On Such a Full Sea: A Novel

by Lee, Chang-rae

  He mentioned none of these activities to Fan, in part telling himself that to do so without a ready or even provisional means of finding Reg would be irresponsible, and maybe downright cruel (despite the fact that he admired Fan for being Fan, which is to say the kind of person who would keep the right perspective on such qualified information). The other part was less generous; for soon enough, one of these lines, Oliver concluded, confirmed at least this: that while really no one could or would say where this Reg was, including someone very high up in the directorate, it was clear he’d become a primary object of curiosity for the very pharmacorp that was buying Asimil. This made perfect sense, if what he was now hearing back about the boy was true. There was Asimil and there was Reg; a life of serial therapies, or maybe none at all. The former would be astronomically expensive. But which was actually more valuable in the end? If he were running the pharmacorp, he would be running the numbers, having it penciled out, but regardless he’d want Reg in his hands, for sure (he’d easily confirmed that both his parents had died of C-illnesses and that Reg was an only child), to determine what in his makeup was leading people to believe he was C-free forever, although how, without his whole life having been lived and studied, could you ever be certain? Maybe you’d have to keep him forever.

  Another week or so went by. By now the hardscape was completed, the sidewalks set and lined with granite curbing, and the roadway paved in the same light gray hue of our very own streets, and then laced with just enough mica to emit the slightest glitter. The young gingko trees were planted and staked. In fact, they decided not to roll out much sod on the double property but instead put in a large playground for all the children of the neighborhood to use, even if there weren’t that many. Oliver had a street sign made up and affixed to the top of a black-painted steel gaslight post set at the head of the drive, the old-style letters embossed and hand-painted: BETTY’S LANE. Inside, the houses were nearly completed, with the installation of cabinetry and appliances and electronics and the finishes of the floors. All the rooms had already been painted or papered, the bedrooms laid in with carpeting.

  Fan’s rooms in her bay’s three floors—all twelve of them, not including the baths—were painted in white. As with the other rooms in the houses, Betty had multiple scenarios for various beautiful and elegant color schemes for her walls and trim from which to choose, a mix of paints and wallpapers, curtains and rugs and throws, but Fan asked to have it done in plain white, the default, bulk white paint contractors used in the service people’s dorms and public restrooms, which was the same white paint the originals in B-Mor had been given truckloads of long ago and that we never stopped using. She chose it for the sake of familiarity but also because the selecting of all those very particular colors seemed to her a tacit acceptance of a future in which she could not quite promise she would be.

  Betty, clearly, had no such conception, instantly agreeing to Fan’s request with the idea that it was a classic look, clean and simple, and she even went so far as to have all of Fan’s furniture covered in the same flat white, if knocked down with the slightest touch of gray so everything wouldn’t be so severe and polar, which turned out to be absolutely right. Fan was at once her au pair, her incredibly capable and independent helper, her sweet little sister, and Betty was now comfortable enough with her to ask more questions about Reg, what he looked like, what he enjoyed eating, his favorite pastimes, all, of course, so she could get a feel for what it would be like when he was here on the “block.” They were in her soon-to-be bedroom suite, surrounded as if in snow. Betty was also naturally curious as to how they’d met, what she and Reg liked to do together, even mischievously inquiring, as a close girlfriend might, about the more romantic details, such as whether he was a good kisser. Fan had never really talked about such things before, but we know she felt comfortable enough with Betty, too, and perhaps slightly dazzled by the woman’s openness and obviously generous heart, that she found herself divulging how Reg had her sit on his right whenever possible because of the small, hairy mole on his left cheek that he was terribly self-conscious about, even with her.

  Oh, he sounds so sweet! Betty cried, and soon they were giggling about Oliver and how he couldn’t walk by a mirror without furtively checking the state of his biceps or abs with his new toning regimen of weight lifting and swimming, the latter of which he started up again after taking Josey for her first swim lessons and deciding to do laps while she was being coached. In fact, Betty went on and told Fan how strange it was to have him around all the time, to be reminded of certain of his habits and traits, like his secret vanity, or his addiction to sour jellies and iced coffee, which apparently he steadily fed himself with during his hours at the medical center and lab, and had seriously cut back on now, though who could tell.

  It seems it is nice for you, too, Fan observed.

  Of course you’ve noticed, Betty said, smiling. It’s been not just nice but wonderful. Maybe you think it’s funny that I’m calling him Liwei, but for me everything feels different. He’s still Oliver through and through, I know, but now he really spends time with Josey and wants to bathe the twins every day and for the first time I think since we were in school we’re watching movies together again in bed at night, with popcorn and wine. We’re not even having to talk that much if you know what I mean, she said, her eyes twinkling. We’re having fun, even stupid fun. Some real joy. We still argue plenty and he drives me crazy with how he has to think everything through a dozen squared times but I guess that’s gotten us where we are. Right? This is truly the place we should be.

  Fan did not demur, nor try to judge whether Betty wholly meant what she said or was more hoping she was. It didn’t matter, because, as we know, it is “where we are” that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not, and as such is the ground on which we will try our best not to feel trapped, or limited, or choose those paths that merely assuage our fears. By this standard, Betty was alive, and so was her Liwei, and Fan could finally now believe that in the near course of time Reg’s whereabouts would be revealed; for she was only human, too, we have to remember, simply a girl with a love who was lost, and if the iron ordeals she endured these past months had made her batten down her longing, in the comfort and relative calm of Betty’s Lane that ache had begun to bristle, steadily untwine.

  With the project nearing completion and their having far less to manage, they took short excursions during the day. When Josey returned from preschool just past midday, they all climbed into the Cheungs’ buslike new van and went to town to lunch and shop or visit the children’s museum or zoo before heading to their newly joined private fitness club where Oliver and Josey swam in the full indoor pool while on the deck Fan watched the twins along with one helper, the strapped-in babies loving the sounds and splashing of the water. The club had set up several treadmills in a connecting room with a waist-high wall, to afford an open view so parents could watch their children swim, and Betty slowly walked on one of these while she caught up on some of her evening programs.

  This is just how they were situated one Saturday afternoon, Fan passing a rattle back and forth with one of the twins, the helper, Pinah, engaging the other, Josey paddling somewhat frantically in the nearest lane toward the swim instructor, though making her way across the pool, with Oliver motoring back and forth in a far lane, when several groups of men in warm-ups and swimming caps with goggles strapped to their foreheads walked out to the deck. Among them was Vik Upendra, Fan recognizing him immediately even with his back turned, for his extra-long limbs and the way he wildly flapped his arms to loosen them, rather than shaking them like the others did. Apparently, they would later learn, there were seasonal club league swim meets, this being the autumn competition for under-forty men. At this point Betty had also seen him, as she was no longer paying attention to her treadmill screen, and when Vik finally turned and saw Betty, Fan could see the instant falter in his face, like any boy excited for a day�
��s swim but who had arrived to a completely drained pool. His arms, which had been stretched high, dropped down slowly and he began to walk toward her, keeping his eyes on her, even as she was minutely shaking her head and looking down at her screen, not wanting to meet his eyes. But Vik stood directly in front of her, and although Fan couldn’t hear him for the din of the indoor pool and the whining jogging machines, she could see very clearly that in so many words he was telling her that he still loved her and that she was doing all she could not to tell him the same.

  On the other side of the pool, Oliver was still swimming and would have kept his head in the water for many more laps, but he must have noticed all the new adult swimmers crowding; he didn’t make his turn. He hung on to the wall instead, still wearing his dark goggles, his gaze settling immediately on Vik and his wife. He just watched them talk, or Vik talk. There was nothing else for him to do. Finally Betty begged him to please stop doing this now and Vik, seeing there was nowhere to go, relented. He walked to Fan on the near side of the pool.

  How are you? he said, his pleasing face all broken into parts.

  I’m fine, Fan said, her own chest heavy. I hope you will be, too.

  Thank you, he answered. Then he slowly walked to the far end with a dignified deliberateness. When he reached the last two lanes, he donned his goggles and then dove into the pool in the next-to-last lane. He smoothly swam the length, freestyle, heading toward where Oliver was now treading at the wall, and when he got there, he didn’t stop or slow but made a flip turn and reversed, kicking hard away. Oliver followed him in his own lane, by the half point catching up to Vik. They kept pace with each other for the rest of the length, their speed more steady than anything else, as if they wanted to be going side by side, as if the eyeing each other were building up their strength.

  Then, near the wall, Oliver swam beneath the lane divider and into Vik’s lane, and when they both flipped and turned, they were still neck and neck, but now flying. The commotion and sight of two swimmers racing in the same lane was now drawing the pool’s attention, such that people were collecting along the four sides to watch them go, crowding and leaning over one another, including Fan and Pinah the helper, so they could see these two, the long man and the short man, the gliding strides and the pistons, their arms sometimes tangling or even striking the other on the shoulder, the cap, the torsos jostling and pushing each other against the divider, riding up over it. There was a race to win but neither knew how long the race was, they just kept eating up lengths until Vik, longer and more fit for having been swimming all these years, began to pull away, one length becoming two, becoming three, until it was no longer a race anymore, Vik flipping and turning against a straggling Oliver and then turning again, clearly keen on reaching and lapping him.

  By this time Betty was shouting for Oliver to stop, to get out of the pool. When Oliver saw Vik closing, he made a furious kick, perhaps for propulsion, but it caught Vik in the nose and instantly bloodied him. There was a guffaw from the spectators, both swimmers now treading in the pinking water. Vik held his face and saw the blood and then fell upon Oliver, the people around now yelling, Betty screaming, with some of the spectators so riled they either stepped in or jumped in themselves or were pushed in from behind, so that others might see the swimmers fighting, though lifeguards and some swim team members had already jumped in and separated Vik and Oliver.

  Fan couldn’t see any more for the bigger people blocking her view, but she did notice Pinah through the scrum, or rather she saw the pinned dark hair of Pinah’s head, suspended a foot below the surface of the water. Her arms flanked wide. Fan jumped in and crouched at the bottom and then shot them both up with a fierce boost of her legs, the plumpish woman much heavier than Fan would have ever thought. Some people on the deck pulled Pinah out and a lifeguard started working on her, Fan watching from the water as she caught her breath at the pool ladder. Luckily the guard got Pinah to cough and hack and start to breathe again quickly, as she’d been under for only a few seconds.

  Fan climbed out quickly, panicking for a second, but saw the twins still secured in their bouncers, if now crying. But she didn’t want to pick them up for how soaked she was, her loose sweatpants and T-shirt now clinging to her. Then she saw a toweled, totally spent Oliver being hugged by Betty at the other end of the pool. Betty was fiercely whispering to him, perhaps beseeching him. Whether he was, in fact, listening to her, Fan could not tell. All she knew was that he was staring at her with the deadest eyes, the hollow of the feeling making her instinctively pull the wet fabric from her belly.

  Look at the fish.

  Our best B-Mor primes. Look at the eyes, luminous and clear. Even on ice, the scales are tiled tight to one another, the points of the fins unbroken, unclipped. Peel forward the gills and see the darkest cherry red, as if there’s blood hotly pushing through its robust, meaty body. The mouth is closed but not clamped in any grimace, saying instead this with a tranquil set of jaw:

  We are in good order.

  Take us up.

  We are ready to be chosen.

  And choose them they do. For the rumors are done. Any remnants of the months-long scare about the wholesomeness of our fish are now very few, to be found in only the most phobic quarters, such as those flats and villas where they parse every morsel and sip and likely never enjoyed them anyway. The rest, however, are back at the fish shops all across the Association, queuing as before and with their unyielding Charter scrutiny selecting the ones they deem the brightest, finest, the most pure. They have absolute confidence in their ability to discern and analyze and perhaps well they should, given where they are. They fully believe in themselves, and it doesn’t matter if our fish are of unsurpassed quality, virtually identical in size and composition, and raised in such a way as to make it almost impossible, if not ridiculous, to try to choose among them. And yet they do, studying the displays like they were buying gemstones, and while there are no jostling scrums like at a special clearance or sale in B-Mor, when someone else picks the very one they’ve identified as theirs, the one they’d determined was destined to best nourish and block any rogue unknittings in their cells, they can’t help but get there just a bit earlier the next time.

  The result has been a heady rise in the price per kilo of #1 primes, enough, in fact, to get us near the record levels reached during the last big boom, when it seemed no Charter could go for more than a couple of days without a fillet on his plate. All the facility tanks are full again with every stage of them, from specks of fry to the stoutest matureds, the concrete floor of the grow houses tickling the feet with the constant vibrato of the filter pumps running around the clock, the air heavier, moister (though it truly can’t be, given how engineered everything is) with the enriched quality of the reprocessed effluent dripping onto the plant beds. These are growing as dense as ever, so that you can hardly see a coworker weeding directly on the other side, merely hearing the threshing of his gloved hands against the stalks.

  And from all this flush being there’s a scent that is at once off-putting and sweetly alluring, too, whiffs of faint rot and newest life columned together and vented through the roof so that the surrounding households of B-Mor must be dreaming of every earthly hunger, of filling themselves with whatever goodness may be at hand. Or are their lights burning later, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning, to feed newly roused desires?

  The rest of us have no such wafts carrying across our paths, and yet here we are in the mall-going throng, like everyone else pursuing our day’s own trivial ends but feeling drawn in, too, by the wider pitch and tow. There’s no specialness or majesty in this, there’s nothing different from what has gone on here since the originals set themselves up, we descendants doing what we should be doing, workday or free-day, in the households or in the parks, contracting ourselves for best use and the welfare of the run of times to come. Nobody knows the future. So when we chat on the stoops, say, before the evening ch
ill finally drives us in, of the lady on the next block who attempted to circumvent the usual regulations and produce her own designer line of fashion slippers in her attic using a platoon of counties peddlers as cheap labor, or of the man who was caught sitting at night—totally unclothed—high up in one of the largest trees in the park because he simply wanted, he said, a better view of the stars, we rib one another and chuckle and maybe even argue about the state of our settlement, though with no more of those uneasy skips or pauses, no more throaty, dire tones. We speak and abide one another and then we go in.

  For what is there to worry about now? With the relative quiet prevailing, the directorate, or some other body, we can’t be sure, has reversed some of the more disheartening measures of recent times, foremost being restrictions on health clinic visits, which are still limited (as they should be, given the realities of the times) but at a more reasonable frequency, and the qualification for Charter promotion (back up to 2 percent), as well as certain smaller things that indeed make a difference day to day, such as suddenly better pricing for our own excellent produce and fish. There’s even talk of the schools using more of our goods in preparing the children’s bento lunches, rather than random broccoli and potatoes of vaguest origins and from suppliers long unnamed and unknown, though this remains to be seen.