The Love Wife (9 page)

BLONDIE / 
The reception line was under the rose arbor, glorious with a repeat bloom almost as lovely as the first. The water beside us was blue and clear.

CARNEGIE / 
Blondie’s brothers and cousins offered toasts. Sonnets, limericks.

BLONDIE / 
Friends played chamber music.

CARNEGIE / 
Blondie was the youngest of the family by a good bit; the epilogue, they called her. Her two sisters were the prologue; her two brothers, the main act. His and His Highness, Blondie’s sisters had called them in their youth. Now they were jovial, articulate men, coming into the Bailey look. Bailey women were various; similar in height, but not noticeably of a type. Bailey men, in contrast, boasted a balanced heft in their youth that turned with age into a backsideless paunchiness. They looked as though they were being pushed through the tunnel of time by a firm hand situated at their lower backs: the more they resisted, the more they flattened in the rear and bulged in the front. Their pants rode low on their hips. The fabric of the seats bagged at the top of their thighs.

But how amiable they were! The cousins and brothers both. For Bailey men did not care in the least whether they bulged, or where. They did not care that they were all nearsighted, and wore metal-frame glasses. Their bow ties were undone long before the main course. They made hats out of the centerpieces. How the various brothers-in-law struggled to keep up! The Baileys critiqued the music and cracked obscure jokes. Should one of them shout,
Lillibolaro!
for example, the others would all jump up and shout,
Lillibolaro!
too—patiently explaining, if you asked, that this had been the battle cry of William of Orange’s Ulster supporters. They played duets on their wineglasses.

Of course, what Mama Wong said later was true. None of the Bailey children owned anything like that neck of land themselves. For they were beyond real estate, those Baileys. Their capital was knowledge. Taste. And character, in Doc Bailey’s generation. He and his siblings were outspoken, plainspoken folk. Blondie’s generation, in contrast, placed more stock in their vocabularies, particularly their adjectives.
Pulchritudinous. Otiose. Restive.
They were chiefly defined by what they could not take seriously.

Blondie was the throwback, a plain Jane who seemed to have no part in certain family games.

All this was related to the second official reason Mama Wong had given, the night before the wedding, an hour before the rehearsal dinner, for wanting to call off the marriage. The first reason was that Blondie was old. Thirty-one, to be exact, six years older than me. An old maid, said Mama Wong, a woman marrying while she still could. Who knew if she could even have babies? I was obviously not her first choice, who knew how many first choices there had been before me.

But the second reason Mama Wong did not like Blondie had to do with the Baileys.

— You watch, she said. In ten years they are all going to need your help. They are not go up. They are go down. You know why? Not because they are stupid. They are not stupid. They are go down because they do not want to go up. They are like children who do not know what they want for Christmas, that’s how spoiled they are.

— They want to live in the moment, I explained. They don’t believe in living for the future. It’s a philosophical thing.

— You think I do not know what is philosophical thing, she said. But so happen I do know. They are like Buddhist monk. But who become Buddhist monk, you tell me? Not the success people. I tell you, in America people do not want anything, do not work hard, they are go down.

She said this in the cocktail area of the restaurant, the light from the street throwing her wrinkles in relief. She had had me late, and was now not young—almost seventy. Still, it was a shock to see her sidelit. She looked as if she had been sleeping, every night, with a plastic-net bag pressed to her face. Her jewelry, meanwhile, flashed cruelly—all the more brilliant, all the more unchanging—in the dramatic light. On one finger she was wearing two rings, one pearl with diamonds, one jade with diamonds. Something I had never seen her do before. Also she played with them in a way she would not have approved of, had she noticed it.
Why show everyone you are nervous?
Sitting by the window, she might easily have caught her own reflection in the window glass, or in the treacherous black ice of the lacquer snack table. But she did not. Only I watched her reflection, agitated as it was and, in the way of all reflections, strange.

— What time is it? she asked.

This was a new tactic. She sometimes asked me the time four or five times an hour, even if she was wearing a watch, as she was today. Two watches, actually, one on each wrist. That was a new thing too.

— Six o’clock, I said.

— Listen, she said. You break up engagement now, I give you one million dollars cash, spend however you like. Only you marry somebody else.

— Ma, I said.

— I tell you something. Lily Lee still not married. I just heard the other day. She almost married someone, but her parents say no. You want, I make introduction. Very nice girl.

— Ma.

— What’s the matter with Lily Lee? You never even meet her.

— Exactly.

— So how you know you don’t like her?

— Ma. I am not going to marry Lily Lee.

— Okay, okay. Listen. I give you one million dollars cash, even you marry somebody else. Not Lily Lee. Not medical doctor. But not Blondie. After marry, you can still go to movies with Blondie. You can still go out to dinner. But on the paper, name is somebody else. I find you nice Chinese girl, she is going to make everybody feel so nice. You like sports, she is going to watch sports. You like cars, she will like cars. She is going to cook some nice food, and one day, you watch, she is going to take care your old mommy too. You marry Blondie, you will be like servant to Blondie’s family. They will look at you, say, Oh, but he cannot talk the way we do. And when you help them, you think they will appreciate your help? I make prediction, they will not appreciate.

I tried to cut in, to no avail. My mother had always been unswerving, but lately she seemed to have taken on new tonnage. She leaned toward me, her face bisected by shadow like a carnival mask.

— That’s what those people are, she said. If other people look like them, more or less the same, they try to see, who is this person? But if they look at you, you are like mirror to them. All they see is how they themself look. You make their reflection look small, look weak, look not so smart, not so hardworking, they do not like you. Is that simple. You marry nice Chinese girl, she is like servant to you. If you want to look at her, fine. Otherwise, she hold up mirror for you to say, Oh, I am so handsome. Oh, I am so rich.

Despite another twenty minutes of this, I turned down the million dollars.

— Look, Ma, I said. I’m going to marry Jane. You can’t stop us.

— Marry Blondie going to kill you.

— She is not going to kill me.

— Okay, then, she said. Blondie going to kill me.

I did not respond to that.

— You listen to me, she said. I offer you one million dollars. Cash.

She banged her open hand on the table in front of her for emphasis.

— I’m going to marry her if it kills us both, I said finally. Adding, preemptively: — You may disinherit whom you like.

The ‘whom’
felt funny in my mouth, like a largish pillow mint that had suddenly materialized on my tongue. Of course, we had always spoken in English. She had brought me up English-speaking. In general, though, I spoke in short sentences with her, employing a limited vocabulary. Eschewing subordinate phrases. Never before had I used this sort of English with her—English-major English. The mint was still there. Perhaps she had not noticed how I had thrown at her the fancy education for which she had paid?

In the next room, tables were being pushed together.

Finally she said: — What time is it?

I told her.

And in a voice so weak it seemed a kind of aftertaste, she said: 
— You are not my son. You can do whatever you want, I do not care.

— Ma.

— No heir, so what? Anyway, we are live in America now, right?

— Ma.

— When I come to this country, she began; then she stopped, as if forgetting what she had just said, and what came next. Then she started again: — When I come to this country, I did not know I end up here alone.

She asked yet once more what time it was.

— You’re wearing a watch, I said. In fact, you’re wearing two watches.

— What time is it? she asked, like a broken toy. —What time is it?

She did not stay for the dinner. When the Baileys came I explained that my mother was indisposed. Her place setting was discreetly removed.

The festivities proceeded according to plan. The restaurant chairs were over-designed, the hors d’oeuvres over-engineered. Still, people were laughing and jumping up and changing seats; the Baileys liked to change seats. There were limericks, replete with off-color off-rhyme. At one point, I danced with the chef. At another, my bride-
to-be was set on a large platter on the table.

I drank as much as anybody, though I knew I was turning red. I told jokes. Then I left on the early side to check on my mother. Everyone understood; in fact, Janie—then she was still Janie—offered to come with me. I insisted she stay.

— The hero must face the dragon alone, I said.

One last swig of wine.

I found Mama Wong in her hotel room, darkly raiding the honor bar and snack basket.

— Are you drunk? she demanded.

There were opened cans and bottles and wrappers everywhere.

— No, I said.

I softened her up by ordering room service. Steak tartare, I began with, knowing she would be outraged and insist on sending it back.

She did.

I ordered a bowl of consommé; we sent that back too.

I ordered lobster eggrolls, figuring that though she would complain about what passed for Chinese cooking, she would eat them.

She ate them.

We ordered more eggrolls.

We admired the vase of carnations on the food cart.

I showed her how to work the safe in her room. I pillaged the bathroom amenities basket with her. I hid the honor bar price list and let her believe that all those snacks and drinks she had tried were indeed free (taking advantage of the fact that she rarely traveled and, if she did, always stayed in the cheapest joint she could find). When the turn-down lady came, I lobbied for extra chocolates.

— Free! I told my mother.

Still I could only convince her to come to the wedding by promising to start a family business once I was married.

— We’ll be partners, I heard myself saying, my voice as soothing as the room lighting. — Blondie will be our property manager.

If only I were drunker than I was.

— You really think we can trust that Blondie?

Mama Wong’s voice miraculously replumped, like an apparently dead plant that’s finally been watered. Her face beamed. She flipped through a menu and ordered marbled cheesecake for dessert.

— Of course, I said. Of course we can trust Blondie.

It was the first time I’d called her that:
Blondie.
How odd it felt in my mouth, like a sound from another language.

I promised I would work out the details on my honeymoon.

BLONDIE / 
My mother’s great-grandmother was a pacifist; she came to America rather than see her sons fight for Bismarck. My mother’s great-uncle was an abolitionist; people said he installed false walls for anyone who wanted them. And my own great-aunt was a suffragette; we grew up hearing how her children had been excluded from birthday parties on account of her views.

Then there was my mother, an art preservationist/civil rights activist who, before she got sick, went door-to-door down South, registering people to vote.

Now our generation did soup kitchens. We did clothing drives, food drives, book drives. We sang carols in hospitals. We protested program cuts, development plans, the Gulf War.

Still we felt ourselves to be votive lights at best, if compared with the original bonfires.

CARNEGIE / 
The elder of Blondie’s brothers, Gregory, made lawn art: big, suggestive sculptures that challenged community norms and ran gleefully afoul of local zoning laws. Her other brother, Peter, practically ran a summer music camp, the nominal director being a sot. This involved confrontations and crises, and hard stands taken for the sake of art.

Her older sisters, Renata and Ariela, filled the world with beauty. They were not thorny, like her brothers. They cooked and gardened; they made weavings, hangings, rubbings. They saw art retrospectives in previews. They did rubber-band balls, sing-alongs, capture the flag, leapfrog; they even devised their own fruitcakes—including, one might contend, their husbands, who affected a gentility so shabby as to verge on the ostentatious. One was a mapmaker. The other, a water diviner. How their beards blossomed! Their shorts bloomed with ink stains. If you talked to them about the Series, they would cock their heads and look at you attentively, awaiting further information. Neither one of them knew the difference between the American League and the National League.

Blondie’s father, Doc Bailey, was disgusted with them.

— Those boys are living inside a balloon, he said. One of these days it is going to go
pop!
The question is, Will they hear it?

Doc Bailey, an imposing man of intimidating health, liked me. He did not care that I came with a daughter. He thought that I reinfused their family with immigrant vigor; that I looked forward rather than backward, and that in this I was, not to mince words, more like himself than like his late wife, god bless her. Doc Bailey credited me with inspiring Blondie to grapple with life. (He had big hairy hands, and when he said the word ‘grapple’ he seized the air in front of him as if to squeeze out its excess molecules.) He thought this because I had coached Blondie in her move up the ladder from an art stringer to a full-time designer. This was in a high-tech firm doing handwriting recognition.