On Such A Full Sea

25

During the next couple of weeks, fan grew ever ingrained into the life of the Cheungs, such that it felt to them that she had always been a part of their family. They all kept saying how much they loved her presence, her indulging play with the children, how she helped Betty make design decisions and kept Oliver exercising, which relieved his stress. Even the helpers adored her, as she never minded picking up after Josey or lending a hand with the dishes. This all came easily to her, of course, being someone who was raised in a crowded household in B-Mor, embodying for Betty and Oliver all the reasons that they were expending astounding efforts and sums on this project.

The effort was all theirs but the sums, we should now note, had begun to dwarf what was actually in their accounts (especially given that they’d just built what had been a new house), as the deal with the pharmacorp had been agreed to in principle but with the minor contractual details, as one can expect with ever-complicating lawyers, still being haggled over. Of course, none of this mattered, as after word of the sale, every major Charter bank had come to the Cheungs hawking huge bridge loans at rates so low anyone would have jumped at the offers. Borrowed or not, a sizable new lode of money is a powerful thing, as everyone knows, not just the quickest balm but a device of dreams, an imagination machine that churns out the exact products of your wishing, one right after the other, so that it’s all one can do to keep up the conjuring. Maybe that’s why in B-Mor it’s always been so costly to borrow money (besides being nearly impossible to make a windfall), which we see now may be a boon, to keep us from pitfalls, of course, but also ever grounded. Our eyes on smaller prizes.

And if we understand Fan in this way, it makes sense enough that she did not prod Oliver and Betty on the question of Reg. She was well aware how all-consumed they were with the light-speed progression of the work, the two houses at this point appearing just like the architect’s full-color renderings (though in truth the serial simulations barely preceded the stages of construction), the design finally set so that each house had three entrances (a primary and two flanking) and the simple window pattern of a B-Mor structure, one atop the other on each of the three floors, the façades now cased in real bricks that had been aged in specialized weathering barns. The interiors were coming along as well, Fan doing a daily walk-through with Oliver and Betty and their architects or foremen during the shift changeover of workmen in the late afternoon, ascending the central stair of each bay as it took them to the landings of a floor’s four rooms that would soon be as plush as the trailers but were distinct compartments, the plan so unlike the overabundant airiness of the former structure. The difference here was that you could move through the various doors and openings between the bays, go up and down and across from wherever you were, the bedrooms and parlors repeated except for the very large kitchen and communal dining room in each house, which would be anchored by a long, rough-hewn plank table for up to sixteen (the pair being made right now, in fact, by a woodworker at Seneca Circus).

But even with everything moving at a breathtaking pace, Fan still tried to remind Oliver as often as she could to please follow up with this or that colleague or friend, and while he never seemed irritated by her requests or replied with any curtness, she couldn’t help but wonder whether he was intentionally not taking their calls or deleting their messages or indeed had never gotten in touch with them at all. For while she didn’t want to think it, from his perspective what benefit would it be to speed up this process of searching for her Reg? Whether they located him and could bring him here, or else found the whole hope was futile, either way would only serve to hasten the arrival of the moment when Fan must decide whether to stay with them or go. And as we recount her travails, it’s not difficult to surmise that this is the basic form of the question, no matter where she was, in B-Mor or the counties or in the soft glove of a Charter: Why did she go? Why didn’t she stay? What ill condition does she see?

It’s funny to say, but maybe if she knew how interested we had become in her absence, she might never have gone.

Though there are signs. Here in B-Mor, where the autumn sun shines in its unmitigated fullness, we see the lengthened shadows of the gathered throng and are grateful for them, as it’s this darkness that now mostly blankets the streets and makes them seem full, our numbers sadly dwindled. There’s still noisemaking and chanting, a chorale breaking out here and there, if with a less strident song. It’s the same with the postings, and the chattering in the mall, as if a certain diminishment had settled into our cells and ceded the keenest color, the keenest heat, as with the first fading leaves now twittering on the lean-branched trees. The only things literally growing are the oddly styled heads you come upon quite regularly of late, the shifting, sheepish eyes of those no longer keeping up their clean-shaven scalps, their renascent hair unruly and confused in its swirls.

We briefly followed one of these persons last weekend, an attractive young woman in her late teens or early twenties, good skin and clear, pretty eyes, being curious as to what she might be doing with that part of her day. We trailed her for an hour in the underground mall, where she browsed the sale racks of blue jeans and glamour tees, then visited a cheap jewelry kiosk where she was clearly acquainted with the clerk, purchasing a shiny accessory for her handscreen before meeting a neatly dressed (and normally coiffed) couple at a tea stall. They took tea and some cookies, and the two women seemed to have some laughs at the expense of the man, who took the ribbing well enough. Then the man noted the time and the couple quickly got up to leave, perhaps for a movie, inviting her to come along, but she declined, happily shoo-shooing them away.

She first checked her handscreen for a while, then put it away and simply watched the streams of people through the clear partition that separated the tables of the tea stall from the mall corridor, her expression difficult to read, neither bored nor wistful nor in any way intrigued. And yet there was something about her in that moment of regard that gave us pause. She was quite enrapt, we were certain, even as her face remained almost totally blank, just as a drinking glass remains unchanged when filled with water but of course is not at all the same.

For we know the moment, too: to have given over to the full onrush of a feeling, to have ridden up the wall of the curl and maybe, if we’re reckless or brave enough, done the deed, essentially turning our insides out. And for a period — this young woman’s lasting perhaps a few weeks — heady with the rich feed of new and unexpected hopes, we make a whole world of that feeling, such that we can hardly imagine how it was before, or could ever be again, so that the smallest things we say or do seem touched with a destined aura. We connect with you who lingers in our path. We forget that every fervor will subside.

The young woman paid her bill and left, and as she stepped on the escalator rising to the street level, someone said loudly enough for her to hear, What about Fan?

She turned and looked about, unsure as to who had spoken. She looked suddenly so stricken and wan, as if her very conscience had leaped out from her chest and cuffed her. The escalator delivered her to the top and she glanced about nervously before scampering away.

It was awful, for someone to have singled out this poor soul, this girl who had only enacted with earnestness and the wonder of a pup those things we couldn’t bring forth or otherwise contrive for ourselves. We must picture her as feeling hounded all the way home, passing the old-timers in the parlor without even her usual blithe Hey, ba, going up to the room she shared with two sisters but who were fortunately away and with unknowing irony doing just as we do in our secret night, our heads gravely cradled, towing rough fingers through the strands.

So what about our Fan? What was her disposition as she stood on the new street the bulldozers had graded between the houses and filled with gravel, bawdy-storied crews having installed drainage and laid out the formwork for the sidewalks? Betty had instructed the architects to consult Fan whenever possible, telling the almost identically dressed and spectacled trio (two men and a woman) that what it felt like out here was as important as in any room of the houses. This is where Josey and the twins and their cousins and their pals would spend much of their most cherished time, racing about, as Fan had described, in a game of tag using the stoops as safe bases, or playing soccer with the curbs as sidelines and ragged grow-house jumpsuits dropped down as goals, or simply sitting enervated beneath the mean summer glare, squinting and dry mouthed, waiting for the ice cream man to putter by on his three-wheeled scooter with its rear icebox full of treats (there was no such vendor here in the Charter but certainly one could be arranged). It was all being knit together before Fan’s eyes, its imminence convincing her at least of the generous vision and spirit of these newfound kin, and perhaps engendering something deeper in her, too, those feelings none of us who are truly living can always master and which thus grace us, if also leaving us vulnerable.

It turns out, though, that Fan was more vulnerable than she could know. For Oliver was indeed taking all his colleagues’ calls, and calling them all back, and then pushing to be referred to others who might be better positioned and connected to those who might actually know something. At first it was squarely annoying how difficult it was to find out almost anything about this Reg, by every account a thoroughly ordinary low-level facility worker, Oliver’s frustration in fact boiling over during a call to a lab friend, when in an arrogant fit of pique he accused the fellow of indolence for not coming up with more useful results. But soon enough, as it grew clear how the channels of his always reliable school and medical network were seemingly being blocked, Oliver became intrigued. The more resistance or obfuscation or dead-ending he encountered, the more it sparked his mind with a deepening fascination, a fascination that soon altered his approach, such that he saw the problem as one of not just exerting pointed social pressures or unpacking certain linkages but embracing the phenomenon of a complex and special aberration, upon which he would apply the force of his research methodologies, structuring and casting his inquiries to probe certain notions and to isolate and test corollaries to see how they led back to a former line or else suggested a new one.

He mentioned none of these activities to Fan, in part telling himself that to do so without a ready or even provisional means of finding Reg would be irresponsible, and maybe downright cruel (despite the fact that he admired Fan for being Fan, which is to say the kind of person who would keep the right perspective on such qualified information). The other part was less generous; for soon enough, one of these lines, Oliver concluded, confirmed at least this: that while really no one could or would say where this Reg was, including someone very high up in the directorate, it was clear he’d become a primary object of curiosity for the very pharmacorp that was buying Asimil. This made perfect sense, if what he was now hearing back about the boy was true. There was Asimil and there was Reg; a life of serial therapies, or maybe none at all. The former would be astronomically expensive. But which was actually more valuable in the end? If he were running the pharmacorp, he would be running the numbers, having it penciled out, but regardless he’d want Reg in his hands, for sure (he’d easily confirmed that both his parents had died of C-illnesses and that Reg was an only child), to determine what in his makeup was leading people to believe he was C-free forever, although how, without his whole life having been lived and studied, could you ever be certain? Maybe you’d have to keep him forever.

Another week or so went by. By now the hardscape was completed, the sidewalks set and lined with granite curbing, and the roadway paved in the same light gray hue of our very own streets, and then laced with just enough mica to emit the slightest glitter. The young gingko trees were planted and staked. In fact, they decided not to roll out much sod on the double property but instead put in a large playground for all the children of the neighborhood to use, even if there weren’t that many. Oliver had a street sign made up and affixed to the top of a black-painted steel gaslight post set at the head of the drive, the old-style letters embossed and hand-painted: Betty’s Lane. Inside, the houses were nearly completed, with the installation of cabinetry and appliances and electronics and the finishes of the floors. All the rooms had already been painted or papered, the bedrooms laid in with carpeting.

Fan’s rooms in her bay’s three floors — all twelve of them, not including the baths — were painted in white. As with the other rooms in the houses, Betty had multiple scenarios for various beautiful and elegant color schemes for her walls and trim from which to choose, a mix of paints and wallpapers, curtains and rugs and throws, but Fan asked to have it done in plain white, the default, bulk white paint contractors used in the service people’s dorms and public restrooms, which was the same white paint the originals in B-Mor had been given truckloads of long ago and that we never stopped using. She chose it for the sake of familiarity but also because the selecting of all those very particular colors seemed to her a tacit acceptance of a future in which she could not quite promise she would be.

Betty, clearly, had no such conception, instantly agreeing to Fan’s request with the idea that it was a classic look, clean and simple, and she even went so far as to have all of Fan’s furniture covered in the same flat white, if knocked down with the slightest touch of gray so everything wouldn’t be so severe and polar, which turned out to be absolutely right. Fan was at once her au pair, her incredibly capable and independent helper, her sweet little sister, and Betty was now comfortable enough with her to ask more questions about Reg, what he looked like, what he enjoyed eating, his favorite pastimes, all, of course, so she could get a feel for what it would be like when he was here on the “block.” They were in her soon-to-be bedroom suite, surrounded as if in snow. Betty was also naturally curious as to how they’d met, what she and Reg liked to do together, even mischievously inquiring, as a close girlfriend might, about the more romantic details, such as whether he was a good kisser. Fan had never really talked about such things before, but we know she felt comfortable enough with Betty, too, and perhaps slightly dazzled by the woman’s openness and obviously generous heart, that she found herself divulging how Reg had her sit on his right whenever possible because of the small, hairy mole on his left cheek that he was terribly self-conscious about, even with her.

Oh, he sounds so sweet! Betty cried, and soon they were giggling about Oliver and how he couldn’t walk by a mirror without furtively checking the state of his biceps or abs with his new toning regimen of weight lifting and swimming, the latter of which he started up again after taking Josey for her first swim lessons and deciding to do laps while she was being coached. In fact, Betty went on and told Fan how strange it was to have him around all the time, to be reminded of certain of his habits and traits, like his secret vanity, or his addiction to sour jellies and iced coffee, which apparently he steadily fed himself with during his hours at the medical center and lab, and had seriously cut back on now, though who could tell.

It seems it is nice for you, too, Fan observed.

Of course you’ve noticed, Betty said, smiling. It’s been not just nice but wonderful. Maybe you think it’s funny that I’m calling him Liwei, but for me everything feels different. He’s still Oliver through and through, I know, but now he really spends time with Josey and wants to bathe the twins every day and for the first time I think since we were in school we’re watching movies together again in bed at night, with popcorn and wine. We’re not even having to talk that much if you know what I mean, she said, her eyes twinkling. We’re having fun, even stupid fun. Some real joy. We still argue plenty and he drives me crazy with how he has to think everything through a dozen squared times but I guess that’s gotten us where we are. Right? This is truly the place we should be.

Fan did not demur, nor try to judge whether Betty wholly meant what she said or was more hoping she was. It didn’t matter, because, as we know, it is “where we are” that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not, and as such is the ground on which we will try our best not to feel trapped, or limited, or choose those paths that merely assuage our fears. By this standard, Betty was alive, and so was her Liwei, and Fan could finally now believe that in the near course of time Reg’s whereabouts would be revealed; for she was only human, too, we have to remember, simply a girl with a love who was lost, and if the iron ordeals she endured these past months had made her batten down her longing, in the comfort and relative calm of Betty’s Lane that ache had begun to bristle, steadily untwine.

With the project nearing completion and their having far less to manage, they took short excursions during the day. When Josey returned from preschool just past midday, they all climbed into the Cheungs’ buslike new van and went to town to lunch and shop or visit the children’s museum or zoo before heading to their newly joined private fitness club where Oliver and Josey swam in the full indoor pool while on the deck Fan watched the twins along with one helper, the strapped-in babies loving the sounds and splashing of the water. The club had set up several treadmills in a connecting room with a waist-high wall, to afford an open view so parents could watch their children swim, and Betty slowly walked on one of these while she caught up on some of her evening programs.

This is just how they were situated one Saturday afternoon, Fan passing a rattle back and forth with one of the twins, the helper, Pinah, engaging the other, Josey paddling somewhat frantically in the nearest lane toward the swim instructor, though making her way across the pool, with Oliver motoring back and forth in a far lane, when several groups of men in warm-ups and swimming caps with goggles strapped to their foreheads walked out to the deck. Among them was Vik Upendra, Fan recognizing him immediately even with his back turned, for his extra-long limbs and the way he wildly flapped his arms to loosen them, rather than shaking them like the others did. Apparently, they would later learn, there were seasonal club league swim meets, this being the autumn competition for under-forty men. At this point Betty had also seen him, as she was no longer paying attention to her treadmill screen, and when Vik finally turned and saw Betty, Fan could see the instant falter in his face, like any boy excited for a day’s swim but who had arrived to a completely drained pool. His arms, which had been stretched high, dropped down slowly and he began to walk toward her, keeping his eyes on her, even as she was minutely shaking her head and looking down at her screen, not wanting to meet his eyes. But Vik stood directly in front of her, and although Fan couldn’t hear him for the din of the indoor pool and the whining jogging machines, she could see very clearly that in so many words he was telling her that he still loved her and that she was doing all she could not to tell him the same.

On the other side of the pool, Oliver was still swimming and would have kept his head in the water for many more laps, but he must have noticed all the new adult swimmers crowding; he didn’t make his turn. He hung on to the wall instead, still wearing his dark goggles, his gaze settling immediately on Vik and his wife. He just watched them talk, or Vik talk. There was nothing else for him to do. Finally Betty begged him to please stop doing this now and Vik, seeing there was nowhere to go, relented. He walked to Fan on the near side of the pool.

How are you? he said, his pleasing face all broken into parts.

I’m fine, Fan said, her own chest heavy. I hope you will be, too.

Thank you, he answered. Then he slowly walked to the far end with a dignified deliberateness. When he reached the last two lanes, he donned his goggles and then dove into the pool in the next-to-last lane. He smoothly swam the length, freestyle, heading toward where Oliver was now treading at the wall, and when he got there, he didn’t stop or slow but made a flip turn and reversed, kicking hard away. Oliver followed him in his own lane, by the half point catching up to Vik. They kept pace with each other for the rest of the length, their speed more steady than anything else, as if they wanted to be going side by side, as if the eyeing each other were building up their strength.

Then, near the wall, Oliver swam beneath the lane divider and into Vik’s lane, and when they both flipped and turned, they were still neck and neck, but now flying. The commotion and sight of two swimmers racing in the same lane was now drawing the pool’s attention, such that people were collecting along the four sides to watch them go, crowding and leaning over one another, including Fan and Pinah the helper, so they could see these two, the long man and the short man, the gliding strides and the pistons, their arms sometimes tangling or even striking the other on the shoulder, the cap, the torsos jostling and pushing each other against the divider, riding up over it. There was a race to win but neither knew how long the race was, they just kept eating up lengths until Vik, longer and more fit for having been swimming all these years, began to pull away, one length becoming two, becoming three, until it was no longer a race anymore, Vik flipping and turning against a straggling Oliver and then turning again, clearly keen on reaching and lapping him.

By this time Betty was shouting for Oliver to stop, to get out of the pool. When Oliver saw Vik closing, he made a furious kick, perhaps for propulsion, but it caught Vik in the nose and instantly bloodied him. There was a guffaw from the spectators, both swimmers now treading in the pinking water. Vik held his face and saw the blood and then fell upon Oliver, the people around now yelling, Betty screaming, with some of the spectators so riled they either stepped in or jumped in themselves or were pushed in from behind, so that others might see the swimmers fighting, though lifeguards and some swim team members had already jumped in and separated Vik and Oliver.

Fan couldn’t see any more for the bigger people blocking her view, but she did notice Pinah through the scrum, or rather she saw the pinned dark hair of Pinah’s head, suspended a foot below the surface of the water. Her arms flanked wide. Fan jumped in and crouched at the bottom and then shot them both up with a fierce boost of her legs, the plumpish woman much heavier than Fan would have ever thought. Some people on the deck pulled Pinah out and a lifeguard started working on her, Fan watching from the water as she caught her breath at the pool ladder. Luckily the guard got Pinah to cough and hack and start to breathe again quickly, as she’d been under for only a few seconds.

Fan climbed out quickly, panicking for a second, but saw the twins still secured in their bouncers, if now crying. But she didn’t want to pick them up for how soaked she was, her loose sweatpants and T-shirt now clinging to her. Then she saw a toweled, totally spent Oliver being hugged by Betty at the other end of the pool. Betty was fiercely whispering to him, perhaps beseeching him. Whether he was, in fact, listening to her, Fan could not tell. All she knew was that he was staring at her with the deadest eyes, the hollow of the feeling making her instinctively pull the wet fabric from her belly.