The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  "No. No, it's not that, it's just..." Sarah paused, caught between friendship and responsibility. "Lately you don't seem that excited about food. You must have noticed it too. I don't get the old sense of wonder."

  I don't either, Maggie thought sadly. "In which stories did that bother you?"

  "Well. The one on the Pennsylvania Dutch. Couldn't you have found anything charming about them?"

  "You're talking about people whose principal contribution to cuisine is the pretzel. Who make perfect strangers sit at a table and share fried chicken. Whose idea of a vegetable is a sliced tomato. And don't get me started on their pie!"

  Sarah smiled. "See, you're as wonderful as ever. Just go off like that. Let yourself go."

  Maggie laughed.

  "And don't forget that part, too. You always found the happiness in food."

  "I'll try."

  But now Sarah's small smile melted, and concern took its place. "Do you think—there's no possibility this is true, is there?"

  "You mean Matt? I have no idea. Did he tell me anything or lead me in any way to think anything? No. He went to China on business sometimes, but so did all the lawyers in his office."

  "You went there with him."

  "I did, once, for a week. Three years ago. Nothing. And you know me. I am watchful. Being attentive is the way I write, and it spills over. I sensed nothing. But this, if it happened, would have been a few years before that. I can't think like this, Sarah, is the truth; I'll go crazy. I have to go and get a lab test, and that's that. Then on from there."

  "It's going to be a difficult trip," Sarah said, now as her friend.

  Maggie nodded. "And just when I was getting the guy kind of settled in my mind, you know? And in my heart. Plus, to be honest, Sarah, even though it's necessary and all, it's not really a good thing for me not to be working, even for one month. I perform better at everything when I'm working."

  "Are you saying you'd rather work?" said Sarah.

  "Of course I'd rather work, but I can't. I have to go there and see to this."

  Now a new smile, different, the impish smile of an idea, was playing on Sarah's face. "Would you like to work while you're in China?"

  Maggie stared. She wrote only about American food. "How?"

  "File a column from there. We can run an old one—I already told you, it's no problem, you have some classics I'd love to see again—but we also have an assignment in China. It just came in. I can give it to anyone, in which case I'd have to send someone. Or I can give it to you, since you are going, and it can be one of your columns."

  "You don't think I'm an odd fit?" said Maggie. She did do ethnic food, of course. From the Basque country-style platters of the San Joaquin Valley to the German sausages of central Texas, it was impossible not to. American cuisine had so many incoming tributary tastes. She knew them all. What she never did was foreign food.

  "It's a chef profile. American guy, born and raised here, but half Chinese."

  "Hmm. That's a little closer."

  "He's not cooking American," Sarah said. "The opposite—back to the old traditions. He's descended from a chef who cooked for the Emperor and in 1925 wrote a book that became a big food classic, The Last Chinese Chef. Liang Wei was his name. The grandson's name is Liang too, Sam Liang; he's translating the book into English. He's a cook. Everything he does is orthodox, it's all according to his grandfather, even though Beijing seems to be spinning the opposite way, new, global."

  "I like it," Maggie said.

  "He's about to open a restaurant. It's going to be a big launch. That's the assignment, the restaurant."

  "Look, I won't lie, for me it would be ideal. I would love to write it," said Maggie. "Not to mention that it would keep me sane. It's just—I don't know how you can give it to me. I'm the American queen."

  "Sometimes it's good to mix things up. Anyway, you're going. When are you leaving?"

  "Tonight."

  "Tonight! You must have a ticket."

  "I do. And I'll have a rush visa by midday. Tell you what, Sarah, if you just reimburse me for the ticket, I'll take care of all the other expenses. I do have to go there anyway." And she did have the company apartment.

  "I can sell that," said Sarah. She shone with satisfaction. She loved to solve a problem. "Are we there yet?" she said. "Is that a yes?

  They knew each other well. Maggie had only to allow the small lift of a smile into her gaze for her friend to read her agreement.

  "Good," said Sarah. "So." She handed Maggie the file. "Sam Liang."

  In Beijing it was late evening. Yet people were still out, for the autumn night was fine and cool, faintly sharp with the scent of the chrysanthemums along the sidewalk. It was the local life in his adopted city that Sam Liang loved the best, like here, the people shopping and strolling on Gulou, the street that went right up to the dark, silent drum tower for which it was named. Sam barely glanced at the fifteenth-century tower, which rose in the center of the street up ahead. He didn't look into the brightly arranged shop windows, or the faces of the migrant vendors who had set up here and there on the curb. He searched ahead. There was a cooking-supply store on this block. His Third Uncle Xie had told him about it. Xie lived in Hangzhou; when he came north to Beijing he always stopped there.

  Sam was hoping to find a chopping block, heavy, round, a straight-through slice of tree trunk, the kind that Chinese chefs had always used. He had two for his restaurant and he needed a third; a busy restaurant really needed three. Every place he'd tried had cutting boards, but they were the plastic ones—the new, modern alternative that had taken hold all over the capital. Plastic was cleaner, people said, safer; it was the future.

  Sam didn't agree. He hadn't come all the way to China to switch from the traditional tree slab to plastic. Plastic ruined a fine blade. Besides, it was true what his grandfather had said, that wood was a living thing beneath a man's knife. It had its own spring.

  Ah, he spotted the store ahead—its lights were on, it was open. If any place still had the old-style chopping blocks, it would be this one.

  More than once Xie had explained how to choose one. "Never buy from a young tree, only an old one. Make sure its rings are tight with age. See that the block's been conditioned properly with oil, that it has a sheen. Don't bring home the wrong one."

  "And what kind of wood?"

  "When I was young all chefs used soapwood. Now most chefs use ironwood, though some like the wood of the tamarind tree from Vietnam. Listen to Third Uncle. Choose the wood that feels best under your hands. Forget the rest."

  Sam opened the door to the shop. In one hopeful sweep he took in the long shelves with their stacked woks and racks and sieves and steamers. He saw the cutting boards, white plastic, in their own section. He saw only plastic; no wood, no tree trunks.

  "Ni zhao shenmo?" said a woman's voice, What are you looking for?

  It was the proprietress, a white-haired woman Sam recognized from Xie's description. "Elder Sister," Sam said politely, "I seek a chopping block, but the old kind, wood."

  "We no longer have them."

  "But why?"

  "They are not as hygienic as the plastic. Especially now, you know how it is, everything is supposed to be clean."

  He knew what she meant—the Games. "But if I may ask, when you stopped selling them, did you have any left?"

  "No," she said.

  His hope was sliding. "Zhen kelian." Pitiable. "My Uncle Xie told me he thought I could find one here. Do you know him? Your old customer? Xie Er?"

  Her old eyes widened. "You know Xie Er?"

  "He is my uncle."

  She looked hard at him. He could feel her weighing the Eurasian mix in his face. Everyone did it. He was used to it. It was the light above his head, the air in which he walked. She wouldn't find anything in his face anyway, for Xie Er was his uncle not by blood but by other ties. "His father and my grandfather were brothers in the palace."

  "You're a Liang," she said.

  "Yes
," he said, surprised.

  She slid off her stool, stiff, and opened a back door behind her. Sam moved closer. She touched a switch, lighting a storeroom of crowded shelves and boxes. "In here," she said, and he followed her. "This one." She moved some papers to the side.

  As soon as he saw it, he knew. It was about two feet across, seven or eight inches thick, still ringed with bark, everything finished to a dull gleam. A heavy metal ring was embedded in one side, for hanging, as such a block should be stored vertically when not in use. He could imagine it ten years from now, twenty, its cutting surface worn to a gentle suggestion of concavity, changing with him, with his cooking, under his hands. He wanted it.

  "I could pay you cash for it," he said. "I'd be so happy to do that."

  "Do you cook?" She was eyeing him. "Yes?" she said at his emphatic nod. "Then just give me a moment. I'll think of a price."

  "Please take your time," he said softly, but inside he was overflowing. He reached out a practiced hand to feel the chopping surface. "And sister, if you happen to know, this is what sort of wood?"

  "That?" she said. "That is the old kind. Soapwood."

  Maggie stood in the airport in front of the candy counter. Matt had always given her candy corn. It was their signature candy, something she used to say every relationship should have. For them it was more of a sacrament than a food. The first time he brought it home he'd had in mind a joke on her American food specialty, but that was soon forgotten and it became his parting token. He would present her with a little bag before leaving on a trip. She could still picture how he'd looked one morning in their bedroom, in the slow-seeping dawn light, packed, dressed, ready to go. When? A year and a half ago? They both traveled so often that they rarely rose for each other's early departures. That particular morning she was half-awake, drifting; she could hear the rustle of his pants and the crinkle of plastic as he dug in his pocket for the little bag of corn. She heard him settle it by her bedside lamp and lean down to kiss the frizz of her hair. Just that. Too nice to wake her. Then the click of the door. Remorse bubbled in Maggie now. So many times she had let him go like that.

  She walked over to the plexiglass tube filled with orange-and-white kernels and opened a plastic bag underneath. On the day he left for San Francisco, the last day she saw him, he did not give her any candy corn, because he was coming back that night.

  In the year since, she had not eaten a kernel. She pulled the lever now and they gushed into her bag, a hundred, a thousand. She got on the plane and ate steadily, sneaking the sugar-soft kernels into her mouth one by one and letting them dissolve until her teeth ached and her head felt as if it would balloon up and float away. Queasy, full, she refused the meals when they came. She started a movie and turned it off. She sat washed by waves of guilt, guilt she'd felt many times this past year as she remembered that she and her husband, in truth, had always loved each other best when they were apart. And now it was for always. She closed her eyes.

  She felt her computer bag between her feet. She hadn't even thought yet about the job. What with getting her visa, collecting a sample for Matt from the hospital where he had banked blood, delivering it to the DNA lab, getting the collection kit, packing, speeding to the airport—with all this she had not given the first thought to her interview with the chef. Actually it had been a relief to have to move so fast. Grief, which had become half-comforting to her, almost a companion, had seemed finally to take a step back. She felt like a person again, even if she barely made it to the gate on time with her carry-on.

  Then she was strapped in, with her candy corn. She attempted to face the situation. Was it possible? Could the claim be true? She let her mind roll back once again. She lingered over every bump, every moment of discord; she knew where each one was located. They were all inside her, arranged since his death alongside love, rue, and affection. She threaded through them now. Another woman? A child? It just wasn't possible to believe he could have kept it from her. He was such a confessor. It was a joke among people who knew him. This was the kind of thing he could never, ever have kept to himself.

  Especially since the question of children was one that came up between the two of them. Originally they were both in agreement. They did not want children. Halfway through their decade together, though, Matt changed his mind.

  At first, when it started, she reminded him of the ways in which parenthood did not suit them. She traveled every month, and so did he. If they had a child, someone would have to stop. That would have be her, clearly; he earned most of the money. The thing was, she didn't want to stop, not for a while. She loved her column. Let me work another year, she would say. Matt was patient. He was the one, after all, who had changed his mind. But always the subject came back.

  He could never have hidden a child. This thought seemed clear to her in the humming silence of the plane. The other passengers were sleeping. After a long time of shifting uncomfortably in her seat she got up and went to the back of the plane, to the hollow where there is always a tiny window. She looked out through the trapped streaks of moisture to the deep darkness, thinking. Finally she crept back to her seat and fell asleep.

  When they landed in Beijing she felt a little sick from the sugar, and she dragged her feet past entry agents who stamped her passport and waved her ahead. She stopped at a currency booth to change a few hundred dollars and, thus fortified, stepped out of security into the crowded public area.

  Touts swarmed. "Hello?" said one. "You want taxi?"

  "No, thank you."

  "Taxi. This way."

  "No." She rolled her bag toward the glass doors, outside of which she could see people in line for taxis. On her right she passed a European man. "How much into Beijing?" she heard him say to one of the men.

  "Three hundred," the man replied, and the European agreed. She kept walking.

  Meanwhile the first man was still following her. "Taxi," he said, and then to her shock actually wrapped his fingers around her arm.

  "Get away from me," she said, and shook him off with such force that even she was surprised. He stepped back, the loser, his smile derisive. She strolled to her place in the taxi line and felt herself stand a little taller.

  Her turn came and she showed the driver the firm's Beijing business card, which bore the apartment address, then let herself melt in the back seat. She had done it; she was here. A freeway sailed along outside, dotted by lit-up billboards in Chinese and English for software, metals, chemicals, aircraft, coffee, logistics. What was logistics? Not knowing made her feel old.

  She still had a few loved ones, at least. She flipped open her phone. It chirped to life. The first number was her mother's. Maggie didn't call her often, but every time she got a new phone she put her number first, at the top of the list, anyway. Her mother had raised her alone and done it well, even if she hadn't been able to make much of a home for Maggie. She deserved to hold the top slot.

  Next came Sunny, her best friend and most frequently called number. Then Sarah; her other friends. And Matt's parents. Her heart tightened, as always, at the thought of them. Their suffering had been like hers.

  She closed her phone as the car swooped down off the ring road and into the city. Right away she saw this was not the Beijing she remembered from three years ago. The boulevards were widened, the office buildings filled in, the street lighting redone. Maybe it was the coming of the Games. Or maybe it was just the way Beijing was growing. She remembered Matt saying it had been under construction all the time, going back more than a decade. Always building, investing, expanding, earning.

  The driver turned down a side street and stopped in front of the building she remembered. She paid the fare—ninety-five kuai. She smiled at the thought of the man in the airport agreeing to pay three hundred. It was like being her old self for a minute; she'd always loved to be the better tourist.

  Inside and up the elevator, she let herself into apartment 426 and clicked on the overhead lights. It was the same. The couch, the television, the wind
ows that faced the city.

  She rolled her suitcase to the wall. Her steps were loud in the silence. There was an envelope on the coffee table. To Mrs. Mason, it said. From the law firm. She opened it. Welcome you to China. Please come to the office in the morning.

  Only someone who didn't know her would call her Mrs. Mason. She had never changed her name. No doubt they didn't know her; Carey was likely to be the only one still in the office who had been there three years before, when she came. She remembered Matt telling her that, aside from Carey, the Beijing office was never able to hold on to foreigners for long. That was one reason the lawyers in the L.A. office, like Matt, had to go there. Then in the last few years they'd hired two Chinese attorneys who had gone to university and law school in the States and then returned, and the pressure eased. Matt didn't go at all the last year and a half before he died. In any case—she checked her phone again—it was too late to call the office now. Calder Hayes would be closed.

  It was early enough to call the chef still, but first she had to do some reading. She slid out the file with Sarah's writing on the tab, Sam Liang, and made herself into a curl with it on the couch.

  The first thing she saw was that he was a chef of national rank, which had to be near the top in the Chinese system, and there was a list of prizes and awards. That was fast, she thought. He'd been here only four years. Then she came to an excerpt from his grandfather's book, The Last Chinese Chef.

  Chinese food has characteristics that set it apart from all other foods of the world. First, its conceptual balance. Dominance is held by fan, grain food, either rice or wheat made into noodles and breads and dumplings. Song or cai is the flavored food that accompanies it, seasoned vegetables, sometimes meat. Of the latter, pork is first, and then aquatic life in all its variety. The soybean is used in many products, fresh and fermented. Dian xin are snacks, which include all that is known under the Cantonese dim sum, but also nuts and fruits. Boiling, steaming, or stir-frying are preferred, in that order, stacking food when possible to conserve fuel. Chopsticks are used. Of the world's cuisines, only Japanese and Korean share these characteristics, and everyone knows they have drawn their influence from the Chinese.