“Why?” she said, her voice sharpening. “Does it count for less if it wasn’t?”
“No,” he said.
“Especially when there’s a child.”
He raised his hands; she had him. But it did count for less. It would have been worse if Matt had actually loved this woman. He hadn’t, and that mattered. Right now, though, Maggie couldn’t see it. Understandably.
“Tell me what happened,” she said, and he did. He started with the night Matt met Gao Lan.
Nice girl, Carey remembered thinking when he first saw her under dancing, roving lights. Pretty. But there were endless girls who were pretty. He knew that. Matt, still somewhat green in China, did not. He saw Gao Lan across the room and begged and pestered Carey until the two of them went over to Gao Lan and her friend and bought them a drink. To Carey it was boring. They were such ordinary girls. There were better girls elsewhere. But he could not get Matt to leave that night and go somewhere else.
The way Carey told it to Maggie, he took his leave early and could only infer what had happened later. It was easier for him to convey it this way, even though it was not the truth. Actually Matt and Gao Lan had been the first to leave; they left together, and Carey saw them go. He could still see Gao Lan turning her perfect oval rice-grain face up to Matt as they walked to the door. She’d had a porcelain femininity that made her quite the opposite of Maggie, across from him now, angular, sad, intelligent.
“Was it just that one night?” she asked. “Or did it happen more times?”
“Only the one night.” Carey couldn’t be sure of that, of course, but it was what Matt had told him.
That winter Matt had come to China twice. On the second visit Gao Lan called him, and what Matt told Carey afterward was that he had broken it off with her then and there. He didn’t share any of the details, just said he didn’t want to see her. Didn’t want to talk to her.
At the time Carey had thought it unfeeling. Carey’s sympathies, if they lay anywhere, were snug in the lap of male prerogative – but there was no reason to hurt a woman, either. Matt had sheared Gao Lan away with one swipe. She didn’t like it. Carey had seen her only once since then, at a reception. She’d given him an icy stare and turned away.
“I felt sorry for her at first,” he admitted to Maggie now. “Bad about what happened. Not anymore. Not after I saw this.” He tapped the claim form. “I know he could be the father, I admit it, but at the same time I still don’t believe it. If she had his child, why would she keep quiet all this time? And – I know this sounds strange, but it’s hard to imagine a child coming from a liaison that meant so little to him.” Carey felt no need to tell Maggie that this had actually seemed to be a little more, emotionally, than the one-night stand it probably was. “A liaison that he regretted.”
“Nature doesn’t care about your feelings for someone,” she shot back. “And how do you know he regretted it? What makes you say that?”
“He told me,” Carey said, and closed his eyes. He could hear the clang of the metal door and see the bright fluorescent lights and see Matt, in the office men’s room, his head over the sink, guilty from the night before. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he said to Carey, raising his face, and Carey, who did not inhabit Matt’s universe of commitments and barely understood its layout, nevertheless read the wild mix of remorse and terror on his face. It was then he sensed that hearts had perhaps been open, along with the sex. “Do you think I could have screwed up my life?” Matt had asked from his well of misery over the sink.
“He loved you,” Carey told Maggie now. “He felt terrible after it happened because he was afraid he might lose you. He was abject. That’s why he cut it off with her. And it never happened again. One night only. I don’t know if it makes you feel any better, but he was in agony afterward.”
“How nice,” she said, voice going slightly flat. “But from what you’re telling me, the child could definitely be Matt’s.”
“I’d say there’s a good chance,” Carey said, “yes. But chances mean nothing. You need the absolute truth.”
“I need the test,” she said.
5
The classics tell us that the mysterious powers of fall create dryness ingent. heaven and metal on the earth. Of the flavors they create the pungent. Among the emotions they create grief. Grief can neither be walled away nor be held close too long. Either will lead to obsession. For someone grieving, cook with chives, ginger, coriander, and rosemary. Theirs is the pungent flavor, which draws grief up and out of the body and releases it into the air.
– LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef
Maggie had called Sam Liang to say she would be late, but even so she had only a half-hour from the time she stumbled out of Carey’s office to the time she was due to present herself smiling at the chef ’s front gate. She got in a taxi and lashed herself into a humiliated state. She’d been made a fool of. Matt had been with this woman, Gao Lan, and he’d been with her at the right time. And she never had a clue. She loved him unflaggingly, until the very last day of his life. Loved him still. Or did she?
This is boxed away, she was telling herself when she came to the chef ’s front gate, for now she had to work. This will be sealed until later. His gate was ajar. So she stepped in, called out a greeting, and followed the pot-clanging sounds to the kitchen.
His back made a curve into the refrigerator. When he stood up and turned around he was holding a whole poached chicken on a plate, its skin a buttery yellow. “How are you?” he said.
That, you don’t want to know. I am the last stop on the bottom of creation. “Fine.” She dropped her bag on the same stretch of counter she had claimed the day before. “How about you?”
“Stressed. I need a better source of live and fresh fish, for one thing, and I need it fast. And I’m cooking until all hours.”
“Trying dishes for the banquet?”
“Trying to conceive the meal.” He leaned against the counter in a brief exhaustion.
“When did you go to sleep last night?”
“Two.” He amended. “Three.”
“We don’t have to do this today.” One hand still rested on her bag. She could turn and leave. She had her own problems, from which, she knew, this would barely distract her anyway. “It’s no problem for me.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Stay. Sit down. I made this for you.”
She glanced at the whole chicken, plump, tender-looking. “You shouldn’t be making anything for me, with all you have to do.”
“I did, though.”
She inhaled. “It smells good.”
“It’s not finished.”
She leaned closer. “But it’s not whole. I thought it was. It’s cut up.” And so precisely reassembled.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s in kuai, bite-sized pieces.”
“How’d you cook it?”
“It’s in The Last Chinese Chef. You put the chicken in boiling water – ”
“How much water?”
“That’s in proportion to the chicken. After you do it once or twice you know. Bring it back to a boil and turn it off. Cover it. Let the chicken sit until it cools. Perfect every time.”
“Just water?”
“Oh, no. Salt. And different things. Today ginger and chives. They are always good for chicken – they correct the metallic undertone in its flavor.” He paused. “They do many things.”
“So flavors correct other flavors.”
“All foods affect each other in some way. We have a specific system.”
“For example?”
“There are techniques. Breaking marrow bones before cooking to enrich flavor. Cooking fish heads at a rapid boil to extract the rich taste. Whole set of techniques for texture, too, ways of cutting and brining and soaking.