"I've just begun to learn to make a few things."
Christine chimed in, "He's a father now and should be a well-rounded family man." She laughed; so did Nan and Dave. In fact, the chicken was undercooked, half of it left in the two platters.
On their way back, Pingping was unhappy and wouldn't speak to Nan. She had often complained that Nan would leave her unaccompanied whenever they went to a party. This time he had done that again, not staying with her for a single minute. She shouldn't have gone to the Mitchells' today. She simply didn't like some of Hailee's godparents. Nan knew why his wife was fuming, so he remained quiet.
The next morning, Pingping dropped in on Janet at the jewelry store on her way to work. When Janet asked her if she had enjoyed the party the night before, Pingping said, "Not really. I like Christine, but to be honest, I don't like Kim and Charlie. They're rude to me, like afraida me or something."
Janet smiled quizzically. Pingping pressed on, "What? I'm never nasty to them."
"You know, Kim is vulnerable. Charlie has been her boyfriend for almost two years, and she cannot afford to lose him."
"Crazy. How can she think I want her boyfriend, that chubby Charlie? I have Nan, he's already more than I can handle. One more man will kill me."
Janet stowed away a box of assorted beads on the shelf, turned back, and said, "A few years ago Kim lost her boyfriend to a Japanese girl, so she must've feared you might do the same to her."
"She's sick."
"Come on, Pingping, you don't know how pretty you are. You can easily bewitch a lot of men. In fact, after you left yesterday, both Kim and Charlie said you and Nan were a lovely couple. Kim was really relieved to know you were married." Janet tittered, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. "Have you heard the expression 'yellow fever'?"
"Yes. A kinda disease?"
"Yeah, you're right. It also means that a lot of men are crazy about Asian women. Believe me, if you weren't married, you could have lots of dates."
"I don't want to date man, I want marriage. Nobody, only Nan want to marry me."
After Pingping left, Janet thought about their conversation, amused by her friend's innocence. She often talked with Dave about Ping-ping and Nan, knowing they'd had marital trouble all along. Dave would say Nan was a lucky man who didn't seem to know how to appreciate his luck. What amazed the Mitchells was that Nan and Pingping, in spite of their rocky marriage, seldom quarreled and wouldn't have extramarital affairs, as if both were content with the situation and would make no effort to improve it. Janet once urged Pingping to take Nan to a marriage counselor, but her friend refused, saying, "We don't need shrink." Probably thanks to the hard work at the restaurant, neither Pingping nor Nan had the time and energy to look for another lover. Also, their son kept their hands full and held them together.
More amazing was that the Wus always shared everything-they had the same bank accounts and paid all the bills together. Whatever they owned was under both names. In fact, Nan let Pingping handle all the money that went through the Gold Wok. By contrast, Janet and Dave each had personal bank accounts and each would contribute $3,000 a month to their joint account, from which all their household expenses, including the mortgage and dining out, were drawn. On holidays and birthdays, they'd buy each other presents paid out of the givers' own pockets. Janet noticed that when Ping-ping bought clothes or shoes for her family, she'd get the same kind for both Nan and Taotao, as if Nan were just another child of hers. In addition, the Wus never got presents from each other. Once, on Pingping's birthday, Janet asked her why, and her friend said, "I don't need gift from Nan. He spend my money if he buy anything. If I buy something for him, I spend his money."
Janet could see the logic of those words and was even more fascinated by their marital state, which seemed quite stable despite Ping-ping's denying that Nan loved her. Aren't passion and sex essential parts of the married life? Can a marriage last without those basic ingredients? Sometimes Janet raised those questions to herself and couldn't answer them, unable to imagine living with Dave without the desire to possess him and without deep love for him. She was sure that if Dave hadn't loved her, he could definitely have started an affair with another woman, and then their marriage would disintegrate. But in the Wus' case, Pingping and Nan seemed in harmony, and neither was really bothered by the absence of passion in their marriage. On the other hand, Pingping had admitted to Janet that she and Nan did make love from time to time, and that the longer they lived together, the more comfortable she felt with Nan in bed. Strange. Maybe they did love each other, but in their own peculiar way.
18
NAN was peeling ginger while watching CNN. The TV, hung up in a corner behind the counter, had tiny refulgent spots on its screen. As the camera shifted to a street crowded with Asian faces, the anchor-woman with kohl-rimmed eyes said, "A Chinese dissident was arrested yesterday afternoon in Beijing. Mr. Bao Yuan, an exiled artist living in New York City, returned to China last week with the intention of publishing a literary magazine in his homeland. The charge is still unclear, but our CNN source reports that he's accused of the crime of sabotage…"
Nan was flabbergasted and stopped the peeler in his hand, his eyes fixed on the screen. He was eager to see Bao's face, but it never appeared. Instead, a scene that didn't directly bear on his apprehension emerged: a group of policemen frog-marched four handcuffed criminals toward a six-wheeled truck, whose back was canvased, as if they were heading for an execution ground.
At once Bao became the topic at the restaurant, though neither Pingping nor Niyan had ever met him. Nan told them how he had lived off Wendy and how she had called in her brother, who threw Bao out of her house. They all felt that Bao might have planned to get arrested for the sake of publicity; otherwise only a fool would have run the risk of sneaking back into China, where the police were awaiting him. Shubo stopped by on his way to work and left a copy of World Journal for Nan, saying Bao Yuan must have been out of his mind. He had to hurry to Grand Buddha and couldn't stay to join them in their conversation. Before Nan could tease him, saying Shubo's unshaven face brought to mind a koala today, his friend was already outside, striding away toward his car. Shubo's bald patch was more eye-catching when viewed from behind.
Nan opened the newspaper. The front page listed Bao's arrest as a major piece of news. On the third page was a long article about the incident, entitled " China 's New Human Rights Violation." Together with the writing was Bao's photo, in which he wore a sardonic grin as if trying hard to fight down a wild laugh. The article reported that he had taken with him a hundred copies of New Lines and intended to distribute them in China. He also wanted to explore the possibility of publishing the journal on the mainland, but before he could find a business partner, the police seized him and confiscated all the copies of the journal. Rumor had it that the authorities were going to put him on trial, which Nan doubted would ever take place, because it might raise more international uproar. He was sure Bao already had a green card, so it would be difficult for the government to imprison him like a regular Chinese citizen. More troublesome for the authorities, the dissident communities in major U.S. cities were already on the move, launching protests and staging condemnations. The article stated that a group of freedom activists in New York and Washington, D.C., had started collecting signatures and appealed to some U.S. congressmen to intervene on Bao's behalf.
Nan talked with Dick on the phone about Bao's trouble. Dick chuckled and said, "I've heard about it. He's famous now, and even my colleagues in Asian Studies have been talking about his bravery."