The Wangs vs. the World(18)

Really, though, it wasn’t some sort of noble consideration for Leo’s feelings. It was more that she wasn’t ready to deny Grayson’s gravitational pull, to be knocked out of his orbit. A satellite, after all, can still look like a star.



But one phone call with her brother and sister was all it took to send Saina hurtling back down to earth. She couldn’t let them come here, battered and bruised, to find Grayson in her bed.

And her father.

She wasn’t even sure if he knew why they’d called the wedding off.

“Why you need to get marry already?” he’d asked, when she first told him about the engagement. “You still young. Is there a baby in there?”

And when the end had come, her father ranted about how he’d never liked Grayson, sent her peonies and a whole salted caramel chocolate cake, emailed Grayson’s parents and told them that he’d cover the lost deposits—how much did he now regret that oversize gesture?—told her to keep the ring and throw it out the window. But he’d never asked why. For all Saina knew, one of his friends had seen the Page Six item and told him about it. Maybe he thought that he was saving face for her by not mentioning the betrayal, just like he’d never mentioned the backlash to her last installation even though he and her stepmother had flown out for the opening and held court at the Hermès party, going drink for drink with her old sculpture professor and telling her gallery owner that she should be selling Saina’s work for more. He’d been a charming embarrassment and Saina had been glad when he’d packed up and flown back to Bel-Air after an obligatory Peking duck dinner.



That was it, then. She started up the stairs. Grayson had to leave. It wasn’t going to last anyway. She couldn’t keep him in hiding forever.

Just say it, she told herself. Just do it. It would be worse if she waited until the last minute, until right before her family got here.

“Hey, baby, we have to talk about something,” she said, pushing open the door to her bedroom.

Grayson sat naked and cross-legged on top of her comforter. He held his cell phone up to his left ear with his right hand and held out his left hand, index finger up, to shush her.

“Oh my little darling,” he said to the phone, “and I wasn’t there for you.” A pause. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

Saina went cold.

“Grayson.”

He looked up, annoyed, and shook his head wildly, waving his finger. “Wait, how big? Nine pounds? Nine? Wow.”

And then something happened: Grayson got beatific.

She had heard of people looking like they were lit up from within, but this was the first time she’d seen it. With that “wow,” all his edges and wrinkles smoothed out and the air around him thrummed, like he’d found a note on some universal chord that she still couldn’t even hear, much less play.

“I’ll be there,” he said to the phone. “A few hours. Don’t do anything else yet, okay? Just wait for me, I’ll be there. Yes. You’re amazing.” And then whispering it again. “So amazing.”

He dropped the phone and looked at her.

“Saina, I know I’m an * and I bolted and then I lied to you and she never had a miscarriage, but I’m a dad! I have a son! And I know you’re going to hate me, and I’m going to have to fix that at some point, and we can probably never be together again, but I . . . I have to go. And that’s all I can say right now. Okay?”

She was choking on something. Or she would be choking if she were breathing. Was that right? Maybe it was the other way around.

“Not okay. No! I can’t believe you’re doing this to me again. How could you say that she’d lost the baby? Is that what you wanted to happen?”

“I thought I wanted you.”

“And now?”

“I’m a father.” He glowed again, just thinking about it. “I have a child. Can’t you see? This changes everything! I can’t wait to see him. Maybe you’ll understand when you have kids.”

“Fuck off. You don’t have kids, you had a phone call. So you’re transformed just like that? In a minute? That’s all it takes? And Sabrina?” Just saying the name made her feel seasick, made the world shift and sway for a minute.

Grayson kneeled up on the bed and grabbed both of her arms. “She just had my baby.” Again, the glow. Like a firefly. Like a glowworm. A lying little glowworm.

In a minute Saina was going to hate herself, but she said it anyway. “And that makes you not love me anymore.”

He shook his head. “It’s bigger than that, hon. I mean, procreation, that’s the whole point of being a man, of being human. This is like the best piece of work I’ve ever made, or better than that. You’ll see, you’ll see. You’re going to be an amazing mother someday, too.”

That was it. Saina did the only thing she could think of. She reached out and stroked him, taking some satisfaction in his stiffening, and then tried to smile as she tightened her grip and shoved him as hard as she could back onto the bed. His head clunked against the wall.

“I was going to break up with you anyways,” she shouted. “I was just about to, and then you had to do this! Why couldn’t you just let me break up with you? You couldn’t just give me that?” Wild, disbelieving, she ran to the bathroom, locking the door and leaning against the vintage claw-foot tub. A minute passed in silence, and then she heard Grayson start to pack up his bag. When he knocked on the bathroom door, she opened it and threw his leather Dopp kit at him and then slammed it shut again.