Janice Lee - The Expatriates

“I have to leave immediately after lunch, so I’m afraid I can’t. Don’t you think we can speak now?”

Diana leans over. Margaret can tell she is enjoying this a little bit. “It’s about our daughters. Courtney has told me some disturbing things.” She pauses.

“Yes?” Margaret says. She has no patience for the drama of the middle school mother.

“Apparently Daisy has been going on websites that are inappropriate.”

This does shock Margaret, although she tries not to let it show. “What sort of websites?”

“It’s nothing crazy, just she seems to be preoccupied with different kinds of problems. Like she’s shown Courtney pro-anorexia websites, cutting, stuff like that.” She stops. “Also, child-loss websites.”

Margaret’s sudden fury surprises even her with its intensity. “What?” she says, so loudly that everyone at the table stops their conversation and swivels their head toward her.

Diana nods her head. “It’s not pornography or anything”—she whispers the offensive word—“but it’s odd, and I think you should have someone talk to her. That is, if you don’t have someone already.”

“So let me get this straight,” Margaret says, feeling as if her head might explode from the restraint she has to show, trying to keep her voice from rising. “So you are telling me that my daughter is exploring the Internet, about issues that lots of girls face, and that she is somehow corrupting your daughter? It seems rather harmless to me. Unless you’d like to explain to me how it’s not.”

Diana backtracks immediately, having misjudged so disastrously. Perhaps she thought that Margaret would be grateful, that she would thank her for watching out so vigilantly for her child. That they would become best friends, that she would have the famous tragedy victim by her side and they could navigate the tricky world of motherhood together.

“I think that every mother would want to know what her daughter is up to on the computer. I mean, we can’t be too careful these days,” she says, looking around the table for support. “Sometimes you have to stop things before they get out of control.”

Ginny, the woman who sponsored the table, looks aghast at the drama that is transfixing the rest of the group. Margaret takes a deep breath. She is not going to lose it today, on this woman, at this table.

“I think you’re overreacting,” she says simply. “Oh, look. The video is starting.”

Margaret turns deliberately around so that she can watch the screen. As the video starts, she steams. She knows this woman, this kind of woman. She thrives on her children’s social lives, the drama, as if she is living it herself. She doesn’t separate her life from her children’s, living through them, like some sick parasite with no life of its own.

But slowly she starts to watch the video instead, coming out of her head. It is the usual charity video fare, with images of children set to a sentimental song. There are two songs that are particularly popular and, she supposes, appropriate for these types of films. It grates to hear the same melody designed to elicit tears over and over again. Still, the videos always affect Margaret, and most women at these gatherings, as they’re supposed to, until they open their checkbooks and assuage the guilt of having their own well-fed, lovingly cared for children at home. The charity is about providing art access to children in low-income housing in Hong Kong, and their bright smiles, their bright eyes, set to a crooning ballad, bring tears to Margaret’s eyes. It’s like crying to a Barry Manilow song.

The head of the charity, a Chinese socialite with an indecipherable pan-European accent, gives a speech. Afterward they are given time to eat the main course. Margaret gets up to go to the bathroom and runs into Frannie Peck, putting on lipstick. She hasn’t seen her since Phuket.

“How are you?” she asks, kissing her on the cheek.

“Good. Enjoying yourself?”

Margaret shrugs. “It’s a good cause.”

Frannie winks. “I know. These things give me hives as well.”

Margaret is reminded of the time she saw Frannie crying behind the wheel of the car. People surprise you all the time.

“How do we escape?” she asks, grinning.

“God, I don’t know. I’m here with Winnie Leong, whose husband works with mine. Who are you here with?”

“Ginny McGrady.”

Hilary comes into the bathroom.

“Hilary!” Margaret says. “I haven’t seen you in months! Thanks so much for that great dinner before the break. How was your holiday? Sorry we didn’t see you in Bangkok, but it got so complicated.”

Hilary looks uncomfortable. “Okay,” she says. She looks at Frannie, still fixing her face at the mirror. “Oh, you might as well know,” she says in a low voice. “David’s having a midlife crisis, and he seems to have left me.”

“What?” Margaret says, shocked. “What are you talking about? We just had dinner all together!”

Frannie leaves unobtrusively.

“Sit down,” Margaret says, and pulls up a stool.

“Oh, I’m fine.” Hilary reconsiders her words. “Well, not fine, but I’m surviving. I breathe, and I put one foot in front of the other.”

“I’m shocked,” Margaret says. “Did you have any inkling?”

“No. It was right after the dinner, actually. He went out and… never came back.” Hilary laughs, a short, regretful bark.

“Really?” Margaret can’t believe that David Starr is capable of something that requires such emotional range. “It’s really uncharacteristic, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Hilary says. “But the older I get, the more I think that people are just unknowable, you know? And life is just full of, I don’t know, surprises? Shit?”

“I know,” Margaret says.

“Of course you know,” Hilary says. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s enough shit to go around,” Margaret says, and she laughs. Hilary laughs too, and they sit in the little velvet sitting room of the hotel bathroom in a companionable silence until someone comes in and breaks the spell, and they get up and shake themselves off.

They go out, and the lunch is a little more bearable, and Margaret can make it through until the serving of the dessert, at which time it is deemed socially acceptable to get up, thank your hostess, and leave.

It’s the first time she has gone out socially in ages, ever since they got back from vacation three months ago.

When they got home from the break in January, they entered a cold and quiet house. Essie had gone home to the Philippines for home leave and was not due back for several days.

The children disappeared upstairs, and Clarke went up to take a shower as she opened the suitcases and put the dirty clothes in piles in the kitchen. She started a load, hearing the rhythmic lull of the washing machine, inhaling the scent of too-sweet detergent, pleasantly alone in the room.

She was thirsty, dehydrated from the flight. In the cupboard, there were two glasses that a wealthy, impractical family friend had given to her and Clarke as a wedding present more than a decade ago. Fabulously expensive, they were paper-thin crystal highball glasses that shattered at a sideways glance. They started out with twelve, and after more than ten years of living and moving and children, two remained. She got one, filled it with cold Pellegrino from the fridge, and gulped down the cool, refreshing, salty bubbles. Bubbly water, an acquired adult taste, she thought.

Suddenly the relief she had let herself feel only in small dribbles came crashing in. Her tension, her worry, her relief, and still, of course, her sadness, made her unable to stand, and she made her way to the table, supporting herself with the hand that was not holding her water. She collapsed onto a chair, letting herself feel the immensity of what she had avoided on the vacation. She had avoided something that would have destroyed her as surely as if she had stood in front of a bus. How could she live, knowing that one more thing would have sent her sailing straight over the edge? One fragile child, two fragile children, three… The infinite variety of things that can go wrong with one life, multiplied by five.