The Love Wife (18 page)

To which Gabriela replied:

of course it does. take back your life!

I handed over the place-setting to Carnegie that night, saying I had other things to think about—for example, the workplace-diversity initiative.

— If we’re going to include that among our investment criteria, we are going to have to make our case, I said.

CARNEGIE / 
That was the same evening she took the lid off our largest casserole and announced: — My life is too short for this nonsense. I value my moments and choose to spend them otherwise.

Gabriela-speak, this was.

BLONDIE / 
Still—I meant it.

CARNEGIE / 
I took over general Lan management. Beginning with the next day, Saturday morning, which found Lan on the kitchen floor, diligently and of her own accord ruining with Ajax our authentic Mexican tile.

I watched her from the doorway. With what grace she moved! She might have been playing a servant in a ballet—Cinderella, about to look up and behold her fairy godmother. Partly this was the way she held herself, but partly too it was the way she used her arms; not working her forearm back and forth like a windshield wiper, but rather engaging her whole arm, sometimes her whole upper body, in a kind of sweeping motion that began and ended with her sitting neatly on her heels. How sweetly she tucked stray hairs behind her pale ears. She even wrung her sponge with unwarranted delicacy—holding her rubber-gloved pinkies aloft, as if handling an antique sugar bowl. Around her, the wet floor shone so brightly in the morning sun that it lit her face when she leaned over, bathed it in an evanescence I would not have thought possible in our mall-rat world. How beautiful she was! I had not realized; maybe it was just the lighting. Though I had noticed, recently, how others noticed her. How she had become attractive to crossing guards, repairmen, delivery boys, as she began to dress a little better. Wear a little makeup. It seemed she had done something fetching with her hair. But I was fetched by something else—some promise of simplicity. Clarity. The purity of her skin, the naturalness of her movements. I wanted to touch her. To take the sponge from her hand; to raise her to her rubber-booted feet. This was not an impulse I generally experienced with adults. Lan, though, seemed singularly registered in my amygdala. Was it because she lived in my house? Did feeling her day-in, day-out intimacy with the children—with my children—make me feel a proxy intimacy?

First, in any case, to stop her. For what was Blondie going to say? To Lan, and to me too. For was I not the person who had bought the Ajax? Was I not the caveman who had summarily dismissed our sweet-smelling collection of lovely organic cleaners? Who had argued, all too successfully, that households all over America had found ways to keep harsh chemical abrasives away from unscrupulous scrubbers of vulnerable porcelain sinks?

But now, two hours before Wendy’s soccer match (we were pushing soccer, an anti-shyness strategy): Voilà! Our floor, diligently de-finished.

Lan looked up expectantly, her face aglow with modest pride.

— How clean the floor looks, I said.

— Not done yet, she said, renewing her attack.

— Stop, I said weakly. Please. I think you are done.

— Of course, she said then.

She sat back on her heels, bright light all around her. Brushed her loose hair back over her ear with her shoulder. Did not squint. She was wearing a blue sweatshirt and yellow rubber gloves. And on her feet, yellow galoshes, apparently Lizzy’s. These were not an ordinary yellow, like her gloves, but a safety yellow such as was used for rescue operations at sea. In our earthtone kitchen, they pulsed technology; yet her natural dignity was undiminished by the aesthetic clash. With aristocratic simplicity she lay her hands, palms up, on her knees.

I had not thought myself unhappily married. But as she knelt there, awaiting direction, I knew Blondie too had awaited something. That the husband Blondie had hoped for did
such crazy things.
That the husband she had hoped for surged with a life force that put her wacky siblings to shame. How interesting the husband she had hoped for. The last time I saw Doc Bailey, he asked if I planned on staying in my job forever. How to tell him that I might indeed be moving on soon?

What they want from you?

I worked too hard for the Baileys.

What they want from you?

I bored them.

In truth we bored ourselves, hauling out our calendars night after night, comparing schedules.
What do we want?
Blondie asked sometimes.
Do we even know what we want?

I gazed now upon Lan’s bent head. At the smooth nape of her naked neck.

Wendy bounced in, announcing that she was going to be the Great Wall for Halloween. This was a change of plan; originally she had planned to be a teenager.

— Just part of it, I mean, she said. A tower.

— Great idea! said Lan.

Her rubber-covered hands flew up. From her attitude of quiet suspension, she seemed to spring full blown into the very picture of Halloween costume support.

— Very original, I agreed. Not to forget the barbarian invaders.

Wendy rolled her eyes and, in concert with them, her besocked feet, such that her soles faced each other and her ankles grazed the floor.

— Is there a contest at school? Lan asked.

Wendy nodded.

— You will win! Lan predicted.

Wendy beamed, straightening her feet up.

I beamed too. Though I knew Blondie, had she been there, would have said,
Life is not about winning and losing
—and of course I agreed—still I was happy to see Wendy so ebullient. To see how Lan was bringing her out.

— Of course people will probably think I’m a rook, said Wendy.

— No one will think you’re a rook, I said.

— But how will they know? That I’m a Chinese wall, and not just any wall?

— You’ll have to tell them.

— Elaine is going to say you can’t tell.

—  Who is this Elaine anyway, who gives you so much grief?

I said. Tell her to go to hell.

Wendy hung her head.

— I can’t, she said plaintively, her spunk gone. — You don’t understand.

Her nose quivered as though she was about to start sobbing.

— I’m sorry, I said then. Your father just doesn’t know what to say, does he? He doesn’t know how to act. He’s not like Lan. He doesn’t understand anything.

— That’s right! You don’t!

— Of course he knows how to act, said Lan soothingly.

— He doesn’t! said Wendy. He acts however he wants!

And with that she departed, leaving tracks on the wet floor. Lan watched her. Still kneeling—beautifully—she eyed the tracks, the first indication I had ever seen that she registered her work as work, and minded having to do it over. Up to now she had seemed an inexhaustible source of energy that would do things two, three times if necessary, so long as they did not involve goat care.

— You know how to act, I said quietly.

— No no no no, said Lan, pressing her fingers together.

I wanted to kneel beside her, and might have done so if I could have with poise. If I would not have appeared some patron saint of tile men, tardily come to bless the grout.

I sat down instead.

— Lan, I said.

I placed my elbows on my knees and clasped my hands together. I lowered my head so that it was on the same level as hers. I feared that even on a chair I seemed a parody of sincerity.

— Lan.

It came out as a near-whisper. Husky, urgent.

With what clarity each of her dark hairs emanated from her pale scalp. How wonderfully they stood clear of one another, even as they fell together, a simple multitude of strong strands. And how they shone in the early light; I could not believe how unabashedly they shone.

— You don’t have to—how to say?—whisper, she whispered back.

— Of course not, I breathed.

She laughed then—a lovely, rippling, low laugh with something private about it. She did not send it out into the open air, for anyone to hear. It was like her performance, addressed.
You,
she seemed to say.
You. You.

I performed too, of course, in a great many ways. And yet for no one in particular; Wendy was right. Where was my community, who was my audience? As for Blondie, did she not perform, still, after all these years, for her family?

You,
Lan seemed to say,
You.

— Lan.

— Yes?

— Stand up please.

Up she sprang, sponge in hand.

I stood then as well, so that I would not be eye level with her breasts. Her blue sweatshirt read
LANDER’S ART SUPPLY
in cracking red letters. A hand-me-up from Lizzy, apparently.

— I want to talk to you about dinner, I said; my voice near normal and yet not normal.

I observed the part in her hair—a side part—and, again, the many black hairs starting resolutely out of their roots. There were a few strands crossing the part, strands that belonged on the left side of her head but that had fallen, somehow, to the right. How hard not to take those strands and flip them the other way. How they begged to be set straight. She would have thought the same, I knew, if she could have seen them. I nobly succeeded in restraining my hand. But when she turned her head, I did blow gently at the errant hairs, stirring a few of the shorter strands into their proper place.

She looked up, unsurprised. It was if she had believed all along that behind the front stage of our lives lay a back stage; as if she had been waiting to learn the way there.

LAN / 
Finally I was inside the house. Everyone knows in America, girls have no morals. How can you expect the men to be better?

CARNEGIE / 
— I want to talk to you, I said. About not setting a place for yourself at the table.

She backed away a step. But only a step; she seemed poised to run away, yet able to consider how to act. She wrung her natural sponge into the recycled-plastic pail, deciding.

Drop. Drop.

Run, or stay?

An inexplicable calm settled over me.

— Forgive me, I said.

— I’m sorry?

— Forgive me for asking, I said. But if you would please set a place for yourself. At the table. At dinner.

She did not say anything.

Then I asked, surprising myself:—Will you be taking the TOEFL exam?

If she was taken aback by the change of subject, she gave no indication. The Test of English as a Foreign Language? She shook her head no. It was as if she knew we were going to have this conversation; as if we both knew.

— Because?

— Because it is no use.

— You are never going to college.

She nodded.

— But if you could go to college. Would you take it then?

— Do you know how old I am?

— Not that old.

Silence.

— Here in America, there are people who go back to school in their sixties, I said. Of course, I can’t promise anything. But who knows.

— Would I get a degree?

She shifted her weight; her rain boots squeaked on the wet floor. A surprisingly bright sound, as somehow befit their color.

— I’d have to talk to Blondie, I said.

LAN / 
How happy I was, and yet how unhappy. For even if I could get a degree—a degree!—it was too late. Women in China retired at fifty, fifty-five at the latest. Who would hire someone like me?

So much
shi qu ji hui
—missed opportunity—in one life.

CARNEGIE / 
She dropped her gaze to the pail. Reading her fate, it seemed, in the suds. She wrung her rough sponge.

— Why am I here? she asked finally, her eyes full of tears. 
— Why do you help me?

I explained about my mother’s will.

She dug her gloved thumb into one of the craters of the sponge, then asked: — But why your mother want me to come here?

I thought.

— I guess she wanted the family to be more Chinese. Like her. She wanted us to be Wongs.

We observed each other in the rippling water. Though we stood some distance apart, our reflections appeared to touch.

She dropped the sponge in the water. Then slowly and deliberately, still gazing at the water, she began to slip off her gloves, one long finger at a time. I watched. The first glove she let fall into our reflection with a soft disturbing splash. It replaced our image with a floating severed hand, bobbing cheerfully alongside the sponge.

The second glove she handed to me.

That night, miracle of miracles, Lan set a place for herself. I saw her doing it and winked at her—as much, I suppose, to make myself feel that I knew what I had begun, as anything else. If in fact I had begun something.

— She set a place for herself, marveled Blondie after dinner, loading the dishwasher.

— How do you like that, I said.

I helped clear the table.

— Did you speak to her?

— What makes you ask?

— Well, she set a place for herself, and when I asked her why today, she said you told her to.

— I did.

I set a last pile of dishes on the counter with a clatter.

— But you weren’t going to tell me you did, said Blondie. You were going to let me think she had decided to do it herself. Also you spoke to her when you knew I had already.

Blondie’s tone was more tired than confrontational. No-nonsense, and yet somehow mild and good-natured.

— And you asked me if I had spoken to her or not, when you knew that I had, I said. You were testing me.

— You wanted to know if you could sway her. If you had some power over her I didn’t.

She poured soap into the soap dispenser, then pushed the energy-saver button. The machine, ever reliable, came on.

I beheld her then, my wife. Today she was wearing a wrap dress and, unusually, a turquoise necklace. An experiment, I guessed. An allowing, to see how it made her feel. How alert she was for revelation; Mama Wong would laugh.

Forget about inner truth. You know what life is about? Life is about survive. That’s it.