Janice Lee - The Expatriates

Margaret closes the window, looks back into her tiny room, with its basic, elemental plan for living. She does not belong here, alone in an apartment building surrounded by strangers. She should go home, she realizes. She should go home to her family.

SHE’S FINALLY DECIDED she’s going to have the baby here in Hong Kong. Afterward, she and her mom have talked about maybe going to Korea or back to New York, or just staying in Hong Kong. She doesn’t know, but she feels good knowing that she has someone with her.

She went to see Margaret one more time, at her house, with Daisy and Philip.

They all sat together, eating buttered toast and drinking tea, and it was okay. She wanted to say so many things to Margaret. Feeling ragged and emotional, she almost said something completely crazy.

“I want to give you something,” she said. “I feel like I owe you so much. That I have taken so much, and I can’t ever make it right. I even thought about—”

And then Margaret put her hand over Mercy’s mouth, physically stoppered her. “Don’t say it,” she said. “Don’t even think it.”

She was grateful to Margaret for being so generous. That’s what a mother is, she remembers thinking, someone who puts others’ needs in front of hers, who takes the pain from others and swallows it herself. Her mother, Margaret: They are mothers. She thinks about that a lot as she puts her hands on her stomach to feel her daughter move fluidly inside her. This good person, this figure who is selfless and forgiving: This is who she needs to become.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD of Repulse Bay is deserted. It is 5:00 a.m., late June. In the mornings, the sound of cicadas is a deafening backdrop to solitary men flagging down taxis to work, the coffee place is devoid of the usual Lululemon tribe, and the supermarket has a few desultory helpers buying groceries for one.

Hilary sits at her desk, replying to e-mails, filled with a serene yet overwhelming sense of well-being. She has deleted the forum websites from her computer and hasn’t visited them for several weeks.

She has been assured by the most cautious of bureaucrats that her case seems very promising, that Julian will be with her in a time frame that they have gone so far as to allow might be less than a year. They are pleased that she would like to adopt an older child, a mixed-race child, a child who had less than promising prospects because of these factors. When asked about further access to him in the interim, they did not shut her down, merely suggested she wait a little. She has come to understand that this is all but a formality and a matter of time.

She is in her office, which she will convert into a bedroom for him. She looks around, tries to picture where the bed will go, the bureau, the desk. He will sleep here, across the hall from her bedroom. He will breathe through the night, whimper through nightmares, wake in the morning to find her staring at him. Her son.

She remembers a moment from the other day. She took him to a local diner for a snack. She texted Puri about something and then put down the phone. Julian took it from the table and looked up at her shyly. She nodded yes and tapped in her code for him. He became absorbed in the phone. This act, of a child taking his mother’s phone and playing with it, an act that she had seen a hundred times before, filled her with an aching contentment.

For the first time, Hilary is considering leaving Hong Kong. She hasn’t thought about it before, always assuming she would be here, with David, as he signed contract after contract. His law firm was happy for him to stay, and she didn’t think otherwise. She was fine, not missing home, not minding where she was. But now, assuming that she gets Julian and she and David are done, there isn’t much to keep her here. She would like to be closer to her mother as she becomes one, and so she’s been thinking. She remembers that when she first moved here, a woman who had been in Hong Kong for six years had confided plaintively: “I feel like my real life is on pause. It’s nice here, and I like all the help and the vacations, but I’m ready now. I’m ready to resume my real life, and now all I feel like I’m doing is waiting.”

So if she moves back home, she’ll start her life again, her new life with Julian. She doesn’t want to traumatize him with too much change too fast, but she’s thinking that after a few months, they will relocate. They can have a fresh start, together, as they begin their new life as a family. This seems right, that they’ll both start anew.

THEY WOKE UP this morning and impulsively decided to drive out to Big Wave Bay. Because the parking lot there has only some twenty spots, there is always a gambling element to the excursion (Will you have to turn back? Will you get a ticket or be towed?), and they are relieved to find a few spots still empty at nine thirty in the morning. Clarke pulls in, whistling, jaunty in a baseball cap. They pull out all the beach things from the trunk of the car and make their way down the short path to the beach, where they stand on the sand. It is still quiet and uncrowded.

“Hot!” Philip says. He hops from one foot to the other, grimacing. He clowns around, like a monkey scratching his armpits.

Margaret laughs. How lovely it is to see your children grow, develop personalities, become their true selves. Philip was a difficult baby and an obstinate toddler, but he is now bursting into a quirky and engaging child.

“Where should we set up camp?” Clarke asks.

They walk to a midpoint between the sea and the path.

“This looks like a good spot,” Daisy says. She is lovely, this daughter of theirs, in her practical navy Speedo swimsuit, solid shoulders, and tousled hair. Margaret resists the urge to squeeze her delicious flesh. Daisy goes about making their temporary place, pulling out the mat and anchoring the corners, as Margaret unpacks the towels — women’s work, Margaret thinks suddenly, without rancor. A man comes by to ask whether they’d like an umbrella, and they rent one for the day. Then the children run down to the water, excited, shrieking. They splash and walk along to where there is a rock pool, looking for hermit crabs.

“Do you want anything?” Clarke asks.

There’s a small canteen at one end of the beach that makes surprisingly good coffee. “Love a coffee,” she says.

He wanders off, and she puts on a floppy hat and her sunglasses. Thus armored, she looks out at the flat line where the sea meets the sky and breathes in the warm morning air.

“Hooey” is what she thought when she first tried meditation and deep breathing. She went to a class at the gym she belongs to but felt so panicked and stressed she got up and left, eyes cast down so she wouldn’t have to look at the teacher. She remembers thinking, Will the teacher think it’s her and her teaching? Will she realize it’s not about her? It’s one of the things she’s come to think about more and more: how everyone is stuck in their lives, thinking about what people are thinking about them, when actually nobody is thinking about them. Only you are thinking about yourself, usually. You or your mother.

Clarke comes back with a coffee for her and sits down next to her.

This is good, she thinks. Sitting here on the warm sand with the sun still low in the sky, water just before them, clouds puffy and white, children in their sights. This is a good thing. She feels his body next to hers, companionable, separate.

“I think I’ll go to Korea before we leave for California,” she says. “Just check in.”

“Yes,” he says. “That’s a good idea.”