On Such A Full Sea

23

Our sister Fan.

Brother Reg.

Sisters Claire and Ji, brothers Darren, Sho, Tien; we will say it like that now, wherever we are, to those beyond our households, beyond our clans, unafraid of what might happen if the bosom address is spurned. Flag us if you must. What can they do? Detain us all? Have most of B-Mor disappear? It’s a matter of numbers, yes, but there is an altered thrum in the air. Too many of us are together now. When we’re at the theater, even for a wildly popular film, not a single seat free, the murmur before the lights dim is often word of the latest gatherings around the settlement, demonstrations that are no longer just spontaneous (like the littering of ponds), or stray (tags on walls), these keen if mostly isolated bursts of feeling. Talk has it there was a meeting at the big children’s park in West B-Mor, openly planned and announced, and at the appointed hour, instead of the wary, measured trickle that might have come before, a few elders sent out with toddlers in tow to test the directorate’s response; they say the grounds were filled nearly all at once, adults with infants strapped to their chests sitting on the swings, the abler-bodied climbing into the rope structure of the forts, the organizers standing on facilities palettes stacked three high so that everyone could see them, passing the bullhorn to one another to speak about the recent raising of the qualifying score of B-Mor children for promotion to a Charter, ours now having to test in their top 1.25 percent instead of the 2 percent before, which seemed already unfair. This is not about the price of fish anymore. Regular people, including people who were even childless, asked to be helped up onto the palettes, to speak of our most talented children and our bittersweet willingness to part with them, and did so without attempting to mask their faces. In fact, someone with high access leaked a security vid of the rally, the face ID predictably focusing on the organizers first and their deputies next and then systematically sectioning the crowd, but the drone’s zoom-and-pan kept moving too slowly and then too fast, perhaps not programmed for such large and dense and shifting numbers, and in the end the vid was rendered unviewable, jittery and useless, until it zoomed out to capture the entire massing. It turns out we are one, if not ever how we expected.

And it cannot matter that outwardly nothing has yet changed. Maybe we don’t even expect things to. Maybe we know that next year it will be deemed that 0.75 percent is the allowed fraction. We may not soon be heeded, but at least we can feel the long-held rumbles, now open-throated, our lungs warmed and aching with this special use that we know may be poignant only to us. There was so little of this voicing before, and now that there is much more, we see it takes as many forms as there are people, though some don’t easily align. There are instances of overexuberance, when someone is so stimulated by this unfettered exhibition that he loses all perspective and control. Take the case of one B-Mor fellow, who, after receiving what he felt was poor care at the health clinic, set up a camera in the staff restroom and took vids of the nurses and PAs, posting them for all, and going further by captioning each with the names and house addresses of these supposedly rotten individuals, who are of course our brethren. While we well know that our clinics are not the finest centers, and that the staffs can often seem indifferent to their charges, there is no excusing this fellow for trying to expose and humiliate them, something we have all darkly considered (not by using surreptitious vids, of course) but would never dream of enacting. And yet this B-Mor did, taking on the mantle of witness, prosecutor, judge, and jury, and executing in an instant the full bore of his malice that was unleashed, in great part, by this new and wide enthrallment.

The feeling he was free.

We will bear his blight, and others, trying to understand them as what naturally attends any plenitude, the rise of certain kinds of pests. But what gives us pause is what also may be happening to the rest of us, who have not gone to any extremes and never will and yet are differently engaged, not ultimately self-celebrating and self-aggrandizing like our health center muckraker but oriented in a way we haven’t quite been before. Are our thoughts angling as much toward ourselves as to our household or clan? Have we become as primary as the collective rest? Such indication may be in what we have begun to hear and see of the concern for Reg. B-Mor remains focused and worried about his whereabouts and welfare; there are growing calls for official information; there was even a lie-in at one of the main intersections of the settlement, in which a thoroughly organized group of younger people spelled out his name on the asphalt with their bodies, causing a jam that took some hours to undo, an inconvenience for sure but one we abided.

There are other Reg notations that don’t at first blush appear out of the ordinary. Newer tags, hand done, that only slightly revise what we’ve seen before, such as:

FREE ME, REG.

I MISS REG.

And amazingly, REG ME, which must have inspired the now popular eponymous song, whose lyrics, quirkily charming as they may be, are remarkable mostly in how much they reveal the fascination the singer has with herself. She goes on and on, and by song’s end, we can’t help but think only of her sitting at the mall café, her tea getting cold, waiting for a boy who might never come. We end up losing Reg all the more. Hey, that’s the point, some say, though it doesn’t feel in the least convincing on that score. And although the majority of us are still fixed on Reg’s happy images about the walls and streets, on the shapely simplicity of his name, on the hope that he will return to us unchanged and whole, it seems some of us have already skipped a few beats forward with no wearing effects at all.

What stands besides is that there has been nothing of Reg. Nothing at all, if you don’t count the wild rumors, which have him simultaneously manning a handscreen accessories kiosk in D-Troy, and gravely injured while attempting to escape from wherever the directorate was detaining him, and currently living among us after being cosmetically and mentally altered, which set off a brief period in which younger men of his build and height were regularly corralled by people absolutely sure it was he. Perhaps you find yourself trailing a gangly figure at the park, the kid jogging with a friend, a ball cap on his head, tufts of curly hair poking out the sides. You actually run alongside for fifty meters or so, eavesdropping on their breathy dialogue in the hope of gleaning some telltale remark or tendency that can’t be surgically erased — the way the bridge of his nose lightly twitches as he laughs, how he makes a tiny throaty rumbling urr if you startle him when he’s on his ladder — and while there is no definitive display, you can’t help but see him locked away behind that boy’s pale face and greenish yellow-flecked eyes, and reach for his pointy elbow. The boy sees this and swerves, sneering as though he’s seen a diseased cur, and then he and his friend bolt down a diverging path, giddily cracking up as if they know they just barely got away.

Which makes us think all the more that if we stop looking he’ll never emerge. It’s in the tilting and thrashing that we wangle our luck. Otherwise, as a wise man once said, we’ll be bound in shallows and in miseries. For the truth is that we can’t help but envision what may well come; for what happens when there are no more songs and postings about Reg or Fan, when all there is remaining are weather-faded portraits and scribbles on the walls? Will we look upon these as our originals did when they tried to make out the ghostly hatch of the old-fashioned firm names and advertisements for things like tooth powder on the sides of the derelict buildings and idly marvel at what times those must have been? Will we have forgotten how impassioned we became, along with the details of the cause?

Or will this capacity be a part of us now, inform from this point forward how we view these long runway-straight streets, these heartening low-shouldered homes, and our modest and well-meaning brethren, who have worked assiduously all these years in the grow houses and tanks and treatment ponds, hardly ever looking up? “B-Mor being B-Mor” is how the saying goes, but whenever someone repeats that now, there’s a rankling in the belly that makes you want to grab the person by the ears and bark, No more!

In fact, this became a refrain during the West B-Mor playground rally regarding the new promotion standard and led to a proposal of a general strike to protest it. Whether a work stoppage will really occur remains to be seen, as it would be a most serious turn, for it’s something that’s never happened in our history, not even when the directorate shut down two very busy health clinics for budgetary reasons or raised the minimum occupancy number for the older row houses after a second boomlet in our population.

You may wonder why the change in the qualifying percentile should be the inciting element when so very few of our children will ever attain it, the likely difference being one or two promotions a year, if any. Aren’t we, as is oft noted, a most practical group? For a couple of generations there was no means of promotion at all, which our forebears didn’t question, and once the chance was introduced by the directorate it was a double gift, for (1) being begun at all, and (2) rare enough that the character and constitution of B-Mor would not be eroded, say, by all of us constantly striving and angling as to how our children might leave. It is a lottery, aptitude based, of course, but a lottery nonetheless, and therefore functions primarily in the realm of imagination and dreams. We have already noted how the winners are feted, memorialized, and then duly consigned to a status like that of the heroic dead, shed of body, ethereal, mythically sublime.

But with this newly raised bar we can only ask: What else must we do? If someday not a single one of our very best can venture beyond the gates then the bargain is too skewed. Enough is enough. And it makes clearer now that the addition each year of those few hard-emblazoned names serves less to mark our progress or manifest our hopes than to parch the bitter seeds lurking beneath our endeavors, which is that where we are does not wholly comfort us. And perhaps never truly has.

Bo Liwei

Like the rest of us, Fan must have at some point gone by the monument and plumbed the etch of those letters with her fingertips, never thinking he was anything but a glimmer in the firmament. But here he was, as Oliver, though not in the least trying to hide himself from her. They were still standing on his lawn, the noise of the party briefly escaping whenever the front door was opened by someone going to their car or a child being trailed by his nanny. They would see her and Oliver, and wave, and he’d wave back, suggesting with his gestures that he was explaining something about the new house to Fan. But as he did, she thought he could not truly be Liwei, for she had been certain she would sense it the very moment she came upon him, that a certain feeling would overwhelm her, but there was no tightened roping in her chest now, no flitting chill across her skin. He didn’t much look like her parents, either, or any mixing of them, though in truth she herself could hardly remember their faces or those of the rest of the household, which made her wonder if she’d looked at them much at all. But then we know arduous journeys can make a blur of heart, and home.

Seeing her skepticism, Oliver asked her if Old Yellow was still there, something he could have viewed but could not have known the name of; it was what all the children of the household called the ancient lion-head knocker on their front door, and always would, as long as it was there. But if he was Liwei, maybe she couldn’t know, for she had never known him and had never seen his picture. And then it was generally acknowledged that those promoted changed profoundly after leaving (and rightly should), that they became thoroughly transformed, just as happens, say, if you let a pink farm pig out into the wild, they grow hairy and tusked and feral, though people will say perhaps the opposite holds here, any B-Mor coarseness and deference subsumed under the pressure of Charter stresses and expectation, which not only clarified one’s character and views of self but recast your very posture, your color, the now ever-fronted way you held your chin.

You want to know why Vik left without you? Oliver said, the question clearly still evident on her face.

She nodded.

I told him to. I said, You should leave her here with me. She’s my sister, after all. Plus, you’ll probably only get in trouble.

There was no trouble, Fan said.

I didn’t mean that, Oliver said. I know that. He told me you were from B-Mor. But it’s funny, and totally Vik. How many people does one ever encounter from B-Mor? He didn’t even know that people were talking about you back there. You and this “Reg.”

Fan didn’t reply.

But that’s the thing about Vik. He’s as smart as anyone I know. Probably the smartest. He could have done anything he wanted. But he can’t do something as simple as say your name to a handscreen. Oliver showed Fan his, her name and household address and then countless links to discussion strings about their whereabouts, to all the theories and rumors about Reg and the directorate.

It would never occur to Vik. That’s why he’ll always be stuck in the ER. He gets on to something particular, and if he’s satisfied, he won’t bother to look up, he won’t go beyond.

Fan said: Maybe he doesn’t want to go beyond.

Oliver sort of chuckled, or suppressed a chuckle, as if to say where should he begin. There was a long-seeming moment in which they simply stood there, these putative siblings, the straight roofline of the brand-new house framing them, if Fan could see it, in a way that indeed suggested like blood, perhaps the shared squareness of their shoulders. But he was looking at her now as he did when Vik was driving away, a pain bubbling up.

You know about them, don’t you? he said. He was about to say something else when his expression changed, and she turned to see Betty behind the glass storm door. Betty opened it enough to poke out her head, wave her hand.

Would you come in now, Ollie! We’re nearly done with the presents and everyone is wondering where you are!

He called, All right, and Betty smiled, and gave them another hurry-up wave. Then she disappeared back inside.

Oliver rubbed his chin. He said: I discovered it last month, just as we were setting up for the sale. Her handscreen must have fallen out of her bag in the kitchen and it was buzzing below the chair because it was nearly out of power. I plugged it in and a message from Vik came up. I know his number. Then I found all the rest, hundreds and hundreds of them. Maybe a thousand. It was amazing. Do you know how innocent most of them were?

Fan shook her head.

They were. They were almost all like that. Essentially just versions of What are you doing, I’m fine, This is on my mind. Truly nothing. You would think that would count. But of course, there were other kinds.

He paused, letting out a trapped breath.

Well, it doesn’t matter now. It’s over between them. At least Vik made that clear. Over for good. It’s nothing that should be thought about again, right?

He wasn’t really asking, but nevertheless Fan did not know what to say. And whether or not Oliver was truly her brother didn’t seem paramount at the moment, either, for how stricken he was, if almost undetectably. He just kept slowly blinking, like his eyes were too dry, the sole stirring in the impassive pane of his face. Did our Fan wish to reach out? Did she want to comfort him with an embrace? Of course, yes. So she did. It took him by surprise, but then he reciprocated with a firmness that surprised her.

When he let her go, he started heading toward the house, but Fan simply stood there.

Oliver turned to her. What are you doing?

She said she thought she should go.

What do you mean, to Vik’s?

She said yes, though in truth she didn’t quite know. Hadn’t she seen him drive off like he wouldn’t ever be coming back? The curving street before her, which led somewhere deeper into the development, was densely quilted by kempt lawns and houses, by cars and tidy young trees. No one else was around.

Listen, Oliver said. You should at least spend the night with us. There’s no place else to go right now. You can stay with us, with Josey and the twins. Josey would love it, I bet. I’ve been thinking about something since the sale. We can do whatever we want now. We can make everything happen. We can look after our family, our kin, all the time. I don’t want only helpers around us, not anymore. Now you’re here. Of course, it’s up to you. But think about it. Whatever the reasons that you’ve come out from the walls. Who else would ever help you? Who else would ever care?

That night, we know, after the party, after everyone (the guests, the caterers, Betty’s parents, all their helpers save the two who slept with the twins) had left, Betty and Fan made up her bed together in the companion bedroom to Josey’s, the one in which Fan had overheard her and Vik. Oliver was on a conference call with the pharmacorp’s scientists from their labs in Kuala Lumpur and Palo Alto. Josey had, of course, gone crazy when she learned that Fan would be staying with them, giddy with the assumption that Fan would be sharing her bedroom, but there was no other bed to bring in easily and Betty didn’t want Josey up all night playing or talking, and it took both of them a long time to calm her down after her tantrum and refusal to brush her teeth and a bout of forced sobs and the books each had to read to her and her last-gasp entreaties before her little body finally relented and she fell dead asleep. It had been a long day and it was late and even Betty, Fan could see, looked exhausted as they stretched the sheet over the mattress, strands of hair loosely screening part of her face, the slightest crook to her back. Fan insisted she would do the rest and Betty thanked her but instead of leaving she plopped herself into the downy armchair beside the bed, taking up the very large glass of wine she’d brought up and placed on the night table. It was as big as a bell. She was absently slow-swirling the ruby liquid but not yet drinking it as she watched Fan spread the top sheet and pull on the pillowcases.

After so many years, Betty said. I know you never even knew each other but it’s wonderful to see you together. Oliver seems so happy. This was going to be a happy day, for him especially, but not like this. I was afraid there would be a letdown after the sale because, frankly, what would we do with ourselves now; it’s like winning the lottery, but I don’t feel that way anymore. There’s suddenly a new shape we can see. And we have you, in part, to thank for it.

Maybe Vik, too, Fan said.

Yes, for sure, Betty said, taking a drink of her wine. I’m sorry he had to leave so abruptly. I didn’t even know.

That’s okay, Fan said, thinking as fast as she could to make sure not to cause any undue trouble.

Did he say why? Betty asked, as if asking most casually.

Fan told her he had to go to the medical center. She said she would call him tomorrow.

Yes, please do, Betty told her. But I did wonder when you two arrived. Vik is always doing and saying the strangest things. I knew you weren’t someone’s “niece.” I guess I thought he was just embarrassed to have hired a helper for himself.

He’s too neat for a helper.

That’s certainly our Vik, Betty said, her eyes a little tickled. You know, we’ve known each other since we were children. Our fathers were colleagues at an engineering firm, and our families and a couple of others liked to go to a lakeside park together, well outside our village, where most other Charter families wouldn’t go. The mothers weren’t as high on it as the dads. They wouldn’t let us swim or even go near the water. But the dads played bocce and badminton, and bought and drank the counties beer, which they said tasted better than what they had in the village.

Fan said that Vik never mentioned his parents or displayed any pictures of them.

I’m not surprised, Betty said. They passed away while we were just starting university, his mother first, and then his father almost right after, though from different Cs. It was a terrible time for him, as you can imagine. He was totally lost. He wanted to quit school, maybe even leave the village and go overseas, but we convinced him not to. Mostly I did. It was around that time I met Oliver…I mean Li…

Liwei.

Liwei. I almost like that better. In fact, I do. It’s certainly more dashing. Do you know if it means anything?

Fan did know, as from time to time someone in the household would brag to a visitor about how a member of their clan had once been Chartered.

She said: Profit and Greatness.

Of course, Betty said, almost sighing. It couldn’t be any other way. Oliver was destined to succeed. Everyone who’s ever met him has thought it. Especially back then. Vik introduced us at the gathering after his father’s memorial service. Of course, Oliver wasn’t trying to be charming, but he was all energy and funny and sweet, and before you knew it, there was a crowd around him, including Vik, who badly needed cheering up. When Oliver was younger, he couldn’t as easily dial himself back, not like he can now. He was always on because he had to be, being where he was from. You can imagine. I almost felt sorry for Vik, but you could tell he was grateful not to be the focus of everyone’s sadness and pity. He was even a little happy. That evening, as we left him to be with his relatives, he said, “Are there two more perfect people more perfect for each other?” and actually made us hold hands. And now look at us. Here we are.

Here we are, Fan said.

Betty took a last big sip and finished her wine. The bed was made up now and Betty believed she had a nightgown that was left behind by a houseguest that might fit Fan. She wobbled to her feet and said she was going to find it, and while she was gone, Fan simply waited, leaning against the foot of the bed. But after a while, it was clear Betty would not be returning tonight. Fan brushed her teeth quietly so as not to rouse Josey, then returned to the new bed and pulled back the covers. She wasn’t sleepy yet. So she just sat, waiting for the long night to come, laden heavy, as she must have been, with the truck of these many strange souls whom she had come upon and who had fallen upon her, all their hopes, and wants, and sorrows, and wounded dreams filling up the room of her thoughts. Could she still see out? Could she still see Reg? Yes. She wasn’t dreaming him anymore for she had him in her constant sight, and he was coming ever closer now.

The next day Oliver and Betty — Betty apologized for having gone right to sleep once she got near her bed — sat her down in the main hall living room to outline what they called the Next Stage. Josey was playing with the new aquarium while she waited to be picked up by the preschool shuttle, having already figured out she could point the remote and control this fish or that or even a group of them. Her twin baby siblings were set up on either side of her in bouncy seats so they could watch the action, and they bucked and flailed their chubby limbs whenever Josey had the fish retreat inside the nooks of the coral and then pop out all at once. The twins’ helpers were there, too, plus the three or four others who took care of the house, who were now dusting and damp-ragging on the periphery, though in this huge airy room and its vaulted ceiling it felt to Fan as if they were sitting at the dead center of a soccer field, the stands empty around them, the yawing space a phantom, coolish draw at her back.

Oliver and Betty were clearly unaware of the feeling, and between slugs of their iced coffees, alternately described to Fan what they saw of their new life, a life they hoped would include her. Oliver had woken Betty up before dawn and they’d talked all morning; they had many of the same notions about how they envisioned their lives, what, in their words, it would “look like, act like, feel like,” this wondrous creature of their new existence. To begin with, they were going to have another set of twins, fraternal, of course, and probably another set after that, though Betty wouldn’t carry those. She would become an all-hands mother, which meant managing every last aspect of the helpers’ and cooks’ tasks and responsibilities, and overseeing the post-school tutors for the children, as well as the clothes shopping and interior design, plus of course arranging the doctors’ visits and the vacations. Oliver would be involved as much as possible, for they decided he’d invest in companies only sparingly, focusing instead on running the charitable foundation they were going to start, maybe for the benefit of Charter helpers’ or even counties children’s health care, though of this they weren’t yet sure. What they were certain of was that this was an unparalleled opportunity, one very few people of their relative youth would ever have, which was not just to hop a global whenever they pleased or drink genuine burgundy at lunch but to spend their precious time together forever, whenever they could, without stinting.

The way they would do this, Oliver explained, was not simply by “wanting to” and “promise keeping” but by making, literally, structural changes; the plan, still preliminary, of course, but at the same time something he had seriously thought through last night, was to reorient this brand-new house, changing everything so that the entrance and front were on the driveway side, which would be mirrored by a similar construction on the abutting lot that he was going to buy. He made a quick perspective drawing of the imagined site on one of Josey’s big sketch pads, his breezy, flowing hand impressively rendering the brick and plaster façades of now more conventional doors and windows. The two new structures would face each other, with the current driveway widened past the lot line and curbed just like a street, though it would serve more as a gathering place than an avenue for cars, the sidewalk lined with healthy young trees, the asphalt marked by the chalk of a few children playing knockout, an older couple cheering them. It was homey and tidy, safe and happy, a prettified version, Fan could see now, of a B-Mor street, one that seemed like theirs, as he rendered what appeared to be a tiny lion head on one of the front doors.

He was going to build the old neighborhood, right here in the Charter.

It would be inhabited, in their vision, by their many children (and helpers, though this was understood), and her parents, and her siblings’ families, and any other relatives who might want to live there, rent-free of course, as long as they understood and believed in their “familial project” of not simply spending a few prescribed if pleasant hours of the holidays and birthdays together but engaging in the “real business” of living, the modest quarters, the joys and frictions of the communal table, the intimacy naturally elaborated enough to encompass every moment of their days, which, frankly, none of them had been experiencing much, if at all, and would have gone on missing if this great fortune had not come.

This is why we’re asking you to stay here with us, Betty said. You know what it’s like to live in this way. I never knew, nor did my parents and siblings, and Liwei — she paused and he smiled gently at her — he’s all but forgotten. You can be our guide, Fan, you can show us what to do when we’re not sure or doing things all wrong.

Now Oliver said, And we’ll do everything we can to find out what’s happening with your friend. I have colleagues all over, likely some with connections to the board of the directorate for B-Mor, if not on the board themselves. I’ll bet someone is. Regardless, we’ll get the information. And if it’s something we can file a formal petition on, we will. Obviously I’ll have more standing now, and so I have to expect that whatever can happen will happen.

And once we find him, Betty added, he can come live here, too, and be a part of the family, part of, what do you call it, the household?

She winked. Though best for a while in his own room, right?

Fan nodded, to this and the rest of what they were saying, not exactly because it was all pleasant and good (even if it was) but because the manner in which they spoke, with such confidence and reason and the heat of just enough ardor, made it impossible to view them and their desires as anything but highly agreeable, this being a Charter trait in general but one that Oliver and Betty had refined to a spell of enchantment. Indeed, Fan couldn’t help but picture her Reg clopping down the stairs in the morning, sleep still sanding his eyes, delighting in the arrangement of fresh fruits and baked goods (just like what was put out this morning, none of it repurposed from yesterday), or using his height to allow Josey to decorate the street trees for Lunar New Year, or just riding scooters together again, feeling free enough to fly away. For none of us can resist such hopeful flashes, which are, in the end, what lights our way through this ever-dimming world.