He looked tired. I decided to be kind. “People loved your speech.”
“See, I told you it was what they wanted to hear.”
Tomorrow was Saturday, and Yong didn’t have to go to work until after lunch. We could sleep in, have sex. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, checked to make sure the door was locked and the lights were off in the living room. We’d skip watching TV tonight.
I thought Yong had fallen asleep, but as I got into bed, he spoke up. “So, who’s Deming?”
I shut the light off so he wouldn’t see the alarm on my face. “Who?”
“Your phone rang when you were in the bathroom. It said Deming.”
My phone was lying face up on the night table. The screen displayed a missed call from you, a new voice mail message. I would listen to it later, when Yong was asleep.
I spoke at the ceiling. “Deming is one of Boss Cheng’s Xiamen clients. He’s traveling abroad right now, calling at odd hours. He must have forgot the time difference.”
“Okay,” Yong said. He didn’t sound convinced.
I pulled the sheets over my shoulders. “Good night.”
A minute later, Yong spoke again. His voice sounded far away, even if he was next to me. “When I came home earlier tonight, you were out on the balcony, on the phone. As soon as you saw me you ended the call. You were acting strange.”
I was glad he couldn’t see my flushed cheeks or hear my rapidly beating heart. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“No.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong. You have nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not worried. But you seemed upset with Zhao.”
“I can’t stand it when he talks about migrant workers that way. Why don’t you ever say anything? Yongtex has your name. You got the award tonight. Tell him to shut up, once and for all.”
“I just don’t let it bother me.”
“Could we go to Hong Kong instead of talking about it?”
“After the holiday season. There’s a lot going on at work.”
“That’s more than six months away.”
“Not so long, right?”
“I’m tired of these parties. Don’t you get tired of it, too?”
“I don’t mind.”
Yong didn’t fight me. He wasn’t angry. Again, I felt let down.
I imagined leaving him, or being left. Losing this companionship, the comfort of being with someone you knew so well. I thought of the nights I had lain awake at Ardsleyville and in the workers’ dormitory, even in the bunk on Rutgers Street, and how long they’d been, how endless the days. All I’d wanted then was to not feel alone. Last year, when Yong had been away for three weeks on business, I’d been glad to have the apartment to myself, didn’t pick up my clothes or clean the dishes or take out the trash. But when I came home from work the apartment felt empty, and when I finally slept I would dream about you, a ten-year-old reciting New York City subway lines, then wake up unsure of where I was, expecting to see you across the room.
Yong touched my arm. “I did good tonight, didn’t I?”
“You did great.”
I knew that I should wait, hold off on telling Yong the truth and on calling you until I was stronger. I didn’t want to upset you more. Yi Ba believed that to give in to your cravings was a sign of weakness. Be strong, I told myself, though I wasn’t sure what that meant anymore. Think it over before you say anything.
But I couldn’t stop myself. “I have a son and I lost him.”
The words hung in the air for an awful, extended moment. “A son?”
I couldn’t answer.
“What do you mean, lost?”
“I had him when I was nineteen. Got pregnant by my neighbor in the village. I left him in America, because I couldn’t take him back to China with me, and then he was adopted by an American family. He recently got in touch with me. That’s who Deming is. That’s his name. Deming Guo.” I wanted to say it again, so I did. “Deming Guo.”
Your name echoed in the bedroom. Yong took his hand off my arm.
“He lives in New York, now, and he just found me. We spoke on the phone twice.”
Yong shook his head, as if he was trying to clear water out of his ears.
I looked at my husband and tried to will him to look back at me. Years ago, as a student in my class, his English had been clumsy, halting. In Chinese he could talk and talk, but in English he was nearly mute, and I had felt like I was somehow responsible.
“You left your son?”
“It’s not like that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was deported, okay? That’s why I left America.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me before.”
“I can explain.” He didn’t respond. “Are you mad at me?”
He wasn’t mad. He didn’t yell, or leave the room, or ask me to leave. Instead, he let me rest against him. He leaned into me. He took my hand and held it close.
But hadn’t I always known he would do this? He had never been the yelling type.
In the moment before I told him about you, I had imagined I was ready to be left, to hear the slamming door, feel my anticipated punishment. That was the reason I’d kept you a secret for so long; why I had given up looking. But Yong was staying, and I would stay, too. In the end, what surprised me the most was my relief.
Twelve
Roland’s roommate Adrian had been home for days. Dumped by his girlfriend, he was no longer moving in with her at the end of May, and now Daniel had to wait for Adrian to finish taking a shower before he could get to the bathroom, which was two hundred percent hairier, the guy being both bearded and longhaired, a shag carpet of a man. Adrian was as silent as Roland was talkative, lumbering out of his room each day with a towel wrapped around his waist and greeting Daniel on the couch with a single “Hey.”
On the morning of May 13, two days before the big show, Roland couldn’t stop talking about who had RSVP’d and who hadn’t, changing the set list for the twentieth time. Later tonight, they would run through the songs again.
As Adrian entered minute fifteen of a marathon shower, Daniel brushed his teeth in the kitchen sink. “Thirty percent chance of rain today,” Roland said, pacing the living room. “Think it’ll make a difference in the turnout? People don’t want to go out in the rain, though what’s wrong with them, are they allergic to life? But there’s also the humidity factor, since it’s a new space to us, and that could affect the sound.”