The Expatriates (25 page)

A
WOMAN
WHOSE
NAME
she can’t remember is thanking her for not having a costume party.

“I mean, I found myself in a toga more often my first two years here than when I was in college!”

It is true that something about being an expat often means finding yourself in a cowboy suit, or a sari. Dress-up balls, or masquerade parties, are uncommonly popular here, which is usually credited to the British influence.

“If I have to buy another cheap polyester outfit in the lanes, I’ll shoot myself,” the woman says. “There’s this Arabian Nights party at the American Club next month, and my girlfriends are going all out, getting dresses made, buying fake jewelry, and I just can’t be bothered, you know?”

Margaret assents. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Clarke stuck with someone from work she knows he doesn’t like. “Excuse me,” she says smoothly. “I just see someone. . . .”

The woman lets her go with a nod. What was her name? Shirley? Shelly? She was a mom at TASOHK whose daughter was in Daisy’s class last year.

It’s going better than she thought. She’s had a glass of champagne and feels a little looser. No more, though, as she gets jittery after more than one. She wonders whether Clarke is having a good time. She walks over to him, places her arm on his waist.

“Hello, darling,” she says. He is standing with Jack McMillan, someone who has been a thorn in his side at work ever since he arrived. He is
a man who is almost good-looking, who aspires to surfer good looks but is just one or two degrees off. His hair is an expensive golden hue, which she is certain he highlights; he booms, “Here he is!” when someone comes into the room.

“Hey, Margaret,” he drawls. He is in requisitioning or something. A Duke boy in China. Khaki pants in Guangdong.

“Hi, Jack,” she says. “How are you?”

“Not bad, not bad. Can’t believe the man here is fifty, you know?”

Jack must be forty-five.

“Age gets us all,” she says.

“Hey!” Clarke protests. “Don’t write me off. I’ve still got a few good years.”

Jack made a play for Clarke’s job when they were in Korea—a move that still leaves her breathless with wonder, that someone could be so ruthless. Still, here they are, being adult, smiling at each other. Conventions are not so easily thrown out, she’s found.

“Are you dating anyone?” she asks.

“You know,” he says. “Here and there. Actually, there.” He points to a lissome twenty-something walking toward them.

Jack is known for turning up with the latest underage models off the plane from the Ukraine or Israel, the ones who were not quite tall enough for London or New York.

“This is Svetlana,” he says when she arrives.

“Hello,” Margaret says.

Svetlana has a heavy accent that Margaret cannot decipher. “Clarke,” she says, “can you help me with something?” They escape and walk away.

“Thanks, darling,” Clarke says, kissing Margaret. “What an asshole.”

“Why do we always have to be the bigger person and invite people we hate?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But better to be the bigger person, right?”

They are waylaid immediately by another group of people, eager to congratulate the birthday boy. Margaret stands a little apart, watching
her husband talk to his friends, his business associates, wondering at him, at what a good man he is.

There is a ripple in the crowd. The children are about to do their performance.

Daisy and Philip stand in front of the crowd, shy and awkward, shifting their shoulders and looking down at the floor. From the side, Priscilla coaches them in a whisper.

“We’ve prepared a song,” Daisy says. Priscilla hits play on an iPod.

They sing a sweet song about their father, set to the tune of “It Had to Be You.” Philip’s voice, not yet changed, rises in a sweet tenor; Daisy harmonizes with him. Waiters begin to distribute glasses of champagne. Clarke finds his way over to Margaret and puts his arm around her shoulders. She puts her hand around his waist and holds on, feeling the comforting solidity of his body. Of course, she cries, tears welling and running down her face in a constant stream. She cannot stand the empty space next to her two children, the way they are standing close so their elbows are almost touching, the fact that Priscilla, a stranger, arranged this because she could not. How to cope with all the new realities of her life, which shouldn’t feel so new, so raw, still. How she feels she should be on the road to somewhere better but absolutely is not. All these emotions are drowning her, so she cries and cries, silently, hoping her children will not see.

They finish, and the audience claps enthusiastically.

“Speech, speech!” The crowd demands Clarke.

He lets her go—she can feel the warmth disappear from her when he departs—and goes to the front of the room.

Priscilla hands him a mike. He takes it and clears his throat.

“Thank you all for coming,” he says. “It means a lot to me and Margaret.” He looks at her, understanding. “Margaret and I moved here three years ago, and as we all know, Hong Kong can be a tough place to transition to, although it is a wonderful place. There are a lot of things to get used to: Work is quite different. I didn’t have to drink snake liquor back in San Francisco to get anything done, and I’ve finally learned to
call my assistant by her name without apologizing.” A big laugh. “But the thing that has made our move here doable is the people.”

He pauses.

“They often say that in expat life, your friends become your family. Because you don’t have mothers and fathers and siblings nearby to count on, you grow close to the people around you. So many of you have come to our aid in so many ways. You have taken our children to birthday parties when we could not; you have brought us food when circumstances made it impossible for us to take care of ourselves; you have shown us unimaginable kindnesses. For this, Margaret and I are truly grateful. It’s impossible to think that three years ago we did not know any of you. You are our family now, and I am so grateful that you are here to celebrate with us this birthday of mine, which I gather is quite a big one. Of course, I want to say thank you to my actual family, my mom and dad, here all the way from California, my gorgeous kids and Margaret, my amazing wife.”

The crowd waits.

“And especially to my son G, wherever he is.” His voice quavers. “We love you so much, G.” He looks down, composes himself. Margaret holds her breath.

“To you, our Hong Kong family,” he says.

Priscilla hands him a glass of champagne.

They all cheer and toast one another. The band strikes up again, and the space is filled with noise and cheer again. The moment has passed as lightly as it could. Margaret doesn’t know if she’s relieved or upset about this.

Is this all it is? Human beings have figured out that to celebrate and feel happy, you need certain elements—people, music, alcohol—and that’s all it takes to create this feeling of celebration and acknowledgment of life and time passing. The rituals we make—the elaborate wedding, the twenty-first birthday—these all signal to the world outside the changes in one’s life. And the funerals, to say good-bye to someone. The one she will never be able to do.

H
ILARY
HAS
BEEN
on pins and needles all night, waiting to see if David is coming. Olivia is well on her way to getting bombed, a combination of not knowing anyone at the party and not caring to know anyone at the party. Hilary knows most of the people here—they are on the American Club-TASOHK-Central circuit, and she is a card-carrying member of this group, even without children. She can be at this party and not feel a shred of social anxiety. The same cannot be said of Olivia, who both cares and doesn’t care. If Hilary pressed her to be honest, the truth would be that Olivia feels superior to all the expats here. Hong Kong is her real home. She owns her apartment, her daughter goes to a local school and speaks Cantonese and English perfectly. To her, the expatriates are just visiting, naïve galoots who come and screech about the jade market and getting dresses copied in Shenzhen. Not for them the rarefied rooms of the Hong Kong Club or the Stewards Box at the Jockey Club on race day. They are temporary and best ignored or tolerated until they receive their orders to return home. She would usually live her life perhaps dining next to them at Otto e Mezzo or browsing alongside them at the bookstore, never having any real interaction. Olivia has granted Hilary an exemption due to their friendship in college, when Hilary acted as a tour guide to California and the rest of America.

Then she sees David walk through the entrance, looking around. She hasn’t seen him in a long time. Not like him to be so late, but she guesses he’s a new person now. He is alone, as far as she can tell. He looks good—a little thin, but good.

She taps Olivia on the shoulder. “David just walked in.”

“Let’s go say hi!” Olivia says.

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“Oh, come on,” Olivia says, and drags her to David.

“Oh, hi, Hilary,” he says uncomfortably. “And Olivia.”

They stand awkwardly.

“How are you?” Hilary asks. “You’ve been traveling a lot?”

“Yes,” he says. “A fair amount.”

There’s an awkward pause while Olivia sways, tipsy, beside them.

“I wanted to tell you something,” Hilary says. “I was going to see if you wanted to get a meal, but I might as well tell you now.”

“Okay,” he says agreeably. Again she wonders where his calm is coming from.

“So I think I’m going to go ahead and adopt Julian,” she says.

“Oh.” A look passes over his face that she can’t interpret. Not panic, not distress, something more complicated.

“I’m going to need your help, though,” she presses on, although in the back of her mind something’s telling her it’s not a good idea. “They’re so strict and picky here. I want to keep you on the forms as my husband, and we’ll adopt him together, but it’ll be purely a formality. You don’t need to have any responsibility, and I can do a separate contract like that if you want.”

“Jesus,” he says. “That’s a lot to drop on me right now.”

Anger rises in her so quickly it feels as if her head is on fire. “Oh, you think?” she says hotly. “You think it’s a lot? You . . . asshole. You think it was a lot for you to leave without any . . . any”—she cannot find the word—“any . . . notification,” she says, using an absurd, businesslike word, “the day my mother came for her annual visit?”

“Calm down, Hilary,” he says. “I’m not saying anything bad. I’m just saying it’s a lot. And that’s part of the whole problem, you know. When you bring this up, the fact that I left is more about that it was the day your mother was coming than the fact that I left. You have some messed-up priorities.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You always, you always made me feel like I joined your family and not that you joined me, do you know what I mean?” He shakes his head. “This is not the place to be doing this.”

They stare at each other, the hostility finally bubbling to the surface.

“I didn’t come here for this,” he says finally. “I’m going to go get a drink, and we can talk about this later, not at a party, not tonight.” He walks off, shaking his head.

She looks at his receding back, trembling with anger. When had this man been her husband, someone she thought she might spend the rest of her life with? He seems like a stranger.

Olivia has been sobered up by the exchange. “Sorry, that didn’t go well, did it?” she says, and puts her arm around Hilary, who is trembling a little.

“That’s not how I imagined it,” Hilary says. “I didn’t expect him to be so . . . uncaring, or mean, even.”

“Imagine where he is,” Olivia says. “He’s had to cut you off in his mind to be able to leave. Of course, he’s not going to want to do the adoption.”

“I just thought . . .”

“I know,” Olivia says. “I’m sorry.”

O
NCE
SHE
CROUCHES
DO
WN
, she starts to plot her escape. She’ll tell her mother she doesn’t feel well, and she’ll go down and get a cab home. But then everything stops for the kids’ song and Clarke’s speech. She listens to it all, feeling sicker with every word. When it’s over, the crowd starts to buzz again, and she knows they’re going to start the dinner service soon. It’s buffet style, with open seating.

She gets up, then spots David.

Great. It’s getting even better. She starts to walk and keeps her head down. He doesn’t notice her, but then she bumps into someone.

“Oops,” says a man in a tan suit. Mercy cannot breathe.

“Hey, you okay?” He looks at her, concerned.

She nods and keeps walking. Only ten feet to the kitchen now. She sneaks a look right and sees Margaret, looking right at her. She keeps walking, swings the kitchen door open, lets it close behind her.

Blessed cacophony of heat and activity inside. She needs to find her mother.

S
HE
COULD
HAVE
S
WORN
she saw Mercy, walking to the kitchen, but it was out of the corner of her eye. Must have been someone who looked like her. What on earth would Mercy be doing at Clarke’s party? She shakes her head as if she’s seen a ghost and continues talking to Frannie Peck, who’s had a few and is encouraging Margaret to do the same. They flag down a passing waiter for another glass of wine, which seems like a good idea at the time.

A
CIGARETTE
. That’s what she needs. She doesn’t really smoke, but she could use a break. Olivia has a pack, and they take the industrial elevator down and walk through the parking garage to the street.

They light up in the street like teenage girls playing hooky. The smoke sweeps into her lungs, clarifying the moment.

“Why is smoking so bad if it feels so good?” Hilary asks. She feels light-headed, removed.

Outside, Aberdeen blinks and twinkles. It’s an industrial warehouse zone, with a truly apocalyptic waterway running through it that is filled with a mysterious murky liquid. Around them, buildings encased in scaffolding emit ghostly light.

“It feels like a Batman movie out here,” she says.

The elevator doors open again, and a young woman comes out. She looks pale and a bit unhealthy. She looks at them warily and then passes by.

“Do you want to leave?” Olivia asks. “It’s kind of boring.”

“I don’t think we can,” Hilary says. “It would be rude, wouldn’t it?”

“No one cares,” says Olivia.

“Cynic.”

The young woman stands, waiting for a taxi. Hilary can tell, in that strange way that one can always tell, that she is listening to their conversation, which is odd, because she is dressed in a waiter’s uniform and is probably local.

“So sad, isn’t it?” Hilary says. “I don’t know how you go on after something like that.”

“If anything happened to Dorothy, I would kill myself, and I’m not being melodramatic,” says Olivia. “She’s the only thing I’m living for.”

“We have to find more to live for,” Hilary says.

“You’re going to become a mother,” her friend replies. “You’ll understand. It’s the only thing that matters.”

Hilary ruminates on this, rolls it around her head, finds the thought pleasing. “I would like that to be true,” she says. “I would like that very much.”