At the Heart of the Universe (37 page)

The three of them cross back and stand over him. He sits up, his hands clasping his knees, shakes his head, says over and over again how sorry he is but there's no way, right now—especially with his turned ankle—that he's going to be able to get over those logs.

“Are you sure, honey?” Clio asks. His answer is in his terrified, exhausted eyes.

“I feel like the biggest jerk in the world,” he says. “I'm sorry, Kate-zer, it's a panic attack. I tried, but—”

“I know, Dad—you tried your best. You'll do it tomorrow, in like daylight?”

“Do you have any Valiums?” Clio asks. “Maybe, if you calmed down...” He shakes his head no. She tries to think. “What if we get someone to carry you?”

“Who?”

“One of those porters, the ones who offered to carry us up the mountain. We could send Xiao Lu back to the monastery, and bring two of them back. Maybe with a stretcher?”

“Good idea,” he says. “That's the best bet. Let's see if we can make her understand that. Katie, we need a drawing.”

They manage to show Xiao Lu what they are thinking. She nods, but indicates that it will take time to go there and come back, and that as it is getting dark all of them will have to spend the night in the hut. Clio shakes her head no, it's urgent, and the three of them will go back to the hut, but she will go on, right away. Xiao Lu nods but says she will lead them there, get them settled, and then go off to the monastery, and come back later tonight with help. They can go back tomorrow morning.

“What about you and Katie going back to the monastery with her?” Pep asks.

“Leave you alone out here? And us off in the dark with her? Forget it.”

Xiao Lu indicates that they should start back to the hut.

“I'm sorry, guys,” Pep says.

“It's okay, Daddy. My daddy'll be okay. I mean like you're
the man
!” She takes his hand and they walk on together, Katie matching her stride carefully to his limp.

For the first time since her blowup with Xiao Lu, Clio looks her directly in the eye.
She looks pleased. Of course she's pleased, she's gotten what she wants
—
another chance.
Clio feels her spine stiffen, and indicates that Xiao Lu should follow Pep; she'll bring up the rear. Slowly they go back along the overgrown path through the bamboo and pines, toward the hut.

31

By the time they reach the hut night has come. Clio tries to communicate with Xiao Lu that she should leave right away for the temple to bring back the porters, but Xiao Lu is getting things organized for their stay. She lights the kerosene lanterns and stokes the stove, and shows them where everything they will need is kept. She takes them outside again and points out the firewood, the latrine, and where her drinking water comes from—a pool formed by a little waterfall spilling over a ledge in the rock face above. Pep limps along after them. His ankle is swollen badly and hurts like hell. When she leaves, he'll ice it in the pool. Filling a plastic bucket with water, Xiao Lu carries it back into the house. She puts on water for tea, and for rice for dinner—with
jung yoo
—and shows them oil and dried vegetables and fresh fruits, and what might be pieces of dried meat hanging from the rafters. Xiao Lu arranges where they will sleep—the bed, and what looks like a small straw-filled mattress and a bulky quilt on the floor.

To Clio's surprise and Katie's delight, there are a large number of bags of a Chinese rip-off of Pepperidge Farm Cheddar Goldfish—Katie's favorite. Xiao Lu points to the calligraphy of the deer and the dawn. Katie gets it at once.

“Mom, can we get up early tomorrow and feed Goldfish to the deer?”

“Of course, sweetie.” Clio is impatient with Xiao Lu, and wonders if she's gotten the message that they want her to leave at once. She urges her to
hurry
. Xiao Lu
laughs and nods, but dallies. To Clio, she seems to be stalling, as if prolonging the time with her daughter. Finally Pep and Clio lead her to the door, and she leaves. The Macys follow her outside and stand close together in the cloudy, misty night, watching the torch flicker between the pines until it might still be there, and might not. Then, feeling a sudden chill, they go back inside.

They busy themselves with making dinner—rice and soy sauce, nuts and fruit and Goldfish. Clio and Pep fight their aversion to the dirt—the dirty plates, cups, food, chopsticks—and use their sterile Handi Wipes to keep whatever their mouths touch clean. But they are ravenous, and hardly speak as they eat. With joint sighs, they finish, and sit by the fire, warm and full and safe.

“Dad, I feel kinda bad.”

“Why's that, sweetie?”

“It's like
I
did this, like I made it happen? I ran and made you run and trip and made it hard for you to cross the bridge. It's my fault, and I'm really sorry.”

“You didn't do it, Kate-zer. It just happened.”

“I know it feels that way, dear,” Clio says, “but it's not your fault.”

“
Kinda
it is.” She pauses. “Mom, there's one thing I don't get? When you said we have to get back to someplace safe, like the monastery, why isn't it safe here?”

“I just don't feel safe with her—or that
you
are safe with her.”

“You mean she'll want me back?” Clio is startled. “I heard you guys talking in the van.”

“You
heard
that?!”

“I couldn't help it, honest.” Clio and Pep nod. “So I thought about it and I mean
sure
she wants me back. It'd be worse if she
didn't
, right? I really wanted to meet her and I'm super glad, I mean, it's really something to meet your
birth mom
. But it's weird because I know I should have like really deep feelings for her?”

“We all know—”

“But maybe it's because she's so different and I'm so different from her—she's so Chinese, she makes me feel I'm like less Chinese and more American. Really, you don't have to like worry, okay?”

Clio smiles and hugs her. “Thanks, but sometimes kids don't see the whole picture. Daddy and I have a lot more years than you, and, as you said after being lost, our job is to make sure you and the family are safe. So you've got to trust us on that.”

“But on
what
? I mean like on our... our like
plight
?”

Clio and Pep smile at the word. “About making sure, honey, that if we need help from other people, we can get it.”

Katie yawns. “Can I go to sleep now?”

They get her ready for bed—she'll sleep on the mattress on the floor. She lies down and snuggles into the heavy quilt and sighs contentedly. Looking at Pep, she says, “Hey, Daddy,
coazy-coazy
! This is fun! Like the time we all camped out in our tent in the backyard and...” She's out.

Clio and Pep clear away the dishes and clean up as best they can. Gingerly, Handi-Wiping here and there, Clio beds down with Katie on the floor. Pep scrunches himself into the small, rough bed. The kerosene lantern is turned down low. The night is so quiet it seems perversely loud. Even though his heartbeat still feels fast and weird, without Xiao Lu there they both feel a touch of calm.

“Clee?”

“Hmm?”

“Think, for a sec, what
is
the actual risk here? What's the real danger? Katie's finally got the message: be careful, and stick together. We're together; we've got food, clothing, shelter—this place has been safe for human habitation for hundreds of years.”

“Call it intuition. I just don't like it.”

“What's not to like?”

“Oh, nothing,” she says, matching his flip tone, “I mean, just some minor thing like—as you yourself said—she'll grab Katie and instead of waiting for us at the next bridge she'll keep on going and disappear with her into China! Jesus!”

“But she's had chances already, and—”

“She has not. I've kept an eagle eye on them.”

He pauses. “Don't take this the wrong way, okay?”

“How can I know, until you tell me.”

“Well, right...” He takes a deep breath.
A risk, to say this. Definitely foreign territory.
“Y'know, my problem isn't the bridge—the bridge is the bridge. My problem is I can't get over it—” He blinks, smiles. “That's a dumb way to put it. But what I mean is, is that it's not out there, it's in here, in my head. And
that's
what's got to change, in me. So, well, maybe that's true of you too?”

“And why am I so afraid? I'm not usually.”

“'Course not, usually. But, well... with Katie, sometimes. Even, sometimes, a bit overprotective and—”

“Don't go there, Pep. Do
not
go there.”

“Sorry. Just
consider
it, okay? I mean we're both really on edge about it—it's a big-time fear, no question. But what
is
the fear, really? And is the fear commensurate with the risk? Is it poisoning the little time we all have with her? When we get home, will we look back and say, ‘What the
hell
were we so afraid of? Look what we missed out on!'”

Clio says nothing, fighting to control her anger—and fighting the paralysis of the control, The WASP Freeze. She tries to follow the breath, to breathe herself down.
Okay, try to open up to the possibility that you've taken this—what Katie calls “a figment”—way too far, that she's no real danger to your child, that you're making something worse of her, for some reason that has to do with... with what? Closeness? Trying to keep Katie from spiraling out, away? Fear of Katie going out into this tough world with such an innocence, such trust?
Possibilities crowd in. She feels the fist of fear unclench, a little, and the merely human ease in. And then she feels an appreciation for her husband. He's hanging in there. Blunt as a pile of rocks, but as solid, too. Maybe there's something new here. Maybe, because he himself feels humiliated, he's more open?

“Pep, you awake?”

No answer. Rocklike. Good for him.

The acrid kerosene lamp is killing her throat, her eyes. She puts it out. Pitch black but for the glow of embers in the stove. She sits back down in the chair that's squeezed between the bed and the stove and the calligraphy table.

She thinks of when she was a girl, every ritual summer like clockwork at the Hale Family Compound in the Poconos, the gangs of kids running around, the olders taking care of the youngers, one game running into another and campfires with s'mores and creaky old cabins with kerosene lanterns, wood fires and smooth wooden chairs and banisters that once were birch saplings and it was good fun, free and unbridled until the hormones hit and the boys became boys and the girls, girls, and everyone grew and fell in love and got married and had kids and was happy for a while and then was miserable and stifled and she didn't marry when it was normal and had to run away to the sexy tropics—and couldn't get back.

She stares at her sleeping daughter, who even after today seems to have no sense of the hole in the core of her soul.
Stop it! How do you know what's there? Didn't she, in a moment after our visit to the orphanage, with tears in her eyes say, “I wish I knew my birth mom”? Well, now she does. And is that better?

All at once she finds herself weeping, forcing her hands over her mouth so as not to wake her husband or child. Weeping harder for her pitiful Hale Family Practice of Forcing Yourself Not to Weep At All.

32

Pep awakens to a touch on his arm. He has no idea where he is. He stares up at a golden glowing light.
I've died and gone to heaven.
But then a face darkens the glow and a cold drop of water falls on his forehead, and he is hit by the strong scents of damp wool, kerosene, and wood fire, and he sees that the face is ancient, Chinese, the ashen-tan color of a persimmon, and wrinkled like a prune—an old Buddhist monk's face.
If this is heaven,
it's the wrong heaven, and I'm toast.

“It's okay, darling,” Clio says, touching his arm, “Xiao Lu's brought him from the monastery. I think he's a doctor.”

“A doctor? She was supposed to bring a
porter
—two porters—to carry me out. This guy looks like he needs to be carried out himself. What's up?”

“I tried to ask her, but all she does is shake her head no. Maybe there weren't any at the monastery, or she couldn't persuade anyone else to come.”

The monk grabs him by the ears, as if they are two jug handles, and forces him to stare into his eyes, which, in contrast to his ashen old face, seem to be live coals in a dying fire. “Ow! Hey, pal,” Pep says, squirming away, “take it easy!”