At once all three sisters waved dismissively at it, chattering; they didn’t like it, they hadn’t been watching it, they didn’t care. Maggie received a water bottle, took a drink from it, lay back, and submitted to the hands of the girl who took her feet out, dried them, balanced them on the stool, and began to massage them. The woman was confident and strong-fingered. Maggie felt her anchor lift, her beleaguered self finally rise and float and start to spin downstream. The world fell away. In time she saw only disconnected images and scattered, luminous thoughts.
Likewise the conversation between the sisters gave way to the silence of pleasure as the masseuses released the legs and feet and then moved around to each woman’s head, neck, shoulders, and arms. Maggie drifted. In a half-dream she saw Matt’s face. How far did you go with her? What did you do? Were there others? But he didn’t answer. A glass wall seemed to separate them. She could see the humorous light in his eyes and the stubble on his chin. See his Welsh face, sheepish and brave.
Is she your daughter or not?
She floated with the woman’s strong fingers kneading up her shoulders and her neck to her scalp, then dropping to her upper spine and starting again. Maggie’s muscles were hard and tense. As their outer layers relaxed and released, images of Matt rose like bubbles, burst, and vanished. Maggie felt the Chinese woman’s hands now on her neck. She remembered Matt two years ago, taking her to a birthday party for his friend Kenny’s little son. She remembered complaining on the way over that people shouldn’t invite grown-up friends to a party for a three-year-old, but Matt broke through her crust, as he usually did. He was the gracious one. He was the reason their relationship had manners. “You know what?” he said. “Kenny’s more proud of this little guy than of anything else he’s ever done. So it’s fine.”
At the party she knew hardly anyone, except Kenny’s wife, so she stood with her in the kitchen to help. They chatted and cut melons and pineapples, bananas and grapes, for fruit salad. On the other side of the pass-through, guests buzzed at the food table and formed a laughing circle around Kenny and Matt as they played with little William on the floor. Both men lay on their backs on the floor with their knees up, whooping and hollering, riding the boy on their knees and passing him aloft from one to the other while he shrieked with joy.
“Look at Matt,” said Valerie, Kenny’s wife. “He loves it.”
It was true. Matt’s face was alight. His eyes were dizzy with pleasure. So tender, the way he held the boy. He wants one. Look at him. Look. It was so undeniable that Maggie thought her heart would crack. “You’re right,” she said softly. “He does.”
Valerie put the last fruit on the platter and wiped it once around the edges. “So when are you two going to have one?”
Now, years later, on her back with a Chinese woman’s fingers working their way down her arm, spreading her hand, massaging it, Maggie remembered the way she had fished for an answer, how Valerie had seen her discomfort and kindly retreated. She remembered the silent thud inside her that told her Matt would never rest, never be content, until he had one of his own. She knew this wish would now define their life together. As it did, in the short time left to them.
It’s no use thinking about him. He’s never coming back. She felt the old sadness. One of the sisters murmured softly in Chinese; the sister next to her released a little laugh. Maggie made an involuntary half-smile in response. She didn’t understand. It didn’t matter. They were happy here together, and they made her part of it. It was guanxi, the deep kind, family. She thought she was beginning to understand it. Make this the start, then. Go on from here. The thought was soft and clear in her mind. The room grew still, just the sound of their breathing, soft, like falling snow. She let go of the world and slept.
9
At the end of the Song Dynasty Hangzhou was the center of the world, and in the middle of the city was the brilliantly lit and clatteringly joyful Imperial Way. One might think it was an avenue of restaurants, wine shops, and teahouses, but it was much more. It was entertainers and courtesans, music, opera, and poetry. The cuisine was the most rarefied, the most exotic. Lovely ladies sang, told stories, posed riddles. Diners vied with each other to compose the most elegant poems, and drank on the results. The night became another world. Leading away from the restaurant down narrow hallways were rooms where women fluttered in silks and the lamps burned low all night. The city had the subtlest and most discerning manners. When an outsider walked in who did not know the proper way to dine, all the patrons, behind their silk sleeves, would laugh at him.
– LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef
Sam counted down the last minutes until the ribs came out of the steamer. He had already gone upstairs and whispered to Songzhao, who would rouse Uncle from his nap. While the ribs were steaming he had started work on the menu, killing and cleaning the chickens, preparing the cold dishes, mixing pastes and sauces. Still so much to grasp. He should have started younger. But life had been good in Ohio, and easy. He had let it go on too long.
Teaching school had been moderate in its demands, with lots of time off. And a man who taught school was a woman magnet. That was a huge plus. Women loved a man who worked with kids. Double that for a man who could cook, and who cooked for fun. He almost always had someone, and life was sweet even if that someone kept on changing. It wasn’t until he was past thirty, with most of his friends paired off, that he started to grow tired of traipsing from one abbreviated version of connubial life to another, his scuffed-up suitcase of self in hand.
At the same time he started thinking about China. He decided to put aside Western food, ignore his father’s warnings, and start to learn Chinese. The rest of that year he drove often to Cincinnati for long beans and pea sprouts, bottles, pastes and sauces. He took a lot of time to think. China was half of him too. He was the grandson of the Last Chinese Chef. He could either avoid it or commit to it.
He made his father sit down with him, dictionaries at their elbows, and start putting The Last Chinese Chef into English. Sam’s own two years of college Chinese had woefully underprepared him to do it alone. But once he knew what the characters were and could look them up, he could take his time with it. He loved the Chinese language, its allusive elegance. He loved the whole sense of history that came with it. And after months of reading and cooking he loved the food, too, even though he knew he’d barely scratched the surface.
“I want to go, Ba,” he said. “I’m going back.”
“Where?” His father was reading the Chinese newspaper from Chicago and only half listening.
“China.”
“Speak reasonably,” said his father.
“I mean it. The uncles are getting on. I want to go while they can still teach me. I’m going to cook, Ba. I’m going to learn. I’m thirty-seven. If I don’t start now, I never will.”
“So learn!” Liang Yeh barked. “You want to throw your life away, urinate on everything, including your education which your mother and I worked so hard for, who am I to stop you?”
“Don’t, Baba.”
“I suppose my opinion is worthless – ”
“Of course not.”
“ – but even you know you are not a Chinese chef! You are good with food, I admit. Everything you cook is excellent. But to become a Chinese chef you must start young. You must be trained like steel.”
“I can learn,” Sam said, stubborn.
“Zi wo chui xu,” his father shot back, You talk big. “You think you can do it? Learn to cook, then! Just don’t go back to China.”