Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

And if you put all of this together, if you collect these happenings and projects and promotions, you would have to say that they comprise again the typical habit of our lives here in B-Mor before this period of disturbance, which, from really anyone’s perspective now, would appear to have passed. It’s like a dream irrepressibly vivid and captivating when it was happening but now nearly impossible to remember, not just its details but the very fact of it. We just slept through it is the sensation. Rested the whole of our night. Of course, there are some who must know we did not make passage serenely in a void. Some of us still tap our fingers to the rhythms of those street-filling chants, or can see, when no one else can, the shape of the signs still ghosted in our minds, now blotted by layers of clean fresh paint. It’s not common, not at all, but every once in a while someone will rise up from a chair in an eatery or tea shop or step from the movie theater line and face the blithe crowd with half-open arms and without having to utter a word say to all: So what is this?

What is this?

What is this?

Naturally, nobody will acknowledge her. Everyone becomes a wall. And the person, solo in a room, sits back down. The act and moment are gone.

And yet it happens that some of us, like spies in a perilous land, will meet a certain gaze; and once we do, that recognition can soften the most wary eye and make us want to exchange all kinds of notations again, even the more improbable tales and rumors, to report everything we know of our Fan, who we’re sure can somehow hear us a little better now. It’s not that we can ever help her or lend her more courage. We simply wish her to know that we are here, and not unsatisfactory, and that in this regard she can please pay us no great mind.

For it was important that Fan keep everything out in front of her. After the scuffle at the fitness center pool, they all went back to Betty’s Lane, and while there was a certain heightened state in the new household — this coinciding with their move from the trailer into one of the new houses — with Oliver and Betty perfectly okay as they all breakfasted at the huge kitchen table, at least until, say, Josey or someone else would make some innocent comment, or after nothing was said at all, when Oliver would abruptly rise and retreat to his study. For a few seconds nothing would happen and then Betty would trail after him, and because of the particular acoustics of the center stairwell shafting the house top to bottom, you could hear them even behind the closed study door rasping at each other, Oliver usually the aggrieved party and Betty the remorseful, though midstream their roles would often switch, and switch back. Josey and the babies, of course, paid little or no attention, preoccupied as they were by screens and toys, the helpers trying anything they could to coax them to eat.

Soon enough Oliver and Betty would return to the table, both looking a bit abraded, and resume whatever they had been doing, usually Oliver checking the markets and Betty reviewing her to-do lists for the day, which included calling her parents, who hadn’t quite yet moved in, as they had gone on a thirty-day cruise with other older Charters, this one around Cape Horn; they logged in every other day, waving and blowing kisses to Josey and the babies from the windswept balcony of their stateroom. Otherwise there were few incursions from the outside world, this pattern of Oliver and Betty repeating itself daily, their ascents and descents, until one morning Betty didn’t follow him, and he didn’t return, at least not until after the dishes were cleared, the lessened tension and casual regard they had for each other surely signaling a calmed new stage. But this more orderly state was somewhat unsettling, too, as are most accommodations in matters of the heart, and if Fan didn’t exactly think their marriage was in jeopardy, she did wonder if some other thing or element had now lodged itself between them, their desire for happiness nourishing a fast-growing buffer all around it so that it would hardly be noticed. Fan was still quite young and her love for Reg was unsullied and the only thing giving her self-pause was that on the night before he vanished she had decided on her own to invite risking the condition she was in now. Yes, it was youth’s first passion, yes, as Reg might dorkishly croon, they were “burnin’ like wildfire,” but in truth Fan made the cold decision in that moment to invite a part of her beloved Reg forever, whether he might wish her to or not. Why did she? Nothing was threatening their future. Again we are sure it was out of love, only love, that she’d told him not to worry. And if there was any secondary reason to be with him again, perhaps it was her hope that she could simply show herself to him, and thus tell him what she’d done.

And which, Oliver informed her and Betty one day on returning from a meeting with a prominent village friend, might happen quite soon, for there’d been a breakthrough lead: Reg was indeed being “studied” at a directorate research facility, one in fact very close to B-Mor. He asked Fan if she knew why he would be examined like this, and of course, Fan had no idea. She truly could have no idea, and never did. Reg was special but no doubt mostly, if not only, to her. In any case Oliver was optimistic, describing how the pharmacorp was applying pressure on their behalf, using its considerable leverage with certain directorate members so that they would allow him a visitation, if not his outright release.

Betty took this news as excitedly as Fan did, promptly taking her the next day, as the best big sister might, to the boutiques in the village to find just the right outfit for the visit. Unlike Miss Cathy, however, Betty didn’t have a preconceived (and squarely daft) conception of what Fan should wear, pretty much liking everything the salesladies brought out for Fan to model, from the designer-jeans-and-blouse look to something more sophisticated, such as a smart cocktail dress, and nixing them (as long as Fan agreed) simply because they didn’t quite fit the bill of a reunion with one’s beau. They tried to figure out what each outfit would say to him on first glance, the bright yellow sundress declaring, I’m very happy! or the knee-length cashmere sweater dress murmuring, I’ve longed for you, or the more formal lacy white gown announcing, We shall never part again . Fan made sure to ask for sizes that would be loose-fitting and comfortable, saying she disliked snug clothing. It was all good fun and Fan found herself giggling along with Betty as she popped out from behind the changing curtain, but in the end Fan chose the outfit that she felt most comfortable in, a set of athletic stretch pants and top and zip-up jacket, all in matte black.

You look great, Betty said, if with eyebrows slightly raised. Very sleek. But why so dark and serious?

Fan explained that this was the closest thing to how Reg most often saw her, which was when she’d just climbed out of the tanks.

Ah, I see, Betty nodded. You want him to feel he’s at home.

Yes, Fan said, although that wasn’t quite right. For really she wanted him to think, Here’s my Fan .

They each got a pair of black athletic slip-ons (Betty decided to get the same outfit as Fan, in her size), and afterward they had to stop at the fitness center before going home to empty Betty’s locker. The Cheungs had decided to quit the club, not to blame it for what had happened but simply to get past the unpleasant memory and association. They weren’t going to join another club; given all the new space they had, they were now planning instead to put a swimming pool in the basement of one of the houses.

Liwei wants a full gym with weights and cardio, too, Betty said, fiddling with the combination wheel on her locker. Plus a romper room for the kids, for when it’s bad weather.