Girl in Translation (33 page)

I stopped the bike. He slowly let his arms drop away from me, as if he too were reluctant to let me go. I had parked the Ducati a short distance away from his current apartment building. They lived next to the FDR Drive. The roar of the highway must have been deafening in their apartment, and the ground seemed to tremble as we walked toward their place. I stopped around the corner from the entrance. I didn’t want anyone to see us.

I swallowed. “That’s it, I guess. Ride’s over.”

He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, his eyes sadder than anything I’d ever seen.

I saw the glint of gold around his neck, under his T-shirt, and I reached out a finger and touched it. “I remember this.”

I pulled him down by the necklace around his neck. Slowly, we kissed. I was engulfed by the softness of his lips, the delicious taste of him. I had lived all these years for this kiss, so that I could be here, on this morning, with him. I would have given anything to be able to go home with him, go to our life together, with our children and no one else. Had I made the right decision? Could I have chosen the life he’d wanted for us? I hadn’t had a choice, it was simply who I was.

Then we pulled away.

There was a long moment when he looked at me with his golden eyes. Again, I drew breath and he put his finger on my lips. “Kimberly, please don’t say anything.”

He slowly lifted his necklace with the Kuan Yin pendant over his head and poured it into my hand, as he’d done so long before by the steamers at the factory.

“Take this,” he said. “Keep it. Stay safe.”

“What will you tell Vivian?”

He gazed at me steadily. “I’m going to lie and tell her I lost it.”

I knew I should have refused, given it back, but I wanted it too much. “I miss you, Matt. I will always miss you.”

Despite his sadness, he shook his head with a hint of a wry grin. “One thing I know about you, Kimberly Chang, is that you’ll always be all right.”

“Good-bye, Matt.”

He turned and walked into his apartment building, without looking back at me again.

I walked back to my bike. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at the building that contained their apartment, cherishing the knowledge that Matt was inside. Then I started to ride away but my mind and heart were so filled with him that I couldn’t help myself, and I pulled over to take one last look back.

One of the windows on the upper floors had just opened, as if that inhabitant also had too many thoughts on his mind, and someone climbed out onto one of the fire escapes. I knew it was Matt. I parked the bike on the side of the street and got off. It should have been obvious that that one was his apartment. It was crowded with plants and flowers: beautiful, that tiny fire escape filled with living things, a gentle protest against the highway and the city.

Vivian should have had my garden now. I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of that thing. Ma had taken it over for me, planting plot after plot filled with squash and winter melons, as if we were in danger of starvation. Then she would go to our bewildered neighbors with her extra vegetables in a little basket, still speaking almost no English.

“For you,” Ma said.

At first, our neighbors had either refused or tried to pay her until they realized that she lived in one of the nicer houses on their street.

“Eccentric,” they now whispered among themselves.

I got off my bike and walked a little closer. Matt stood there in the morning light, glorious in a thin T-shirt he’d changed into. He leaned on the railing while the highway rumbled behind him and the smog rose into the air. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

And then she came out.

Her hair was long now, and it blew backward in the wind. Her shoulders and arms were thin in contrast to her swollen belly. She touched his shoulder, and whatever thoughts he may have been having dissipated and he was back there, with her, his lovely wife and mother of his children. He pulled her in front of him, wrapped his arms around her, and they stood there, looking out into their future.

It started to rain as I rode, the drops beating down on my helmet like a funeral drum. It was all so much. I could let go of my past with Matt. But what really hurt was the reanimation of a dream I’d thought I’d let go of. A future of lying with him every night in our bed, raising a family together, wavered against the reflection of my headlights on the tar and disappeared into the air like smoke from a fire.

I kept his necklace inside my glove during the whole ride home. It seemed longer than usual. My mind and heart were filled with Matt, the smell of him, the feel of him. How would I ever get him out of my head again? But in the end, my emotions quieted themselves and by the time I turned onto the long driveway of our house in Westchester, I knew that someday, I would be able to fully accept it all. In a bittersweet way, I was glad I had given him his happiness with Vivian.

I parked the Ducati in front of the garage, then composed myself before walking across the lawn. As I approached the entrance, my twelve-year-old boy hurtled out the door, his gym bag in tow.

“Hey, where are you going?” I asked in Chinese.

“I’ve got baseball practice! Mom, I’m going to be late.” His Chinese, although not quite as perfect as his English, was excellent. Jason’s face was so similar to his father’s, Matt would have recognized him in a moment had he seen that photo in my office: the golden eyes, the bushy eyebrows, even the lock of hair that always fell in his face.

He was already getting his bicycle from the bike rack but I called, “Jason.”

“I have to go.”

“You forgot our special good-bye.”

He paused, then ran back to me. “I’m too old for this.”

“Come on.” I put down my helmet and gloves and slipped Matt’s necklace into my jacket pocket.

Then we both switched into English and chanted together, “I love you, give me a whack.” We gave each other a high five. “Have a great day, and I’ll be back.”

He gave me a big hug and kissed me on the cheek. As he rode away down the street, he waved to me and called, “See you later, alligator.”

In our spacious living room, Ma was wiping off her piano. The dust motes hung in the sunlit air. In her mid-fifties now, she was still beautiful. I paused in the entryway to watch her.

Without glancing at me, Ma said, “The animal doctor called again. He must worry about the cat. Although the cat doesn’t seem to be sick.” Now she looked up and raised her eyebrows, challenging me to give her more information. Andy, the gray tiger cat in question, was sitting in one of the Palladian windows behind Ma, licking his white paws.

I chose not to respond to this. I’d been surprised when Tim, our vet, slipped in an invitation to an art opening with his last bill. We’d gone out a few times since then, and I liked him because he was gentle and patient. I’d stopped telling Ma about any of the men I dated because she always wanted me to marry them. “I’m feeling a bit tired. I want to lie down.”

Ma knew something had happened. She crossed over to me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” I managed to smile.

I went upstairs and shut myself in my bedroom. I closed the shutters to darken the room, then slipped the CD from Bellini’s Norma, which I’d seen at the Met with Ma, into the stereo. I lay on the bed with Matt’s necklace in my hand and let it all wash over me.

Ma and Annette had both come with me for the abortion, both sat outside in the waiting room as I was being prepped. Before they could do anything, the doctors needed to confirm the length of the pregnancy by means of an ultrasound. A mere technicality, I’d thought. The technician smeared a viscous gel across my stomach. I had goose bumps on my skin. I felt I would die from the cold. She kept my hospital gown open so she could use the ultrasound wand to locate the fetus.

I expected a clump of cells attached to the uterine wall. I kept my mind carefully blank but without warning, an image of the fetus sprang onto the screen and I gasped. I shifted so abruptly that I dislodged her wand. The technician gave me an irritated look, which I registered in the back of my mind, but I ignored her injunction to stay still. I was riveted by the monitor.

He was doing gymnastics. A small tadpole-like figure, he pushed himself against the thick uterine walls and toppled over, swayed from side to side, swam in that enormous space with complete joy. He was defiant and playful, I imagined he was laughing. In that moment, I started to love him, Matt’s child. And mine forever.

If his father had been another man, I think I may still have gone through with it. But he was Matt’s. As soon as I saw him, I had no choice, even though our journey afterward was not easy. If it hadn’t been for my talent for school, we would all have gone under.

When I didn’t go through with the abortion, I did wonder if my relationship with Matt could possibly recover. I’d even gone to look for him, and seen him with Vivian again. How that had hurt. I didn’t know he’d already figured out what I’d done, what I’d intended to do. I could have broken them up again, I knew that. But the pain had given me more time to think, and I realized the baby didn’t actually change anything: much as it wounded me to admit it, I had to face the fact that in the end, I would have made Matt unhappy.

Ma and I brought Jason up carefully, the two women who were his only parents. He loved me so much. I was away for much of the time he was growing up. From when he was just a little boy, he noticed the rare occasions I bought something new for myself. “Pretty Mommy,” he would say. Before his round childish eyes, I truly felt beautiful. How he cried every time I had to leave, even though Ma, his grandmother, was always there for him. I would come home deep in the night to find him clutching his grandmother in his sleep, in a chair before the front door, where he’d waited for me to come home until they both fell asleep again.

The first apartment he lived in was that one in Queens, a paradise compared to the old one in Brooklyn, which he never saw. I remember Ma would run her hands over the surfaces of the furniture, the walls, the kitchen appliances in a sort of dazed surprise. I too was amazed that the walls and floor were clean and intact, that when we were all in the living room together there were still other rooms in the apartment, empty of people and insects.

I deferred Yale for a year to have him. Those were the hardest times, when Ma and I worked on sacks of jewelry at home to keep the pregnancy hidden. With both of us working as hard as we could, we could barely make the rent and bills. Then soon after Jason was born, I took double shifts sorting mail at night at the post office so I could be with him as much as possible when he was awake. At the beginning of the following school year, we all moved together to New Haven, to a little apartment close to the university. Once I was under Yale’s protection, things got a bit easier.

We got by on scholarships and loans. I worked four jobs at a time while I was a student, but I still graduated with honors and then moved on to Harvard Medical School. In those debt-ridden years before I finished medical school, I called upon any and every talent I had to become the best surgeon I could.

I gave Matt this: his life with Vivian and his family, his simple happiness. At the same time, I took away his life with us. I owed Jason a great debt, one I could never repay. I kept him from his father all these years. When I gave Matt up, I forced Jason to do the same. For my attempt at nobility, our son paid the price. He was still young enough not to ask me too much about the topic I didn’t want to talk about: his father. I knew there would be a time when he would want to know the whole truth. What would I tell him? How could I know what the truth was, so long ago, when I knew so little myself?

I sat up as the lyrics of “Sola, furtiva, al tempio” filled the room:

I break the sacred bonds.
May you live happy, forever,
Close to the one you love.

Then I took a deep breath, got off the bed and opened the door.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank first my mother, Shuet King Kwok, who taught me the meaning of kindness and courage, and my late father, Shun Kwok, who always led the way for my family.

With the publication of this debut novel, I’ve stepped into unfamiliar territory. Fortunately, my agent, Suzanne Gluck of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, knows every pathway of all the worlds I need to navigate. I have complete admiration for my entire team there, especially my international agents, Tracy Fisher and Raffaella De Angelis, and Suzanne Gluck’s assistants: Elizabeth Tingue, Caroline Donofrio and, most especially, Sarah Ceglarski.

Every single person at Riverhead has been phenomenal. With her unfailing intelligence and sensitivity, my editor, Sarah McGrath, has the ability to step inside the text. She’s the ideal reader and editor I’ve always imagined. Special thanks to Marilyn Ducksworth, Stephanie Sorensen, and Sarah McGrath’s assistant, the insightful Sarah Stein. My foreign publishers have also been wonderful, especially Juliet Annan and Maaike le Noble.

Lois Rosenthal, editor in chief of the now defunct Story magazine, was the first to pluck me out of the slush pile and teach me what fierce editing was all about. The Columbia MFA program showed me how to become a professional: in particular, Helen Schulman and Rebecca Goldstein made all the difference to me. I’m also grateful to the people who included me in the Holt textbook Elements of Literature: Third Course: Karen Peterfreund, Mary Monaco and Ann Farrar.