The Expatriates (22 page)

S
HE
GOES
to the hotel, and luckily, the room is available, although it's only 7:00 a.m. They remember her from before, and the hotel manager escorts her to her room, only barely stifling his curiosity about why she is back in Seoul. The room is cold, and she turns up the thermostat before pulling back the bedcovers and huddling under the comforter.

The black-eye is so draining she actually falls asleep for an hour and wakes to find that it is already eight thirty. She calls the police station, dialing the number from memory. Mr. Park is not there. She hesitates, then calls his cell phone. When he answers, she can tell from the announcements and ambient noise that he is just emerging from the subway. He is also exasperated.

“Mrs. Reade,” he says. “I told you it was not certain. It will still take some time. You should have waited for me to call you.”

“I couldn't wait,” she says. “You should know.”

He sighs.

“Okay, I will call you when I get to the station.”

She gives him her room number at the hotel, lies down on the bed again, and turns on the television. There is a Korean morning show on, the kind with impossibly good-looking hosts and people doing funny tricks for their fifteen minutes. The sound of the show helps, the tinny music, the relentless upbeat voices. Her brain is distracted. It reminds her of when she went to a dentist and he wiggled her lip while he administered the novocaine, and it helped a lot with the discomfort.

So part of her mind listens as a woman comes on in
ajumma
clothes, clothes for a middle-aged housewife. Then music starts, and
a pole descends from the ceiling. She starts to strip off her dowdy clothing, to reveal an impressive body in a gold bikini. This being Korea, the bikini is still quite modest. She starts a routine on the pole that is reminiscent of Olympic gymnastics, spinning around horizontally, with her arms splayed straight. It is very impressive. The presenters talk all through her performance, oohing and aahing.

She looks at the clock: 8:50. If time passed any slower, she feels, it would be going backward.

He doesn't call until nine thirty. She jumps when the phone rings.

“Mrs. Reade,” he says. “There is no news to report. The boy is still answering questions.”

“Aren't there photos?” she asks. “Or can I go there?”

There is a pause. She always feel brash and impolite in Korea, as if she's always asking for more.

“I will call you back,” he says.

Clarke has e-mailed, saying he will arrive around two. She starts to feel stirrings of hunger but doesn't want to leave the room in case Mr. Park calls, and she's not sure her cell phone will work properly, so she orders coffee and some pancakes from room service.

The phone rings again while the food is being delivered.

“Mrs. Reade,” Mr. Park says. His voice is gentle. “There has been mistake,” he says. “I am so sorry.”

Her heart plummets so fast, so deep, that she feels dizzy from the altitude change within her.

“What?” she manages to say.

“I'm so sorry,” he says. “The child has another family that has claimed him. It happened very fast. They are the correct family.”

In one corner of her mind, she can still hear the tinny sounds of the television. In another, she is aware of a black hole that she must avoid at all costs. She is teetering on the edge of it, peering down, wondering how she will prevent herself from falling. She does this by feeling a sudden surge of virulent anger toward Mr. Park.

“But WHY?” she cries. “WHY did you call me and tell me there
was a chance? Why did you get my hopes up?” She begins to sob, wildly and openly.

“WHY?” She bangs the phone down.

She screams, screams again. It feels good, so she keeps doing it. The phone rings, and she ignores it. Her throat is raw and her voice giving out, so then she crawls under the blankets and climbs into a little ball at the bottom of the bed.

She cannot live; she cannot not live. The child, the children. She almost forgets how to breathe. The stifling air inside the blankets makes it even more difficult. She embraces the difficulty, the suffocating feeling, the frantic scrabble for oxygen. She almost passes out and then has to throw off the blankets before she does.

She lies there quietly, breathing deeply, the cold air.

There is a knock on the door.

“Mrs. Reade,” says a female voice. “Mrs. Reade. Is everything all right?”

She almost giggles at the question but succeeds in choking the laugh down.

“Sorry,” she calls. “Everything is okay now.”

A pause. Then the knock again.

“So sorry, Mrs. Reade. Can you open the door? I just need to check.”

She lies for a minute, and then gives in to the inevitable, what she has to do if she decides to stay in the room, stay in a world where people do normal things and, thus, have a chance to get to normal herself. She gets up and opens the door to a pretty young Korean girl in her twenties.

“I'm fine,” she says. “Sorry about the disturbance.”

The girl bows. “So sorry to disturb you. But our other guests were worried. I will leave you now, unless you need something.”

“Thank you,” she says.

She closes the door and goes back to the bed and lies down, in the fetal position.

What had Dr. Stein said to her back in those first days? “Your pain is so raw and intense. It's like nerves that have been sheared off, and you are feeling wild, vibrant pain with no painkiller. I know it is unbearable. I know you cannot accept this new reality. I promise you: You can survive this, you must survive this, and time will make it bearable. You will be able to live. Time will help you.”

She remembers this. And how to cope. When you feel the grief about to hit you like a tidal wave, you breathe deeply. You decide whether you're going to let yourself go there, or whether you're going to get up and write a grocery list instead. You go through the motions of life and wonder that you are able. When you want to kill yourself from the pain, you write down everything you are grateful for. You go for a walk. You look at the children you still have. You hum, so the silence doesn't overwhelm you.

So it wasn't G. The main thing.

She must call Clarke, she remembers. Another thing. So he won't get on the plane. But when she dials, he has already turned off his phone, is on the plane already. She hates this window of inaccessibility, so unusual in this day and age. The children are at school. They didn't tell them anything, not wanting to get their hopes up. They think she is here to do legal paperwork. So she is here, in this hotel room, by herself, with nothing to do until Clarke gets here. Then they can fly back together.

People go back to work after tragedy; people need something to do. If she hadn't had Daisy and Philip, what would she have done? They had given her a lifeline with which to tether herself. And she wonders, as she has before, if she has selfishly had her children to give her joy, to give her life a facile meaning she never has to question. Who would question someone who spends her life taking care of her children? Isn't that the very meaning of life? She remembers reading a story in the paper about single women in Vietnam having children as they got older. One of them told the reporter it was so that she would have someone to
take care of her in her old age. The bald practicality of the statement had taken her breath away. But wasn't that what everyone did, they just dressed it up in prettier words?

There is a burst of applause from the television. It startles her back into the moment. She checks her watch. Ten thirty.

She decides to go to the department store so she is surrounded by people and light. She puts on her shoes and hesitates over her coat until she remembers she can get there through one of those underground tunnels.

At the store, she goes to the basement, where they have dozens of food stalls and stands. She buys a cup of coffee and a brioche and sits down to eat. It's still quiet, being a weekday, and just a few people are sitting around her.

Remember this, she thinks. The hot, fragrant coffee. The buttery, flaky bread. Feel these. Taste these. Stay here.

Later she goes up to the top floor, where they have children's clothes. She buys a coat for Daisy, a pair of pants for Philip, and goes back to the hotel.

People are different in hotels. She always has to get into a bathrobe and climb into bed when she's alone in one. It's because the bed is the focus of the entire room. There's rarely room for a couch or somewhere to sit, so the logical thing seems to be to get into bed. She lies to one side, by habit—she has become used to Clarke and various children sharing her bed, something the children had done while young, which had been resurrected full force after the incident. Before, when they were infants and toddlers, she remembers waking in the middle of the night to find one, two, sometimes three children in there with them, with their stuttered, nighttime movements, often sitting bolt upright in sleep and then falling down again, their shallow, quick breaths while dreaming. Sometimes she would stay awake to watch them, lying there with their small, solid bodies, sprawled insensate, completely vulnerable, and kiss their temples, their sweaty scalps, smell their sweet breath. Then she would steal away to one of their beds so she could get some sleep.

She drifts into sleep and is woken by the sound of the door being opened. Clarke comes in. He smiles when he sees her, full of hope. Her stomach drops all over again. When he sees her expression, his face falls.

“So?” he asks.

“No,” she says.

He sits down on the foot of the bed and holds his head in his hands.

She puts her hands, palms flat, on his back, delicately, as if they might hurt him.

Her husband is a good man, and this whole thing has affected him in a way that is so vastly different from the way it has affected her that it has almost destroyed their marriage. They have taken turns comforting each other, but he has been the one to keep the family together, to try to make it whole, to encourage her to move forward. That is the way it usually is, it has been explained to her, but it is still unsettling to see how he tries to pretend that everything will be okay. She cannot imagine it, even as she sees how it has to be that way for Daisy and Philip. In some of her more interior moments, she even admits that she is being the selfish one, while he is the one with the harder job.

He turns. His eyes are rimmed with tears. “I just . . . ,” he starts.

“I know,” she says.

He reaches for her. There is still this. This has remained. So far in the back of her head she has never articulated it out loud. But a faint whisper. Maybe another will come. Maybe.

H
ER
APPETITE
has returned with a vengeance, a cacophonous hunger that surprises even her with its ferocity. Pregnancy is hollowing her out with cravings. Her days of eating lettuce slicked with oil and vinegar, just to fill the hours, are but a distant memory.

She and Charlie are at a new, hot restaurant she has chosen, a week into whatever it is they have going.

“This salmon has been harmoniously raised,” Mercy says, reading off the menu, raising an eyebrow.

“What?” Charlie says.

She tries to suppress her irritation and fails. She pops a piece of bread in her mouth.

“It's funny,” she says. “It's funny that it says that the salmon is harmoniously raised.” I'm being didactic, she thinks, and then thinks, Charlie doesn't know what that word means.

He looks at her, shrugs his shoulders.

“You wanted to come here,” he says, but he's not bothered.

“Because it's ridiculous, you know? Like when they say the tuna is line-caught? Do you know what that is about?”

“No,” he says, buttering a roll.

“Because all these people are crazy, and they want to know where their food came from, or how it was raised, in what kind of environment. Like when they say the tuna is line-caught, it means that they didn't fish with nets, because dolphins get caught in the nets and die, and people don't want to think that there is collateral damage or side effects from when they eat their seared yellowfin with cilantro mustard.”

He never picks up the thought and runs with it.

“Like
Portlandia
. Have you ever seen it? The whole locavore, crazy liberal thing? And this salmon. It's such bullshit. Have you ever heard of the salmon farms and the color wheels? The people who raise salmon have special feed that will dye the flesh, and the supermarkets and buyers can choose the color they want on a color wheel, and the fish farmers tweak the feed. It's like our idea of what color salmon should be, that orange with white stripes, or the idea that tuna should be that dark red. It's like a giant conspiracy of our own stupidity.”

She might as well be speaking Greek.

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” he says.

“Because you don't read the
New Yorker
, or the blogs that I do,” she says. “You are not interested at all in the same things. How can you not know anything about this stuff?”

She hates hearing herself even as she speaks.

“I do have a job,” he says.

Here is a man who is buying her dinner at an expensive restaurant she chose, who is kind to her, who is good in bed. And yet she is the one who feels annoyed. Oh, and here is a man who has no idea she is carrying another man's baby.

When that thought comes to her, she folds the menu and puts it down. She was starving, but now her appetite collapses.

“You know, you are so American,” he says. It is a neutral statement, she thinks, but he says it in such a way that she doesn't know what he is talking about.

“I have no idea what that means,” she says, trying not to sound combative.

“Americans are so involved in small, meaningless details. Asians are practical. I thought you were more practical, but when I hear you talking about organic salmon and stuff like that, I see you are a lot more American than I thought.”

“Oh,” she says. Of course he said organic salmon, which was missing the entire point. “Does it bother you? Do you like it or not like it?”

He throws his hands up. “I don't like it or not like it. I prefer not to spend time thinking about such stupid things!”

Stung, she asks, “What do you prefer to think about?”

He sips his drink. “Things like work, if I'm doing well. Whether I should stay in this field or whether I should do something else. I'd like to find a girlfriend who could become a wife”—his gaze is steady on hers—“stuff like that, which is important, which will impact my life. Not whether the salmon is the organic or not.”

“Do you think about stuff like that all the time?” she asks, wonderingly. “You have to have some moments of silly thoughts.”

“I guess,” he says, in a tone that means he doesn't.

“You live in a world without irony,” she says.

“You are always bringing up that word,” he says with exasperation. “Irony. Or meta. You are always saying things are meta. I have no idea what you're talking about.”

This is not going the way she planned. She thought that tonight she would tell him about G. Not about the baby yet. Baby steps. Ha ha.

“Sorry,” she says. Time to reset.

He is exasperated, she can see. Not the best way to start.

They order. He orders the salmon, without any apparent irony. She orders the pesto pasta. He gets a bottle of wine, although she says she will just sip at her glass.

“You don't drink much,” he says.

“No,” she says.

Silence.

“How is work?” she asks.

“I had two almost all-nighters this week,” he says. “One for a Chinese electronics company that's about to IPO and also a Malaysian food company. I got home at four in the morning and had to be back at the office by eight.”

“Ouch,” she says.

“It's like this for everyone when they start,” he says. “You work hard and pay your dues.”

“So I hear,” she says.

“Are you looking for a new job?” he asks.

“Yes, and my mom is too,” she jokes.

He smiles. “That must be difficult,” he says. “I can't imagine living with my mother, although a lot of people here live with family until they're married. That doesn't work for me. Not with my parents. We're too different.”

Mercy is reminded of those marriage manuals from the 1950s that get passed around via e-mail or Facebook every once in a while: “When your husband gets home from work, don't nag him. Ask him about his day while bringing him a drink and his slippers.” The slippers part always reminded her of a dog.

“So I wanted to say,” she starts, then thinks she should wait a bit, maybe until the appetizers come, so stops.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, come on. You can say what you want to say,” he says. “You should feel comfortable with me.”

“Except we just had a quite uncomfortable exchange.”

“That?” He looks surprised. “You think that is uncomfortable? That's just us talking and figuring out who we are in relation to each other.”

Sometimes he is surprisingly fluent in English and in emotions.

“Oh, well, I'm glad you think that.”

His appetizer comes, asparagus spears drizzled with a reddish oil.

“Do you want some?” He pushes the plate to the center of the table and asks the waiter for two small plates so they can share. This small generosity makes her eyes fill.

“You are crying?” he says, incredulous. “What is going on?”

“I'm just . . . emotional,” she says. “Sorry.”

“Don't apologize,” he says.

“ 'Cause there's something I want to tell you.”
I'm pregnant.

“Okay.”

“I don't know if you heard what happened to me a year ago.
Something bad happened. And it was my fault, and I've been trying to deal with it this whole time. Which is why I'm not working, and why I haven't gone out or seen people in so long. But you probably don't know, because we didn't know each other back then, so you wouldn't have noticed . . .” She's blabbering out of nervousness.

He reaches over, takes her hand. “I know,” he says. “It's a small world, and everyone hears about awful things like what happened to you with the child. In Hong Kong especially. It must be very hard.”

“Yes,” she says, relieved. “It's so hard, and everyone is focused on Margaret and her family, as they should be, of course, but I feel like my life has been ruined too, and I'm not allowed to say anything or do anything, except be sorry and fade away. I don't know why I haven't moved back to the U.S., but I feel like that would be running away and I should suffer and . . . I don't know.”

“I'm glad you told me,” he says. “I've been waiting for you to tell me, but I didn't want to ask.”

“Thank you,” she says.

He doesn't say, “What happened?” or “How did it go down?” or “Do you ever talk to the family?”—all questions she has been asked by other friends, not out of empathy but more out of an unseemly, almost prurient, interest. There are those advice columns that tell you to respond, “Why do you ask?” but that's just such an aggressive thing to say to someone who is purporting to help you that she can never bring herself to say it.

“Terrible things happen all the time,” Charlie says. “You just got to keep living your life.”

“You are nice,” she says.

“I think Asian people are better at this sort of thing, suffering,” he says.

She almost laughs but realizes he is serious. “Oh?”

“Yes, of course,” he says. “Americans are very soft.”

“You like to make generalizations about Americans versus Asians.”

“Americans like to say things like that, tell people about themselves,” he says with a smile.

“Whoa, this is so meta.”

“Like that,” he says. “This meta thing is so American, and I don't really get it.”

They laugh, and she thinks, Can it really be that easy? Then remembers the other thing. And feels sick again. What would it be like, she thinks, to live life without guilt, without worry, without feeling fraudulent? What is it like to be like Philena, to traipse through life protected by attentive parents and endless bank accounts? She wishes she could have that, just for a little bit, maybe just to see her through this time in her life when everything is going wrong, and even the things that are going right are going to veer off course at some point because of the other things. How fast will this guy flee when he knows everything? She would guess pretty fast.

“What did you do today?” he asks.

Today she tried to make an appointment at a public hospital, but since she's not a permanent resident of Hong Kong, they told her that she will have to pay the nonlocal rate. Since the local rate is around HK$100 a visit and the nonlocal rate is ten times that, this is a big deal for her. She hadn't known that only permanent residents got the cheaper rate, since everyone always talked about how cheap health care was in Hong Kong. She also found out that the birth was going to cost HK$100,000 or almost US$12,000, at least as a nonlocal. Since all this is unsayable, she smiles and says something about updating her resume and browsing online.

She actually finds the whole thing weird. The fact that Charlie is willing to put up with a girl who is unemployed, ostracized, and odd just because she happens to be rather pretty and compatible with him in bed makes her question everything about the world. Why does it work this way? Is this the way everything works? What sort of value system exists that that's okay?

“Do you know Eddie Lai?” he asks. “He's from Columbia as well.”

“Name rings a bell,” she says.

“Do you want to have dinner with him and May next week? You know they just got married. They're having people over to their house, like a dinner party,” he says.

She sees it happening, this coupling, how she is being presented to society as Charlie's girlfriend. She has been witness to it, all through college and after, but it's never really happened to her. She's always been the girl to hook up with at parties, to go out with a few times, but never anything lasting. Is it really this easy? How is it that she's never been privy to it before? It's seductive, this image of newlywed bliss, the starter apartment in Mid-Levels with the IKEA furniture and the expensive groceries from the gourmet supermarket. Acting at being real adults, having dinner parties with other couples. It is so close she can practically smell the California cabernet and the chicken with garlic cloves roasting in the oven—the beginner meal for young couples playing house.

She's been with boys who are cheating on their girlfriends. She can tell the affair is even more amazing for them, the forbidden making everything heightened, double the pleasure, like a drug they snort and then fall back, hit over the head with ecstasy. In the morning comes remorse, but still, the intense pleasure is worth it for them. Damn couples, she used to think, even the illicit sex is better for them than for single people.

So if this is what it's like, she wants to enjoy it, but she can't. Because she's Mercy Cho. Because things never go right for her.

“There are a couple of long weekends coming up,” Charlie says. “Do you have any plans?”

“My whole life is kind of a long weekend,” she says.

“True.” He grins.

“It's Buddha's birthday, right?”

“Yeah, and May Day, and a few before,” he says. “I've been thinking about going away.”

“Oh, yeah?” she says. “Where?”

“I don't know. I want to go to a beach and drink cocktails with umbrellas on them.”

“That sounds nice,” she says.

“Want to go with me?” he asks.

“Oh!” She is surprised. This she had not expected.

“I just thought . . .” He is embarrassed, a little shy.

“That sounds great,” she says. She cannot even go on to say “but . . .” as she intended, because he beams and grabs her hand.

“Good,” he says. “My treat.”

Later she wonders what she should have said. “But I'm pregnant.” “But my mother is here.” “But why me?” All things she is thinking. Anyway, she will have several weeks to mess things up with him, so it doesn't really matter. Sometimes she lets herself imagine what would have happened if she had met Charlie before she met David. Would her life have spooled out in this wonderful, unimaginably effortless way? Girl meets boy, boy likes girl, boy pulls girl out of her awful life. But then she reminds herself that's a fairy tale, and of all people, she should be the last to believe in fairy
tales.