The Foremost Good Fortune (33 page)

I choose a green-flowered wraparound dress from my closet. It sounds bad but it’s actually fine with the high black boots I wear it with. I look normal in this dress, and by that I mean that my breasts look normal. Which is always my goal now. In this dress the fake one on the left sits almost directly parallel to the real one on the right.

The party is set up with five long banquet tables and boiling pots of broth at each place setting. Someone has put large plastic bottles of Coke and Sprite in the middle of each table. Wine is not a Chinese custom at dinners like this. But soon, waiters bring out warm bottles of Yanjing beer. Tony wants people to mingle before they sit down. He tells me he hates it when everyone in the office runs for their seats. The music helps. Tony hired a Brazilian singer from our apartment building named Lucio, who sings “The Girl from Ipanema.” But everyone still seems uncomfortable. They are awkward—as if they don’t know how to make small talk with their cubicle partners. As if they’ve never done this before. “Why don’t they want to mix it up?” Tony asks me.

I tell him he’s trying to make a Chinese office party into an American cocktail hour. And it kind of works. But only because Tony and Eric,
Tony’s second in command, fan out around the room. “We won’t be eating for at least an hour,” I hear Tony say to many of the men. “Come listen to the music. No need to sit. No need.”

The next time I’m near Tony, he is standing beside Lucio’s electric piano, going over a small list his Chinese office manager, Cynthia, has made of the order of events. That is when he looks at me and says, “I tried to keep you out of it. I really tried.”

I’m drinking my second glass of Sprite and pretending it is Sauvignon Blanc. I have no idea what he means. I’m hoping we can sit down soon. I’m hoping this night will pass quickly. If I’m honest, I’m hoping this whole year will pass quickly. Because on the calendar I keep in my head, each year that passes takes me further away from the cancer.

“Right,” I say to him. “I’m just here to listen and support you.” It’s important to him that I’ve come to the party. For a short while, when we first returned to Beijing, I thought I needed to distance myself from everyone, even Tony, in order to get better. I think I was trying to isolate the disease. Isolate myself. I can see now that this was not the best way.

“And that’s why”—Tony tries to smile—“when they call your name, just stand up quickly and come to the microphone and I’ll take it from there.”

“They’re not going to call my name,” I whisper loudly in his ear. “Because I am not going up to the microphone. That’s not why I came. Remember. Not at all why I came.”

“Oh yes you are.” Tony smiles. “You have no choice. Cynthia has gotten you a gift.”

“Oh God.”

“Oh yes. And there’s more.”

“There can’t be.”

“There are games. Marriage games.”

“I’m going to sit down now,” I say. “I’m not listening to you anymore.”

The gift Cynthia hands me up at the microphone is a cut-glass fruit bowl with red psychedelic swirls running through it. She has a glass bowl for each of the other six wives at the party, who are forced to
listen to their husbands give short, painfully awkward speeches about how grateful the men are for spousal devotion. Cynthia has talked the men into doing it, and it’s a kind of public praise that doesn’t seem to come naturally here. I wince while the wives stand on the stage and look down at the ground.

At least Tony is able to skip the devotion part. When it’s my turn to receive a bowl, he takes the microphone and says, “Susan and I would like to thank all of you for your hard work this year and for your support. We don’t know many people here in China, and you have been like family to us.” I smile and clap when the audience claps and think that these people have not really been like family. At least not to me. I hardly ever see these people. But it occurs to me that they might be like Tony’s family—his extended Chinese family. How lucky for him. A part of me is jealous. How different Tony’s and my days look in Beijing. He spends his time in an office with these interesting colleagues and gets to speak Chinese all day. I’m proud of him for what he’s done here—brought the company to China. Forged relationships.

I go sit down with my fruit bowl, but Cynthia calls me back. She says into the microphone that the games are beginning and asks me to take a seat onstage. Then she waves the other six wives up and gives them seats too, and blindfolds. No one said anything about blindfolds. The object of the game, Cynthia announces, is for the seven husbands, also blindfolded, to take each woman’s hand and figure out which is their wife.

My chair is first in the row. When the game begins, a strange man takes my fingers in his sweaty palm. “Is she your wife?” Cynthia asks him.

He presses my hand with his thumb and says with confidence, “Yes. This is my wife.” Which produces squeals from the audience. My new husband and I are herded off to the side in our blindfolds, where we wait, hand in hand, while the rest of the group tries to mate.

When it’s Tony’s turn, I hear him walk down the row of seated women with outstretched hands, quickly saying to each one, “No, not my wife. Not my wife. None of these is my wife.”

In the end, he’s paired with Jenny, the shy office secretary. When they stand together and hold hands, the audience cannot contain itself. People snort with laughter, they’re having so much fun. I smile and
smile and think that if I have to smile any more my face will freeze. The finale comes when everyone takes off their blindfolds—all fourteen of us—and we realize that not one husband was able to find his own wife.

And even though I’m standing in front of a crowd of strangers, paired with a man I believe is married to Sophie Wu, the new office translator, I am still moved by my husband’s show of loyalty. By his knowingness of me, and that he did not mistake me for someone else.

When we’re allowed to go back to our table, I slink down low in my seat and guzzle more Sprite. That’s when Alan, in presales, gets up and takes the microphone. He smiles and, with no warning, begins belting out a Frank Sinatra song: “My Way.”

This is not on Cynthia’s schedule. We all stare, and then the audience begins to clap and cheer. They love the song. People are warming up now. They seem to think the singing is a fantastic end to an amazing night. Alan is earnest and off-key, and I begin to laugh silently, and then the laughing turns into giggling until I’m not quite able to get a handle on it. I bite the insides of my cheeks hard and bend down to pretend to fix my shoe. This is no time to unravel.

The singing is infectious. Now Frank stands up. The crowd cheers when he says he’s going to do a traditional folk song from his home province of Hebei. He begins, and it sounds like he’s screaming: high-pitched, loud, Chinese screaming. He opens his mouth unnaturally wide to get the sounds out. We can see his molars. The audience begs for more. When are we ever going to go home? Tony has family here now. My people are thousands of miles away, in cities where it is either too late or early to call because of the baffling time change.

Frank does another folk number, and just when it looks like Eric is going to take the stage to sing, Tony jumps up and grabs the microphone. “Thank you, Frank,” Tony says in Chinese, and smiles. “Thank you for that treat.”

Rose

I saw Rose again today. It’s almost spring in Beijing, and we met for tea on the indoor porch of a café called The Face. There were red antique tea tables. We sat on a pink-flowered couch. She looked older. Rounder. Her glasses frames are green now. She wore jeans. She always wears jeans. And this time a small fitted gray cape over a T-shirt. We ordered mango puer tea and snacks. She brought presents for the boys: Chinese picture books. She kept laughing her wonderful, high-pitched laugh.

“Are there a lot of Chinese people going to Turkey?” I wanted to know.

“Medium amount of people,” she said. “But more soon if Turkey joins the EU, because Chinese people see it as a way to get to Spain or Italy.”

“Do you like the job?” I asked. “Do you like it more than teaching?”

“I like the fixed salary. I make four thousand yuan a month, but it is constant. When I taught, sometimes I made two thousand. Sometimes six thousand. But it was never steady, and I was always tired.”

A waitress brings two pots of tea and then three stacked trays of bite-sized food. Rose unwraps the fork and knife from the paper napkin. She asks me how she is supposed to use the fork. “Do I hold it in my right hand or my left?”

“It’s complicated,” I say and show her. “You cut with the knife in your right hand, and then you switch it back. Or you can just leave your fork in your left hand. That’s okay too.” There are small ham sandwiches on toasted bread, and tuna with lettuce on miniature croissants. The tuna is surprisingly good. “How is your boyfriend?” I can’t help but ask.

“He is out of a job. My parents came for the Chinese New Year and
said they did not want to see him. They think he is a nice boy, but he is not the one for me to marry. So I told him I was going home, when really I stayed here the whole time with my parents.”

“This sounds complicated. This sounds hard. Did he ever suspect you were still here?”

“I did a very good job of tricking him.”

“Both your parents came?”

“They stayed in my apartment. They like my new place. It is very nice.” Rose looks tired to me.

“What are your work hours?”

“It is not so bad. Eight hours a day and a half hour for lunch. But there is pressure.” She takes off her glasses. “There is so much pressure.”

“Do you mean from your boss?” I bite into a lemon tart.

“My boss is a Turkish official. She rejects most of the visa applications. Even the ones I approve. She has final say. She cannot read Chinese. Or speak it. I have to write my reports in English.” Rose claps her hands in delight. “This is a very good thing! This helps me practice. And I can tell that most of the applicants are faking it.”

“What do you mean, faking it?”

“The people are poor peasants from the countryside, but they come to the visa office pretending to be businessmen. They create false stories of companies they run and colleagues. Then I call the company and I can tell it’s not a real boss on the line—they’re speaking with an accent that’s wrong for the province. I call the wife listed on the application and I can tell she’s not the real wife, because she doesn’t know the name of her husband right away.”

“Wow,” I say, and take a sip of tea.

She smiles. “I used to be nice to the people. People would get their visas rejected but they would not leave the visa office. They would keep coming to my desk and asking me why. At first I tried to be helpful. I did not know any other way. Then one day last fall, a colleague told me I was too nice. He approached me during the working hours. He said, ‘We are not a hotel. We are not a restaurant. You are not offering a service. You are being too good to these people. You have authority now. You need to demand respect.’ And so I got a little meaner. I changed.”

I thought I could see this in her face—it was harder now. And her eyes
did not sparkle as much. I wanted to say, “Don’t change! Don’t change.” She told me of a kind old Chinese couple who came to the office with an application because they wanted to go see their son and grandson in Turkey. “They had the right paperwork. They had money saved. I approved them. Because everything about them was appropriate. But my boss turned them down. The only reason she gave was that they were old. She said she was certain they would want to stay and live in Istanbul. I had to tell the couple. They did not understand. I had to ask them to leave my desk in the end.”

We finish our tea. I’m trying to connect the Rose at the visa office to the Rose who taught me how to say “Hello, how are you?” in Chinese. There is some distance to travel between the two.

We walk out to the street. Rose asks me if I would like to play mahjong with her girlfriends sometime next month. “Just girls,” she says. “I want you to meet my friends.”

“Sounds great,” I say. “Sounds really good.” I am not sure if we will see each other again. If I will ever meet her friends. Our connection in this teeming city seems fleeting to me now. Rose is not my Chinese teacher anymore.

“You have homework, Susan.” Rose smiles. “You must learn to read the Chinese characters for the numbers one through ten. Each character. If you do this, then you will be able to play mahjong with me.” Then she opens the cab door, steps inside, and is gone.

Glitter

It’s Saturday night and Tony and I revive the lost tradition of date night. Aidan is eating yogurt from a mug on the floor while he watches his brother dance naked to the Jackson Five. The song is “ABC.” Mao Ayi watches from the kitchen door. She’s going to babysit for us tonight. I’m waiting for Tony to get out of the shower so we can go. The music is cranked and Thorne jumps up on the couch. Mao Ayi is laughing now and moving her body. Then she starts taking small steps: 1-2-3, 1-2-3. It’s the ballroom dancing I’ve seen all over China.

Aidan calls out to his brother, “I think this is a song about love.”

Thorne yells back, “Maybe Michael wants a girlfriend. Because his brothers all have one.” Thorne keeps leaping from the couch to the rug and screaming in the song whenever Michael does.

“He’s the youngest one,” Aidan reminds us. “Michael is the youngest and he hasn’t made a girlfriend yet.”

Tony and I say good-bye and take a cab to a Japanese sake bar called Manzo down a crowded alley on the other side of Chaoyang Park. The tables are white and the blue plates have tiny fish painted on them. Billie Holiday plays on the sound system. The Chinese waitress brings us a small chalkboard of handwritten fish specials. We order shrimp and grilled squid and cold Asahi beer from the tap.

I toast Tony for his month, for his year, for creating an office for his company here out of nothing. I toast him for his grace under pressure, and I mean it. He has an ease in China now.

He toasts me too. We’re not big on toasts, but he says he’s happy to sit here with me and eat the fish and drink the beer. He predicts we will have many good years to come. And this is just like him—to think
of our future and not our past. I’m grateful to Tony for that too, for moving us forward.