“I won’t hear a word against our little girl,” Mrs. Wetherston said warmly. She loved Mrs. Liang by now and she spent happy hours describing to her friends how interesting it all was since Alec had married a Chinese girl. “Of course, my dears, the family is exceptional,” she always told them.
Dr. Liang she respected but disliked. After the one dinner the two families had taken together, Mr. Wetherston had refused to spend any more time with Dr. Liang. “We don’t speak the same language,” he had told Mrs. Wetherston.
“We ought to try to understand Chinese psychology, I think, dear,” she had said gently.
This also Mr. Wetherston had refused to do. “I get enough psychology in my clients,” he said firmly. “I don’t want it in my relatives.” He would have preferred that Alec had married a nice American girl and he made no bones about that. “Now, Dorothy,” he had told Mrs. Wetherston, “I’m not going to say anything. For a Chinese Louise is a nice girl. But I’d rather Alec had married a nice American girl instead of bringing home a foreigner. Of course it can’t be helped, and there was already little Alec. We didn’t know about him. I guess I understand the circumstances — well, all I can say is, let’s make Louise American as fast as possible, and forget the rest of them.” Since he left home before nine in the morning and did not come back from his downtown office until after six in the evening, he was able to do this easily.
Mrs. Wetherston did not have the courage to tell him that she was beginning to enjoy her unique position as the mother-in-law of a pretty Chinese girl, especially one who was a daughter of the Liang family. Nobody had paid any attention to her before and now they did. Her bridge club, where she had always been inconspicuous except for a bad play, now made much of her and asked her many questions. Once even a reporter came for an interview, and the next day she was half proud, half embarrassed to see a picture of herself in an afternoon paper, set in the middle of a column of how it felt to be the mother of a son with a Chinese wife. She felt a hypocrite when Alec thanked her for being so good to Louise.
“Mom, you could have been so different,” he said gratefully.
“But I enjoy her, dear,” she protested. “And the baby is so good — and so pretty, Alec. And it was so sweet of Louise to name her Dorothy.”
The marriage was turning out well. If Louise was growing more rather than less lazy, she was sweet tempered and content, for she had fallen easily in love with her husband. She had taken up her friendship with Estelle again and had laughed at her childish infatuation for Philip. Philip was married, too, but he had gone to California because his brilliant blond wife wanted to act in pictures, much to his father’s disgust. Louise never went to the Morgan house, but Estelle, who was still single and working in radio, had at first come often to see Louise.
“Philip was only a boy,” Louise had mused, smiling, and her long Chinese eyes were full of rich secrets which Estelle could not divine.
Then somehow the friendship began to dwindle. Louise, married to a handsome young American, nursing their pretty child, taking care of her lively little stepson, had become unendurable to Estelle. Since the war, girls married young. To be twenty-four and then twenty-five and still not married! It wasn’t as if there weren’t plenty of Chinese that Louise could have married. American men ought to marry American women. When Estelle stopped coming Louise did not miss her. She did not miss anybody.
“Louise,” Mrs. Liang said when the door had closed behind her. “Now I want your listening.”
Since Louise belonged to the Wetherston family, Mrs. Liang felt it her duty sometimes to speak in English to her.
Louise, changing the diapers of her adorable baby, did not look up. Little Alec was emptying the pin tray and she kept an eye on him. “Yes, Ma,” she murmured.
“Now I am leaving your pa for nearly two months. Anyway six weeks,” Mrs. Liang went on. “You must not just stay here and not see him. Every day or two days you must go to apartment and see what is Neh-lee cooking.”
“All right, Ma,” Louise said. She had no intention of such faithfulness, but she did not want to disturb her mother by truth. She lifted her baby tenderly in her arms, unbuttoned the front of her dress, and presented her full young breast to the child’s obedient mouth. Sitting in a low chair thus she made a pleasant picture which moved Mrs. Liang’s heart.
“Like I was with you,” she murmured, her eyes swimming.
Louise smiled, unbelieving. Her mother could never have been pretty, even as a young mother. “Go on, Ma,” she said.
Mrs. Liang hitched her chair nearer and began to speak in a low rapid voice in Chinese. “Eh, Louise, I tell you, your pa is a man, naturally. All men are the same. They like women too much.”
Louise looked away. “Oh, Ma, when Pa is so old!”
Mrs. Liang looked indignant. “He is not too old. To you, yes, but to any woman over thirty, no! And I tell you—” She broke off and considered. Should she or should she not mention the name of Violet Sung? She could not control herself and she went on in English again. “You know Violet Sung? She is always — well, I don’t say! But when I am away, your pa will be very weak.”
“Oh, Ma,” Louise murmured again.
“You don’t need to keep saying so,” Mrs. Liang said with irritation. “I will tell you later when you are not so young, and you will understand better. Now all I say is, sometimes see your pa, and listen to some friends, and hear if there is any talk. It is for Pa’s sake. He is too famous and well known for talk.”
Louise laughed. “All right, Ma. But you’re funny.”
Mrs. Liang laughed, too. She felt better. She had little time and she rose, remembered she had brought a pair of new rubber pants for the baby and fumbled for them in her bag. “Of course don’t tell Alec. Your pa is not his family. Maybe I am suspicious but I know your pa too much. Now such pants like I got you haven’t for the child. They button, like so, and when you wash, buttons out, and so—” Mrs. Liang demonstrated. “Good, isn’t it not?” She laughed again heartily. “Well, now I go back to ancestral village, and I must get used to small watercloths holding to babies’ bottoms and open pants to make some water on the ground. Never mind — in China it is not bad. Here, of course, it cannot. Carpets on the floor and so on. I think Americans are troubling themselves sometimes too much.”
Louise laughed again. “Oh, Ma, you’re really a scream, if you only knew it.”
“Screaming? I am not screaming, Louise,” Mrs. Liang protested.
“Oh, Ma,” Louise repeated laughing helplessly.
From Louise Mrs. Liang had gone to Mrs. Pan. The two women had discussed thoroughly Mary’s engagement until there remained nothing to tell. But Mrs. Liang after rending of the heart, had decided to ask Mrs. Pan also to let her know of any gossip. Whatever gossip there was would surely penetrate at once to Chinatown, where everything was known about everybody.
Mrs. Pan had been down on her knees scrubbing her floors when Mrs. Liang came and she was glad to see her. She had got up, wrung her cloth dry, and slapped her youngest child gently on its bare legs.
“You little thing — don’t dirty floor,” she said with mock severity. Then she had laughed. “Come in, Mrs. Liang. My children are terrible. Sit down, I have some tea already made. These little cakes mildew if we don’t eat. My, my, so you really go on the plane! I couldn’t dare. My stomach is too foolish.”
The conversation ran on rapidly, most of the time in duet, until the tea was drunk, the cakes eaten, and Mrs. Liang came to the point for which Mrs. Pan had been waiting.