The Expatriates (4 page)

She and Clarke flew to Hong Kong for a few days to house-hunt and get the lay of the land. The real estate agent, a young Chinese woman whose glasses steamed up in the humidity whenever she got out of the air-conditioned car, clutched a clipboard and had an earpiece permanently stuck in her ear. Her name was Rosacea. Margaret later discovered that the curious English names that locals gave themselves were cause for much merriment in the expat community. She and Clarke
found themselves that first weekend at a dinner party where someone insisted that they had known a Pubic Ha and that their Rosacea was nothing special. Johnakin, Zeus, Tweety, Aids—everyone had encountered something stranger. One-upmanship was universal after all. There was a long and animated conversation about names that were one letter away from being ordinary, such as Jackon or Rimy (Jackson, Remy).

“It’s sort of a bastardization of an English name,” said one American woman.

“‘Bastardization’ seems a strong word,” Margaret said.

“You know what I mean,” said the woman impatiently.

Margaret looked around. Everyone was white, and they may have all been American, and even all from the left side of the country. She had thought that Hong Kong would be international and cosmopolitan, but she felt as if she were at a dinner party in any suburb in northern California.

She was dizzy with jet lag and sleepy from red wine, and the hostess, a nice woman from San Diego whose husband would work with Clarke, told her, when she was helping her pour the coffee, “We’ve all been there, honey. Trying to stay awake in front of the new boss or trying to look good for new friends. Be good to yourself.”

“Where are the Chinese people?” she wondered to Clarke later that night as they were getting ready for bed.

“What are you talking about?” his voice garbled as he brushed his teeth. “They’re everywhere!”

“But where was that place we were? Stanley? I felt like it was all white people. It could have been Marin County.”

He spit foam and laughed. “Look at you,” he said. “One day in Hong Kong and already you see the vast schism between white and Chinese here. What do you think you are?”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

The next day they got on the plane and flew home to rent out their house, decide what to take. Three months later, they landed back in Hong Kong and began their new life abroad as one more
iteration of that species found throughout the farthest reaches of the world: the American expatriate.

It was exciting—this young family taking on the world. Daisy, at nine, was the most upset, but she handled the transition fine. G was just three, not old enough to know anything. Before they left, he would wake up every morning and ask, “Are we in Hong Kong?” She was so in love with him at that age. Two and three, the impossibly sweet ages, where they still smelled delicious, still nestled their head into your neck. They, the bright young family, moved to Hong Kong and started their bright new future.

Now she leaves her house. Just leaves. The power of that impulse. Just leave the children. Just leave the house. It will all be here when you come back. Things will roll on without you. Questions will be answered, repairmen admitted, homework somewhat finished. Just leave. Things will be the same. A thrilling idea. One she knows is not true.

She’s been saying she’s going to the gym but driving instead to her secret room. Her need to leave her house, her family, is growing. Before, she would steal away at nine in the morning, seeing all the kids off, Clarke to the office, but she wakes up and feels as if she cannot breathe, cannot possibly go through all the motions. So she says she has a 7:00 a.m. exercise class and escapes the house at 6:30, kissing warm, groggy children good-bye, making two cups of coffee, one for Clarke, one for herself in a stainless-steel travel flask, making sure the homework is in the backpacks and Essie knows what to pack in their lunchboxes.

She drives in the near-deserted streets and parks in a local lot, where the man knows her by now, waving her in. Margaret loves driving in the open, empty streets early in the morning, seeing the world slowly wake up. She sees both women and men in clothes from the night before, puffy-faced and abashed; industrious runners, sheened with perspiration; shopkeepers, rolling up their steel awnings. She thinks that anyone up at this hour is a saint or a scoundrel, or a little bit lost. She is
removed, in her little car, driving, driving, driving, the steering wheel solid between her palms, her destiny so completely linked to her actions: If she moves right, she will be hit by a car; if she moves left, she will drive the car into the concrete wall. These certainties are what keep her grounded. She is in control here.

She goes to her apartment, and sometimes she reads a book or wanders through the Internet—she has begun bringing her laptop with her. She supposes she could just call it an office, but that doesn’t begin to describe what this place does for her.

It is a space of her own, just for her, where nothing from her real life need encroach.

This morning, though, she had waited. She had waited with her children at the bus stop in the cool December air. She had held their still-small hands in hers, feeling their frail bones. And they had let her, because they knew she needed it. The preschool buses really get to her. They rumble up the hill, filled with small children and their small, curious faces. On one bus this morning, a little girl had stared out, her blank face painted white and black like a dog, framed in the window. Like a moment out of a surrealist film. Then the bus rumbled past, and the girl with the face paint was gone, vanished. These are the moments that fill her with a temporary, bittersweet gratitude, that she is here, on this gray sidewalk, with her children by her side, an empty day stretched out before her after they have gone to their respective classrooms with their respective teachers, the temperate blue sky above dotted with floating clouds. And her fear that it will all go away, again.

Her children went off to school this morning, she had a meeting with a party planner, and then she came here, to her secret place.

It is here that she allows herself to think. She is in the bathtub. She is naked. She is alone.

She is a woman who has two children. Not three.

She sits in the warm water, embryonic, floating, and wonders how to begin living with that fact as a base.

W
OULD
THINGS
have been different had she not gone on the boat trip? Never met Margaret? She thinks about that possibility until the unfairness makes her breathless.

Junk trips were a common weekend excursion. On Saturday or Sunday mornings, boaters congregated on far-flung piers or in the cool marble lobby of the Aberdeen Marina Club or the more basic Boat Club, with swimsuits and towels packed in L.L. Bean canvas totes; PARKnSHOP bags filled with paper napkins and plates, plastic forks and cups; coolers with marinated chicken wings, cold potato and pasta salads, chopped-up fruit, bottles of wine. In this case, the boat trip had been organized for a friend’s fortieth birthday, Barbara Chang Miller, a Korean woman married to an American man, with two young children. Barbara had been like a big sister to Mercy. They had met at a Columbia alumni event, and she had taken Mercy under her wing and introduced her to some people, which she had appreciated, since the twenty-something scene was a bit of a goldfish bowl and it was nice to escape it every once in a while to hang out with real adults. Mercy brought a bottle of sauvignon blanc and a linen scarf bought in Stanley Market as a birthday present for Barbara.

It was September but still hot, as it tended to be until mid-October. The boaters greeted one another, finding their respective groups, moving slowly in the damp morning air, hair wet, clutching lattes, children scampering around exploring the corners, as they waited for everyone to arrive. When critical mass was achieved, a phone call was made to the boat to dispatch the tender, or to hire a sampan, and a smaller boat
came to take the group to the bigger boat, usually a lacquered wooden junk or a large white yacht rented out for the day.

There were around twenty people—five couples, most with children, mostly American, plus Mercy. She and Barbara were the only Asian people in the group, something she always noticed in Hong Kong, because it was pretty hard to accomplish. Mercy was introduced to Margaret and Clarke Reade, who had three kids who were dashing around the pier. Mercy had never met Margaret but had read about her in the local paper when she had consulted on some hotel garden in Mong Kok. Clarke, Margaret’s husband, looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place him. She had never met the other families. Mercy was the lone single girl.

They got on the sampan and were taken out to the boat. The boat boy hoisted them on, and there was the usual flurry of activity: the women dumping ice in the coolers, putting away the food, setting up the drinks; the men popping open beer cans and retiring to the top of the boat; children scrambling everywhere, babies wailing, mothers calling distractedly for all to be careful; the chatter and the warm smell of coconut sun lotion.

The driver started the engine, and as the boat gathered speed they settled into their roles: the children, sitting at the front, wind ruffling their hair, noses up in the air like dogs, as they sipped from soda cans; mothers gossiping in the back; the men laughing and relaxing on top.

Mercy found herself sitting next to Margaret, who on first glance seemed perfect. She was beautiful, in that polished, golden brunette way, with the perfectly peaked eyebrows and tawny skin and long, coltish limbs. She had on white knee-length shorts and a raspberry linen tunic embroidered in darker raspberry curlicues, under which she sported a red triangle bikini. From what Mercy could see, she had a kind, handsome husband, three beautiful kids, whom she patted distractedly and lovingly, and an interesting job. Women like her made Mercy itchy. How did she end up with all that? She was older
than Mercy, of course, but still, she couldn’t imagine accumulating all those things in eight years, or in eighty.

Margaret was one of those women who Mercy imagined didn’t recognize a mean person, since no one would ever be mean to her, or snotty, or distracted. She gave off the aura of someone who was someone, someone you should know, or whom it would behoove you to know. She had never known condescension in her life.

She was kind too. She asked Mercy about her work, was lovely about it. When asked about hers, Margaret tried to demur but was pressed and then told of some of the fabulous gardens she had done all over the United States.

She talked to Mercy for a while about hiking and beaches and outdoor sports, hesitated, and then asked if she’d ever want to take her kids out. “Of course, I have a helper, but what I miss is the young people who will take my children out and really talk to them and can get them moving and thinking. Kids in Hong Kong just want to sit inside in the air conditioning and play video games.” She told Mercy a story about a neighbor whose child was so spoiled he sat playing video games while a helper spooned food into his mouth. The child was eight.

This is what parents did. They told you stories about children and were outraged or delighted by some odd detail and were perplexed if you were not appropriately outraged or delighted as well. They lived so entirely in that sphere, that sphere of people with kids, that they forgot that people could have no kids and have no idea what they were talking about. But Mercy didn’t mind Margaret. She was gracious and kind and wanted to include Mercy in her life. So she said yes. She would come over and do stuff with Margaret’s children. She wondered how much she would be paid but didn’t ask. She was not good at that sort of thing.

Another mother fretted about being on a boat. “It’s like being surrounded by a giant swimming pool,” she said. “Your child could go overboard, and if you didn’t notice right away . . . ,” she said, gesturing at the wake. She sipped urgently at her white wine. Mercy
wondered why she would drink at ten in the morning if she was worried about vigilantly guarding her children’s safety.

“The Shang in Cebu is the best!” a woman said, talking about her recent vacation. “The beaches in the Philippines are so nice.” Living in Hong Kong, the exotic became affordable and everyday. Mercy herself had gone on group trips to Boracay, to Hanoi, to Bangkok, on package tours that cost about US$300 for air and hotel. Even Philena had joined in a few, slumming it in her good-natured way as they caroused in the cheap bars and beaches of Southeast Asia.

The pleasant journey took about an hour, and they anchored near the beach, the boat boy scrambling around the front, hauling the anchor off the deck. It was around eleven, and it was starting to get crowded in the water, some six boats already there. The motor turned off, the boat rocked gently, and the heat gathered in the sudden silence. Everyone turned slippery and loose in the sudden warmth. Children began to jump from the roof.

Mercy joined them. She threw off her tank top and shorts on the roof of the boat, her one-piece swimsuit underneath. She had learned to wear modest clothing around older, married people. She stepped over the low rail, gripped the white surface of the roof with her toes, felt the sun warm her shoulders. Then she leapt. The water enveloped her, harsh and cold, as she plunged. She went in deep, her body a sharp line, then struggled up, frightened. People were always dying on these trips, boozy sunny days when people drank to forget the week. You would read about them in the local paper on Monday: not missed until the boat trip home, or someone hitting his head on part of the boat as he dived, or a propeller accident, or a simple drowning.

She broke the surface and waved to Barbara, who waved back.

“You look like one of those shiny-headed seals,” Barbara said.

“Should I swim under the boat?” Mercy called.

“Aren’t you frightened?” Barbara shouted. “I would be.”

She was, but that’s why she always made herself do it.

“Watch for me on the other side,” she called, but she couldn’t tell
whether Barbara had heard her. She treaded water for a few seconds, filled her lungs, and jackknifed into the water.

She went deep, and went down, down. The silence. The loud, echoing silence always shocked her when she was in the ocean. She went deep enough to be sure to not touch the bottom of the boat, slimy and crusted with creepy shelled things. She saw the dark hulk of it in front of her, went deeper. She wondered if salt water was good for your eyes or bad, or neutral. And then came the moment when she couldn’t back out, was more than halfway. You decided to go for it or not. She fought the urge to turn back and instead swam for her life. Her head ached. She swam, powerful strokes with her arms, kicks with her legs, head stretched out as far as possible. The beginnings of panic. She swam and swam and swam. Finally, light above, her neck straining to see. She broke the surface and looked up. Air heaved into her lungs. The sun was shining. Children laughing, people talking. Life going on. No one was watching for her. Barbara had gone off, to pack something or follow some child’s cry. Mercy ducked her head underneath again and came up new. She swam to the back of the boat and hoisted herself up. She rinsed off with the freshwater shower nozzle, tears stinging her eyes, and dressed. She felt so alone. She thought that she must be getting her period. She must be melancholy for a reason.

People were starting to gather their things to make the short journey to the beach. They waved over a sampan, and the first boatload left. When the boat came back, Mercy climbed in with her beach bag that had her sunscreen and towel. An old fisherwoman was steering the boat. She had a big black brimmed hat and leathery brown skin.

She looked at Mercy, with her tanned thighs and white shorts and orange tank top. Suddenly, Mercy felt very exposed.

“
Joong gok yan?
” the woman asked. “Are you Chinese?”

Mercy shook her head no. “Korean.”

“
Hong gok yan
.” The old lady nodded. Then said in English, “You no marry.”

Mercy laughed. “What?”

“You no marry.” By this time, another couple and their toddler son had come on board—the worried mother, who had been frightened of accidents.

“Yes, I’m not married.” She smiled.

“You no marry. No have husband.”

“Yes,” she said. “Okay.”

“Never!” The woman leaned over and tugged on Mercy’s earlobes. It was so sudden she couldn’t even recoil.

“Okay, okay!” she said, laughing out of shock.

“Your ear say no children.” The old woman looked at the other woman. “She have no children. But you never get fat,” she said to Mercy, as if by way of consolation.

The other woman looked at Mercy uneasily. “I don’t know . . . ,” she started to say.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Mercy said. “You have no idea how used to it I am. It’s fine.”

The woman looked at her with pity. “Okay,” she said. “But this woman shouldn’t say that to you.”

“Oh, what does it matter,” Mercy said. “She’s just an old woman on a fishing boat.”

The boatwoman pulled on the rope and started the engine. The boat started puttering slowly to the shore. Mercy looked out at the flat horizon and tried to arrange her face in a pleasant expression. When they reached the shore, she got out in thigh-deep water and helped to pull the boat in so she could receive the boy from his mother. She reached her arms out.

“No, thank you,” said the woman. “Bill will get him.” She waited for her husband to get out of the boat and then handed over the child.

“I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” Mercy said, holding on to the boat so the woman could clamber out.

“Jenny,” said the woman. “And Bill, and our son is Jack.”

“My name is Mercy,” she said. She was so tightly wound she didn’t
know whether she was mad at Jenny or at the fisherwoman or at the world.

They all arrived at the beach and wended their way to the barbecue pits.

Lunch was jovial, lubricated. The men poured out charcoal and tried to light the fire, swearing merrily. “Man make fire,” Barbara’s husband grunted.

When the charcoals glowed orange, they laid down chicken wire and roasted the chicken wings while drinking bottle after bottle of beer. Jenny was nervous about Jack being so close to the fire and kept talking about it.

Another woman looked at Mercy’s wet hair and said, “You are so brave. I haven’t swum in Hong Kong waters since I saw a bloody Kotex floating by.” The others hooted, and Mercy felt stupid.

“It’s so hot,” she murmured, twisting her hair back. “How can you not swim?”

“Yes!” Barbara said. “You are all old, afraid people. Mercy is the only one who has joie de vivre. She is young! You should try to be more like her.” Barbara was from Korea, and her English was not perfect despite Columbia, but she was the warmest person Mercy had ever met. She invited every stray to her house, cooked them
jigae
and
mandu
, and was the den mother for stray Koreans in Hong Kong. Mercy smiled at Barbara gratefully.

A man from New Jersey with a sharp face said, “What’s with the Normals?”

“What?” said Margaret. “What do you mean?”

“I just interviewed a guy from Beijing Normal University. That’s different from Beijing University, right?”

“It’s more of a teacher’s college,” said Barbara’s husband, who was in Beijing every week for work.

Mercy watched Clarke sip his beer, and suddenly it clicked. She knew where she knew him from.

She had been on an elevator with him, and he had been with another man. Two anonymously handsome Western men in suits. They were everywhere in Central. She had, uncharacteristically, been laden with shopping bags, as she had been tasked to buy group birthday presents for a few friends, since she was the only one not working at the time, and she supposed she had looked like a spoiled princess.

“Women!” the other man had said to Clarke, as he scanned her carelessly. “Women and their shopping.”

She had been stunned. The man spoke as if she were invisible, or as if she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Later she had thought of all the things she could have said. Like “I went to Columbia!” or “Because you men take all the high-paying jobs.” Or something. The idea that she was entirely inconsequential to the men in a small elevator was hideous to her at that moment, struggling as she was to find a job, find her rent money, find her life. She turned red, almost stamped her feet, struggled to find something to say. And then they got off. She was left steaming, unfulfilled. And here Clarke was, sitting across from her, as confident as ever, as unknowing, married to a perfect woman who was presumably exempt from the assumptions of him and his ilk.