But soon Sam had to say goodbye. They needed to catch a train in time to make their flight. He embraced everyone for a long time and longest of all his uncle. Maggie embraced them too, pressing her cheek to each of theirs in turn.
They rode down in Songling’s car, with Songzhao in the front passenger seat and Maggie and Sam behind, comfortable, leaning back side by side, easy in the green curves of bamboo light. They came to the lake, with its boats and its tree-shaded serenity, and they curled around it for a while until they reached the hotel. The car idled in the big, looping driveway while she ran up and retrieved her bag, rode the elevator down to the lobby, and checked out. She had never used her room.
They turned away from the lake now and into the crowded streets. Traffic crawled between the tall commercial buildings. Songling and Songzhao were talking softly up front in Chinese. Sam was content, tired. His hair was pulled tightly back in his ponytail, but here in the bright daylight of the car she could see the silver strands weaving back from his temples. “What?” he said, looking at her.
“Nothing.”
“My gray hair.” He reached up and brushed a hand above his ears.
“How did you know I was looking at that?”
“How could I not know? I’m sitting right next to you.”
She nodded, but inside she was thinking no, that does not explain it. Because she had been sitting next to people all her life and most of them never had any idea what she was thinking. Even people she knew fairly well. He seemed to know, though, at least sometimes.
“Maggie,” he said, a bit tentative. “I wanted to say sorry about last night.”
“Sorry why?” she said. “I’m the one who fell asleep in your room.”
“I feel bad, though. I wanted to say something to you. I really did mean to spend the night in the hall.”
Songling and Songzhao were still talking in the front. Songling let out a little laugh and they went right on in Chinese.
“I like you,” Sam said. “I would never want to disrespect you. I went to sleep in the hall because I would never do that.”
Got to respect the widow, she thought with a flash of hurt. “I wasn’t offended,” she said.
“Because I would never do that kind of thing lightly,” he said. “Never did and never have. Well” – he made a small confessional cringe – “I can’t say never. But even though I’m clueless on almost everything, I have managed at least to figure this much out, by this age – that there is nothing casual about people being together that way.”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Maggie. “I made you come in because you were sleeping on the floor. Besides,” she added, as they stared out the window side by side, “I would never do that lightly either.”
“Okay,” he said. The subject was closed. There was a Chinese comic monologue on the radio, punctuated by laughter from a studio audience overlaid by chuckles from the front seat and even, once, a small chortle from Sam. Maggie was getting used to this world she could see around her, the Chinese world, one she could float across like a cloud. It was strange to sense it, to begin to recognize it, but she felt free here. She felt good.
Then they were at the station, and they piled out and hiked the straps of their bags up on their shoulders. Emotional goodbyes went back and forth, and Sam and Maggie exchanged quick embraces with Songling and Songzhao. When she hugged Songling the woman delivered a musical stream of Chinese in her ear, and Maggie gave her an extra squeeze of assent in reply. Whatever Songling said, she agreed with it. Sisterly support. Part of her wanted never to leave, wanted to stay here forever in this place where she couldn’t even understand anyone. The car was running. Sam was behind her. She turned away, reluctantly, and followed him up the steps and through the doors that led into the station.
10
Chinese cooking accumulates greatness in the pursuit of artifice. Although we say our goal is xian, the untouched natural flavor of a thing, in fact we often concoct that flavor by adding many things which then must become invisible. Thus flavor is part quality of ingredients and part sleight of hand. The latter can go to extremes. The gourmet loves nothing more than to see a glazed duck come to the table, heady and strong with what must be the aromatic nong of meat juices, only to find the “duck” composed entirely of vegetables. The superior cook strives to please the mind as well as the appetite.
– LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef
They landed and shared a cab into town and pulled up in front of her building. “Well,” he said. A bubble of silence rose between them. They shifted in their seats. Neither had thought of what to say at this moment.
“Okay,” she said. She pulled her bag into her lap, ready to get out.
“Look, I’m going to be working like mad now, but if you have any questions – ”
“Please,” she said, “go ahead, good luck. Don’t worry about me.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m going to start writing.”
“You have enough?”
She laughed. “I’ll say.” She knew perfectly well she didn’t need to interview him or even see him again; all she needed was to know the outcome of the contest. She had enough now for three articles. One of her little books was filled almost to capacity with her notes on what she had seen and observed and heard him say; another book held the obsessively careful printed list she always made of everything she had eaten. Never in fact had she accumulated a list so heavily annotated with descriptors, explanations, anecdotes, as this one was. She had enough. Too much. The hardest thing was going to be sorting through it and choosing where to place the spine of her piece. She turned to him. “Do call me, please, after it’s over, and let me know how it went. To say I’ll be waiting to hear would be a monumental understatement. Five days, right? Saturday night? I’ll be burning candles.”
“Do some voodoo for me.”
“I will, the best voodoo of all. I’ll write your story.”
He laughed, the open, unexpected laugh that she knew somehow, every time she heard it, was the laugh he had brought with him from home. This was the boy part of him. She liked it. She had liked a lot of things about him these last two days. “Good luck,” she said. She took his hands and pressed them between hers, then climbed out of the cab.
Inside the apartment nothing had changed. There was her computer, her suitcase, which she had left behind these last days in favor of a tote. Down the hall was the bedroom where she’d slept with Matt three years before and which she had – admit it – avoided on this trip, staying at night in the living room until she could barely stand, then feeling her way down the hall in the dark and toppling into bed. In the bathroom hung her one towel. Already she had worn her little groove here.
She stood for a while, staring through the darkness at the glittering columns of buildings outside, noticing that she felt different for the first time in many months and interested in the change. It was China maybe, the brash thrill in the air, the unmoored freedom of being far away from her life. Yet it was also the pleasure of the days with Sam in Hangzhou. She still had her grief, but it no longer felt lodged in all her cells and fibers. She had assumed she would grow old with grief, that it would become like her face or her walk or her habits of speech. Now she saw that grief too was a thing that could change.
She turned away from the window and the city. It was time to start work on her piece, even though Sarah had generously told her she did not have to hurry. “Forget your usual deadline,” she had said when she called from Los Angeles a few days before. Maggie had explained to her that the competition wouldn’t culminate until Sam’s banquet on Saturday night, and the article couldn’t be filed before it did. “Fine,” said Sarah. “Take extra days if you need to. Stay longer. Just get home in time to do your holiday column.”