The Leavers(42)

Yong was on his second beer, Zhao and Fu on their third. “We have six million dollars in exports per fiscal year,” Zhao said. “We delivered our Christmas orders early last year. The production cost for Walmart was one-fourth the retail price.”

Yong turned to me. “My wife worked in New York City for a long time. She’s an English teacher now, does international translation for Yongtex.”

Fu looked over. I channeled my teacher voice. “I’ve seen the factories in America and they can’t compete with Yongtex.”

“What are the buildings like in New York?” Fu asked.

“Tall. Beautiful. Majestic.”

Lujin looked down at her plate and scratched her thigh.

“And the weather?”

“Hot and sunny in the summertime, and snow in the winter.”

“Fuzhou could be a top-rate city, but it’s being taken over by bad influences,” Fu said. “Too many outsiders.”

“Cheap labor,” Lujin said.

“Twelve people crammed into one room,” Zhao said. “You live like that, don’t be expected to be treated any better than vermin.”

I hated hearing shit like this, but I held back. Yong had asked me here so I could make a good impression on the Walmart buyer. The one time I’d talked back to a client about Sichuanese workers, Yong hadn’t gotten the deal. For weeks he fretted about losing the apartment, never being able to afford to move to Jiangbin like he wanted to, the potential collapse of Yongtex. “I don’t know why you’re not worried,” he said, and I was about to tell him he was overreacting, that none of that would happen, when I saw how afraid he actually was, heard the tremble in his voice. Yong’s worst fear was being exposed as a fraud, committing some fatal mistake that would result in a plunge in status. The city was full of people like this. It was easy to make money and easier to lose it. But because Yong had never gone without, he couldn’t imagine surviving on less.

I took my phone out of my bag. The screen announced a new message from an unknown number; I hadn’t heard it ring. I excused myself and walked out to the restaurant foyer, dialed the code to get my voice mail. Hello? said a man’s voice. It was slow, almost hesitant, Fuzhounese laced with a weird, unplaceable accent. This is a message for Polly Guo.

At first I thought it was a client calling to complain about World Top, or another development in Yong’s never-ending kitchen renovations.

This is your son, Deming.

My heart sped up. I listened to the message again. Your voice was a deep man’s voice, but there was something recognizable in it, though your Chinese sucked: I am good. New York is where I live. Leon your number gave me. Leon I found, Michael found me. You are good? I would like to talk to you.

You left me a phone number and said I could call you anytime. I put my fingers in my mouth and bit. Pain darted down my arms. Were you okay? How did you find me? I hadn’t spoken to Leon in years. When the hostess looked over, I took my fingers out and tried to smile. “Business call,” I said.

For so long I had wanted to find you. Leon had told me you’d been adopted by Americans, that they were taking care of you, he insisted you were in good hands, and I tried so hard to believe him, because the only way to keep going was to act as if you were totally gone, that we were both better off staying put in the lives we had. But if I’d had a choice in it, and I hadn’t, I would never have let you go, never! I played the message again, saved the number in my phone. If I ignored the accent and shitty grammar, you sounded okay, and there were no signs that you were sick or unhappy.

When I returned, the big plates of food seemed grotesque, indulgent. Zhao and Fu raised their glasses. “To success,” Yong said. I repeated the toast, but my hand was shaking.

“FU WAS IMPRESSED BY your time in New York,” Yong said as he steered the minivan up the hill.

I checked my phone: no new calls. “I hope the deal is signed.”

“I hope so, too.”

We parked in our building’s garage, took the elevator up to the twelfth floor. The tiles, so nice and cool during the humid summers, felt chilly under my feet. I raised the heat on the digital thermostat. Cold was scratchy brown blankets, a chill that wrapped around my bones. I took a plastic bottle of water from a box in the kitchen and tried to ignore the drywall dust and construction tarp draped across the counters. A memory twitched, the Bronx kitchen. Mama? you said, standing there with your underpants over your face, you were six or seven years old and you laughed as you walked toward me with your arms sticking out like a monster’s. Youyouyou—I clawed at the image but it bounded away. How swiftly it tumbled out of control, from your hand to Leon’s mouth to nail polish to Star Hill and Ardsleyville.

I took off my makeup. We changed into our pajamas and sat on the couch, leaning against each other, and watched an episode of a Korean historical drama that took place in medieval times. Yong played with my hair; I rubbed his hands. This was my favorite time of day, when we were home together, didn’t have to worry about how we looked or what we said.

In New York it was morning. Did you still look like me? How tall were you? We used to play peek-a-boo in the boardinghouse on Rutgers Street and you’d hide as I walked around, asking my roommates, “Did you see Deming? Where is he?” until you giggled and I’d go, “I think I hear something!” Then you—chubby, accusing, mine—would emerge from your hiding space and point at me and shout: “You lost me!”