Last Night at the Telegraph Club(37)

Joseph blinked again and lifted the piece of steak to his mouth. It was salty and well marbled with fat that left a rich smear of beef flavor on his tongue. He chewed and swallowed. He took a sip of his mai tai, tasting the sugary rum cut with the acid of lime juice. “Of course,” he said.

“I wish your family could come for New Year too,” Grace said. Her mother and brothers were coming for the week; they’d stay at a hotel in Chinatown, since there was no space in their two-room apartment.

“Don’t worry yourself about it.” There was no possibility of his whole family coming all the way from Shanghai. At least, not yet.

“I only worry about you.”

“You don’t need to.” He wished she would drop the subject.

“How can I not? The war was one thing, but now—who knows how long this situation will drag on?”

“The Communists have acknowledged that the Nationalists are the legitimate leaders of China. I believe that Chiang and Mao both have the best interests of China at heart.”

She looked skeptical. “I don’t know who to believe.”

“Believe me. Besides, America has too much to lose if China doesn’t stabilize. We won’t let it happen. And then we’ll go back.”

“I’ve never been.”

She had never met his parents, only his younger brother Arthur, who was his sole family representative at their wedding.

“Then you’ll go for the first time. We’ll bring Lily and Eddie to meet their grandparents. You’ll see. This situation won’t last forever.” He smiled at her, projecting a confidence that he almost believed.

“If you say so,” she said as the band struck its first notes, but she sounded doubtful.

They turned to look at the band; to Joseph’s surprise, they were all Caucasians. And then a trio of Chinese women dressed in diaphanous veils emerged, arms raised and fingers gracefully extended, to twirl across the dance floor. The show had begun.



* * *



—

Their seats were quite good. When the dancing girls swept past, they came close enough that Joseph could smell their sweet, floral perfume. Their bodies were barely covered by those sheer veils. Every time they spun, the gauzy fabric floated free to give a glimpse of what lay beneath: muscular limbs, smooth white skin, youthfully firm breasts. They were not as alluring as the dancing girls he’d seen in Shanghai before he’d come to America (he allowed that he’d been younger then and probably more impressionable), but they carried themselves with an appealing, straightforward energy. They were almost wholesome, and he wondered whether Grace approved. She had always had a Puritanical streak in her, which he attributed to her American upbringing.

The girls were followed by a number of singers. There was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a husky voice, billed as the Chinese Sophie Tucker. There was a tall, broad-shouldered man with slicked-back hair and an easy smile, billed as the Chinese Frank Sinatra. They were all good, Joseph thought, or at least they were good enough, and their being Chinese made up for the rest. He particularly enjoyed the Mei Lings, a duo of dancers who evoked Fred and Ginger in their lifts and dips around the dance floor. They had some real elegance.

Joseph glanced across the table at Grace to see if she was enjoying herself. She was watching the show with an easygoing expression as the Mei Lings swirled past. He realized, slowly, that he hadn’t truly looked at Grace tonight until this moment. He’d catalogued the silk flowers in her hair (slightly crooked now due to their earlier encounter with his face), the V-neck dress she wore, her new pumps, but he hadn’t seen past the surface. Sometimes he felt as if he never saw past the surface anymore; it was safer to look at the world with a detached, clinical eye.

When he first returned from the war, there had been an awkwardness between them. The years they had been apart had distanced them from each other. Though he had been eager to see his family, he realized the moment he set eyes on them (fresh off the navy ship, the dock crowded with weeping wives and shrieking children) that they had been frozen in his memories, and now Grace and Lily and Eddie looked strangely unfamiliar. Eddie had been reluctant to approach him at first, because he didn’t remember his father. It had been Grace who pushed him forward encouragingly; it had been Grace who took Lily to greet him.

Now, as the all-Caucasian band played a waltz for the Chinese dancers, he looked at his wife. He had always thought she was pretty, but her prettiness had softened over the years. The line of her cheek, which she had rubbed lightly with rouge, was plumper now. She was both the same girl he’d met a decade ago and undeniably changed, and for the first time in a long time he felt a kind of ache for her. It wasn’t the yearning he would have felt as a young man long separated from his lover. It wasn’t a simple physical desire. It was thoroughly unscientific, this feeling that was overtaking him, as if his body was belatedly acknowledging how far apart they had been for so long, and his mind was finally catching up.

He had missed her.

Ever since he returned from the war, he’d felt as if part of him were still back in China, but he wasn’t there anymore. Those army hospitals had been long dismantled; those boys he treated had returned to their homes—or at least they were beyond suffering. And here he was now: in this gaily colored and dramatically lit nightclub in America, sitting across from his American wife. The music was loud and brash; the smell of perfume and cigarettes lay heavy on the air. He lifted his mai tai to his lips and took another sip of his drink, the condensation dripping down the side of his hand like an electric shock. Wake up. You are here.