Sam was hoping to find a chopping block, heavy, round, a straight-through slice of tree trunk, the kind that Chinese chefs had always used. He had two for his restaurant and he needed a third; a busy restaurant really needed three. Every place he’d tried had cutting boards, but they were the plastic ones – the new, modern alternative that had taken hold all over the capital. Plastic was cleaner, people said, safer; it was the future.
Sam didn’t agree. He hadn’t come all the way to China to switch from the traditional tree slab to plastic. Plastic ruined a fine blade. Besides, it was true what his grandfather had said, that wood was a living thing beneath a man’s knife. It had its own spring.
Ah, he spotted the store ahead – its lights were on, it was open. If any place still had the old-style chopping blocks, it would be this one.
More than once Xie had explained how to choose one. “Never buy from a young tree, only an old one. Make sure its rings are tight with age. See that the block’s been conditioned properly with oil, that it has a sheen. Don’t bring home the wrong one.”
“And what kind of wood?”
“When I was young all chefs used soapwood. Now most chefs use ironwood, though some like the wood of the tamarind tree from Vietnam. Listen to Third Uncle. Choose the wood that feels best under your hands. Forget the rest.”
Sam opened the door to the shop. In one hopeful sweep he took in the long shelves with their stacked woks and racks and sieves and steamers. He saw the cutting boards, white plastic, in their own section. He saw only plastic; no wood, no tree trunks.
“Ni zhao shenmo?” said a woman’s voice, What are you looking for?
It was the proprietress, a white-haired woman Sam recognized from Xie’s description. “Elder Sister,” Sam said politely, “I seek a chopping block, but the old kind, wood.”
“We no longer have them.”
“But why?”
“They are not as hygienic as the plastic. Especially now, you know how it is, everything is supposed to be clean.”
He knew what she meant – the Games. “But if I may ask, when you stopped selling them, did you have any left?”
“No,” she said.
His hope was sliding. “Zhen kelian.” Pitiable. “My Uncle Xie told me he thought I could find one here. Do you know him? Your old customer? Xie Er?”
Her old eyes widened. “You know Xie Er?”
“He is my uncle.”
She looked hard at him. He could feel her weighing the Eurasian mix in his face. Everyone did it. He was used to it. It was the light above his head, the air in which he walked. She wouldn’t find anything in his face anyway, for Xie Er was his uncle not by blood but by other ties. “His father and my grandfather were brothers in the palace.”
“You’re a Liang,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, surprised.
She slid off her stool, stiff, and opened a back door behind her. Sam moved closer. She touched a switch, lighting a storeroom of crowded shelves and boxes. “In here,” she said, and he followed her. “This one.” She moved some papers to the side.
As soon as he saw it, he knew. It was about two feet across, seven or eight inches thick, still ringed with bark, everything finished to a dull gleam. A heavy metal ring was embedded in one side, for hanging, as such a block should be stored vertically when not in use. He could imagine it ten years from now, twenty, its cutting surface worn to a gentle suggestion of concavity, changing with him, with his cooking, under his hands. He wanted it.
“I could pay you cash for it,” he said. “I’d be so happy to do that.”
“Do you cook?” She was eyeing him. “Yes?” she said at his emphatic nod. “Then just give me a moment. I’ll think of a price.”
“Please take your time,” he said softly, but inside he was overflowing. He reached out a practiced hand to feel the chopping surface. “And sister, if you happen to know, this is what sort of wood?”
“That?” she said. “That is the old kind. Soapwood.”
Maggie stood in the airport in front of the candy counter. Matt had always given her candy corn. It was their signature candy, something she used to say every relationship should have. For them it was more of a sacrament than a food. The first time he brought it home he’d had in mind a joke on her American food specialty, but that was soon forgotten and it became his parting token. He would present her with a little bag before leaving on a trip. She could still picture how he’d looked one morning in their bedroom, in the slow-seeping dawn light, packed, dressed, ready to go. When? A year and a half ago? They both traveled so often that they rarely rose for each other’s early departures. That particular morning she was half-awake, drifting; she could hear the rustle of his pants and the crinkle of plastic as he dug in his pocket for the little bag of corn. She heard him settle it by her bedside lamp and lean down to kiss the frizz of her hair. Just that. Too nice to wake her. Then the click of the door. Remorse bubbled in Maggie now. So many times she had let him go like that.
She walked over to the plexiglass tube filled with orange-and-white kernels and opened a plastic bag underneath. On the day he left for San Francisco, the last day she saw him, he did not give her any candy corn, because he was coming back that night.
In the year since, she had not eaten a kernel. She pulled the lever now and they gushed into her bag, a hundred, a thousand. She got on the plane and ate steadily, sneaking the sugar-soft kernels into her mouth one by one and letting them dissolve until her teeth ached and her head felt as if it would balloon up and float away. Queasy, full, she refused the meals when they came. She started a movie and turned it off. She sat washed by waves of guilt, guilt she’d felt many times this past year as she remembered that she and her husband, in truth, had always loved each other best when they were apart. And now it was for always. She closed her eyes.
She felt her computer bag between her feet. She hadn’t even thought yet about the job. What with getting her visa, collecting a sample for Matt from the hospital where he had banked blood, delivering it to the DNA lab, getting the collection kit, packing, speeding to the airport – with all this she had not given the first thought to her interview with the chef. Actually it had been a relief to have to move so fast. Grief, which had become half-comforting to her, almost a companion, had seemed finally to take a step back. She felt like a person again, even if she barely made it to the gate on time with her carry-on.
Then she was strapped in, with her candy corn. She attempted to face the situation. Was it possible? Could the claim be true? She let her mind roll back once again. She lingered over every bump, every moment of discord; she knew where each one was located. They were all inside her, arranged since his death alongside love, rue, and affection. She threaded through them now. Another woman? A child? It just wasn’t possible to believe he could have kept it from her. He was such a confessor. It was a joke among people who knew him. This was the kind of thing he could never, ever have kept to himself.
Especially since the question of children was one that came up between the two of them. Originally they were both in agreement. They did not want children. Halfway through their decade together, though, Matt changed his mind.