The Natural Laws of Good Luck (30 page)

“Yeah, just this way.”

“All men do this?”

“No. You know, sometimes a very good man, a very nice man, does very terrible things. Because he wants to lift himself up higher, protect himself, or protect his family.”

“Then?”

“Make her heart dead.”

“Not you.”

“No, I am not this kind of person.”

“Just some men have men?”

“Yes. This title just talk about for man keep heart whole very hard. Talk about man inside fighting with himself. He decide do something help himself, but help himself will make another person get very, very bad situation. Long, long time, China government make many people do this way. Chairman Mao want everyone fighting with each other, fighting with self. He make political games and tell people they must follow his rules. Then change
rules. All throw away. He do this again, again, again, until people's minds change. Not just minds change—people's deep heart change. Then they know, every idea can come apart. Every good thing happening have other side, have someone get hurt. Every bad situation you can make better. Nothing is just one way. Chairman Mao let them know, world change, you need change, too.”

“This is your book,
Men Have Men
? You mean it is about how a man can keep his heart whole no matter what happens around him?”

“No, no, no. I just make title for fun. This is joke. Yeah, this is like nothing.”

I took a day off, and Zhong-hua and I drove over the mountain to return the church key, since the board of directors did not wish to discuss payment schedules or floor mopping. At the mountain pass, the high point where one half of the world rolls away to Boston and the other cascades toward home, I pulled over so that Zhong-hua could find a privacy bush. He said, “Behind part very pain.” I said I would make another doctor appointment for him. We stopped at Bennington College on the way home to pick up another financial-aid form for my next semester. I didn't mention the student loan to my husband because I had no idea how I was going to repay it. Back at home, Zhong-hua asked me where he should plant the red flower tree.

“What red flower tree?”

“In back of car. A tree from your college.”

“You bought a tree at the college?” Somehow I knew instantly that was not it. “You dug a tree up at the college, didn't you?”

“No need dig. Just pulla is OK.” He was already digging a hole near the shed. “Have small red flowers.”

“How do you know that? It's still winter, and this tree looks dead.”

“No problem. I know this kind of tree. You need every day water, then this tree will. Get other shovel; this one no good.”

“Zhong-hua, in China, do red flowers mean happiness?”

“Not mean. Just red color Chinese people like.”

“Does red stand for good luck?”

“No luck.”

“Red is . . .”

“Means good! Everything fine!” Zhong-hua tipped his chin as exclamation to each word reverberating from the alert center of his body. He clapped his hands. “That's all!”

Whispering Sages

G
RADUALLY
, my husband seemed less of an apparition and more of a solid being. Still, we were not sure he was well. We had to wait for the next test and the next. These were forays into his hepatic and pancreatic ducts with tiny instruments, like street cleaners equipped with infinitesimal gutter brushes. Whatever stuck to the bristles went under the microscope. “Mr. Lu, you are fine,” they said.

Zhong-hua didn't feel fine. They said he could return to work, but he had no work to return to. They said he should go ahead and do the things he wanted to do, but he didn't want to do, he wanted to sleep. I knew by now that visits to the doctor were likely to be a waste of time. Zhong-hua would refuse pain medications, sleeping pills, antidepressants, blood pressure drugs, stool softeners, stool hardeners, muscle relaxers, and tranquilizers, all of which had been prescribed before.

I could not discern physical from emotional pain, which was something he would never admit to harboring. He let me know that the concept of being depressed was a very foolish one in his opinion. I used to be able to fall asleep imagining that his snores were harmless winds rambling through the pines. Now they sounded more like a flooded river clogged with tree branches. His breath gurgled and eddied, struggling against treacherous currents;
it quickened and stopped, rose to voice, and fell back a swallowed rumble. He lurched back and forth, his weight and density uncompromising. He had only to roll against me to cut off my breath by compression. I took to creeping overtop him on all fours and escaping to the floor pallet in the next room with a blanket and pillow. I could still hear the disturbance through the wall.

All our efforts had not been enough to turn the ebb tide that illness had set in motion. And yet, in my eyes, my husband had struggled valiantly, rising to every challenge with a plodding thoroughness torqued with maniacal intensity. Hadn't he confounded the MBA students at the technical institute's mock negotiations with the meat-grinder company? Hadn't he crammed a hundred new words into his head to deliver a talk to Paroda's class about China?

Each night when I came home, Zhong-hua was usually still waiting for his spoonful of energy to fill up. His sleepless nights were followed by dog days. He said, “Body just want sleep.” He reminded me of the ancient monk Chen Tuan, a Tang dynasty Taoist master, famous for his sleeping meditation. Chen Tuan spent most of his 118 years this way, waking only when someone ready to benefit from his teaching approached him. His sleep was not sleep as most people think of it but rather a type of internal energy cultivation, a kind of hibernation useful for avoiding evil influences such as fighting warlords, and maybe depression.

If Zhong-hua felt a burst of zeal, like unexpected change in his pocket, he hardly knew how to spend it. He restacked the woodpile or filled in the potholes in the driveway. Zhong-hua was also in charge of the inside of the house and took sporadic initiative. One night over delicious peppered lamb soup with cilantro, Zhong-hua urged, “After eating, you need go to barn, look at books. You need hurry because barn not have electricity.”

“Why do we need electricity?”

“I want you see. Today work all day making bookshelf in barn because house too crowded.”

Now that he mentioned it, I had noticed the airiness in the house. Most of my books were gone! I was loath to condemn my husband's industry but was a little chagrined that he saw my books as clutter. I supposed words that make no sense might fairly be categorized that way. Not sure which random books had been exiled, I followed Zhong-hua into the darkening barn, where we clambered over the used-lawn-mower collection, seeing by bars of gloaming light slanting in between the barn slats. I wondered where my favorite book,
The Master of Hestviken
(an epic tetralogy by Sigrid Undset set in medieval Norway), had ended up—out here or in the house. “This time just move not-useful books.” Zhong-hua gestured toward the inner wall and lit a cigarette, watching my face. The wall had become a mosaic of many different-sized cubbyholes partitioned with scraps of pine. The cubbies ranged from the size of a shoe box to the size of two boxes of corn flakes placed side by side and were packed full of wildlife encyclopedias, poetry journals, oversize hardbacks, and stout paperbacks, stacked horizontally or vertically, but all with the spines facing in so that the titles could not be read. I paused a long time, not wanting to sound unappreciative. “Um, Zhong-hua, why are the books all facing the wrong way?”

“If need turn, can turn.”

The first time I needed a book that I suspected had been filed anonymously in the wilderness library, I was not pleased. It was cold out, and the barn was dim by the time I got off work. Surprisingly, by scanning the irregular shelves by flashlight with the approximate thickness of the book in mind, I reached up and, more often than not, found I had fixed on the title I needed. Sometimes I used the library as a kind of daily divination, just pulling down one of the books at random and letting a sentence tinder my mind.

After the book blitz, Zhong-hua resumed his supine position in front of the huge television that I had purchased out of the
Want Ad Digest
from a crippled Vietnam vet who lived in a trailer rusting in a pine woods like a forgotten lunch box in some weeds halfway to Canada. He had made me coffee on a campfire because he had no
stove, and while we drank it, his little collie got tangled up in the garden hose, stepped on the nozzle, and sprayed us in the face. The man had laughed uproariously and sputtered, “Welcome to Paradise!” A dog was good medicine.

Here I was again, thinking up cures for my husband, who was possibly only cultivating energy and not depressed. The compulsion to “fix him like a teapot” returned. I knew he liked the large breeds, particularly huge, black German shepherds. Zhong-hua would make a good trainer, but this kind of dog cost plenty. And then there would be shots, food, and the problem of containment. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed an unaffordable remedy.

The medicine we received was less majestic than the fantasy, but it had fur and four legs. One of my clients called to say her son had a litter of mutts that needed homes quickly. They were half poodle and half Jack Russell terrier. I went with Sweet Sweet to have a look. The last remaining puppy was rat-sized and trembling, his eyes completely hidden behind an untidy mop of black hair. He seemed to gaze expectantly from his perfect nostrils. The hair on top of his head was longer than the rest and stuck straight out like bird feathers. We took him to the vet for flea treatment, all two pounds of him, and the next morning a cluster of evicted fleas congregated on top of his head.

Zhong-hua grunted. “This kind of dog not interesting. I just like big dog. If you like this kind of small dog, you can take care. I don't like.” I was struck by the intensity of his rejection. Sweet Sweet played with the puppy for a few minutes and then went to her room and shut the door. A few minutes of nipping and licking sated her desire for a pet. Maybe I would have to find this dog a better home.

“What should we name him?”

“Nothing. ‘Small Dog' is OK. No need another name.”

Maybe this dog was
my
cure. Anyway, I had to leave the medicine dog with his reluctant caretaker while I went to work. When
I came home, I heard the shower running and could not find Small Dog. Then Zhong-hua stepped out naked, holding a wriggling bundle in a towel. He and Small Dog had just showered.

“This kind of dog very dirty. Need wash every day.”

I went upstairs to change my clothes. When I came back, Zhong-hua was blow-drying Small Dog. He then sprawled on the pallet with Small Dog in the crook of his arm and enjoyed an evening of watching Tai Chi videos while brushing the furry feet with an old toothbrush.

One day when the weather was just cold enough to have thinly iced the pond, I came home to find Zhong-hua and Small Dog huddled together in a blanket. Small Dog's nose peered out pathetically.

“Yeah, today Small Dog almost go to dead,” Zhong-hua reported. “He on other side of pond walking on ice top. Ice start breaking, and he fall in. He cannot swim and just crying ‘ee, ee, ee.' I cannot reach, so I get long pole with roll-around paint-house thing at end. I rolling, rolling, rolling, until I get Small Dog back to pond edge. Small Dog terrible cold and shaking. I need hold two hours, stop this terrible shaking. Now I think he OK.”

Paroda adored this dog and started visiting after work just to see him. We all stood around in the kitchen while Paroda coveted the dog, cooing and burying her face in his fluffy fur. “This dog no good,” Zhong-hua said. “Anyway, I already had this kind of dog in my child times.”

“Really? You had a dog?”

“Yeah. Same kind of dog. Wintertime. Family have no food, no warm clothes. Somebody give me tiny puppy because mother dog have no milk, cannot feed. I hold dog inside my shirt on my stomach, because I not have coat. At night I think best way is take dog in my bed, keep him warmer. This seems good way. But morning I cannot find dog. I stand up, looking around, shaking shirt, pants, blanket. Something fall out on floor, looks like black glove. Then I see black glove have small ears, have nose. This means I all night
sleep on top of dog, making him like flat pan bread. After this, my whole life I never want another dog.”

Small Dog aggravated me by pooping under the piano bench. Since I was absent all day and Zhong-hua was in charge of the home front, I first picked up the poop and next attacked my husband. “This is ridiculous. Why, with all of nature outside, can you not open the door? Good grief, what is wrong with you?”

My husband stood very still, as if he had just swallowed a horse pill and was waiting for it to hit bottom. He looked directly at me and said, “Did you see if poop have small white worms, not?”

Caught off guard, I began to consider this very pertinent question. “Noooo, I don't believe there were any white worms.”

“Good! Good!”

In this skillful manner, my husband redirected my tirades toward constructive matters. He could always slip the trap of blame without flinging retaliatory accusations. He had that sleight of hand that, while no good for gambling wins, could shuffle the cards in a flash so that the most important thing appeared on top.

Our situation seemed to be forming a Gordian knot, a pretzel that had no free end to tug on. Meanwhile, I held a meeting with my clients in the park and asked them what kinds of things might improve the quality of their lives, things that didn't cost a lot. Someone said, “Vegas,” and another, “Canada.” I shook my head, “Can't do it.” They prioritized three wishes: coffee parties with Ring Dings, sitting by the ocean (any natural body of water could substitute), and visiting the Indians on the reservation.

“The government screwed the Indians.”