On Such A Full Sea

22

The housewarming party, it turned out, was going to be a retirement party as well. They had messaged everyone the news yesterday, after Vik and Fan had returned from the Circus. Apparently, Vik’s colleague, who was also in his early thirties, a blood C-specialist at the medical center, had been developing an antirejection drug for the last eight years, starting from when he was still a medical student. Although just 60 percent efficacious in yearlong trials, the drug had been deemed promising enough that all three major pharmacorps joined in a frenzied auction for his patent. The winning bid was certified by the respective attorneys yesterday afternoon, and was a sum of cash and unrestricted stock that Vik’s colleague and his wife and their three young children could live on for the rest of their lives, and in the finest Charter style. This was why Vik was only half joking when he said that they would be tearing down the new custom-built villa they now pulled up to. The driveway was nearly full with catering vans and the immediate street spots were all taken, so Vik just parked right behind the vans. The neighborhood was an elite one but not as elite as Miss Cathy’s, certainly a rung below, with smaller, narrower lots, the houses appearing surprisingly modest from the front but extending far back from the façade, and in some cases right to the rear property line, such that there was hardly any remaining yard.

Oliver and Betty’s house had a span like this, and to Fan’s eye was not nearly as attractive as her own clan’s row house, which though meager in comparison and attached on either side gave one a feeling of ever-abiding welcome, with its fetching stoop and the timeworn textures of the brightly painted brick. Even Miss Cathy’s villa, grandly imposing as it was, seemed more friendly than this one, which looked like a leaden two-and-a-half-story coffin, clad in graphite-colored brushed metallic panels, the nearly flat and barely visible hip of the roof spined with sharp-edged beams, all the windows of irregular sizes and shapes in the most haphazard placement, as if a child had chosen and affixed each by pure whim with no regard for the final pattern. There was a short line of other guests at the front entrance waiting to be greeted, and Fan could overhear some of the comments about the new house, which were mostly positive, except one fellow who wasn’t taking to the landscaping and wondering why there weren’t a lot more flowers and shrubs. His wife shushed him, saying they’d only moved in last week and that Betty’s magical hand would have the place all together in no time.

Vik didn’t betray any feeling or opinions about the property, his general demeanor on the drive over and now even-keeled, if not one of great eagerness. Yesterday when they returned to the apartment, he was in improved spirits and they’d watched a different old anime film (after he inhaled some vapors) and afterward had gone for a bubble tea in town, as he was craving one. As they drove back with their drinks, the message came in about his colleague’s good fortune, and he had actually laughed on viewing it, rapping at the steering wheel as if at once pleased and befuddled, as well as perhaps panged by the rueful envy one can suffer on learning of a peer’s success.

Maybe it was this jealousy, or simply the sugary tea and tapioca balls, suddenly fueling him, but Vik started to talk about how out of curiosity he’d graphed unpublished Charter C-death rates against those from 125 years ago and how, though it appeared there was vast improvement after controlling for nascent-stage diagnoses, which is how Charter survival rates were measured, Charters didn’t actually live more than a few years longer than they did back then. People now just knew much earlier that they were diseased, literally sometimes mere days into the condition. And while they were being “cured” with all the therapies available now, it could be argued that they were never actually “well,” given the constant stress of regimens and associated side effects.

But all this masked a more serious and underreported issue: the fact that a growing number of patients, after near lifelong serial therapies (some from when they were in preschool), had stopped responding to the treatments altogether. This was antithetical to the stance of the all-powerful C-therapy industry, which held that there was always a cure and had, in fact, always come up with one, no matter how a C-illness might express itself or evolve. But now — though, of course, Vik did not know this — it was like what we ourselves faced in our grow houses early on in the originals’ history, when it was found that a certain blight had developed that could not be eradicated or prevented with any known chemicals or change in practices. They examined the grow media, the water, the grow-house air, the particular mélange of engineered nutrients, testing each and then all the possible matrices, and in the end it was decided to dismantle the grow houses and literally incinerate every last thing inside them, right to the concrete flooring, and start over again, which indeed solved the problem. But of course, this was not an option with what was now facing Charters.

This was why Vik’s colleague’s new therapy was so valuable, as it could address a profound threat to the entire C-industry, its companies grown massively rich over the last one hundred years, certainly the most profitable on the planet. Fan, if not comprehending every particular of what he said, gathered enough to ask him why he chose to work as an emergency room doctor, rather than be a C-specialist. This seemed to short-circuit Vik; he took a long sip from his bubble tea straw and told her that people got sick, they always did and always would, and in the end no one would ever figure out why. But he found addressing their immediate ills gave him satisfaction. So, yes.

The moment passed and he made no more of it. Vik now carried the boxed apple pie stiffly before him like a ritual offering, and when they reached the door where Betty and a helper were greeting everyone, he gently deposited it into her hands and quickly whispered something — Vous êtes ma tarte aux pommes — which was audible only to her and Fan and perhaps the helper. Of course, Fan didn’t understand the breezy, lispy words, but assumed from Betty’s stricken expression that he had said something confusing or maybe even rude, and certainly not amusing to her in any way. But Vik was almost sweetly smiling and the helper behind Betty was smiling back at him, if only reflexively, and Betty could do nothing but hand back the pie box to the helper and air-kiss Vik quickly and, with an effortful smile, ask who his young friend was.

Meet Fan. She’s the niece of a friend. I’m keeping her company today.

Hello, Fan. I’m Betty Cheung. Welcome.

Fan thanked her and shook her warm, dry hand. Betty was quite petite, not too much taller or broader than Fan, in fact, and very beautiful in a needlessly perfected way, as if a higher power had taken a woman who was similar to Betty and plenty pretty, and decided to bestow the most shapely cuteness to her nose, and fund a sappy darkness into her brown eyes, and draw rounder and fuller her smallish lovely mouth, and envelop it all in a slip of clean pure skin that could never possibly pale or blush or sweat. Having somehow unconsciously grasped that this had happened, Betty dressed herself just as exquisitely, no matter the occasion, and whether it was a dress or jeans or apron, the faithful cut of her clothing never allowed the impression of her smallness to supersede the faultless lines and proportions of her figure, surely fit but never too drawn or lean-looking.

Betty had to greet the next guests and the helper ushered Vik and Fan into the rest of the house, pointing them forward to where the party was before she peeled off to the kitchen with the pie. Vik had not brought up with Fan beforehand how he would explain her presence and they did not discuss it now, this being his style. But he had also grasped what everyone who met Fan clearly sensed about her, that among her numerous capacities there was her ready ability to acclimate to any temperature. She certainly wasn’t the kind to query him about the particulars of his relationship with Betty, despite how curious she was and what she was beginning to think. Of course, none of that mattered to Fan. It was Vik’s life to do with as he pleased, to follow as he pleased. She had come along to enjoy one final day’s outing with him, and she wondered when he left for the hospital tomorrow morning whether she would leave a good-bye note and resume her path, too.

The interior of the house was an open plan, dominated by a long central living room with an exceedingly high ceiling and an exposed, intricately engineered steel catwalk offering access to the five bedrooms, two on each side and the master at the far head. The main level felt like a chapel that had been cleared of its pews and filled with multiple conversational sets of furniture, though all the sofas and armchairs were empty now with everyone gathered in the rear under an immense full-height conservatory with operable glass panels that were darkened when needed. The conservatory was essentially the backyard but a backyard screened and lighted and plumbed and under complete climate control, the size, it seemed to Fan, of one of the natural-light B-Mor grow nurseries where they didn’t also raise fish.

Some people caught sight of Vik and waved him over, drinks in their hands. They were a group of younger doctors like Vik, both women and men, perhaps a bit more ruffled and unkempt in the hair and clothes than the other guests, who were mostly in their thirties and forties, and children, seemingly scores of very young ones, each being held or closely trailed by a nanny wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. Vik’s colleagues hardly acknowledged the niece-of-a-friend Fan, partly for her presumed age, but mostly because of how focused they were on the subject of the Cheungs’ windfall, reportedly worth not only cash and stock but also offered a contract for Oliver to continue directing the development of his therapy for the next five years at twice his current salary at the medical center. He hadn’t decided what to do yet, naturally torn between wanting to guide the research on his brainchild and doing absolutely nothing, at least as far as working was concerned.

I know what I’d do, one of the women said, swirling her glass of white wine. She was gangly and sallow with frizzy dirty-blond hair, her dark brown roots grown out too long. I would have gone in and quit this morning and then chartered my own global for a six-month tour of vineyards. Vineyards in every continent. But I wouldn’t care if it was just one. I haven’t been anywhere!

None of us has! the other woman responded. How could we? We’ve all been in school forever and then went right to work!

And will do so forever! an unshaven man piped in. He wore a funny little brimmed hat that seemed too small for his big swarthy head.

I took a global to Fiji in the spring, another of the men offered.

I think I remember that, the second woman said. Wasn’t that just for a long weekend?

A regular weekend, actually. But it was really great.

What’d you do?

Swam some. Mostly slept.

Solid.

The first woman said, Do they have vineyards in Fiji?

The Fiji fellow said he thought not but couldn’t be sure.

Would you go on your trip all by yourself? the funny-hatted man asked the woman with the wineglass. She thought about it.

I’d bring a man with me, maybe even several men, for the company but also so I would be sure to get pregnant.

You could get pregnant now.

But I don’t have the time. I don’t yet have the money. And when I finally have both, I’ll be too old even to take drastic measures.

You can keep.

Don’t be icky.

I think we’ll all change our minds about that.

Not me.

I’d go on your global, the Fiji man said. I like those flights. But you can’t get something for nothing. You’d have to buy my loving.

Maybe I would.

They all laughed nervously, though maybe not Vik. Being nudged by their huddle, Fan had drifted a few steps away and now stood among some children who were picking at the many rectangular platters of delicious-looking food on the catering tables, though to Fan it all tasted invisibly misted with the same half-stale sauce.

And what about you, Vik, would you ride my global? I’d pay lots for you. I’d pay twice your salary.

I wouldn’t let you, Vik told her, accepting a beer from a roving waiter. Love should be free.

You’re terribly wise, Vik, the funny-hatted man said.

It’s because I’m much older than all of you.

What, by four or five years? You’re the same age as Oliver, aren’t you?

From eleventh year on, we were in the same form and section.

Wow, the man said. Must have been a drag to have all that brilliance with you the whole way through. I’d have gone blind.

We all did, Vik said, subscribing to the mood. But Oliver is too charming to despise.

And Oliver knows it, someone said brightly from behind Vik.

It was Oliver.

Hail Caesar! the group quickly roared.

Ditch the rotgut, he told them. With him were three waiters, one of them cradling an inordinately large bottle of Champagne — a double magnum — by its bottom and neck, the other two ready with flutes. Oliver gave hugs to the two women and chest-and-shoulder bumps to the men, with maybe an extra-heavy bump for Vik. Oliver was the shortest person among them and a bit stocky, though, as with his wife, there was something highly crafted about him, plus in his case also unmistakably, irrefutably, clean, as though he had showered twice, a third time, then gone back and fine-scrubbed himself again. He scanned Fan as Vik repeated what he’d already said about her, though to Fan it was clear that Oliver wasn’t in the least believing him. But he didn’t say anything, simply shaking her hand, or rather giving her his to shake, not exerting the slightest bit of pressure.

This just got delivered and I want you guys to have the first taste.

He took the bottle and propped it on his thigh, thumbing at the cork. It shot out and hit a panel of the glass ceiling hard enough that they all winced, though it didn’t appear to have cracked it. But now wine was fountaining over Oliver’s hand onto the tiled floor, and he pivoted to the waiters so they could catch as much as they could in the glasses they extended.

My God, Oliver, the second woman gasped. Is that real Champagne? You could have bought a car instead!

Maybe a used one! he said, pouring out the glasses, the foam overflowing the rims. But I don’t care. I love you guys. I want to share everything I’ve got. The other guests were looking over jealously at them, but what made Oliver the master of such potentially awkward situations was how obliviously enthused he was (though he could never be oblivious) with those he engaged, so that one couldn’t help but be awed by his attentions, even when they were directed at someone else. It was like watching the turn of the Earth from a global, the continents getting lit by the Sun. You could not feel too bereft.

The Fiji man began making an odd, lame toast to used cars, which was snuffing the moment until Vik saved it by proposing they drink to the stunning new house, the design and construction of which Betty had so skillfully overseen. They hear-heared to that, though the Fiji man joked as to what the proper waiting period was for redoing the place altogether.

What? I wouldn’t pry a nail, Oliver said, sounding put out. But he grinned. This house is so perfect I’m going to build another one exactly like it on that lot over there, then connect the two with bridges.

Don’t I see a big house on that lot?

Not for long, Oliver said, his innate keenness showing, the long saber of his confidence. They’ll have to sell, for what I’ll offer them. Then I’ll buy the two adjoining lots in the back, so we can have a real play yard for the kids. Then my work will be done.

What about the new company job? the second woman asked. What about Asimil? Don’t you want to see it through?

Oliver said of course he did, but that from everyone he’d talked to as they prepared for the sale he understood it would never be how it was, he’d never again have full control of the direction of the lab. He and his researchers would be employees in the end. After a few months, he would find it maddening; in a year, impossible. He would then quit in frustration, leaving the lab and project rudderless.

So better not to waste a whole year. They already have a plan for Asimil anyway. And I decided I don’t want to treat patients anymore, either.

But they love you!

Thank you. I will now entrust them to all of you. Day by day I was a medical doctor but all these years I’ve also been an entrepreneur. I was building a business. That business has significant value now. It exists. So I’m going to begin doing that again.

Another kind of therapy?

Probably, but not necessarily. Something in medicine for certain. Maybe devices. But not directly, not bench work. I’m going to be an angel investor, right here from the house. I can leverage an expertise very few people have. So I’m having an office set up. This way I can watch the kids grow. Betty and I can have lunch.

It sounds wonderful, the vineyard woman said, everyone tinkling their glasses again. Another rush of guests had stepped into the conservatory, including a few of his lab assistants and Betty’s parents, and so Oliver went to meet them, handing the massive bottle to the catering waiters to go around and pour glasses for the other guests. It seemed everyone’s eyes and murmurs were following him, this generous and gracious and even filial genius who’d made good on the promise of his powerful intellect and leveraged it, as he’d said, to this now magnificent scale. Vik told Fan he was going to the bathroom and she nodded, though she noticed that he, too, stopped by and greeted Betty’s parents, who warmly greeted him. She was fine to stay here alone but she wasn’t alone now, as a pudgy young girl with black bangs had latched on to her by the banquet table, saying, You want to play? Her thoroughly exhausted-looking nanny entreated Fan with a desperate smile and Fan naturally said she didn’t mind. The girl was four or five years old and her name was Josey. Josey was very bright and talkative and decided to make up a plate of food for a play dinner party and did so with startling care and maturity, choosing a healthful mix of fresh veggies, plus a second plate teetering with cake slices and cookies.

They settled at one of the many small bistro tables that had been set up for the party. The nanny sat on a folding chair on the periphery, finally having a chance to eat something herself. Josey demonstrated how to dip the crudités in the whipped dressing she’d dolloped on the plate. She bit half of a carrot stick and gave the rest to Fan, but when Fan only pretended to eat it, Josey scowled and took Fan’s hand that was still holding the jagged rest and pushed it up toward her mouth. Fan could have resisted, easily reclaimed her hand, yet there was something about the fierce set of the girl’s chin and the pinch of her tiny dampish grip, a focus and determination that was so pure and elemental (and that undoubtedly had not yet been thwarted in her life) that Fan thought it best the moment be played all the way through.

Once they had eaten enough veggies, Josey pronounced they could have dessert, and it was now that the young girl seemed to forget they were sharing, as well as maybe forgetting everything else around her, clutching the big chocolate chip cookie in one hand while forking pieces of carrot cake into her mouth with the other, and then even dipping the crisp cookie into the creamy icing and having it that way, the combination pleasing her immensely. In fact, she was eating a bit too avidly, in Fan’s view, when the girl stood up and tried to cough. She shivered and dropped her fork, and without a thought, Fan rapped her squarely on the back once, quite hard, which caused the girl to yelp and shook the piece of cookie forward onto her tongue. She kept chewing it even as she wailed from the surprise blow and the frightened faces of Oliver and Betty’s parents, who had already rushed over.

Daddy! she sobbed, Oliver taking her into his arms. He thanked Fan for her confident action, as he’d noticed them together just before Josey got in trouble. One would think Josey’s grandparents would be busy offering her comfort and assurance, too, but instead the wispy, lamb-faced, stylishly dressed pair had turned a radish hue and were flaying the terrified nanny, who had bounded over still holding, the misfortunate thing, her piled-high buffet plate. She tried to explain but they weren’t hearing any of it, calling her lazy and incompetent and stupid for not sticking by Josey at all times, until Fan finally said she was to blame for asking to spend time with their granddaughter.

I should not have let her eat so fast, she said, which to her mind was certainly true.

Who in the world are you? said the grandmother.

She’s Fan! Josey cried, unlatching herself from Oliver and taking Fan’s hand. And it’s not her fault!

It’s not anyone’s fault, honey, Oliver said to her, though the flash of his icy regard for the nanny seemed to wither the woman instantly. He told her that she could go home for the day. Dr. Oliver, please, I will stay, the helper meekly said, patting Josey on the back, but before anyone could say another word, the grandparents had already summoned a brace of other helpers to lead the helper away, all of them whoop-cooing the shunned one like she was a strange, just-alighted bird.

I’m going to play with Fan! announced Josey. Oliver, craning about the crowded party and the various guests signaling him with their wineglasses, asked Fan if she would stay with her for a while. Josey immediately led her upstairs to her bedroom, a pink-and-white paradise of frilly-gowned dolls and sleepy polar bears and herds of unicorns, her canopied and skirted bed made to look like an icing-dotted pink princess cake, wall-to-wall fluffy sheepskins carpeting the floor. They played some vid games and next with the dolls and animals and then a pretend, with Josey as the nanny and Fan as Josey, in which nothing unusual happened, just Josey combing Fan’s hair and rattling away idly in remarkable detail about the troubles of her adult son, Raymundo, who evidently drank and gambled away most of his meager counties earnings, as did all of his friends. No worlds made for us, little girl. At one point Josey stopped brushing and tapped Fan on the shoulder and whispered: I have to do a stinky. Fan took this to mean what it did, Josey leading her through a short hallway of closets to the connected bathroom and having her stand sentinel while she sat on the toilet. This always takes forever, Josey said theatrically, rolling her eyes, and then picked up one of the handscreens from a bin of toys beside her to start a game.

Fan heard some muted voices — the bathroom was Jack-n-Jill, shared on the other side by an as yet unoccupied child’s bedroom — and as Josey became engrossed in her game, Fan drifted toward the sounds, realizing she was hearing Betty and Vik. They were trying to keep their voices down but they were arguing. They were arguing about messages, and no longer sending messages, about the sweet gone past and the harsh press of the present, about the time being wrong and then never wrong, which even Vik, clearly the more wounded and angry party, didn’t sound convinced of. But he kept on beseeching Betty. She was now rich beyond imagining, yes, he could never offer her such heights, but at least they weren’t bloodless and joyless together, and cast to conduct their lives ever the same, merely with nicer things, the same-same-same. You’ll take a global every month but you’ll never go for pie! He was not sounding very rational now. Then it was silent for a moment, like they were embracing, even kissing, and then all there was to be heard was some shuffling of feet and Vik’s groan of Oh, come on, before the sounds of a door slowly opening, and closing.

When she and Josey finally returned downstairs, the determined girl at last successful in her business, people were gathered in the main hall around the collection of gifts they’d brought and deposited there, Betty and her helpers presiding.

There you are, sweetie! We’re going to open the house presents now. Didn’t you want to help?

Josey squealed and threw herself into the pile. She shred away the wrapping papers like a ravenous big cat, precariously showcasing each gift over her head — a custom-forged chef’s knife, a crystal wine decanter — and then handing it to a helper, who would put it away safely and catalogue it for Betty. There were thirty or forty presents, all so luxuriously wrapped and fancifully ribboned, the strappings slowing Josey down enough that another helper was tasked to snip them unobtrusively so when she touched them, they fell away like loose straw. Still it was going to be a lengthy process, everyone fully indulging the giving and the delight of the child.

Fan looked for Vik but he wasn’t there. Was he still up in the bedroom, slumped in a chair, disabled by heartbreak? Or was he alone in the conservatory, trying to stunt his grief with drink? Suddenly she felt herself lost. After Betty left him, Fan had tried to listen for his movements, she had nearly gone into the other room to console him. But like too many of us would, she determined he was better left undisturbed than be forced to commune with her. No matter, solace; the problem of sympathy is that it requires two. Despite having followed her many travails, whenever we put ourselves in Fan’s place, we can’t help but feel unsettled. It’s not because of the many palpable dangers, or the strings of awful suffering she had to witness, the homeliest aspects of our citizenry. Instead the feeling can come from something as unpitched as this: standing among a roomful of strangers in a house far away.

After a few more unwrappings, Josey discovered there was a very big present that had been hidden by the stacks of others, covered in sparkly white paper with a huge sky-blue bow. It was nearly the size of an outdoor AC unit. Though it wasn’t labeled, Fan knew it was Vik’s gift. Josey brazenly shoved a few smaller presents aside and paused a moment before it, as if taking its measure. The helper unclipped the bow and then Josey clawed a corner and ripped at the paper, dragging it across the front. There was a cardboard hood over it and together Betty and the helper lifted it up and off.

It was an aquarium. Someone said plug it in, and someone did. Its lights flicked on and everyone clapped. It was a popular new kind, called the Full Sea, one that was already filled with water and completely sealed. There was a gravelly seafloor and a mass of gnarly coral and sea plants that looked like threaded sugar and ribbons of dark green silk, which swayed with an invisible, gentle current. There was a remote that came with it, and someone pressed it and out of the gaps in the coral came tropical fish. They looked so alive and real someone gasped — all household creatures having been banned — but these were artificial, if perfect, spotted catfish and striped angelfish and red discus fish and iridescent barbs, their fins fluttering, their mouths working, their bodies flashing away whenever someone tapped at the glass.

It was then Fan strode quickly from the main hall to the front door, coming out on the landing. When she got there, she saw Vik’s coupe, already backed out and just now spinning away. She waved for him to stop. She didn’t want to be left. She shouted, running down the steps and across the front grass. But he was gone.

And it was now that she saw Oliver had watched him drive away, too. He had been standing in the driveway on the other side of the catering vans. He approached her slowly, his face somehow somber and sated all at once.

And in a voice that shook her, he said, I know who you are, Fan.

She didn’t answer, or couldn’t, sure that she’d now come to the end of a line.

You’re my sister.