But he learned. He could not help but learn, as vigilant as he was for any sliver of instruction or advice. And this is what Oliver revealed to Fan he was best at, his truest gift: he was instantly able to determine who possessed expertise or useful knowledge, and then glean from them whatever he could, even if they were against him, which most everyone was at the beginning, his classmates and teammates and coaches and even his violin teacher, who had never worked with a Chartered student before. The only one who had been immediately welcoming to him was a very quiet but self-collected Vikram Upendra, who noted an error in a second-order partial differential equation Oliver had written out for the class, mentioning it to Oliver only afterward to make fun of their conceited instructor, who believed himself a rare genius who should have been designing propulsion systems or proprietary trading platforms.
Oliver admired Vik’s mind, for sure, but mostly for how unruffled he was, how he let everything come to him and then made it fit into his own idiosyncratic measure. This could never be Oliver’s way, but hanging out with Vik helped him understand the value of not always pushing and striving at full tilt, that there were situations best handled by patience or throttling back or maybe — and this had never occurred to him — by doing nothing at all. The funny thing was that there was a worrisome period in which his research seemed to have stalled, until one day he asked himself what Vik might do and proceeded to halve his large staff so they could concentrate their efforts on simpler approaches to the problem. Soon thereafter there was a breakthrough, and whether it was mere coincidence didn’t matter, because in Oliver’s own mind, Vik had a credit in his success.
It’s why I could do nothing to him the day of the party, he confessed to Fan. They had stopped as usual at the coffee bar, Oliver having his iced Americano, Fan a tangerine juice.
I was going to punch him out. I was going to strangle him. But I couldn’t. He said he was sorry, which I could see he genuinely was. That was it. That was my friend Vik. He could have tried to excuse himself, he could have easily pointed out how lonely Betty had been these last few years when I was working at the lab at night after seeing patients. Every weekend, too. It was why they began spending a lot of time together again, just as friends would, which they didn’t try to hide and I was actually grateful for. Betty seemed much happier. And you know what? She was. I wasn’t a very present or attentive husband and father then. Before that, too.
Fan said it seemed he was quite present and attentive now.
He nodded, though somewhat absently, as surely screening in his mind was a set of pictures he would see from time to time, and forever, whether he wanted to or not.
After a pause, he said: Have you talked to Vik? Wait. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t even know why I want to know.
She said, Maybe you wish to be friends again.
Oliver thought about it. He said, I guess I do. All these years, Vik was my only real friend. But it’s too late now. It’s gone. And besides, it would be too awkward around Betty, with us acting like nothing was wrong. I appreciate it that you haven’t said anything to her. You may think this is odd. But I don’t ever want her to have to apologize to me.
It was then that Oliver got very quiet, not shedding tears but shuddering very finely, as if he were earthen inside and loosely caked and just about to shear. Fan saw how much he was resisting, and to bolster him placed her hand beside his on the café table, the simple sight of which seemed to calm him down, the two opposing forms differently sized but too similar in the proportions of the fingers to the palm, the chafed, uneven rises of knuckle, the way their thumbs turned a little too far inward, for their being anything else but true kin.
25
During the next couple of weeks, fan grew ever ingrained into the life of the Cheungs, such that it felt to them that she had always been a part of their family. They all kept saying how much they loved her presence, her indulging play with the children, how she helped Betty make design decisions and kept Oliver exercising, which relieved his stress. Even the helpers adored her, as she never minded picking up after Josey or lending a hand with the dishes. This all came easily to her, of course, being someone who was raised in a crowded household in B-Mor, embodying for Betty and Oliver all the reasons that they were expending astounding efforts and sums on this project.
The effort was all theirs but the sums, we should now note, had begun to dwarf what was actually in their accounts (especially given that they’d just built what had been a new house), as the deal with the pharmacorp had been agreed to in principle but with the minor contractual details, as one can expect with ever-complicating lawyers, still being haggled over. Of course, none of this mattered, as after word of the sale, every major Charter bank had come to the Cheungs hawking huge bridge loans at rates so low anyone would have jumped at the offers. Borrowed or not, a sizable new lode of money is a powerful thing, as everyone knows, not just the quickest balm but a device of dreams, an imagination machine that churns out the exact products of your wishing, one right after the other, so that it’s all one can do to keep up the conjuring. Maybe that’s why in B-Mor it’s always been so costly to borrow money (besides being nearly impossible to make a windfall), which we see now may be a boon, to keep us from pitfalls, of course, but also ever grounded. Our eyes on smaller prizes.
And if we understand Fan in this way, it makes sense enough that she did not prod Oliver and Betty on the question of Reg. She was well aware how all-consumed they were with the light-speed progression of the work, the two houses at this point appearing just like the architect’s full-color renderings (though in truth the serial simulations barely preceded the stages of construction), the design finally set so that each house had three entrances (a primary and two flanking) and the simple window pattern of a B-Mor structure, one atop the other on each of the three floors, the façades now cased in real bricks that had been aged in specialized weathering barns. The interiors were coming along as well, Fan doing a daily walk-through with Oliver and Betty and their architects or foremen during the shift changeover of workmen in the late afternoon, ascending the central stair of each bay as it took them to the landings of a floor’s four rooms that would soon be as plush as the trailers but were distinct compartments, the plan so unlike the overabundant airiness of the former structure. The difference here was that you could move through the various doors and openings between the bays, go up and down and across from wherever you were, the bedrooms and parlors repeated except for the very large kitchen and communal dining room in each house, which would be anchored by a long, rough-hewn plank table for up to sixteen (the pair being made right now, in fact, by a woodworker at Seneca Circus).
But even with everything moving at a breathtaking pace, Fan still tried to remind Oliver as often as she could to please follow up with this or that colleague or friend, and while he never seemed irritated by her requests or replied with any curtness, she couldn’t help but wonder whether he was intentionally not taking their calls or deleting their messages or indeed had never gotten in touch with them at all. For while she didn’t want to think it, from his perspective what benefit would it be to speed up this process of searching for her Reg? Whether they located him and could bring him here, or else found the whole hope was futile, either way would only serve to hasten the arrival of the moment when Fan must decide whether to stay with them or go. And as we recount her travails, it’s not difficult to surmise that this is the basic form of the question, no matter where she was, in B-Mor or the counties or in the soft glove of a Charter: Why did she go? Why didn’t she stay? What ill condition does she see?