Home Leave: A Novel

by Brittani Sonnenberg

  We’d been expecting a lot of sympathy from Aunt Beth about how tough it was to live in Asia, but instead she went on and on about how good we had it, pointing out things like our driver, the vacations to Phuket and Thailand, and our apartment building’s humongous swimming pool. Mom told her that she should apply for a job at the American school, but Aunt Beth said somebody needed to be close to Grandma and Grandpa, and then it went quiet at the dinner table until Dad jumped in and started talking about how Clinton was worse than Jimmy Carter.

  I felt really sad the day we dropped Aunt Beth off at the airport; it was like leaving the States at the end of the summer. With Aunt Beth there, Shanghai felt more normal: I didn’t feel so gawkishly tall, all of us laughed a lot more, and America felt close and real, not like some dream we’d just woken up from. Aunt Beth had a way of being in China that I admired. She didn’t try to fit in or be Chinese: she dumped sugar in her jasmine tea and, when we protested, told us that that’s how she liked it. Yet she wasn’t one of those annoying tourists who ask for a fork and a knife and only eat rice; she was the only one of us who tried chicken feet, and pronounced them delectable, a word I had to look up when we got home.

  * * *

  For a while I tried to act like Aunt Beth, adopting her casual, slightly wild laugh, and the way she lifted her eyebrows in humorous disbelief instead of getting upset. But Sophie made fun of me for copying her, and it was true—it wasn’t really me. Aunt Beth’s easy gestures and her quick humor were part of the luxury of being a tourist, of nothing mattering, and also a privilege of being grown-up. None of the tricks helped when you were in the seventh grade, and it was the spring dance show, and you were in a black leotard, and the guys were scoring the girls’ bodies. I got a six, which was better than Clara Park (four) but worse than Evgenia (eight). At those times, when the drowning feeling started, I pictured being back at Grand Ada’s mountain home in North Carolina, sitting on the porch. I remembered the air that smelled like pinecones, and drinking Swiss Miss hot chocolate with lots of Cool Whip on top, sitting on the warm beams of the porch, and stretching my legs out, not feeling like I needed to slouch or suck my stomach in.

  Home Leave

  Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina, 1993–1995

  Each year, mid-June, the expatriate women and children of Shanghai abandon China as if it is the Titanic, sinking fast. They stuff their suitcases with gifts for the folks back home: fifty-cent fans from the local market that make their clothes reek, deliciously, of sandalwood; stuffed panda bears; brightly colored sets of chopsticks for relatives who only use forks and knives, and calendars featuring “China’s Awe-Inspiring Classic Best Tourist Attracts.”

  Looking at these families, these moms turned single for the summer, checking in at the airport, brandishing passports and boarding cards for Spain, Brazil, France, Canada, the US, and Germany, you would think they were all going back for good, given the size and quantity of their luggage. But of course we need all of these suitcases! the mothers, shocked at such ignorance, would point out to you. How else will they have enough space for everything they need to survive another year in China? Colgate toothpaste (their kids refuse to use the Chinese kind), jeans and dresses for Mom (Western women can only fit their big toes into Chinese women’s clothes), shoes for their teenagers (who’ve already outgrown local sizes), and boxes of cereal that will admittedly be consumed over the first week back in Shanghai but are essential in maintaining the illusion that everything you need from back home can be tucked into a corner of a suitcase, even if it means you have to stand on said suitcase while your kids zip it up.

  For Elise, Sophie, and Leah (like most other expatriate men, Chris stays in Shanghai, working most of the summer), home leave feels like trying to watch two movies with one VCR. Early on in the middle of the first film, you eject the tape and slide the second one in, watch that for a while, and then go back to the first one, in the middle of the scene where you stopped the tape. The advantage of such a system is that you can watch two movies, nearly simultaneously. But the choppiness of the viewing experience speaks against it, not to mention how annoying it is to repeatedly get up from the sofa.

  China and America are two such completely separate films. When the Kriegstein females fly back to the States each summer, they reenter their American selves, interact with other Americans, against an American backdrop. For most of the summer, this is the mountain cabin in North Carolina that Ada bought after Charles died, two hours from the Atlanta airport. But back in Shanghai, in the fall, it is as though North Carolina never happened. How can Leah explain, to Evgenia at Shanghai American School, the simple comfort of being covered in your grandmother’s quilt, drinking hot chocolate on the cabin’s front deck, hearing the bells from the town chapel tolling in the valley, knowing you have a whole day of reading ahead of you, and nothing—no sidewalks full of twelve million inhabitants; no giggling gaggles of Shanghainese schoolchildren, pointing; no menus listing indecipherable dishes—to remind you that you don’t belong?

  On the other hand, in the States, how do you explain (to aunts, old school friends, former neighbors, your brothers) what it feels like to live in Shanghai? “Bless your heart,” Elise is told repeatedly. Then, as if what she is enduring is too unbearable to voice aloud, the listeners put a hand on her arm (in solidarity?), close their eyes, presumably imagining the horrors of living in China, and shake their heads quickly, as if rousing themselves from a nightmare. Of course, Elise, Leah, and Sophie can always take out the Shanghai photo album they have brought along, but they find that they don’t really want to look at themselves back there, preferring to fall into the rhythms of American life and forgetting that there is any other way to be.

  This works best at Ada’s mountain home. In Atlanta, they sleep on friends’ pullout couches since they no longer have a house in the city. Spending the night at her friend Rina’s house, Leah tries to feign interest in the latest gossip about kids she hasn’t seen in two years. At soccer camp, Sophie is heralded as the camper who has come the farthest to participate, and suddenly, the stares that meet her from the other campers feel as uncomfortable as the gawking she has learned to ignore on Shanghai’s streets.

  Such discomforts disappear in the mountains, where the TV never accuses them of having missed episodes for the last nine months, and Grand Ada is just as soft and snuggly as Sophie and Leah remember, baking the same blackberry cobbler that she always has. For Elise, her mother’s predictably passive-aggressive remarks and thinly veiled disapproval of Elise’s leaving Chris to “fend for himself,” as Ada puts it, in China, hinting that such long stretches of time apart are not healthy, particularly for men, do not faze Elise as they would have before. Instead, the motherly barbs feel reassuringly familiar.

  That they meet in North Carolina is also part of the deal: Elise has no desire to spend weeks on end back in Vidalia. If her mother wants to see her, she can come see her in the mountains, on more neutral turf. To Elise’s large relief and slight apprehension, Sophie and Leah seem to enjoy a relationship with their grandmother that resembles what Elise shared with Ada before everything went so wrong. But with Paps gone, there is nothing Elise needs to protect the girls from, no further tests of Ada’s allegiances. Elise sees her mother’s kindness to the girls as an extended apology, one that, after so many years, Elise is too tired not to accept. Having the girls there lightens the atmosphere: they keep Elise from sinking into bad memories, not unlike the water wings Elise had insisted Sophie and Leah wear in the pool, long after they had learned to swim. When Sophie and Leah leave the house to build forts in the yard or pick blackberries near the pond, the temperature in the room drops considerably, Elise’s tone with Ada grows harsher, and it is always a relief to hear the door slam, have Sophie run in with their spilling, juicy bounty, see the tension drain from Ada’s face as she takes the berries from her granddaughter’s sticky hands to wash in the sink.

  Sometimes Ivy drives up from Vidalia, and Dodge and Grayson and th
eir wives from Little Rock, and there are long meals with cheese squash, catfish, corn bread, fresh tomatoes with mayonnaise; Dodge doing imitations of all the folks back in Vidalia; Grayson’s twin boys sitting with Sophie and Leah at the kids’ table; all the grown siblings raising their eyebrows about how much Ivy is drinking, so they won’t have to worry about how much they’re drinking.

  * * *

  Over the course of their two and a half years in Shanghai, the Kriegstein women perfect the art of home leave. Elise, in particular, develops elaborate coping strategies: don’t try to visit too many people; don’t go to Indiana without Chris; make sure you have a week for yourself, in Atlanta, in New York, wherever, without the girls; don’t expect phone calls with Chris to be points of reconnection. (The time difference, the odd echo that often creeps in, and their two separate surroundings conspire in making Elise feel more alone after she’s hung up than before, even though she can hear, in Chris’s voice, that he is lonely, that he hates the summers by himself, that he misses them and the US.)

  * * *

  Home leave, for all of its glorious familiarity, is always confusing. Which film—the one taking place in the US, or the one taking place in China—is the real one? In the American film, Leah is tall, but not exceedingly so; Sophie’s blond curls garner smiles but not shrieks; and Elise is never asked her age and weight by anyone except her gynecologist. In the American film, on their third summer in the States, Leah kisses Lane, Sophie’s best friend’s older brother, and spends the summer with a racing pulse, blushing and stammering, sneaking off to make out in the woods, unaware of Sophie and Ana spying from the rhododendron bushes—whereas in the Chinese film, Leah is never once asked to dance at school dances. In the American film, Leah’s old school friends have received their learners’ permits, while Leah has never so much as sat behind the wheel. In the Chinese film, Leah can cross Shanghai alone, bargain for oranges in Mandarin, and describe the distinct cultural pressures her friends feel, depending on whether they are Brazilian Catholic or Korean Protestant. The only things the two films have in common are Leah, Sophie, and Elise—and, to a lesser degree, Chris.

  When they first moved to China, Chris assured them that Shanghai would just be two and a half years, and then they would be back in the States. No more leave, just home.

  Then Chris is given an offer he can’t refuse, in Singapore.

  The girls are bribed into moving to Singapore with the promise of a dog. Elise isn’t so easily bought. For some reason, one that even Elise cannot articulate to herself, she adamantly does not want to leave China, despite the air pollution, and the apples you have to peel, and the anxiety about your weight that being surrounded by tiny Chinese women inspires.

  Like nowhere else before, except perhaps London, Elise feels captivated by Shanghai. The city is like a gorgeous boyfriend who treats you badly but always leaves you wanting more and, when he wants to be nice, melts you. Elise never really had a boyfriend like that, but she always fantasized about having one. Or maybe she is just sick of saying yes to Chris. “Sure, honey, why not?” like some simpering fifties sitcom housewife. Like Ada.

  Chris is shocked at Elise’s resistance to the move. He begs and pleads, pointing out that there is no job back home anymore. Elise calmly explains that she doesn’t want to go “back home”; she wants to stay in China. “Wo bu yao zou” (I don’t want to go), she tells Chris in Mandarin (she’s been taking lessons for two years now), which leaves him unamused.

  “Why don’t we ask the girls what they think?” Chris shrugs, the courteous diplomat. (There is a reason he is such a successful business negotiator, and even beats his Chinese colleagues at their own game.) Sure of victory, Elise does not pause to consider that Chris has never suggested such a democratic procedure before. For years to come, Elise will regret agreeing to the “referendum,” as she comes to think of it. She hasn’t felt so ganged up on since the ninth grade, when tenth-grade girls spread a rumor that she was on the varsity cheerleading squad as a freshman because she’d let the football coach kiss her. It also stings because Elise presumed she knew their daughters far better than Chris. There was no way Sophie and Leah would choose a new foreign country in Asia over staying in Shanghai, she thought. But she underestimated their desire for a puppy, American movies, and decent cheeseburgers, all of which are on offer in Singapore. Elise is outvoted, three to one.

  During the two months before the move to Singapore, Elise moves around in a daze, going on long walks alone after school, not coming home for dinner. Chris leaves work earlier, takes the girls to restaurants, and the three of them are often giggling conspiratorially on the couch when Elise returns, which doesn’t help her feeling of intrafamilial exile.

  Then the day comes to leave Shanghai, in early August. Elise, like Mechthild, weeps the entire trip. Sophie and Leah, no longer giggling, hug her on either side, and Chris keeps her supplied with a steady stream of white wine and antianxiety medication. Elise doesn’t inquire how he conjured up the pills. She swallows them gratefully and avoids looking out the window as the plane takes off, and shuts her eyes, again, when the plane touches down at Changi Airport.

  The Heat

  Singapore, November 1996

  Back at therapist’s office, one month later, near the end of a fifty-minute session. Family is seated in same chairs as last time. Noticeable tension in the air. Only Sophie seems serene.

  Elise: I knew it. I had a bad feeling about the move from the beginning—

  Therapist: But surely you grasp, Elise, that Sophie’s cause of death, the heart condition, was a chronic one, something she had at birth. It had nothing to do with Singapore—

  Elise: The heat!

  Chris: The doctors told us, over and over, it had nothing to do with the temperature that day—

  Elise: Sure they told us that. With their Singaporean smiles, giggling out of nervousness, the same way they would laugh at sad parts in movies. I remember watching Philadelphia in Singapore—the audience erupted in laughter when Tom Hanks died—

  Chris: Elise. Listen to yourself.

  Elise: We should have stayed in Shanghai.

  Therapist: Chris?

  Chris: It’s not rational. It’s cruel. She blames me for it, you know? Not out loud, but whose fault was it that we moved? Mine. And therefore…you do the math.

  Sophie: I was always going to die.

  Leah: She was always going to die.

  Elise: How do you know?

  Sophie: I didn’t know until the day it came. I felt strange when I woke up. I thought, I bet today I’m going to get my period. (Rueful laugh.) But it was something bigger.

  Leah: I don’t know…I didn’t know. I was with her the whole day. I didn’t sense a thing. I wish she could have given me some sort of sign, communicated somehow—

  Sophie: I was embarrassed. I thought about asking you how to use a tampon, but I didn’t know how to bring it up. And it wasn’t like I was even bleeding. (Softer.) We never talked about that stuff.

  Therapist: Leah, what do you think Sophie would have said to you that day? Or, wait, I take that back. What would she say to you now? Why don’t you pretend she’s in this chair? (Gestures at the chair where Sophie is indeed sitting.)

  Sophie (to Leah, in pig latin): Ust-tray or-yay own-hay eaths-day.

  Leah (looks away, then turns back to the chair, concentrating, listening; she speaks slowly): Trust your own deaths.

  Sophie: That’s right. Yes! You got it, Leah!

  She rushes up to give Leah a high five; then, at Leah’s nonresponse, Sophie remembers the rules, slouches back to her chair.

  Elise: What? Trust your own—that doesn’t sound like Sophie. That sounds a little scary, sweetie. What do you mean by that?

  Leah (to the chair): “Trust your own deaths,” yeah right. What are you now, some kind of back-from-the-dead psychic? I bet that’s a line from Star Wars.

  Sophie disappears.

  Leah (senses Sophie’s leave-taking, breathes in sha
rply): Sophie!

  Therapist looks nervous; his role-playing exercise has pushed Leah to a place he didn’t intend.

  Elise (to herself): Trust your own deaths.

  Chris: See? It wasn’t because we moved to Singapore. It wasn’t the heat. Leah just said as much.

  Elise: She wasn’t talking about that, Chris. Jesus! You’re so literal.

  Leah (to Sophie’s empty chair): You see? Here they go and there you went. Fuck that. I’m out of here too.

  Leah climbs up on her chair, straddling the two arms, as though she is on the ledge of a tall building, contemplating a fatal leap.

  Therapist: Leah, will you please take a seat?

  Leah obliges, with adolescent resentment. Chris and Elise continue bickering in the background.

  Therapist: Guys, I’m afraid we’re approaching the end of the session. Chris? Elise? (Clears his throat.) Chris! Elise! Time to wrap things up.

  Silence. Elise comes over to Leah’s chair, hugs her. Leah flinches. Chris comes and circles his arms around his wife’s waist.

  Chris: Let’s go.

  Therapist: Leah, can I speak to you for a second, alone?

  Chris and Elise depart.

  All four Kriegstein voices, including Sophie’s (from offstage): Gute Nacht, oyasumi nasai, buenas noches, bonne nuit, wan an, anyon, ood-gay ight-nay!

  Leah is clearly listening to these voices, which the therapist cannot hear. It is “good night” in seven languages—including pig latin—something that the Kriegsteins, up until Sophie’s death, always said to each other after prayers at night.