The Love Wife (38 page)

There was a goat lived on a farm

and dinner was his name, oh!

T-O-M-M-Y

T-O-M-M-Y

T-O-M-M-Y

and dinner was his name, oh—

in a funny voice that he makes funnier and funnier if we don’t laugh until finally we can’t help it. But Shang isn’t singing, he looks back at his own behind with a face so dark red it’s like his skin isn’t strong enough to keep the blood inside. Then you realize how mad he is, which is mad enough to pick up the pitchfork Lanlan uses for Tommy’s hay. Lanlan screams No No No No and tries to pull him away by the waist or grab one of his arms to stop him, but his arms go up and down hard, with her hands wrapped around them like she’s teaching him how to use a Chinese butcher knife. Then Tommy isn’t even standing up he’s just lying there first bleating and panting and bleeding, and then just making a gurgly sound with his head in a funny position and blood coming out of his ears. That’s when you realize how bony his backside is, and how his tail used to point straight up. Because it’s just lying there now not pointing at anything. But here’s the weird thing. Lanlan’s trying to stop that Shang but she looks like she’s hugging him. It’s like what Lizzy says. Lanlan should hate Shang but she doesn’t. She doesn’t hate him.

It’s Tommy she hates.

Then Shang stops and wipes his forehead with his arm and puts the pitchfork back in the toolshed next to the garage while Lanlan wails and wails, you would swear she actually loved that goat, we just couldn’t tell. Except that she looks up while she’s wailing and watches Shang put the pitchfork away, and then it’s more like a story she’s telling. It’s more like one of her strange stories, only she’s telling it and in it at the same time, some story about this girl and the goat she loved, she just wants Shang to sit down and listen and feel what a terrible man he is, like an emperor who killed this girl’s heart. It’s like one of her strange stories, only here in America when it should have stayed in China, what is it doing here? And what is she doing in it, and how can Shang understand it? When Shang has probably never heard one single other story like that. How can he feel bad when he’s like children who have never heard of sacrifice? When he’s not even Chinese?

It’s too strange for a yard like our yard full of squirrels and apple trees and a play structure. A squirrel jumps from one branch to another, rustle rustle right over my head as if I’m part of the tree or maybe it’s not afraid of me because it can see I’m so paralyzed. My arms and legs feel tingly and full of sap, I’m surrounded by leaves, it’s amazing how many of them there are left, considering how many have fallen off, like a ton. Also how much blood there is even in a small goat. It’s all coming out of his ears. So it’s mostly in one place, all around his head, which is good. Does it stain driveways or just wash off? Across the street is the buzz of Mitchell’s ride-on lawn mower, going like for one last time before the grass stops growing. And another noise—the squirrels on the roof of the barn that scratch scratch scramble, they’re always losing their footing, Lizzy says Russell says these are like the most uncoordinated squirrels he’s ever seen. And the mockingbirds, they’re making noise too up on the telephone wire, except it sounds like it’s being vacuumed up by the sky today. It’s those clouds hanging down like the insides of an old couch if you crawl under it, you know how you can’t hear practically anything down there. Everything is going, the mower and the squirrels and the birds just like usual, except that Tommy is lying there and even with the blood I think he’s sure to get up and start tracking it all over except that he’s like this animal in a museum now, you know how they don’t even blink if a fly lands on them. He doesn’t and doesn’t and doesn’t. And that’s when I realize the soundproofing isn’t in the sky, it’s in Tommy. It’s so weird he can do that, you just can’t believe it, but Tommy is soaking up the noise, he’s soaking it all up and turning it into blood. So that all that’s left is words, I hear them like they’re in tree talk.
It’s dead.

— You killed him! He’s dead! Lanlan cries and cries and cries and cries. She’s kneeling next to Tommy and bending over him so her hair is practically in his blood but not quite, she flings it back behind her shoulders and kneels in a place too where his blood won’t get on her knees. But mostly she’s crying and crying, even when she stands up and kind of steps over and around Tommy’s body, closing the toolshed door so the pitchfork is inside. You can still get to the toolshed from the garage door which is open, but at least you have to go around a little corner, and you can see Lanlan thinking that.

Because Shang is still mad.

He’s the kind of guy who wears Lycra everything. These shiny black bicycle shorts with a padded seat and a matching black shirt with a zipper at the neck and a yellow stripe across the shoulders to be snazzy. It’s the kind of clothes that make him look even hairier than he probably is, because it’s so smooth and he’s so hairy everywhere except his head. And red, his face is red like one giant birthmark. He’s full of new words for Lanlan, words I’m not sure I exactly know either like what does ‘two-timing’ mean, and ‘whore’? He’s yelling so loud I can’t understand everything he says, I have to keep closing my eyes. What Lanlan says, in a lower voice—I can’t hear all of that either, I just want to flutter like a leaf and not hear anything. Lanlan says she understands the goat now, she sees it could not help what it did, it had no choice, but he says to leave the goat out of it, she was no goat and did what she wanted. She says she’s sorry, she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, she was just optimizing, isn’t that what he told her to do? She was keeping her options open just like him, wasn’t that what he was doing? Staying married to his wife?

— That is not the same thing, Shang says, but when Lanlan asks him to explain, he doesn’t.

The sky is getting heavier and heavier.

T-O-M-M-Y.

Lanlan kicks the goat. It’s exactly like what people do with Elaine sometimes, they make fun of other people so they’ll be on her team and she won’t make fun of them. Except the first kick isn’t much. It’s sort of experimental, she does it in his back, in a dry spot. But then she kicks him again and again and knots her hands up into fists, and it works. Shang laughs.

— You hated that goat, he says. Who wouldn’t.

She kicks the goat again and I’m surprised at the look on her face, it’s not like any look I ever saw. She looks like she could be one of the Red Guards she told us about, or like one of the guys outside the car when I was adopted in China, Lizzy said they looked like they were never ever going to get what they wanted their whole entire lives and had to watch on TV while other people did.

— Options! says Shang suddenly, it’s as if somebody woke him up in the middle of a dream. — What a joke.

— Not a joke, says Lanlan. This is America, right? Land of the free. I think free means you have options.

— I see law school in your future, he says.

— I give all your clothes back, she says.

— Good, says Shang, and starts to pull her skirt off.

— Take your hands off! she screams.

The lawn mower stops. Did Mitch maybe hear her? But no, he is wearing a Walkman and bouncing while he loads up his leaf bag with grass. And now the wind picks up so that the leaves are flapping and flying off, like all at once, pretty soon everyone’s going to be able to see me.

— I was going to marry you, Shang says, still grabbing. — I was going to leave Vicky for you. What a joke.

— As if I would marry you!

— Now that’s a real joke, he laughs. Anything else funny, Miss Show Me What Is Sex Slave? Miss Tell Me What You Like?

He pulls the rest of the skirt down so she is standing there in her underpants. She has some bikini underwear for dress-up, but right now she is wearing plain underpants like mine, only rattier. She is struggling so hard she steps into Tommy’s blood once, twice, three times, she’s stepping in it and stepping in it until her sandals are all splattered and her skirt around her ankles too. They’re not her fancy sandals and it’s not her best skirt, but still I know she’s upset about them.

— Stop, she begs. Stop.

It starts to rain these huge drops, every one of them splats really loud. Tommy’s blood begins to run and Lanlan is leaving huge pink red footprints all over the place including right on her skirt, which is still caught around one foot.

— Stop! I yell then too, even louder than the rain. — Leave her alone.

I jump out of the tree like a squirrel, landing on the driveway. I’m shaking like a squirrel too but it works! He stops.

— What are you doing back there, he says, and his look is suddenly friendly, like this uncle I barely know but who knows my mom and my dad and how I was adopted and everything.

— Not in front of Wendy, says Lanlan. And to me she says: — It’s a game. I like it.

She smiles this completely crooked smile at me.

— Really. You don’t have to worry.

— A game, he echoes. She likes it. And then he says: — I see it’s raining out.

— It’s pouring, I say.

Because it is, the wind is suddenly blowing and the rain is coming down harder and louder, and far away you can hear there’s thunder then that
shhhh
of the rain really starting to drench everything.

— Excuse us, says Shang. We’re going to step in out of the rain and you should too young lady. Why don’t you run inside and get yourself some dry clothes before you catch pneumonia.

Then he grabs Lanlan in her underpants and drags her into the garage. Her skirt stays outside.

— Mitchell! I yell, starting to run down the driveway. Mitchell!

But then I remember the pitchfork. I run back to the garage door and go in the toolshed, and there is Lanlan with no clothes on except the blood and her bra and her shoes and Shang is holding her arms behind her back.

— I have a new word for you, he’s saying. The new word is—

— Not in front of Wendy, says Lanlan. Stop. Stop!

He does stop then, and turns and looks at me while I hit him with the pitchfork, which is when Lanlan gets away and attacks him too, and I swing and hit him again, as hard as I can. It’s sort of scary hitting someone, I’ve never hit anybody before. I just hope I didn’t hurt him, I’m not like Lanlan who is kneeing him and kicking him like she wants to kill him.

He crumples up on the floor, right on the concrete floor, in his nice shiny black outfit.

It is raining and raining. I think I hear Tommy but I guess I don’t.

Lanlan is pulling her underwear back on. Shang moans. His face is like something you made up on a computer program, it’s like you hit the command
shmush,
except that he’s crying.

That means he’s alive.

Lan doesn’t look at him or say anything either.

I think maybe we should get him some water or something.

I’m still holding on to the pitchfork but it’s getting heavier and heavier. The handle rust is scratchy, and there’s like this nail head sticking right into my hand.

Tommy, I hear. I swear I hear Tommy.

Where’s Tommy?

15

Independence Island

CARNEGIE / 
The first rule for noncitizens being to avoid the law, we did not press charges against Shang, but instead dispatched Lan to Maine. The plan being for her to live for a while on Independence Island with her friend the driver. Let the goat affair cool down, and who-knew-what heat up. Predictably, Jeb Su—a former professor, it turned out—leapt at his chance. What with his wide mouth, he grinned literally from ear to ear as, sitting in my study, he heard out our proposal. He thanked us profusely and eloquently for our help, in flawless English; among other things I was happy to see that Lan had gained a great tutor. I tried to impress upon him that November wasn’t exactly honeymoon season in Maine. That there would probably be snow, and that the heat in the main cabin consisted of a woodstove. But the stove was at least new and large and efficient, I told him. If you stoked it right, it would burn all night.

— Don’t worry, I’m sure we will manage, he said.

— We’d be happy to lend you a car, I said. We have an old Jeep we were going to give Lizzy when she got her license. Please use it as long as you like.

— Oh, no, he said. We can’t take a car from Lizzy.

— We’ve recently realized we don’t want her to have her own car anyway. This is the perfect excuse to keep it away from her.

— You are very generous, he said then. Thank you.

— It has four-wheel drive, I said. Which you are going to need.

— Thank you, he said again.

A solid man, he filled his chair perfectly. Its armrests seemed designed to support his arms; his feet reached exactly to the carpet.

— Life may be difficult there, he continued, but it is a long way from Heilongjiang. Coincidentally, you know, I was also sent north to the countryside, way back when. Lan and I have that experience in common.

— I didn’t know that, I said.

— I bring it up, he said, as a way of saying I have relevant experience for this challenge. You don’t have to worry. I’ll take good care of her.

As if to underscore his qualifications for his new role, he wore a red plaid lumberjack shirt, apparently just off a shirt cardboard. Fold marks divvied his torso into rectangles.

— How wonderful, I said. I’m so glad.

— She is well worth the trouble, he said. His hands lifted from his armrests with enthusiasm. — A wonderful girl.

Blondie and I agreed.

— Please let us know if there’s anything you need, she added, leaning forward in her chair.

— I’m so happy for you, I said. Lan too.

And so I was.

Lan, though, when I visited her apartment, seemed on edge.

— It’s cold, but it’s not Heilongjiang, I said.

She packed.

— He loves you, you know. Blondie and I are so happy for you.

She packed.

— Do you not love him?

— If you like me to love him, I will love him, she said finally.

Her windows rattled.

— Are you not happy about this? I saw you laughing with him.

— If you like me to be happy, I will be happy.

— He seems like such a nice man. So well-spoken. So educated.

— He used to write propaganda for the Chinese government, she said.

— He used to write propaganda?

She softened.

— He didn’t want to, he had to do it.

— And this, we have to do this, I said. Do you see that? Who knows what Shang might do if you stay. He’s a dangerous man.

She packed.

— Do you not want to go?

— If you like me to go, I will go.

— Please stop it, I said.

However she felt about Shang, she was packing the fancy sweaters, the leather pants. The fancy shoes, in different colors, with high heels and pointy toes. Just the ticket for Maine. She was wrapping these in tissue paper, and arranging them just so—her manicured pinkies sticking up higher, it seemed, than ever.

— If you like me to stop, I will stop.

LAN / 
Even now I sometimes think I could have worked things out.

No one could handle Shang like I could. Yes, he lost control. But later—how sweet he could be! After the rain, the sun.

Besides, we had one investor already, and two meetings set for next week.

BLONDIE / 
How to explain to Gabriela about Tommy? I brought her chicken soup, but she would not, could not eat.

— You and Lan, I sighed, on day three.

— It’s your fate, said Gabriela. Trying to get people to eat.

— It is. How did this happen?

— You agreed to it, said Gabriela, tasting a spoonful at last.
— That’s how.

WENDY / 
One thing about Lanlan finally being gone is that Mom can start looking for a new baby-sitter. She hangs up signs, she runs ads in the paper so that the phone rings and rings, but she says it’s not so bad screening the calls because half the people don’t speak English and she definitely wants an English speaker because of Bailey. Plus she has a form she got from a friend, she just asks the questions on the form and checks boxes. Do they drive? Smoke? Drink? Have experience? Have they ever been in a car accident? What would they do if a child in their care started choking? She’s in no hurry, she says if no one clicks, no one clicks. After her last experience all she wants is to get the right person.

Then there’s stuff to think about like finding me a therapist, she says she really wants me to see someone about what I’ve been through.

— I’m so proud of you, she says. But it’s too awful. And to think you never cried. I think you need to cry.

— Okay, I say.

She hugs me.

— Here we spent your whole babyhood trying to get you to stop crying, and now we have to get you to start.

We laugh. But then I tell her it’s true, I have bad dreams about Shang and Tommy and Lanlan, bad bad dreams where Shang gets back up and attacks me with the pitchfork, or grabs me the way he grabbed Lanlan.

— He was scary, I say.

— I bet he was, says Mom. You have to stay away from people like that. Then she hugs me again, saying: — If I could, I would vacuum it—
pfft!
—right out of your head.

And when she says that I start to cry a little, because of there being no vacuum, I just wish there was a vacuum.

— I like hugging you, you know, she says. And: — Picture Lionel. When you start to think of that Shang, think of Lionel.

So I try that and find that it works pretty much.

That’s one thing.

Also there’s Russell’s band getting busted for breaking into a school to borrow something, I think maybe an amplifier and they were going to put it back, but they got in trouble just the same, so that now Mom wants Lizzy and Russell to break up. She doesn’t call him Dreaded Dreadlocks anymore, now she calls him Mr. Wrong.

— If you learn anything from Lan, she tells Lizzy, it should be that Mr. Wrong is Mr. Wrong. You can follow your heart right into trouble.

LIZZY / 
But I was not interested in learning from Lanlan. First of all Lanlan wasn’t following her heart, and second of all Russell wasn’t even one of the ones who broke into the school.

— He’s not his friends, I said. He’s an independent mind. You should hear what he writes, it is so much his own sound. It has like totally nothing to do with his friends or anybody else. Including his parents, who can’t even sing on tune.

— Is that so, said Mom.

— He’s not like you, I said. Reading what your friends read and running because your friends run and doing yoga because everyone in the world is doing yoga. Russell says gardening is the number-one hobby in America besides, you are such a follower.

WENDY / 
Russell wants Lizzy to live with him, that’s the new thing. Mom and Dad say absolutely positively no, but Lizzy wants to try it.

— It’s not like I’d stop going to high school, she says. Or like I wouldn’t apply to college.

— So you’re planning on going to college, says Dad.

LIZZY / 
—What you really mean is, You must be kidding, I said.

— You’re sixteen, said Dad. One-six.

— Sixteen may be a baby to you but it’s old enough to get a job, I said. It’s old enough to drive. It’s old enough for a lot of things.

— Do tell, said Dad.

He wanted to call Russell’s parents, but couldn’t remember Russell’s stepmother’s name. He said he could only remember the names of wife one, who was friends with a neighbor of ours, and wife three, who he knew some other way. Wife four he could not remember for the life of him.

— The question is, If I give Russell’s dad the pop quiz, think he’ll know?

— Dad, I said, you can’t manage me the way you managed Lanlan. You don’t get to decide who lives with who, I have news for you.

— I did not manage Lan, he said.

WENDY / 
Lanlan and Uncle Su get married almost right away but nobody goes to their wedding because they don’t even call first. Also it’s not really a wedding, they just go to some office, there’s no dress or cake or anything, it’s just to solve the visa problem because Lanlan was on this J-1 and had to be in school, and now she’s not in school. Lizzy says maybe she’s pregnant but I say remember how she thought she was getting too old?

— She gets her period, says Lizzy.

— Still, I say.

And sure enough instead of having a baby they have a shop where they sell Chinese food.

— Remember all the food she cooked for us? Mom says. Now she’s cooking it for other people. She says she’s so lucky she learned American taste.

Nobody can sit down in the shop, it’s like so small they can only do takeout. But it’s doing well, that’s what Dad says, it’s the immigrant success story all over again. He says they work all the time, it’s hard hard work, much more work than homework, which we shouldn’t complain about, as long as we think homework is work we will never get anywhere in life. He says that in this big pleased way, as if he’s finally found something he can vote for in the world. It’s like things are going terrible for him at work but at least this one thing is going great.

LIZZY / 
As if there was somewhere to get to.

All grown-ups cared about was houses and cars and sending the kids to college. As if we even wanted to go.

WENDY / 
Dad says Lanlan is an inspiration to us all, but Lizzy says Lanlan is practically the same as Mom and Dad now, doesn’t that kill you?

— Like she had an affair with Shang and with Uncle Su both, figuring one or the other of them was bound to marry her, says Lizzy.

— That’s not why, she was in love with Uncle Su! You said so yourself, I say.

But now Lizzy says Lanlan was just using her brain.

— Uncle Su wasn’t married, she says. Shang was. But Shang had a great plan for making money in China. Remember how he was going to make her a cofounder of his company? Uncle Su just meant a green card and a job who knew where. McDonald’s.

Lizzy says this while putting these little braids in her hair, like all over.

LIZZY / 
Lanlan was like that. Like when I asked her should I live with Russell, she said I should think about how much money a musician was going to make. And how I was going to make him marry me. And whether anyone else was going to marry me either, after I lived with him. I tried to tell her how living with someone didn’t make you, like, ruined. It wasn’t like I was headed for some seconds bin in some bargain basement.

— You are still young, Lanlan told me. Don’t sell short.

WENDY / 
Whatever, I still think she’s great. Like she told me that I shouldn’t worry so much about Elaine, that no matter how bright a sun, in the end it goes down. And she was right. Like it turns out Elaine’s father is going to jail for stock fraud, which Dad says is a fancy way of saying cheating, everyone is so depressed at her house people say they’re not even going skiing over Thanksgiving. Now when anyone sees Elaine, all they have to do is put their fingers up in front of their face like bars and she runs away crying. She wrote a whole essay for the class magazine called ‘Kids Can Be Mean,’ which just made everybody laugh more. Then she wrote one called ‘You’re Not Anything, You’re Just You’ and one called ‘People Just Need to Pick On Somebody.’ I feel sorry for her but Lizzy says I have to learn to tell people to go to hell.

— You think Elaine would feel sorry for you if you wrote an essay and everybody laughed? she says.

And she makes me practice saying it: — Go to hell! she says.

— Go to hell! Go to hell! Go to hell! I say.

One day I even say it to Elaine’s face: — Go to hell! I say.

But the way she turns away I feel sorry for her, I can’t help it, which the therapist says is all right.

Her name is Mary Kay, and she has an iguana in her office.

LAN / 
Our storefront was the smallest one on
Main Street.
The store was like a tunnel. But sometimes there was a line all the way out the door to the street, even in the snow. People came from the next town over, even from the next county. And guess what our most popular dish was? Dumplings! The same dumplings I used to make for the family.