The Leavers(95)
“Even for a—nearby call?”
The clerk’s eyebrows resembled subtraction signs. “Your cell won’t work here,” she said. “If you use the phone in your room and punch in this code, you should be able to complete the call. We can charge any phone calls to your account if you give us a credit card.”
Daniel tried to decipher the clerk’s rapid words as he grasped for a response. He took out his credit card. He’d already charged the flight; a couple phone calls wouldn’t make a difference.
He returned to the room and called his mother’s number again, using the phone by the bed. This time, he got her voice mail.
“Mama, it’s Deming. I’m in Fuzhou and I want to see you. I’m staying at the Min Hotel in Wuyi Square, room 323. Please call me.” He left the phone number for his room and went out in search of dinner.
FUZHOU SMELLED LIKE A barbecue in autumn. The buildings had windows that reminded him of eyes, tracking his winding journey. Some buildings were wide and curved with long strips of windows like slices of gray masking tape, others tall and skinny with sharp or circular rooftops. Some buildings looked like an open greeting card, set on a table with arms flung out to embrace him. Others were only partially constructed, their tops a skeletal cage of scaffolding, and from a distance they resembled a band of mismatched toys. There was an architectural incongruence, but it made sense. Daniel preferred disorder to order, liked the trees in the spaces between buildings, leaves touching the low roofs of older homes. The city looked like it was trying to build itself up but would never fully succeed. This was an underdog’s city, ambitious and messily hungry, so haphazard it could collapse one night and be reassembled by the following morning.
The sounds of Fuzhou were deep yellows, blues, and oranges. Fuzhounese and Mandarin banged out around him, the playlist of his unconscious, and even the words and phrases he didn’t recognize were like falling into a warm bath. There was not one scrap of English, not anywhere; not in the street signs and bus stops and billboards, not in the voices he overheard, nor in the music sliding out of taxis. It was trippy, surreal, the swirl of familiar sounds on such unfamiliar streets. He’d never been to Fuzhou before but it was a place he already knew. His brain struggling to stay alert, he repeated to himself in English: I’m in China! I’m in China!
He turned to avoid a moped careening down the sidewalk and a bicyclist nearly swerved into him. When he stopped, the woman behind him yelled, “Move it!” He ducked into the nearest store to get his bearings. After a little effort he recalled the word for map and bought one of the city, but when he unfolded it the street names were in Chinese characters and he couldn’t read a thing.
He saw a family heading onto a crooked side street, nearly hidden in the high-rises, and followed them along a stone wall plastered with signs exhorting the importance of washing your hands after you sneeze. Stepping over puddles with an oily sheen in the center, he walked into a courtyard. The noise from Wuyi Square had disappeared, and the buildings reminded him of the houses on 3 Alley, two-story homes with brick walls and hanging laundry. Children played as old women sat on plastic stools and fanned themselves with newspapers, talking about how so-and-so’s daughter was marrying so-and-so’s son. Inside the houses he saw families cooking and eating dinner. A lump formed in his throat.
He found a noodle stall tucked between two of the houses and ordered a bowl of vermicelli noodles in pork broth with vegetables, glad nobody commented on his Fuzhounese. The food appeared and he scarfed it down, drank cups of watery tea until his headache subsided. On his way back to the hotel he got lost, went the long way around a construction site of eerie half-demolished structures, and by the time he found Wuyi Square, it was dark.
No new messages for him in the hotel room. Daniel took a long shower, filling the bathroom with steam clouds. He called his mother again, left her another message, then lay down. He woke at seven in the morning with the light streaming through the open curtains. She still hadn’t called him. A heavy stinging grew behind his eyes. He had made it here, but she didn’t want to see him, and he had no one to go home to.
Two mornings ago, he had left Ridgeborough with nine hundred and sixty bucks in his bank account. During a lull in the middle-of-the-night drama with Kay and Peter, he quietly cashed out of the game, charged a ticket to Fuzhou leaving from the Syracuse airport the following afternoon, and deleted the poker account. On the corner of Oak Street at seven in the morning, he called Cody.
“Can you do me a huge favor?” he’d said. “I need a ride to the airport.” Cody arrived in his Jeep with a good-bye present, a baggie of Vicodin from his recent wisdom teeth removal, for Daniel to take on the flight. When Daniel checked in at the airport and cleared security six hours early, he sat at the empty gate and realized he was shaking. In the end, he hadn’t been able to do what Peter and Kay wanted. Three more semesters of classes, followed by graduate school. Staying upstate. He hadn’t been able to do what Roland wanted either, play the music Roland wanted him to play. If he could just talk to his mother in person, maybe he could figure out who he should be.
Now, in the hotel, he wished he had her address. All he knew was what she’d told him on the phone, that she lived in a neighborhood called West Lake and worked in a school that taught English. He called and left her another message, took the elevator down to the lobby. “Can you look up an address for me?” he asked the clerk. “A Polly Guo. Or Peilan Guo. She lives in West Lake.” She might have changed her last name when she got married, but he didn’t know her husband’s name, only that he owned a textile factory.