A Thread of Sky, page 14
“Are you and your dad here for male bonding?”
He shrugged. “I guess he’s finally decided to give it a try.”
A little thrown, she tried to think of a helpful reply. Just then, her mom, sisters, aunt, and grandmother stepped out of the elevator.
“Have fun,” Byron said, with a smirk.
She ignored him.
Outside, liberated from the tour, her family began to stretch and turn, absorbing the place through all their senses. The city cooperated this morning, imbuing its ordinary happenings with an extra glow—people biking in business attire with tufty-haired kids perched behind, old men playing chess with scraps on the pavement, old women sweeping store-fronts with hand-bound brooms, the savory smell of baozi wafting from stacked bamboo steamers. Kay bought a half-dozen and, after some hesitation, everyone took one. Biting into her own, she held her breath. Sometimes the outside was mushy, the inside a hard lump. But these baozi were luscious, the dough hot and pillowy, the savory pork filling bathed in its own juices.
The bus station was just far enough to require a healthy exertion. The bus line was just long enough to make them feel lucky to squeeze into seats, which looked like they’d been rescued from a junkyard. Their stop was a brown and dusty town, stalled like so many others somewhere between a pastoral village and a strip mall. She found the lot Du Yi had described, where minivans were for hire, and bargained just until everyone felt self-satisfied. The ride was just bumpy enough to feel adventurous. The air-conditioning was broken, but gentle breezes swirled around them, and lush greenery occasionally brushed into the open windows as they wound higher and higher. At last the driver pulled over.
Kay jumped out. There it was, more spectacular than she’d imagined—a tarnished tiara atop a rocky green peak, the watchtowers like points where gems were once set, all shrouded in a haze of dust like magical smoke.
No souvenir stands, no touts. No cable car. No paved steps. Barely a path—a jagged fissure in the brush sharply angled toward the sky, like a bolt of lightning from the earth.
“Wow,” Mom said.
“We’re supposed to climb this?” Sophie asked.
“Wa,” said her grandmother, her eighty-year-old grandmother.
“Oh no.” Kay clapped her hand to her mouth.
Her grandmother couldn’t climb this section of the Great Wall. Kay herself would struggle. Cheeks blazing, she checked the time. By now, the tour group would be well on their comfortable way to Badaling, to ride the cable car and take pictures and buy souvenirs, to check the Great Wall off their list. Certainly that was preferable to standing here like this.
“What should we do?” she finally squeaked.
Mom said, “How about the four of us try to climb? Aunt Susan will wait with Grandma.”
Grandma nodded. “The Great Wall is not new to me.”
Kay mumbled, “We should’ve stayed with the tour. I’m sorry.” In her mind, Byron’s smirk bobbed to the surface.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. We all make mistakes.”
Mom’s tone was so eager that Kay winced. Before another silence could take over, she said, “Okay. If you’re game. Let’s go.”
The trail was barely wide enough for one, the incline just gradual enough to get a foothold. Kay tested each spot, instructing her mother and sisters to step where she stepped. A slip could be fatal. Soon the dirt path became even steeper and sandier, and the weight of the water and fruit in her backpack kept pulling her back. She tried to crawl, but everywhere she placed a hand or foot, clumps of earth loosened and fell, exposing skeletal rock.
Behind her, Mom and Nora and Sophie were breathing hard, scratched by shrubbery, slipping in their sandals.
“Let’s turn back,” Kay huffed. “It’s too dangerous.”
They looked at her in surprise.
“We can make it.” Mom wiped her mottled face with a sleeve.
“This is good exercise,” Sophie said.
“We’re almost there,” Nora said. “Look.”
Kay craned. The climb was surprisingly short, cutting right up the mountainside. She steadied herself. She lifted one hand, one foot, the other hand, the other foot, and then crumbly gray brick sat at eye level.
After some heaving and tugging, the four of them stood on this unnamed remnant of the Great Wall, broken off on either end. While Kay focused on catching her breath, Mom and Nora and Sophie scrambled from vista to vista, exclaimed at a waterfall, peered out the sentry windows.
“What is this, really?” Sophie asked. “All I know is that you can see it from outer space.”
Mom smiled. “Actually, that’s a myth. But ask Kay—she’s our tour guide today.”
Kay found herself stammering. “The Great Wall was built to guard against Mongolian invasion. But it didn’t work—I mean, there was Genghis Khan. Well, it worked for a while.” She hadn’t studied the Great Wall. It had seemed too entrenched in the Western imagination to be worth studying, like foot-binding or kung fu. She’d only tried to see it, properly, and that was hard enough.
“When was it built?” Sophie asked.
“A thousand—no, two thousand years ago.” The difference of a millennium. “Mom?”
“Some sections were added later, while others were destroyed and rebuilt. But yes, construction started two thousand years ago.” Mom fished out her camera. “Smile!”
After Kay and her sisters had posed for a dozen shots, they all sat down to rest, letting their legs dangle over the mountainside. Kay handed out the water and fruit, keeping a badly bruised peach for herself.
Mom said, “You know, sometimes at home, I get this strange feeling, like I’m going to fall.”
“You mean those dreams where you’re falling and falling, and suddenly you wake up?” Sophie asked. “I’ve heard they’re common among high achievers. Falling represents fear of failure, loss of control.”
“No, it happens when I’m awake. And it’s not the actual fall, but the moment before. I had a similar feeling when I was pregnant, all three times. A fainting feeling—my blood and nutrients diverted to you girls. So maybe this is like a phantom pregnancy, now that you’re all grown.”
After a long pause, Nora said, “Maybe you should see a doctor.”
“Maybe. Maybe I have some imbalance, literally.” Mom forced a small laugh. “Anyway, all I wanted to say was, now that I’m here with you girls, up high, now that I actually could fall—well, I feel just fine. Better than fine.” Mom smiled directly at Kay. “And I’ll feel even better once I have you back home.”
Kay sucked at her bruised peach, still fat with sweet juice.
Even as she began to lead the way down from this nameless section of the Great Wall that had beckoned her for months, that she hadn’t even enjoyed climbing, the thought that she might never see it again made her vision blur, and she nearly lost her footing.
10
Susan released a long sigh, and felt like she’d held it for years. She and Ma were sitting in shade at the foot of the mountain, on a large rock that made a passable bench, though its newly upended appearance didn’t make for much peace of mind. This was a rest stop for tumbling rocks, not for two old women—one middle-aged, one plain old. And this being China, there was no cement siding, no orange netting, not even a warning sign. There was a section of Great Wall for Irene and the girls to climb, and for Susan and Ma, there was shade.
Mosquitoes attacked her, then buzzed and danced, amused by her swatting. If Ma was getting stung, she didn’t show it.
Susan was itchy and hot and hungry and thirsty. When they made it back to the hotel—if they made it back in time—they’d get Peking duck, “special treat,” Tommy had said. All she wanted was dinner at home with Winston. Or at least a hotel room with her own husband, instead of Ma.
The first overnight stay had taken place, and her life had not fallen apart. That night, to express sympathy for her predicament, not to air any grievance of his own, Winston had noted that Ma and Irene and the girls hadn’t asked him one question about himself. This hadn’t even registered on Susan. Now her life with him felt more solid than ever, those walls waiting to contain her once again.
“So you’ve been to the Great Wall before?” she asked.
Ma made a scornful noise. “I never had leisure to sightsee back then.”
Susan swatted at a mosquito buzzing by her ear. Ma reached into her handbag and passed her a fan. Susan wondered if Ma carried anything else handy—repellent, food, water. Her new travel purse sat on her lap, ladylike and useless.
She flicked at the metal clasp of the fan. It snapped open, catching the web between her thumb and forefinger. She silenced a gasp, sucked quietly at the smarting skin. Ma said nothing.
“Kay should’ve given this more thought,” Susan said.
“She’s a spirited child.”
“She’s not a child anymore.”
“I’m her grandma. When you have children, you can tell me who’s a child.”
Susan sighed again. To her and Irene, at least, Ma was never anything like this indulgent “Grandma.” As a mother, Ma had done her duty. She hadn’t become a dead branch on the family tree, hadn’t squandered her biology. And of course that made sense, more sense than how Susan had spent her fertile years, incapable of raising a plant, let alone a child.
Susan fanned herself. The exertion cooled her face, but made the rest of her even hotter.
A few weeks ago, she’d finally called Ba again, thinking that at the very least, she needed to be able to say she had—and that maybe he’d forgotten, changed his mind, been advised by his doctor not to fly. Instead, he’d demanded their itinerary. An hour later, he’d called back to dictate his own.
Then he’d asked if Ma knew about his plan.
“I don’t think so. I don’t know. Maybe she heard from Irene,” Susan lied.
“You know her daughter came all the way from Beijing to see me?”
He meant Kay. He’d probably forgotten her name. “Did you enjoy the visit?”
He grunted. “That girl has more fire than you or Irene ever did.”
Playing one female against another—in old age, that longtime habit of his had probably become an involuntary tic. Brightly, Susan had said they’d all see him soon.
In eleven days, Ba would board a plane to Hong Kong. In twelve days, so would they. Susan hadn’t told Ma or Irene.
She’d tried to imagine best-case scenarios. If Ma simply agreed to see Ba. If they carried on a brief, civil conversation. If they laughed, a bittersweet laugh that buried the past. If they promised to stay in touch, exchange medical updates, grumble about their children. If they decided to spend their remaining days as husband and wife again. All preposterous, the first not much less than the last.
Susan fanned herself harder. Her stomach rumbling, the mosquitoes buzzing, even Ma’s breathing, all rising to an unbearable drone. She snapped the fan shut.
“You seem in good health,” she said.
“I am,” Ma said.
“Ba isn’t so lucky.”
The droning seemed to pause. Inside, Susan started to cower.
“So?” Ma snapped.
“I just thought you should know.”
“It means nothing to me.”
Ma meant, of course, not only his health, but Ba himself. Susan let the droning swell between them again.
How was she to stop Ba? Or tell Ma? Or tell Irene to deal with it? She’d only tried to do her duty as a sister and a daughter. She’d called Irene, then Ba, and made conversation. How was she to have foreseen any of these consequences?
At last, four shiny black heads appeared in the brush, faces pink, sweaty, and self-congratulatory. Ma abruptly stood, the rock teetered, and a sharp patter hit Susan’s back—an avalanche of pebbles and dirt. Such a rush to greet the mountaineers? Yet Susan shook out her shirt and followed to hear their tale of courage and triumph.
“Nice ring.” Nora’s tone was odd, breezy yet searching.
Susan looked down at her left hand. Her diamond ring was catching the afternoon rays, shooting tiny rainbows throughout the back of the minivan.
When Winston had first presented it to her, she’d stared until he said, anxiously, “It’s platinum.” She still wasn’t sure why that mattered. She still didn’t know how many carats, or what cut. It was her first jewel, her first piece of jewelry. She knew Winston loved seeing it lodged on her finger, and she knew it impressed other people. To her, the stone seemed as prosaic and flavorless as refrigerated red roses, but inherent beauty wasn’t the point. A diamond was a standard. It allowed others to assess your worth to the man who’d promised to keep you for life.
Susan noticed her niece’s face was no longer a girl’s—no lines or spots, but a tiredness around her mouth and eyes, a new gravity. Everyone else had dozed off. She fumbled for conversation.
“I heard you’re quite a star on Wall Street.”
“I’ve had a good run. It’s time to move on.” That same odd tone.
“To what?”
“Something more meaningful, I guess. Not that trading was just about money to me, absurd as that sounds.”
“Being a trailblazer.”
Nora’s brow lifted in surprise, then furrowed, as if she were trying to work out a difficult riddle. After a moment, she said, “Didn’t you teach? Poetry, right?”
Susan was taken aback. She never expected strangers to have heard of her, or people who knew her to have read her work. But for her niece to ask, Didn’t you teach poetry? Like, Were you somebody, once?
She nodded. Nora waited. Susan feigned a yawn. Decorously, Nora turned to the window, and Susan closed her eyes.
Irene had raised such obviously outstanding daughters—sharp, ambitious, good-looking to boot. She’d bequeathed them Ma’s self-righteousness, perhaps not realizing they’d be finished with American exceptionalism, historical ignorance, and entitlement. They were in the vanguard; others were laggards. They set out to better the world, and held themselves above it. They rebelled against a luxury tour and led their eighty-year-old grandmother to a crumbling mountain, and considered that some kind of progress. And they could not conceive of her, their aunt Susan, having gone out into the world with as much hope, foolish or not, as their own generation now.
When the tour group reconvened for dinner, the others seemed less than rapturous over their official Great Wall expedition, and just as overheated and undernourished. Irene gushed over Kay’s tour-guiding. To her credit, Kay gave only a sheepish grin. Everyone ate each allotted portion of Peking duck as it came, meat, skin, scallions, sauce, all preassembled.
Afterward, Tommy herded them to an art gallery filled with ornate silk screens. An old woman sat on display, too, flicking a needle through a door-sized screen, fashioning a pair of fat white cats fluff by fluff—the pricking of tourist consciences, live. Irene announced she’d buy a silk screen and summoned her daughters to help her select one, sending Tommy and the gallery manager into a tizzy. Susan made her way to a bench and found herself seated beside Ma—sidelined and waiting once again.
Why were the two of them here at all? Six women, three generations, two sets of sisters—for the mathematics, for the symbolism? Her own unthinking invitation to Irene had been a handy excuse. Irene’s grand plan revolved around her and her precious daughters. Susan and Ma were included as gestures; at most, buffers for that core group, the center of the universe.
So why was any of it Susan’s responsibility? It probably wasn’t her phone call that had inspired Ba, either. It was Irene’s own plan, if not Kay’s visit.
Susan waited until Irene chose a silk screen, until they were released to their hotel rooms, until Ma stepped into the shower. Next door, Irene stood at the mirrored bureau with a pair of tweezers, yanking at tiny, obstinate roots.
Susan took a deep breath. “Ba will be waiting for us in Hong Kong at the end of our tour.”
Irene’s hand stopped in midair. “What?”
Susan repeated it.
“Didn’t you call him back?”
“Yes. He wouldn’t listen.”
“How could he arrange this by himself? How does he know we’ll meet him? How could he just show up if you said no?”
Susan shrugged. “You want to leave him stranded at the airport?”
Irene slammed down her tweezers and wailed, “What’ll we do?”
Susan was relieved at the plural pronoun. “We have to tell Ma.”
“You know she won’t see him. You know this will ruin the whole tour.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“But this is our holiday! This is our chance to reconnect!” Irene seemed deaf to the irony of shouting such sentiments.
“Maybe that’s all Ba wants, too—a chance to reconnect.”
“Then let him plan the next reunion,” Irene snapped.
Susan noticed the sound of the shower—one of the girls. For the first time, she started to form a plan of her own. “I think Kay put the idea in his head, actually.”
Irene pressed her lips tight.
“And I think the girls should tell Ma.”
“You must be joking.”
“She’s their grandma. She won’t get mad at them. She might even listen.” Susan thought she could see the dueling forces in Irene—maternal instinct versus self-preservation.
Irene hissed, “They have enough to cope with. They lost their father.”
“They might find some consolation in seeing their grandfather.” Susan was impressed at her own boldness. “Maybe that’s what Kay was after.”
“He was never a father to us, let alone a grandfather to them.” Irene’s hands had curled into fists at her sides, a gesture Susan remembered from childhood, a gesture of frustration and near-defeat.
Easily, Susan said, “Doesn’t he deserve a chance to redeem himself?”
Irene set her palms flat on the bureau. “What exactly did he say? When he came up with this scheme. When you told him my plan.”
Susan was a little thrown. “That he wants to see us. That it might be the last time. Something like that.”
