A Map for the Missing(32)
“Hello? Hanwen? What is it? Shouldn’t you have left already?”
“Yuanyuan was being difficult. I’m going to be a little late.”
“How will it look when you arrive so late? They asked specifically to have you there.”
“And why did they ask that?”
She realized with a start how accusatory they both sounded, rare for them. Confrontation and blame were not in either of their personalities, and this was one of the reasons she liked him. He was more interested in peace than in his own pride, a quality she thought rare in men.
Guifan’s exhalation was staticky and loud over the receiver. He would be slouched in the leather chair behind his office desk now, his eyes closed and his hand rubbing at his temples, resenting even this thirty-minute delay in the orderliness he preferred.
His voice was calmer when he spoke again. “All right, I’ll tell them you’re running late. Just hurry.”
At the softness of his voice, her anger faded. She went upstairs to their bedroom, wanting to check her makeup in the mirror one last time. When the guard had come with news of Yitian’s arrival, she’d briefly debated wiping off her lipstick. She’d wondered if it announced too much for a meeting she’d hoped to treat casually, but now she felt secretly pleased as she examined her reflection. She’d caught glimpses of him watching her, and in this way they had been like mirrors, refracting upon one another. She guessed his wife was the type of practical woman who didn’t wear makeup. She hoped that her appearance might have surprised him, in the way his face surprised her when she opened the door. She’d expected someone thin and wiry, whose head might be bent slightly at the neck as he looked down upon his worn shoes. Hands shoved into his pockets, hair overgrown, falling over his eyes. This was how she always used to find him. Walking up to him, there was the impression that a part of him was not of this world, and only when other people entered his direct line of vision did he materialize completely. Instead, there’d been that alert man at the door. His back straight, eyes wholly absorbed in the world around him, taking it all in and utterly a part of it.
When he said he hadn’t visited in years, her stomach—privately, guiltily—had done a small backflip. She’d been sure that he came back often and had decided never to contact her. Whenever she thought of the single letter she sent him, she felt awash with shame. What business had she, contacting someone who had no thought of her?
She was overwhelmed by desire to tell someone about Yitian’s appearance. She imagined returning to the dorm room in Tang Family Village, collapsing breathlessly upon her bunk, and saying, “You won’t believe who came to visit me today!” But she didn’t have any friends to see in this city where her husband had been assigned, which was caught in a bland space between the provincial culture it was trying to shed and the opulence of the more prosperous cities it aspired to be. At first, she’d tried going for afternoon tea at the homes of other cadres’ wives. In their homes vast and adorned with rosewood furniture, they talked about their children and gossiped about other officials’ mistresses. She was sure the other women called her standoffish, now, at the parties she didn’t attend. She didn’t know how she would otherwise make friends. Errands that might force her into the city were all handled by others: her driver picked up and dropped off Yuanyuan at school; their ayi or her mother went to the market each morning for groceries. At times she felt the loneliness so overwhelming it became like a physical shadow pressing upon her. She’d sleep in the middle of the day to avoid the feeling, and dreamed of walking through her longtang as the mothers called their children in for dinner through the iron grates of their windows. Or she’d be weeding in the rice paddies, the water still chilly in the early spring as it lapped against her calves.
Only when she hurried into the car minutes later did Hanwen realize her mother had never mentioned the hug, and this was how she knew with certainty that the gesture had not been insignificant.
* * *
—
In the car driving out of the city, she told the driver not to rush. She wanted to delay the arrival at the dinner for as long as she could.
About a month ago, while Yuanyuan had been at school and her mother was out on her morning walk around the complex, there’d been a knock on the front door, which almost never happened. She was just looking up when Ayi was already running to answer.
Two strangers stepped into her house, one of them so short he could meet her gaze exactly. He was dressed in a crisp, Western-style taupe suit, the other man much taller and wearing a plain white undershirt with holes in the sleeves that pulled up around his large and ropy arms. If she hadn’t been so surprised, the sight of these two men together would’ve struck her as comical.
They walked into the home without being invited, gazes directed firmly at some point above her. The man in the suit picked a spot on the couch with the air of someone who owned the place. The taller man stood stoically in the corner, wedged between two cabinets, watching.
“Are you here to see my husband, Wang Guifan?” she said. This seemed the most likely explanation. “He’s never home during the day. Perhaps you should try his office instead.”
“No, actually. We chose this time when your husband wouldn’t be home. We wanted to speak to you specifically.”
The suited man took his time before saying, “My surname is Qian. We’re colleagues of your husband’s.”