Janice Lee - The Expatriates

So Charlie wants to pick her up, which is really nice, but her mom is staying with her, so she meets him downstairs in the lobby at nine.

“You look nice,” he says.

“Thanks,” she says. “So do you.”

“Do you want to get something to eat before we go?”

So they go to a bistro nearby and get a table outside, because the night is not too cool, and start with cocktails. The chairs are tippy, and the table’s marble top is stained with red wine. She’s been here before, with David, and feels awkward, but none of the waiters recognize her, and she begins to relax.

She thinks just for a minute if, if, she should drink, but this baby, this tiny accumulation of cells inside her, is so minuscule and so easily ignored, such a thought and nothing else, that after the first sip of Tanqueray and tonic, she manages to forget about the whole thing entirely.

From then on, it’s a typical twenty-something date. Lots of cocktails to get loose and happy, a big meal, he pays, no awkwardness, and they get into a cab at eleven and go to the party, which is at some guy’s parents’ place, which means it’s an enormous apartment with lots of rooms with pictures of the absent parents, who have gone to Colombo for the weekend. There is a strobe light strung up and a rooftop where people are dancing with lit cigarettes in one hand and beer bottles in the other. Lots of her friends are there, and they scream with happy drunkenness to see her.

“Haven’t seen you in sooooo long,” they say, and hug, giddy with alcohol. They are so drunk they forget to ask how she is, which she likes very much.

After this happens for the fourth time, Charlie pulls her aside. He doesn’t know her situation. “You’re popular,” he says, his face flushed and happy.

“You’re handsome,” she says.

And then they kiss.

The night flashes by, in corners of rooms with beds with multiple couples making out, staggering to bathrooms to fall on the toilets, spilling vodka as she pours some more. When she looks at a clock, it says 1:00 a.m., then it says 3:00, and they’re at another club, Charlie by her side.

“Where were you?” she tries to ask.

“I’m here,” he says. But he doesn’t understand what she’s saying. She’s saying, “Where were you before all this other stuff happened, where were you when you could have saved me?”

But then she falls asleep, and when she wakes up, she’s in his apartment, and it’s ten in the morning.

Luckily, her clothes are all still on. And his are too. He lies, disheveled, snoring lightly.

She gets up and almost throws up. There was a shawarma pit stop at some point last night, and the garlicky meat stink in her mouth is nauseating. She goes to the bathroom and finds some mouthwash. Gargles. She looks at herself in the mirror, mottled pale skin, sunken eyes, greasy hair. The bathroom is small and humid and messy, a boy’s bathroom, with hairs stuck to the shower wall and mold in the grout. She sits down on the toilet and pees. It smells sweet, like fermented juice, residue of all the alcohol.

Bad decisions.

She wipes and gets up to look at herself in the bathroom mirror while she’s washing her hands. Poor, pregnant, hungover Mercy.

So many bad decisions.

MARGARET IS DREAMING. G is nuzzling her, she can feel the solid, sweet shape of his head on her arm, rubbing as he used to. She used to call him her kitten, the way he would purr up to her and rumble with the simple pleasure of being near his mother. She would press his temples with her two palms while kissing his forehead, squeeze his butt cheeks, rub his chubby, perfect stomach with its adorable knot of a belly button. There is nothing like children to bring out the animal in you.

She picks him up and hugs him, smelling him, then wakes up, with the hard plastic wall of the airplane on her cheek. There is a little drool on her mouth.

It is a dream, and she is awake, and she is on an airplane, although Mr. Park said she shouldn’t come yet, that it might all be nothing, but of course, as soon as she heard there was anything, she had to go to the airport right away.

Clarke had come to the phone after his assistant got him out of a meeting, and she had been sobbing. He hadn’t been able to understand her.

“They think, they think, maybe…,” she had managed to say. “Maybe, a boy, the right age…”

“Oh, my God,” he said. “When can we go?”

She had told him she would go first, because Mr. Park had said it would take a few days to get the boy to Seoul, but he had needed some more information from her, and he shouldn’t have called her so early, but he knew she would want to know, even if it turned out to be nothing. A rural village, a single woman who suddenly had a child, a nephew she was raising, she said, because her sister had died. A suspicious neighbor had finally called the police, and it turned out the child wasn’t the woman’s and that she didn’t have a good explanation as to how he had come to her house. He was the right age, around five or six, and his Korean wasn’t too good, and his English was much better.

She had booked the black-eye, the flight that left Hong Kong at 1:00 a.m. and got in at 5:00 Korea time. Clarke would be on the first morning flight. Luckily, the plane had been half-empty, and she got a window seat with no one next to her. She had left a message at the police station that she would be arriving the next day, so Mr. Park would expect her. He had told her to wait in Hong Kong, but how could she have?

The Hong Kong airport at that midnight hour had been spooky, with carpet-cleaning machines whirling and dark, empty shops. She had nursed a cup of tea in the food hall, waiting for the flight to board. Around her, tired travelers checked e-mails, read newspapers, drank beer. She moved to the gate area and sat down. When the call came, the travelers all gathered up their things and traipsed to the gate, almost zombielike in their slow, sleepy gait.

Her body is awake now, immediately, when she realizes where she is. She is tingly, alive, painfully so. Her son might, might, be on the other side of this flight. She will fly across this ocean, go to this different country, check into the hotel and take up vigil again, so that she might feel his body nestle against hers, smell his sweet breath.

The cabin is dark. They switch off all the lights after takeoff, and most passengers are sleeping before the plane even gets off the ground. She was so wired that she thought she would never fall asleep, but it happened without her knowing. She is grateful for the rest. She looks at her watch: 3:00 a.m. She slept for a couple of hours and now has a few more hours of flight time.

It’s been seventeen months. Seventeen months since October break when they went to Seoul and G was lost. Seventeen months since she has seen her baby.

When they land, she and her fellow travelers are regurgitated, rumpled and disheveled, into a giant hallway. She goes through immigration and out into the still-quiet arrivals hall, it being a mere six in the morning. Outside is freezing — early spring can still be cold in Seoul — and her breath puffs out as she walks to the cab line. This city is the color of smoke — all gray concrete, cinder-block buildings, and morning sky — but turns into neon frenzy at night, with pulsating lights and the red and white streaks of passing cars. She gets a taxi to the hotel and lies back, exhausted, against the vinyl seat, seeing the flat gray of the Han River, the billboards announcing new electronics, and pretty girls advertising Korean shampoo. Stripped trees line the banks of the river, bare silhouettes until suddenly she sees one with a nest on it. She allows herself to imagine the return trip, with G beside her, surely looking a little bit different, certainly quiet, subdued, but back with her, back next to her. Will this vision come true? Will this gift be given to her? She doesn’t pray. She has prayed so much she is exhausted and not sure if she wants to believe in it, just as she doesn’t want to say she doesn’t believe in it just in case God is vengeful. How many bargains has she struck with the world in these past seventeen months? How many deals has she made with the devil or whoever she thinks might sway destiny? Too many that have come to nothing.