‘What do you want, Lin Hong?’ Wang asks, wanting to get straight to the point.
Lin Hong looks at him gravely. ‘Your father’s condition is worsening. The burden of caring for him is becoming too much for me.’
‘Hire a full-time nurse then,’ Wang suggests. Why Lin Hong took on full responsibility for caring for his father has always been a mystery to him.
‘He needs more than a nurse,’ Lin Hong says. ‘I want to move him to a residential care home for elderly people with disabilities.’
She hands Wang the glossy promotional brochure on the coffee table and, as he flips through, Lin Hong gives him the hard sell. Full-time doctors and nurses on site. State-of-the-art medical equipment. Physiotherapists and dieticians. Peaceful environment with carp ponds and landscaped gardens. Wang needs no selling on the idea. Having sat through half an hour of his father’s evening routine, he doesn’t doubt that Wang Hu will receive more respectful care in a home.
‘Can’t you see how exhausted I am?’ Lin Hong says, pointing a manicured finger at her chest. ‘Day in, day out, I attend to his needs. I deserve a break. It’s time for a change. When I heard that you and your wife had separated—’
‘We haven’t separated,’ Wang corrects. ‘It’s only temporary, while we sort out our differences.’
‘When I heard that you had separated,’ Lin Hong repeats, ‘I was inspired to take a look at my own life. I am forty-two. That’s not so old, is it? There is still time for me to do something with my life and be somebody. I have so much potential. .’
Her self-help-manual-speak makes Wang wince. Though Lin Hong’s eyes are earnest beneath her lash extensions, he doubts that his stepmother will ever do anything with her ‘potential’. Despite the money and resources she has had at her disposal, Lin Hong has done nothing for the last twenty years but visit the beauty spa and watch Korean soaps. His stepmother’s mean streak makes her seem interesting, but really she’s vapid and dim. Wang suspects she’ll be lost without the routine of caring for and bullying her invalid husband.
‘What will you do?’ Wang asks.
Lin Hong tosses her auburn hair. ‘Oh, you know, something creative. Interior design, or fashion. I am a very artistic person — everyone compliments my great taste. I want to renovate and redecorate this place too — knock down some walls and change the colour scheme. I want to convert the home gym into a bedroom for Echo, so she can come and live here after your divorce. Echo should have her own bedroom. It’s wrong for her to share with her mother at her age.’
Wang baulks at her plan for Echo to live with her. But Lin Hong doesn’t notice.
‘Echo and I will decorate the room together, then I will take her to Ikea to choose new furniture. It will be so much fun! You can move in here too, Wang Jun. Once your father has moved out to the private care home, there will be plenty of room for the three of us. .’
Wang drains the last of his whisky for the courage he needs to step between Lin Hong and her delusions. ‘Yida will never agree to Echo living here,’ he says. ‘And, as for me. . well, I think my living here would be. . impractical. .’
Lin Hong sighs. ‘Yida won’t have any say in the matter,’ she says. ‘I will hire the very best lawyers to handle the divorce proceedings and guarantee you custody of Echo. And how can you say that living here will be impractical?’ Lin Hong laughs and sweeps her hands at the high ceiling and vast floor space. ‘Look how spacious it is! And we have a maid to cook and clean and do the laundry. You and Echo will be very comfortable. Much more so than in that cramped hovel in Maizidian. Ugh — so filthy! Does that woman ever clean? I’ll do a much better job of taking care of you and Echo than she ever did. .’
Wang doesn’t know what to say. He has a sudden resurgence of loyalty to Yida, who, for all her faults, at least hasn’t parted company with reality.
‘If Yida and I divorce, Yida can have custody of Echo,’ he says firmly. ‘She’s a good mother and I won’t take Echo away from her. And please understand, Lin Hong. . we won’t ever move in here. Echo won’t want to leave Yida. And I’d rather live on my own. .’
Lin Hong narrows her eyes at this, and Wang regrets not having another glass of whisky to fortify himself against what is to come.
‘Every choice you have ever made, Wang Jun — dropping out of university, becoming a taxi driver, marrying that woman, and now this — has been wrong,’ she says. She brings her whisky to her mouth and chokes it down. Wang knows he should stand up and leave now. But part of him wants to stay and see how low-down and dirty she will fight. ‘You are very selfish to deprive Echo of the opportunity to have her own bedroom with furniture from Ikea,’ she continues. ‘She would have so much fun staying here! You should stop being so selfish and let Echo decide for herself where she lives.’
Wang smiles. ‘We’ll let Echo decide then, shall we? You know, Lin Hong, Echo doesn’t like coming here. I have to drag her here most times. You are very pushy and overbearing, Lin Hong. You are a very hard woman to be around. .’
Lin Hong looks as though she’s been slapped. Then she rears up, hissing like a cornered cat, ‘A hard woman, am I? Well, at least I don’t have a mental illness. You are not fit to be a father, Wang Jun! You should be back in a psychiatric hospital. The police should lock you up with the other madmen they are rounding up before the Olympics. I ought to report you to the Public Security Bureau as a threat to national security!’
Wang laughs at this. He laughs at her viciousness. The bloodletting is cathartic, even though the blood spraying about is his own. ‘Listen to yourself, Lin Hong! You are poisonous! I wouldn’t let Echo stay with you for even one night.’
Lin Hong leans towards him. She spills whisky on her chiffon top as she shouts, ‘You are a bad father, Wang Jun! They should never have let you have a child! They should have sterilized you in the hospital! They should have locked you up like your mother! You are just as insane as she was!’
Wang straightens up, as though a low voltage has run up his spine to his skull.
‘What do you mean, “locked up like your mother”?’
Lin Hong smiles. She had not meant to say what she said. It had slipped out. Her stepson’s expression is so gratifying, however, she is glad it did. ‘Your father put her in a hospital. The same one you were in.’
‘No,’ Wang says. ‘She died from pneumonia.’
‘She didn’t die,’ Lin Hong corrects. ‘She recovered, and then she was moved to the mental hospital. She was there for a year or two, then she ran away.’
Lin Hong’s voice is no longer shrill. Back in control, she is smooth and dulcet as a late-night-radio-show host. Wang is faint. The room spins as though he has drunk a bottle of whisky, not a glass.
‘She’s still alive?’
‘Dead,’ Lin Hong says. ‘A week after she ran away from the hospital, your father got a phone call from a town in Heilongjiang. The police had found her in the streets, frozen to death in the night. They cremated her and posted your father the death certificate.’
Wang is short of breath. His chest has narrowed and he can’t get air inside. ‘When was that?’
‘1992.’
‘But he told me she died years before then, when I was twelve. I don’t understand. .’
Lin Hong sips her whisky, relishing his confusion and anguish, taking her time.
‘Your father wanted to protect you,’ she says. ‘After you were sent to boarding school her madness got worse. She was like a wild animal. In the hospital she was howling and biting the other patients and doctors. She couldn’t speak. She didn’t know her own name. The doctors said that she would never recover. No child should ever have to see his mother in that condition.’