Janice Lee - The Expatriates

“That’s interesting, Mom,” she says, and smiles. Her mother gives her a shy smile back. They both turn back to watching the woman and stand, listening, as she goes on and on, her manic delivery punctuated by her putting the items into a cloth bag. She pays, all the while chattering, signing the credit card slip, and walks out. The woman looks boldly at everyone, her gaze sliding over Mercy and her mother, stopping for a second. Koreans always recognize one another. Mercy looks away. The woman walks out, still talking.

People in the line exhale, shuffle their feet. The tension seeps out from the room.

“There was a crazy woman at church,” her mom says. “Remember her? Haeri’s mom, Mrs. Kim?”

“What happened to her?” Mercy remembers Haeri, quiet and studious, until ninth grade, when she came back from a summer program in Korea with permed hair dyed a startling orange, a predilection for blue eyeliner, and an equally changed attitude toward life. Her mother, a housewife, rarely left the house except to go to church, where she would sit and rock in the community room after service. The other women steered clear of her as her husband tried to talk to some of the other men. He was an unsuccessful import-export man, like her father. Haeri went wild after the Korean program, from which apparently three of the girls had gone home pregnant. Sent to improve their Korean and understand Korean culture, the teenagers had instead discovered that local bars would sell them anything and had hooked up with one another all summer long. This is what Haeri told the other girls at church after Sunday school.

“The hottest Korean guys are from Texas. They’re so tall!” she had told them. “And there are no Asian girls in Texas, so they’re so psyched. They’re totally jealous that we live in New York, where there are so many Koreans.”

At the program, there had been Koreans from Berlin, from Warsaw and the Canary Islands, and a few from South America and Africa. Their immigrant parents worried about their displaced children not knowing their homeland and sent them back through summer programs run by universities. Mercy’s father had pooh-poohed the whole idea and asked where the money would come from. But Haeri’s dad had come up with the money. Haeri said she was now called Hex — a new name for a new girl. It had stuck, strangely.

“What is Hex, I mean, Haeri”—Mercy corrects herself; the mothers still know her as Haeri— “what is Haeri doing now?”

“I don’t know. They move away,” her mother says. “Maybe Florida? I think she try to kill herself, the mom, and then they move.”

They have a moment to consider the mentally disturbed mother, the wayward daughter, then they are called to the cashier and are shaken out of the reverie.

THEY HEAD OVER in the car. Clarke’s parents came over beforehand, and they had Essie take a photo of the whole group before they left. Then they decided to take one of just their nuclear family. Margaret stood behind Daisy and Philip in front of Clarke — the perfect family unit, a man and a woman with their boy and girl, their replacements in the cycle of life, Clarke turning fifty, with his entirely appropriate and attractive wife, their beautiful children. Margaret looks at the photo on her phone.

“So nice,” she says to Clarke, handing it to him. “What a great photo.”

“Love it,” he says. He hands the phone to his parents. “Look, Mom.”

“It’ll be fun,” Margaret says. A wish? A declaration? A vain hope, perhaps.

Daisy is fiddling around with her phone. “Can I Instagram the party, Mom?” she asks.

“Sure,” Margaret says, uncertainly. She’s seen Daisy’s Instagram account, follows it as she’s supposed to, and it still seems inexplicable to her — group pictures of girls flashing peace signs, photos of desserts.

“What does that mean?” Clarke asks.

“It’s this thing that all my friends do. We post pictures, and people can respond. I have three hundred followers!”

“Nothing inappropriate, though, okay?” Margaret says.

“I’ve heard that girls get into terrible trouble these days with those things,” Clarke’s mother warbles.

Margaret and Clarke’s mother are answered by an epic rolling of the eyes.

They get out of the car and ride up a creaky industrial elevator to find Priscilla rushing around clutching a clipboard, with reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She pauses to greet them and exclaim on how beautiful the children are. They look around and tell her what a marvelous job she’s done. And she has. There are a million twinkling tea lights, and she has rigged up paper lanterns all over so the rather uninspiring original warehouse space has the look of a cathedral. She has arranged for a band from Manila to play cover songs and get the crowd dancing, and they’re twanging through a sound check. There is a gorgeous long table set up and a mike in case anyone wants to make a toast.

“You have a lot of friends,” Priscilla tells Clarke. “And such lovely ones.”

What a pro, Margaret thinks, grateful.

“Kitchen’s working hard,” Priscilla continues. “We’ll have some hors d’oeuvres for you soon. Want a glass of champagne?”

“Why not?” Clarke says.

It’s a little after seven, and guests have been asked to arrive at seven thirty, so there’s time to wander around. Daisy takes a few photographs of the family and herself against the backdrop of the party.

“Those are called selfies, right?” Clarke asks.

Daisy rolls her eyes again.

“What’s with the eye rolling?” Margaret says. “Your eyes are going to roll up and never come down. I’m sorry we’re so embarrassing to you.”

“Can I see?” Clarke says.

Daisy shows him her phone, and Margaret looks at their two heads bent over the device. As staff bustle around them, lighting more candles, adjusting chairs, Margaret sits down. A waiter offers her a plate of chicken satay, decorated with a sprig of rosemary.

“No, thank you,” she says.

The first guests come through the door, Charlie and Mel Gordon, and she gets up.

“Welcome to Clarke’s birthday!” she says. “Thank you for coming!”

“We’re so glad to be here,” Mel says. “I haven’t seen you in so long! You look well.”

And so the party begins.

OLIVIA INSISTS that they go early so she can get the lay of the land. It’s 7:40 when they walk through the entrance, decorated with shimmering silver tinsel. Margaret and Clarke are standing near the front, with three other early birds.

“Hi, Margaret! This is my friend Olivia. I don’t think you’ve met.” They all cheek-kiss, bobbing back and forth. With them is a woman Hilary has seen around but doesn’t know.

“I’m Hilary Starr,” she says, introducing herself.

“I’m Melissa Gordon,” the woman says.

“You look really familiar,” Hilary says.

“Yes, I know! You do too!” They size each other up in a friendly way.

“TASOHK?” Mel ventures.

“No kids,” Hilary says. “I know! We go to the same physio! From a few years ago.”

“Dr. Chan! Above Pacific Coffee.”

“Yes!” Hilary recalibrates. “You look really good,” she says. Mel was much heavier then and less attractive.

The woman blushes. “Yes, my mom says she can’t recognize me.”

Some expat women thrive outside their native terrain. They are the trailing spouse, so they don’t have to work. And they arrive and realize they can have someone else vacuum and make the beds and the lunch boxes and do the laundry, and so they take that found time and use it to improve themselves. Some who were stay-at-home mothers before go back to work; some become fluent in Mandarin; some take up painting seriously, or whatever it was they used to want to do; and some become very fit and attractive.