Good Chinese Wife

by Susan Blumberg-Kason

  Epilogue

  It was a hot summer day the first time Cai met my fiancé, Tom. A dozen kids scrambled around my parents’ back porch for Jake’s seventh birthday party while Cai quietly videotaped our son playing with his friends, the Sears Tower looming in the background. That evening Jake, Tom, Cai, and I drove to Chinatown for dinner at a Malaysian restaurant. It was the first time the four of us had been alone together. The din of the restaurant camouflaged our wavering conversation. After dinner, Jake and Cai walked ahead while Tom draped his arm around my shoulder.

  “It looks like Jake is leading his dad,” Tom said as father and son crossed the street ahead. Patient and calm, Tom had known about Jake before he asked me out at work—a hospital where I was temping at the time—a couple years earlier. Months before Cai arrived in Chicago for this visit, Jake had casually mentioned in an email to his father that Tom and I were engaged.

  And then it was Cai’s turn. He revealed over the phone in early 2006, a month after my wedding, that his girlfriend Mimi thought it was time that they marry. I’d never expected to feel sad to hear Cai was going to remarry. I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend. So I phoned Janice, who still lived in New York and was engaged to a German businessman. “I shouldn’t care about Cai’s new marriage, but I can’t help feeling somewhat dejected.”

  “It’s not just you. I’ve heard it’s always upsetting when an ex finds someone else. I’m sure Cai felt the same when he learned about you and Tom. Just give it some time. Soon you won’t think anything of it.”

  As usual, Janice was correct. Cai had been back in Hong Kong for four years and had met Mimi at a Western opera, in which she had been a performer. She’d lived in New York for almost a decade and had recently returned to China to teach at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, yet still traveled around the world to sing opera. Theirs would be a long-distance marriage, Cai told me, but eventually he’d move back to China, to a Shanghai that resembled very little of what we had experienced eleven years earlier.

  It was during this time that Cai also mentioned he’d resumed contact with Ting-Ting. Now a teenager, Ting-Ting had moved back to Wuhan to attend boarding school. After she’d lived in the dorms for a few semesters, Ting-Ting asked Cai to pay her rent for a three-bedroom apartment off campus.

  “She’s only sixteen and doesn’t need such a big apartment,” Cai said to me on a forty-eight-hour visit to Jake in Chicago.

  “What did you tell her?” I asked, not wanting to sound too curious. I’d tried to maintain a professional rapport with Cai since our divorce, devoid of emotion or attachment. But I did want to know what had become of Ting-Ting. Cai hadn’t mentioned her before then.

  “Of course I agreed. I’m her father.”

  “Do you see her often?”

  “No. I’m in Hong Kong. She’s in Wuhan. But I wanted to help her, so I’m paying her rent.”

  Poor Ting-Ting. After all these years, her father still wasn’t a constant presence in her life. Paying her rent could never make up for their lost time together. And as infrequently as Cai visited Jake, he did schedule consistent visits every year or two, even if they only lasted two days.

  While we were on the subject of Ting-Ting, I suggested to Cai that she and Jake could start corresponding. Jake was old enough to write letters, and Ting-Ting must surely be able to read simple English or know someone who could translate a letter from an eight-year-old.

  “I’ll ask her,” Cai said.

  Months later, when Cai phoned to speak to Jake, I asked again about Jake writing to Ting-Ting. “Can you give me Ting-Ting’s address?” Cai must know it since he paid her rent.

  “Sorry,” he said, pausing a moment. “Ting-Ting doesn’t feel comfortable writing to Jake. She thinks she’s too fat.”

  Huh? Too fat to write letters? How had Cai responded to his daughter’s heartrending assertion? I felt bad for Jake because he was losing a relationship with his sister, yet Cai wasn’t eager to foster that bond.

  Several years later, Cai would mention on another quick visit to Chicago that Wei Ling had married a banker and was living in New York. And Ting-Ting had joined them, enrolling in college somewhere in the New York area. As luck would have it, Cai was headed to New York the following day to see his wife, Mimi, sing an opera there.

  “So you’ll see Ting-Ting?” I said more as a statement than a question.

  “No. I don’t know how to find her.”

  “You could surely find Wei Ling’s phone number from old classmates. It’s always worked in the past.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know where they live.” Then he changed the subject and asked about the Mandarin class Jake attended after school once a week.

  Just as I was about to bring the conversation back to Ting-Ting, I suddenly felt like I was slipping back a decade to when I was married to Cai and encouraging him to reach out to his daughter. But that wasn’t my place anymore. I couldn’t be the one to push for this relationship. My idea of the right thing to do differed from his, and I knew I’d have to leave it at that. Tuning back to his questions about Jake, I waited for him to finish, then went on to tell him about Jake’s Mandarin teacher and the types of sentences he’d been learning.

  • • •

  In the winter of 2008, Cai announced that he would be making another one of his quick visits to Chicago. This time he’d bring his wife, Mimi, along.

  I braced myself for an uncomfortable meeting and lost my appetite a few days before they flew to Chicago. Tom stayed home with our baby daughter, Rachel, while I drove Jake from our new home in a Chicago suburb to meet Cai and Mimi in Chinatown.

  Jake and I entered a dim sum stadium, my hand gripping his. We paused before a stream of middle-aged women pushing metal carts piled high with bamboo steamers filled with dim sum: dumplings, sticky rice, and juicy beef balls. One of the dim sum ladies ruffled Jake’s hair, remarking that we’d returned. “Huí lái le,” she said, remembering I spoke Mandarin. It was Jake’s favorite restaurant and we’d been regulars over the last eight years.

  I smiled, too nervous to chat. Holding Jake close, I peered through the crowded tables to locate Cai, who had come in from Shanghai where he and Mimi lived together with a miniature pinscher. From behind a cluster of young couples, Cai ran up to Jake, lifting his eighty-pound bulk and embracing him like an oversized teddy bear.

  “You’re so big!” Cai set ten-year-old Jake back down, his eyes sizing Jake up and down. It had been two years since father and son had met.

  Cai peered at me, nodding congenially. My shoulders taut, I watched him with caution. I immediately noticed he was wearing a platinum wedding ring, something he refused to do when we were married. It felt like a little punch to the stomach. I wondered if this meant he had never really taken our marriage seriously. Or perhaps it wasn’t him at all, but his new wife. I imagined Mimi was probably more assertive than I was when she got married to Cai.

  Just then a tall woman with short hair and lipstick to match her red cashmere sweater hurried past Cai and greeted me with a firm handshake, her diamond rings sparkling in a stream of sunlight flowing through the windows behind me.

  “It’s so good to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.” Her English was perfect and her smile genuine. “I’m Mimi.” I wasn’t expecting her to be nice. Was this how Wei Ling felt when she met me?

  Mimi led me to their table as Jake and Cai followed. I studied Jake’s face. He walked stiffly beside Cai, and his eyes stayed focused on me. What did he think of his dad, someone he knew mostly from phone conversations every few months?

  “Please sit.” Mimi took the chair next to me. “Jake looks so much older than in his photos. You’re doing such a good job with him.”

  As the carts of dim sum passed, Jake and I took turns pointing to choice dishes: eggplant stuffed with white fish, shrimp dumplings, beef rice rolls, and chicken congee. During lunc
h Mimi sashayed between cultures, conversing comfortably with Cai about Chicago’s version of dim sum compared to those in China, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, and about American movies with Jake and me.

  Then Mimi turned to me. “I’m surprised your husband and daughter aren’t here. Why didn’t they come?”

  “Rachel still naps a couple times a day, so Tom stayed home with her. Believe me, it wouldn’t have been pleasant if she’d missed her naps.” I tried to sound lighthearted, never revealing how difficult it had been for me to show up that morning, let alone subject Tom and Rachel to something I’d been dreading since Cai announced this trip a month earlier.

  Tom had told me he’d do whatever I wanted—accompany Jake and me or stay home with Rachel. I felt it would be best for them to stay home, in case Mimi was unfriendly. But just as with Wei Ling, I grossly miscalculated Mimi’s lovely personality. Still, it was nice for Jake to have this time alone with Cai, without having to share the spotlight with his baby sister.

  While we ate, Cai told us about Mama and Baba’s new apartment and how he and Mimi visited them in Hidden River whenever they got the chance. Although grateful I no longer had to make those trips to Hidden River, I did feel bad for Mama and Baba. They hadn’t seen Jake since they left San Francisco nine years earlier. I also felt a bit guilty because it was my fault that Jake couldn’t see his grandparents—I refused to go back to China with him. They’d only spoken on the phone a couple times, and only when Cai stayed with them and asked us to call his parents’ number. One consolation was that Cai always took plenty of photos and video of Jake on his visits to Chicago so he could show his parents how much Jake had grown.

  After lunch, we headed to a children’s museum along the Chicago lakefront. To give Cai time alone with Jake, I sat with Mimi on a bench along the sidelines, learning about her early years in Shandong, how she discovered Western opera, and her path to New York and reviews in the New York Times. Every once in a while, I glanced over at Cai and Jake engaged in a giant game of chess or standing in line for a ropes course.

  Jake smiled often and seemed more at ease with his father now. With the help of Mimi’s calming presence, I relaxed and chatted with her. Later I drove Cai and Mimi to their shabby hotel in Chinatown, aghast that Cai would allow Mimi to stay at such a location. It didn’t even have a private bath, she told me with a chuckle, as if amused by the simplicity of the place.

  Before Jake and I headed back home, Mimi hugged me tightly. I looked forward to seeing her the following day, again for dim sum, before their flight to New York, where she was going to perform in an opera. Up until I’d met Mimi, it was easy to wish the worst for her and Cai. I had felt resentful that Cai had treated me as an enemy during our marriage. Now here was another woman who was probably gaining from what Cai had learned from his mistakes with me.

  But once I got to know Mimi, I couldn’t help but hope that her marriage would work. I finally knew what it was like to have a caring spouse and a happy life. If Mimi and Cai were happy, it could only benefit Jake’s relationship with Cai, no matter how little they saw one another.

  On the way home, Jake rehashed the events of the day. “Baba’s wife is much better than I thought.”

  “I thought the same thing,” I said, pulling onto the highway ramp at Chinatown.

  It was then that I started to appreciate what I had gained from my marriage to Cai. Throughout those five years, I had tried to be a good Chinese wife but had ended up almost losing myself. There was more than enough of the bad for me to dwell on, but there also were glimmering rays of good that shone through.

  Because of everything I had been through, my life seemed so calm and easy now with Tom. Though in another untraditional marriage, I could be myself and know that Tom would love me for it. I had matured and become stronger, but I could also put into perspective little things that might have bothered me before. If Tom needed to stay at work late, I wouldn’t get upset—I knew he wouldn’t be out with other women or driving God-knows-where to find an adult video store.

  Most times, he would jump in to help with the kids or start cooking dinner. But if he wanted to sit back with a beer in front of the TV, I was fine with that, too. I relished this peace and stability that had been absent in my first marriage. And if Tom’s mother wanted to see the kids—I had another son named Martin a couple years after Rachel was born—I knew she wouldn’t threaten to keep them for a few years.

  The calmness I felt in my marriage allowed me to be a better mother to my children. I could see the difference between how I behaved when Jake was a baby and when Rachel and Martin were the same age. While Cai’s moods dominated my first two years as a mother, not allowing me to truly focus on my son, I felt no such stress during Rachel’s and Martin’s early childhoods.

  Tom was a first-time father when Rachel was born, and was happy to let me make big decisions for her: which foods she would eat, what time she would go to sleep, and how to dress her for each season. These things were all sources of distress in my marriage to Cai, but with Tom they were never up for argument.

  With a peaceful family life, I could spend time with my kids doing things I thought they would enjoy. I took them to Chinatown to try out new dim sum restaurants and shop for moon cakes at the Mid-Autumn Festival. We read books about Chinese culture and decorated our house with red posters of fish and smiling children at Chinese New Year. I knew I could never do these things with the kids if I had still been married to someone who continued to drain my energy until I was solely operating in survival mode.

  And in the ironic way in which history tends to repeat itself, I learned something else from Cai. Twelve years earlier, he had phoned me at work one winter day, enthusiastic about booking a trip to China before Jake turned two. Cai had stressed the urgency in purchasing these tickets so we wouldn’t have to pay for Jake’s airfare. Cai’s call had come out of the blue, leaving me frightened and panicked to act quickly. That phone call ultimately sparked the events that led to our divorce.

  Just as Cai had surprised me with that call, one winter day in January 2012 when Martin was also two years old, I paged Tom at the hospital where he worked as a cardiologist. No matter what he was doing—rounding on patients, reading stress-test results, or performing postoperative procedures—he never failed to phone me back at his earliest convenience. I could always tell from the way he started the conversation whether he had time to talk for a bit or if we had to keep it short. My heart thumped when the phone rang a couple minutes after my page.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he asked leisurely. Although he didn’t seem in a hurry, I suddenly felt rushed to get it all out.

  “I have a crazy idea. The deadline is tonight, and my mom said she could stay with the kids for a week. Although we’d have to buy the tickets now, we wouldn’t have to fly until sometime before May first. The airfare is just too good to—”

  “Wait a second,” Tom said, not impatiently. “What are you talking about?”

  “Hong Kong.”

  “Hell yeah! I’d love to go there.”

  Although Tom knew all about my time in Hong Kong—and after—I had never suggested traveling there in the decade since we’d met. Looking back, I could see that I wouldn’t be able to return until I felt comfortable with myself and grounded in my new family. Having Rachel and Martin helped with that. And seeing Jake grow into a confident young man did, too.

  Yes, now that I felt secure in my new life, I could return to the home of my twentysomething self and experience it afresh. I expected to see changes in Hong Kong since I’d left. After all, it had been fourteen years. But then again, I had changed, too.

  Acknowledgments

  Years ago, I attended a writing conference in Chicago and met a woman who warned that others might steal a book idea if it’s revealed too early. I followed this advice for years, but it was only when I started talking about it that this book started to become a reality. And I
learned that writing is anything but a solitary endeavor.

  A million thanks to my brother, Jonathan Blumberg, for inspiring me to write the book in the first place. To Xu Xi, Kathy Carter, Paula Bernstein, Bruce Tracy, Kathleen Herbach, Jennifer Barron, Sara Rubin Agahi, Chandrika Marla, Czes Tubilewicz, and Sharon Woodhouse for early feedback. To Jean Oram, Glenn Stewart, and everyone at AgentQuery Connect.

  To my friends on Authors of Asian Novels, Facebook, and Twitter. To the many writers who have provided invaluable support and a warm shoulder: Ilan Greenberg, Ceil Miller Bouchet, Linda Furiya, Dana Sachs, Rachel DeWoskin, Kim Fay, Janet Brown, Chris Thrall, Tom Carter, Pete Spurrier, Stuart Beaton, Caitlin Shetterly, Jean Kwok, Susan Conley, Shannon Young, Tracy Slater, Anju Gattani, and of course Jocelyn Eikenburg.

  To Erica Lyons, thank you for your support, friendship, and the Hong Kong charm. I wear it with honor.

  Jean Hao-Hirt, thank you for being a champion of my story and my best friend all these years. Annie Galpin, do jeh, do jeh. And a huge thank-you to all my friends from CUHK, both in Hong Kong and Chicago. Friends and saviors from my San Francisco days: Adrienne Robillard, Tim Booher, Adria Arteseros, and Bren Ahearn among many others.

  A thousand kowtows to Wendy Nelson Tokunaga, who taught me how to write.

  To Carrie Pestritto, dream agent extraordinaire and dear friend. Thank you for believing in this story at first glance and for finding it the perfect home. I can’t imagine my life without you. Thanks also to Emily Sylvan Kim at Prospect Agency.