A Map for the Missing(99)

“Well, if you don’t want to see me anymore, then I suppose I’ll be gone forever,” he said.

She took a deep breath. “Nothing will happen to our family now that Guifan’s agreed, right? That’s a deal?”

He laughed, a truly joyous laugh. “Just like a Shanghai woman, the way you speak. Yes, it’s a deal. I always knew you were the right person to talk to. You knew what was at stake.”

“I did.”

“And why shouldn’t you have some nice things, some help? We’d like to give you some gifts to thank you.”

“All right.”

“Let’s call it all sorted, then? Just tell him to send one of his secretaries over to our office, when he gets a chance.”

She hung up the phone.

Her hand was trembling as she pressed the button on the machine that would stop the recording. But she hadn’t faltered or become light-headed. She rewound the tape and played it. The sounds of her voice and Mr. Qian’s were a little scratchy, but the important parts were there—his acknowledgment of the deal, the offer of other gifts. She was startled to find her voice didn’t sound shaky at all. Was that how she seemed to others, out there in the world? It was she who’d given Yitian the information he needed. How different would her life have been, in America and with Yitian? She did not know. She could only say this: on the tape, she sounded confident and natural, sure of her statements, her voice never breaking, arriving in the world assured and steady.



* * *



—

She’d surprised Guifan on many occasions over the course of their marriage. When she’d been able to cook a dish from his hometown of Wuhan—she’d simply followed the directions she found in a newspaper column—or when she recognized some obscure character he couldn’t. But she’d never seen him so surprised as when she handed over the tape and explained what it was. He was sitting at the kitchen table over the bowl of rice they’d saved for him.

His spoon clattered to the floor. “You didn’t tell me you were doing this.”

“I was worried you weren’t going to do anything. So I had to.”

“I didn’t ask you to—”

“What was I supposed to do? Just wait and watch you?”

He ran his fingers around the edges of the tape and sighed heavily.

“The mayor is going to get in trouble if I turn this in,” he said. “Others, too.” He spoke slowly, as if each word handed out a sentence. Even now, given such a gift, he wasn’t capable of decisiveness. She’d learned something new about her husband in these past weeks, long after she would have believed the time for learning new things about each other had passed. If she were to reach down inside him, she would find his core to be soft and pliable. There was nothing inside him she could truly stand up against, and perhaps this is why she didn’t feel remorse about kissing Yitian, as she’d supposed she would. She felt free and released, seeing her husband as he truly was.

“You have to decide what to do with the tape,” she said. “I can’t turn it in. But just think, if you gave it to the Party. Or even if you told the Li Corporation you had it. That would be enough.”

He looked at her and nodded. She could see, slowly, sharpness returning to his expression. He could do the weighing and the analysis of the relative consequences.

He ran his finger over the edge of the cassette. “You’re right. Thank you. I’ll figure out what to do.”

She left him there at the table, alone.



* * *



—

She found her mother in her room, preparing for bed.

“Ma, I’m sorry for ignoring you earlier. There was something going on with Guifan.”

“I could guess that.” Her mother was sitting on the edge of her bed, soaking her feet before sleeping. Hanwen kneeled beside her and dipped her fingers into the plastic tub, the same baby-blue one that they’d used to bathe Yuanyuan when he was just born. The water had gone cold.

“I can’t tell you everything that happens in our lives.”

“I know, I know. This is your family now. I don’t mean to intrude. Sometimes I just get worried.”

“You don’t need to worry about it. I’ve taken care of it.” And Hanwen could hear her voice as it had sounded on that recording as she said this, decisive and certain.

Her mother squinted at her, as if trying to make sense of a person she hadn’t seen in years.

“What is it, Ma?”

For a moment, her mother’s eyes seemed to sharpen into that old expression. Then in the next, all the tension was gone from them. Her eyes relaxed back into her face.

“Nothing. It’s just that this stable life, with no worries for you, is all I’ve ever wanted you to have. My job as a mother is done.”

What was there to say to that? Hanwen had spent all these days carefully treading around her mother, worried about telling her the truth, when all along her mother had been like a child who just wanted to be told that everything would be all right.

Except her face was not like a child’s at all. She was old, older than she’d ever looked. It struck Hanwen that the same thing would happen to her, in time—she could drift along vaguely with Guifan and her mother would grow old and die and Yuanyuan would grow up and leave. What else was there to expect?