Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

Fan told her he had to go to the medical center. She said she would call him tomorrow.

Yes, please do, Betty told her. But I did wonder when you two arrived. Vik is always doing and saying the strangest things. I knew you weren’t someone’s “niece.” I guess I thought he was just embarrassed to have hired a helper for himself.

He’s too neat for a helper.

That’s certainly our Vik, Betty said, her eyes a little tickled. You know, we’ve known each other since we were children. Our fathers were colleagues at an engineering firm, and our families and a couple of others liked to go to a lakeside park together, well outside our village, where most other Charter families wouldn’t go. The mothers weren’t as high on it as the dads. They wouldn’t let us swim or even go near the water. But the dads played bocce and badminton, and bought and drank the counties beer, which they said tasted better than what they had in the village.

Fan said that Vik never mentioned his parents or displayed any pictures of them.

I’m not surprised, Betty said. They passed away while we were just starting university, his mother first, and then his father almost right after, though from different Cs. It was a terrible time for him, as you can imagine. He was totally lost. He wanted to quit school, maybe even leave the village and go overseas, but we convinced him not to. Mostly I did. It was around that time I met Oliver…I mean Li…

Liwei.

Liwei. I almost like that better. In fact, I do. It’s certainly more dashing. Do you know if it means anything?

Fan did know, as from time to time someone in the household would brag to a visitor about how a member of their clan had once been Chartered.

She said: Profit and Greatness.

Of course, Betty said, almost sighing. It couldn’t be any other way. Oliver was destined to succeed. Everyone who’s ever met him has thought it. Especially back then. Vik introduced us at the gathering after his father’s memorial service. Of course, Oliver wasn’t trying to be charming, but he was all energy and funny and sweet, and before you knew it, there was a crowd around him, including Vik, who badly needed cheering up. When Oliver was younger, he couldn’t as easily dial himself back, not like he can now. He was always on because he had to be, being where he was from. You can imagine. I almost felt sorry for Vik, but you could tell he was grateful not to be the focus of everyone’s sadness and pity. He was even a little happy. That evening, as we left him to be with his relatives, he said, “Are there two more perfect people more perfect for each other?” and actually made us hold hands. And now look at us. Here we are.

Here we are, Fan said.

Betty took a last big sip and finished her wine. The bed was made up now and Betty believed she had a nightgown that was left behind by a houseguest that might fit Fan. She wobbled to her feet and said she was going to find it, and while she was gone, Fan simply waited, leaning against the foot of the bed. But after a while, it was clear Betty would not be returning tonight. Fan brushed her teeth quietly so as not to rouse Josey, then returned to the new bed and pulled back the covers. She wasn’t sleepy yet. So she just sat, waiting for the long night to come, laden heavy, as she must have been, with the truck of these many strange souls whom she had come upon and who had fallen upon her, all their hopes, and wants, and sorrows, and wounded dreams filling up the room of her thoughts. Could she still see out? Could she still see Reg? Yes. She wasn’t dreaming him anymore for she had him in her constant sight, and he was coming ever closer now.

The next day Oliver and Betty — Betty apologized for having gone right to sleep once she got near her bed — sat her down in the main hall living room to outline what they called the Next Stage. Josey was playing with the new aquarium while she waited to be picked up by the preschool shuttle, having already figured out she could point the remote and control this fish or that or even a group of them. Her twin baby siblings were set up on either side of her in bouncy seats so they could watch the action, and they bucked and flailed their chubby limbs whenever Josey had the fish retreat inside the nooks of the coral and then pop out all at once. The twins’ helpers were there, too, plus the three or four others who took care of the house, who were now dusting and damp-ragging on the periphery, though in this huge airy room and its vaulted ceiling it felt to Fan as if they were sitting at the dead center of a soccer field, the stands empty around them, the yawing space a phantom, coolish draw at her back.

Oliver and Betty were clearly unaware of the feeling, and between slugs of their iced coffees, alternately described to Fan what they saw of their new life, a life they hoped would include her. Oliver had woken Betty up before dawn and they’d talked all morning; they had many of the same notions about how they envisioned their lives, what, in their words, it would “look like, act like, feel like,” this wondrous creature of their new existence. To begin with, they were going to have another set of twins, fraternal, of course, and probably another set after that, though Betty wouldn’t carry those. She would become an all-hands mother, which meant managing every last aspect of the helpers’ and cooks’ tasks and responsibilities, and overseeing the post-school tutors for the children, as well as the clothes shopping and interior design, plus of course arranging the doctors’ visits and the vacations. Oliver would be involved as much as possible, for they decided he’d invest in companies only sparingly, focusing instead on running the charitable foundation they were going to start, maybe for the benefit of Charter helpers’ or even counties children’s health care, though of this they weren’t yet sure. What they were certain of was that this was an unparalleled opportunity, one very few people of their relative youth would ever have, which was not just to hop a global whenever they pleased or drink genuine burgundy at lunch but to spend their precious time together forever, whenever they could, without stinting.

The way they would do this, Oliver explained, was not simply by “wanting to” and “promise keeping” but by making, literally, structural changes; the plan, still preliminary, of course, but at the same time something he had seriously thought through last night, was to reorient this brand-new house, changing everything so that the entrance and front were on the driveway side, which would be mirrored by a similar construction on the abutting lot that he was going to buy. He made a quick perspective drawing of the imagined site on one of Josey’s big sketch pads, his breezy, flowing hand impressively rendering the brick and plaster façades of now more conventional doors and windows. The two new structures would face each other, with the current driveway widened past the lot line and curbed just like a street, though it would serve more as a gathering place than an avenue for cars, the sidewalk lined with healthy young trees, the asphalt marked by the chalk of a few children playing knockout, an older couple cheering them. It was homey and tidy, safe and happy, a prettified version, Fan could see now, of a B-Mor street, one that seemed like theirs, as he rendered what appeared to be a tiny lion head on one of the front doors.

He was going to build the old neighborhood, right here in the Charter.

It would be inhabited, in their vision, by their many children (and helpers, though this was understood), and her parents, and her siblings’ families, and any other relatives who might want to live there, rent-free of course, as long as they understood and believed in their “familial project” of not simply spending a few prescribed if pleasant hours of the holidays and birthdays together but engaging in the “real business” of living, the modest quarters, the joys and frictions of the communal table, the intimacy naturally elaborated enough to encompass every moment of their days, which, frankly, none of them had been experiencing much, if at all, and would have gone on missing if this great fortune had not come.