A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

I press further, thinking this may be my last chance to glean some insight. “As you know, I’ve been working on this book about your father. I’m curious, has your sense of him changed over time? Did you ever discover things that made you uncomfortable?”

“My father was a complex figure who did what he believed was best for his family and his country. You and I will never know the depth of the challenges he faced. Thank you,” she says, “and good night.”

I e-mail Ching Lan and ask her to meet me at the office tomorrow at nine.

By 7 a.m., CNN is on the air with an old guy in Oregon holding up a notebook of Nixon’s, which he claims his grandfather won when the former President was a poker-playing lieutenant commander in the navy. The notebook is dated 1944, which coincides with Nixon’s service. The man reads an excerpt, which I immediately recognize as a fragment from “Good American People.”

Leaving the house, I have the feeling someone is watching me. An unfamiliar car is parked nose-out in the driveway across the street; the driver gives me a creepy nod, and I swear I would hear a camera clicking if cameras still clicked.

The elevator in the midtown building that houses the firm stops on every floor, dispensing its Starbucks-cupped, muffin-topped human cargo. I am aware of someone behind me. “Cut too close to the bone,” he says over my shoulder. I move to turn; the elevator goes dark and jerks to a stop. The other passengers gasp.

“We’re under attack,” a woman screams.

“Doubtful,” a man mutters.

“There’s always a snag,” a familiar voice says calmly over my shoulder. “Always something a little bigger than you running the show.”

“Tell me more,” I say.

“What more can I say? I’m disappointed,” he says. “My fifteen minutes are fading fast.”

The elevator car lurches upward, the lights blink, the door opens. Passengers surge forward, rushing to get off, fearing there is more to come.

“Must have been a power surge,” an old man who has remained in the car says. “That kind of thing used to happen all the time in the early 1970s; we called it John Lindsay’s long arm.”

Up ahead, scuttling towards the fire stairs, I spot a man in a blue windbreaker, tan khaki pants, and a baseball cap.

Ching Lan cries when I tell her the project is over. “I try to be no one when I come here. I am blank for you to write your books on.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, “I will write you an excellent letter of reference.”

She sobs.

“And I will hire you to copyedit my book.”

“That’s not why I am crying,” she says. “My career will be fine: I have been offered full-time professional position on a volleyball team, but I told them I had to finish this first. I am crying because I see you love President Nixon very much — despite how he behaves. You work hard, you are so brave. Because of you I have been studying all about China. I learn so much more about my country than I ever knew. I learned about myself through you.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“What do you think happened?” Ching Lan asks.

“Fear,” I say.

“Maybe later,” Ching Lan says, “they will try again, and it won’t seem so scary.”

“Have you ever done that, frightened yourself with something?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I am not so scary. But my father, he doesn’t like mice. A mice scares him very badly. He jumps on his pickle barrel like a little girl. My mother has to chase the mouse like a big cat. Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“What do you like so much about China?”

“No one has ever asked me that before. This may sound odd, but I like how big it is — China has everything from Mount Everest to the South China Sea, and how many millions of people live there, how industrious they are, the depth of the history, how ancient, beautiful, mysterious, and other it is.”

“Have you ever been there?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “Have you?”

She shakes her head no. “My parents tell me they never want to go back, that what is there is from long ago, and that life is very hard. They are sorry for their relatives who stayed, and they carry the sadness with them, but they like it better here.”

What I don’t tell Ching Lan is that I am also secretly terrified of China: I imagine a dark side that doesn’t value human life as deeply as I do. I worry that if I went there something would happen to me, I would get sick, I would rupture my appendix, I would end up doubled over in a Chinese hospital unable to care for myself. I imagine dying of either the gangrenous appendix or perhaps an infection following surgery performed under less-than-sterile conditions. I don’t tell Ching Lan that I have nightmares that involve Chinese people wearing bloody lab coats, telling me in broken English that my turn is next. I also don’t tell Ching Lan the one big idea that I’ve not yet articulated. I don’t tell Ching Lan that I can’t help but sometimes wonder if the current world economic crisis could be directly linked to Nixon’s opening relations with China.

When we are done, Ching Lan and I say goodbye to Wanda and Marcel and turn in our badges; goodbye to the office, to the firm, to the men’s room, to the elevator.

We go to the deli for lunch; I am not hungry, but her mother insists. “On the house,” she says.

I have brought the trinkets from South Africa, which are now like going-away presents. I give Ching and her mother scarves I bought in the airport, and for her father a money clip. Her mother gives me a Hershey bar for the road. “Don’t be strange,” she calls after me as I’m leaving. “Come back soon.”

It’s 2 p.m. I’ve been home all of ten minutes and have changed my clothes and gone out to water the plants when Sofia pulls up.

“Unscheduled stop,” she says as she’s coming up the driveway. I’m sure she’s been circling the block, waiting for me to come home.

“I keep thinking about you and the Big BM.” She puts her hands on her hips with a staged sigh.

“It was better than I expected. I’m really indebted — thank you,” I say.

“My pleasure,” she says. “I learned so much about you and Nate and South Africa! How was the cake? I forgot to ask.”

“Perfect.”

“I’m glad,” she says. “I wasn’t sure it would work — different water, altitude, and ovens! I don’t know if Sakhile told you, but I sent four extra boxes of cake mix so they could experiment ahead of time.”

“You really did think of everything. And all the Jewish traditional elements — I had no idea that was going to happen.”

She smiles proudly. “The bars and the bats, that’s what I do,” she says. “The jerseys looked great, didn’t they?”

“Fantastic,” I say, “and the whole thing with ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’—amazing.”

Sofia blushes and then reaches out and puts her hand on top of mine, which is at that moment squeezed into a fist holding the spray nozzle. I lose my grip, the nozzle slips out of my hand, and water shoots in a wild circle, abruptly stopping when the hose hits the ground.

“You know,” she says, not noticing what happened with the hose, “ours is a much deeper relationship than the usual client-planner.”

I say nothing.

“I’m really interested in you,” she says.

“I can’t.”

“Are you not interested?” she says.

“I’m involved,” I say, literally taking a step back.

“I thought she ran away.”

I say nothing.

“Are you counting an affair with a married woman as involved?” she asks.