The Leavers(82)

“Hong Kong will be our next vacation destination,” Yong told Ning and Zailang. “And after that, Singapore and Tokyo.”

“Tokyo?” Zailang said. “Have you booked the tickets yet?”

“I haven’t gotten around to it,” Yong said. “Work is so busy. But perhaps a winter trip to Hong Kong. It’s so easy to get there. What do you think, Polly?”

“Sure.” I took a second helping of broccoli, but could barely taste the food. “Wonderful.”

“Let me know when you go, and I’ll send you a list of my favorite restaurants,” Ning said.

“That sounds great. Tell me more about what it’s like there.” But as I watched Ning’s mouth move, I was unable to concentrate on the words. Tomorrow, I would call and let you know I hadn’t meant to end our call so abruptly.

Our table was full of our friends, Zhao and Lujin, Ning and Zailang, and Yong’s other colleagues and their wives. I looked around the room and saw the same table duplicated, over and over: fat men in dark suits, lipsticked women in tight dresses, plates and plates of food, empty beer bottles. I didn’t look out of place. My purple dress had been tailored to fit, and I wore a pair of diamond earrings and a matching ring, a gold bracelet with oval loops that resembled a chain. My hair had been dyed and highlighted. Earlier tonight, after I got off the phone with you and changed into my dress, Yong and I had admired our reflections in the bedroom mirror. “Look how we match,” I said. I couldn’t tell him about you or Ardsleyville, destroy the illusion we built for ourselves.

Another round of dishes arrived, and the Forum’s president, a man in a pinstripe suit, introduced Yong, who made his way to the stage. He tapped the microphone to make sure it was on, even though it had been working fine when the president had spoken.

“I come from humble beginnings,” he said, “like so many of you. I met many obstacles and challenges along the way, but overcame them through perseverance. And now, I am proud to lead Yongtex. We are truly the future of business, because we’re not only a factory, but we work for the social good. First, by providing job opportunities to the needy.” He looked down at his notes and up at the crowd. I silently pleaded for him to keep talking. “And—second, we promote trade. Third, we are spurring economic development in the region and elevating the status of Fuzhou business.”

His words petered out, but he finished strong. Our table clapped, followed by the rest of the room. “Thank you,” Yong said. When he returned to the table, I could see how relieved he was. I placed a hand on his knee. We needed each other. I belonged here.

“You did good,” I said.

AFTER THE DINNER, WE had coffee at Ning and Zailang’s apartment. The women sat along the end of an L-shaped sectional couch, the men at the long dining table. Ning and Zailang had blocked off part of the living room and constructed a new wall to create a bedroom for their son, Phillip.

Lujin and Zhao’s daughter was taking grade nine English, even though she was only in grade eight. “She was falling behind, so we decided to push the teacher to place her in a higher class,” Lujin said. “That’s what you have to do, force them to do better.”

“Children don’t function that way,” I said. “They also need encouragement.”

Ning smiled. “You have to encourage, but you also have to be firm. They need to learn on their own.”

“But what are we telling our children if we set them up for failure?” I saw Ning exchange a look with Lujin. “We could be harming them, affecting them later in life.”

“On those TV shows the parents are always giving their children empty praise,” Lujin said. “But real life is different.”

“I am talking about real life,” I said.

“Real-life children aren’t like the ones you see on television.”

“I’m not talking about television. What, I can’t have an opinion about raising children, too?”

Lujin raised her eyebrows. Ning stood up and pulled down the front of her dress. “Excuse me, I need to check on Phillip. It’s his bedtime and I bet he’s still up.”

The room felt airless. “The weather has been so warm lately,” I said to Lujin.

“I hear it will rain tomorrow,” she said. “What a relief that will be.”

I went to the kitchen and rinsed out my coffee cup. I wanted you to call again, but you were right: I had messed up. I had given up on finding you so that I could sit at parties with people like this. Keeping you a secret, as if you were the thing that was wrong. I dried my hands on a towel that hung from a hook on the side of the refrigerator, and the cloth snagged on the bracelet Yong bought me last year. When I pulled the towel away the bracelet seemed too large and gaudy for my wrist, like the chain was mocking me.

In the living room, Zhao was talking about Sichuanese migrant workers, his favorite topic. “That’s why we pay tuition to send our daughter to a private international school. The public schools are overrun with outsiders.”

I sat across from him and said, “But they can’t even get into state schools.”

“Exactly. And they should stay out.”

“They have schools in the countryside they can go to,” Lujin said.

“You just said they’re taking over the public schools in the city, and then you said they can’t get into these schools. What are you saying? You can’t have it both ways.”