Across a Green Ocean (5 page)

Emily knew her husband would never be fully accepted into her family, but she wasn’t sure if it was the kind of family that anyone would want to be accepted into. Her parents were such
immigrants
—putting mothballs in their closets, keeping furniture covered in plastic, refusing to drink tap water unless it had been boiled, not trusting the dishwasher to get the dishes clean. This was true in every one of the client households she visited. Funny how what she couldn’t accept in her parents she accepted without comment or criticism in her job. But she worked with these people; she didn’t have to live with them.

Part of what had attracted her to Julian in the first place had been the differentness of his family background. He had grown up an only child in Los Angeles, in a multi-roomed ranch house appointed with expensive southwestern pottery and handloomed Mexican rugs. When he was eight, his parents had divorced. His father, a film company executive, had a string of girlfriends, all progressively younger and thinner and tinier, like nesting dolls. His mother was a former catalog model and spent most of her second husband’s money on preserving her looks. The one time Emily met her, at her and Julian’s wedding, she thought that the former Mrs. Yeager resembled an animated corpse.

After his parents’ divorce, Julian had been sent to boarding schools at which he acted out in various but, he assured Emily, creative ways—performing dirty spoofs of the school song, showing subversive films on various methods of corporal punishment. For a time, it seemed like he wouldn’t be able to get into any decent college, and he was thinking about taking the year off and traveling around Asia, but his father had pulled some connections, and here he was, all the way across the country from his parents, but still attempting to do everything he could to put as much ideological distance between the way they had brought him up and his present life.

The fact of it was that Julian was set to inherit a great deal of money, was already inheriting it, but it seemed to Emily that it weighed more heavily on him than if he had none. Sometimes she had thought he would be better off with someone who understood that particular problem of growing up with active, but lucrative, disinterest, rather than Emily, whose parents had achieved a comfortable middle-class existence but who had behaved every day as though a single wrong move would send them headfirst into the abyss shared by so many other immigrants.

When Julian asked Emily to marry him, the enormity of the ring overwhelmed her; not just the size of the diamond and how much it must have cost, but what it meant to make such a decision so early in her life. After all, her mother had gotten married at twenty-five, but look at what the following years had brought her: the suburbs, children, picking up her husband’s socks every night. She had never known her mother to have the kind of job that could be called a career. Everyone was afraid of being like their parents, Julian had told her—look at himself. But he promised her that things would be different. She could follow whatever career she wanted, for as long or as short as she wanted. They’d never move out of the city. And, most importantly, they would not have children.

Julian had made it clear from the beginning of their relationship that his own childhood had been so miserable that he wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. Not that he would lead the kind of life his parents had—of course not—but to him, it was too big of a chance to take. The last time they’d had a serious conversation about having kids, Emily had been studying for the bar, and she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to worry about another human being in addition to the trajectory of her own career. Besides, Julian himself required considerable taking care of; she had always been the one who assured him that he could do good work, that he was different from his parents.

Well, Emily thought, he’d certainly reneged on his promise about where they would live. Back then, there was no way for either of them to predict what would happen, that Julian’s filmmaking career wouldn’t take off, so that he would need some other project to keep himself busy; or that every year he’d allow himself to spend more and more of his parents’ money, until one day he surprised her by suggesting they move out of the city.
We could have a garden and grow heirloom tomatoes,
he’d said, with a gleam in his eye that was usually reserved in other men for high-end golf clubs or a luxury car (that, too, would come later).

This prospect had not frightened Emily as much as she once thought it would. By that time she was so firmly ensconced in her work that she didn’t see how where she commuted from would make much of a difference. She would always have Chinatown, to anchor herself to not only her previous life, but her parents’. But she could see that with their renovated eighteenth-century farmhouse, with its sentinel evergreens that framed the front door exactly, Julian was creating a kind of familial history that she, too, had craved in her youth. So she went along with it, leaving all of the furnishing and landscaping to Julian, and privately storing this little concession away in the back of her mind, like a get-out-of-jail card, to be used when she really needed it. What Emily didn’t expect was that she would need it sooner than expected, for she was beginning to suspect her husband had also changed his mind about having kids.

She could pinpoint this change as taking place shortly after her thirty-first birthday. Her actual birthday had been on a weekday, and since she had been working late on a case, it would have been impossible to plan anything. So instead Julian had made a reservation for the following Saturday night at a small Italian restaurant they had frequented when they had begun dating. It was located on the first floor of a brownstone in the West Village, so hidden by vines that you could walk by without knowing where it was, but even parents had discovered it by now.

The waiter had seated Emily and Julian next to a table with a couple who looked to be in their mid-thirties. They were extremely attractive; the man appeared to be Asian, and the woman, Scandinavian. Normally, Emily disliked being seated next to an interracial couple (out of the entire restaurant, she and Julian had to be seated next to
them?
It was like a practical joke). However, this couple was different, for they were with their infant daughter. She had fine hair the color of honey, but her eyes were undeniably Asian—small, dark, tipped up at the corners.

As if noticing her stare, the child smiled at her. Lest she come across as a curmudgeon, Emily smiled back. The child squealed with laughter, and Emily looked away, made uncomfortable by this miniature attention.

“Awfully late for kids to be up,” she muttered to Julian.

“Come on, she’s cute.”

“Sure, but do you really think it’s a good idea for her parents to take her out to a place like this?”

Julian shrugged. “Why not? The French do it.”

“The French let their dogs eat at the table.”

“A child isn’t a dog, Emily.”

“No, a dog’s more fun.”

Then Emily noticed a look of yearning, almost determination, on Julian’s face, something she hadn’t seen since they’d first met and he talked about the kind of films he wanted to make.
A child isn’t a project,
she thought. But she knew that when Julian saw that little girl—or any half-Asian child, of which there seemed to be more and more, whenever she looked—he was imagining what their own child would look like.

It was as if, in a cruel twist of fate, her biological clock had been transferred to her husband. Emily had never felt anything in her own stomach other than a churning ball of fire over a deposition, quickly soothed by an antacid. She did know she did not like children. If she was being honest with herself, she was scared of them. She avoided lines with mothers and their screaming kids at the grocery store, switched seats on the plane if she was sitting in front of a child who kicked, tried not to gag when a woman nursed in a public place. Whenever her friends foisted a newborn into her arms, she held it gingerly, as if holding a ticking bomb.

Perhaps what she was most scared of was what children represented: the lack of a dream. She had always maintained that people had children because they didn’t know what to with the rest of their lives. Even though she knew plenty of women had both careers and children, and that it was possible to get outside help, she also knew Julian disapproved of nannies, having basically been brought up by one. Even if he didn’t expect her to give up her job to take care of a baby, he’d probably want her to cut back to spend more time at home. He, on the other hand, would make an excellent stay-at-home dad since he was there almost all the time now, anyway.

Since the night of her birthday dinner, Emily had watched Julian carefully for further signs, wondering if they’d always been present. Was this what moving to the suburbs had been all about, not just the wish to be able to have a garden, as he’d assured her? Had all the care he’d taken in decorating the house been more than just a sign of good taste? Was this the real reason behind the uncharacteristic purchase of his latest car, a silver Bimmer? Then her father passed away, and she felt as if the question of having children was not only hanging over her head, it threatened to stifle her. This time the pressure was coming from her mother, although it had always been there in some form. Ever since she had gotten married, Emily knew her parents had wanted her and Julian to have a baby. Announcing that she and Julian were planning to buy a house had almost seemed cruel, a false hope. Emily knew that the promise of a grandchild would greatly assuage her mother’s grief.

If her mother were to know that Michael was gay, it would be even more important that Emily have a child. Her mother must be aware that plenty of gays and lesbians had children; they adopted, they used sperm donors, they hired surrogates. There was pretty much no excuse for anyone not to have a kid these days. But her mother was a traditionalist, and while it might not matter in the end, that she would love a grandchild no matter where it came from or how it had come into being, she would still depend on Emily to be the one who would do it properly, just as Emily had done everything else in her life. At some point, as skillful as she had been over the past few years at avoiding the subject of having children, Emily knew she would have to have an answer for both her husband and her mother.

The train had reached the station, and Emily disembarked along with a few other late commuters. Everyone else was heading in the other direction, into the city for a night out. Just the thought of it was exhausting to her; she wanted nothing more than to get into bed. She had little difficulty in locating her car in the lot, a Buick in an unfashionable shade of maroon that was older than she was. It was her mother’s first car and had been handed down to her when she was old enough to drive, then transferred to Michael when he got his license, and then reclaimed when she’d moved to the suburbs. When she started using it again, she found that it was like a time capsule. Wedged in the backseat was the cushion her mother had sat on because she was too short to see over the wheel; the glove compartment was stuffed with mangled cassette tapes from Emily’s teenage years; and underneath the floor mats were mummified French fries that must have come from Michael’s tenure. In a fit of perversity, Emily decided to keep everything the way it was. She felt driving a car like that was the equivalent of giving the finger to all the SUVs she encountered on her neighborhood streets.

As she pulled into the driveway and parked behind the Bimmer, she saw a light on in one of the upstairs windows. She hadn’t realized it was so late; Julian must have gone to bed. She opened the front door and walked softly into the kitchen, which gleamed with stainless steel and polished tiles. Emily herself never spent much time in here beyond brewing a cup of coffee for her travel mug, but this was Julian’s domain. He had chosen the ecologically sustainable bamboo for the cabinetry, and the recycled glass for the backsplash. The meals he cooked were elaborate, requiring visits to multiple farmers’ markets, even trips into the city for specialty items.

When she checked the bottom oven, she saw that Julian had left dinner for her, as was his habit. She knew that most people would appreciate this gesture from a spouse, but she was starting to feel oppressed by Julian’s culinary zeal. Tonight appeared to be some kind of Moroccan stew, judging from the colorful blend of chickpeas and peppers. To prove that she had tried it, Emily dipped a finger into the sauce and licked it; it was rich with tomatoes and saffron. She covered the dish and put it in the refrigerator. Maybe she’d have it for dinner tomorrow, provided she got back early enough.

She passed through the living room with its massive fireplace at one end, the ceiling crisscrossed with rough-hewn beams that dated, the real estate agent had assured them, from the original structure built in the late 1700s. The aesthetic in this room was more appropriate to that time period: a pine Dutch Colonial sideboard, straight-backed Shaker chairs whose very angles spoke of openness and honesty. Julian had spent days at yard sales and local antique stores, looking for this kind of stuff, usually on weekdays when Emily was at work. He had loved the idea of buying a house that had a history, although Emily was quick to point out that it was a history that belonged to neither of them, hers being Chinese and his a mix of German and French. If it bothered her so much, Julian had said, why didn’t she get one of those scrolled and lacquered cabinets or a delicately carved rosewood table from an Asian import store in the city? Yeah, Emily had replied, that would go over real nice with the cherry end tables and Windsor chairs. Instead, she insisted on buying their couch, which was large and shapeless and upholstered in soft gray corduroy, and was absolutely brand-new.

Upstairs, Julian was already in bed, a book lying facedown on the comforter. For a minute, Emily gazed fondly at him, the shape of his biceps beneath the worn T-shirt he liked to sleep in; the tufts of light brown hair sticking up all over his head. His hair was starting to thin on top, which endeared him to her further. It was at these times that she was so overcome with love for her husband that it seemed impossible that she could refuse him anything.