The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  She ran upstairs and put her things in the room and then came back down. Another thing: it would be a blessing to have company tonight, not to be alone. She had done it, got the sample, sent it off, and there was always that sense of letdown when a difficult task was finished. There was also the sadness, the finality; if Shuying wasn't Matt's, then she, Maggie, would never see his face in any living form, ever again. In time she might even forget his face. She would remember it only the way it had been captured in pictures. She was going to see herself get old in the mirror, and never remember him any other way but young.

  "You okay?" said Sam when she got in the car.

  "I am," she said, and she closed the door behind her.

  Xie must have fallen asleep because he awoke to the sound of the car door. Then a second door. Voices. A woman. His shaggy brows lifted. Finally, after all this time, the boy had brought a woman here! An instant web of thoughts bloomed and branched out in his mind as he heard their steps coming up to the door.

  "Men kai-de!"he called. Door's open!

  The door pushed open and in came Nephew, smiling, wet-eyed, and behind him an outside woman with large, dark eyes and unruly hair.

  Nephew dropped beside him and held him in the Western way as he murmured to him in Chinese. Then he said, "Uncle, this is Maggie McElroy," and raised a hand to the girl. Xie did his best to give her a smile. She was pleasing in spite of her face, which was too sharp. Of course she could have looked like a dog and he would have been happy, considering that she was a woman and Nephew was bringing her. " Huanying, huanying,"Xie said.

  "He says welcome."

  "My pleasure to meet you," said Maggie.

  "Ta hen gaoxing renshi ni," said Sam.

  Xie had been watching her eyes. He could always tell when someone understood. "She can't talk?" he said abruptly in Chinese.

  "No, Uncle, not a word."

  "Too bad."

  "No! No, Uncle, it's not like that. She's not my girlfriend. She's a writer, she's doing an article about the competition. It's no more than that."

  "Did I say something?" Xie demanded. "Did this worthless old lump say anything to her but welcome?"

  "No. Sorry. Anyway, I'll run her back to her hotel after dinner."

  "She is your good friend, she is welcome."

  "She's not—oh, never mind." Besides, she was his friend, in a way.

  Uncle Xie was looking sternly at him. "Enough." The old voice was imperious. "Show me your wrists!"

  Sam unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled them back. He knew he wasn't going to have enough new scars to please Uncle. Serious Chinese cooks always had a signature pattern of mottle-burns. These burns could extend past the wrists all the way up the forearms. Just reaching across the stove, a chef could be burned by spattering oil, and the burns left their own special marks. Even American immigration officers checking incoming Chinese chefs with work visas knew to check the wrists and forearms for the spatter-pattern of scars.

  Xie craned his neck. "Closer!" he rasped, and then when he got a look he let out a weak snort. "What do you do all day, lie about? Do you ignore your prayers to your calling? When are you going to rush to clasp the Buddha's foot—the day of the banquet? Don't you know by then it will be too late?"

  "Uncle, I have been thinking, and trying dishes—"

  "Flush your thinking! It is the American in you that thinks somehow everything you need will arise by magic inside you! Wrong! You have to learn! To learn you have to work!"

  "But Uncle—"

  "If you were working you would be burned!"

  Behind them Maggie stared. Though she didn't understand their Chinese, it was obvious that, as sick and weak as the old man was, he was hitting hard. Yet Sam didn't seem to mind. He could feel her watching and turned around. "Don't worry. It's his way of saying I matter to him."

  "It's fine," she said.

  Then Uncle Xie cut back in with his rasping Mandarin. "I'm waiting! And since you did not bring this foreign female here to tell me you had a special feeling for her, why are you talking to her? Lump! Dogmeat! Do you think I have so much time left? Wash your hands! Tie back your hair! You should cut it. It looks terrible. Prepare!"

  "We're going to be cooking now," Sam told Maggie. "You'll have to forgive me."

  "Nothing to forgive. I'll watch. That's why I'm here." She crept to the side and sat down. "You're fun to watch."

  "See, that's why I wanted you here. You're nice to me. I get nothing but tough love from my relatives. Ah, here's Wang Ling, Uncle Xie's wife." And he bent to hug a small, white-haired bird of a woman.

  He spoke in Chinese to the old lady, introducing Maggie, after which she took Maggie's elbow with a surprisingly strong little hand. She sat beside Xie and soothed him while Maggie settled on her small worn stool against the wall.

  First there was soaking of lotus leaves, which Maggie gradually saw were meant to wrap short ribs. She watched as Sam followed instructions from Uncle Xie and mixed a marinade of soy sauce, scallions, ginger, sugar, peanut oil, and sesame oil, plus a spoonful of something. "Bean paste," he shot back at her over his shoulder. Her notebook crept out of her purse practically of its own accord, and she started writing things down.

  The ribs and the marinade went back in the refrigerator. "They have to steep," said Sam. Then he lifted the lotus leaves out, wet and limp like elephant ears. He stared at them for a second. "I see my mistake," he said to Maggie in English. "I should have cut them with scissors when they were dry."

  "Worthless," sniffed Xie.

  "Completely," Sam agreed, and started sawing on them with a serrated knife.

  After half an hour his uncle said, "All right. Take the ribs out. First, take all the pieces out of the marinade, the scallions and ginger—throw them away. Leave some of the marinade on the meat. You're going to put two bite-sized ribs in each lotus leaf. First roll them in the five-spice rice powder—get a lot, now, make a paste. Get some larger rice crumbles. Large enough for the mouth to feel. That's it, now roll them. You have the plate ready? Line them up. No! Turtle! Smooth side down! You're going to turn them over to serve, remember? Just witness your stupidity!"

  "He doesn't seem happy," said Maggie.

  "It's not as bad as it sounds," Sam said.

  Now Wang Ling was bending over the old man, telling him it was time to go up and nap. "Yes, Auntie," Sam agreed. "You are right. Uncle, I'll carry you up. We'll awaken you in two hours when the ribs are finished steaming. Would you like that?"

  "Like it!" said Xie. "I'll swat your worthless head if you don't!" Then he broke apart, coughing.

  "Come, Uncle," Sam said, and he lifted the thin old figure in his arms like a child and bore him gently toward the stairs. Wang Ling bent to take the empty rattan chair.

  "Oh, no," Maggie said quickly, "let me." And she scooped up the chair, which was light, and followed Sam into a central hallway and then up a straight single flight of stairs between whitewashed walls. At the top they turned into the second bedroom.

  It was warm with the sweet vinegar of old people, the books, the glasses, the cups of tea, the medicines. Sam laid Xie on the flowered bed. Curtains lifted in the breeze. "Thank you, my son," Xie said to him, voice flickering, exhausted.

  Now, Maggie thought, he did look sick. His skin was yellow parchment, his hands weak and palsied. His chest rose and fell with effort. He was trying to talk to Sam.

  "Guolai," he whispered, Come here.

  Sam bent close.

  "I don't suppose you have any miserable idea for a menu, do you?

  "Not yet, Uncle."

  "I have written one out for you, my son. Songling helped me. Songzhe, Songan, and Songzhao are bringing back all the food you will need for it. You are to prepare it for tonight. When you are done, even if you do not use any of the dishes from it, you will understand the classical progression."

  "Yes, Uncle. I'll start when they get here."

  "Awaken me the moment the ribs are ready." He lifted his head off the pillow
, the only thing left he could move. "Don't make me come after you!"

  "No, Uncle," Nephew said, tenderly tucking the cover. Xie watched as he and the curly-headed foreign woman slipped out. He himself could feel the soft bath of sleep coming on. Sleep was his comfort now, sleep and memories, along with the kind gaze and gentle hands of his old wife. And his children. And Nephew, now that he was here.

  The injections his wife gave him took away the pain, even as they made his mind as clear as glass. Everything around him was like a dream. What had been far away was near. The days of his youth, particularly, seemed as pure and immediate as if they had just occurred.

  Hangzhou was a food lover's dream then, and had been for a thousand years. Even the most ancient texts recorded its "abundance of rice and fish." By the time of the Southern Song in the twelfth century, restaurants and teahouses were two-thirds of the city's establishments. In order to outdo one another, Hangzhou chefs turned to the lavish use of ingredients, even rare ones, not even to eat, but simply to flavor the others—prawns used as a seasoning, crab roe as fat. And then there was decorative cooking. He must remember to bring this up with Nephew. At certain points in Hangzhou's history, presentation had reached virtuosic, garish heights, with elaborate mosaics of brightly hued hors d'oeuvres and the cutting of main-dish ingredients into floral and animal shapes. Oh, and there were the local delicacies: the Zhenjiang black vinegar and the Shaoxing wine.

  It was right that Nephew should have his final lesson here in Hangzhou. Nowhere else in China were the people so occupied with gastronomy. Oh, he thought, shivering with delight, for so many centuries cultivated men had thought nothing of spending long hours over wine and poetry, debating which was better: the fresh pink shrimp flavored with imperial-grade green tea leaves, or the skinned shad wrapped in caul fat and steamed with wine.

  Diners such as these deserved flattery, and so in Hangzhou a new element of Chinese cuisine was born—the pleasure of the compliment, made by the chef, delivered to the diner. This in turn gave rise to a whole sub-school of dishes characterized by surpassing subtlety, dishes that would be apprehended only by those with genuine taste.

  Into this food fairyland had been born the young Xie, with his best friend and sworn brother, Jiang Wanli. The two families lived in adjacent compounds, and the little boys seemed joined to each other in all things.

  They waited on private banquets together at the restaurant, not serving, just watching from the side in their gray silk gowns and black overtunics, ready to refill wine cups or change plates. Here they learned the esoteric lessons of cuisine. Food was not just to eat. It was a language. It was a regulator. It set the ladder of power. Each time the boys served, they observed this. Each meal was art, was a delight, but also a revelation of hierarchy.

  Before a banquet they would wait for their guests at the entry, its pond and arched bridge and feathery trees laid out in the style of ornate containment which had long been the region's signature. As they led the arrivals back to their private dining room, ready-set with cold dishes, they were already trading calculations silently, through no more than glances. Who would sit in the shangzuo, the seat of honor facing the door? Who would sit in the lowest seat, with his back to the door? What dishes were selected? Who served food to whom? What toasts were proposed, in what order? Which prestige foods would be served? These were the parts of the banquet language which had meaning. The conversation, the words that were said at table, meant next to nothing. It was through etiquette that the verdict was passed. The boys saw subordinates demoted, successors selected, the revelation of a traitor in the group. Sometimes they saw the bland manners that meant the banquet with its formal mix of supplication and magnanimity was just a show, the successful candidate having already been secretly agreed upon via the age-old back door.

  Ah, Xie thought in an agony of hope, the boy's meal had to be brilliant—in every way, on every level. All the right messages had to be sent out through the dishes, all the right resonances struck. He watched the long-pointed fronds of the bamboo outside the window and wondered once again what it was that made their movement so odd now, so brittle in the breeze. This was the last thought he had before he slept.

  Down in the kitchen Maggie and Sam found the four Xie children, all in their forties, all with the crosscut Xie cheekbones of the patriarch. None of them looked like the delicate, narrow-faced mother, not even the son. Sam introduced them: Songling, the oldest, Songan and Songzhe, the other two girls, and Songzhao, the son.

  Sam had told her they spoke a bit of English, but she didn't hear any. All were talking in Chinese at once. Cornucopia-stuffed string bags of food spilled onto the counters. Gourds and herbs and cabbages and all manner of flowering chives were spread out, tubs of rosy-fresh roe, a great live fish slapping in a plastic bucket, and two live chickens, caged.

  "These you're going to kill?" said Maggie.

  "Not in here," he said. "There's a place outside the kitchen door for that. Don't worry. It won't be when you're around."

  "Give me some warning. I'll take a walk."

  "Come to think of it, maybe you should watch." The thought made him smile. "You're in China. Actually, Maggie, the sisters have a plan for you, if you like. They're all going to get a massage. They want you to go with them."

  "A massage?" she said.

  "They always do this together when they come home." He was making separate piles of the vegetables, the sliced-in-place pads of fresh pasta, the eggs.

  "Women shunbian qu," one of the sisters offered.

  "They're going anyway," he translated.

  "To a massage parlor?" she said.

  He laughed. "It's not that kind. Oh, there are those here too, believe me—just not this place."

  "I wondered," she said. "I saw girls in Beijing."

  "Wonder no longer," Sam told her. "It's everywhere." Indeed, prostitution had sprung back to life alongside the restaurant business in the 1990s. It took all forms and went through every kind of channel, one of them being massage establishments whose true purpose was immediately made obvious by low lights, bed-furnished cubicles, and so-called masseuses clad in skintight gowns slit to their pale hipbones.

  In the dim lights, the girls who worked there were usually pretty. By Western standards they were inexpensive, too. Added to that was the fact that prostitution here was not hidden away in secret, seedy places the way it was in the West. It was forthright, visible. Sexual services in token guises were openly offered in the best hotels and business centers. Outcall services supplied whatever was desired in more private settings. At the highest caste level were all the women who were kept in apartments and on retainers for their sexual services: contract mistresses. If what you wanted was paid sex—and Sam didn't, personally, not because he was ashamed but because for him paying seemed to knock the whole point out of it—then China was a great place to be. Plenty of Chinese men were into it. Some laowai men too, though they mostly stuck to the bargirls and masseuses.

  "I won't lie to you," he said to Maggie now. "Massage parlors of that kind are everywhere. Very big here, with Chinese and with foreigners too. But so is the other kind, the legitimate kind, where the workers are trained and it's totally therapeutic and they just do massage, on men and women alike. It feels great. You should go. The sisters want you to."

  They spoke up now, chorusing in Chinese, obviously saying yes, yes, she should go.

  "We can't really talk to each other," said Maggie.

  "That doesn't matter. You're getting a massage."

  "I think I could use that," Maggie admitted. Except for hugs and handshakes, she hadn't really been touched by anyone this past year. Everyone was kind to her, but their kindness was in the heart. She had not felt anyone's hands on her. No one held her. So often she had lain on the boat and wrapped her arms around herself, even in the daytime, the curtains tight against the bright light and the faint slap of the lines in the wind.

  Sam said something in Chinese, and Songling linked her arm throu
gh Maggie's. "Come," she said, and led her outside.

  "Bye," Maggie called back to Sam, and he just looked at her with a smile, one that seemed to penetrate through her shell to the inside of her, one that said, You're about to feel good.

  Songzhe sat beside her in the back of the car, and Songan rode up in front with Songling. They curved down through a green pelt of trees rich with bamboo. When they passed an entrance gate with a sign in English and Chinese she saw they had been driving through the Hangzhou Botanical Garden. The sisters batted back and forth like birds, happy to see each other, and Songzhe kept leaning over to squeeze Maggie's arm. Everyone was so physical here, Maggie thought. That was one reason she liked it. That and the fact that people went around in groups. Sam, for example; even though she had mostly been with Sam alone, he seemed to have a herd of family members supporting him in the background. They were quarrelsome, but they were there. It was a form of sustenance. It was not Maggie's life, never had been, but she liked it.

  When they drove up in front of the massage place, she saw that it did indeed look like a clinic. Chinese women in white coats and flat shoes checked them in and led them to a room with eight leather recliners separated by side tables for drinks and reading matter. A wall-mounted TV was blaring a Chinese travelogue. The Xie sisters chattered and laughed. They soaked their feet in plastic-lined wooden tubs of hot water with herbs. She could feel how happy they were to be together, even if it was for their father's final illness, even if their eyes were brimming at the same time they talked and laughed. Each had gossip and revelations and new digital photos on their cell phones, which they made Maggie look at and admire. Maggie knew how they felt. She understood happiness, and she understood grief. Many times during the last year she had been pulled between the two, the way they were now.

  "He shenmo?" said one of the white-coated women, standing next to her, and Songzhe translated, "Something to drink?"