The Love Wife (7 page)

BLONDIE / 
— We’ve lived with you every day for fifteen years, I said. We couldn’t begin to imagine life without you.

— Think of yourself as a body part, said Carnegie.

— Yeah, but what if you could do plastic surgery, said Lizzy. We’re like the tummy flab you would fix.

WENDY / 
— Speak for yourself, I say. I’m not like tummy flab.

— I’m glad you realize that, says Mom.

— I’m more like a lung or something, I say.

Bailey rocks back and forth, meaning he wants more of something, but it must not be French toast, because when Mom gives him that, first he puts it on his head, syrup and all, and then he sends it flying.

— Bailey! Lizzy yells.

That’s because a piece of French toast lands right between her boobs.

— Perhaps that blouse is a bit revealing, says Mom.

— Perhaps you should feel sorry for me instead of making sure to tell me what you don’t like about the way I’m dressed! yells Lizzy. And anyway it’s not a
blouse.
I wouldn’t be caught dead in a
blouse.

Lizzy stomps up the stairs so loud that even in the kitchen a bird flies away scared from our new bird feeder, which is stuck on the window with suction cups and supposed to be squirrelproof.

Even the bird feeder is yellow today, that’s just the kind of morning it is.

— In my family, this was called overreacting, says Mom. Being too sensitive.

— We can call it that in this family too if you like, says Dad, finally sitting down. — She’s being too sensitive.

— Perhaps I should quit work, she says. People say that the time to be home isn’t the first couple of years, it’s now, when you don’t know when they’ll want to talk.

— If someone quits it should be me, he says.

— Dearest, you’re not going to get laid off.

— Dearest, this is America, says Dad. Anything is possible.

Later I report all this to Lizzy.

— Overreacting! she says. Sensitive! Of course I’m sensitive. I’m sensitive because I totally don’t belong to this family!

Her room is like the most amazing place these days, completely empty and neat like a monk’s cell. It’s like she’s too mad at the world to even have one single thing on the walls, all you see are CDs and headphones and a picture of her new boyfriend Russell the Musician, in the exact same spot that she used to have Derek the Normal. And there’s her cell phone of course. She doesn’t have a regular bed, all she has is a futon on this platform, which I guess I wouldn’t mind having either, now that I lie down on it. It makes the room look so big, like the ceiling is so far away. Like you have all this room.

— You belong to this family, I say. You do.

— Someday I am going to go back to wherever and find my real mom.

— How’re you going to do that?

— I’m just going to, she says.

She’s sitting on her other piece of furniture, her beanbag chair.

Then she says: — At least you know where you come from. At least you can like go back to that orphanage in China.

— That’s not true, I say. They don’t even know my foster mother’s name, forget about my real mother. Or my real father, you can like double forget about him.

— And why is that? says Lizzy. Have you ever wondered how come there are all these adopted girls from China where their parents at least know the foster mother and you don’t?

— They’re not supposed to, I say.

— But some do, says Lizzy. Like Lily does, and Mimi too. Don’t you ever wonder how come?

She says that and looks out her big window, which you realize is the other thing in her room, like her third piece of furniture. A big big window she has, so big it’s hard to open.

— I guess, I say.

— Because their parents made sure they knew, says Lizzy.

— But the foster mothers ask for money, I say. Lily’s parents only know because her foster mother sewed a note into her clothes. Like over her heart, Lily said, in the very inside layer of all her clothes, it was just lucky her parents found it. Plus they could barely read the writing after it went through the wash.

Lizzy stares at me a little. Sometimes I wonder if she would stare like that if she went back to her old hair, it’s like once she went blond nobody could stare at her anymore. Because they like so noticed her they had to try not to, and then she could stare at them.

— You don’t get anything either, she says. I really, completely don’t belong to this family.

— You do, I say.

— I do not, she says.

But she’s sprawled out more on her chair, and like staring a little less.

— I’m like a visitor, like Lanlan, she says.

— What about me? I say.

— You can be whatever you want, she says. It’s a free country.

— I like visitors, I say.

— Good for you, says Lizzy.

— I like Lanlan, I say.

— Good for you, says Lizzy.

— There is something about Lanlan that gets Mom and Dad to say the same thing the other one just said, I say.

— Hmmm, she says, and then is kind of quiet, which is practically the nicest thing she’s ever said to me.

4

A Family Is Born

CARNEGIE / 
And again backward: to fifteen years ago, and the story of how Lizzy came to us.

BLONDIE / 
For this is how our family came together, Lizzy first. And is that not the start of the story?

CARNEGIE / 
I was a grad student back then, living in the Midwest, which I did not particularly like; and getting a master’s in double e, which I did not particularly like. It so happened too that I had signed up for an opera class in the church annex with the copper beech tree. Did I like it, particularly?

My mother detested opera.

And so yes, I did like it most particularly. Yes.

I thought, what’s more, that there might be interesting women in that class, women who would prove, surprise, unlike my mother. And should one of them prove particularly interesting, I knew what I would do: invite her to an opera. The local conservatory was always mounting something, so to speak. I warmed its shiny schedule in my pocket.

In the meantime, I passed and passed the smooth-barked beech tree. I looked up into that tree and thought about climbing it. But I was a man now; climbing the tree was like a question I did not have to answer. My life was full of new questions, questions so large I did not know what they were.

They preoccupied me with their vagueness.

BLONDIE / 
I like to think of Carnegie in that phase of his life—passing that tree, considering his life. Considering the tree—how huge it was, and what a room it made under itself. So rich and venerable, and yet like a prison, he said. Its lowest boughs, big as trunks themselves, grazed the ground, which was resplendent with moss. Years later Carnegie was still talking about that moss, and the way the roots rose out of it like a day of reckoning.

I didn’t know any other men who stood back that way. Carnegie had big hands—like my father’s, strong, but smoother and more delicate. He kept them in his pockets as though he was saving them. He might have been a surgeon, or a pianist.

CARNEGIE / 
My mother had considered me a sap on account of the things I did not do.
Forget about it!
was one of her maternal refrains because as a child I had refused to eat eggs, insisting they were baby chickens. As an adult I was bothered by raccoon traps.

Then there was the matter of evictions. It was just Mama Wong’s luck to have her one child, her one son, her heir, turn out the type who was haunted by evictions. Several times I paid a tenant’s rent rather than see a certain old couple or young mother or rascally codger out on the street.

The couple proved worthy of help. Even Mama Wong saw the point, in the end, of providing two old geezers in wheelchairs with a place to set their brakes. Also I made a good case for the single mother with twins. Anita went on, in fact, to become the best super we ever had; the twins grew up happy to cut our grass and shovel our snow. But what about the codger? Didn’t he have two sons in sports cars who ought to have done their share?

— This is America. Nobody can count on a son, I argued once. Except, of course, you.

To this Mama Wong at first laughed appreciatively.

— You are the last real Chinese son in America, she agreed, her forefinger in the air. She crouched forward for emphasis, springing up at the end of the point like a conductor. Then she fetched her body back, her chin, her arm. Repacking herself, it seemed, in a kind of tai qi maneuver. — I know you will never forget what you are, she said. No one going to have to tell you.

But other days she waved her hand dismissively.

— For what can I count on you, you tell me? she said. Give money away to rich people, that’s what. How can you be my son? I tell you honest way, I don’t know who you are.

Her face then was resigned, and slack. Only her hands moved, dropping down to her desktop to rearrange the beautifully sharpened pencils. She watched some leaves, blown flat against her window; they lifted loose. Away they flipped, back out into the yard, flipping, flipping. Who cared? In her youth she had exuded a lovely suppressed animation. People had watched her, not because she was so beautiful, but because at any moment her face might break into something else. Something about her promised revelation.

Now, in her enfeeblement, she was becoming straightforward.

It was true that the codger, when he died, left half a million dollars to his favorite charity, the National Basketball Association. He left, in addition, one dime each to his sons. This was so they could each call a friend and cry. They wouldn’t have had to do this, he wrote, if they had learned to hustle like even the lousiest substitute player in the National Basketball Association. Also he left a broadcloth shirt to me, writing,

You would have given the shirt off your back to me. So I give the shirt off my back to you. You did touch me, you poor schmuck. But what kind of championship you ever going to win? You got this country all wrong, young man. You should listen to your mother. Rent is rent. Get rich, be happy. Isn’t that what they say in China? It’s the same here. Be poor, be miserable. Old world, new world, every world is still the world.

BLONDIE / 
Carnegie never wore the shirt.

CARNEGIE / 
I was in my poetry phase then; the phase in which I walked in the woods and considered myself working. I was entranced by the deathless morph of villanelles. And the compulsion of terza rima! Like a person with attachment problems. I owned an inkwell and a blotter and was never without a thesaurus.

Naturally all this was related to a lady friend who finally, finally slept with me, only to announce a half hour later that she wanted to be friends.

— Let’s have a correspondence in verse, she said.

I switched to double e the next week.

BLONDIE / 
His mother was delighted.

CARNEGIE / 
She had a consolation girlfriend all picked out.

— Lily Lee, she said. Daughter of Filbert and Flora. Valedictorian in high school, now is medical doctor. But not just medical doctor. I’ll tell you what her character is. Look like her mother have some trouble with her kidney, right? So what is her specialty? Kidney! Her mother never have to go see stranger, always get the best care. That’s what kind of girl she is.

I declined to meet Miss Lee.

BLONDIE / 
Instead he stood by large trees with his hands in his pockets. Carnegie had left home; he had left his mother. He was awaiting something big and honest and potent.

We both had selves that were cresting some hill, then. Lives that before setting all four tires back on the road, could have said yes to almost anything.

CARNEGIE / 
To the opera. To the Midwest: to this sky, this wind, these grids. To these polite and helpful plain folk.

And, of course, to a most lissome, auburn-haired classmate who turned out, unfortunately, to be an anti–nuclear-arms activist and nun. Sister Mary Divine, she said her name was. I thought she must be joking. That really was her name, though, and she really was a nun, even if she seemed more of an anti-nun. To wit, she did not wear a habit or even a bra. She doodled. She carried a fanny pack. She swore. Not that she went so far as to take the Lord’s name in vain, but she was heard to say, upon occasion, Dammit.

She didn’t need a libretto, knowing every aria already, and one day came in with yet more amazing knowledge. A baby had been left on the steps of the church proper; an Oriental baby. She hoped she wasn’t being racist, but was there any chance I knew where the baby had come from? She was sorry to ask. So far as she knew, though, I was the only adult Oriental in town. Did I have any thoughts about what would be best in terms of finding a home for the baby?

BLONDIE / 
Was he offended? I did wonder that, later.

For you see, I had gone to school in California, and majored for a while in East Asian Studies. I had had my consciousness raised.

CARNEGIE / 
Offended? No.

Would I follow her back to the church? she asked.

We left before class started, our rudeness forgiven by special dispensation. It was an enormous night. Dark enough to see the Milky Way, and how many colors the stars came in, actually: blue, green, citron yellow. No moon, just a summer breeze crackling as if with the waking stretch of night animals. We passed the old beech tree. The dark street glimmered with a recent rain, like a river.

If only I did not have allergies. But I did, hives. It was soybean-harvest season. My skin was dotted like op art.

Still I traveled the street river behind my guide, eyes on her fanny pack. My allergies, I knew, could not be racially linked, exactly. How many Asians, after all, could be given hives by soy harvesting? Yet they did seem linked to a certain proclivity to skin sensitivities; for example, an inability to wear wool. And these in turn seemed linked to my smooth and sparely hairy body. As I stood, itching, in the church hall, I wondered if there weren’t indeed things I understood better about this bundle of swaddling than did, say, Sister Mary Divine.

I had never held a baby before, much less an abandoned baby.

The bundle was like a longish football, only warm and light. So tossable, yet untossable, what an idea! I felt what a civilized being I was. An enormous strength, stilled by defenselessness. Sister Mary Divine was saying, I thought, that from the umbilical cord she judged the baby to be a day or two old. This was not the receiving blanket the baby had come in, she said. That blanket was being fingerprinted by the police. I nodded, idiotic. Surprised by how close I felt to her. How intimate to be sharing this experience—of what? Of staring into this miniature face, like something out of a fairy tale. So red! So squashed. Circular. A gnome’s baby, this seemed, with a white stocking cap on. The white cap was not even a real cap but a surgical stocking, knotted at the top. Fringed at the bottom by the baby’s black hair.

Asleep.

— Where did you come from? How can you sleep at a time like this?

I wanted to count the baby’s lashes. I put my face to the baby’s face; that innocent breathing, breathing. Sweet, noisy, unpracticed. Its whole body heaved and collapsed. The abandon in its exhale! As if one part of its small spirit was bent on returning to the Old World, even as another said,
Stay.

— You are the first to see her other than Sister Angela and myself. And of course the police.

A girl! I had forgotten to ask boy or girl. A girl. Of course! An abandoned Asian baby, even here, was most likely a girl. Again I felt it, a tug of connection like a hitch in my sweater. Healthy? Sister Mary Divine said so far as she knew. She had a doctor on the way.

— I don’t think you have to clutch her like that. I think you can just rest her on your forearm.

I was indeed clutching it—her. My shoulder was raised way up into the air as if I were on a stage, and about to be yanked post-haste into the sky. Sister Mary Divine eased the baby from my wrist and hands into the crook of my arm. How loving her touch! I wanted to kiss her. She had exquisite hands, with surprisingly shiny nails, marred only by that ring. That ring was too big, witness the red indentations on the adjacent fingers.

— There, she said.

— Ahh, I said, or something like that. Then I said (or thought I said, or wanted to say): — Let’s get married and have this baby.

— Thank goodness, the doctor’s here!

Sister Mary Divine escaped to the door, that medievalish oak door, her auburn hair lifting behind her like a magic carpet. Her breasts were bouncing, her fanny pack unzipped. Later she left the convent, I heard. She ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate and married a dog-sled racer. In the meanwhile, the doctor was here! Another marvelously unswerving, sensibly shod, braless woman. She had a large bag in haul, and a friend, similarly jiggly.

— I am Dr. Pierce, the doctor announced calmly. Her voice was like a barge you could stand on. — This is my friend Jane from out of state.

— Thanks be to God, said Sister Mary Divine.

BLONDIE / 
I had just arrived at the airport when my old friend Nomie, now a pediatrician, announced, We have to go see this baby. And then there I was, in this church, with a man holding what might have been the Lord Jesus, except that in all the pictures Jesus was never crying, as this baby was. How panic-stricken that poor man! A Chinese- or Something-American. Explaining that a Sister Mary Somebody had gone to see about a bottle.

— Formula, I hope, said Nomie.

The man wasn’t sure; and so off she went, leaving the man and me with the baby.

— Walk her. Give her your thumb, said Nomie as she left. Bounce her up and down.

— 
Ehh, ehh, ehh
, the baby cried.
Ehh, ehh, ehh
.

Never had so tiny a sound seemed so loud. You could feel it pierce you—how it ran through you like a giant needle and thread. She was wrapped up like a papoose in a pilled flannel blanket with bears and bows printed on it.

CARNEGIE / 
— Your thumb will be too big. Try your pinkie, said the woman.