The Expatriates (28 page)

S
HE
IS
WALKING
through IFC running errands when she is accosted by an Indian man.

“You are lucky,” he says, “but you are sad. Can I tell you what will happen next?”

She looks at his eyes, and he smiles ingratiatingly. He is dressed in a cheap suit, the kind that makes you sad because the effort must be so great, like when she lived in New York City and once the Chinese deliveryman was dressed in a suit. To show you they are still hoping. She has heard of these men who accost you in public places, who offer to tell you your fortune and try to reel you in. She remembers reading about a court case where one woman had given her life savings to a psychic and then come to her senses.

“What do you think will happen?” she asks.

“I sense you are missing someone,” he says. So vague it could apply to anyone, and yet. . . .

“Margaret!” she hears. It’s Hilary Starr.

“Oh, hello,” she says, turning to her.

“What are you doing?” She pulls Margaret away from the man. “Haven’t you heard what these men do?” she asks, glaring at him. “Sometimes they blow some sort of gas in your face that makes you drowsy and susceptible. It’s dangerous.”

“Urban myth, surely,” Margaret says, although she’s not sure.

“This man is not the solution,” Hilary says. “Do you want to get a coffee? I have to tell you the insane thing that just happened to me.”

“Sure,” Margaret says. They find a Starbucks and order lattes.

“I just had lunch with David,” Hilary says. “I wanted to tell him that I’m going ahead with adoption. I don’t know if you knew, but I’ve been having this boy come to my house for several months for piano lessons. He’s seven, Julian, and I’ve decided I want to adopt him.”

Margaret had heard vaguely about this and nods.

“That’s wonderful, Hilary. Congratulations.”

“But get this! So I’m telling him because I want to keep his name on the forms because it’s easier to adopt as a couple, and then he tells me he’s gotten some girl pregnant!”

Margaret claps her hand over her mouth. “Come on!” she says. “No way.” It feels good to be having this conversation about other things, other people.

“Yes! And she’s keeping the baby! She’s young, some Korean American girl who went to Columbia.” Hilary keeps talking, not realizing that Margaret has stopped reacting, gone white with shock.

Hilary stops after a while. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“Wait,” Margaret says. “A Korean girl? From Columbia? What’s her name?”

“A strange name. Mercy? Milly?”

As if she had summoned the girl into her universe again, just by writing the e-mail.

Margaret gets up abruptly, uncertainly, as if she is drunk, chair clattering to the floor behind her, and walks out, leaving Hilary agape in her wake.

T
HE
ODDEST
THING
. She ran into Margaret after leaving David, and full of the news, she asked her to coffee so she could tell someone, share with someone. Why does it not seem real until you’ve told someone?

But when she told her the news, Margaret got up and ran, like someone was after her. She left her latte steaming on the table.

Hilary let her go, then, thinking it over, it hit her.

Of course! The girl.

The girl who lost G. The nanny. David’s girl. The same.

Jesus.

S
HE
HAS
TO WRITE BACK
, of course. But what to write?

Maybe meet face to face? But the baby, her swollen stomach. She doesn’t want to spring that on her.

She goes home that day, having sold an antique chest to a nice older couple from Indiana. She helps them fill out the shipping forms, and they pay with traveler’s checks, something she hasn’t seen in years. She feels useful, good, as if she has a place in the world.

At home, her mother is making
kimchi jjigae
, one of her favorites.

“Thanks, Mom,” she says. “That smells really good.”

“When I was pregnant with you, I always want the spicy food.”

They sit down to eat at her tiny folding table, one of them on the bed, the other on the chair. Mercy wants to weep, because it feels so nice to be sitting here with someone who loves her unconditionally.

“Are you going to move?” her mother asks. “This place so small.”

Mercy knows what her mother is asking. “I don’t know,” she says.

“Coming soon,” she says. “Four months and you’re going to be more and more uncomfortable.”

“I know,” she says. “But I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“We could go back to New York,” her mother says. “You can come home. Have more space. And baby can be born in America.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she says. “I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

“I can help you, Mercy.” Her mother moves over to sit next to her. Mercy can smell her familiar smell—the lotion she rubs on her hands after she finishes cooking, mixed with the scent of
doenjang
, a unique, pungent odor that brings her back to childhood.

Mercy’s eyes fill with tears. “
Umma
,” she says: Mom. And she breaks down.

She tells her mother everything, the whole story, with all her jobs and the unemployment and how she met Margaret and went to Korea with their family, and G—her mother breathes in sharply at this part but does not interject, just lets her keep going—and how she’s been living, or not living, for the past year. She tells her about David and about Charlie and how she’s messed everything up and how she thinks she always will be messed up. She tells her how she knows she’s going to have a girl, and she’s deathly afraid for her already. Mercy has been alone with all this for so long that, while she is telling it, she is so overwhelmed with gratitude and relief that someone is there to listen that she almost feels happy. She even tells her mother about getting the man to translate the fortune booklet when she was a teenager.

Her mother listens to all this and starts crying in the middle of it, so they are both weeping together, talking and listening, sitting on the bed in the tiny apartment.

“I love you,” her mother says. “Don’t worry. You are okay. How can you not tell me before? I am your mother. I fail you.”

Mercy has watched enough Korean dramas to know that Koreans are used to tragedy and melodrama. It’s in their blood. Mothers pretend to abandon their adored child rather than let them know some secret that would hurt them, or lovers don’t tell each other the one thing that would unravel all their issues. It’s a distinctly Korean way of being, and so she fits right in.

“It sounds like a drama,” her mother says, as if reading her mind.

“I know!” she says, smiling through her tears.

“You shouldn’t think you are unlucky forever,” her mother says. “You can change your destiny. Look, I change mine by leaving your father. It reset. I don’t know how it is going to be, but it’s going to be different. It will be.”

“But what should I do? Should I write her back?”

Her mother gets a fierce look on her face. “That woman cannot tell you you are not allowed to be happy. She is not in charge of you.”

“But I ruined her life. Her family’s life.”

Mercy remembers something from her teenage years. She lost an earring at someone’s house, and after searching for a while, she went to ask her mother for help. Her mother went and scanned the area where she had lost it. “When you want to find something small like this,” she told Mercy, “you have to get down to the floor.” She lay down on the carpet and put her eye to the ground. “Come down, Mercy,” she said, gesturing. They lay on the carpet and scanned the floor at ground level. She was right: Things looked different from down there. Mercy found the earring immediately. “See,” her mother said. “You have to get down to the level of the thing. Don’t be too proud to do it.” They lay there for a moment more, Mercy absorbing the lesson, the fact that her mother was there with her, willing to get down on the floor and find something with her, teach her something. She felt lucky.

Her mother speaks again now.

“That woman has responsibility too, Mercy. She choose you to help her, and these things can happen. It is not all your fault. You can live your life. You are allowed.”

“I don’t think she’s telling me I can’t be happy. I think she just wanted to reach out.”

But people like Margaret are aliens to her mother. They are so far apart they will never be able to understand the other’s motivations or predilections. To be her, to be Mercy, always traveling back and forth from these different kinds of people, is to be exhausted. To straddle all those viewpoints and be the translator and the mediator and never know what you yourself should be thinking.

“Thank you, Mom,” she says. They sit with their simple Korean meal, spooning up the spicy stew, feeling it burn its way down their throats, nourishing them.

She will handle the Margaret issue by herself, but she does not feel alone anymore.

I
T
HAS
BEEN RAINING
nonstop for a week. The sky opened up and never closed, and torrential, steady rain has been flooding the island. The mountains are crumbling onto the roads, where the concrete, swollen with moisture, has been caving in and creating soft, porous potholes. The sea is a muddied, swirling green full of sand and sediment; the beaches are a sodden, sorry mess.

Margaret comes across a book on the balcony, left behind by a forgetful Daisy. Now a bloated pulp of soft, tender paper, it smells rich and sweet and musty. She throws it in the garbage. The never-ending rain has made her feel hopeless but also secretly pleased that she doesn’t have to go anywhere. She stays in, empties the dehumidifiers, and regulates the temperature of her house, as if she’s in survival mode.

She enrolled Daisy and Philip in the first session of summer school with the promise that they might take a vacation after. They grumbled but acquiesced. So the summer days resemble school days a little, except slower, more soothing, the pressure let out.

Clarke e-mailed her a tentative itinerary that had them going back home in late July. He said he was going to book it unless she said no. She didn’t respond, so she assumes he has booked it. He is learning.

Today is the day she is going to meet up with Mercy.

A few days after she sent her e-mail and then found out about the pregnancy from Hilary, she received a brief note back, thanking her for reaching out and suggesting that they meet in person. Mercy suggested a few days but could only meet after six, as she worked in
Kowloon now. Not a word about the pregnancy, although Margaret didn’t really expect her to tell her over e-mail. They arranged to meet in Kowloon, close to Mercy’s work.

She calls Clarke. “I’m going out tonight,” she says. “Is it possible for you to come home early, since I have to leave by five?”

“Sure,” he says. “What are you doing?”

“I’m meeting a group of girls for dinner,” she says. If she keeps it general, he won’t ask who.

“I’m really glad,” he says. “It’s good for you to go out and spend time with friends.”

When she comes back through the kids’ rooms on her way out, she comes upon Daisy sleeping, book splayed out next to her, unusual because she is too old for naps. It must be the rain. Daisy’s hand is in the pocket of her hoodie, and it looks uncomfortable. When Margaret pulls it out, it’s clutching a bead necklace. This girl. She can break Margaret’s heart a million different ways.

If life is a continuum, and Daisy is at the beginning of an adult life and Margaret is the midpoint, where, what, is someone like Mercy? She seemed so unformed, so unknowing, a mere child still. For the first time, Margaret considers that Mercy has a family of her own, a mother, a father, possibly siblings. A family, a history, a background. All she saw before was someone in relation to herself, how Mercy could be helpful to her family, to her, for her. What Mercy did to her.

Margaret leaves to meet Mercy, wondering what, or who, she will find.

W
HEN
SHE
AND
M
ARGARET
see each other, she swallows, hard. Beautiful Margaret, still perfect looking, if a bit drenched from the rain. They sit down at the coffee shop, an out-of-the-way place in a touristy hotel. She places her hands under her belly. Margaret, always polite, doesn’t say anything.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Mercy says.

“I knew,” Margaret says.

“Really? How?”

“Hong Kong is so small,” Margaret says. “You know that.”

“It’s due in October,” Mercy says. “A Halloween baby.”

“And what will you do?” Margaret asks. An open-ended question for a fluid situation.

“I don’t know,” Mercy says. “Jeez. This has gotten intense so quickly.”

Margaret smiles. “Yes,” she says. “Maybe we should order something.”

“Don’t you think it’s funny,” Mercy says, “that people always have certain rituals? We need to meet for meals or nourishment to mark certain occasions, and we have to observe certain customs before we get into what we really feel.”

There she goes again, saying inappropriate and bizarre things at the worst times.

But Margaret smiles. “Yes, otherwise it would descend into chaos, I suppose.”

“One small way for us to distinguish ourselves from the animals.”

“You’re very smart, Mercy,” Margaret says. “I think you always have been.”

“About everything but life,” she says.

She hadn’t known what to expect, but this is okay.

The waitress comes over, and she orders a chocolate milkshake while Margaret gets a coffee. “Cravings,” she says apologetically.

“I know,” Margaret says. “I had different ones with every child. With my first, it was BLTs with fries, all the time, and with mint-chip ice cream. I gained fifty pounds!”

“I think I’m well on the way to that,” says Mercy.

They look at each other.

“So,” Margaret says, “how have you been?”

Mercy is quiet. “Not good, obviously,” she says. “But I don’t want to talk about me when it’s your family I’ve impacted so much.”

“It’s weird,” Margaret says. “I’ve thought about you so much, but in a way, I’ve not thought about you at all. Only about G.”

Silent again.

“I got a job,” Mercy says. “Through my mom at the church. Oh, my mom came over, and she’s living with me for a while.” She feels that these are okay things to talk about with Margaret, virtuous, noncontroversial things like mothers and churches.

“Oh? What kind of work?”

“Selling Korean antiques. One of the church ladies has this store. It’s just down the street, and that’s why I couldn’t meet you earlier. I work there kind of as her sales assistant. She’s nice.”

Margaret’s eyes fill with tears.

“Sorry!” Mercy says, stricken. “I’m so sorry.”

Margaret shakes her head. “I’m sorry too.”

“No, you don’t need to be sorry!” Mercy says. “I’m the one. I’m the one to be sorry forever.” As she says this, she realizes she has never apologized to Margaret, never seen her since what happened. There was the note, but that was it.

“I know,” Margaret says. “I didn’t know for a long time, but now I think I know.”

“How are Daisy and Philip? And Clarke?”

“I think everyone is doing better than me. I’m the one dragging everyone down. They tiptoe around me.”

“It’s hard to move on,” Mercy says.

“How did this all happen?” Margaret says, gesturing to Mercy’s belly.

“Oh, this,” she says. “It’s complicated. It was unexpected, to say the least.”

“I don’t mean to pry,” Margaret says. “Have you thought what you’re going to do?”

“No,” she says. “My mother wants me to go back to New York and have it there. The father’s . . .” She doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Okay,” Margaret says. Another silence.

For a moment, Mercy considers telling Margaret about being the other, the unseen, the one not in the magazine article or the news story, but she can’t see how she’s going to explain it. “I couldn’t eat for a year after what happened,” she says instead. “I felt so guilty I couldn’t do anything.”

“I don’t know what you went through,” Margaret says simply. “What I was—what I am—going through is so intense I didn’t have any time for anyone else other than my family.”

“And I’m the reason! I’m the one to blame!” She feels she has to be out front taking the blame, telling Margaret, Here is your chance! Take your best blow!

Margaret doesn’t, though. “I didn’t know what it would feel like to see you,” she says. “It’s not as painful as I thought it would be.”

“I don’t know how you’ve survived,” says Mercy, although right after she says it, she thinks it might not be the most helpful thing to say. At least she is talking about Margaret now and not about herself. She thinks that’s probably the right tack.

“I wanted to erase you so badly,” Margaret says. “I wanted you not to exist, because if you didn’t, this never would have happened. But here you are, adding to the world. That’s ironic, right?”

“I don’t know if I can handle your being kind,” Mercy blurts out.

The starts and stops of this conversation make Mercy feel as if she’s having a series of seizures. “Do you know what the opposite of talking is?” she blurts out.

Margaret is taken aback. “No, what?”

“It’s not listening. It’s waiting.”

Margaret processes, understands, then finally laughs. “Are you just waiting?” she asks. “Are you not listening to what I have to say?”

“No, no, no,” Mercy protests. “It’s just that this is a very weird conversation, and there are all these awkward pauses.”

“I’m waiting for the massive wave of hatred to flood over me,” says Margaret suddenly.

Mercy looks stricken. “I know,” she says. “It should.”

“I know it should. But I don’t feel it.”

They sit quietly. The waitress brings their drinks.

Mercy unwraps the straw. She shouldn’t have ordered this. It makes her feel like a child next to Margaret. Shouldn’t she be more strategic in every aspect of her life? She decides she must pick up the check when it comes, a forward thought that surprises her.

Margaret stirs cream into her coffee. “Were you at Clarke’s party?” she asks. “I thought I saw you, but I didn’t know why on God’s green earth you would be there.”

Mercy barks out an embarrassed laugh. “Um, I was. But I didn’t know it was Clarke’s party. I obviously wouldn’t have gone if I had known. My mom has a job at that catering company, and she asked me to help out. Hong Kong is so small, you know. So sorry.”

She wants to sink down into the earth. She wants this terrible and awkward encounter with this lovely and damaged woman to be finished. She wants to get up and leave.

But still she sits, they sit, drinking their coffee, their milkshake.
They are still bound by social convention. She supposes this is maturity, or adulthood, or life,

Mercy spoons up the melting ice cream in her milkshake and wishes, more than anything, to feel that at some point in the future, she might be happy. But she looks across the table and sees that the woman sitting there wishes for that even more desperately.