and come to Toronto. We should cool down, she said, see what happens in the next year.
âSlow down, cool down, itâs all you say now.â
âIâm going to answer the phone once every two days. I got call display.â
A week later, Ming said that Chen had tried to kiss her again, and she hadnât stopped him. Did Fitzgeraldwant to break up because of her lack of faithfulness, she asked. She would understand. She explained all of this in one very long expectant breath, with no pause. Fitzgerald said that he wanted to come see her.
âOur first plan was the right one, to just be study friends. I wish we hadnât got so off track,â said Ming.
âI need to see you. You owe it to me.â He felt an urgent need to bed her harshly and memorably if it should be the last time.
âIf youâre going to be angry, itâs better for us to make a break.â
Fitzgerald said that he needed her to get through everythingâthe exams, the interviews. Ming warned him not to twist things into being her responsibility.
âDonât make me into your mother,â said Ming. A long, mutual silence. Then, âSorry, I shouldnât have said that, Iâm not sure why I said that.â
âIs that what you think this is about?â asked Fitzgerald. He had once told Ming that the loneliness he felt after his mother died was like living in a house frame that would never be clad with walls or a roof.
âLook, that was wrong of me. Pretend I never said it.â
âThat hurts, you know? And then it hurts more that you want to pretend you never said it.â
âYouâre not going to lay a guilt trip on me,â said Ming, suddenly hard again. âI donât do guilt.â
âNo, you donât, do you?â
âLetâs stop.â
âWeâre not done talking,â said Fitzgerald.
âWe are done. What else do you have to say?â
âLots.â
âDo you have anything good, anything positive to say, or are we just going to hate each other more? Iâm sorry I mentioned your mother, which was wrong. Iâm sorry Iâm sorry Iâm sorry. Thatâs all I can say on that subject.â
âWell, you meant more, but now you wonât own up to it.â
âLetâs stop, letâs not hate each other.â
âHate? I thought we loved each other. I donât know why youâre bringing hate into it. As for my motherââ
âGood night.â
âNo, donât you, Mingââ
âGood night, Fitzgerald.â
When he called back, the phone rang until it went to her answering machine. Five minutes later, he dialed and the phone rang until her machine picked up. An hour later, her machine answered still.
Ming answered his calls every second night. She told Fitzgerald that she still thought he was a beautiful person, as if this was a dreary but proven scientific principle and therefore she could not deny it despite its uncomfortable implications. She maintained that he was the only person she could trust telling âeverythingâ to, which meant the intimate aspects of her tutoring by Karl. Fitzgerald wanted to ask whether he, too, would become an uncomfortable secret, but fearedthat the asking would make it come true. At the end of each call one of them would be crying, and the other angry. In December, Ming said that although it was a âfactâ that she loved Fitzgerald âas a person,â they should no longer speak.
âYou need me more than I can deal with, and more than you can handle, frankly.â
âBut if you werenât trying to run away, I wouldnât need you so bad.â
âItâs not my fault. I wonât allow that.â
âWhat about next year, when I come to Toronto?â
âIf you come to Toronto, next year is next year. I suppose anything is possible.â
In the following weeks, Fitzgerald left monologues on
T.A. White
Derek Walcott
Lisa Fiedler
Anne Ashby
Mary Moody
T. C. Boyle
Theresa Romain
John Julius Norwich
Gwen Bristow
Arial Burnz