build-up before rush hour. Feeling better now, Bob watched Sienna across from him in the taxi sitting wide-eyed and silent, taking in the sky-scrapers, the dirty ones and the gleaming, the rivers of cars, buses, taxis (it looks like a reverse volcano, Bob thought, the lava flowing up into the hulking crater), the occasional, surprising tree, leaves thinning, pale yellow or washed-out red at best, not the vivid colours of home, but somehow in New York any colours at all seemed unusual.
“Have you been here before?” Bob asked.
“I was born here,” she said. “But we left when I was five, so I don’t remember much.”
“Ah.”
“My father was an illegal immigrant. He came from Shanghai on a boat, in secret, and worked three restaurant jobs for seven years to pay off his debt. He was a mechanical engineer and had taught himself English from BBC broadcasts during the Cultural Revolution when he was sent to the countryside. He always wanted to go to England.”
She nodded slightly as she talked and her jaw tightened so that Bob could imagine her father had impressed upon her what it meant to escape Mao’s China, to take on menial labour in a strange land.
“And your mother?” he asked. “You told me once she was Irish, I think.”
“Yes. She was a nanny. She would come to one of my dad’s restaurants on her day off and spend hours at the window writing home.”
“She came to see your dad where he worked?”
“Well, he started working there and then after a while he owned it. I’m not sure how that happened. But it happened more than once. He ended up with all three restaurants by the time he was ready to leave. My mom was supposed to marry a rugby player back home, but Dad wooed her with won ton soup and ginseng tea. She maintains that I was conceived after she had eight bowls in one afternoon. Supposedly it had nothing to do with my father – he was just the guy standing by at the right time to marry her.”
“Are they … still together?”
“Oh God,” she said. “Like two barnacles on a boat.”
They were immersed in the streets of Manhattan by then. An immense billboard showed a thin, blonde, washed-out-looking model in the act of pulling down her panties for reasons unexplained but apparently having something to do with a particular brand of soap. Bob let the unfamiliar streets and traffic pass through his consciousness like a series of waves that he would not try to grasp or control in any way. Their taxi driver, Ravjinder Singh, whose blurry face stared at them from the identification card on the sun visor, and whose immense blue-turbaned head seemed to take up most of the front of the car, would bring them safely to the Central Heights Hotel.
“How about you?” Sienna asked. “How about your … wife?”
Although he wore a wedding ring, Bob had never mentioned Julia. Not in any of the notes he had exchanged with Sienna, starting in early September when she had come to see him about his course and building when she submitted her project outline, then her poems; not a word about Julia during their quick lunches at the cafeteria, sometimes with other students and faculty, lately not; nothing about her or Matthew duringtheir several long walks in the park at the edge of campus in the late afternoon. It wasn’t, as far as Bob was concerned, a deliberate omission. Julia simply wasn’t part of that universe – if that was the word – the
universe
that Sienna brought with her. It was one of poetry and light, of energy and youth and dreams and potential, the
possible
, as Bob thought of it, nothing ground down or stuck in the mundane mould of reality. Nothing of bills and groceries and weekends spent traipsing from home store to home store looking at tiles and glazes, cupboards and counters, doorknobs, sinks, pantries, faucets, on and on ad nauseam to repair the allegedly disgraceful kitchen. Nothing of laundry and garbage, no recycling, no lawn to tend, no muffler that sprang a hole
“Have you been here before?” Bob asked.
“I was born here,” she said. “But we left when I was five, so I don’t remember much.”
“Ah.”
“My father was an illegal immigrant. He came from Shanghai on a boat, in secret, and worked three restaurant jobs for seven years to pay off his debt. He was a mechanical engineer and had taught himself English from BBC broadcasts during the Cultural Revolution when he was sent to the countryside. He always wanted to go to England.”
She nodded slightly as she talked and her jaw tightened so that Bob could imagine her father had impressed upon her what it meant to escape Mao’s China, to take on menial labour in a strange land.
“And your mother?” he asked. “You told me once she was Irish, I think.”
“Yes. She was a nanny. She would come to one of my dad’s restaurants on her day off and spend hours at the window writing home.”
“She came to see your dad where he worked?”
“Well, he started working there and then after a while he owned it. I’m not sure how that happened. But it happened more than once. He ended up with all three restaurants by the time he was ready to leave. My mom was supposed to marry a rugby player back home, but Dad wooed her with won ton soup and ginseng tea. She maintains that I was conceived after she had eight bowls in one afternoon. Supposedly it had nothing to do with my father – he was just the guy standing by at the right time to marry her.”
“Are they … still together?”
“Oh God,” she said. “Like two barnacles on a boat.”
They were immersed in the streets of Manhattan by then. An immense billboard showed a thin, blonde, washed-out-looking model in the act of pulling down her panties for reasons unexplained but apparently having something to do with a particular brand of soap. Bob let the unfamiliar streets and traffic pass through his consciousness like a series of waves that he would not try to grasp or control in any way. Their taxi driver, Ravjinder Singh, whose blurry face stared at them from the identification card on the sun visor, and whose immense blue-turbaned head seemed to take up most of the front of the car, would bring them safely to the Central Heights Hotel.
“How about you?” Sienna asked. “How about your … wife?”
Although he wore a wedding ring, Bob had never mentioned Julia. Not in any of the notes he had exchanged with Sienna, starting in early September when she had come to see him about his course and building when she submitted her project outline, then her poems; not a word about Julia during their quick lunches at the cafeteria, sometimes with other students and faculty, lately not; nothing about her or Matthew duringtheir several long walks in the park at the edge of campus in the late afternoon. It wasn’t, as far as Bob was concerned, a deliberate omission. Julia simply wasn’t part of that universe – if that was the word – the
universe
that Sienna brought with her. It was one of poetry and light, of energy and youth and dreams and potential, the
possible
, as Bob thought of it, nothing ground down or stuck in the mundane mould of reality. Nothing of bills and groceries and weekends spent traipsing from home store to home store looking at tiles and glazes, cupboards and counters, doorknobs, sinks, pantries, faucets, on and on ad nauseam to repair the allegedly disgraceful kitchen. Nothing of laundry and garbage, no recycling, no lawn to tend, no muffler that sprang a hole
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