The Love Wife (36 page)

He laughed.

— Don’t worry, I’ll teach you. For now, just imagine it. What we could do with a good idea. Which I have.
He leaned back in his chair.
 — Online gambling. Think about it .

He had it all worked out. How people would use prepaid phone cards to place their bets, and to collect if they won. How they could bet on all sorts of things.
Wimbledon
—that was a tennis tournament. Or the
World Cup—
that was soccer. Anything on TV. Or else they could play card games online. A game called
blackjack,
for example. Or something more traditionally Chinese. Mahjong. We could find out what they used to do in Shanghai in the olden days, he said. We could call it
LasVegas.com
. Or what was Chinese for
Get Rich
?

— Eventually we would want to get away from the phone cards,
he said.
Do our own cards. And then! Do you realize how much money we could make in breakage alone?

He explained
breakage
to me, and how he was shopping his business plan with venture capitalists right now. But he wanted me to be in on this from the start. He wanted me to be a
cofounder.

— You know what I thought when I first saw you?
he asked me.

I shook my head.

—Buy,
he said.
Buy and hold.

—
Where will the business headquarters be?
I asked him.

—Suzhou,
he said.
Of course. We’re going to set up shop in Suzhou like all the Taiwanese businessmen.

When he reached for my hand, I gave it to him gratefully, with all my heart.

CARNEGIE / 
It was like a grade-B movie: he never picked her up at the house. Because of his wife and kids, he always picked her up behind the post office downtown, a five-minute walk away. Never mind that he lived three towns over; he wanted to be careful. And in a way his trepidation about our neighborhood was justified: everyone knew everyone else’s cars, and took keen notice of anything untoward, it was true. A hedge flopped over, a flag left out in the rain, a tricycle gone loose. Stray pets. Dandelion proliferation, especially if said dandelions were allowed to advance to the puff state so tempting to children and so threatening to the neighborhood.

In town there was less apparent surveillance. Actually, though, I did occasionally catch his comings and goings, because the temple to health I had recently joined was located on the second floor of a building facing the post office parking lot. Always I had wondered why the floor-to-ceiling windows in clubs like this—such a magnificent view of the parking meters, after all. And where was it written that treadmills must needs face big glass? I had personally never yearned to exercise with the world as my witness, and had long ago predicted the demise of this particular trend. Who really wanted to watch humans in the throes of their will-to-fitness?

Everyone, it seemed.

Now I too exercised in the display window Saturday mornings. Jogging, not running, as per my cardiologist’s orders. My heart on a monitor.

This is how I knew Shang drove a black BMW convertible, and that when Lan got into the car, she did it quickly, with a furtive air. She liked black cars, I knew; in China the power elite all drove black cars. She had in fact once wondered aloud why Blondie and I didn’t drive black cars with tinted windows too. How passionately we avowed, then, our undying love of our van! But I digress. She in any case had barely enough time to close the door before the car zoomed off. Once her scarf got caught in the door. She was able to disengage herself; Shang stopped more or less immediately. Still my heart rate spiked so alarmingly that the treadmill flashed and beeped, and I was automatically eased into a cooldown.

Once too from an Exercycle at the far side of the gym, I saw them enter the diner across the way, or thought I did; I biked a good quarter mile squinting in disbelief. Was that really Lan? Wearing skin-tight jeans, and where did that blouse come from? A deeply V’d affair with a ruffle like a bed skirt, perfect for showing off some cleavage and a carnelian necklace I could have sworn to be my mother’s.

It was as if, through some strange computer cut and paste, a bit of Shanghai had ended up downtown. For there, sure enough, despite my best efforts, was one of those desperate Chinese women Mitchell’s brother Nick had described, on the make.

LAN / 
Probably it did not look so nice. But in fact Shang was unhappy with his wife long before he met me. The only reason they had children was thanks to test tubes. He was a lonely man. I felt sorry for him.

Sometimes I wondered about our business plan. Could we really
yi bu deng tian—
reach heaven in one step? I did wonder.

But still I felt hope. For the first time in my life, I felt real hope.

CARNEGIE / 
When Lan spoke to me now, it was with minimal eye engagement. If I asked, Are you going out again? she would say, If you like me to I stay home, I stay home.

One morning I discovered a white sweater soaking in the laundry sink. There appeared to be a large red ring on it, as though someone had used it for a wine coaster. The room stank of bleach.

Also she carried a beautiful leather backpack now. A tailored, polished half-moon this was, with thin straps and a zipper that ran across its knife-edged top.

WENDY / 
If you knock on her door, she still says, You! and, Come in! But she doesn’t make snacks anymore, and it’s like she wouldn’t exactly mind if you left. Before if you tried to leave she’d think of something to try and make you stay. But now if you try to leave, she just says bye-bye. And she still asks you how things are going at school, but if you tell her about something that happened at recess she might ask you about recess five minutes later. And if you tell her what happened again she’ll say, Oh! That’s so funny! again or, Oh no, that’s terrible! And if you say to her, You just said that, she’ll say, Did I? And look genuinely sad and sorry.

Sometimes she cooks and says it makes her feel better. But sometimes she cooks and it just makes her cry.

— Cooking is for families, she says one day in her room.

She has her books all around her but they’re on the floor like Lizzy’s, and if you look at her notebook you can see how she doodles in the margins like Lizzy too. But anyway, she’s not studying right now, right now she’s trying to play chess with me.

— I have no family, she says.

She says: — Even if I get married tomorrow, probably it is too late.

— What do you mean? I ask her.

And when she says she’s too old to have children, I tell her that’s not true, she can always adopt.

— Adopt what? she says.

And she makes such a bad move, hanging her queen, that I have to tell her she can take it back. But of course she doesn’t want to and so what should I do? Take her queen?

— A girl like me, I say. I’m adopted, remember? In fact you could probably adopt me.

She just laughs though and says in Chinese: — 
I meant a real family but okay. I’ll take you.

I look and look at the board.

— 
I’m not a bad second choice,
I tell her.
I was my parents’ second choice.

And finally I do it, I take her queen. Leaving her in this awful position.

She doesn’t even care.

— 
No no,
she says.
You were their number-one choice, and would be my number-one choice too.

— 
I wasn’t,
I say.
But second choice doesn’t mean second-best. That’s what they say.

Lanlan looks at me funny then.

— Of course you were born in China, she says in English, but practically you are born here.

— Practically but not exactly, I say. Check.

— Ah! she says. You are too good for me.

— If you use your knight you can block me, I say.

She uses her knight.

— Checkmate, I say.

— Ah! she says again. But then suddenly in Chinese she says:
— 
That kind of thing doesn’t matter. I can understand you no matter where you come from. No matter what, you are my number-one choice and my number-two choice too. You are my good friend.

Then she looks at her toes—not that she can actually see them, seeing as she has her blue slippers on.

— 
Lanlan,
I say,
what do they say?

— 
They say they are old but maybe all right still,
she answers, sort of smiling but sort of not.
Though who knows. Maybe they will someday look like my great-aunt’s toes, and my skin will look like her skin. I have hope these days. But maybe in the end I will still die in house full of flies.

— 
That’s not going to happen,
I say, putting the chess pieces away.

But she just says: — 
Who knows?

CARNEGIE / 
More scenes from the grade-B movie: Lan comes home with a gift box in hand. The night of her next date she appears in a new sweater or skirt or jacket. A number of items are leather. No more V-necks with ruffles; these clothes are up to the minute, with features. The cut is unusual; it ties up the back; the color appears black or blue depending on the light. It shimmers, it zips, it comes with a carrying pouch.

WENDY / 
— I thought you didn’t need clothes, I say.

— I need nothing, she agrees. But look, so beautiful.

She holds up a dress.

LAN / 
These were not Hong Kong–style—more American. But I liked them, I did. And I had to think what a
cofounder
should wear.

LIZZY / 
— Use your brain, I told her. No gifts come free.

But she just laughed.

— Look at these, she said, showing me some shoes.

LAN / 
Ah, but the shoes were something! I had never seen such shoes. Maybe in Shanghai, they had them, but not in Jinan. I thought they were so so beautiful. Such colors! Not just bright red, for example, but dark red too, and persimmon. Some were suede. Some were patent, or embossed to look like snakeskin. One pair had a T-strap. One had straps that wound around the ankle.

WENDY / 
She puts them on for me, and walks around in these bitsy steps.

— You look like you can barely walk, I say.

— Rich people do not need to walk, she says.

BLONDIE / 
She experimented with her hair. One day she gelled it, another day cut her bangs so that they hung down into her eyes. The bottom edge grew fringed. More wisps appeared all the time.

She wore more makeup too—foundation, blush. Eyeshadow. Pale lipstick some days, other days a diva red. She used a lipstick pencil for better lip definition. She tweezed her eyebrows and curled her eyelashes. Another woman might have looked ridiculous. Lan looked like a movie star.

How could we ever have thought her plain?

Of course, as Lan changed her look, so did Lizzy and Wendy. Lizzy took up a baby-girl style of dress—lots and lots of pink.

LIZZY / 
Worn ironically.

BLONDIE / 
Then came a style that shunned commercial purchases. Lizzy asked me to teach her to sew—delighting me—and began to make her own clothes. Her once-empty room was now full of scraps. She allowed me to teach her to knit too, and to crochet. Sometimes I thought she was turning into my sisters—she had that utopian aesthetic. She liked to make little crochet squares, the kind other people turned into potholders and afghans. She turned them into tops.

From the crochet tops she went on to bandanna tops, then to cropped tops made from old Boy Scout uniforms, or gas station uniforms, or bowling shirts. All her material came from used-clothes stores. Nothing matched—that was part of the aesthetic.

She made quilts too, in unconventional shapes. Star-shaped quilts and oval quilts and amoeba quilts. She made a quilt that looked like a giant Citgo sign, and sold it.

LIZZY / 
For two hundred dollars! I gave the money to Russell’s band.

BLONDIE / 
Like Lizzy, Wendy wore skirts and pants together, and shirts over sweaters. She copied Lizzy’s color combinations—pink with burnt orange, black with pastels. She wore Lizzy’s hand-me-downs, blouses with Peter Pan collars or puffed sleeves. Which at first Wendy’s classmates thought weird. But then Elaine started copying Wendy, and pretty soon everyone else was copying her too.

CARNEGIE / 
Wendy Bailey Wong, trendsetter.

BLONDIE / 
Lan thought all this very strange.

LIZZY / 
— You don’t like anything in the store? said Lanlan.

— Everything these days has a logo on it, I said.

— And we hate logos, said Wendy.

— Logos just make you feel like you’re owned by corporate America, I said.

— Of course American corporations very bad, said Lanlan.

— We hate fashion, said Wendy.

CARNEGIE / 
The grade-B movie: sometimes Lan came to breakfast with eyes so puffy she looked like a
National Geographic
photo, you could actually see the caption.
By puffing up her eyes, this creature is able to avoid prying conversation.

But invariably flowers arrived before noon. She was such a regular stop that the delivery boy did not even ring her doorbell, but simply shouted, Yo! Lani! up to her window.

BLONDIE / 
She began to stay out overnight.

CARNEGIE / 
We knew this because on the advice of some fellow parents we were spot-checking Lizzy’s whereabouts in the wee hours. Not that we didn’t trust her, we did, yada yada. But what e-mails we were receiving these days; ominous as something from the FBI.

Some things going on. You might keep an eye out. Also do not leave your house empty on weekends. And if we all lock our liquor cabinets, well they’ll be locked, and please let’s keep a lid on the instant messaging.