Girl in Translation

by Jean Kwok

  Slowly, he climbed out from under the table and got into his father’s lap. I turned the echocardiogram around so that they could see it more clearly. “You have a very good heart but because this part is too narrow, your entire heart must work harder. There’s especially too much pressure here, in the left pumping chamber. This can really hurt your heart muscle later and lead to a lot of other problems.”

  “Like what?” Mr. Ho asked.

  I answered again. “High blood pressure or heart failure.”

  His face fell. I knew he’d been hoping that surgery wouldn’t be necessary.

  “This is a curative operation,” I told him, “which means he would be cured afterwards. Obviously with follow-up care and a cardiac rehabilitation program.”

  They both looked happier at this.

  With a glance at me, Pete asked, “Will the pretty doctor be there for the operation, Pa?”

  His father sighed and nodded. “She’ll be the boss.”

  Impressed, the boy addressed me directly. “Really?”

  “I’m your surgeon,” I said to him. “I’ll be there with you the whole time.”

  Now I looked at Mr. Ho more carefully. He seemed familiar, like someone from long ago. Where had I heard that name before? An idea occurred to me and I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “You wouldn’t know a Matt Wu?”

  The man looked at me in surprise. “Ah-Matt. Of course.” Now he examined me more carefully as well. “Are you a friend of his? I didn’t know ah-Matt was acquainted with such important people!”

  “You probably don’t remember. Matt and I used to come have wonton soup sometimes.” I couldn’t help smiling at the old memories. This was the waiter who’d always pulled us to the front of the line.

  “Oh,” he looked at me vaguely, clearly trying to remember, trying to see me as someone other than his child’s doctor. “Yes, sure.” Mr. Ho nodded without meeting my eyes, and I knew he was only pretending. He remembered only Vivian.

  I tried to sound as casual as possible. “Do you still see him sometimes?”

  “Sure, Matt’s always around.”

  I took a deep breath. This was my chance. I held out a copy of my card. “Would you give him this for me?” Pete took it and started scraping it across his cheek. “Tell him . . .”

  Mr. Ho waited, expectant.

  “Tell him I said hi.”

  He plucked my card out of Pete’s hands and put it in his wallet. “I will.”

  In my imagination, I’d run into Matt hundreds of times over the years: on the bus, at the bank, in New Haven, in Cambridge; I had fantasies of him being a patient at the hospital, school, university, wherever I was. Perhaps it was also for this reason that I’d taken the position at the hospital close to Chinatown when we’d finally come back to New York. I’d imagined that he would walk in through the door one day, but of course, he never had—not to the pediatric cardiac surgery department, anyway. Finally, I’d gone looking for him in Chinatown. I knew the places he used to hang around and made excuses for myself to frequent them. I saw that the nameplate for his old apartment had changed, so he’d moved. I didn’t dare face him directly anyway, not after what I’d done to him, and I tried not to be noticed as I wandered around.

  Then, I actually saw him once. It was late in the evening, and through the crowd, I suddenly caught a glimpse of him, just a few feet away, going into a bridal shop. It was only for a second, and I’d seen him from the back, but I knew it was him. I had to follow. I heard a woman’s voice greet him, then I stepped up to the lit window. There was a little girl, about five years old, sitting underneath a mannequin. Was she his? I could remember now the reason I’d lied to Matt all those years before: to avoid dooming our child to this lovely little girl’s fate. But who was I to say that she, too, wouldn’t take her future into her own hands? This was the reason Vivian had been given a whole life to spend, every day of every year, with my Matt.

  And then there he was, in the doorway. The little girl jumped up, ran to him and he caught her in his arms, laughing. I quickly stepped out of sight. I was afraid to linger, I felt as if I had no more strength in my legs. I left him there and didn’t dare return to disrupt his happy life.

  It was early on Saturday morning and I hadn’t even changed out of my motorcycle gear, because I’d come in only to check the status of one small patient of mine: a newborn who’d come out of surgery with me the evening before. She’d made it through the night. I said a few words to the parents, who were waiting in Intensive Care.

  Even after all these years, I am still filled with awe each time I hold the knife in my hand. My patients are often small, so small that some have breathed our common air for only a few days, and here they lie under the scalpel. Every time, I am filled with dread that it is my skill that will determine if my charge shall live or die. I try to believe in fate. I try to tell myself after the failed surgeries that there are times when there is nothing anybody could have done better. Those are the nights when I lie in bed alone, reliving the operation, wondering why this one was chosen to die, wondering if I had made that choice by some error I had made. It is a task that demands constant perfection from me; perhaps that is why I chose this work, to have that unending call of faultlessness deafen me to the call of my own heart.

  “Can I have a minute too, Doc?” It was Matt’s voice in English that came out of the corridor. He was standing there in a T-shirt and jeans, and at the actual sight of him in the flesh, looking at me with the same golden eyes I’d dreamed about for so long, my heart inflated at such a speed that I thought I would die of joy right there.

  I saw him take me in. A smile began to light up his face. “Kimberly.”

  A wave of happiness rose from my chest to my face and I looked down to hide my sudden flush. I shifted the motorcycle helmet to my other hand. I snuck another look at him and saw he really was older: instead of the young guy I’d known, this was a man. The muscles of his shoulders and arms were hard from a lifetime of physical labor, and the strength of his gaze seemed to say that he knew who he was.

  Now he spoke in Chinese. “I wasn’t sure I’d find you here today.”

  “Actually, I’m off duty. I just came to see one patient. Come on. Let’s go to my office.”

  The walk through the hospital hallways felt electric with Matt by my side. I didn’t know what to say, and I took care not to bump into him by accident, but I couldn’t stop myself from smiling at the simple fact that he was here with me.

  When we stepped inside my office, he took his time walking along the walls, looking at all my diplomas and awards. “You’ve come real far, factory girl.”

  I went to my desk, to flip over the only photo I keep there. “Thanks,” I said, trying to sound casual.

  He noticed, of course, and came over to me. “You don’t need to do that. I don’t want to see the love of your life anyway.”

  I took a breath. “How’s Park? And Vivian?”

  He didn’t seem surprised by my knowledge that he was with her again. He must have figured I would have found out. “Both fine. He’s helping out at UPS, where I work, doing some odd jobs in the garage. Vivian’s got a job at a bridal shop.”

  So Matt was working as a UPS guy. “What happened to her father’s place?”

  “Closed down. Bad economy. She’s doing good too, the boss says she’ll become the manager someday.”

  “Great,” I said. I’d heard that one before and I knew Matt didn’t believe it himself either. “I thought I saw her in a magazine years ago.”

  “Yeah, it probably was her. She did some modeling for a while but then she quit.”

  “Why?”

  “Her husband got too jealous.” He ran his fingers through his hair, seeming embarrassed. “Stupid guy, huh?”

  I felt as if he’d struck me. He did love her, of course he did. They’d had years of loving each other and caring for each other. After I broke up with him, I found out that he’d gone back to her very soon afterward. I’d just bee
n a short break in between Vivian and Vivian.

  “And how are you?” I managed to ask.

  He flicked his gaze across my large office, then shrugged, a bit defensively. “I make a good living.”

  “Yes.” I looked up at him and I couldn’t stop myself anymore. Slowly, I reached up, laid a hand against his cheek. I wished I could keep him safe the rest of his life. I took a deep breath. “I have to tell you—”

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I’m not as dumb as I look. I was there too, remember, when we made the baby?”

  I was speechless.

  His voice cracked. “When you broke up with me, you shattered my heart. At first, I believed you that we were too different. ‘A bamboo door needs a bamboo door and a metal door needs a metal door.’ I’ll never forget you saying those words. I always knew you were better than me, but I couldn’t figure it out either, how you could be so cold all of a sudden. And then I counted the days and I knew.”

  I took him in my arms then and he let me. He still smelled the same, of aftershave and sandalwood soap. I pressed my cheek against his shoulder and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s why I never came after you. That’s why I went back to Vivian.”

  “You already knew then?” I could hardly recognize my own voice. “You got back together with her because you hated me?”

  “It broke me, Kimberly. You never asked me. You never gave me a chance. We could have made it. Maybe not with all those fancy degrees of yours, but we could have been together and we could have had our baby.” Now his eyes were clotted with unshed tears.

  “I can’t tell you how much I regret what I did. I was never better than you, and I’m not now. In those days, our financial situation was so unsteady, I felt as if we were all hanging on to a tiny piece of flotsam that could never take all of our weight. You, me, Park, Ma, the baby. I had to cut you loose.” I paused for a moment. “And I didn’t think I could make you happy.”

  “What?”

  “I know, we were so happy then. But I didn’t think it was fair to tie you to me with a baby. Could you have lived with this? A pediatric cardiac surgeon for a wife? I often work eighty hours a week. I’m on call weekends and nights. It would have been different if you could have chosen freely, day by day, to be with me, but with the baby, you would have had no choice.”

  “What about you? You didn’t have to become a surgeon. You could have stayed home. Are you happy now? I would have taken care of you.”

  My answer was soft. “I had an obligation to my ma and to myself. I couldn’t have changed who I was. I wish I could have. Sometimes, I wish I had.” I stopped and walked a few steps away. He was watching me. “But I wouldn’t have been happy on your journey, and I know you wouldn’t have been happy on mine.”

  “And our baby paid the price.” His eyes were filled with emotion. “You don’t know what it means to love a child.”

  I parted my lips to speak, ready to change everything now, but then he said, abruptly, “Vivian’s pregnant again.”

  I was blinded as all the tears I’d been holding back rushed into my eyes. Despite all of my logical reasoning, despite knowing we could never really have a life together, I realized now I had hoped that if he knew the full story, our fate would somehow change. I turned away and wiped my face with the back of my hands. I felt his arms go around me.

  He whispered into my hair, “It’s always been you, Kimberly, from head to tail. But Vivian needs me.”

  My voice was quiet. “I know. Your family needs you. Matt, why did you come back here today?”

  For a long moment, he held me. “For the same reason you sent me your card. To say good-bye.”

  I closed my eyes. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  Matt gave a long whistle when he saw the Ducati. Sleek and powerful, it was everything I had dreamed of in a motorcycle.

  I’ll never forget that ride with Matt. His arms were around me, the smell of leather was everywhere and the scenery of New York blurred and turned liquid as we raced by. I felt as if we were traveling through a time warp, back to that first bike ride when Matt was working as a pizza delivery boy. I wished we could go back to then and through all the years that we had missed together. He was wrapped close around me, my hair streaming back onto his neck. What I would have given to have that ride last forever.

  I stopped the bike. He slowly let his arms drop away from me, as if he too were reluctant to let me go. I had parked the Ducati a short distance away from his current apartment building. They lived next to the FDR Drive. The roar of the highway must have been deafening in their apartment, and the ground seemed to tremble as we walked toward their place. I stopped around the corner from the entrance. I didn’t want anyone to see us.

  I swallowed. “That’s it, I guess. Ride’s over.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, his eyes sadder than anything I’d ever seen.

  I saw the glint of gold around his neck, under his T-shirt, and I reached out a finger and touched it. “I remember this.”

  I pulled him down by the necklace around his neck. Slowly, we kissed. I was engulfed by the softness of his lips, the delicious taste of him. I had lived all these years for this kiss, so that I could be here, on this morning, with him. I would have given anything to be able to go home with him, go to our life together, with our children and no one else. Had I made the right decision? Could I have chosen the life he’d wanted for us? I hadn’t had a choice, it was simply who I was.

  Then we pulled away.

  There was a long moment when he looked at me with his golden eyes. Again, I drew breath and he put his finger on my lips. “Kimberly, please don’t say anything.”

  He slowly lifted his necklace with the Kuan Yin pendant over his head and poured it into my hand, as he’d done so long before by the steamers at the factory.

  “Take this,” he said. “Keep it. Stay safe.”

  “What will you tell Vivian?”

  He gazed at me steadily. “I’m going to lie and tell her I lost it.”

  I knew I should have refused, given it back, but I wanted it too much. “I miss you, Matt. I will always miss you.”

  Despite his sadness, he shook his head with a hint of a wry grin. “One thing I know about you, Kimberly Chang, is that you’ll always be all right.”

  “Good-bye, Matt.”

  He turned and walked into his apartment building, without looking back at me again.

  I walked back to my bike. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at the building that contained their apartment, cherishing the knowledge that Matt was inside. Then I started to ride away but my mind and heart were so filled with him that I couldn’t help myself, and I pulled over to take one last look back.

  One of the windows on the upper floors had just opened, as if that inhabitant also had too many thoughts on his mind, and someone climbed out onto one of the fire escapes. I knew it was Matt. I parked the bike on the side of the street and got off. It should have been obvious that that one was his apartment. It was crowded with plants and flowers: beautiful, that tiny fire escape filled with living things, a gentle protest against the highway and the city.

  Vivian should have had my garden now. I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of that thing. Ma had taken it over for me, planting plot after plot filled with squash and winter melons, as if we were in danger of starvation. Then she would go to our bewildered neighbors with her extra vegetables in a little basket, still speaking almost no English.

  “For you,” Ma said.

  At first, our neighbors had either refused or tried to pay her until they realized that she lived in one of the nicer houses on their street.

  “Eccentric,” they now whispered among themselves.

  I got off my bike and walked a little closer. Matt stood there in the morning light, glorious in a thin T-shirt he’d changed into. He leaned on the railing while the highway rumbled behind him and the smog rose into
the air. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  And then she came out.

  Her hair was long now, and it blew backward in the wind. Her shoulders and arms were thin in contrast to her swollen belly. She touched his shoulder, and whatever thoughts he may have been having dissipated and he was back there, with her, his lovely wife and mother of his children. He pulled her in front of him, wrapped his arms around her, and they stood there, looking out into their future.

  It started to rain as I rode, the drops beating down on my helmet like a funeral drum. It was all so much. I could let go of my past with Matt. But what really hurt was the reanimation of a dream I’d thought I’d let go of. A future of lying with him every night in our bed, raising a family together, wavered against the reflection of my headlights on the tar and disappeared into the air like smoke from a fire.

  I kept his necklace inside my glove during the whole ride home. It seemed longer than usual. My mind and heart were filled with Matt, the smell of him, the feel of him. How would I ever get him out of my head again? But in the end, my emotions quieted themselves and by the time I turned onto the long driveway of our house in Westchester, I knew that someday, I would be able to fully accept it all. In a bittersweet way, I was glad I had given him his happiness with Vivian.

  I parked the Ducati in front of the garage, then composed myself before walking across the lawn. As I approached the entrance, my twelve-year-old boy hurtled out the door, his gym bag in tow.

  “Hey, where are you going?” I asked in Chinese.

  “I’ve got baseball practice! Mom, I’m going to be late.” His Chinese, although not quite as perfect as his English, was excellent. Jason’s face was so similar to his father’s, Matt would have recognized him in a moment had he seen that photo in my office: the golden eyes, the bushy eyebrows, even the lock of hair that always fell in his face.