‘What is he like?’ Dr Yu said. ‘I mean, in his privacy?’
What was the harm in telling her? I thought about the way he wouldn’t eat unless the food sat correctly on his plate — peas here, potatoes there; no drips, no drops, no smears. How he couldn’t sleep without the top sheet tucked in all around him; how he liked his women as neat as his mother. Smooth, groomed, no visible pores or swellings, no fat — my God, my fat! How he dressed after the fashion of Einstein, in black socks, gray pants, shirts that varied slightly but were always subdued, jackets that were almost identical.
And how uncomfortable he was here in China, how much he disliked the steamy, crowded buses, the old clothes, the crowded sidewalks, the open-air markets with their unrefrigerated offerings, the smells, the dirt, the noise, and the absence of wildlife, which implied to him that everything had been eaten. I thought about that astigmatism of his, that twist which made him see the worst in anything, and about his ability to make others see the same way, as if he’d etched their corneas with acid rain.
But I didn’t say any of this. ‘He likes a clean house,’ I said instead. ‘He likes things neat.’
‘You live in a nice house?’ Dr Yu asked, and I said yes but then, pressed to describe it, found myself describing another house instead. Not our spacious, clean colonial so near the university, but the cramped bungalow where I’d grown up with my mother and father and brother and Mumu, who was stuck in a wheelchair and slept in the den. As I spoke I sketched the house’s outline in the air, and I could see that it seemed luxurious to Dr Yu.
‘Six rooms,’ she marveled. ‘We have three, very large apartment for just three people, now that our daughter and youngest son are away. Kitchen, sitting room, sleeping room separate. Plus a bath with running water. Plus central heat. You could come visit us, and see.’
I nodded. ‘Someday,’ I said. I thought this was only one of those conversations I’d had at a hundred cocktail parties. Vague promises, vague suggestions, all forgotten the next day and never followed up.
Dr Yu finished her beer and looked at me. ‘So, what do you do now?’ she asked. ‘For work, I mean.’
I was embarrassed to tell her about my recent idleness and so I stretched the truth instead, casting back to the houses I’d bought and redone with my great-uncle’s money. ‘I’m a renovator,’ I told her. ‘A rehabber.’
‘What is that?’
‘I buy old, ruined houses and fix them up again. I make them look nice, and then I sell them.’
Dr Yu stared at me, apparently fascinated. ‘This is a job?’ she said. ‘People pay you for your … your …’
‘Taste,’ I said firmly. ‘People pay me for my taste.’
‘Really?’ She seemed puzzled. ‘They can’t fix these old houses themselves?’
‘Well, they could,’ I said. ‘But they don’t have the time, or they don’t understand how to do it …’
‘I see,’ Dr Yu said. ‘That’s very interesting. Perhaps you could explain …’
But suddenly the burr-voiced woman stepped to the microphone again, waved the musicians silent, clapped twice, and said, ‘Thank you for attending this our reception-party. Good night.’
Instantly the room began to empty. I looked at Dr Yu; Dr Yu smiled and said, ‘The party is over. Time to go.’ She gathered her umbrella, her bag, and her books and moved into the stream of people headed for the door. Her bag had a damp stain on the bottom that was spreading up the side, and suddenly I knew where that plateful of food had ended up. ‘Our daughter and youngest son are away,’ she’d said, presumably meaning that her eldest son still lived at home. My father, heavier even than me, used to bring food home from the cafeteria where he worked, stuffed peppers and casseroles that he stowed in bags and then shared with me after my slim mother slept.
‘Wait,’ I said to her. I felt I owed her something, and Walter was headed our way. ‘Would you like to meet my husband?’ I had forgotten that Walter and I weren’t speaking.
Dr Yu nodded and blushed, and then Walter stood before us looking pained. ‘Walter,’ I said. ‘I’d like to introduce a colleague of yours. Dr Yu Xiaomin.’
Walter nodded, his dismissing, you-barely-exist-for-me nod, as easy to read in China as at home. He was tired, I knew, and depressed by the visit he’d made that afternoon to the university’s science facilities. I’d overheard him talking to Paul LeClerc on the way to the banquet, and there had been no mistaking his distress. He’d described the classrooms, bare and scarred, and the absence of equipment that would have been basic at home. ‘No autoclaves,’ he’d said. ‘No coldrooms. No electron microscope. The library doesn’t have any good journals. Thirty students share one dissection specimen. How are we supposed to help them?’ They hadn’t asked him for help, I knew; they had only asked to share their work with him and have him share his in return. But Walter had a missionary streak to him as wide as any river — he was apt to see lives different from his as something broken he was meant to fix. ‘We have to triage this,’ he’d said to Paul, quite seriously. ‘Separate the ones we can’t help from the ones we can.’ I knew he saw Dr Yu as someone past helping.
Dr Yu’s blush deepened as Walter tugged me aside and said, ‘Let’s go, I need to get out of here. The others are all on the hotel bus already. And I promised I’d talk to Fred Dobzhinski, and I’ve got things to do …’
I could have wrapped my hand around his heathery tie and pulled until his head parted from his neck. I turned and saw Dr Yu, already separated from me by a stream of people, fussing with the buttons of her blouse. She looked at me for a second and then looked away, and I looked at Walter again and saw a six-foot-tall carp standing on his tail. I pulled away from him, made my way to Dr Yu, and said, ‘I’m sorry, he’s such a prick sometimes …’
‘Prick?’ asked Dr Yu.
‘Schmuck,’ I said helplessly, knowing my meaning was still lost. ‘Asshole!’ I said much too loudly, sure Dr Yu would get this phrase despite my confusion of body parts and metaphors. ‘Not ass-face, asshole.’
Dr Yu smiled. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ She scribbled another character on her palm and flashed it at me. ‘Hard to miss,’ she said.
‘Hard to miss,’ I agreed.
‘You will come to have dinner at my home tomorrow night?’ she asked. ‘We would be most happy — you can meet my husband and my son. My husband is a doctor and maybe he can fix your cough.’
I hesitated; the idea was impossible. We had some presentation scheduled for the next night, some show or dinner or entertainment, as we did every night. All we were ever going to see of China was the thin, thin skin, creamed and powdered and rouged and depilated.
‘Please,’ she said, watching me think. ‘It would be a great honor for us.’
I looked back for Walter but he was gone, vanished the way all of this, the singing and dancing and drinking and talking, the eating and proud hospitality, would vanish if he had his way. Already a dark yellow, sulfurous cloud hung over the city and made my lungs sting, as if I were manufacturing acid rain inside my chest. I coughed, then coughed again. I looked out the window and saw Walter near the bus, clicking his index finger against his teeth and sheltering his head with a newspaper. He stood all alone.
‘I’d be delighted to come,’ I told Dr Yu, making my mind up that instant. I liked her face, and her curiosity. And even if she’d approached me only because of my connection to Walter, it was me she’d asked to visit. ‘Can I come alone?’