by Wendy Lee
“It looks like someone used an eraser in the middle of the painting,” she observed.
“It’s really more of an investment,” Harold amended.
“Then you’ll put it in storage, right? Because you can’t be thinking of hanging it in here.”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t go with the living room.”
Harold looked around the expansive space, the sofa upholstered in gray linen, the charcoal-colored cushions, the moss-green chairs. “What do you mean? Everything here goes with gray.”
“I’m thinking of having it redecorated in brighter colors. Maybe turquoise and marigold.”
“Okay, it won’t go in here,” he conceded. Then he was aware of how silent the apartment was, when usually there would be the sound of the housekeeper bustling in the kitchen. “Where’s Maribel?”
“I fired her while you were away.”
“Why?” Maribel had been with them for more than five years, since before Adrian was born.
“I believe she stole your watch.”
“I told you, I lost the watch while I was in Shanghai.”
“You didn’t sound sure about it.”
Harold opened his mouth, then closed it. He couldn’t tell Vicki he’d given his watch away to a random bar girl.
“Anyway”—Vicki waved away the reason—“her food was always too salty. Don’t worry, Serena has someone she can recommend.” Vicki’s friend Serena seemed to be taking over her life, just as her husband, Charlie, seemed to be taking over Harold’s.
“I’m going in to the office soon,” he told Vicki.
“Without breakfast? I’m sure Maribel left something behind.”
“I ate something on the plane,” Harold lied. He began to repack the painting as Vicki went into the kitchen to struggle with the espresso maker.
Half an hour later he was on his way into Taipei proper, into the Eastern District that contained the city’s financial center. At this time of day the roads were clogged with vehicles, speedier mopeds weaving their way in and out among the cars. Harold’s phone started to ring but he turned it off. He wanted these last few minutes of solace inside the car, protected from the world beyond.
He didn’t know what kind of reaction he’d wanted from Vicki about the painting. Maybe an acknowledgment that he could appreciate an item for other than how much it cost? That he could still feel something?
When he got to work, a security guard helped him transport the painting through the lobby, up the elevator, and into his office. As Harold passed by her desk, his secretary called out, “Mr. Yu, you have a message—”
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he told her.
Harold’s office commanded a breathtaking view of the skyline, including the vaguely pagoda-shaped Taipei 101, which used to be the world’s tallest building. Often, when he’d gotten off of a difficult call, or felt unsure about a challenging decision, he’d stand in front of the window and gaze at the building for reassurance. After his last trip to New York, Taipei 101 reminded him of the Freedom Tower downtown, and its terrible legacy. Perhaps towers were no longer the signs of power they used to be.
After unwrapping it for the second time, Harold leaned the painting against the wall opposite his desk. Yes, that would do. He had just sent an e-mail to his secretary, asking her to arrange for someone to come and hang the painting, when Charlie Lin burst into his office.
“Didn’t you get my calls? My messages to your secretary?” he demanded.
“I’ve been busy—”
Charlie glanced briefly at the painting. “Yeah, with interior decoration.”
Ignoring him, Harold motioned Charlie to take the seat opposite his desk. “What’s going on?”
“It’s happened again.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A second worker committed suicide at the Shanghai factory.”
Harold was surprised, yet not truly, that this kind of tragedy had repeated itself. As Charlie filled him in, it seemed that the circumstances were different. Last time, it had been a young female worker who had taken rat poison supposedly over a breakup. This was a young male worker who’d thrown himself off the roof of the dormitory. He’d done it during an afternoon recess, when there were more than a hundred witnesses out in the yard. Harold imagined some of the boys playing basketball on the meager court, girls gathered in conversation, when the figure fell darkly from the sky behind them.
“What’s worse,” Charlie continued, “he left a note. A list of demands, or a manifesto, so to speak.”
“What kind of demands?”
“That workers should be paid more for overtime and that the rent for their dormitory beds should not be raised, among other things.”
“Workers pay rent for their beds?” Harold thought of the cramped girls’ dormitory he’d seen on his recent trip to the factory.
“You didn’t know that? Anyway, it’s caused quite a stir among the workers and some of them are agreeing with the demands. No riots yet, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility.”
Harold could believe that. With the female worker, the reason for her suicide had been fairly clear. It would be harder to spin this one.
“So what’s the plan for damage control?” he asked.
“There’s a press conference set for this afternoon, with local and foreign papers. You’re expected to speak.”
“Me?”
“As the head of the company, it can’t be anyone else. You know that.”
“I’ll figure something out,” Harold finally said. “In the meantime, find out where this worker who killed himself was from.”
“Why?”
“We’ll have to send his family some kind of compensation.”
“A month’s wages?”
“Something like that.”
Until the conference was scheduled, Harold didn’t leave his office. He attempted several times to write out what he would say, but it all sounded false. If he wanted to give excuses, he should have a company spokesperson do it. Charlie was right; in a situation like this, he had to be the person to speak. He just didn’t know if he had the necessary confidence to pull it off.
When the appointed hour came, Harold went to the restroom. He rolled back his sleeves and doused his face with water. His shirt was wrinkled, and he regretted not thinking of sending back home for a proper suit. If he had and Vicki was around, though, she would suspect something had happened at work, and he couldn’t talk about this with her.
He waited in there for fifteen minutes to give the press time to arrive and get settled before he entered the conference room. The atmosphere felt more like a trial than a public relations meeting. His every step was accompanied by the click of cameras, and all eyes followed him as if pulled by strings as he made his way to the head of the room. Harold spotted Charlie standing in the back, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else.
“Thank you for coming,” Harold said. “I’m sure you’ve all heard about the tragic event at Xingli Factory by now. At this company we give a great deal of oversight to what goes on there. In fact, my colleague Charles Lin and I visited just last month, where we personally inspected the work floor and the dormitories. While I’m not saying that the young man who so sadly took his own life had just cause for his grievances, it’s also quite possible he was mentally unstable. . . .”
This had been his strategy, to present the male worker as having non-work-related issues, as with the female worker who’d ingested the rat poison. But he could tell, looking at the faces of the reporters, that it was not going over so well.
“What about the other workers?” one journalist interrupted to say. “Is it true that they are planning to riot?”
Harold glanced at Charlie, whose earlier briefing was all the information he’d gotten on the matter, but Charlie shrugged.
“There are rumors of potential unrest, yes,” he admitted, “but we are confident that the situation will be handled in the appropriate manner.”
“How are you going to meet the workers’ demands?” asked a young woman who looked like she could be a college student.
Harold continued to talk about improvements in the workers’ conditions, finding himself citing Miss Hao’s litany of amenities such as the basketball court, hair salon, Internet café, and other useless distractions, when he found his mind drifting off. It was as if he were standing in the audience, watching himself, this pathetic, middle-aged man in a wrinkled shirt, the hair at his temples growing shiny with sweat, talking about a situation he would never find himself in, because of where he lived and how he had grown up.
“And that is why,” he heard himself saying, “our company is severing ties with Xingli Factory until it can be determined that their standards have been raised to acceptable, international levels. The worker who died will not have sacrificed himself in vain.”
A buzz rose above the crowd and then dissolved into a hundred questions, all of which Harold ignored. As the security guard escorted him to the doorway, he passed by Charlie, who murmured, “What would your father have to say about this?” in his ear before fading into the background.
When Harold got back to his office, he noticed that his secretary had gotten someone in to hang the painting on his wall while he had been away. He got her on the phone, thanked her for her efficiency, and requested that all calls for him be put off until the next day. He was sure that the news was already spreading about his announcement, and the company’s shareholders would be demanding answers.
As was his habit, he stood in front of the full-length window, gazing out at the tower of Taipei 101. Usually, looking down at the faraway street and the insectlike bustle of people below had a calming effect. It made him feel removed—even above—the rest of the world and its mundane problems. But this time he wondered what the male worker at Xingli Factory had thought the second before he’d stepped off the roof of the dormitory. Because of the list of demands, he’d had to have planned this act. But had the young man hesitated at the edge, wondered if his life was worth it? Harold knew he could never be so desperate, nor so brave.
Feeling as if the floor were falling away from him, he sat down at his desk and stared at the painting until the image began to blur. He stared at it until his mind felt like the white spot in the middle of the gray: a calm, blank space.
* * *
What would your father have to say about this? had been Charlie’s last comment to him. Harold was sure his father would never admit he had done anything wrong. He’d never heard his father deliver an apology, or give an explanation for behavior anyone else would find questionable, especially to his son.
When Harold was in his last year at Taiwan National University, his mother had come down with a terminal illness. She spent her last few months at Kuang Tien General Hospital, attended by a twenty-four-hour nurse. Her mind became addled with the medication, and she stopped recognizing any of her visitors, including family members. Harold and his father never visited her at the same time, and soon Harold found out the reason for that.
One weekend, after a hospital visit, his father invited him out to lunch. Harold arrived first and sat at a table large enough for twice as many people as were expected, while around him entire generations of other families, from grandparents to restless children, swarmed at the other tables. Then his father came in with a woman he had never seen before. She introduced herself as “Auntie Mai,” but Harold could never bring himself to call her that. He assumed she was his father’s mistress.
Auntie Mai appeared to be around his father’s age, and if Harold had met her under different circumstances, he might have found her facial features plain but pleasant. She was attentive to his father, cautioning him not to eat too much fatty meat because of his gout. As usual, his father ordered the most expensive dishes on the menu, including sliced abalone and shark fin soup, although Harold didn’t know whom he was trying to impress. He could only be thankful that his mother was too far gone to know about this other woman.
After his mother’s death, Harold’s father continued to associate with Auntie Mai, who was euphemistically referred to by colleagues and friends as his father’s “companion.” Once, he tried to ask his father who exactly this woman was, but his father had curtly told him to mind his own business.
Having finished college, Harold began to see quite a lot of his father, as he was being groomed to take over the family business. The two of them never discussed their personal lives until Harold met Vicki and introduced her to his father, right after they had decided to get married. To his dismay, his father brought Auntie Mai, whom he hadn’t seen in years, to the meeting. She and Vicki seemed to take to each other, talking about wedding venues and whether a hotel would be considered too much of a Western influence while a temple ritual was too Eastern.
“She liked my ring,” Vicki pointed out afterward. “Your stepmother has good taste.”
“She’s not my stepmother.”
“Whatever she is, she’s very nice.”
“You don’t know her like I do.”
“Really? How well do you know her? Do you even know how she and your father met?”
“Not really,” Harold had to admit.
In later years, the gout and other consequences of extravagant living caught up with Harold’s father. At his funeral, Harold walked in front of the procession, dressed in traditional white robes and hat, while the other mourners followed behind. Some of them carried banners, while professional musicians accompanied them with cymbals and clappers. Upon reaching the gravesite, he bowed and knelt several times, then lit the spirit money that would ensure his father was as wealthy in death as in life. The plot already contained his mother’s remains, and there would be room for Harold and his wife, but none for any children they might have. There was definitely no room for Auntie Mai.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Auntie Mai, standing apart from the rest of the procession. She was dressed in somber colors, but at least she didn’t have the gall to wear white or black. Although he wanted to approach her, he managed to hold his feelings in check until the ceremonial rites were over and people started to leave.
“What are you doing here?” he asked her. The tightening of her lips indicated that he’d grasped her arm more tightly than he’d thought.
“I’m paying my respects,” she replied evenly.
“Your presence is disrespectful to the memory of my mother.”
She inclined her head. “I can see how you feel that way. But your father was an important part of my life, too. Surely I’m allowed to say good-bye?”
Harold was saved from answering with words that he might later regret as Vicki came up behind them. “I hope you are well, Auntie,” she said.
Auntie Mai took her hands. “I’m so sorry for the loss of your father-in-law.”
“And I’m sorry for your loss.”
Harold couldn’t listen to any more of this infuriatingly polite exchange. “Please,” he said to Auntie Mai. “Leave my family in peace.”
She nodded and walked away, and then Harold turned to Vicki. “What do you mean, ‘your loss’? She’s lost nothing but someone who paid for her lifestyle.”
“What lifestyle? Auntie was hardly wearing the latest fashions.”
“Stop calling her that! She’s not anyone’s ‘auntie.’ ”
“Why are you so angry? I was just trying to be civil to your family.” Vicki adjusted the veil on her hat. She had chosen to wear Western mourning clothes in black, and Harold hadn’t had the will to fight her on it. But now that, combined with her reception of Auntie Mai, was too much.
“What makes you think you can decide who’s part of the family or not?” he demanded. “When you’re hardly part of the family yourself?”
Vicki’s mouth quirked. “If you’re not careful, Auntie Mai might be the only family you have left.”
A month later came the reading of the will. Everything of his father’s went to Harold, except for the apartme
nt that had been set up for Auntie Mai. Harold took it upon himself to tell Auntie Mai this in person, thinking he’d finally get some satisfaction and a measure of revenge for his mother, to see her reaction that she hadn’t been left anything else. He was sure that she was counting on a windfall that would allow her to live in luxury for the rest of her life.
But rather than the fashionable neighborhood he had expected, Auntie Mai’s apartment was located in Wanhua, a working-class district that was one of the oldest in the city. The apartment was on the first floor of the aged building, prefaced by a small but well-tended courtyard of lush plants including tan hua, white flowers that bloomed one night a year before dying.
When Auntie Mai invited Harold in, he noticed that her living room, like the outside of the building, was shabby but clean. The white antimacassars on the backs of the sofa and chairs spoke of another generation, as did the heavy rosewood furniture. Her small television was set to one of the Taiwanese soap operas that Vicki liked to watch, or maybe it was a different soap opera; everyone looked the same when crying, so he couldn’t tell the difference. Auntie Mai switched off the television and offered Harold tea and watermelon seeds, which he refused.
“I can’t stay long,” he told her. “I’ve just come to tell you about my father’s will. He’s left you this apartment but nothing else. No money. No assets.” Harold searched Auntie Mai’s face for some sign of disappointment, but she remained composed.
“That’s very generous of him,” she finally said. “I wasn’t expecting anything else. From him or from you. You might be surprised,” she added, “but I can take care of myself.”
“What do you do?” This was the first personal information he’d asked of her.
“I’m an in-house nurse.”
Harold remembered the various nurses who had been employed when his mother was sick. “Is that what you were doing when you met my father?”
Auntie Mai gave him a slight smile. “I met your father when we were children. I’m from Keelung Harbor.”
This Harold found hard to believe; it sounded something out of a folktale. He could barely picture his father as a boy, running barefoot on the docks, before being taken in by his wealthy benefactors. “What was he like back then?”