Typical American (6 page)

Sweating, she thought of her sister. How much easier for her to dare hope!

A modern type.

Ahead, Theresa could see a bit of sky — a sheer blue wall, undistinguished. Below, the cypresses looked dusty and disparate, like so many display pieces, badly grouped. To her right, a discreet stand of sycamores, peeling.

Her feet throbbed.

There were radical thinkers in the city these days.

Or so she'd heard. Sweat pooled between her fingers.

A modern type.

What if he'd just come back from France, or Japan, sleepless with ideas, only to find that he'd been engaged to some sweet country miss? Of such fine family! What then? He'd sit down with his father, his mother. A capable girl, and so sweet-tempered!

Of course, he was more probably a Shanghai banker's son whose grand ambition was to become a Shanghai banker.

Her feet grew vehement. A capable girl, and so sweet-tempered, and so graceful! How beautifully she did mince now, as though her toes had been bound with fire-strips. One step, one step.

She could not go on.

Still she took another step.

A cane. She should fold up the parasol, use it for a cane. The decision, when it came, opened suddenly, a crevasse. So let him see her! Let renegade not miss renegade for sheer lack of daring! Brave, she folded her parasol, hobbled off to the right, leaving the path. She did not look back to the gate, but only forward, toward the peeling sycamores.

Shade. She rested, her head spinning. So!

Then: What had she done? What — She tensed.

Nothing. Was it her imagination? Still she felt it, a presence behind her. A gaze, cool as the round marble inlay of a chair back. She tried to say something, but her voice dried in her throat.

He should say something.

But still he gazed, only gazed. Waiting.

What now? A bird shrieked. She saw it fly out from nowhere, its wings flashing black, then white.

She turned.

The report came back that due to an unspecified family crisis, the banker's son would be unable to marry for some years. In

fact, Theresa found out, well before their date in the park, he had run off with his father's concubine. So what shame was there? What loss of face? It was his family who had been disgraced.

Still she grew vacant. The path; the brush; the rocks; the gate; and beyond the gate, sun-white, a small deserted clearing. Her spine twisted; in her dreams she twisted, turning toward that clearing again, again. A perverse tropism.

Her parents consulted, debated.

Finally she was sent to Shanghai, to some close friends with an invalid daughter; Theresa was to keep that daughter company for a few months. She was not allowed to bring her cat. When her sister got married, Theresa heard about it in a long, poetic letter, beautifully written. Then the Communists. Her parents' friends wrote, urgently. With tremendous good fortune and not a few connections they'd found a way to send their daughter abroad, on a student visa. What to do with Theresa?

The mail foundered with the government; they received no answer.

Hong Kong, Tokyo, San Francisco. Theresa picked the English name Helen for her delicate friend. Like Helen of Troy, she explained: also it sounded like Hailan, her real name, Sea Blue. They frolicked in a melancholy way, half giddy with freedom and travel, half fearful and lonely and worried, and irritated too, having gotten along in China, but as the simplest of friends. It was strange, learning to make decisions together. Years later, they laughed to see the girls, Mona and Callie, in a three-legged race. That's the way they were, they said, bound together with some old rope — their overlapping history, their parents' relationship. Things in common, that made it easier to talk to each other than to strangers, but hardly meant that when they did they would agree. And they didn't agree, though after a few near-arguments, each did her part never to let that show; so that they grew at once closer and lonelier, like colors that, when knit

together, gleam all the more distinct. Every day brought compromise so basic neither one would talk about it, as though such prideless friendship belonged to a realm past conversation. "You guys are so formal with each other," Callie told Helen once. This was when she was in high school, trying to learn to be up front.

Helen handed her a dish. "So many family members, I already lost them all," she answered.

No elaboration. It was just before sunset, a time of day when the sun stared blithely across the kitchen, instead of studying the floor. Callie drew the curtains with a soapy hand, but even so the light washed everything out.

"It's not funny," said Theresa. Mona stopped.

"Was in the Chinese newspaper." Helen shook her head. "Really sad."

"Sometimes I think maybe he come to look for me, but cannot find me." Ralph's voice was sodden. "Nice person, Little Lou. Good heart."

"Sad," said Callie.

"Oh, so sad" Mona sighed heavily.

Theresa glared, but went on. "Anyway, so finally I call one place, and someone says yes, there's a Chinese man here named Ralph. She thinks she saw him go out for a walk."

"So happen," Ralph explained, "time I move there, I so tired, I forgot to ask them if someone call, please not to say anything."

"We were just lucky like that," said Theresa.

"Just lucky?" asked Mona, with an innocent look.

Theresa glared at her again, but before she could say anything, Ralph had already taken his cue.

"Not lucky, miracle!" he said.

And, of course, next came the black coat — and then, Older Sister!

First there was Theresa's ankle to take care of. Ralph tried to hail a cab, which he'd never done before. He put a tentative arm up; instantly one pulled over, in a rolling wave of black slush. Magic! Ralph marvelled at his own command. The driver leaned his head back. "Hospital?" said Ralph; and even before all the syllables were out of his mouth, the car lurched ahead, so responsive that Ralph was thrown against the seat. He straightened himself dazedly. At the hospital, Theresa was whisked into a perfectly white room; he was ushered in after her. She emerged on crutches, looking like a veteran.

Though it was after hours in Theresa's building — a women's residence — under the circumstances, Ralph was allowed in. He waved his thanks to the lady at the desk. Clatt! — the elevator doors. Clatt! They opened again, like the shutter of a slide projector; and in front of Ralph shone private splendor. Flocked

wallpaper, moss green with gold, in a pattern of sinewy trellises; a matching moss-green carpet; and on the walls, electric torches. Flame-shaped bulbs spiralled up from gold-tone leaves. Ralph entered the hall reverently. Theresa stopped in front of door 9D. "Push that," she instructed, and he did, with such a respectful press that he had to ring again, with more punch, to produce the noise that would make the door open. Still nothing. No matter — Theresa handed him her pocketbook. She had keys. But just as he fathomed the bag's knot-shaped clasp, the apartment door swung suddenly, wondrously, wide. Ralph stared, handbag agape. He'd readied himself for a comb, a mirror, a change purse, maybe some paper clips. Here instead stood a woman.

And around her, China. Ralph took in the scrolls, the shoes by the door, the calendar, the lidded cups of tea, as if they were part of her person, an extension of her clothes; he found them so familiar — found her so familiar — that even a half second later he could hardly have said what he'd recognized. Then she spoke (a soft, breathy sound) and he realized he didn't know her after all. That's why they were being introduced. Belatedly he began to register some specifics. Delicate feet. Sturdy calves. Slight figure overall. A contained way of moving; she seemed instinctively careful not to take up too much space. Shoulder-length black, curly hair (a permanent). A heart-shaped face that, with its large forehead, and small mouth, and slightly receding chin, seemed to tilt forward. She had large eyes, but mosdy, it seemed, for his beat-up shoes. Shy, Ralph concluded hopefully. The considering type. Not a talker.

But Helen was not a listener either, so much as something else. Attentive. She sensed when a guest needed more tea before the guest did, expressed herself by filling his cup, thought in terms of matching, balancing, connecting, completing. In terms, that is, of family, which wasn't so much an idea for her, as an aesthetic. Pairs, she loved, sets, and circles. Shoes, for instance (he was right), and cartons of eggs — and, as it happened, can openers that rolled easily around a lid, never sticking. Not too

much later, a clean Ralph, with all-new clothes, left a deluxe model on the kitchen counter, with a red bow.

Helen opened every can in the cupboard.

Theresa reported this back to Ralph.

Then it was belts, circle pins. Ransacking his trunk, Ralph found a tam-o'-shanter; socks; booties; a pen-and-pencil set; a hairbrush, hand mirror, and comb. All of these Helen used, displayed, wore, not once in a while, but every day, blushing. He spoke her dialect, that's to say; and she, certainly, his. Oxtail soup, she made him, steamed fish with scallions. Now that there were no servants, Helen was learning to cook. Would he taste-test for her?

He would, although, paradoxically, it inflamed more than abated his homesickness to try a mouthful of a dish and pronounce, after some prodding, that it was too salty, too sweet, too spicy-hot. Her cooking was so agonizingly close to that of his family's old cook that his stomach fairly ached with the resemblance, even as his mouth thrilled. More ginger, he coached. Less vinegar. More soy sauce.

One day, she had her crystal chicken just right, and her red-cooked carp too. Ralph proposed with a family ring Theresa had brought over, a single piece of spinach-green jade set in white gold. Not that he couldn't have afforded a new ring by then. From their friends at English language school, Theresa and Helen had discovered that most companies didn't care what papers their draftsmen came with; and just like that, Ralph had a job in an airy room, with his own tilted drawing board. Other people complained. The long hours, those hard wooden stools. If only the stools had backs, they said, then after hunching and hunching, they'd be able to rest a bit. And what were their prospects? Already they were beginning to discern what would be abundandy clear in another decade — that at the end of every project, they would all get laid off, and have to find new work at another firm, where, just as they were beginning to rise in the ranks, they'd be laid off again.

Ralph didn't mind, though. He was grateful enough to have

a place to go in the morning (with a doughnut shop on the way, no less), and every week, a paycheck.

Then came the possibility of Ralph's finishing his Ph.D. after all. This was serendipity itself; with the fall of the Nationalists, other Chinese students had become as illegitimate as he. "No status" — that was how they stood with the Immigration Department, suddenly naked as winter trees. What now? They waited. Rumor had it that, having kept the technical students here, the Americans were going to have to do something with them — probably send them all back to school. Sign-up sessions. Ralph went along with everyone else. No, he wasn't a Communist. Yes, his status was "no status." As for how he got that way, "English not so good, excuse please?"

"Say again, please?"

"Whaaa?"

The volunteer let it go.

So much to celebrate!

To save money, Helen rented a Western-style, white gown with a matching veil. The ceremony was in the side chapel of a college church; the reception in a small, carnation-wreathed social hall. Pipes clanked. Tables wobbled. Outside, it sleeted. Yet Ralph and Helen, in the simple way of newlyweds, were delighted with the food, with the decorations, with the guests, with each other; even, later, with the pictures, though in truth the majority were out of focus and overexposed. The photographer was a drunkard. But who wanted to say so? Helen hung the pictures up anyway. A shot of her and Ralph. A shot of each of them with Theresa. She even hung the shot of all three of them together, which looked like nothing so much as a triple-headed ghost. "The Mystery of the Trinity," Theresa would joke later. Yet at the time she admired it as politely as everyone else. It was a good likeness, she agreed, a fine family portrait.

true. The one gnarl of her childhood was the knowledge that, if she did not die of one of her diseases, she would eventually have to marry and go live with in-laws. And then she'd probably wish she had died. How faint she felt, just listening to the stories other girls told — about a neighbor's daughter, for example, who walked all the way home from Hangzhou, only to be sent back. That was extreme, of course, but how about her friend's cousin who, married away into the countryside, was made to take baths in a big copper vat? Over a pit fire, as though she were a pork joint, in water that had already been used by her father-in-law, her husband, her husband's seven brothers, and her mother-in-law. Don't worry, Helen's parents reassured her, we'll find you someone nice, someone you like too. No one's going to beat you. But at best, Helen knew, she would be sent to scratch out some new, poor spot for herself, at the edge of a strange world, separated from everyone she loved as though by a violent, black ocean.

Now, America. For the first few months, she could hardly sit without thinking how she might be wearing out her irreplaceable clothes. How careful she had to be! Theresa could traipse all over, searching out that elusive brother of hers; Helen walked as little and as lightly as she could, sparing her shoes, that they might last until the Nationalists saved the country and she could go home again. She studied the way she walked too, lightly — why should she struggle with English? She wrote her parents during class, every day hoping for an answer that never came. She went to Chinatown three times a week, thinking of it as one more foreign quarter of Shanghai, like the British concession, or the French. She learned to cook, so that she'd have Chinese food to eat. When she could not have Chinese food, she did not eat. Theresa (who would eat anything, even cheese and salad) of course thought her silly. "In Shanghai you ate foreign food," Theresa said (da cai, she called it — big vegetables). "Why shouldn't you eat it here?" Still, for a long time, Helen would not, which they both thought would make her sick.