Typical American (13 page)

Ralph refused to get the point. Until luckily, the sun clouded over, and everyone began to get goose bumps. "The girls are catching cold" Helen shouted.

"We are!" Mona and Callie played along. Gan mao — to catch cold — was one Chinese phrase they understood completely. "We're freezing! We're dying!"

"Better put the top up," Theresa advised.

Ralph pulled off at the next exit.

"Where are we?"

"Connecticut."

"What's Kencut?" Callie wanted to know.

"Another state," Theresa answered in English. "We're in another state."

"Isn't this near where Old Chao andjanis are moving?" Helen asked.

"Not too far," said Ralph. "This is where Grover Ding lives. One of his houses, something to do with tax"

In later years, when Helen taught the girls how to talk, she'd teach them when not to continue, as she put it. It was a polite way of making a point, she said, but the way she said it, the girls knew that by point she meant barb. How come, though, when they fell silent, no one seemed pricked? "American kids, their mothers teach them nothing," Helen said. "Typical American, what can you say."

In their household, on the other hand, silence had teeth. Now, when, at the mention of Grover, no one continued, Ralph looked to see what the women meant. He glanced toward Helen, checked Theresa in the mirror. Then, civilly, he took them around for a tour.

Connecticut would have been beautiful any time of day. But so breathtaking were the streets that late afternoon, with their sentinel trees and tender gardens, that the sun itself seemed to waver, unsetting, reluctant to leave; it was the onlooker whose presence weighted everything. Colored it too, with banner greens, strawberry golds, every fairy-tale hue. And such peace! Such stillness! Perhaps after driving so long, they would have found any bit of ground fabulously unmoving. In any case, they sighed — a hometown — and feeling themselves to have arrived somewhere, parked the car.

When did they realize that a town like this was their destiny — that if they drew out the line of their past it would pass through this point, that however it curved afterward, for some time they would dwell in a house like one of these, with a yard and garage? Their collective longing thickened in their throats, Helen's especially. "Beautiful," she whispered, over and over. Through the windows, she saw curtains, candlesticks, cupboards; and in one, a woman moving among her chosen objects. "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!"

"It is," agreed Ralph.

"It's almost as nice as China," said Theresa.

"For America —"

"It's beautiful" insisted Helen.

"So clean," agreed Ralph.

Mona and Callie romped on the sidewalks. "We're skipping!" cried Callie. "Skip!" echoed Mona, stumbling.

"It would be nice for the children to have a place to play."

"A backyard."

"It's a good place for family."

They mused up the streets. Down.

"What town is it Old Chao and Janis are moving to?"

"Tarrytown."

"That's Westchester."

"Ah."

"Next time, maybe we'll go over there, look around," said Ralph.

Helen's heart fired up. "Next time!"

"Janis is going to study real estate, become a broker." "You want to work? Outside of the housef For strangers ?" "Sure she can go to work if she wants to" said Theresa. "Why

notf" Helen uncovered her cup, checking to see if her tea leaves had

sunk all the way to the bottom yet.

Ralph suggested they try to xiang hanfa — to think of a way.

"What banfar Helen sat up in bed.

"I don't know" he said. "But maybe there's someone we could ask to help us, some smart guy —"

"What smart guy?"

"Well, for example, that man, you may remember him, Grover Ding..."

Helen did not continue.

Or not that night, at least. Another night some months later, though, she wondered, "What exactly does Grover do?" She did not really expect an answer when she asked this; Ralph was snoring.

But at the name Grover, Ralph stirred enough to answer, "A lot of things. A lot of real estate too." He rolled over to face the aisle between their beds, his blankets twisted around him. "He knows everybody."

"Do you know how to get in touch with him?"

"What about Older Sister?"

"I didn't mean we should do anything." She retreated quickly to her restless sleep.

Ralph dug through his old papers, sneezing as he explored one box after another; somehow they'd grown dusty in the move. He could still envision Grover, the morning mist, the taxi door slamming. He could still hear the door slamming too, and there, that clatter, that was the muffler pipe. He could smell the exhaust. Grover's crisp card lay in his hand that morning; the raised letters shone. He pictured it in his hand again — he was

an imagineer, about to find it, he was sure — when Theresa shuffled into the room, her old slippers rasping against the floor like sandpaper.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "You sound sick"

"No, fine," said Ralph lamely. "Just looking through some old boxes" He sneezed again.

"Doing a little cleaning, huh"

"That's right."

"Ah" Theresa hesitated.

Ralph turned red. Dust hung in the air.

"Okay," said Theresa then. Resignation crossed her face; it was not so much an expression as something that appeared to emanate from her pores. "I just heard you sneezing, that's all."

Ralph blinked; she turned to the door; and as her angular form began to soften and disappear in the bright hall light, it occurred to him that she really had just come to see about his sneeze. It occurred to him too that he'd never seen anyone look so tired. How long her training had gone on already; when would there be an end to it? She might as well have been swimming across an ocean. Days at a time, she was gone, and when she returned she sometimes went straight to bed without washing her face or brushing her teeth. Yet even so, she had come to see about him — she who saw patients all day, every day — because he was her brother.

"Older Sister," he said.

Her slippers grew quiet.

What had he meant to say? He flushed again.

"You have something to say?"

"If we buy a house, will you live in it with us?"

"I was hoping to."

"Good. I just wanted to be sure. You know — whole family together"

"You have to know how many bedrooms, huh."

"Exactly."

"Are you going to buy soon?" She was surprised.

"Not too soon." He shrugged. "No down payment." Theresa considered him. What was he so awkward about?

Then she thought she knew. "Well, I hope I can chip in on the

mortgage payments. I'll be done training pretty soon, you know,

and then I'll have a good salary" "Oh nonono," said Ralph. "Why not? I chip in for the rent."

"Nonono, this is different. A mortgage is a big commitment." "So? I'm going to live there for a long time, right? And because

of me, we'll have to buy a bigger house than we would other-

wise."

What if you get married? Ralph wanted to say, but didn't have the heart. "I'm the father of the family," he explained instead. "It's my job, the house. You are only —"

"I'm only what?"

Ralph swallowed, chagrined.

"Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. You'll see. Thirty, forty, fifty years from now, I'll still be here."

"Will you?" Ralph wasn't sure what to think about that.

"Once a Chang-kee, always a Chang-kee," she quipped.

"Good one!" exclaimed Ralph. "That's a good joke!" — and for a moment he was laughing, his heart full of family feeling, that tremendous, elemental solidarity.

This time, though, when she disappeared into the white hall, he was glad enough to let her go.

once judged this silly. Now she pondered her image with seriousness. She looked inward too, at the quality of her heart, its constrictions, its deposits. Its vessels were clogged with words, she discovered. An unexpected finding. When she first came to America, her English teacher had admonished her, not for speaking too much, but too little. "Speak up!" Her teacher had lifted her arms through the air like a priest ordering a congregation to stand, so that her slip showed, gray and raggedy. "Speak up! Speak up!" At the time Theresa had not dared to; and though later she'd learned to talk professionally — to present cases — past differential diagnoses and treatment plans, she managed nothing. Her teacher, it seemed, had exposed her lingerie to no use.

Except this — that Theresa now, too late for class, fairly burst with what she had to tell. About having to parade herself through parks in August. Or what about that dinner? Her indignation came to her in English, even as she recalled a Chinese saying, Lao xu cheng nu — constant shame becomes anger.

Her heart was indeed a fist, just as it was described in the texts.

If she slept more she might be able to contain herself better, she thought; she imagined rest and sleep to be like the clay flood walls villagers built in China. Lacking rest, though, she was the Yellow River, roiling, threatening to become the sorrow of millions. She envisioned Grover, bloated, somersaulting in the water, his eyes spongy with fungus ...

What kind of a way was this for a doctor to think?

Years later, she might have recognized anger's place in her life to be like that of a poison color in needlework — Callie could have told her this. She might have seen it to be the garish shade that could bring a planned composition to life. Now, though, she tried to box herself up. She had always been nice about her morals; she grew nicer still. How dangerous a place, this country! A wilderness of freedoms. She shuddered, kept scrupulously to paths. Once she had allowed other residents to wink at her, and

had sometimes even winked back. Now she stiffened and turned away.

Only to come, not too much later, to a surprise. Life heaves these things at us, chance gifts from its green waves: she'd noticed from the chart that she was about to see a thirty-six-year-old Chinese male, height five-ten, weight one hundred seventy pounds, blood pressure on the high side of normal but entirely normal nonetheless, in good health, reason for visit suspected bleeding hemorrhoids (why did people come into the emergency room for hemorrhoids? but of course they did, for sunburn too, and gas) and already it had occurred to her that there might be a certain awkwardness, there always was, when this hemorrhoidal Mr. Chao realized he was about to see a woman doctor. Still, she was prepared for it. So authoritatively did she sweep into the room, eyes on the chart, so coolly did she inquire, "So what brings you here today?" that she might not have noticed to whom she was talking had he answered back.

The fluorescent light buzzed. She lowered the clipboard. "Old Chao!"

Old Chao was blushing so furiously that he seemed to be swelling, his very blood cells agitating to escape. Nothing in his upbringing had brought him toward this. He sat down, blinking. "I have, ah, corns," he said finally. "Foot corns." He nudged his bulging briefcase under a chair. "Haven't seen you in a long time! What a surprise!" He said, "A woman doctor! You! They didn't tell me. They told me, Dr. Chang. I think they should tell people if they are going to see a woman doctor. My regular doctor is Dr. Blumberg. A man. He's on vacation. I thought you were in medical school."

"I'm in training."

"Really? My doctor is away."

Theresa smiled professionally. "On vacation?"

"On vacation." Old Chao seemed to relax a bit, as though, walking in the dark, he'd reached out and found a railing.

"Would you like to see another doctor?"

"Oh, nononono," said Old Chao; but then he stood up as if to leave.

"Would you like to go?"

"Oh, nonono." He sat back down. The chair wheezed.

"Well. Shall we have a look at those, ah, corns?"

"Sure" Old Chao nodded his head, once, twice, three times. He untied his right shoe.

"Let's have you up on the table"

Old Chao changed seats, wing tip in hand. Theresa peered politely at his cornless foot. She cupped his heel. Dead skin flaked into her palm. "So how are things at the department?"

"Things at the department. They're, ahh — right there, do you see it? — they're going very well. Of course, we're very happy to have your brother even though he's —"

"Here?"

Old Chao puckered his face into a semblance of pain.

She let his foot down gently. "So things at the department are . . ."

"Very good, yes, thank you, and Ralph's doing very well, except, you know, that he may be 'climbing a tree to catch fish'..."

If Old Chao was trying to divert her attention from his foot, he'd succeeded. "What do you mean? What tree? What fish?"

"What do I mean?" Old Chao seemed to be pulling his usual self back on with his sock. He applied himself to his shoelace.

Theresa smiled. "Well. I suppose I'd be pleased to write out a prescription for your corns."

Old Chao retied his other lace, for good measure.

"Those corns," she said again, pointedly. "I've never seen such corns."

She thought she saw a blush rising; but a moment later, Old Chao had both his shoes on. In English, he said, "You play hard, you Chinese girls."

Now Theresa blushed.

"Okay, a favor for a favor."

Ralph wasn't going to get tenure; or at least it wasn't definite. Space, Old Chao explained. Satellites. Rockets. Mechanics was out. "What matters now is plasma. Fluids. Ralph is making a big mistake. I've been trying to tell him."

In the end, Old Chao left without any prescription at all. Theresa began to write him one, but he waved his hand at her to stop; and when she didn't see him, he impulsively picked her pen out of her hand. "No need," he said. He threaded the pen back through her fingers, gendy.

Ralph, meanwhile, was explaining himself to Callie and Mona. "You know what your father is? Your father is scholar." He drew them a pyramid. At the bottom were the graduate students. Then there were lecturers, then there were assistant professors, then there were tenured professors. "I am grade three," he explained. "A grade-three scholar."