The yellow light fills his eyes as he turns to look at her. Strands of white in her hair, ashy skin still shiny with oil, bags under the eyes. Some fundamental answer encased in her bones. Why did he come? Yes, he wants, needs, to talk to this woman, but why?
She goes on. “And here I thought you understood, understood all along, and acted accordingly. Surely you left town knowing it was going to happen.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought you knew. The storm. The storm coming to the East Coast. I still believe you knew. You don’t want to take responsibility for what you knew was happening. You, and only you, possessed the knowledge and foresight to prevent it from happening. And yet you didn’t.”
“No,” Ming says. “I didn’t.”
“You knew what you were doing.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“No, I think it’s clear you’re the one who is losing your mind.”
A wingbeat of acknowledgment flicks between them.
“What do you mean, I knew what I was doing?”
“You’re too intelligent to not see this. You knew about the freezer. You knew it was possible for someone to be trapped inside the freezer.”
“Why would I have thought it would happen? Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it will happen.”
“But your older brother told you it would happen. He told the entire community, he broadcast it on the radio, that he wanted to close the door.”
There’s a radio on the kitchen counter. “He was angry, he was raving—”
“You knew how miserable William was, how much he hated your father,” she says. He’s struck by her certainty, her confidence. Is it because she’s speaking the truth? “And you, too, hated him. You hated his embarrassing reputation for being boorish, a womanizer, a lout. But you hated him the most because he was an immigrant, a father who couldn’t help you accomplish what you wanted, who could give you nothing to bring you closer to what you wanted to be. He was not only of no use to you, he was less than no use. He was a humiliating, shameful person with no control over his crude passions. He was an embarrassment, it would have been better if he were dead, then you wouldn’t have to make excuses for him, hide him, disguise him, disguise yourself. Like your brother, you wished him gone. You know that by leaving town you were approving his murder. You wanted him to die! And so, when we were discussing the storm, we were discussing his murder. Americans love to talk about the weather—it can stand for so many things.”
Ming waits: she has more to say.
“You, of all of us,” she went on, “are the person who is least certain Dagou is innocent.”
His mind moves back to O-Lan’s first months at the restaurant. He was home for only a week that summer, her first. Didn’t he try to speak to her, near the dishwasher? Wasn’t he the least distant of the family?
“You hate me,” he says. “But I’ve done nothing against you.”
She does not reply, doesn’t need to.
“You hate all of us. You think we’re fat, stupid Americans. We’re spoiled. But you think there’s something real about us.” She gives him a startled glance, and he knows he has correctly guessed her thoughts. “So you’ve stayed with us. Even my father couldn’t figure out how to get rid of you.” He remembers something. “He cut your salary once. I remember it, I saw the books. He cut your salary and you kept showing up.” Confusion tumbles his consciousness. “Why did you keep showing up? And why didn’t—why—”
“Why didn’t he fire me?”
She smiles slyly, a wide smile that turns up at the corners like the Cheshire Cat’s. He has never seen her full smile, and it repulses him.
Stumbling over his own feet, he hurries out, shutting the door with force, as if he can make her disappear.
Ming’s Second Visit to O-Lan
It’s the night before the trial. Ming lies fully dressed on his old bed, listening to the neighborhood dogs barking to one another, yard to yard. His turn now. His eyes are dry and he rarely blinks. He keeps rubbing his left ear and feeling his forehead with his palm and the back of his hand. No fever, but his mind moves from image to image with an uncommon speed, touching lightly and refusing to stop, to focus. He sees his brother Dagou in his pink shirt. “You asshole!” Shutting his eyes, Ming can still see vividly his old posters (Albert Einstein, John Lennon), his debate trophies and math team trophies, his stack of Werewolf comic books, his old bathrobe hanging off the back of the door. His analog clock radio. Scruffy and generic objects, evidence of a past that shouldn’t matter. But, of course, this was the room where it began: where he first read a copy of the Financial Times that had been left in the restaurant and understood if he could only become educated in the right way, he could grow rich enough to leave this place behind. Not only this house, but this community, this town, this state; and he would never return, never again be near his father. Has leaving Haven been enough? Is it possible to get even farther from them, from all of this? That is what the fifty million is about.
Ming rubs his ears. He leans over and fiddles with the volume knob on his old clock radio. He’s set the radio alarm in case he sleeps, to wake him up in time to catch his flight to Phoenix. But he can’t sleep. Some time earlier, James checked in, colorless and anxious, and left the house. Now, at closing time, James must be putting up a sign that says the restaurant will be shut down for the duration of the trial. James and O-Lan are removing their aprons and washing their hands.
How old is O-Lan? She has seemed beyond fertility. Slightly hollow around the eyes, with a few white hairs at her temples, dull ocher of her cheeks, soft flesh under her arms. But is it possible she’s only in her forties, less than ten years older than Dagou?
Ming props himself up on his elbow, ears pricked. He checks the radio volume knob again. He gets out of bed, still wearing his shoes, and leaves, locking the door carefully behind him. He drives slowly, pausing occasionally to review his thoughts, until he reaches the house. Soon O-Lan will be returning from the restaurant. He parks two blocks away, waiting, until he sees her old Hyundai emerge from one alley, slowly cross the street, and enter the next alley. He waits until the attic light turns on before opening his car door. At the top of the stairs, he tries the knob. Once more, it turns easily in his hand.
This time she’s sitting at the table, calmly eating an orange. He hesitates, then plants himself a few feet away.
She chews slowly, watching him with no expression.
“You’re related to him,” he bursts out. “To us. You are his daughter.”
O-Lan smiles again. He can see it now—the family resemblance, in the very spade-shaped jaw he hates. Why hasn’t he seen it before?
“Since when do you care about flesh and blood?”