The Love Wife (45 page)
Mom! I said. You’re better.
Of course I’m better, what did you think? I was going to stay like an idiot forever?
Mom, I said. I had my heart attack. I got attacked by my heart.
Your heart was always problem, she said. From the beginning I say so—no drive, number one. Number two, have to rescue everyone. Even I am dead, look how you try to rescue me. For what? What kind of joke is that?
Mom, I said. Do you know this poem?
We the living, we’re passing travelers:
it’s in death alone that we return home.
Of course I know it, you think I have no culture? she said. You will never know how much I know.
I was going to be okay, but they were sending me back to the O.R., why were they were sending me back to the O.R.? Suddenly there was Lizzy saying they had to leave Bailey, Bailey wasn’t allowed to come, good luck though, we all love you, and then there was Lan’s voice, I thought, saying what? Was she whispering? And Wendy saying, We hope you live, then Blondie telling her not to say that, she shouldn’t say that, and Wendy crying and saying I couldn’t hear her anyway and what did that mean, ‘unconscious’? Did that mean I was being kept alive? And was that Blondie’s voice then telling her it was okay, even if I could hear I wouldn’t mind? I hoped it was Blondie’s, but then it was Lan’s, and then they were all gone, and I couldn’t say good-bye, I just wanted to remember what I could remember while I could. Why did everything hurt? Bailey’s first full sentence—Dad go away. Followed by Mommy mine! Mommy mine! How Lizzy’s arm hung stiff beside her after her tetanus shot, how she wouldn’t let anyone even see it, and yet how she played still with her dolls and blocks and shopping cart. Played and played, with one arm. How old was she then? And Wendy, demanding Read book! I want Lizzy read book! Insisting, when we couldn’t see the moon, Lizzy find! Lizzy find moon! Telling us, I don’t like dying. Asking, What will happen when everyone on the earth is dead? And, When I have babies, will you be my grandpa? And there was Lan at her computer; and there, Blondie dividing perennials in the garden. Now who can I give this to?
And there I stood at the kitchen sink, licking the peach juice off my hands before washing them, of course I had to wash them, but first I had to get all the juice. It was a beautiful afternoon.
We were lucky! Now you think so. All that time you act like you want to be something else; now you wish you were FOB. That is because you know the end of the story. At the beginning of the story, you do not know what is happen, you don’t feel so happy, believe me.
On the other hand, sometimes we get up early in the morning, just me and my small son, and I feel this is a big life. Sometimes I think how many people are bored, and how we are not bored. We are going somewhere; we are going, going. I made up my mind about it already, and I know. We are going up. You can be rich in money, and of course, this is good. But you can be rich in story, and this is good too. Sometimes I think people just want to be rich in money because money make their life a story.
Ma, I say. I got the book, and it turns out I’m not even your son.
Only an American boy would read something and think, Oh, that must be true. As if true is that simple!
So what is the truth? I say. Tell me before I go back to my family.
Your so-called family, she says, with a laugh.
My family, I insist.
She laughs again.
Lan is your daughter.
My long-lost daughter.
And I?
She laughs. Who you are if you are not my son?
I love Blondie, you know, I say. That’s another joke. I married the love wife.
Then how can she be the love wife? Tell me.
And what about Lan? I might have married her, you know. If Blondie divorced me.
Another wrong wife!
Ma. Weren’t you the one who sent her to me, from your grave? A second wife? A love wife?
Laughter.
It seemed natural enough, I say.
Natural! she exclaims. On the other hand, marry Blondie not so natural either.
What is, then?
Nothing is natural, she laughs. Nothing.
This is a joke, I say.
She laughs and laughs. No one is so easy to surprise as an American, she says. Let me ask you, now, honest way. How can you be my son?
How can I not be? I say, after a moment. After all, you wrecked my life.
Ah! Now you are like real Chinese! See some big joke.
Stay, I say. Mom. Don’t go. Stay.
But she does not answer.
Come back, I say. How can I wreck my life by myself?
You doing fine by yourself, she says. Anyway, I am not your mother, talk to you. Of course not.
What do you mean?
Look how you love me, she says. How can I be your mother, you love me like that?
But I do, I say. I do.
Then I am not Mama Wong, she says. Do you see?
I see and I don’t see, I say. I see and I don’t.
Good! See and don’t see, say and don’t say, know and don’t know. That is the natural way.
What do you mean?
Listen, she says. I was not your mother. You were not my son.
But that’s not true.
Okay then. I was your mother. You were my son.
That’s not—
Exactly!
I thought you said, A child should say this is my mother, period. This is my father, period.
Otherwise family look like not real, I said.
I thought you said—
Since when do you listen to me anyway?
Since—
What you listen is your own fault! I am dead! Don’t blame on me!
But—
I am dead! I am dead! I am dead! Do you hear me? Dead!
But—
Shut up, she says. Go! No but.
But—
Two wives are always trouble, I can tell you that.
But—
Go, she says. The way you hang around, looks like I am the love wife. Go!
But—
What’s the matter with Lily Lee? That’s what I want to know.
Ma—
Go! Go!
WENDY /
The waiting room is full of people waiting and waiting. Nobody says live or die, everybody talks about making it.
Did he make it? Did he make it?
And we talk that way too.
We hope he makes it. We hope he makes it.
We talk about the other people.
We talk about the cafeteria.
We talk about the shop downstairs.
But mostly we don’t say much. Mostly we hope, and wait for when we’ll know what we’ll know. And I guess that will be it. This world can disappear like any other, that’s what Great-grandma Dotie used to say, but anyway, right now, here we are. Bailey and Lizzy and Lanlan and Mom and me. We’re eating chips, we’re watching TV, we’re taking Bailey to the bathroom. We’re doing somersaults, and shooting fire, and playing birthday party.
— I am three! Bailey tells us. Not two! Three!
Nobody stares at us, I guess it’s obvious we’re together.
Waiting.
One corner of the waiting room is ours because that’s where we put our stuff, by the window. We take up five seats, but Bailey just uses his to jump off of. Mom sits across from Lanlan and her tummy. They both have snacks for Bailey, and Bailey takes snacks from them both. They both play with Bailey, and Bailey plays with them both. But it’s like they’re on opposite sides of the earth instead of in the same little corner, if one of them walks in front of the other, the other looks down. Mom’s eyes barely even look blue anymore.
It’s hard to believe you could ever call either one of them a love anything.
But these are our seats, there are no other seats, the waiting room is crowded. On the other hand, if we leave, no one takes them, I notice. Because they’re our family’s.
Mostly we don’t leave anyway. Mostly we sit, minute after minute, watching the same clock, here in the corner of the waiting room that is where our family sits. Soon we will know, soon we will know, soon we will know something.
In the meantime, the family book is mine, I think. Does anyone even remember that? Mama Wong left it to me. Though of course I’m going to share it.
When the sun gets too bright, we pull the shade.
And just that second the surgeon appears, a silhouette in the doorway.
— Well, we went into extra innings, he says. But we made it.
We made it! How we cheer and cheer then, wildly, all of us—cheer and cheer, our whole family, together. Hooray! We made it! We went into extra innings, but we made it!
It’s happy, so happy, and who knows?—just might stay happy. Look at us all hugging, after all, Lizzy and Bailey and Mom and Lanlan and me, and look now! How Lanlan grasps Mom’s hand, and Mom grasps hers. That’s happy!
But then they let go, and look away, blinking.
We made it! And yet we know now, too, what we know.
This world can disappear like any other.
It’s amazing how dark a room can suddenly get.
Acknowledgments
Eternal thanks to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lannan Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Fulbright commission for their timely and critical support.
I thank too, for their endless good nature and inexplicable faith, my agent, Maxine Groffsky; my editor, Ann Close; and my husband, David O’Connor.
This book draws to an unusual degree on the stories and perceptions of a large number of people. I thank you all for your patience and candor and enormous generosity.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gish Jen grew up in Scarsdale, New York. Her work has appeared in
The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly,
and
The Best American Short Stories of the Century.
The author of three novels and one book of short stories, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two children.
ALSO BY GISH JEN
Who’s Irish?: Stories
Mona in the Promised Land
Typical American
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2004 by Gish Jen
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Hal Leonard Corporation:
Excerpt from the song lyric “Sue Me” by Frank Loesser. Copyright © 1950 (renewed) by Frank Music Corp. All rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
New Directions Publishing Corp.:
Excerpt from
The Selected Poems of Li Po
by Li Po, translated by David Hinton. Copyright © 1996 by David Hinton. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jen, Gish.
The love wife: a novel / Gish Jen.
p. cm.
1. Chinese Americans—Fiction. 2. Chinese—United States—Fiction. 3. Interracial marriage—Fiction. 4. Adopted children—Fiction. 5. Married people—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3560.E474L685 2004
813'.54—dc22
2004040917
eISBN: 978-1-4000-4379-8
v3.0