"At least I'm not out of character-haven't forgotten how I started. All right, thanks a million!" Too sick to argue with Shubo anymore, Nan wheeled around and stalked out of the Gold Wok.
"Such a hothead," Shubo said to his wife, and cracked the joints of his fingers.
"I did promise Pingping to let her work here."
"So what? We've changed our minds. We own this place now and must run it in our own way. Once Pingping is here, Nan will poke his nose into our business for sure." He passed into English: "Too many dragons cause a drought."
"The right American idiom is 'Too many cooks spoil the soup.' "
"You know what I mean."
"But aren't Pingping and Nan our friends?"
"No friendship is unconditional."
Niyan breathed a sigh and said no more, believing he was right. In this place one had to take care of oneself. Friendship was largely based on mutual usefulness-only personal interests could bind people together.
24
EVER SINCE Nan began working at the motel, he had kept a poetry journal, which was a traditional practice of ancient Chinese poets. On the first page of his blue spiral notebook he had copied these lines from Frost's "Oven Bird":
The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.
At night he often read those lines before writing down his ideas and reflections on poetry and writing. He regretted not having started the journal earlier, which helped him organize his thoughts and also provided material for his poems. When he sat at the front desk alone, he felt at peace with himself. At long last he could sit like this, thinking and writing devotedly. How mysterious and miraculous life was! Even Pingping's back injury had done him a service, forcing him to change his life. He couldn't help but wonder whether it was the working of some supernatural power that had lifted him out of his old rut. How fortunate he was to have Pingping as his wife and fellow sufferer.
Every day he told her she must concentrate on her recuperation and mustn't work too hard on her paper cuttings, which she had begun making for Janet's store and which she enjoyed doing very much. She and her friend would split the money from the sales of her artwork, and Pingping wanted to study many patterns, improve her scissor work, and develop her craft. She imagined that someday she'd show her mother the cuttings, which would force the old lady to admit that her oldest daughter was superior to her in the art. Nan fully supported Pingping's plan and bought her rolls of paper of different colors and a set of scissors, large and small. But he advised her to take the paper cuttings mainly as a hobby, not as a profession. In other words, she mustn't give herself any pressure and must rest well, not sit too long and hurt her back again. He also told her to avoid going to the Gold Wok, which she might hate to see now. Shubo and Niyan had reorganized the business, and nowadays many Chinese customers, including a foursome glee club, would go there and sing karaoke songs until midnight.
The Wus talked about what Pingping might do after she recuperated. Ideally, she thought she'd like to get a degree in library science and work as a librarian eventually, but that was not feasible. Besides being unable to write in English and having to pay high tuition, she couldn't leave her family for college. Taotao would need her help in the next few years, and she'd feel restless when away from home. As a compromise, she thought she'd like to open a clothing store at Beaver Hill Plaza. They could import fashionable clothes from China and other Asian countries and sell them here for a good profit. They had known people in this business doing quite well in Massachusetts. So Nan went to see the owner of the plaza, who agreed to rent the Wus the suite next to Janet's store, which had been vacant for more than half a year. The Wus planned to open their shop in two or three months.
At last free of the restaurant, Nan somehow felt wary of food and had deliberately curbed his hearty appetite. These days he ate just one meal a day, usually in the evening. If he was hungry at work, he'd drink a cup of coffee with a lot of milk and sugar in it, and if hungry during the day, he'd eat a banana or an orange, as though reducing his food intake could strengthen his body and mind. He didn't know how long he could continue to do this, but he wanted to exercise his willpower fully so as to live a life different from before.
One morning, as Nan was about to leave the motel, Mr. Lee called him into his office. His boss narrowed his small, kind eyes and said, " Nan, would you like to be the manager of this place? I will give you a big raise for that."
Without thinking twice Nan replied, "No, I want to work zer night shift so zat I can take my son back from school in zee afternoon. He has some extracurricular activities." True, for the first time Taotao could join the chess club, though he wasn't good at any real sports thanks to lack of participation over the years. Before Nan had changed to his current job, the boy had had to return home immediately after school, by the bus. Now Nan would pick him up late in the afternoons, and on Thursday evenings he'd drive him to the Red Cross office in Lawrenceville for public service. Sometimes father and son talked about where Taotao would go to college. The boy, already a freshman in high school and half a head taller than his mother, always said he'd go to the Northeast for college, partly because he was still a Red Sox fan. These days he had been talking about sociology as his college major. Nan, knowing Taotao might again switch to another subject in the humanities or social sciences, didn't discourage him and just asked him to come back to see his mother at least twice a year. He suspected that his son might want to meet Livia again, and worried that she might still do drugs, but he didn't ask him. He was sure they still had e-mail contact. In time he'd try to dissuade Taotao from going to college in the Northeast, since Pingping would prefer to have him closer to home.
Mr. Lee, having expected that Nan would jump at the offer since almost a third of his wages went to health insurance, was moved by Nan 's explanation and said, "You're a good daddy. I understand."
The offer saddened Nan in a way. It reminded him of his interview seven years ago with Howard, the owner of Ding's Dumplings in Manhattan. Howard too had meant to make him a manager eventually. Nan 's life now seemed to have come back in a circle to the starting point. Yet he could see that he was no longer the same man. He had been toughened by the struggle, by the mistakes he had made, by the necessary process of acclimatization that a regular immigrant like himself would have to go through. What's more, his family had a relatively stable life. He could even say he was a better man now, wiser and more capable, and determined to follow his own heart.
When sitting at the front desk in the small hours, he'd think about his life, especially about his twelve and a half years in America. Many things previously unclear to him had become transparent. The notion of the American dream had bewildered him for a good decade; now he knew that to him, such a dream was not something to be realized but something to be pursued only. This must be the true meaning of Emerson's dictum "Hitch your wagon to a star." To be a free individual, he had to go his own way, had to endure loneliness and isolation, and had to give up the illusion of success in order to accept his diminished state as a new immigrant and as a learner of this alphabet. More than that, he had to take the risk of wasting his life without getting anywhere and of becoming a joke in others' eyes. Finally, he had to be brave enough to devote himself not to making money but to writing poetry, willing to face failure.
On Christmas Eve, which was a Friday, he wrote a poem for Ping-ping for the first time in his life. The lines came naturally and effortlessly as he jotted them down in his notebook. Seeing the words on the paper, he was moved, also awed, his vision blurred a little. The poem went: