Across a Green Ocean (22 page)

Emily was reminded of how her mother had once said that she and her father had met at a Chinatown dance. They would also never have met had they stayed in their respective hometowns.

“Gao told me right away that his visa had expired. That’s why he moved so often. He was afraid that he would be tracked down. He never left a forwarding address or told his landlord where he was going. But once he met me, he said he was ready to stop running.”

Emily thought of the many couples she had encountered in her job; almost always one person was seeking citizenship through the other. She suspected more than one of them were false marriages, especially when the husband or wife had hastily been brought over from another country. But how was that different from any other marriage of necessity, a union forged from loneliness, unrealistic expectations, lack of choice? Emily sometimes wondered if that was true of her own parents. Hearing Jean speak, she knew that Jean and Gao’s relationship had not been like that.

“What did you think when he told you about the visa?” she asked Jean.

“It didn’t bother me. Almost everyone I knew back then had some kind of problem like this. You just didn’t talk about it. I was one of the lucky ones. I had come to the States when I was ten and became a naturalized citizen. I never thought for one minute that Gao was interested in me for a green card. He even promised me, when we decided to get married, that he would never ask me to help him get one. It would be enough that our children would be full citizens. He always felt this way. If only I could have felt the same.”

Tears were spilling down Jean’s cheeks now, although her face was still impassive. It was eerie to behold, as if a waxen doll were crying. Silently, Emily handed her a napkin from the metal dispenser on the table.

“I just wish I had some sign that he had forgiven me, something he said.” Jean blotted her face; the bow on her blouse was askew. “You saw him recently, didn’t you? At the detention center?”

Reluctantly, Emily nodded.

“Did he say anything to you?”

Emily hesitated. Was there any point in telling Jean that Gao had talked about accepting deportation, about leaving her and Sam because he did not feel he could live in a country that no longer wanted him there? She wished she could say that he had talked about how much he loved his wife and son, but that would be disingenuous. “We mostly talked about his health. That’s all.”

“Oh.” Jean looked down into her coffee cup, disappointed.

“Jean,” Emily said softly, “you don’t need Gao’s forgiveness. You need to forgive yourself, for Sam’s sake, if not your own. If you don’t, he’ll associate your guilt with his father’s death for the rest of his life. Besides, blaming yourself doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way you could have known what would happen.”

“If it’s not my fault, then whose is it?”

“The immigration system’s,” Emily said firmly. “And we’ll find a way to prove it. Well, Rick will.” She stopped for a second. “I hate to tell you this, but I’m not going to be working on the case anymore.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too close to me, and I—well, I’ve been having a lot of problems, too. Personal problems.”

“Like what?” For the first time that afternoon, Jean sounded intrigued.

“Well, my mother is starting to date again, my little brother’s run away to China, and I’ve just left my husband.”

“Those are a lot of problems,” Jean observed.

“Yes,” Emily said. “But even though I won’t be on the case anymore, I’ll be here for you, if you want to talk. I understand what you’re going through.”

A wrinkle appeared across Jean’s smooth brow. “How so?”

Emily took a deep breath. “My father died a year ago of a heart attack.”

“You never told me that.”

“It wouldn’t have helped.” At least back then, Emily thought.

“Can I ask about your mother? Is she doing better now?”

“I think so. Of course, I haven’t visited her as much as I should. But I was just home over the weekend, and she seemed to be doing okay. Maybe even better than I thought.”

“I hope,” Jean said, “that I will be strong like your mother.”

Emily hadn’t thought that her mother might be strong, or that she or Michael could be considered strong in the aftermath of their father’s death. Certainly she didn’t feel particularly strong at the moment, having just admitted to Jean everything that was currently going wrong with her life.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said to Jean. “Why don’t we meet here in a year, at this very diner, and we’ll see how you feel?”

Jean managed a faint smile. “I hope I’ll feel differently.”

“You will.” Emily hoped this would be true of herself too.

The waiter stopped by to see if they wanted anything else, but they asked for the check. Jean had to return home soon, because she’d left her sister for too long with Sam, while Emily had another appointment to get to. At the street corner they said good-bye, Jean to take the subway back to Queens and Emily to head uptown. The next time they’d see each other would be at Gao’s funeral, which was to take place next week. Emily promised she’d attend. No matter where she ended up living, no matter what state her career and marriage were in, she would be there.

A
fter leaving Qinghai Lake, Michael, Liao, and Ben head back to Xining through the late-afternoon sunshine. Liao falls asleep in the car, his head lolling back against the headrest. With his mouth slightly open and the tendons ropy in his outstretched neck, he looks like a baby bird.

“There is a rug factory outside of town,” Ben says to Michael. “We will pass by it soon. Should we go there?”

“Rug factory?” Michael repeats.

“Yes, they weave rugs out of yak wool. They’re very warm. Maybe you can buy a rug for your family in America?”

Michael wonders who in his family would want a yak wool rug, which he guesses wouldn’t smell much better than the yak butter. His mother would put it in the basement, while Emily would say that it didn’t fit the décor in her house. Then he remembers something else he read on the travel website.

“Aren’t the rugs made by prisoners?” Michael glances at Liao, who is still asleep; in fact, he is snoring a little.

“Yes,” Ben replies pleasantly. “Do you want to go?”

“Um, no, thank you,” Michael says. Then, feeling bold since Liao is clearly unable to hear him, adds, “Did your father ever talk about when he was in the labor camp? Like why he was sent there?”

“No,” says Ben. “All I know is that he was in prison when he was a young man.”

“You never asked him? I mean, you were never curious?”

Ben shrugs, keeping his eyes on the road. “Back then, you can accuse people of anything. It doesn’t mean it isn’t true or you are a bad person. Plenty of people were sent to the labor camps for doing nothing.”

They probably still are,
Michael thinks but doesn’t say aloud. “So your father doesn’t like to talk about the past?”

Another shrug. “There’s nothing to talk about. But, no, he does not like to talk about it.”

Michael sits back in his seat. “Neither did my father. Did your father ever mention mine before?”

“I don’t remember him talking about your father, no. Only last night, when he says that you are here in Xining and wants to see us. He thought your father was with you, too. He was very sad that your father was not.”

Michael considers and then dares to ask, “Do you feel you and your father are close?”

Ben glances briefly at his sleeping father, as if approximating physical distance. “What do you mean, close?”

Michael realizes that it isn’t a language barrier, but maybe a cultural one that he’s come up against. “I mean, do you feel you can tell him anything?”

“Of course I can tell him anything. He is my father. Also,” Ben adds, “we live in the same house. He will hear anything I say.”

Michael wonders at the nonchalance of Ben’s statement, whether it’s really true or Ben is just saying what he thinks Michael wants to hear. Or maybe he’s misinterpreted the question, although Ben’s English is good enough that Michael thinks otherwise. He has to admit that he’s a little jealous of how Ben is able to speak so easily of his father.

The streets of the city flash by, and soon they are stopping at the familiar gate of the normal university with its statue of Mao. Ben drives onto the grounds and parks the car in front of one of the departmental buildings. As they’re sitting there, Liao still asleep, Ben’s cell phone rings. He takes out a device that looks much newer and more complicated than Michael’s own from his tracksuit pocket.

“It is my mother,” he explains to Michael after ending the call. “She wants to know when we will be home. There is a little time before dinner, though, to show you around.”

Ben gently prods his father awake, and the three of them get out of the car and walk onto the college campus, which looks busier than when Michael was there two days ago. Students in their blue-and-white gym uniforms stroll about arm in arm, not couples, but girls with girls and boys with boys. Michael knows this doesn’t mean anything, just that they’re close friends. He saw two PLA soldiers walking around that way in the Muslim market the day before.

“They look very happy,” Michael says of the students.

Liao makes a disapproving sound. “There are some problems. There are many things the students want to change.”

“What kinds of things?” Michael asks, thinking about his own college experience and some of the most popular issues brought up then: protesting against anti-affirmative action bills, banning the Greek system, legalizing marijuana.

“They say there is bad service in the library. Also, the water they drink makes them sick if they do not boil it long enough. And they do not like how the lights go off at ten thirty every night.”

“The lights go off at ten thirty?” Michael echoes.

“Yes, in the dormitories. The electricity is cut off. That way the students are sure to go to bed and get enough rest. Sometimes, though, they light candles to study, and then it is dangerous because they can burn down the dormitory.”

Michael shakes his head behind Liao’s back.

They pass by a clearing where strains of ballroom music issue from a boom box, and same-sex pairs of students and opposite-sex pairs of older couples dance together. They stop to watch as the dance pattern changes from a waltz to a foxtrot. A student switches disks on the boom box, and a synthesizer beat blares forth. The older couples move to the side, but the students break apart and began to sway to the music. They don’t bop around in the way Michael expects, but move in perfect coordination, arms swinging together, hips swiveling in unison, like line dancing.

“What is this music called in English?” Liao asks.

“Disco?” Michael guesses. There is something very seventies about it.

“See,” Liao observes. “Even when they dance disco, the Chinese like to be unified.”

Michael nods, wondering if the man is trying to make some kind of discreet political statement, but Liao just walks on serenely.

Continuing the impromptu tour, Liao and Ben show Michael the canteen, where apparently the students’ problem is that they want to conserve trees by using plastic spoons instead of wooden chopsticks, but the spoons cut their mouths. They walk by the field where the students do their morning exercises, like millions of other students all across China at exactly the same time. Then Michael is unintentionally taken past the students’ restrooms, mainly identifiable by the deep, rank odor that he is beginning to associate with Chinese toilets. It is more than a stink; it seems to come from the very bowels of the earth itself. This, he thinks, is something the students should be complaining about.

Finally, they come to a square, five-story apartment building, all with glassed-in balconies in a row down the front. They climb three flights of stairs and enter a space that is about the size of Michael’s apartment back home, except that it has concrete floors and walls whose upper half is painted white and the lower half, pale green, as if in a psych ward. A couple of scrolls, and a calendar showing a field of flowers, hang on the walls, but otherwise they are bare.

A young woman holding a chubby toddler comes forward to greet them. Liao introduces them as Ben’s wife, whose English name is Mary, and his son, Rong Rong. Liao’s wife, a smiling, round-faced woman, emerges from the kitchen. From what Michael can tell, the kitchen is the glassed-in balcony he saw from outside the apartment building. He can glimpse a two-burner stove on top of a low cupboard with a tank of propane next to it. The wall above the stove is peeling and streaked with black smoke from cooking. Above, crisscrossing the glassed-in space, is a line of drying laundry.

“Would you like to wash up?” Liao asks, pointing to a neon green plastic basin and matching water jug in a corner.

Michael declines, but asks to use the bathroom. It is a closet off the main room, and as he has suspected, contained a squat toilet. As spotless as it is, an inescapable whiff comes from it. He tries to pee quietly in the miniscule space so that his hosts won’t be able to hear him. Where, Michael wonders, do the Liaos shower?

When he comes out of the bathroom, Ben suggests, “Do you want to see the rest of our apartment?”

“Yes, I’d like to take a tour,” Michael replies, but Ben doesn’t seem to get the joke.

The one room Michael hasn’t seen so far is down a short hallway. It is a bedroom with a single high bed covered with a bright pink coverlet and a matching honey-colored dresser, unlike the assorted furniture in the living room. There is a crib at the foot of the bed, and above the headboard hangs a huge framed wedding photograph of Ben and Mary, made to look like a painting. They are both in Western dress, Ben in a tuxedo and Mary in a frothy white gown and veil that seems to take up half the picture. She looks very different from the plain young woman Michael was introduced to, her face made up, her head tilted with her chin resting on one hand. Ben stands behind her, one hand on her shoulder and the other holding her free hand, in a pose that Michael recognizes from a thousand high school prom photos.

“Was this taken at your wedding?” he asks Ben.

“No,” Ben says. “Chinese people don’t have weddings like you Americans. This was taken in a photo studio after we got married. You can dress up in many different costumes, from the olden days, even the movies.” He strikes a pose, arms outstretched as if he’s at the prow of a boat, and adds when Michael looks confused, “
Titanic
. Are you married?”

“No,” Michael says shortly. “Do you and Mary sleep here?” He figures that he can be just as nosy.

“Yes. Rong Rong sleeps in there.” Ben points at the crib.

“Where do your parents sleep?”

“In the living room.”

Michael marvels that a family of five lives in a space that is not much bigger than his own apartment in New York. He thinks about how if things had ended up differently for his father and Liao, he and Emily might have very well grown up like this, sharing a room. Actually, if that were true, he wouldn’t have even been born; Emily would have been the one child his parents were allowed to have. As alarming as that thought is, he can’t help but think that if that were the case, then his father wouldn’t have had a son to be disappointed in.

“And where do you shower?” Michael finally asks the question he’s been dying to know the answer to.

“There’s a bathhouse on campus.”

“Doesn’t that get cold in the winter?”

“When it’s cold,” Ben says, “I run there and back.” He grins. “It’s good exercise.”

After they return to the living room, Liao insists Michael sit down on a bed pushed against one wall, which Michael guesses is where he and his wife usually sleep. It is piled high with satin quilted blankets and pillows, and proves to be quite soft, if a bit slippery. Everyone else sits on chairs or stools around the low coffee table, and Michael realizes that the bed-couch is considered the place of honor.

The table is covered with food: a whole steamed fish with ginger, prawns encrusted in sea salt, sautéed greens with the bite of garlic, eggplant in black bean sauce, peppery egg mixed with tomato, sautéed corn with pine nuts. It is mind-boggling that so much food can have come out of that tiny kitchen. Michael knows that the Liaos must not eat so well every day, that it has all been prepared especially for him. He compliments the dishes and asks what makes them taste so good.

Ben whispers something to Mary, and she retrieves from the kitchen a small packet of what looks like baking soda. “This is gourmet powder,” he says.

Michael inspects the packet, wondering if he should bring some back for his mother and sister. Then he sees the English letters on the side:
MSG
. He hastily thanks Ben and gives back the packet, and tries not to eat so much after that, but he supposes the damage is already done, and he doesn’t want to offend his hosts, and the food is very, very good.

They don’t talk much. Most of the sounds are made by chopsticks clinking against bowls, glasses against the tabletop, and Rong Rong’s fussing when he is fed something he does not want to eat. Everyone seems to be feeding him, not only his grandmother and mother, but even Ben reaches over at times to put a tidbit into his son’s mouth. It can’t be so bad, Michael reflects, to have three generations sitting around the table like this. Despite what Liao has been through, no matter what conditions he lived in and currently lives in, he is able to enjoy his family now.

Now come the personal questions, mostly from the women. Michael is asked again if he is married. He replies that his sister, Emily, is. Mary wants to know if Emily is married to a Chinese or a
waiguo ren,
an “outside person,” which he thinks is kind of funny because, obviously, Julian is not an “outside person” in America. When Michael says a
waiguo ren,
Mary nods sagely.

Michael asks how Ben and Mary met, and is told that Mary was a physical education teacher at the university while Ben was studying to be a tour guide. After they married, she quit her job and now spends her time taking care of Rong Rong and her in-laws. Liao was an English teacher until his retirement seven years before. He has a pension, but they mostly live off of Ben’s income, which is quite good, Ben adds. He is not being immodest, it is just a fact.

They ask Michael what his job is and how much he makes, without any hint that these might be inappropriate questions to ask someone you just met. Michael supposes, like staring, these subjects are not considered forbidden here. He says he works with computers and that he doesn’t know how to convert his salary into Chinese money.
It’s probably so high you can’t convert it,
Ben says, and Michael does not bother to correct him.

The women clear the table, and then Mary goes to put Rong Rong to bed. Michael can hear Liao’s wife in the kitchen and wonders if he should offer to help. But Liao and Ben just sit at the table, and he realizes that it is a time for men only. Liao goes to a cabinet and takes down a bottle of grain liquor and three tiny, thimble-sized cups. He pours some for each of them and raises his cup.