The Wangs vs. the World (39 page)

“Did you really have this? For such a long time?”

He grinned in a way she hadn’t seen since before everything went bad.

“You dropped it one day. I pick it up to give back to you, but then I decide that I want to save it so that I can talk to you in the future.”

“But you never did.”

“I came to America.”

“But you said you hardly remembered me!”

“I remember all the important parts.”

He moved closer to her and placed the back of his hand against her cheek. She turned her head and caught his fingers in a kiss. They both closed their eyes and sat like that, almost but not entirely together. Barbra breathed in with her husband’s every exhale; he breathed out with her every inhale. It was quiet in Saina’s house, no helicopters or police sirens to cut through the stillness. She took hold of his hand and kissed the fingers again, altogether and then separately. He moved closer. They weren’t so old. Not yet. The familiar desire still rose within her as he let everything else fall away and focused, slack jawed, on her alone.

When was the last time they had been together like this, both of them completely present and desiring? They fell back together on the bed, but before she could pull off her nightgown, Charles stopped.

“You think I am very foolish for wanting to go.”

“Not foolish. No. But is it necessary for it to happen right now? We just got here. Wait a few days. Rest.” For a moment she felt desperate that he stay; they’d only just found each other again. “If you buy a ticket right now with that cash, they might think you’re a terrorist.”

“I cannot wait any more. I’ve waited already for fifty-six years. My children are starting to think that they need to take care of me. If I wait longer, they will be mushing my food and taking away my beer.”

Barbra didn’t want to, but she understood.

“Do you want to come as well?” Charles asked.

She considered for a moment, knowing what she had to say. “If you want me to come, I will go. But I think you don’t. I think you want to go by yourself.”

The moonlight was spreading. Now the shadow of the diamond windowpane angled over the bed. Charles looked at her in that silvery glow and slowly, slowly, pushed his finger up inside the fluttery sleeve of her nightgown and hooked the collar, tugging it off her shoulder.

四十一
Helios, NY

EACH STAIR leading up to the third floor made its own sort of creak. Saina didn’t know them as well as she knew the second-floor stairs yet; those she ran up in a pattern of leaps and side steps, appreciating anew the narrow Uzbek carpet that she’d installed as a runner and congratulating herself when she reached the top without a sound. Not that it mattered when she was living in this house alone.

When she had come to Helios six months ago, Saina told herself that she bought this big place because it just made more sense. After a decade of accepting the distorted reality of three-million-dollar third-floor walk-ups in TriBeCa and SoHo, the idea that she might possess a hundred-year-old house with four bedrooms on twenty-one acres for a fraction of that price was not something that she could bypass. After all, she could redo this place and resell it—instead of making art, she could bring old farmhouses back to life. Or she could invite other people—writers and composers and scientists, even—to do residencies here, hire a good cook, and have intelligent, ebullient dinners at long tables in the garden that would lead to cross-disciplinary collaborations and long marriages. Or she could just restore this bucolic dream and keep it when she moved back to the city to reassume her rightful place.

Really, though, Saina bought an oversize property because she had to. A grand project meant that this was a pivot rather than a retreat, even if anyone who bothered to look could see the lie of that.

Or maybe she was psychic. A new home for the Wangs. Had she known when she was buying it that there were exactly enough rooms for her family? She had not! And yet now here they were.

Saina eased open the door to what had become Grace’s room. It was a three-quarter-size door and you had to duck as you entered, but the eaves shot up in the middle, giving it the feel of a rustic temple. Her little sister had all of the windows flung open, and a smattering of maple leaves dotted the coverlet, blown in from the ancient tree that stretched up and over the house. In half a second, Saina ran across the room and leapt on Grace, a warm, sleeping bundle.

“Gooooood morning, good morning, it’s time to greet the day!” she sang, wrapping her arms around Grace and squeezing her.

In response, Grace groaned and smiled, eyes still closed. “I can’t hear you. I’m asleep.”

“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shiiiiiine!”

“Oh my god, why are you singing church songs to me?”

“It’s gospel, Gracie! Plus, Bruce Springsteen covered it.”

“Even worse!”

Saina flopped over and burrowed under the covers, resting her head next to her sister’s. “These really are nice sheets. I guess they were worth it.”

“Wait, are you worried about money, too?”

Should she tell her? Better not to. “Not yet. But no matter what, a few hundred dollars for some cotton that you put on your bed is ridiculous.”

“I guess.” Grace snuggled in. “Saina?”

“Hmm?”

“I like your new boyfriend.”

She laughed. “Thank you. He was good with Dad, right?”

“And Babs. So . . . do
you
like him?”

“You mean do I
like him
like him?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“So . . . does that mean you guys have had sex?”

“Grace! Why are you asking me that?”

“Just tell me! Have you? Actually, you don’t have to say it. I know you have. Did he stay over last night?”

“No. You saw him leave. Remember, we said good night to him together?”

“Yeah, but I thought you might have snuck him in after we all went to sleep.”

“Like summer camp? No, I’m too grown-up to do that now.”

“You’re not a grown-up, you’re a puppy!”

“Oh god, I forgot. You’re right.”

Saina yipped and whined obligingly, taking the sleeve of Grace’s T-shirt between her teeth and growling.

“No! No! Stop! You’re not a puppy! You’re a pterodactyl!”

“Don’t those not exist anymore?”

“Um, yeah. They’re extinct.”

“No, I mean wasn’t there some sort of grand dinosaur renaming? I don’t think the brontosaurus is an official dinosaur anymore either.”

“That’s impossible, because you’re a pterodactyl and you’re right here next to me.”

“Oh yeah! Phew! It’s so sad when species are permanently wiped out!” Fanning out her arms and smacking Grace in the face, Saina let out her best prehistoric shriek.

“Ow! No wonder we killed all of you!”

“You mean you’re a meteor?”

“
Bam!
Hellfire! Damnation! Destruction! Earth is over!”

“Do you want some pancakes?”

“Yes! Acts of God love pancakes.” Abruptly, Grace’s tone shifted. “Hey, Saina? Are you sad that Mom never met any of your boyfriends?”

“Well, I’m definitely not sad that she never met Grayson.”

“Yeah, but maybe if she had, she would have known that he wasn’t a good guy and you never would have ended up getting engaged to him.”

Saina sat up and noticed the old photograph tacked onto the wall eye level with the pillow. It was their mother on the tarmac in Las Vegas, stepping into the helicopter that would ferry her to her death. Strange that their father would have had this roll of film developed, a set of reminders of the last trip he took with his wife and of his own outrageous fortune. “Why do you think that?”

“Well, she was our mom! She would have known you so well, better, even, than any of us know you, and she would have met him and known instinctively that he wasn’t right. And she would have given you good advice.”

“Mom wasn’t really the advice-giving type.”

Grace flipped over. “I hate it when you say stuff like that! I don’t believe you.”

Frustrated, Saina said, “Grace, you didn’t ever know her.” As soon as she did, she hated herself for it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know you wish so much that you did know her. I’m sorry you never got to, Gracie.” She nuzzled in close to her sister, who didn’t respond, didn’t move. “I’m going to go make you pancakes, okay?”

Saina started the pancake batter, cracking eggs into a big glass bowl already half full of sweet, grassy-smelling milk. It was satisfying to watch each one splash down and then surface, a saturated yellow in a field of creamy white. After half a dozen, plus a dash of vanilla, she beat them until the whole mixture was the color of fresh butter then stirred in careful handfuls of the dry ingredients.

As Saina mixed, Grace came downstairs and stood, watching her. Finally, she said, “Remember that time when we made Mickey Mouse pancakes?”

“You still remember that? How old were you? Like, seven?”

“It was the summer before you left for college. And then you started a fire, and we had to put it out with baking soda.”

“And then Ama came in and yelled at us and you cried and said that you didn’t want to eat baking soda.”

“I didn’t cry!”

“You did. It’s okay, you were only seven.”

“I was just a baby.”

“Want me to make you Mickey Mouse pancakes now, baby?”

Grace picked up a tiny, deeply red strawberry and ate it. Paused. And then said, “Will you?”

Saina poured the batter in a squeeze bottle and then held her hand over the cast-iron pan, waiting for the heat to rise before spearing a pat of butter on a knife and running it over the dark surface of the pan. She let it sizzle for a moment then drizzled in the outline of a face. It was all wrong for Mickey, though. Too round at the bottom and not long enough. But . . . Saina added a lopsided pair of glasses on the face, some tufts of hair and two ears, giving it time to brown before flipping it over, then sliding it onto a plate and putting in front of Grace, who was slicing the strawberries now.

“Who does this look like?”

Grace stared at it for a long moment. “Not Mickey.”

“No.”

“Um . . . Anchorman?”

“No! Does he even wear glasses? No, it’s someone you know.”

“In real life?” Grace considered. Shook her head. And then, “Is it Dad? It is!”

“Yes!”

“I can’t eat my father! Patricide!”

“Gastropatrimony.”

Grace broke off an ear. “Oh wait, my father’s delicious. We should save this for him, he’ll be so into it.”

“Will you go wake them up?”

Three minutes later, Grace came clattering back down, a fully dressed Barbra trailing behind her.

“Babs won’t tell me where Dad is!”

Not even a full day had passed, and Grace had already tossed aside the beatific calm that she’d brought to Helios. Ah, well, she was only sixteen. There would be other epiphanies. “What’s going on?”

“I only need to say the thing one time, not two,” said Barbra.

“Okay,” said Grace. “So what is it? Say it already, where is he?”

“Daddy went to return the car at the airport.”

“What? Why’d he go by himself? He should’ve waited for us to wake up—I could have gone with him. How’s he planning to get back? Should we go pick him up now?”

Her stepmother turned towards the window and looked out at the barn Saina was slowly converting into a studio. “He’s not coming back. He’s going to go to the airport.”

“Right. To return the car.” Why was Barbra being this obtuse? “And then he’s coming back?”

“And to get on an airplane.”

Instinctively, Grace and Saina grabbed for each other’s arms. “We just got here! Where’s he flying to?”

“Zhong guo.”

“Are you serious? Why is he going to China? That doesn’t make any sense! Why didn’t he tell us?”

Saina’s heart sank. Had the shock of losing everything made her father crazy? “Is it the land? Does he really think—”

Barbra looked at her, level. “He thinks yes.”

“What? What are you guys talking about? What does Dad think?” Grace’s whole body was canted towards them, quivering. “I hate it that no one tells me anything! I’m sixteen now. I’m not a baby. Just tell me already!”

Sigh. “Okay, so Dad thinks that he can roll up to China and they’ll just give him back all of the land that his family had to turn over to the Communists.”

“Well, he’s right! I mean, it’s not theirs, it’s his. Why should they get to keep it?”

“They do not worry about fair,” said Barbra. “You don’t take over a country by fair.”

“But, Grace, you know there’s no way that it’ll happen, right? As much as Dad might want it to?”

“It could,” she insisted. “Why couldn’t it? He could make it happen.”

Saina turned to Barbra. “He didn’t . . . he didn’t have a message for us or anything?”

“No messages.”

Why had she spent so much time worrying about whether he would be comfortable here? Whether he’d approve? All he did was deposit Barbra and Grace on her doorstep like chattel and then take off without even saying goodbye. Saina slammed her mug down on the marble counter. “Fine. If he wants to call, he’ll call. Grace, let’s go get you enrolled in school.”

From: [email protected]

To: Wang, Saina; Wang, Andrew; Wang, Grace

September 19, 2008

Hi, darling children 1, 2, 3—

How are you? I landed in Beijing today. I am sorry there was not a time to say goodbye before I leave. Tomorrow I will travel to our old home, 老家. Do not be worried, be happy. Remember, if you go out in sunshine put on sunscreen, you do not want to be old and wrinkle like me. Ha!

—Daddy

四十二
Beijing, China

10,310 Miles

CHINA WAS his last chance, and Charles Wang was a man who used all of his chances.

What he didn’t expect, what surprised him from the moment he got off the thirteen-and-a-half-hour flight and stepped into the enormous glass-and-steel marvel of the new Beijing airport, was the realization that China could have, should have, been his first chance.