The Natural Laws of Good Luck (27 page)

The diamond golf ball glittered lopsidedly there until the first opportunity I had to use it as a weapon. I had hurt feelings over some stupid thing I have no memory of now, so I took the ring, put it back in the box, and stuffed it into Zhong-hua's sock drawer. I didn't really think about it after that. A few weeks later we were driving somewhere with Zhong-hua at the wheel when I noticed with a start that
he
was wearing the ring. I said nothing. He continued to wear the ring, this huge, cheap, lady's ring. He would probably still be wearing it, except that he left it on the sink one day and I snatched it up and hid it. I've forgotten where.

The Keys to the Kingdom

“G
OODER
is not a word. We say
better
: good, better, best.”
“Better
? Oh, right. Better. Better. What you mean
best
?”

After four years, this word remained alien to my husband. It bounced right off his brain. Paroda was sitting at the kitchen table with Zhong-hua. She had an expository writing course her senior year of college and was interviewing Zhong-hua about the Cultural Revolution. The project included Zhong-hua's giving an oral presentation to the class. He told her about having to carry Mao's Little Red Book under his arm and memorize it. Throughout grade school and middle school, Zhong-hua and his classmates had no textbooks, just Mao's book. Mao said things like, “Firstly, do not fear hardship, and, secondly, do not fear death,” and “To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.”

Three times a day every Chinese citizen except babies had to read passages from Mao's book. Even feeble, bedridden elders would be propped up and the pages turned for them by others. These memorized sayings could be regurgitated as bus fare, train fare, currency at the melon stand, and protection against spittle in the face, brutal beating, or even death. Zhong-hua held his hands behind his back and stood very straight to demonstrate for Paroda
how to address a shopkeeper:
“Chairman Mao says if we have shortcomings, we are not afraid to have them pointed out because we serve the people. I want one half
jin
of peppers
.” He laughed and shook his head, ending with an abrupt one-word punctuation: “Terrible.”

Zhong-hua told Paroda about shivering through sleepless nights in the countryside. He and other youths had been sent to labor in an area plagued with earthquakes. At night they had to lie on the ground under stick shelters. Zhong-hua had taught the others how to sew their blanket between layers of plastic bags to lessen the ground chill. It was important to cover your face completely from the icy air, but some boys were claustrophobic and could not sleep. Zhong-hua said he was one of the lucky ones. Other girls and boys from the cities had been sent to distant western provinces to herd sheep on horseback through vast uninhabited territory. The bodies of those who suffered injury or illness were often not found until six months or a year later.

After Mao died, Deng Xiaoping sorted out the legacy of Maoist thought into piles of horrible mistakes and useful wisdom, condemning the former and upholding the latter. Juxtaposing these polar opposites as fraternal twins was a profoundly Chinese solution to the problem of evil. Zhong-hua remained in awe of Mao for his accomplishment in having forced a vast feudal nation across a bridge of human sacrifice into the modern industrial age. Mao believed that the old traditions condemned China to impoverishment and exploitation by the Western world. Promising prosperity and power, he broke the chain of four thousand years of tradition and pried open the people's minds with the relentless chant of change. Shins and shoulder blades and heaps of ancient bricks piled up at the center of a whirling storm of progress.

I had just gotten to sleep after staying up too late helping Sweet Sweet write yet another essay on
The Great Gatsby
and the American Dream. Zhong-hua came to bed noisily around 2:00 AM and lay on his back with his eyes wide open. After a few seconds, he elbowed me: “Po-li-ti-cal fash-en. How to say?”

“Dammit, Zhong-hua, do we have to do this now? Political faction. Political faction. Can this wait until tomorrow?”

“This very, very important thing for Paroda.” He had me there. He would never for his own sake be inspired to stay up half the night in order to enunciate “terrible things.”

“OK. Well, political faction is
zhenzhide
, right? That's political. And
zhendou
is faction, a split-off group.”

“Oh, not
zhendou
. This word is
douzhen. Douzhen
. This mean like fighting ideas. But what you mean
group
?”

“Zhong-hua! How can you not remember
group
or
better
or
exit, pot, pan, cup
, or the name of any American person other than Michael, but you can say ‘The antifreeze is probably leaking from the head gasket'?”

“No idea.”

He stayed up until three for a whole week with the dictionary. Paroda had always been Zhong-hua's cultural navigator, and he took every opportunity to repay her with life wisdom. Currently, she had a boyfriend problem. It seemed she wanted to spend more time together than he did. Zhong-hua took a study break to elucidate her love life through the analogy of closing a deal on a used car. The short version and essence of this lengthy monologue was: “You need give the salesman more space, Paroda. Take more time. Tell salesman your point of view, talk. Then you need back up, let him think about. Then, salesman will know, for this person most important thing not buy car. Most important thing is respect this person's own mind. He have separate mind, not your mind. Then he will lower the price. Sooo, you can buy car very cheaper.” Paroda groaned and covered her ears with her hands. “Mom, make him stop talking about the used-car salesman. I'm so confused I don't know if I'm the buyer or seller.” There was no subject Zhong-hua could not analyze in terms related to either the Tai Chi principles of yin and yang, used cars, or all three at once.

When the day for the class presentation arrived, Zhong-hua put on a suit and picked up Paroda at her apartment. Later Paroda
called almost crying. “Mom, they wouldn't let him talk. He had so much to say, and the professor stopped him after eight minutes. It was not fair, Mom. Everybody else got twenty minutes. He has so much to teach, and now he can't.”

“Don't worry about it. You prepared a good lesson—you and Zhong-hua. If you have something to offer, sooner or later, the world will come and get you—hey, even if you'd rather not go.”

Wise words sometimes spoke themselves—probably because I'd heard them somewhere else—and were untainted by association with my army of “terrible things,” which could in no way be compared to the Red Army, starvation, firing squads, or anything overtly threatening. My army specialized in negative thinking, a cadre of old soldiers on donkeys who slogged around conjuring a dim outlook from the details of our life: the teapots on the shelves pointing their snouts in the air; my sculptures standing around in unappreciated nakedness; Zhong-hua's unlucrative classes. He still had a few Tai Chi students: Brian, a drummer for a locally famous rock band, and Lenny, a retired Russian anesthesiologist with serious asthma. Zhong-hua called them both “Blenny.” Small John, also known as “Have Stomach John,” was an office clerk who always pleaded broke but required one-on-one instruction because he was Tai Chi–challenged. For a while, we had a “Big John,” a nurse who ultimately found it more relaxing to ride his Honda motorcycle than to learn Tai Chi. Then Russian Blenny quit.

Zhong-hua had another Tai Chi student thirty miles to the east, a seventy-six-year-old man recovering from cancer. Zhong-hua called him “Over-the-Mountain-Old-Man.” After the cost of gas and the fees for renting space for the class, this faithful student and the remaining Blenny cost us money. Zhong-hua said, “Over-the-Mountain-Old-Man seems very lonely,” and “Blenny very lovely learn Chen-style Tai Chi.”

Zhong-hua did not like my worrying. He said, “Do something, need get paid. Who pay you do this worry job? Nobody pay!”

On the ground floor of my office building was a fancy restaurant not frequented by case managers. The fashionably dressed restaurant clientele smoked on the stone steps with the homeless and disabled people served by our agency and left their wraps on the coat rack at the bottom of the stairs. Some of the street people sported very handsome hats.

There was also an elegant meeting room with a chandelier across from a large office in which a handsome middle-aged man sat at a desk, often eating a fragrant lunch delivered by the waiter. Every few days the man could be seen with a bottle of Windex and a towel polishing the massive conference table, where he met portly men whose dignified dewlaps slid about the mirrored tabletop as they nodded and frowned. In order to exit our agency or the restaurant, one had to pass between the chandeliered room and the office. The man left his door wide open and made friendly small talk to everyone who walked by, no matter how sleek or shabby.

One day as I hurried down the stairs from the fourth floor, I bumped right into the handsome man and blurted out, “Who
are
you?” He told me he was Tom Triscari, professor of business at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lally School of Management. “Business!” I said, quickly blocking his path. “My husband is a businessman from China.” I pulled out one of the business cards a friend had created for us the day before Zhong-hua headed for the Javits Center:

Zhong-hua Lu

CULTURAL NAVIGATION

Chinese Culture and Business Consultant

English / Mandarin

The man beamed. “You just made my day. Can you believe I have been waiting for someone exactly like your husband? I want to design a new course for teaching MBA students about Chinese business culture, and I need an expert's help.” I called Zhong-hua
and asked him if he could come to Troy. Without asking why, he said, “Yes!” and appeared in less than the twenty-minute drive. Professor Tom talked slowly and precisely to explain what he had in mind. Zhong-hua leaned forward and nodded: “I exactly understand.” This meeting seemed destined, even though I had kind of pushed it with the fake, yet potentially real, business cards.

Together they conjured an elaborate ruse designed to teach the students that they didn't comprehend Chinese culture and didn't know the first thing about doing business with the Chinese. Zhong-hua would pose as the CEO of a Chinese meat-grinder company called Changshi—a real meat-grinder factory in Shandong Province owned by Zhong-hua's friend. The student-run company, E-Z Grind, had to negotiate the outsourcing of its innovative nonstick grinder to the Chinese. The professor would recruit some Chinese graduate fellows to pose as Changshi executives. While the men talked inside, the mounted policeman outside leaned down from his draft horse and tucked a ticket under Zhong-hua's windshield wiper. He had parked in the building's loading zone, thinking himself lucky to find such a welcoming space close to the meeting.

The black business shoes waited pertly by our kitchen door, newly shined and ready to attend the meat-grinder meetings. Zhong-hua met with Professor Tom and the Chinese company's team a few times a week to map out the details so that the MBA students would not be tipped off that the situation was simulated. They could view the company and the products on the Changshi Web site but, not being able to read Chinese, didn't discover that Lu Zhong-hua was not employed by this company. The first meeting was scheduled for five, when my workday ended. I left fifteen minutes early and passed the meeting room on my way out of the building. The Chinese team was already sitting at the long table in straight-backed chairs, obviously waiting for Mr. Lu. I drove home and spotted the other car in the car shed. I burst in the kitchen door and there was Zhong-hua eating chicken gizzards with
wilted spinach. I cried, “Zhong-hua, aren't you supposed to be at the meeting?”

“What time is it?”

“Five o'clock.”

“Oh, I need quickly go!”

A few hours later, I heard the sound of his tires on the gravel and looked out the kitchen window to see my husband sauntering toward the house with a cigarette in his right hand and two dead pigeons dangling upside down in his left.

“Give me boil some water.”

“Zhong-hua, what the hell?”

“This meat very delicious. In my childhood times, catch this one make me very happy.”

“How did you get those birds?”

“Second Street. Just use hands, twist neck. Very easy.”

“OK, but I really don't think you should twist pigeon necks in front of Triscari's office anymore.”

Zhong-hua laid the birds on the counter and ran cold water into a pot. With one sharp nod, he agreed heartily. “You right.”

Triscari was interested in pushing his students. Some of them had a blasé inability to locate Japan, Korea, Thailand, or Cambodia on a map or to operate out of their comfort zone when it came to interacting with people from other cultures. The class he and Zhong-hua designed forced them to do just this. Triscari's candor and effusiveness were not normal, and I'm pretty sure in China he would be considered of unsound mind for those qualities alone. The other faculty members didn't care for him because he made them seem lazy and uninspired by comparison. Zhong-hua thought he was a global visionary, and I thought he was visionary because he saw in my husband the extraordinariness that he made no special effort to reveal.

I imagined Triscari as some kind of a master pickpocket, a spiffy, modern-day Robin Hood redistributing the wealth of our economically depressed town. In my projection, he knew just how the
world worked, and that could rub off on us. Silly for me to be looking for a savior under a chandelier after I spent all day teaching my clients to be their own heroes. But at the very least, the elegant, perfectly ordered office, with its paperweights, custom draperies, leather chairs, and framed romantic landscapes, had an air of purpose, and the polished desk shone as a comforting, if illusory, counterbalance to chaos. It was not illusion when I asked Triscari to take the small son of a destitute mother with cancer to a local ball game, and he said, “Of course I will.”