” or simply, “If you want.” He claimed that she was implicitly invited to everything, but Van didn’t feel that was so. She needed proof; she needed to hear it from him. So she would keep asking him—“Do you want me to go?”—until Miles grew exasperated. There were nights Van found herself literally sitting at home waiting by the phone, though she would never have admitted that to anyone. When Miles did finally call and ask what she was doing she would always say she was working. Her one constant. Even if she had been watching Beverly Hills, 90210 reruns, or sitting with unopened casebooks and a cup of tepid tea.
“I’ll only be a few minutes,” Miles said. “You like the basil chicken and green beans, right?” He pressed the garage door button.
Van waited out the grinding sound of the door rising. Cold air blew into the kitchen. “Why don’t we just eat here? I can make some pasta.” She could see that Miles was distracted. His mind was already ahead of the moment, ahead of her. “I mean, it’s late,” she said lamely.
“I’ll be right back.” He extended an arm, a fluttery wave that didn’t touch her. Van watched him get in the dark red Land Cruiser he had bought two years ago; she had inherited his old Infiniti sedan. From the driver’s seat he waved at her. Go inside, he mouthed. And Van did.
By midnight she was telling herself to calm down. She stood at their bedroom window watching the snow flurries harden into ice. And Miles was out there, driving into a ditch, the big car tumbling over and over, trapping him inside.
He wasn’t answering his cell phone. She didn’t leave a message, though he would see that she’d called. She would have called Saigon Garden, if they were still open, and for a wild moment even considered calling the police. She had, she realized, no one else to call.
Linny, she suddenly thought, was precisely the person she couldn’t call at a time like this. In middle school she used to say, Take a chill pill whenever Van got anxious about something—laundry that Linny hadn’t done; rowdy friends that Linny had invited over. Van could still hear the high notes of her sister’s laugh, thick with derision. God, you’re so uptight.
No one would have said such a thing to Miles. As unalike as he and Linny were, they both possessed a genetic gift of self-confidence that had bypassed Van. They both seemed to trust that things would work out no matter what.
It occurred to Van that she didn’t know where either of them was at that moment.
Outside, the streetlights cast an accusatory glow on the garbage bins still at the curb. They had been there since Thursday; surely the watchful neighbors didn’t approve. A strange feeling made Van shiver: Miles had never before neglected to bring the bins inside.
Van had drifted off on the TV room sofa when she heard the garage door opening. It was past one a.m. She hurried to the back door, feeling guilty for falling asleep and forgetting about Miles. Of course he hadn’t crashed or skidded off a road. He was a careful driver, something she’d mentioned to her friends when they complained about how their husbands drove too close to other cars, too fast for comfort. Miles wasn’t like them.
“Where have you been?” She tried not to sound demanding.
All the kitchen lights were on, too bright. Miles walked into the house without taking off his shoes. He had his coat on and his hair was wet. He looked like he had been traipsing around in the snow.
“I was driving,” he said.
He would not look a
t her and in a rush of fear she said, “What happened?” She approached slowly, reaching for him.
He stepped back. Van stopped. Her arms were still in midair, floating appendages that she had to return to her side. She knew that Miles was going to say something she didn’t want to hear. He said, “I don’t think I want to live with you anymore.”
For years, probably for the rest of her life, she would have to know this. The exact sentence. The blindness of the moment, like falling in a dream and waking just before impact.
A long minute passed in which Van stared at him, disbelieving. Miles kept his head lowered.
“But we’re married.” It was the only thing she could think to say. They were married. That was the parameter, the barrier. The fact. The image of Sunil and Madhu reappeared, their hands entwined.
“I don’t think I want that either.” Like he was turning down a new cable channel. Like saying no thanks to something at a buffet.
He said, “I thought I should tell you.”
“You’re telling me.”
“I’m telling you what I’ve been thinking for a long time.”
Van let the house go silent. She closed her eyes and asked it to help her out. Tell Miles this is ours. She wanted to feel the snow falling on the roof, ice crystallizing on the windows. The difference between outdoors and indoors was stark—it was everything. If only Miles had not left the house. If only she had made him stay.
But through the silence came Miles: “I have to go.”
“No.” Her eyes opened. “You never told me anything.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You were thinking all these things and planning all these things and you never said a word.”
“I wasn’t planning. I just needed to think, Van. I just needed to think.” His voice gave out. He was crying. He was actually weeping into the sleeve of his coat.
Van could feel herself beginning to crumple, something inside her folding in on itself.
“Are you—” She couldn’t finish the thought: Are you with someone else?
“I’m alone, if that’s what you’re asking,” Miles said.
Van felt a sense of relief at that. If there wasn’t someone else, then everything would be all right. He would recover; he would have to recover.
He made a halting move toward the stairs. “I’m going to get some things.” He walked around her.
Van fought the urge to go after him. It would only egg him on, she decided. He wanted another fight. Now, when the Gupta case was taking up her time—that would be a classic moment to begin one. Hadn’t he always wanted her attention most when she was busiest with work? Even in the law library he used to graze her arm with his, toy with her hair. On her notes he’d scribble, Hey, babe, let’s go back to my place.
When Miles came downstairs with a duffel bag, he headed straight to the back door, and with a pulse of panic Van saw that he actually meant to leave without saying another word.
“Good-bye, then,” she called out.
Miles paused. His hair was still shiny with melted snow, his face a shadow. “I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m going to come back here tomorrow and we’ll just keep on the way we’ve been. But I’m not going to. We need to separate for a while.”
The words were terrible, but Van kept herself steady. She watched him close the door, listened to the sound of his car backing out of the driveway, accelerating into the falling snow. She could stand there for hours, she believed, waiting for his return. Yes, she could wait. She would call his bluff.
And now here she stood, almost two months later, looking at the end of April, the almost-spring that had brought nothing she could call progress. In March the U.S. had invaded Iraq, which had generated fresh waves of anti-Middle Eastern fear throughout southeast Michigan. Van imagined her former colleagues calling emergency meetings at the International Center; she imagined her former clients keeping themselves, as much as possible, tucked inside their homes. They too would be closing every blind, double-checking all the doors. Van remembered how it had been after September 11, when mosques around Detroit had been vandalized, windows smashed. On the front door of the Center someone spray-painted the word Terrorists. One of the lawyers found a sign taped to her home mailbox saying Camel jockeys go home. Her husband wrote on it in large letters: We’re Sikh you idiots.
March had also seen the Department of Homeland Security’s official takeover of Immigration, dissolving the INS into ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The new rules and paperwork had brought chaos to Gertz & Zarou, as it called all future H-1Bs into question. Though Van felt more isolated than ever, removed from the real action in Detroit, she threw herself into sorting out the new messes as her only way to keep her mind off Miles.
She had only heard from him in the form of e-mails—sent, she knew, so he could avoid talking to her directly. His messages were brief: he needed more time—he thanked her, in fact, for giving him more time—and reminded her that she didn’t have to worry about the bills, which were paid automatically. He said he would be in touch later. I hope you’re doing okay, was the last thing he had written. Ever since that day she had driven around trying to track him down, Van had often considered staking out his office and trailing him after work. But the fear of being caught held her back; she didn’t want to be that exposed, her heart made so visible to the person who could crush it. If this was a test, then she had to pretend to embody the strength that Miles had always valued.
She had assumed that if she held out he would come back and they would resume their life where they had paused it. But his e-mails, combined with her upcoming trip to Wrightville, illuminated the question that had grown within her, expanding like the daylight minutes as she checked the security alarm, the locks on the windows: What would she be like, and how would she feel, if and when Miles did come back? It was the first time she considered that as a real question, the first time she didn’t have a clear answer.
Since Miles had been gone, Van had failed to stay the course of tidiness he had directed. He hated messes, dirty dishes on a table, papers cluttering the counters. Maintaining neatness had always been work for Van, though she tried to conceal that. She liked that Miles thought of her as disciplined. In his absence Van’s own entropy, which she blamed her father for instilling in her, started creeping back. She let the junk mail pile up. She kept unwashed dishes in the sink. Once or twice a week she ordered an extra-large sausage-and-mushroom pizza to eat over the next few days. The boxes accumulated in the garage, overflowing the recycling bins that Van kept forgetting to bring out to the curb. Somehow, the less she cleaned, the smaller and safer the house seemed to feel.
The bedroom too was slowly becoming a different space. Van dropped towels on the floor, left dresser drawers half open. The bed did not get made. The show pillows with their square shams were piled on the corner chaise, and the silk drapes that were supposed to frame the plantation shutters no longer held their even pleats. Van’s habit of eating cookies and crackers while walking around the house reappeared, resulting in a sprinkling of crumbs that got mashed underfoot. They reminded her of how, before Miles chose her, she hadn’t even owned a vacuum cleaner. Instead she’d found at a garage sale one of those push-around sweepers favored by low-end restaurants. Of course, she had thrown the thing out before Miles had ever discovered it. He had, for their new house, purchased a fancy Miele. Pale and sleek, purring gently, it was nothing like the roar of the Luongs’ ancient Sears monster, a hulking machine with all of the attachments jutting out unused. The Miele glided, flattened under beds.
But it also highlighted a problem: the carpets themselves. They should have gone with all hardwood on the second floor, Miles said, not six months after moving in. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he kept repeating. He seemed genuinely distressed about it, even embarrassed. Van, who loved the muffled comfort of her bare feet on carpet, who had championed the carpet in the first place, pointed out that it was cozy in the winter. “Rugs,” Mi
les retorted. “That’s what rugs are for.” He declared his intention to have the carpet torn out and hardwoods laid down, but the plans evaporated after the disaster with Vijay Sastri.
That they had worried about the floors when Vijay was being evicted from the country—Van had not pointed out that juxtaposition to Miles. He had developed a habit of teasing her about her work, calling her Ms. Self-Righteous, Esq. or Madam Do-Good. He reminded her lightly, just once or twice, that he brought in the real money. Van didn’t object when he veered conversations away from politics toward subjects like house design. In spite of his eye toward modernism, he talked of paying homage to his roots, which meant teak tables from his family’s ancestral province in China and a Mission cabinet from San Francisco, where he was born and where his great-grandfather had landed at the edge of the gold rush.
Van had often envied Miles’s fourth-generation status. It meant no questioning of origins, an ability to laugh full-on if someone told him to go back to his own country. It also meant his parents and his grandparents all spoke perfect English. They traveled and behaved, Van couldn’t help thinking, like any white upper-middle-class family, so in tune with their affluence that they never hesitated to wave down a waiter or step into a posh boutique. Miles thought of the Midwest as an ironic space, had often pointed out the times Van slipped back into a phrase like “Where’s it at?” Those Michigan, middle-of-the-country linguistics offered an endless source of amusement, in the same way that every new group of college freshmen had to marvel over “pop” versus “soda.”
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