by Anne Tyler
Jin-Ho's grandpa didn't use to visit so often, but after Maryam changed her mind he got to dropping by almost every day and talking, talking, talking to Jin-Ho's mother. He would start out discussing politics or his volunteer tutoring job or a TV program he'd watched, but before you knew it he would have moved on to Maryam. Sometimes I'm walking toward my house, he would say, coming back home from your house or the mailbox or whatever, and just before I turn onto my block I think, What if I find her waiting there for me? She could be waiting on my porch, planning to say she was sorry and she didn't know what had come over her and begging me to forgive her. I don't look up as I'm rounding the corner because I don't want her to think I'm expecting her. I feel a little self-conscious knowing she might be watching me. I have a sense that my posture doesn't seem entirely natural. I want to act nonchalant but not, you know, too nonchalant. She shouldn't think that I'm carefree; she shouldn't think she hasn't harmed me.
When he talked like this, Jin-Ho's mother would first pat his hand or make a low murmuring sound but in a sort of hurried way, as if she couldn't wait to get past that part. Then she would start in on Maryam. Why you give her a thought, Dad ... why you ever gave her a thought, I honestly can't imagine. She's not worth it! She was wicked! Oh, not that I'd have blamed her if she'd simply said, 'No, thank you.' It's true that you'd been dating for just a few months. And besides, a lot of women that age feel they simply can't remarry because of their late husbands' health insurance or pension payments or some such. Plus you didn't show the best judgment in springing it on her; admit it. With no warning like that; out in public. But she should have made herself clear right away dismissed the subject tactfully, brushed it off, made light of it. Instead, she told you, 'Yes.' And we all celebrated! We offered all those toasts! Jin-Ho and Susan started figuring out how they would be related! Then, bam. Just ... bam. She tells you to get lost.
Well, not exactly to get Why couldn't she have kept seeing you, at least? You could still have gone on dating, you know. It didn't have to be all or nothing.
Ah. Well, in point of fact, Jin-Ho's grandpa said, I believe that was more my decision than From the start I felt she was a very cold person. I can say that now that it's over. Very cold and aloof, Jin-Ho's mother said.
She's just a woman with boundaries, hon.
If she's so fond of her boundaries, what did she ever immigrate for?
Bitsy, for goodness' sake! Next you'll be telling me she ought to love this country or leave it!
I'm not talking about countries; I'm talking about a basic ... character flaw.
Jin-Ho always worried that her mother might be hurting her grandpa's feelings when she criticized Maryam. But he kept coming back to visit; so it must have been all right.
When Xiu-Mei got up from her nap, their mother took the two of them grocery-shopping without any pacifiers. Xiu-Mei cried the whole way there. She cried in the store, too, but Jin-Ho's mother gave her a banana and that helped a little bit. She went on snuffling, but she did eat part of the banana. On the way home, when she started crying again, Jin-Ho's mother pretended not to notice and talked right over her, discussing the party. I've bought colored sugar, and chocolate sprinkles, and those little silver BBs ... I think cupcakes will be better than a single big cake, don't you agree?
Jin-Ho said, Mmhmm, with her fingers stuck in her ears.
As soon as they reached home, Xiu-Mei got herself a pacifier from under the hall radiator and went off to sulk in the TV room.
On Tuesday, when Jin-Ho's car pool dropped her off after school, she found her mother sitting on the front steps in her big thick Irish sweater. What are you doing here? Jin-Ho asked, and her mother said, Waiting for you, of course. But she wouldn't have been waiting there ordinarily. And then she said, I thought maybe we could have our snack on the patio today, which was odd because it was real fall weather sunny, but cool enough that Jin-Ho was wearing a jacket. It all made sense, though, once her mother had the tray ready to take outside. Coming, Xiu-Mei? she asked. Xiu-Mei was pushing her kangaroo mama and baby around the kitchen in her purple toy shopping cart. But you'll have to leave your binky in the house, her mother said, and Xiu-Mei stopped short and said, No! which caused her binky to fall to the floor. She bent to pick it up, jammed it back in her mouth, and started pushing her cart again. They had to go on outside without her.
Over their snack, which was peanut butter cookies and apple juice, Jin-Ho's mother talked some more about the party. She didn't like the sound of the weather forecast; a hurricane was heading up the coast. This is one time the weather matters, she said, because I've thought of a really good solution for the binkies. We're going to tie them to helium balloons and let them fly up in the sky. Won't that be beautiful? Then we'll go into the house, and we'll find the present the Fairy has left.
Could a hurricane blow us away? Jin-Ho asked. (She'd just seen The Wizard of Oz on TV.)
Not this far inland it couldn't, but it could bring a lot of rain. We'll just have to hope it's over by then. They're predicting it for Thursday, which would give us two days to recover, but since when has the Weather Bureau known what it was talking about?
Then she turned toward the house and called, Xiu-Mei? Have you changed your mind? Yummy peanut butter cookies, honey!
They'd left the back door cracked open, so Xiu-Mei had to have heard her. But she didn't say a thing. The only sound was the squeak-squeak of her shopping cart. Jin-Ho's mother sighed and reached for her apple juice. She pulled her sweater sleeve over her hand like a mitten before she took hold of her glass.
Wednesday was No Binkies Outside of the Crib Day. Jin-Ho's father said all he could say was, he was mighty glad he had a job to go to. Then he left for work half an hour early. And Jin-Ho was glad she had school to go to, because already she could see how things were shaping up. By the time the car pool honked out front, XiuMei had thoroughly searched the house and found not a single pacifier. They were all in a liquor-store carton on top of the refrigerator, but she didn't know that. She curled into a ball underneath the kitchen table and started crying very loudly. Jin-Ho's mother was in the bathroom with the door closed. Jin-Ho called, Bye, Mama, and after a moment her mother called back, Bye, sweetie. Have a nice day. From the sound of her voice, it seemed she might be crying too.
So Jin-Ho sort of dreaded coming home again. But when she walked in, the house was quiet a cheerful, humming quiet, not a sulking quiet. She found her mother stirring cocoa on the stove, and her grandpa sitting at the table with the newspapers, and XiuMei in her booster seat sucking a pacifier.
Well, hey there, Ms. Dickinson-Donaldson, her grandpa said, and Jin-Ho said, Hi, Grandpa, carefully not looking in Xiu-Mei's direction, because maybe the grownups had failed to notice the pacifier and she was not about to point it out.
But then her mother said, As you can see, we've changed the rules a bit.
Jin-Ho said, Mmhmm, and climbed onto a chair.
I was telling your mom, her grandpa said, if the Binky Party is the big renunciation scene, why put Xiu-Mei through all this misery ahead of time? Right, Xiu-Mei?
Xiu-Mei busily sucked her pacifier.
We should just wait for the actual moment, he said. I know earlier I suggested a tapering-off approach, but I've reconsidered. Then he nudged Jin-Ho with his elbow and said, 'Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.'
Jin-Ho said, Okay ...
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
However, Jin-Ho's mother said, turning from the stove, Saturday is still Binky Day! Remember that, Xiu-Mei! Saturday is still the day the Binky Fairy comes; you know that, don't you?
Oh, hon, give it a rest, Jin-Ho's grandpa said.
I just don't want her assuming But he said, So! Jin-Ho! What did you do in school today? and that was the end of that.
Snack was cocoa and alphabet cookies. Jin-Ho picked different cookies out of the tin and set them in front of Xiu-Mei. See?
An A, she said, and Xiu-Mei removed her pacifier long enough to say, A.<
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Right, Jin-Ho said. She felt happy and relieved, as if Xiu-Mei had just come back from a very long trip. And here's a B. And another A. And a C. And an A again. They seemed to be all A, B, Cs. She rummaged through the tin, hunting up an X to show XiuMei her initial.
Jin-Ho's grandpa was telling her mother that he had been a fool. Maybe it was just too long since I'd been part of the courtship scene, he said. I mean, what was I thinking? I picture how I must have looked, stashing that champagne in your fridge ahead of time like a total idiot, so cocksure, so all-fired sure that she would say yes Well, and she did say yes, Jin-Ho's mother said. You weren't an idiot in the least! She said, 'Yes,' in plain English, and we drank that champagne. It was only later that You know, her English seems to be a lot better than it is, JinHo's grandpa said. Did you ever notice that? She wrote me a letter once when she was away in Vermont, and that was the first time I realized that she often doesn't put article adjectives where she's supposed to. 'I am having very nice time,' she wrote, and 'Tomorrow we go to antique shop.' I guess that's understandable, when you've grown up speaking a language that doesn't use 'a' or 'the,' but it implies some, I don't know, resistance. Some reluctance to leave her own culture. I suspect that that's what went wrong between the two of us. The language was a symptom, and I should have paid more attention to it.
She also didn't put her s's on some things, Jin-Ho had noticed. Too many cracker will spoil your dinner, she would say. Jin-Ho didn't mention that, though, because she loved Maryam and she wanted her grandpa to love her too.
It's nothing to do with language, Jin-Ho's mother said. It's her. She has this attitude that she knows better than us. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if she claimed there wasn't supposed to be an article in those sentences.
She might, Jin-Ho's grandpa agreed. When you think about it the way she observed the Iranian New Year but never ours; and calling everyone 'june' and 'jon'; and that harem in the kitchen cooking rice for every occasion ... Well, sometimes it seems to me that most of the adapting in this country is done by Americans. Do you ever feel that way?
But that's not really what I have against her, Jin-Ho's mother said. What I have against her is, she's elusive. Oh, I hate it that the world finds elusiveness so attractive! Elusive people are maddening! Why doesn't anyone realize?
Did she suppose I didn't have my own doubts from time to time? Jin-Ho's grandpa asked. I had recently lost my wife a lot more recently than she had lost her husband. I was working very hard to start over. It wasn't always easy, believe me.
You're well out of it, Jin-Ho's mother told him. Never mind, Dad. Someone else will come along.
I don't want anyone else, he said.
Then he must have thought he had left the wrong impression, because he said, Anyone, I mean. I don't want anyone, period. Jin-Ho's mother patted his hand.
Everybody would be coming to the party except Grandpa Lou and Grandma Pat. They had accepted another invitation and they refused to change their plans. Jin-Ho's mother said she couldn't understand that. Where are their priorities? she asked. Between some random couple and their own granddaughter It's not a random couple; it's their closest friends, Jin-Ho's father said. And their friends are celebrating a golden anniversary, while their granddaughter is merely giving up her pacifier.
Well, I don't know why I care, anyhow. I'm beginning to think this whole event is doomed, from the way they're talking on the radio. After Hurricane Isabel hits, we'll be floating in the Inner Harbor.
You said we couldn't blow away! Jin-Ho told her mother. You said we were too far inland!
No, no, of course we can't blow away. We don't have a thing to worry about. I was exaggerating, Jin-Ho's mother said.
But that evening, she and Jin-Ho's father dragged all the patio furniture into the garage just to be on the safe side.
Maybe the radio announcer was exaggerating too, because he said they'd be hit on Thursday and on Thursday the weather was fine. Jin-Ho went to school the same as usual, came home as usual, had her snack. The sky was getting darker, though, by late afternoon, and there was a bit of wind and a smattering of rain. When Jin-Ho's father got home from work he said, It's picking up out there. Jin-Ho began to feel prickly-skinned and excited, the way she did on Christmas Eve. During supper she kept twisting around in her chair to look out the kitchen window. The air was a weird shade of lavender and the trees were flipping their leaves wrong side to. Keep your fingers crossed for our elms, her father told her. As much money as I've spent on those things, I might as well be putting them through college. Jin-Ho giggled, picturing that.
Then the lights went out.
Xiu-Mei began to cry.
Jin-Ho's mother said, We're all right! No reason to panic! and she got up and fetched the candles from the dining-room buffet. Jin-Ho's father lit them with the pistol thing they lit the bad burner on the stove with two candles on the table and two more on the kitchen counter. Everybody's face looked flickery and different. Xiu-Mei kept waving one hand, and at first they didn't know why but then they saw she was experimenting with the shadows on the wall.
Isn't this fun? Jin-Ho's mother said. It's just like camping out! And it won't be for very long. Pretty soon BG and E will have it fixed.
But all evening, they stayed in the dark. They read picture books by candlelight, and at bedtime they climbed the stairs with the flashlight from the kitchen utility drawer. They left the flashlight lit and standing on Xiu-Mei's bureau so she wouldn't be scared, but she cried anyhow and Jin-Ho was a little bit worried herself. So they both ended up sleeping with their parents. The four of them lay in a row on the bed, which luckily was king-size. Outside the wind was roaring and the trees were making crackly sounds and every now and then a handful of rain flung itself against the windowpanes. Jin-Ho's mother had left one window propped open an inch because she'd read somewhere that otherwise, the house might implode. Jin-Ho's father said no, that was tornados, and they argued about it awhile until Jin-Ho's mother went to sleep. Not long afterward, Jin-Ho heard her father get out of bed and tiptoe over to the window to shut it. Then he came back and went to sleep too. Xiu-Mei was already asleep, although still from time to time she took a faint suck on her pacifier. Outside the wind went on and on till Jin-Ho started feeling mad at it. Several times she heard sirens. She wondered if their house was floating in the harbor yet. So far it felt pretty solid, though.
Then it was morning and she was the only one there. The window nearest her was matted over with leaves, which gave the room a greenish tinge although the weather seemed sunny. She climbed out of bed and went to look more closely, but she couldn't see; so she went to the other window and looked through that. The front yard was a mass of tree limbs. A huge old oak from across the street was lying on its side, extending into their yard and almost completely hiding her father's station wagon. He had parked it out front last night because the patio furniture was using up his half of the garage. Only a patch or two of the station wagon's gray roof showed from beneath the branches.
Downstairs, Jin-Ho's mother was making toast by holding a slice of bread over the stove with a pair of kitchen tongs. Xiu-Mei was stirring a bowl of Cheerios around, and her father was on the phone. Well, good, he was saying. You're luckier than we are, then! It looks like it could be days before we get our power back. He listened a minute and then he said, Thanks, Mom. But even assuming we could make it over there, one of our cars is smushed and the other's trapped in the garage with an elm across the driveway. We'll just have to leave things where they are and not open the freezer door, I guess.
He was wearing his pajamas and the red plaid bathrobe he ordinarily saved for weekends. When he got off the phone, Jin-Ho asked him, Aren't you going to work? and he said, Oh, I doubt any of my students will be showing up today, hon.
Do I have school?
I don't imagine it's open. In any case, how would you get there?
Jin-Ho's mother came to the table with the piece of toast, which was streaked with black
and smelled nasty. I don't want it, Jin-Ho said, and her mother said, Fine, because I'd prefer you eat some kind of cereal. We need to use up the milk before it goes bad.
When is BG and E going to fix our electricity? Jin-Ho asked.
I don't know, honey. There are thousands and thousands of people all in the same boat, according to your daddy's little radio.
Aren't you glad now I bought that? Jin-Ho's father asked her mother. I told you it might come in handy!
He was a sucker for gadgets. It was the cause of a lot of arguments between the two of them.
From breakfast time till lunch time, the whole family worked at cleaning up the yard. Of course they couldn't do anything about the Cromwells' oak tree, which crossed the street completely and blocked all traffic, or the elm that lay in front of the garage. But they collected the smaller branches, and the sprays of leaves still green and wet and healthy-looking, and they stuffed them into garbage bags and lugged them to the alley. Jin-Ho found a bird's nest. There weren't any birds in it, though. She was in charge of the little tiny twigs, which she put in a plastic bucket that her father emptied from time to time. On either side of them their neighbors were cleaning up too, and people called back and forth to each other in a friendly sort of way. Mrs. Sansom said one house down the block still had electricity. They were letting their neighbors run long, long extension cords to power their refrigerators. If BG and E doesn't get things fixed by tonight, she said, I vote we combine all our perishables and have a great big neighborhood cookout on our grills. Jin-Ho thought that sounded much better than using up the foods at home. She hoped BG and E wouldn't get things fixed. The weather was cool and breezy and pleasant, with a fresh smell to the air, and she had never seen so many of the neighbors out in their yards at one time.
For lunch they had an omelet to finish off the eggs. Then XiuMei went down for her nap, and Jin-Ho watched from her parents' bedroom window as the tree men worked on the oak tree in the street. Their saws were angry-sounding, like hornets. They cut a passageway for cars through the middle of the trunk, but they left the base in the Cromwells' yard with its roots clawing the air and the top in the Donaldsons' yard all leafy and bushy, still hiding their station wagon. Jin-Ho's father said they would have to see to that later, when it wasn't a state of emergency. He took Jin-Ho out to count the tree rings after the men had left. Mr. Sansom was counting too. It wasn't as easy as you might expect, though, because one ring sometimes blended into another and they kept losing track. The trunk had a strong, sharp, sour smell that caused Jin-Ho's mouth to water.
