Mary was having dinner with my parents back in Houston that night. I spoke to my parents over the phone, and made sure everything was all right. "Mary is looking after us. She is such a nice girl!" my niang told me.
Then I spoke to Mary. "How is everything in Houston?" I asked.
"Fine, your parents are adorable! I've just bought them some Chinese cabbage and pork and they have made me some delicious dumplings!"
"Mary, I miss you. I want to ask you something…" My heart thumped as I spoke. I was so nervous and so hopelessly backward in trying to find the appropriate words. I just wanted to say, "Will you marry me?" but I was too scared. What if she said no?
My fumbling continued, my voice shaking. "Mary, you are such a special person in my heart and the most beautiful person in the world. I feel that you are a much better human being than I am. Sometimes I don't feel that I deserve you. Would you still love me the same when I have a long silver beard at the end of my life?"
"Li." Mary sounded impatient. "What are you trying to say?" I knew she was thinking, for god's sake just get on with it! "Are you trying to tell me that you want to spend the rest of your life with me?"
"Yes! Do you think we can be happy together, for the rest of our lives?" I still couldn't say what I wanted to say.
"Li," she said matter-of-factly, "you are the dearest person in my life. I will love you until I die. Of course we can be happy together for the rest of our lives."
Asking Mary to marry me was the hardest, the bravest and the luckiest thing I had ever done in my life. My heart soared into the air. Now I had found my soul mate. My niang was ecstatic. Even my dia was happy, though his reaction wasn't quite as spontaneous as my niang's.
Mary told her parents about our engagement immediately, and of course they were happy, but being Catholics they were somewhat uneasy about their daughter not being able to have a traditional wedding because of my previous divorce. So one of my friends, who was also Catholic, set up a meeting for me with a priest, Father Monaghan.
Father Monaghan was a chubby, friendly person. He wore a pair of spectacles and a priest's robe. I hesitated in front of this rather ordinary-looking man-he didn't look like a messenger of God to me. "Nice to meet you, Father Mon…" I struggled with the pronunciation.
"Monaghan," he said helpfully. "Tell me about your problems."
I told him everything-my failed marriage with Elizabeth, my defection story, which he knew well enough already, my love for Mary, her parents' sincere wish that their daughter could be married in the Catholic Church.
"Does Mary love you as much as you love her?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied.
"Do you believe in any religion?" he asked.
"No, I was never allowed to believe in any religion. Except Mao's communism," I replied.
"Do you believe in God?" he asked seriously.
This was the first time anyone had asked me this and I had never given it much thought. I remembered looking up into the sky as a child and imagining the gods above, whoever they might be. I remembered flying my kite back home in my village and imagining my secret communication channel up to the gods, saying my prayers and sending up my secret wishes. I thought of every turning point in my life and I knew I'd felt a great force guiding me, but I could never put a finger on what that was.
"Yes, I do believe there is a god," I finally replied.
Then Father Monaghan said, "I'm going to ask you the last and most serious question of all. I want you to take your time to consider this."
I started to feel nervous. "To be able to marry Mary you have to become a Catholic. Are you prepared to adopt the Catholic religion as your only religion for the rest of your life?"
I sat there like a statue. Communism had been my religion for over eighteen years. Ever since I'd turned my back on it I hadn't questioned myself about other religious beliefs. I had no idea what kind of differences there were between other religions. Perhaps Catholicism was like communism, I thought. But as long as I believed in God, the one God for all people in the whole world, then surely Mary and I would be able to share the same religion. So I agreed there and then to become a Catholic.
Both Mary and her parents were overwhelmed with this news. Mary's mother couldn't figure out how on earth Father Monaghan would get the Catholic Church to agree to have my first marriage annulled. But Father Monaghan assured us that because my communist background had denied me any religious freedom, our marriage within the Catholic Church would be perfectly possible.
I was supposed to have five religious education sessions with
Father Monaghan and I was given a Bible to read. I still had such difficulty understanding how Jesus could possibly have been born to a virgin. "How do we know that Jesus wasn't Joseph's child?" I asked Father Monaghan. But Father Monaghan was very patient and after just three lessons I was baptised, at the age of twenty- six. It was 1987 and our marriage date was set for October.
Two nights before our wedding, I learnt all about the tradition of the bachelor's party. I was reassured by my friends that this was one tradition that we simply had to have.
That same night I was invited to a lavish black-tie party in honour of the beautiful and glamorous Isabella Rossellini, daughter of Ingrid Bergman. But first my friends took me to an Irish pub. They gave me vodka. They all drank water, but I thought they were drinking vodka too. By the time we got to Isabella's party, my head was spinning.
Then it was on to our final stop, a men's club. We were ushered to a private VIP room. During the course of the evening, twenty- dollar, fifty-dollar, sometimes one hundred-dollar notes, were exchanged as the men were entertained by topless dancers. This was the western version of the Chinese wedding's "chaos night", I thought. Mary's brother Matthew who was with me was horrified. By one o'clock in the morning, I was exhausted and told my friends that I'd had enough of the wiggly topless dancers and I just needed to go home. But I was too drunk to drive.
"I'll drive you home!" my friend John volunteered.
"No, I will. I'm not drunk," said Matthew. But all the way home he forgot he wasn't in Australia still, and he habitually drove on the wrong side of the road.
Mary's mother was so worried about our bachelor's party. She nearly called the police to see if there were any reports of dead Chinese and Australians in any car accidents that night.
By the time of our wedding Mary and I had bought a new house with a large front yard that we could use for our wedding reception. Since my parents had just left America -they'd arrived more than six months ago-none of my family members could be there, but we had invited over fifty of our friends. How I wished my parents could be present too.
We decided to have our wedding in the little Catholic chapel where I had been baptised. The wedding rehearsals were like getting ready for a major performance. But the wedding ceremony itself was no ordinary performance: it was the defining moment of our lives.
With Charles Foster standing by my side as my best man, I nervously waited for the sound of the music that would signal Mary's entrance into the chapel. Then I saw her, the princess of my life being led down the aisle by her brother Matthew. I had feelings in my heart like never before. For a brief moment I thought I was in another time altogether. For a brief moment I could see only the image of a young and innocent eighteen-yearold Chinese girl, way back in 1946, being carried with her entourage towards her future husband's village. But then suddenly that image vanished and I saw in its place Mary's beautiful, loving face.
We went to Acapulco for our honeymoon and shared the most intimate time of our lives together. The more we understood each other the closer we grew.