Across a Green Ocean Read online

  The sight of the familiar lit windows as she pulled up in the driveway almost made her weep with joy. Before she had removed her keys from her purse, the door had opened and Han was standing just inside. Without a word he pulled her into his arms, and when they finally let each other go, she did not say where she had gone, for it did not matter. She was home now.

  In the weeks that followed, the Tang household returned to normal. No one came to take the children away. Since that night in the hospital, Michael’s colic seemed to get better, and then one day it miraculously stopped. Against her will, Emily had her eyes tested and was found to be farsighted. As if resigning herself to the inevitable, she chose pink plastic frames that made her dark eyes look huge, like something caught underneath a magnifying glass. Although Ling assured Emily that the glasses were becoming, privately she mourned the loss of her daughter’s looks, and wondered what Emily would remember about the day her mother almost left her family.

  As for Pastor Liu, his wife passed away the following year. Although she did not speak with him in private again for a long time, in her mind, Ling started to consider him not as just her pastor, but as someone who had loved and lost. And in the following years, whenever she and Han would take the children into Chinatown, she’d remember that afternoon and conversation with him and think fondly about who she had been back then, as if she had been a different person entirely.

  I don’t care what people think of me and Pastor Liu, she had said that morning on the phone to her friend Beatrice Ma, although that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  Beatrice Ma had been full of the news that Ling had missed that morning by not going to church. From the way she talked, you would have thought that Sundays were not a time to reflect but for discussing other people’s shortcomings. Apparently, the juiciest piece of news was that the Wangs’ eldest son, Alvin, an investment banker, had blown his yearly bonus on an escort service. It was nice to know, Ling thought, that there were people out there whose children were even more confused about what they wanted out of life than hers.

  “Where were you this morning?” Beatrice finally asked.

  “My daughter came to visit.”

  “Oh? You didn’t tell me she was coming.”

  I don’t always tell you everything, Ling thought. In direct opposition, Beatrice seemed to tell Ling everything about herself, from the way her stomach felt after eating lunch to the latest style in which she planned to get her hair cut. Beatrice had always been talkative, but it seemed to have gotten worse after Han had passed away, as if she imagined Ling were starved for conversation. Many of her friends at church had acted the opposite. In the days after, they were reluctant to visit her, as if they were afraid that by sheer association their own husbands would drop dead as unexpectedly as Ling’s had. Ling felt that this had become the most relevant thing about her; if she were living in a folktale, she’d be known as the Widow Tang.

  “How is Emily?” Beatrice wanted to know.

  “She’s fine.” Ling did not want her family problems to become more fodder for Beatrice’s gossip mill.

  “She’s not pregnant yet?”

  “No.”

  “That’s too bad. How old is she now?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  Beatrice made a clicking sound with her tongue. She herself had been blessed with four grandchildren, two each from her sons, and she was always complaining about them and her daughters-in-law. Sometimes, listening to Beatrice complain about how fat one grandson was getting or how one granddaughter had forgotten to send her a thank-you note for a gift, Ling wanted to take her oldest friend’s nose between her thumb and forefinger and twist hard.

  By now Beatrice had moved on to an entirely different subject. “You know, Pastor Liu asked about you today. He was wondering where you were.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I reminded him that it was almost a year since . . . Well, that you probably needed some time alone,” Beatrice finished.

  Ling imagined her friend sitting in her kitchen, still dressed in her designer-label church clothes. Her husband had probably snuck off the moment they’d gotten home to join one of the card games that the men organized on Sunday afternoons; old habits die hard, even outside of Chinatown.

  “That sounds about right,” Ling replied.

  “Pastor Liu seemed very concerned that you weren’t there. If I hadn’t told him that you wanted to be left alone, I think he might have paid a house call just to make sure you were okay. Wouldn’t people have something to say then?”

  As Ling told Beatrice that she didn’t care what other people thought, she wondered if Pastor Liu would have indeed come to see her. Probably not, she decided, especially after their last conversation, which had taken place following church the week before. But Ling would never tell Beatrice what had happened then, not with that mouth of hers.

  “How are you doing?” Beatrice asked. “Really?”

  “I’m fine,” Ling forced herself to say. “Thank you for asking. You’re a good friend, Beatrice.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Beatrice said. She went on to talk a little more about the Wangs’ son, how his wife had thrown him out of the house and demanded a divorce, and what a shame it was since they had two young children, and what a disgrace to the Wang family name. Then she made Ling promise that she would call her the next day to go shopping, which Ling automatically agreed to before she hung up.

  Ling gazed out of the window at the backyard, wondering what exactly Pastor Liu had said to Beatrice. Had he sounded more concerned about her than, say, elderly Mrs. Yee who had broken her hip last week? Or had she just imagined that he’d wanted to ask her a very serious and rather awkward question the last time they had been together?

  She certainly hadn’t sought out any special attention from Pastor Liu. She had made that clear a year ago when her husband had passed away. At that time he had asked Ling if she needed someone to be with her, but Ling had refused, saying that she had her children. The only thing she asked him to do for her was to deliver the eulogy at Han’s funeral. After Emily and Michael left, she sometimes considered taking Pastor Liu up on his offer, but thought it would be inappropriate.

  Then, three months ago, in the parking lot after church, Pastor Liu asked Ling if she wanted to have lunch with him.

  “There’s this new vegetarian Indian place I’ve been meaning to try,” he said.

  Ling could feel her taste buds instinctively recoil. Not because she didn’t like Indian food; she just had no idea what it was. Han’s culinary preferences didn’t extend to farther parts of Asia, and so neither did hers. Ling had an idea that Indian food involved curry, and curry was spicy, wasn’t it? She remembered an ethnic meal that Julian had cooked when she and Han had visited him and Emily after they’d first moved to their house. It was made up of mashed vegetables that reminded her of weirdly flavored baby food, accompanied with what appeared to be pancakes. When Julian had said that they were supposed to use their hands to eat, Han had looked at him as though he were a barbarian.

  “Not your favorite?” Pastor Liu asked, misinterpreting her silence.

  “I’ve never had Indian food,” Ling admitted.

  “We should definitely go, then.”

  Ling agreed they would take his car, although as Pastor Liu carefully opened the door and closed it behind her, she wondered if that was a mistake. Maybe she should have driven her own car and followed him, in case some of the church ladies were watching. But she supposed that would make it look even more like they were doing something wrong. How unbecoming it was for someone her age to blush at the thought of going anywhere with a man, as if she were a teenager, a teenager who had never been on a date before. Of course it wasn’t a date, since it was the middle of the day. Besides, even if they weren’t exactly friends, she and Pastor Liu had known each other for more than thirty years.

  Although it was bright outside, the restaurant was dimly lit, as if it were in a perpetual state of d
usk, or maybe just some bulbs were missing from the fixtures overhead. The little light there was glinted off gold decorations on the walls, multiarmed dancing gods, and pagan masks. They made Ling feel a bit uncomfortable, having just come from a Christian church, but Pastor Liu didn’t seem to care, so she figured it was all right.

  Pastor Liu took a penlight from his pocket and trained it on the menu. “That’s better,” he said.

  This gesture struck Ling as immensely practical but also something only an old person would do. In any case, better light wouldn’t have helped her decipher any of the strange items on the menu, and she asked Pastor Liu to order for her. The dishes that arrived were not as strange as she’d feared, nor as spicy.

  “Have you ever been to India, Ling?” Pastor Liu asked.

  Ling almost choked on her food. She shook her head, then remembered that Pastor Liu had recently traveled to India on a mission. “What is it like there?” she asked.

  “Very poor, more poor than places in China, even.”

  Ling nodded, not wanting to reveal that she had never even been to mainland China.

  “But the people I’ve seen there appear to be happy, despite their simple lives. Or, rather, I don’t think they’re any less capable of happiness than many of the members of our congregation.”

  Ling thought about Mr. Tsai, who was rumored to be in serious debt; Mrs. Chao, who supposedly was cheating on her husband; her friend Beatrice, who complained about everything.

  “Even the animals seem to be happier than they are here,” Pastor Liu continued. “The cows walk wherever they want, the dogs don’t have collars or leashes. They may not live as long, but I’d argue that they lead freer lives.”

  Looking across the table at Pastor Liu, Ling couldn’t help but remember the last time the two of them had sat together in a restaurant, in Chinatown twenty-five years earlier. Ling wondered if he saw much change in herself. There was no question that there was physical change. Her body and the lines of her face had softened, her hair more coarse and thin, although she had given into vanity and dyed it black. But as for internal change, how young and naïve she had been then, thinking that she could leave her family. Also, she had never considered the possibility that she and her husband might not grow old together. Perhaps it was better that her younger self had not anticipated that prospect.

  When it came time to leave, Pastor Liu took the check over Ling’s protests. “You can pay next time,” he said, and she subsided at the startling, yet not entirely unwelcome, thought that there might be a next time.

  Over the next few months, this became Ling and Pastor Liu’s routine after church, to take one of their cars to the Indian restaurant, where Ling became bold enough to try things with names like saag paneer and malai kofta, and return to the church parking lot, after which they would go their separate ways. Ling came to find that Sunday afternoons, which she used to dread above all others, with its quiet after the bustle of church, could pass quite quickly. She didn’t doubt that she and Pastor Liu were the topic of conversation among the church ladies, but she didn’t care. She was a widow; Pastor Liu was a widower. It was her right to call on her pastor if she needed help with the grieving process.

  But when she and Pastor Liu met up, they did not talk about Han, although they did discuss her children. Ling described Emily as a lawyer who worked with immigrants and Michael as an artist, albeit on the computer.

  “They both sound quite accomplished,” Pastor Liu said.

  “Not so accomplished. Emily is married but has no children. Michael has no girlfriend.”

  “But they have steady jobs.”

  “I don’t think they are happy. When I call them, they say they are fine, fine, and act as if they can’t wait to get off the phone. I wish that my children could be closer to each other. But I feel they live as far away from each other as I do from my sisters in Taiwan.”

  “I’m sure they talk without your knowing about it.”

  “I hope they do. I hope they are at least able to talk about their father.”

  Pastor Liu was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Ling, I understand what you must have gone through this past year. What happens when you lose a spouse.”

  As she watched him say these words, Ling thought about how much he had loved his wife, must still love her if he had never remarried more than twenty years after her death. “But,” Ling said, “you have to move on.” This was actually a line she had heard on one of those talk shows she watched in the afternoon. Who knew that so much could be learned from the ruins of other people’s lives?

  “Maybe,” Pastor Liu said, “there is a way we can help each other move on.”

  His eyes held hers for an instant before she looked down. She knew that she was not ready yet for what he intended to ask her, for what their relationship was turning into, perhaps not this Sunday or the next.

  So, the following Sunday, when Pastor Liu followed her into the parking lot, she turned around.

  “I don’t think we should be doing this,” she said.

  “Ling, all we’re doing is having lunch.”

  “Still.” She struggled to find the words. “I don’t think it’s correct. It is too soon.”

  She could not read his face now. “Maybe it is too soon,” he acknowledged. “But when it is the right time—”

  “I will call you, Frank,” Ling said, without realizing that she had called him by his given name.

  She went to her car and left the parking lot as fast as she could, causing more people to stare than during any of the times she and Pastor Liu had left the church grounds together.

  This was the real reason why she hadn’t gone to church in the morning. Worse, if Emily had gone with her, Pastor Liu would have come over to say something to her, and then Ling was sure that she’d blush, or say something inappropriate, that would reveal what she and Pastor Liu had been doing these past few weeks. Not that there was anything wrong with having lunch, as he had said, but Ling was afraid of what it might lead to. She had so carefully constructed her life this past year around the idea of herself as being alone, now that she had finally eased herself into it, she didn’t think she knew how to be otherwise.

  As she walked from the driveway into the house, Ling heard the telephone ring. She wondered if it was Beatrice again, calling about something else she had heard at church that morning, or maybe it was Pastor Liu. That second thought made her breath catch a little. She automatically put her hand to her hair, just before she picked up the receiver, and paused to laugh at herself. To still care about how she looked, as if she could be seen through the phone. Surely, that had to be a sign of something.

  CHAPTER 9

  At eight o’clock the next morning, when Michael comes down to the hotel lobby, he sees a young man leaning against the front desk, talking to the clerk. Behind him is an older man who rises when he sees Michael, and then Michael is finally face-to-face with his father’s childhood friend.

  Michael knows Liao Weishu must be around his father’s age, but he appears much older—a slight, stooped man with leathery skin and thinning hair. When he smiles, he is missing some of his bottom teeth. But his eyes shine, and his handshake is strong.

  “You look like your father,” Liao says, appraising Michael openly.

  All his life Michael has been told that Emily looks like their father while he looks like their mother, but he just nods and smiles.

  “This is my son, Liao Bin.” Liao Weishu indicates the young man. Michael can see a resemblance between them, in the set of the mouth, the shape of the eyes.

  “You can call me Ben,” the son says. His English is just as proficient as Liao’s, although it sounds more colloquial without his father’s British accent.

  Ben looks to be around Michael’s age, with a head of close-cropped hair and a round face. Unlike most of the other young men Michael has seen so far in this city, he is informally dressed in a tracksuit that probably cost more than the cheap rayon suits he’s seen other men
wear. Around his neck is a plastic lanyard that holds some kind of laminated credential.

  Ben gestures toward the clerk. “I told him that you are an old family friend and they should take good care of you.”

  “How do you know him?”

  Ben lifts the plastic lanyard from his chest. “I’m a certified tour guide.”

  “He knows everyone in the hotel business,” Liao says proudly.

  For a moment the three of them stand there looking at one another, smiling, not sure of what to say next. Michael feels that he should be bursting with questions, but instead he thinks that these two people are almost as much strangers to him as if he had encountered them on the street. He feels disoriented somehow, as if they had been conversing in Chinese instead of in English.

  Then Liao says, “We should get started. We have a lot to see today.”

  They exit the hotel to where a car is parked at the curb, and Michael realizes that he has no idea where the Liaos are taking him. Ben gets into the driver’s seat, and Liao motions for Michael to take the passenger’s, but he refuses, deferring to the older man. To Michael’s relief, they seem to be heading out of the city. He recognizes the train station where he arrived a few mornings before and is amazed by how familiar this place already seems to him.

  “Where are we going?” he ventures to ask.

  “First,” Liao says, “we will take you to Kumbum Monastery. In Chinese it is called Ta’er Si. It is one of the oldest and most important Buddhist monasteries in China. Then we will go see Qinghai Lake.”

  “Everyone who comes here has to see the lake,” Ben adds. “It’s the number-one tourist destination in the province, after the monastery.”

  “Do you get a lot of foreign tourists here?” Michael asks.

  “Sometimes Americans or British, but mostly Japanese and Koreans,” Ben answers. “There are also a lot of Chinese from the big cities in the east. They want to see what Tibet is like, but even though the train now goes to Lhasa, it’s too far and the elevation is too high. It’s not comfortable. So they come here instead. It’s like, how do you call it, Little Tibet.”