Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

So other trailers were trucked in and situated on the far side of the sister property to house the family and the helpers and Fan, quarters that Fan assumed the Cheungs would find barely acceptable but that turned out to be as luxuriously appointed as their home and, in fact, at an even higher standard (they’d built and furnished the house pre-deal, after all): the trailers, Betty told her, were meant for housing evening-program stars when they were shooting in remote locations, and were made by the same company who built the planes that flew the upper-atmosphere globals, the interiors of the double-wide trailers lined in natural marbles and leathers and rich silks and hardwoods. There was a kitchen trailer for the cooks so the family would be assured of having its meals and snacks and beverages prepared exactly as Betty wanted them sourced and prepared, plus an exercise and virtual-activity trailer where Fan and Josey always spent time right before dinner. Though the trailers were much smaller than the family was used to and the first few days were difficult (the twins seemingly crying nonstop, Josey crabby and nervous, Oliver and Betty suddenly so busy and stressed that they began to snap at each other and everyone else, though not at Fan), they soon began to appreciate these less exalted proportions, where there wasn’t so much space around them; they felt like they were finally living inside, even safer and more secure, especially with the volumes of noise and dust and all the other probably C-accelerating chemicals and particulates stirred up by the construction. And maybe because the trailers were made just like the globals, they were upper-atmosphere quiet and pressurized with purified ionized air.

Fan tracked the progress of the project perhaps as closely as anyone, what with the children not really caring and the helpers out of sorts with the changes in routines and Betty and Oliver neck deep in every detail, watching the stages of the work from the foundation pours to the framing in what seemed to be a time-lapse vid, the new building going up literally overnight (there were so many tradesmen bolting and joining the metal alloy studs that they jostled one another for room), and then sheathed like the original house while the complex innards of both structures were fashioned and fed in, all the labors and change orders and supply drop-offs and debris pickups going on simultaneously like an orchestra tuning up, but under Oliver and Betty’s guidance not making any of that daft, unhinged music, instead sounding out a somehow harmonic, not unbeautiful tone. It was almost magical to behold, and although Fan still harbored many-sided reservations about her brother and his wife, she was like any of us would be, which was awed not just by the inexorable progression of this Genesis-scale undertaking but by their unshakable belief that they were the very people who should bring it off. In B-Mor such self-faith, such a singular audacity, would have been dismissed or mocked, not only because we so value humility or consensus but because most everything we want has already been placed within our reach.

We must say that Fan was heartened by their striving, their devotion, and felt closer to them and their children and the helpers for it. She was our good Fan after all, she wanted to believe in their ultimate decency, to be a generous sister and auntie, and couldn’t help but also think that a small fraction of their efforts and concentrations applied on her behalf would eventually lead to her reuniting with Reg. This was actually being planned for by Betty, who already had her architects draw in a new extension to the original house that contained a full set of suites, with a dedicated entrance, and that was labeled in the plans as Bay Fan/Reg. There was much more space in the extension than just for two, which was surely just Betty anticipating, rationally thinking things through; they did not know the way Fan was, nor did she want them to know. She was wary as she had always been that such a disclosure could only compromise her, though with Betty and Oliver, who seemed so pleased and appreciative of her presence, she was beginning to imagine a disclosure of her state, naturally wondering, too, if in telling them they would want to help her even more.

With Oliver — whom she could not quite bring herself yet to address as Liwei, as Betty did, as even he was now introducing himself — she was spending more time than anyone, including Betty, who was now camped at the center of the armies of salespeople who came to the command trailer bearing samples of their lighting and plumbing fixtures and bolts of fabrics and carpeting and wallpaper. She had to figure out the countless combinations of such items and the resulting design scenarios, altering course depending on what was available and when and in what quantities, luckily cost not being a factor. Meanwhile Oliver was overseeing the construction and the shuttling in of manpower and machinery, as well as donning a hard hat for part of each day and nailing or soldering something (though this, he admitted, was a noticeable drag on the schedule). He was exceedingly busy, but was also taking some time each day for himself, something Betty was encouraging him to do now that he wasn’t going to work anymore. She proposed that he rekindle his past interests, which he took seriously and with enthusiasm, swimming and taking out his old violin — he played for the family on their first night in the trailers — but as he confessed to her during a break when he and Fan took a light jog around the neighborhood and down to the main square, he wasn’t sure if those had been truly his interests at all.

He recounted to Fan that once assigned to a Charter foster family, a childless older couple (whom he had not been in contact with for a long time), he’d continued with the violin lessons and swim team he’d been doing in B-Mor, plus started a genetics club at the secondary school (where he met Vik, eventually convincing him to start swimming competitively because of his wingspan) and was involved with a social-service group that gave free math tutoring on the weekends to the children who lived in the service people’s dorms.

I certainly found them engaging and enjoyable, Oliver told her. He took a sip from his iced coffee (which was all he drank besides a little wine in the evenings). But can I say that those were the things I really wanted to do? I started on the violin and swimming so early that that was never a question, and because I was good at both, there was no thought that they weren’t the right activities. The other things I chose because there again I was very good at them and wouldn’t waste my time or anyone else’s, plus they fit in with my vita for medical studies. So does something you’re excellent at and that people admire you for and that does some good for all make for an “interest”?

Fan said she didn’t see why not.

It certainly can, he replied. But all that doesn’t confirm that it really is. Maybe it should mean you can’t love it, because what if loving something means you should mostly feel frustrated and thwarted, and then a little ruined, too, by the pursuit. But that you still come back for more. You’re good at free diving, right? That must be why they put you in the tanks. But did you always like it, even before it was clear that that’s what you should do? Was it something you loved? Or were there other things that you were doing that you might have enjoyed even more?

There weren’t other pursuits for our Fan, of course, as it was only ever one boy or girl in any generation of a household who was allotted such opportunities, and only if they showed highest promise, a custom that Oliver had clearly forgotten or had never noticed. But Fan didn’t tell him this, nor that when the first few times she dove as a little girl she nearly drowned. Nor did she tell him how much indeed she had loved it anyway, just as he was positing, even before she was able to describe the feeling to anyone in the household, and through force of will and mastery of her fears had made herself into a fine diver. Or that she sometimes trembled at the prospect of having been cut from the tank-diving track, despite all her efforts.