Behind us, the sloping riverbank was covered with rocks, and up beyond the slope, on the esplanade, some kiosks stood, though they were unmanned. There was also a restaurant that would open to tourists in late May. Atop that structure squatted a loudspeaker that must have remained voiceless for the whole winter. On the west of the pavement spread a small cemetery, and in its center stood a tall bronze statue of a Russian soldier against an obelisk, wearing a rain cape and holding a submachine gun that had a thick, round magazine. A flock of crows perched on his helmet, shoulders, and arms, cawing hungrily. Around us people were all excited, some jabbering, some shouting, and some snapping photos of the floating ice blocks. Downriver to the east, across the water, was a cement factory where two smokestacks were spouting whitish fumes.
Juya said the riverbank was a hot spot for social gatherings in the summer and also a place where young people would come for a date. You could rent a rowboat, and if you were willing to spend more, could take a two-day cruise downstream to the Russian border in Tongjiang and Fuyuan.
“We used to pick up fish from this water when the ice was breaking open,” Juya said.
“You don’t do that anymore?” I asked.
“Uh-uh, it’s too dangerous. Besides, a lot of farmers raise fish now, so folks no longer eat fish from this polluted water. My brother, Benning, was once trapped on a block of floating ice while he was reaching out for a killed bullhead. He was scared and hollered like mad.”
“At this spot?”
“No, down the river, close to our village.”
As we were speaking, a flock of oil drums bobbed past, some glistening with patches of grease in the glare of sunlight. “He was rescued?” I asked about her brother.
“Yeah, an off-duty firefighter jumped into the water and brought him to the bank, but the man’s leg got crushed. He became a local hero for a couple months.”
“Where’s Benning now?”
“I wish I knew. He only told us he travels a lot. He’s been in touch with Juli, though. They’re very close.” There was a trace of petulance in her voice.
“I’d love to meet him,” I said.
“He used to be based in Guangdong, but I’m pretty sure he sometimes goes to Beijing.”
Her father also mentioned Benning before I took my leave the next morning. His parents wanted me to meet him when he went to the capital the next time, and they asked me to urge him to find a girl, start a family soon, and give them a grandchild. “Treat our son and daughters like your own kids,” my sister told me. At her repeated request, I promised to visit them again in a year or two.
Their warmth and hospitality moved me and made me reflect again on my parents’ secluded life. Both Gary and Nellie had been loners and rarely mixed with others except for a few relatives. Although I loved my mother, I often felt uneasy when spending time with her alone. Unhappy and frustrated, she tended to take her anger out on me, perhaps because she believed I was closer to my father than to her. When I finished my PhD and was hired by the University of Maryland, Nellie appeared underwhelmed and closemouthed, as though to show I could never live up to her expectations. She had wanted me to go to medical school, but I hated medicine. When I published my first book, a monograph on the U.S. role in the Opium War, and got tenure, she remained unimpressed. I used to tell Henry that my mother was a troubled woman; yet the two of them got along and were fond of each other. Whenever Nellie came to visit, Henry would make shrimp scampi or chicken Parmesan for her. He was much better at cooking Italian than I was. My mother often joked about me, saying, “A slow girl can have a late blessing.” That was her way of approving my second marriage. I think she envied me.
1956–1957
Gary and Nellie got married in the summer of 1956 and moved into a bigger apartment in north Alexandria. It was on the third floor and had a living room; two bedrooms, the smaller of which he used as his study; and a narrow balcony — more than eleven hundred square feet total. For the first time in her life Nellie lived in a place that felt like her own. Her parents, despite having accepted the marriage, still could not appreciate Gary, who in their eyes was too introverted and too tense. He seemed never to let his guard down and even at parties wouldn’t touch alcohol, giving the excuse that he was going to drive afterward. (Grandpa Matt often said about Gary, “Jesus Christ, the dude kept a poker face even at his own wedding. I wonder what can make him happy.” Grandma Beth would counter, “Gary couldn’t loosen up like you ’cause he and Nellie were gonna leave early the next morning. He had to keep his head together.” The newlyweds spent their honeymoon the following week in St. Petersburg, Florida.)
Yet unlike the McCarricks’ other son-in-law, Gary was responsible and generous to his bride. Better still, he had not expected anything from her parents. Before the wedding, Nellie had talked to Gary about whether she should ask her parents for a few thousand dollars to pay for the wedding party, but he urged her not to, saying he was already grateful that they’d given her to him, that in China the groom’s family had to take care of all the expenses. That was true, but it could also have been his way to ease his guilty conscience about bigamy. He believed that, with the help of the Chinese government, he could explain and justify things to Yufeng eventually. But what could he say to Nellie? There was no way he could reveal himself as a married man to her without being exposed. This realization made him more considerate to her.
After their wedding Nellie had stopped waitressing because she wanted to raise a family. With Gary’s salary, $680 a month, she was happy she needn’t go out to work anymore. In the early days of their marriage, they enjoyed having sex, so much so that he stopped using his study at night for weeks. At times they’d go to bed even before ten p.m. (“He was like a wild animal,” Nellie confided to Lilian many years later. “He was a little rough in bed in the beginning. I had to teach him how to slow down with some foreplay and how to follow my lead.”)
Nellie found herself pregnant in the late fall of 1956. In spite of his excitement, Gary was unnerved. Now remarried and with a child on the way, he realized he’d begun putting down roots in America. More unsettling was the prospect that the longer he lived here, the deeper and wider his roots might reach. He often shuddered at such a scenario: China summoning him back and his having to leave without delay, abandoning Nellie and their child without warning. He hoped nothing like that would happen. If a departure came, he’d like to have enough time to make arrangements and untangle himself.
Nellie’s pregnancy made her moods swing capriciously. She complained a lot and often threw fits, but Gary was tolerant and solicitous. If he couldn’t stand her anymore, he would lock himself in his study, working or reading. Nellie had few friends. She spent most of her days in front of the TV and wouldn’t miss a single episode of I Love Lucy and Lassie. She even dyed her hair fiery red like Lucy’s, and when she didn’t like what Gary said, she’d grunt “Eww” in imitation of that funny woman. At dinner she would brief him on what she had watched that day, but seldom did he show much interest. She suspected that her words went in one of his ears and out the other. Once in a while she felt so frustrated that she would lash out at Gary, calling him a “swot,” a word her grandfather had used to refer to someone who stuck his nose in a book all the time. Indeed, nowadays Gary read and wrote a lot, often deep into the night, in the study that he kept strictly to himself. In there everything was in order, and he wouldn’t let Nellie tidy up the room for him. Every morning he made sure to lock his two file cabinets before going to work. Whenever he found she had entered the study in his absence, he’d blow a fuse, insisting that the nature of his job allowed nobody but himself admittance to his work space. That annoyed her, but bit by bit she gave up cleaning that room.