“I can’t take this anymore.” Connie stood and carried her bowl of soup upstairs to the master bedroom.
Tian sighed, again rattled by the exchange between the two women. If only he could make them shut up, but neither of them would give ground. His mother went on, “I told you not to break with Mansu, but you wouldn’t listen. Look what a millstone you’ve got on your back.” Mansu was Tian’s exgirlfriend. They’d broken up many years before, but somehow the woman had kept visiting his parents back in Harbin.
“Mom, don’t bring that up again,” he begged.
“You don’t have to listen to me if you don’t like it.”
“Do you mean to destroy my marriage?”
At last Meifen fell silent. Tian heard his wife sniffling upstairs. He wasn’t sure whether he should remain at the dining table or go join Connie. If he stayed with his mother, his wife would take him to task later on. But if he went to Connie, Meifen would berate him, saying he was spineless and daft. She used to teach him that a man could divorce his wife and marry another woman anytime, whereas he could never disown his mother. In Meifen’s words: “You can always trust me, because you’re part of my flesh and blood and I’ll never betray you.”
Tian took his plate, half loaded with rice and eggplant and a chunk of the fish, and went into the kitchen, where he perched on a stool and resumed eating. If only he’d thought twice before writing his mother the invitation letter needed for her visa. The old woman must still bear a grudge against him and Connie for not agreeing to sponsor his nephew, his sister’s son, who was eager to go to Toronto for college. Perhaps that was another reason Meifen wanted to wreak havoc here.
Since his mother’s arrival, Tian and his wife had slept in different rooms. That night he again stayed in the study, sleeping on a pullout couch. He didn’t go upstairs to say good night to Connie. He was afraid she would demand that he send the old woman back to China right away. Also, if he shared the bed with Connie, Meifen would lecture him the next day, saying he must be careful about his health and mustn’t indulge in sex. He’d heard her litany too often: some women were vampires determined to suck their men dry; this world had gone to seed — nowadays fewer and fewer young people were willing to become parents, and all avoided responsibilities; it was capitalism that corrupted people’s souls and made them greedier and more selfish. Oh, how long-winded she could become! Just the thought of her prattling would set Tian’s head reeling.
Before leaving for work the next morning, he drew a map of the nearby streets for his mother and urged her to go out some so that she might feel less lonesome—“stir-crazy” was actually the word that came to his mouth, but he didn’t let it out. She might like some of the shops downtown and could buy something with the eighty dollars he’d just given her. “Don’t be afraid of getting lost,” he assured her. She should be able to find her way back as long as she had the address he’d written down for her — someone could give her directions.
At work Tian drank a lot of coffee to keep himself awake. His scalp was numb and his eyes heavy and throbbing a little as he was crunching numbers. If only he could have slept two or three more hours a day. Ever since his mother had arrived, he’d suffered from sleep deficiency. He would wake up before daybreak, missing the warmth of Connie’s smooth skin and their wide bed, but he dared not enter the master bedroom. He was certain she wouldn’t let him snuggle under the comforter or touch her. She always gave the excuse that her head would go numb and muddled in class if they had sex early in the morning. That day at work, despite the strong coffee he’d been drinking, Tian couldn’t help yawning and had to take care not to drop off.
Toward midmorning Bill Nangy, the manager of the company, stepped into the large, low-ceilinged room and went up to Tracy Malloy, whose cubicle was next to Tian’s. “Tracy,” Bill said, “can I speak to you in my office a minute?”
All the eyes turned to plump Tracy as she walked away with their boss, her head bowed a little. The second she disappeared past the door, half a dozen people stood up in their cubicles, some grinning while others shook their heads. Tracy, a good-natured thirtysomething, had started working there long before Tian. He liked her, though she talked too much. Others had warned her to keep her mouth shut at work, but she’d never mended her ways.
A few minutes later Tracy came out, scratching the back of her ear, and forced a smile. “Got the ax,” she told her colleagues, her eyes red and watery. She slouched into her cubicle to gather her belongings.
“It’s a shame,” Tian said to her, and rested his elbow on top of the chest-high wall, making one of his sloping shoulders higher than the other.
“I knew this was coming,” she muttered. “Bill said he would allow me to stay another week, but I won’t. Just sick of it.”
“Don’t be too upset. I’m sure more of us will go.”
“Probably. Bill said there’ll be more layoffs.”
“I’ll be the next, I guess.”
“Don’t jinx yourself, Tian.”
Tracy put her eyeglass case beside her coffee cup. She didn’t have much stuff — a few photos of her niece and nephews and of a Himalayan cat named Daffie, a half-used pack of chewing gum, a pocket hairbrush, a compact, a romance novel, a small Ziploc bag containing rubber bands, ballpoints, Post-its, dental floss, a ChapStick. Tian turned his eyes away as though the pile of her belongings, not enough to fill her tote bag, upset him more than her dismissal.
As Tracy was leaving, more people got up and some spoke to her. “Terribly sorry, Tracy.” “Take care.” “Good luck.” “Keep in touch, Tracy.” Some of the voices actually sounded relieved and even cheerful. Tracy shook hands with a few and waved at the rest while mouthing “Thank you.”
The second she went out the door, George, an orange-haired man who always wore a necktie at work, said, “This is it,” as if to assure everyone that they were all safe.
“I don’t think so. More of us will get canned,” Tian said gloomily.
Someone cackled as if Tian had cracked a joke. He didn’t laugh or say another word. He sat down and tapped the spacebar on the keyboard to bring the monitor back to life.
“Oh, I never thought Flushing was such a convenient place, like a big county seat back home,” his mother said to him that evening. She had gone downtown in the morning and had a wonderful time there. She tried some beef and lamb kebabs at a street corner and ate a tiny steamer of buns stuffed with chives, lean pork, and crabmeat at a Shanghai restaurant. She also bought a bag of mung bean noodles for only $1.20. “Really cheap,” she said. “Now I believe it’s true that all China’s best stuff is in the U.S.”
Tian smiled without speaking. He stowed her purchase in the cabinet under the sink because Connie couldn’t eat bean noodles. He put a pot of water on the stove and was going to make rice porridge for dinner.
From that day on, Meifen often went out during the day and reported to Tian on her adventures. Before he left for work in the morning, he’d make sure she had enough pocket money. Gradually Meifen got to know people. Some of them were also from the northeast of China and were happy to converse with her, especially those who frequented the eateries that specialized in Mandarin cuisine — pies, pancakes, sauerkraut, sausages, grilled meats, moo shu, noodles, and dumplings. In a small park she ran into some old women pushing their grandchildren in strollers. She chatted with them, and found out that one woman had lived here for more than a decade and wouldn’t go back to Wuhan City anymore because all her children and grandchildren were in North America now. How Meifen envied those old grandmas, she told Tian, especially the one who had twin grandkids. If only she could live a life such as theirs.