The Wangs vs. the World(120)

四十九


THEY WERE running blind through the long hospital corridors, past the ward of wounded, past the newborn babes, Bing Bing bringing up the rear carrying, of all things, a thermos printed with an image of Barney the dinosaur. It was nighttime again. In each of their three hearts was pure panic. Pulses stampeding, they approached the door to their father’s room just as a doctor was walking out. He looked up at them, weary.

“You’re Mr. Wang’s children?” he asked, in Mandarin.

They nodded. “What’s happening?” asked Saina.

“He had another small stroke. We’ve stabilized him and we’re monitoring his vitals. We’ve given him some medication so he may be—”

Grace cut in. “But what does that mean?”

Andrew looked through the window into his father’s room. His stepmother had arrived. She was lying on top of the covers, her body folded around his father’s, their hands entwined, the tips of her stockinged feet touching his, a pair of dumplings wound in hospital sheets. They looked beautiful like that, his shrinking parents, lying nose to nose. A sudden fear raced through him, and he pulled Grace by the arm. “Let’s talk to the doctor later, come on,” he urged.

Their father and Barbra both looked up. “Ah, Andrew will know. Who is the Viking?”

“Dad, what are you talking about?”

“He is very confused,” said Barbra, clutching his hand tighter, her eyes not leaving his face. “He was okay, but now he keeps asking about the Viking.”

Andrew knelt by the side of the bed. “Dad, do you mean Leif Eriksson?”

Charles beamed. “Yes! Very smart boy. Always very smart, very good. But everybody wrong, they are not the ones who discover America. Not Vikings. Not Christopher Columbus. He discover nothing!”

“Okay, Dad.” What was happening? It was like his father was drunk.

“Je chuang je me ne me chou? Shei gei wo mai yi ge chou de chwang?”

“Hou le la,” soothed Barbra.

“Dad. Baba.” Grace crouched uncertainly at the foot of the bed. She wanted to crawl onto the mattress, but there wasn’t any more room.

“Grace, Meimei.” Charles looked at his daughter. “You are very smart, too. You know that love too much is okay. That is the best thing in life. Love too much.” Charles looked up as Saina came into the room. “Jiejie!” There was something he had to tell her; there were things he had to make sure all of his children knew. “Sai-na. My beauty. Oh yes.” No. That wasn’t it. The words weren’t traveling correctly between his heart and his head.

“I should get the doctor back,” said Saina. The five of them fit into such a small space. She squeezed in closer. “Should I?”

No one answered.

“Dad, you’re acting kind of weird. Is it the medication? Do you feel okay?” asked Andrew.

There it was. It wasn’t advice; it was gratitude. “Thank you for giving me a good life,” said Charles, to his children, to his wife whom he had known since she was almost a child. “A beautiful life.” It was becoming harder to focus, and even as his body lay calmly on the bed, his mind skipped frantically above, trying to keep its grasp on the moment. He looked at them, each one of them, locking eyes, and felt a sudden panic. “Daddy doesn’t want to die. Life is too much fun! Always new thing in life!”

Barbra looked at him, tortured. Grace wailed and Andrew put his arms around them all, pleading with his father, “Don’t die. Don’t die. Just don’t! Don’t do it.” Saina got up and ran into the hallway, calling out for the doctor.



Something serious was happening. She was so scared, his daughter.



He had always wondered what would happen after death, and now he would find out. What if death was just a perpetual state of dying? A never-ending fall into a blank forever?

The children. Saina, Andrew, Grace. His wife. Barbra. Their lives unfurled in all directions, skipping out from his hospital bed like pebbles across a lake, all magic and light, bouncing from water to air and back again as he sank under the cold, cold surface. Cold in here. Too many blankets. He must say something to them. Why had they put him in such an ugly bed?

There were other things that he knew. The Indians were just a tribe of early Chinese people who took a long walk across the Bering Land Bridge and ended up in a New World. The true Americans were Chinese! It was too bad it had taken him so long to remember that.

Charles struggled to hold on to the receding world, to the knowledge that his loves, the four of them, were all around.

Love burned bright white in him.

A glow, aglow.

The world began to slip from his grasp.

Earthquakes. Floods. Infidelity. Betrayal. Failure. The fields burn and the next harvest is assured. The world destroys itself and we rebuild it. The destroying is as important as the rebuilding. There can be as much joy in the destruction as the rebirth.

Three. He had three children, blue, green, yellow, each one a pulsing thing.

A glow, aglow.

He had Barbra, another heart outside his own heart. Red.

A glow, aglow.

They still lived. They leaned in over him now and pressed their bodies against his, warm living things. They talked, but he couldn’t hear their words, couldn’t understand what there was to say even though he remembered, still, that words were important to alive people.