The Dissident

by Nell Freudenberger

  “Ceece?”

  “I think if you love her, you should.”

  “Should…?”

  “Go home. Get married. I mean, we loved having you—it isn’t that. But I’m not sure it’s been good for Max and Livy, having so many people in the house.”

  “They’re the most important thing,” Phil said solemnly, as if he were making a sacrifice—as if they were making a sacrifice together, each giving up an equivalent thing.

  “And Mr. Yuan,” Cece heard herself saying. “Because I do think he was just being polite about the cats. And it didn’t matter so much before, of course. But now that he’s getting so much work done—”

  Phil was silent.

  “I’d like to let him just have the space. You understand?”

  “Cece?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t be mad at me—”

  “I’m not mad at you.” Her voice was pitched higher than normal.

  “—when I say this.” Phil paused. “I think Mr. Yuan might be taking advantage of you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure he’s here just to paint.”

  You think Mr. Yuan is taking advantage, Cece thought. But she couldn’t go that far. “He isn’t here only to paint,” she said. “It’s also about experiencing another culture.”

  “I know. I just think you should be careful.”

  “You think he’s dangerous.” She was joking, but Phil responded seriously:

  “Not physically. Aubrey didn’t have a good first impression of him, which is strange.”

  “It is strange,” Cece said. “Since Mr. Yuan barely said anything during dinner. It was Aubrey who was doing most of the talking, if I remember correctly.” She was having trouble seeing. Her body felt jerky and detached, like the wooden manikin out in the studio.

  Phil laughed. “OK. I just wanted to say thank you for the other night. But now you’re mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “I was just telling you what I think, Ceece.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Cece said. “It’s inappropriate.”

  There was a silence—not one of their typical, loaded silences, but simply a freeze.

  “Wow,” Phil said. “I guess that’s it.”

  “Probably we shouldn’t talk for a while,” she said.

  “Probably not.”

  “Take care, Phil.”

  “You too, Cecelia,” he said, taking it a step too far. When had she become so unaccustomed to the sound of her given name?

  66.

  CECE WAS SITTING IN THE INTERNSHIP OFFICE ONE AFTERNOON, ADDRESSING permission slips, when she had a visitor. It was after three-thirty, and she was waiting for Mr. Yuan to be finished. The Internship Office was pleasant at this time of day, and it was still warm enough to leave the window open. She could hear girls’ voices coming from the picnic tables outside the library. They were working on their centerpieces for the sesquicentennial. From the side lawn outside the auditorium, you could hear the tinny hammers of the men building a stage in front of the Claire Moffet (class of ’38) Memorial Reflecting Pool, where they would make the sesquicentennial speeches, and release the balloons and the doves.

  She was glad to hear the knock on her door. The fact that other people’s children still wanted to confide in her was a small consolation, in the face of recent failures with her own.

  “Come in,” Cece called, but it took her a moment to recognize the woman who opened the door: a slim shadow with the sun slanting in from the atrium behind her.

  “Am I interrupting? I was just here to get Emily, and I thought I’d stop in—”

  “Felice,” Cece said. “It’s so nice to see you—I was going to call, actually. We would love to have you to dinner after everything settles down.”

  “With your house guest,” Felice suggested, sliding into the seat normally occupied by Cece’s interns. “You must be overwhelmed.”

  Cece had not forgotten her conference with Emily, but she had been able to put it out of her mind successfully. When she saw the girl in the hallways, she tried to smile, but Emily purposefully avoided eye contact. Cece assumed that Olivia’s friend had thought better of her accusation, or had simply been making an idle threat. Perhaps, if asked, she would pretend not to remember it at all. This was a strategy both of her children used, and she did not consider it lying. As a teenager, your whole personality was a kind of rough draft. You made a lot of mistakes, and Cece felt that you ought to be able to do as much revising as necessary, without being penalized for it.

  Now, however, as she faced Felice Alderman across the desk, Cece had the uncomfortable feeling that she had not behaved completely correctly either. Had the best course really been to forgive and forget? Or had she perhaps been under some obligation to reveal Emily’s accusation (however groundless) to school authorities—an obligation she had ignored, in order to protect Mr. Yuan?

  “Olivia and Emily are so close,” Cece began. “Olivia adores her. It’s been Emily this, Emily that, ever since they got back from Paris.”

  “Yes.” Felice sighed. “Emily is certainly popular.”

  Cece smiled graciously, a skill she had developed through charity work. There was no point in allowing things to become unpleasant, just because you didn’t happen to like a person.

  “Now we just need to get those grades up,” Felice continued. “I know she hasn’t come to see you yet, but she says she’s interested in art.”

  Cece took a deep breath of the sweet, grassy air (outside the gardeners were mowing). Apparently Emily Alderman had kept their chat to herself. Any damage the girl had done might still be repaired.

  “Of course they have this Chinese teacher this year. Thanks to you.”

  “Oh no,” Cece said firmly. “Thanks to Mr. Yuan. He volunteered, you know.”

  Felice looked surprised. “I didn’t know. You mean, he isn’t officially a teacher?”

  “Well, he has taught a great deal in China,” Cece said. It occurred to her that she didn’t know whether this was true. “The certifications are different there, of course.”

  “Of course,” Felice said.

  “The important thing is just that the girls have this wonderful opportunity.”

  Felice gave her a noncommittal smile. Cece glanced out the window: the students were shooing some pigeons away from their project, a sesquicentennial banner stretched out on the cement.

  “Personally I’ve always thought she ought to study psychology. That’s what I did in college, and I never regretted it.”

  “My husband is a psychiatrist,” Cece said, gratefully steering the conversation away from Mr. Yuan. “Where did you—”

  “Oh I know,” Felice interrupted. “Emily mentioned that.”

  “I’m arranging for some of the girls to go to one of his lectures, if only to see what a college lecture is like. If Emily is interested—”

  “How wonderful of Gordon to help.”

  “Oh, well, he doesn’t have a choice,” Cece joked. “I psychologized him into it.”

  Felice smiled. “You know what they say.”

  “Sorry?” Outside, the girls were screeching about something. A siren wailed up Third Street, shattering the peace of the afternoon.

  “They can’t do it on their own families,” Felice said. “Isn’t that right?”

  Cece looked at the stack of envelopes on her desk, still waiting to be addressed. Joan had said that Cece was a “people person,” but Cece was beginning to doubt it. These days all she ever wanted was to be alone.

  She looked up from the desk, and tried to summon her sister-in-law’s intimidating reserve: “It’s not that he couldn’t,” she said. “Only that it wouldn’t be appropriate. Gordon is a wonderful father.”

  “No, no,” Felice exclaimed, leaned forward and put her left hand on Cece’s desk. Multiple diamonds flashed there, like warnings. “You’re misunderstanding me. I just meant that cliché—you know—about psychiatrists and their families.
No doubt Gordon is the exception that proves the rule.”

  Outside, the girls continued yelling: why couldn’t they be quiet, even for a minute?

  It’s in her hair.

  Ew, ew.

  “Obviously he’s wonderful with Max,” Felice said.

  “Max?”

  “After everything he’s been through.”

  Gross. Get it OFF.

  “What is going on out there?”

  Felice’s voice maintained a casualness, but the emphasis betrayed her: she knew she’d gone too far. How dare she bring up Max, as if everyone knew all about it?

  “It sounds like some kind of crisis.”

  “A bird shit in someone’s hair.” Cece was surprised this wasn’t obvious to Felice. She was surprised to hear herself use the word shit.

  Felice laughed again. “It’s supposed to be lucky.”

  Shut up, Cece thought. Get out—go.

  “Isn’t that what they say?”

  Cece stood up. “Unfortunately I have to run. Mr. Yuan is waiting for me.” She felt Felice watching as she rifled through the piles of paper on her desk. She was sure to forget something.

  “Maybe it’s a Chinese saying? About it being lucky?”

  “We said that when I was a girl,” Cece said, stuffing the permission slips into her purse, where they would get crumpled. Never mind—she could Xerox them at home. She had a powerful desire for home: the dim, silent foyer, the stained-glass window dropping chips of colored light onto the ivory-carpeted stairs.

  “That’s right,” Felice said. “So it couldn’t be, could it?”

  “Be what?” Cece said, opening the door.

  “Chinese,” Felice said softly. “Back then—we barely even knew where China was.”

  67.

  THE DAY BEFORE ST. ANSELM’S ANNUAL DANCE DIRECTIONS CONCERT, Cece gave me a message that someone had called for me.

  “He didn’t speak very much English—or maybe it was the connection,” she said politely. “He said to tell you he’d spoken to Harry, and to congratulate you on your big success.” Cece handed me a sheet of paper with a number, and the words DNA-ture and Big Success in enthusiastic red ink. “I’m sorry that I didn’t get his name.”

  When I called my cousin back the next morning, he was in the middle of packing. I could hear voices, and a good deal of banging in the background; friends were helping him clear out his things, he explained, in preparation for a move to an apartment in Chaoyang, near the Kerry Center.

  “It’s expensive,” X said. “Like everything these days. Do you remember how much I paid for that room in the East Village? Eighty kuai! Isn’t that incredible?”

  “That was a long time ago,” I said.

  “You’re right!” my cousin exclaimed. “It’s stupid to live in the past. And this new place is a lot better than that room, that’s for sure. Everything new, two bedrooms, even radiant flooring in the bathroom. And there’s an office for me to keep track of my work.” X laughed; he was notoriously bad at any kind of bookkeeping.

  “It sounds perfect,” I told him.

  “How is Los Angeles?” he asked. I was surprised to hear a new tentativeness in his voice, as if he were being careful to humor me. He was waiting to ask about the art show until he found out whether I was angry.

  “Oh, fine,” I said, allowing him to squirm a little. “The weather is great.”

  “And the, um—DNA-ture? Was it boring for you?”

  “Boring!” I said. “Why do you say that? People loved it.”

  “They did?”

  “There must’ve been two hundred of them there.” (I exaggerated a little, for effect.)

  “Really?”

  “And a curator from the Armand Hammer Museum—he said something about wanting to talk.”

  “Great!” said X.

  “There should be some gallery interest, maybe even in New York.”

  “Wow,” my cousin said. “You’re incredible.” Then he repeated the news to someone else. I heard a female voice.

  “Who’s there?” I asked.

  “A lot of people are helping,” X said. And then, as if casually: “Meiling is here. Not helping, of course. You should see her—like a house!”

  I heard Meiling chastising him in the background. My cousin paused, and then, with extremely uncharacteristic awkwardness, made a joke:

  “Lucky the new place is so big.”

  I understood so quickly that I thought I must’ve always known. I wondered how I could’ve doubted it. There was the way my cousin had encouraged me to visit her, and the way Meiling had avoided the question of a father. How could I have imagined that the post might be vacant? My ex-girlfriend was, above all, practical; she would not have allowed herself to drift toward motherhood without a firm plan in place. I had no doubt about who had insisted on the comfortable apartment in Chaoyang: Meiling’s child would not grow up in a rickety hutong house, or a drafty studio at Dashanzi, with a loft bed and a toilet down the hall. Most important, he would not grow up without a father. In fact he would have a famous father—one who had prestigious international shows, but preferred staying with his family in a large apartment with radiant flooring to traveling all over the world. Knowing Meiling, I was not surprised it had all worked out so elegantly.

  My cousin and I were both quiet for several moments. It didn’t hurt as much as I would’ve expected. In fact there was a kind of lightness, a sloughing off, as if I had completed some particularly onerous task.

  “So, do you know what you’ll do now?” X asked. “Thinking of coming home?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “I have to finish my project.”

  X hesitated. “Right, of course.”

  In spite of his encouragement, I knew it hadn’t occurred to him that my “project” would be anything but a distraction. My teaching job would’ve seemed to him an onerous responsibility. It was only recently that those things had begun to mean something more to me. I decided, on a whim, to confide in my cousin.

  “And there’s this girl,” I said.

  “Really?” X said. “That’s great. Who is she?”

  “Not a girlfriend,” I told him. “A student. She particularly needs my help—she’s very talented.”

  “Mm-hm,” X said. “How old is she? Sixteen, seventeen?” I heard Meiling again in the background, and I couldn’t help being a little bit gratified.

  “She’s nineteen,” I told him, “and she’s really just my student. I should get going, actually—so I’m not late to class.”

  “Hold on,” X said. “Meiling wants to talk to you.”

  For a moment, I had the familiar excitement: a tunnel opened into the glistening past. But for the first time, the present was stronger.

  “I actually have to go,” I told my cousin.

  “We’ll be around if you want to call back,” X said. “Your time to night would be tomorrow morning for us.”

  “I’m going out to night.”

  “A date,” X guessed.

  “A concert,” I said, not exactly correcting him. “Give my best to Meiling. Tell her the Lobster Hermit sends his regards.”

  68.

  MALMSTEAD HALL WAS DIMLY LIT AS PARENTS, SIBLINGS, AND TEACHERS (as well as a large contingent from the William O. Douglas School for Boys) filed in for the Dance Directions concert. Although we were early, there were not five seats together; Cece and I sat on the left side of the aisle, while Dr. Travers, Max, and his girlfriend sat a few rows back on the right. I looked around at the audience filling up the tiers of plush orange seats, like the ones in a particularly fancy movie theater, and spotted a few of my AP artists who were not members of Dance Directions. The one student I was looking for, however, did not seem to be in attendance.

  I hadn’t really expected to see June and her grandmother in the crowd, but as I scanned the rows of faces, I was disappointed anyway. After my slip in the classroom two weeks ago—letting the other girls know I had seen June’s aviary—our Chinese lessons had abru
ptly ended. That, I supposed, was my punishment. But June had also stopped working in my classroom during her free periods. Had she finished her net, or was she simply trying to avoid me? I had spoken to her only once since then, when we’d encountered each other at the snack bar on the south side of campus. It was the middle of the morning, when most students were in class, and we were practically alone.

  June hadn’t smiled when she saw me approaching, but she hadn’t walked away either.

  “How have you been?” I asked her. “Have you finished your project?”

  June collected her change before answering me. “Which project?”

  “Your net.” I lowered my voice, as if it were a secret between us.

  “I’m throwing it away.” Just like that: casual.

  “Throwing it away!”

  “You were right—there was no point to it.”

  “But you must have something to do with it. You spent so much time.”

  June shrugged, like she didn’t know what I was talking about. I was desperate to continue the conversation, although I didn’t know what I wanted to say.

  “Are you bringing your grandmother to the concert on Friday?” I asked, trailing after her to the communal microwave. “I know several of your classmates are in Dance Directions.”

  “Talk about ‘something that is not art,’” June said. Then she called out to another girl, one I had never seen before, with very long black hair and an armful of colorful leather bracelets. I should have been glad to see that she had her own friends; instead I was tremendously jealous.

  “See you, Mr. Jow,” she said casually, giving me (as Batty would say) the cold shoulder. I was still standing there when a voice startled me: Vice Principal Diller peered down over the railing on the second floor to ask whether my students would be delivering their Sesquicenterpieces to her office the following Monday.

  “I believe so,” I said, careful not to promise anything.

  My hesitation had not seemed to please the vice principal. “I certainly hope so,” she said, withdrawing her head like a turtle.