Janice Lee: The Expatriates

“So she’s pregnant, and she’s going to have the baby?” she says.

He nods. “I think she is. I didn’t tell her what to do, not that I could have.”

“No,” she says.

Silence.

“What’s her name?” she asks.

“Mercy.”

“How did you meet her?”

“At a bar.”

“Original,” she says.

He shrugs his shoulders helplessly. “It just happened that way.”

“And does she work? What does she do?”

“She doesn’t work. She’s between jobs.”

“So is she living with you? Are you supporting her?”

He looks uncomfortable. “No, I haven’t really seen her much since she told me. We definitely don’t live together.”

“What?” Hilary is outraged. “She’s having your baby, and you haven’t seen her since she told you? What’s wrong with you?”

“It was such a surprise,” he says. “I’m just figuring out what I should do. I told her to tell me whatever she needed, and I’m covering all the costs, of course.”

“Why is she having the baby? Is she older?”

“Not at all. She’s young, like twenty-seven.” He understands what it sounds like. “She’s smart. She went to Columbia, and she’s American, Korean American, actually.” He means, she’s not some young bargirl.

“So why is she having the baby?”

“I don’t know!” He throws up his hands. “As if I would ever be allowed to ask that question! You can’t ask that question either, of all people!”

“How far along is she?”

“She said the baby’s due at the end of October, so I think around halfway. It all happened really fast.”

“So she doesn’t have a job, and she’s young. What is she going to do?”

“I have no idea,” David says. “I really don’t. I did not plan for this.”

Looking at David, uncomfortable in his dark suit, sitting in front of her, suddenly Hilary pities David. She pities and despises him.

“Well,” she says, “you’ve gotten yourself into a situation.”

He grimaces. “You sound just like your mother when you say things like that,” he says. Then, “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hilary says. She is still digesting the new reality. David will not stand in the way of her getting Julian. David has gotten a woman pregnant and will have a baby.

“Is she going to keep the baby, like raise it? She’s so young.”

“I have no idea, Hilary!” he says, exasperated. “I really have no idea. I haven’t spoken to Mercy in weeks. This was all a big shock to me too.”

“Don’t you think you should?” she says. “Speak to her, I mean. You should be a good guy.”

He pauses. “That’s what she said too, that I should be a good guy.”

“ ’Cause it’s true. Don’t regret anything. Don’t do anything you’ll regret later. Be stand-up.”

“I’m trying to be, Hilary,” he says. “I was just trying to figure out who I could be, and then this happened, and it’s been screwing with me. I didn’t even have a few months for myself.”

“You’re not asking for sympathy, are you?” she asks, incredulous. “Please tell me you are not asking for sympathy.”

“No, no, of course not,” he says. “But… fuck it.” He picks up his chopsticks and starts to eat. She stares at him for a moment, and then does the same. You have to eat to live, right? This is what goes through her mind.

THROUGH THE CHURCH, her mother gets Mercy a job. One of the women she has befriended has a small shop in Tsim Sha Tsui where she sells Korean antiques, and she hires Mercy to help her out. Mercy takes the MTR to Tsim Sha Tsui every morning now and emerges into the crowded streets of Kowloon to make her way to the shop, in the basement of a small, run-down shopping mall. Their customers are tourists, mostly Americans, so the woman, Mrs. Choi, is pleased to have Mercy there to talk to them. She pays her a nominal amount, but she brings them both lunch every day, and Mercy is happy to have somewhere to go.

Is it really so easy? She has slipped into another life entirely, in the same city, in the same time. But here there is no pressure, there is no expectation. Nobody knows who she is, nobody knows what happened the past year, and she feels, hopefully, that even if they did, she would be forgiven, because it took place in another world. She still hasn’t told her mother about G, but it seems so other, so foreign, she feels that even if she did, her mother wouldn’t be able to understand. So instead she just lives in this new world, where everyone is Korean and no one expects you to go out and party and have a boyfriend, an amazing job, and a glamorous life. Here lives a different kind of expat. Mrs. Choi’s kids, two boys, went to local school, and one graduated from Hong Kong University and one is at City U, local universities. They didn’t have the money to even think about studying abroad, she said. Mercy has met them once or twice, when they came by the store. They are a little younger than her, but nice, shy. They speak fluent Cantonese and Korean, but their English is a little halting, inflected with a Hong Kong accent. She can tell she is exotic to them, sophisticated. They treat her respectfully, as if she is much older. What Charlie would be like if he hadn’t gone to Columbia, she thinks.

It is June, and it is hot. She is starting to get bigger but is not ungainly yet. The rattle of the air conditioner in the shop is their constant background as Mrs. Choi watches Korean dramas on her laptop in the back office. Mercy sits up front, on a rosewood stool, waiting for customers.

This is where she is when she gets the e-mail.

Her blood freezes. Margaret Reade.

She shuts off the phone, reflexively, and slides it into her pocket.

Can’t be.

She gets the phone out and checks again. Yes, Margaret. The subject line is blank.

She gets up and tells Mrs. Choi she’s going to get a soy milk and does she want anything? The answer is no, so she takes the escalator up to the street level. She wants to find a quiet corner to read the e-mail. She walks to a distant corner where there is a dusty jewelry shop and a hair salon, both not open yet. She sits on the low ledge. Heart pounding, she opens the e-mail.

Dear Mercy,

You must be surprised to hear from me. I’m surprised to be writing. I haven’t seen or talked to you since Seoul. We have no news on G, although Clarke and I go regularly to check in. It is still very difficult, and my heart has been forever broken.

I’m not writing for any bad purpose. I’m just writing. I don’t really know why. I haven’t found a way forward yet. I wonder how you are doing. I have to be honest. I don’t know if I want you to be doing well. I don’t know if I could think that was fair.

But I am living my life. Mostly because of Daisy and Philip. They are doing okay.

I watched a documentary on texting and driving. In it, a young man killed someone’s son because he was distracted at the wheel. The dead boy’s father checks in with the man who has killed his child, and in the film, the man reads a letter that the father has written him. It was so beautifully written, and the father was so loving and forgiving, and I just cried and cried. Maybe this is why I’m writing you. I don’t know. Maybe this is just a hand lifted up to see what is out there.

Margaret

Mercy can tell that this e-mail was written hastily. She reads it again. She doesn’t know what she was expecting, but it was not this. She has no expectations of Margaret or Clarke. There is no rule book for relationships between people with their type of history. She knows she is expected to disappear, but she doesn’t know if she’s allowed to be happy or successful or whether she’s supposed to live the rest of her life in repentance. She feels that the life she has now is acceptable, with the small pleasures she has recently acquired, but she can also see how a few years down the line, she might not be so tentative with her own right to happiness, how time might blunt her guilt even more. This is growth, she thinks, but it is still painful.