9
NAN went back to see his family at the end of September. Pingping and Taotao were overjoyed to have him home again, though Heidi greeted him lukewarmly. Pingping had explained to Heidi several times that Nan had gone to New York just to take a job; perhaps Heidi was afraid she might have to shelter Pingping and Taotao if Nan abandoned them. Nan had promised Heidi on the phone that he would come back as soon as he went through his training at the restaurant. Now, to convince her that he had been learning to be a chef, he cooked a dinner-wonton soup, lemon chicken, and shrimp dumplings-for the Masefields and his family. His cooking was a complete success. Livia loved the wontons so much that she wanted Nan to teach her how to make and boil them. Nan told Pingping what he had put into the stuffing, and she promised Livia that she'd get the wrappers from the Chinese grocery store in Burlington and show her how to wrap and cook wontons. Both Nan and Pingping knew that the girl would forget her interest in a matter of a day or two. Livia rarely persisted in doing anything.
Nan could stay only the weekend and would have to take Greyhound back on Monday morning. He didn't sleep in the same bed with Pingping, though they made love while Taotao was napping in the other room. She sighed afterward, saying she had missed him terribly and felt handicapped without him around, because there were many things she couldn't handle by herself. "Why can't we stay together?" she asked. "When you're not home, I'm restless and can't sleep well at night."
"I can't sleep well in New York either. Too noisy."
"Heidi asked me if we were separated."
"I'll come back soon. Honestly, I don't care about the editorial work, but the job at the restaurant is an opportunity for me to learn a trade. Just take my absence from home as a stint I'm doing, all right? I'll come back like a real chef in a few months."
"Taotao misses you too."
"I know."
"If you meet another woman you like in New York, you can spend time with her, as long as you don't catch disease and come back to us."
"Drop it! I'm too tired to have another woman. One's enough."
That stopped her. Nan remembered that before he left for America, she had said the same thing. Somehow she always thought he could make women weak in the knees. In reality he believed he wasn't attractive at all and was too quiet and too introverted to be a lady-killer. Worse, he had never been good at flirting or sweet-talking. Before coming to the States, he had heard that American colleges offered all kinds of bizarre courses. When he enrolled at Brandeis and got a copy of its curricula, he had thumbed through it to see whether there was a course in flirtation or seduction. If there had been such a class, he'd definitely have taken it.
Nan sighed, still fingering the tip of Pingping's hair while she was lying on her side, facing the back window. After the lovemaking, he still felt numb in the heart. This numbness made him gloomy. He knew she sensed his state of mind and must be feeling hurt.
What he didn't know was that she sometimes hated to go to bed with him, because sex made her feel miserable and degraded. "Cheaper than a whore," she'd chide herself afterward. Despite her undoubted love for him, despite her great effort to hold the family together, she simply couldn't always reconcile herself to the feeling that to have sex with a man who didn't love her was somewhat like self-violation. That was why she wouldn't mind that much if Nan slept with another woman, though she did fear losing him. If only he could understand how she actually felt.
She gazed at the sheets of rain rolling down the widowpanes as she listened to Nan snoring lightly.
The next morning Nan drove Taotao to the town library, where the boy checked out a stack of books. On their way back, father and son chatted about Taotao's pals at school while Nan was driving rather absentmindedly. The boy was on the math team now, but he disliked the practice for the future tournaments, which he said were more about the speed of your response than about your knowledge. There was a small traffic jam near the old town cemetery caused by an acci-dent-a pickup had broadsided a white station wagon. Approaching the site, Nan swerved into the newly opened lane marked by orange pylons. As he was coming out of the stopgap way, somehow the right-hand side of his car touched the rubber-coated front shield of a coupe, but the contact was so light that Nan wasn't even aware of it. He continued driving away.
The bottle-nosed coupe honked, then sprang forward, following him. Nan ignored it as road rage and didn't stop. He drove faster. A moment later the car overtook him and beeped again. "Pull aside!" the driver yelled at Nan, who still didn't know what was going on.
He stopped before a speed bump and stepped out of his car, his son remaining inside. A stocky man in a trench coat leaped out of the coupe and rushed over. To Nan's astonishment, the man produced a police badge and flashed it at Nan 's face, though his unbuttoned coat revealed that he wasn't wearing his uniform. His hawkish eyes blazing, he shouted, "I'm a police officer. Why did you hit my car and run?"
"When… when did I do zat?" "Just now. Don't argue with me!" "I reelly don't know what happened."
"Stop arguing. You committed a crime, d'you understand?" He slapped his flank. "I have a gun here." Indeed, he wore a pistol, though he was off duty. "Give me your driver's license!" he ordered.
"Why?"
"I said so. Give it here!"
Nan turned to look at Taotao, who was still in the car, unaware of the trouble outside. He handed his license to the policeman, who began to jot down the information while saying, "You're lucky today. If you don't stop next time, I'm gonna shoot you."
Seized by a sudden surge of heartsickness and self-pity, Nan begged, "Why don't you do it now? Keel me, please!"
"I can do that if I like." The officer kept writing without raising his eyes.
"Come on, awfficer, pull out your gahn and finish me off here. I'm sick of zis miserable life. Please shoot me!"
His earnestness surprised the man, who looked him in the face and muttered, "You're nuts!" Then he went on in an official tone of voice, "Stop bluffing! I've seen lots of wackos like you who don't give a damn about others' property."
At this point Taotao came over and stood by his father. The officer handed the driver's license back to Nan and said, "This is revoked. You can't drive anymore. You're in deep shit."
"Why not keel me instead? Come on, put me out of this suffering! I'm sick of zis uncertain life. Please fire your gahn!" Nan gulped back tears, his face twisted with pain.
"Get a grip here, man. We all have a cross to carry, and only death and taxes are certain in America. You gotta be more careful when you're driving, especially when you have your kid in your car." He glanced at Taotao, whose eyes were watering too. Without another word he turned and strode away.
On their drive back, Taotao said, "Dad, you shouldn't talk to the cop like that."
"Why?"
"You could get killed."
Nan wanted to tell his son that he'd prefer death to this life that seemed to lead nowhere and only to reduce him to nothing, but he throttled his impulse. A kind of shame washed over him. "I won't do zat again," he said.
The incident shook him deeply. He wasn't sure whether his license was really revoked. If it was, how could he get a new one? For the time being he could manage without it, but it would be indispensable when he came back to Boston eventually. He dared not ask Heidi for advice, for fear of arousing unnecessary suspicion. As a last resort, he phoned a local radio station that night, under the alias Jimmy, to ask the talk-show host.
The call went through. The gentleman told Nan on the air, "It doesn't work that way, Jimmy. An off-duty officer has no right to revoke anyone's driver's license. He isn't even entitled to issue a ticket for a traffic violation. That means your license is still valid. Don't worry about it."