Then I realized that while I was exploring his face, this man had also been probing mine. It was not in the same parsing way Korean eyes looked at me, trying to discern the percentage of my genetic split. Judging by the tight line his lips made, I could tell that mine was a face that displeased him. I grew self-conscious; I took a step back.
He spoke. “You Jane Re?” he said. There was that thick Brooklyn accent.
I nodded, too shy to trust my own voice. Our family name, in the original Korean, was pronounced “Ee”—less a last name than a displeased squeal. “Lee” was its most common Western perversion, but there were others: Rhee, Wie, Yee, Yi. Re was a bastard even among the other bastardizations.
“Ed. Ed Farley.” He stuck out his hand. I expected it would be rough to the touch, but my fingers glided over the smooth skin of his palm.
I followed Ed Farley down a dark, narrow hallway, lined with carved African masks. Mr. Farley was not tall—maybe only two inches taller than me—but under his buttoned-up shirt I could tell he was broad-shouldered and lean. He had the kind of natural muscles that made you think of hours spent not at the gym but on construction sites, lifting beams of wood and steel, or warehouses, loading pallets of merchandise onto trucks.
I adjusted my suit blazer and pulled down the hem of my skirt. If something happened to me, I knew what Sang would say: Telling you so. I’d had to pretend I’d gotten an interview with a bank.
After a seemingly endless hallway, we finally turned left and entered the living room. We’d just made a loop around the house, only to wind up right back at the front. The bay window down at the far end of the room, draped in crimson velvet curtains, was the same hooded window that had stared out at me from the street. Dark wood bookshelves, crammed with books, floated on the walls, with more books heaped in piles on the floor.
There was a rustling of the curtains; I saw a small foot poking out, then a little leg, then a little girl. An Asian girl. She had a tiny frame but a large head, its largeness further emphasized by the unfashionable bowl cut of her stick-straight black hair. She didn’t look stereotypically Chinese—I might even have mistaken her for Korean. She jumped down from her window perch and bounded toward me with purposeful strides. She looked like a colt: half trotting, half tripping. One arm was sticking out in the air, ready to receive mine. The other held an oversize newspaper.
Her outstretched hand reached me first. “You must be Jane Re. My name’s Devon Xiao Nu Mazer-Farley, and next week I start the fifth grade. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.” By the time she finished speaking, the rest of her body had caught up to her hand.
We shook; the girl had a surprisingly tight grip.
Devon Xiao Nu Mazer-Farley’s face was so different from Ed Farley’s: it was shallow, like swift strokes on a sheet of clay. On a scale of increasing facial three-dimensionality, things would look something like:
I heard light, scampering footsteps, like a mouse’s. I turned around and saw a woman hurrying toward me, arm outstretched, frizzy gray hair streaming behind her. She squeezed my knuckles. “You must be Jane. I’m Beth, Devon’s mom. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
This was Mr. Farley’s wife? She looked a decade too old for him. “A real pleasure to meet you, too, Mrs. . . . Farley.”
“Mrs. Farley!” she laughed.
“That kind of has a nice ring to it,” Mr. Farley said from the couch, but too softly for the woman to hear.
“Please, call me Beth,” she said to me. “But for the record, it’s Dr. Mazer.”
I apologized for my error, but with a swipe of her arm Beth waved it away.
“Please, excuse me. I must return to my reading,” Devon said to no one in particular, returning to her window nook, disappearing altogether behind the curtains.
Beth gestured to the seat next to Ed Farley. “Make yourself comfortable.”
I looked at the wicker love seat where he was sitting—there was maybe a foot and a half of clearance. It would be a very tight squeeze.
“Dr.—Beth, please, sit—”
But Beth insisted. “I’ve been parked on my ass all day.” She said “ass” right in front of her daughter and didn’t bother to censor herself. Only Mr. Farley cleared his throat.
I was made to sit. I pressed my knees together, so they wouldn’t knock into Ed Farley’s. I could feel his tense thighs against mine. Beth began pacing around the room, swinging her arms vigorously. Hannah did the same thing to increase circulation. Black, wiry sprouts of hair peeked out from under Beth’s arms through her sleeveless, shapeless tunic top.
I couldn’t picture a more mismatched pair than Beth Mazer and Ed Farley. Beth looked like she was well into her forties: her face was gaunt, with yellow circles under her large, dark eyes. Blackheads studded her nose. Perhaps if Beth dyed her hair or blow-dried her frizzy strands straight, she might have minimized the age gap between them. Still, she seemed to carry herself with the confidence—and entitlement—of a younger, prettier woman.
“Jane!” Beth said. “We are thrilled to meet you. Tell us everything.”
Everything? I reached for the file folder in my bag. “Here is my résumé—”
Beth waved it away. “We want to get to know you. Let’s have a conversation.”
Weren’t we already? “Um, okay.”
“You just graduated from college, right? What was that experience like?”
Beth’s question was oddly open-ended.
“It was good, I guess. I double-majored in finance and accounting.”
“Isn’t that a shame, Beth.” It was Mr. Farley who spoke.
“Ignore him, Jane. That comment was more about me than about you.” Over my head they exchanged a look. Beth went on. “I suppose the cat’s out of the bag, Jane: I have something of a predisposed bias against banker types. They are my mother’s people! Clearly I’m a self-hater. So it goes, so it goes.” Clearly Beth was an oversharer. As she spoke, her cheeks did not flush red, the way most normal people’s would when they realized they were divulging too much information.
She went on. “But frankly, Jane, I’m surprised you’re applying for this kind of job. You seem like a bright, sensitive young woman, despite your degree.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer it.
“Tell us where you’re from.”
“Queens. Flushing.”
Beth called out to Devon, “Remember, sweetie? The last time we were in Queens? When I took you to see the Mets play the Giants?”
Devon turned from her window perch. “And the Mets lost,” she said, scrunching her nose. “They always lose.”
“You’ve got to believe, sweetie.”
People only ever have two stories about Queens: bad times at JFK and bad times at Shea Stadium.
“And what do your parents do out there?” Beth backpedaled hastily. “That is, if you’re comfortable talking about it. I know I hate it when people are always like, ‘And what do your parents do?’ God, look at me! I’m turning into my mother.” Beth made an exaggerated shudder, presumably for comic effect, but when she finished that routine, she stared down at me, waiting for an actual answer.
“My uncle has a grocery store in Flushing.”
“Your . . . uncle?”
I found myself craving the sterility of corporate-finance interviews.
“I live with his family. They—My mother died a while ago.”
The curtains parted, and Devon came bounding across the room. She put her face right up to mine. “How did your mother die?”
“Devon!” Beth said sharply. I exhaled a sigh of relief. But then she said, “It’s not polite to ask that. It’s better to say, ‘How did your mother pass away?’”
Devon corrected herself, her small hand giving my shoulder a reassuring pat. Then her mother began patting my other shoulder. The two exchanged a conspiratorial l
ook of shared pity. This interview was starting to make me feel tap-tap-hae. I turned my head away, because I couldn’t trust myself not to contort my face with displeasure. You of all people need to worry about wrinkles. I caught Ed Farley’s eye.
“If she doesn’t want to talk about it, she doesn’t want to talk about it,” Mr. Farley muttered before picking up the newspaper. I was surprised by his display of nunchi.
Thankfully, the conversation moved on to other topics. Beth settled to the floor and crossed her legs. She lectured, and I listened. She told me she was a professor of women’s studies at Mason College. (“Up for tenure next year!” she added in a strangely anxious, high-pitched tone.) I remembered seeing their ads on the subways—WHERE POETS BECOME PARTICLE PHYSICISTS . . . AND VICE VERSA!, the tagline read—above a set of multihued youths leaping in the air. Mr. Farley taught high-school English at a prep school downtown. They had met at Columbia as graduate students in the English department. She talked about Devon’s adoption process—“We’re trying to revise the adoption rhetoric by calling it an ‘alternative birth plan’”—as well as the responsibilities that came with the au pair position.
“I don’t want someone who’s just going to clock in and out each day. We want you to grow and become part of our family,” she said. “We want—”
Devon, peeking out again from the window, called out, “Ma, I need your help. What’s the author mean by this?” Devon had completely interrupted our interview, but Beth did not tell her it was rude. Sang and Hannah always used to wave me away when they were with other adults, until I was old enough to learn not to bother them at all. Instead Beth turned her full attention to her daughter. “Let’s have a look, sweetie.” Devon brought the paper to Beth and inserted herself into her mother’s lap.
Beth studied the page. I mean, studied. At first I’d thought, based on the thick white paper and colorful illustration on the cover, that it was some sort of children’s newspaper. I was wrong. The text inside was chunky, with little white space. Four minutes ticked by. (I kept making not-so-subtle glances at my watch.) I thought of what Sang would say: You think time like some kind of luxury? But Beth was so absorbed in her reading it was as if the rest of us weren’t even there.
Finally she looked up. “Okay, sweetie, let’s break it down. The author refers to a ‘cultural investigation.’ What do you suppose she means by that?”
“I already know what that means,” Devon said impatiently. But her mother was still looking expectantly at her. “Fine. ‘Investigation.’ It’s like when a detective goes around and starts looking for clues to solve a crime. Like this one time on Law & Order they were interviewing the murder victim’s parole officer—” She clamped a hand over her mouth. Beth shot her husband a look. “Ed!”
I don’t know how I thought Ed Farley would react. But he just gave a boyish shrug of his shoulders and said, “She wandered in while it was on TV. What, you wanted me to turn our daughter away?”
“And Daddy made me do muffin ears and face the wall whenever they did the shooting scenes,” Devon piped up, thinking she was helping their case.
Beth shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with your father.” She sighed. Given the rather jocular tone of the family moment, I thought she would leaven her words with a smile, but instead she shot her husband another angry look.
Beth and Devon continued to discuss the article. There was an exhaustive thoroughness to Beth’s explanations, so much so that she generated little forward movement. She seemed to circle in place, hovering over each word as she unpacked its meaning, before she moved on. She was, I could tell, a dogged perfectionist—she took all the time in the world to belabor each and every point. It was exasperating to watch. Yet Beth never seemed exasperated. She continued looking intently, tenderly, at her daughter until it was clear that Devon understood the whole piece.
When they were finished, Beth folded her daughter into her arms. “Wo ai ni, Devon.”
“Wo ai ni, Ma,” Devon said, her arms wrapped in a choke hold around her mother’s neck.
Then, perhaps so she wouldn’t leave her father out, she yanked on his hand. “Wo ai ni, Daddy.”
He put down his paper. “I love you, too, Devon,” he said, and gathered her into a bear hug. Then the family reconfigured into a group huddle.
Devon exchanged another conspiratorial look with her mother. Should we? she seemed to say. Beth nodded. Their circle parted. Ed Farley was opposite me at the far end of that circle, flanked by his wife and daughter. Devon and Beth each entwined their arms fiercely around me.
It would have been so easy to write them off. Beth Mazer, with her hairy armpits and her complete lack of social grace. Ed Farley, gruff and a little cold, and probably ten years her junior. Their daughter, Devon, a half-pint-size imitation of her mother, even though she was Chinese. And now they were touching me. Sang and Hannah never hugged me. They didn’t even hug their own children. We were not a touchy-feely kind of family. I could have chalked up the whole strange experience to potential cocktail-party fodder: This one time? When I interviewed to be a nanny? They were a family of freaks.
And yet.
Something in that moment shifted for me; I can’t explain why. On a rational level, I recognized the corniness of the moment. I recognized the inappropriateness of their behavior, of the job itself, the underutility of my college degree. Yet I also considered the way Beth had explained the article to Devon, saw the way she was holding her now. I suddenly pictured myself living with them, being taken into the fold. It did not seem so far-fetched that I could be Devon’s au pair. My tense shoulders began to loosen. Slowly I returned Devon and Beth Mazer’s embrace. I took care not to brush hands with Ed Farley.
And then, just as immediately, we broke free and something shifted again.
“I know what you’re thinking. My Mandarin’s terrible,” Beth said.
“It’s true! All the kids at Chinese school make fun of Ma’s bakgwai accent,” Devon said.
I didn’t know exactly what bakgwai meant, but I recognized it as a not-nice way the Chinese kids sometimes referred to the American kids at school. Beth blushed. I was surprised by how deeply her cheeks flushed red, for a woman who seemed to have no sense of shame. She said, “Be honest, Jane. Just how bad is my accent?”
Did she think I was Chinese? If Beth Mazer hadn’t waved away my résumé, she would have found, listed under “Skills,” a proficiency in Korean, not Mandarin.
“I’m . . . um, Korean—”
“You’re not Chinese?” Beth interrupted. “You mean, Ed didn’t . . .” I didn’t think her face could get any redder, but it grew redder still. Her eyes darted to her husband. “Ed!”
While Ed Farley took his time composing his response, Beth whipped her head back to me. “Please don’t think I’m one of those people who just assumes. God, I’m mortified! You must think I’m a culturally insensitive boor. But it’s just . . . we advertised for a Chinese au pair.”
“The ad cut out,” was all I could manage. Nunchi forbade me from saying anything more, such as, Why didn’t you write a shorter ad?
“Ed. Could I speak to you in the kitchen? Please. Now.” Beth’s questions fell flat at the ends, like statements.
Ed Farley let out an exasperated sigh. “If we must.”
The two got up and left the room. I wondered if I should just see myself out. While I puzzled over what to do, Devon bounded across the room and took her father’s seat next to me.
I heard indecipherable murmurs coming from the other side of the house.
“It’ll be okay,” Devon said, patting my hand, as if our roles were reversed.
I looked over at her, her face contorted into the kind of scrunch that Hannah always yelled at me to fix. Did it bother Devon that she looked nothing like her parents? When I was her age, my hair was much lighter than the black it eventually settled into, and a smat
tering of freckles spread like wings on either side of my nose. People were always pointing out the differences. It made me grow awkward and tentative in social situations. Yet Devon seemed so assured of her place in the world. She was just like her mother.
I heard a burst, from Mr. Farley. “. . . about to ask if she’s Chinese over the phone!”
Beth murmured, “. . . our daughter’s development.”
Devon put on a bright smile. “Let’s read something.” When she said, “Let’s,” she’d actually meant “I’ll.” She snapped open her newspaper and began to read, in an even, eloquent voice, tripping over fewer words than I would have if the paper had been placed in my hands.
I heard Mr. Farley’s voice again. “Then I guess you can’t hire her!”
“But she’s . . .” Beth trailed off.
Ed Farley walked briskly back into the room. I stood up. Then, standing close enough for me to smell his clean soap smell, he said, “We’ll be in touch.”
I’d heard those words repeated from enough HR departments to know what they meant: Thanks, but no thanks. I’d bombed—for being the wrong kind of Asian. I couldn’t even land my backup plan, a job that up until a few moments ago I hadn’t even wanted in the first place.
Devon looked up at me and squeezed my hand. “Best of luck,” she said.
“You, too,” I said, though she didn’t need it. I squeezed back.
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