Across a Green Ocean (6 page)

When she slid the book out from under his hands, he stirred.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I saved your place.” Behind her back she inserted a coaster into the middle of the book, approximately where she thought it had been open to. Then she slipped under the covers, snuggling up to him.

Julian made a face.

“What? You used to like the way I smell,” she said.

“You smell like the train.”

She brought a sleeve to her nose. “True.” She began to unbutton her shirt.

“That’s more like it,” he said, and buried his nose in the damp cleft of her bra. “Mmmm. Emily sweat.”

“Gross,” she said, and pulled away from him.

“How was your day?” he asked.

“Hectic. Oh, get this.” She told him about Gao Hu’s medical report. “Can you believe this kind of thing happens, in this country? Sure, maybe the gulags of Russia or Chinese labor camps or something, but in America?”

“Em,” Julian said. “You’re starting to sound scary. Right-wing scary.”

“You know what I mean.”

He put a hand on her thigh but appeared too tired to move it up any farther. “It’s almost midnight. You don’t want to work yourself up about this, or else you’ll never sleep.”

“I guess you’re right. I need to go into the office tomorrow, too.”

“One of those weekends, huh?”

“Sorry, baby.” She threaded one hand through his hair and gave an experimental tug.

“Don’t,” he said. “There isn’t any more where that came from.”

She bent and kissed the top of his head. “There’ll always be enough for me.”

After a moment, he asked, yawning, “Anything else happen today?”

“I found out that my brother’s gay and has gone off without telling anyone where.” She paused. “Those two things are not related.”

Julian looked more awake. “Really? Maybe he’s at some gay retreat.”

Punching his arm, she said, “I’m serious. He went away without telling anyone who cares about him—my mom, me, his boyfriend. . . .” She hugged her elbows to herself. “I met his boyfriend for the first time today. I can’t believe my little brother has a boyfriend.”

“How old is he now?”

“Twenty-six.”

“That’s old enough to be in a relationship. But given my memory of a certain someone’s reluctance to get married, I would say that settling down early doesn’t run in your family.”

“I did too want to get married,” Emily protested. “I just didn’t like the way you went about asking me.”

“What did you want, for me to do it in public?”

“Oh God, no. You know my coworker, Rick? He proposed to his wife by sending a singing telegram to her workplace when they were like twenty-two or something.”

Julian laughed. “I guess it turned out all right for him.”

“How so?”

“He has three kids, right? Sounds like she eventually forgave him.”

She shook her head. “Three kids. It sounds so . . . archaic. I can’t imagine what that must be like.”

“Can you imagine what
one
would be like?” Julian asked quietly.

Another step, and she would be falling into the very thing she had dreaded for so long; a discussion that would have plenty of emotions and heated words, but no right or wrong answers, and possibly no final decision. She tried to speak slowly, rationally.

“Julian, I thought we decided on this a long time ago. When we first got married.”

“People change, Emily.”

“Only if they don’t have the guts to stand for what they believe in. Do you remember how you used to say that population growth was out of control, and you were the last person who wanted to contribute to it?”

“Emily,” he said. “I was nineteen when I said that.”

“Have you even asked yourself why you’ve changed your mind? Maybe this is some kind of midlife crisis you’re having. Maybe you’re just looking for something you can finally be good at.” She regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them, wished she could draw them back to where her darkest, and most truthful, feelings lurked. When she was tired, it was harder for her to keep them from slipping out, especially in front of her husband. She knew that their fourteen years together wasn’t an excuse, as well as the fact that Julian would probably forgive her. She just couldn’t help it.

“I know that you don’t think much of what I do,” Julian finally said, “but I’m not going to fail at being a parent.”

“Julian.” She put her hands against the sides of his face. “You’re not a failure. You make all this”—she indicated the large, comfortable bed they were in; the solid oak furniture; the house and the yard beyond—“possible. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“Most days it is. Most days I don’t think about it at all. But other days, I drive down this street, I open this door, and I think, what does it all mean? Why bother having all this, of coming here in the first place, if this is all we’re ever going to have?”

“That was your decision, not mine. I never asked to move out here.”

“You’re hardly here, anyway.”

She got up from the bed, bracing herself. “I can’t talk about this with you. Not now.”

“There’s never a good time for you to talk. You’re always at work. I come home, and there’s a message saying that you’re going to be late again. Now you’re not even here on the weekends. You probably spend more time with Rick than with me.”

He had started to raise his voice. “Hush,” she said.

“Who’s going to hear, the neighbors?” This was impossible. They lived a half acre away from the next house, which sometimes worried Emily, who had always lived within shouting distance of neighbors, even if she didn’t care to associate with them. “Even if they could, I don’t care. What I care about is what’s going to happen to us.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to us.”

“Right,” Julian said, and there was an edge to his voice that she had never heard before. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

They stared at each other across the expanse of the bed, neither of them speaking or even moving. Emily grasped for words, but for the first time, she didn’t know what to say to her husband that would bring them back to an equilibrium, to where they were supposed to be. Then, as if surfacing from underwater, she heard her phone going off in her purse. Julian heard it too.

“If you get that . . .” He left the threat unfinished.

Emily grabbed her purse and went downstairs, briefly glancing at the unfamiliar number before picking up. “Hello?”

“Hey,” came a young man’s voice against a thumping backdrop of party music. “This is Edison Ng. I think I know where your brother might be.”

E
very travel website Michael Tang had looked at that summer had advised him not to go to Qinghai Province.

 

 

Still, this is his destination, as he sits on a hard sleeper train from Beijing to Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province, in the northwest of China. It would have been much quicker to have taken a flight, but Michael wants to save money, and besides, he thinks that this way, he can see some of the country.

It turns out to be the most mind-numbing twenty-four hours he has ever experienced; physically numbing as well, for although the dark-green bunks are sparsely padded, they still feel like concrete to sleep on. Michael has the top bunk and feels like the main attraction in a hearse. During the day, the people who sleep on the upper bunks come down and sit on the bottom bunk, three per side, staring at one another like participants in a bad expressionist play. There are tiny hunched grandmothers, mothers holding infants, men in cheap rayon suits. People’s Liberation Army soldiers, dressed in olive-colored uniforms, sit at small tables beneath windows on the other side of the aisle, playing cards. Despite the signs that indicate no smoking, every male seems to have a lit cigarette, so the train car is filled with a faint bluish smoke that smells like burning trash.

When Michael looks at the other people on the train, he sees nothing in their faces that reminds him of himself, or his parents, or even the recent immigrants he has seen on the streets in Chinatown. Most of those immigrants are from coastal areas and not the interior of the country, but still, these seem like a difference species of people—blunt, impassive, totally devoid of hope for a better life. They are, in a word, peasants.

Dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, he realizes that he stands out as a foreigner, even if his facial features more or less resemble those of the people around him. None of the other men, even though their clothes are of poor quality, are so casually attired. Also, no one else seems to have a backpack, although many do have large, square red-and-blue-striped plastic bags stuffed with everything from melons to DVDs. Michael recognizes these bags, filled with fake designer purses and sunglasses, from the vendors on the street corners in New York City. They must be the internationally designated receptacle for pirated consumer goods.

Despite his appearance, or perhaps because of it, no one speaks to Michael. He supposes it is just as well. Like Emily, he does not know how to read or write in Chinese; unlike her, he also does not know how to speak it, although he understands some of the phrases his parents used to toss around, usually having to do with it being time to eat, time to sleep, or time to go outside. Things that a five-year-old, or a dog, might understand. Periodically, he catches someone staring at him unabashedly, as if trying to read a fortune told on his face instead of his palm. At first, Michael looks away, but when he gets tired of it, he returns the stare until the other person drops their eyes. They seem to exhibit no embarrassment in doing this, and Michael comes to understand that staring is not considered rude in this culture. He also realizes that it doesn’t mean the person is interested in whatever they are looking at. It’s just something to see, to pass the time.

There’s nowhere else to go on the train, other than the stinking latrine with its metal squat toilet. Once, Michael thought to stand in-between the cars, to try and get some fresh air, but came upon a woman holding her infant son over the gap, with his pants pulled down. She was whistling a tuneless song, and as she did so, the child began to urinate, not only into the gap but also all over the corridor. Michael turned around and went straight back to his seat.

So, still jet-lagged, he sits next to the window and looks out of it, the landscape passing by as if in a dream. It seems like days, but, in fact, has been just one since he’s left the bustle of the modern airport in Beijing, stayed overnight in a nondescript hotel, and made his way to the crowded railway station where it appeared as if refugees were trying to get on the last train out of the city, but which he suspected was simply an ordinary day in the Chinese capital.

Since then, fields of grasses topped with yellow blossoms have given way to some of the most inhospitable-looking vistas he has ever seen: slopes covered with dun-colored rock, dry riverbeds that appeared as if they have been without water for the last hundred years. Sometimes the train track runs alongside a road, upon which an ox, followed by a farmer, trudge, both so covered with dust that they are nearly indistinguishable from the ground they walk on. Mud houses the same color as the landscape appear and disappear back into their surroundings. When there are more than several houses, apparently they are enough to be considered a village, and then the train stops. People open their windows and buy packages of dry noodles, tea eggs, bottles of water, and cigarettes from the vendors outside. When they are done with their purchases, they throw the wrappers and bottles back out the window. The sides of the tracks are littered with trash, often providing the only spot of color in the otherwise monochromatic scenery.

Also, along the whitewashed mud walls, are large Chinese characters written in red, sometimes ending with an exclamation point. They look as if they are out of another time period, probably some kind of propaganda.
Go back!
Michael imagines them saying, in a private message just for him.
This is a mistake! You won’t find what you’re looking for!

What, or rather who, Michael is hoping to find at the end of his trip is a man named Liao Weishu. This is the name signed at the end of a letter that Michael discovered among his father’s things after the funeral. At that time, he had no idea what of his father’s he should take. His mother had been so hopeful, offering old clothes that would never fit him, since he was taller and skinnier than his father had been; or accessories, such as cufflinks and tiepins, that could only be worn ironically. He recognized a navy-blue suit jacket that was the only one he remembered his father ever wearing, the collar stiff with hair oil, and the lining in the armpits discolored from perspiration. The jacket was so narrow that Michael imagined anyone who wore it must have perpetually hunched shoulders, constricted by fabric as well as other things.

Finally, he asked to go through his father’s papers and chanced upon the one item that didn’t look like it was some kind of financial document (these he’d leave to Emily to sort out): an envelope that was addressed to his father. The postmark indicated it had been sent about a month before his father’s death, from someplace in China that he had never heard of and didn’t think he knew how to pronounce. Then his mother had come into the room, and he had put the letter in his pants pocket, where it stayed unopened for another nine months. Sometimes he would think about it, and be satisfied enough to simply know it was there, and then he forgot about it altogether. The only reason he’d rediscovered the letter that following June was because David had wanted Michael to go with him to the wedding of one of his closest female friends. Michael had taken out his sole good pair of pants and had come across the letter again.

Unfortunately, it was written in Chinese, except for one sentence toward the end of the letter—
Everything has been forgiven—
in neat but spiky handwriting, as if a crab had crawled over the page. Michael wondered if his father had racked up some kind of debt. He could ask his mother to translate, but that would bring up questions and uncomfortable memories. So instead he put an ad online for a translator, and it was answered by someone named Edison Ng, whom he arranged to meet at a coffee shop downtown. At first, he was skeptical of this skinny college kid wearing a backward baseball cap, but Edison assured him that he was fluent in both languages and could translate the letter for fifty dollars by the end of the week.

“Heavy stuff, right?” Edison commented after he’d delivered the translation. “Who do you think this Liao Weishu guy is?”

Michael was still trying to digest its contents. “Other than a friend of my father’s, I don’t know.”

“For another fifty bucks I can track him down for you online. . . .”

Michael had to admire the kid’s entrepreneurial drive. “Thanks, but I think this requires more than an Internet search. I’m going to have to go to China to find him.”

As soon as Michael spoke those words, it seemed like the most logical solution in the world. Of course he had to go to China and meet this Liao Weishu. Liao did not know that his father had passed away, and it was up to Michael to break the news to him. You didn’t write someone after forty years and just receive a letter in return. No, a personal visit was in order. Without telling anyone, he applied for a visa.

He wasn’t running away, Michael assured himself. Although there were other, very good reasons for him to get out of the city. The heat, which made his apartment feel crappier than usual. The fact that the lease on his apartment would soon be up, and he might not be able to afford to renew it. His inability to find a new job—no one wanted a graphic designer who had once accidentally turned in a report with rude drawings doodled in the corners. That it would soon be a year since his father died, and his mother would probably want him to come home and commemorate it somehow. He imagined what it would be like—an uncomfortable dinner at home with Emily, who would be preoccupied with her latest case; and Julian, who would hover awkwardly on the periphery; and his mother, who would try to fill the silence with chatter, answering questions no one asked. Also, there was David. By that time, he and Michael would have known each other for around ten months, on and off, but if you counted the times they were on, it would only be around seven months. Not that anyone was counting.

After Michael found out what the letter had said, he told David that he had changed his mind about accompanying him to the wedding of his friend, Laurel.

“I don’t understand,” David said. “You have female friends too. Like that girl who lived next door, Annie.”

“Amy. And we never dated.”

Michael found it amusing that in high school, David had played straight, captaining a couple of sports teams and dating the daughter of one of the oldest families in town. Laurel’s wedding was on the grounds of an organic farm, and Michael was sure he would be the only Asian person in attendance, aside from a couple of trophy girlfriends. Or maybe he would be the trophy boyfriend.

“This isn’t what I signed up for,” he told David. “Being your plus one.”

“Fine,” David said. “But you’ll be missing out on some amazing grass-fed beef. Or is it free-range beef? Anyway, you know, beef that’s so fresh it talks back to you.” His tone was playful, but clearly he was troubled by Michael’s reluctance to be considered a couple.

Therefore, David went alone to the wedding, which took place on a beautifully sunny day in late June, a day on which Michael stayed inside his crappy apartment and only ventured outside in the evening to get something to eat. When he came back, David was waiting for him, sitting on the top step underneath the skylight that was plastered darkly with pigeon droppings.

“How was it?” Michael asked.

“Wholesome and bourgeois,” David said. Then, after a pause, “If you were there, we could have made fun of the flower arrangements. Fucking modernist sculptures, they were.”

“I missed you, too,” Michael admitted, before realizing a moment later that David had not actually said that he’d missed him.

But it didn’t matter, because then they were kissing, and somehow Michael managed to unlock his door, and they moved as if in a choreographed dance the few feet across the room from the door to the futon that David always swore he would catch something from, and things were all right again.

That is, until a few weeks later, when David suggested Michael move in with him. By that time Michael had received his visa and was close to maxing out his credit card after purchasing a plane ticket, among other travel preparations. It was almost too easy to become upset at David and accuse him of things that were only partially true, before storming out of David’s apartment and ignoring his calls. This way he didn’t have to tell David anything about what he was intending to do, to explain himself when he didn’t even know why he was taking this trip.

Michael realizes, though, as the train winds its way through the plateaus of northwestern China, this trip has everything to do with David Wheeler, and it was set in motion over a year before.

 

That summer morning, Michael had made plans to meet a friend at a restaurant in Chelsea, a place that guaranteed a wait of about an hour, followed by awful service. Thus, he was already not in a very good mood when he came to Fifth Avenue and found his way blocked by hordes of shirtless young men, cheering on a street full of more shirtless young men elevated in gaudily decorated floats. He had forgotten about the Gay Pride Parade.

Normally, Michael scorned this kind of event. Was there really a need to emphasize your otherness, to flaunt it in other people’s faces? He had spent so much of his life hiding—hiding where his parents had come from in high school, hiding his boring suburban upbringing in college, hiding his lack of corporate ambition at work—that it was second nature to hide a less visible aspect of himself as well.

After struggling through the crowd for several minutes, he couldn’t find a way to cross the street. He gave up and was about to call his friend to cancel when he heard a voice behind him say, “This sucks, doesn’t it?”