by Susan Conley
Aidan’s room looked beat-up—floorboards dinged from skateboarding and kick ball, white walls dirtied from smog and greasy fingers. It was hard to stand there and know that in a few short hours we’d be gone. That the apartment would sit empty—as if we’d never learned Chinese verbs there or sung compulsively or cried ourselves to sleep. I thought of how much living we’d done in those concrete rooms up above the Fourth Ring Road. Now we were leaving? How could we? How dare we?
Four days before our flight there’d been good-bye ceremonies for both boys at school. I’d sat in a small red plastic chair and watched while Thorne and Aidan climbed into inflatable rubber rafts in the middle of their classrooms. They played Handel’s Water Music and then all of us stood up—the students and the boys’ teachers and Julie, the principal, and me—and we swayed to the music. We were meant to imagine Thorne and Aidan riding in their rafts over the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean, headed home to the United States.
After the music finished, Aidan began reading a speech he’d crafted that morning: “I don’t have the words to say how much I liked first grade.” I held my camera over my eyes to hide my tears. He added for good measure that what he really looked forward to in America was going to a wood-oven pizza place he knew. “You sit on a stone bench,” he told everyone, “and watch your own crust cook.”
When Thorne spoke from his raft, he said he was grateful to his friends in third grade for making him “so comfortable here.” I laughed and cried again for his word choice. Where was that boy who gnawed at his shirtsleeve our first month because he was so nervous? The boy who couldn’t stop singing? I wondered if we were messing things up again by leaving. I wondered if we should just stay put.
We’ve been back in Maine a month now. Thorne walks around the house singing the Chinese songs from the winter musical. But I don’t need him to stop. I understand the low-grade hum of anxiety in his head that compels him. It’s also no surprise that Aidan is having “the sleeping problems” again. We’re repeating the dislocation cycle—this time back in our home. The patterns are the same: Thorne sings, Aidan wanders the house at night and finds other people’s beds to crawl into. I am the one who wonders out loud again where we are. What we’ve done in moving back. I can’t sleep either. I’ve been on the lookout for Saturn but have not seen any foreboding signs. Neptune rules my house now. The novel got finished. The blank writing book Lily brought me from Italy is filled.
Last night Tony and I watched the film he’d taken of the dumpling making: Lao Wu never looks into the camera, and his hands move so fast they don’t seem natural. Mao Ayi is all business too. Her hands scoop the filling into her fingers, make a small ball of it in her palm, then slide the mix into the center of the pancake, which she presses closed with her thumbs and forefingers and seals. Finished. Then on to the next one. Over and over.
Thorne laughs on camera and says, “Bui dui! Bui dui,” to Lao Wu, who places his hand on Thorne’s head, just for a moment. Not okay! Not okay! Together they whip off cookie platters of jiaozi in short minutes. Then Tony’s camera follows everyone to the dining room. On film we look like some ad hoc family: two striking Chinese people—a man and a woman in their fifties with shocking black hair—chattering in Mandarin with one skinny six-year-old named Aidan and a taller version of the same boy named Thorne and their mother, who watches in quiet amazement.
“Tell us,” Tony says to Mao Ayi in Mandarin on the film, “what you are eating?”
“Jiaozi,” she replies clearly, and then blushes and looks away.
“Hao chi!” Aidan yells and puts a dumpling in his mouth with his chopsticks.
It hit me in my living room in Maine that we were a family—six people sitting around a wooden table in Beijing, sharing a lunch after spending most of the last few years together. “Look, Tony,” I said and reached for his arm. “Everyone is talking in Chinese, even me.” Then Thorne pops up on the camera sitting on Lao Wu’s lap. Lao Wu is grinning. Beaming. He casually puts his arm on Thorne’s shoulder—then his hand on Thorne’s knee. Thorne leans into his chest and laughs.
Three hours later, Lao Wu drove us to the airport and asked me when we’d be coming back to China, even though we both knew it was a question I couldn’t answer. “Wo bu zhi dao,” I said. Don’t know. We’d found him a job with a British family who’d just moved to Beijing. Mao Ayi would start on Monday with a family from Australia.
Lao Wu nodded at the road and responded very clearly in English, “Not good. This is not good.”
Then he parked the van in international departures and he cried. So then Tony cried. And then I cried. Lao Wu had packed us a care package: more apples and bananas and pears than we could ever eat on a thirteen-hour flight to Chicago. Plus two dozen lollipops and a box of Chinese malt balls. I took the food from Lao Wu and did not try to hug him. I put my hand up in a frozen wave. The boys ran out of the van and clamped on to Lao Wu’s waist. He patted their heads with his open hands and wiped his tears and patted their heads some more.
Then the boys were off just as quickly. They had luggage carts to push. An important flight to catch. They were going home, they called to him in Chinese. Women hui jia. And they paused to wave back at him one more time, just before the revolving glass doors swallowed them whole.
• • •
This morning during breakfast before school, I asked the boys what they missed most about China. Without pausing they both said “Lao Wu” at the same time. His absence felt palpable. What I recall most is the way he would get a quick hug in when he lifted Aidan out of the van. And the way Thorne would lean into Lao Wu’s shoulder from the backseat once the van had stopped. We can’t hold an entire country in our hearts or heads—so what we seem to be doing is holding certain people.
We ate our Honey Nut Cheerios then and made a list of things that were different between the United States and China. Thorne said, “School is less stressful in America,” which seemed like a good thing to me.
Aidan said, “The trees are greener here, and write down that I already can’t remember the playground in China.” They both wanted me to add the fact that they have a new Chinese teacher in Maine who’s getting them to write a rap song in Mandarin. There were no rap songs in Chinese class in Beijing.
I put the pen down and dug into my cereal. “We’ll go back,” I said. “Back to China for vacations and who knows.” I looked over at Tony.
“Shanghai?” he said, like a question. Then he took a sip of coffee and rested his hand on my cheek and smiled. He smiles more often now than he did the last time we lived here. He’s brought that ease he knew in China back with him to the States. And he talks in Mandarin on the phone all day. His new job will take him to China every other month. “I think the next place we should live is Shanghai,” he repeated, laughing.
The one thing I’d like to put on our list is the part about how the last time I lived in this house I didn’t have cancer. I used to actively avoid cancer news if it drifted my way. I used to change the dial on the radio station. It was as if the country called cancer didn’t exist. And I miss her sometimes—that version of myself. God, she seems young to me now, though we weren’t even gone three full years. That woman who guarded the good times vigilantly, even maniacally. That new mother who thought she and her kids would live forever if she could just get them to sleep more.
Strange as this may sound, I’m also relieved to find out she doesn’t live in this house any longer. Someone a little stronger has taken her place. I know now that keeping bad news at bay doesn’t mean bad news isn’t going to come for you. And that I can still hold my heart open even if it does come. I’ve let go of the metaphor I’d been carrying with me all these months—I can see that cancer doesn’t have to be a cultural isolation. Doesn’t have to be my own private China. I have no use for that comparison anymore. I’ve made my peace with both countries.
Acknowledgments
There wouldn’t be as much good fortune in this story if there weren’t all
these people who helped. So first to my close group of writer friends: Sara Corbett, Caitlin Gutheil, Anja Hanson, Lily King, and Debra Spark. I’m indebted and humbled.
Then to my parents, Michael Conley and Thorne Conley, for their great acts of kindness and for never wavering.
To John Conley, my brother. And to Erin Conley, my sister. How lucky am I to have grown up with you two.
To the amazing Dr. Ann Partridge at Dana Farber, who inspires me every day to get out there and live. To Dr. Michelle Specht at Massachusetts General, my gratitude and respect have no end. To Dr. Celine Godin, for her wisdom and candor. To Dr. Anne Rainville for making me go back to the Beijing hospital. To Dr. Carlos Camargo for all that came after that. And to Ann, Gretchen, Jenny, Katherine, Kate, and Lisa. May we all be talking on a porch together when we’re eighty.
In China, I want to thank Lao Wu, Mao Ayi, Xiao Cheng, and Rose. I’m still learning from their lessons in language and in life. Deep thanks also to the people we explored China with: Melanie Cutler and Eliot Cutler, Deb Fallows and Jim Fallows, Lars Jorgensen, Erin Keogh and Chris Keogh, Mimi Kuo-Deemer, Molly Lloyd, Anna Poulsen, Dan Reardon, Ken Shih, Anne Stevenson-Yang, Britta Von Lewinksi, Hans Von Lewinski, Vanessa Wang, and Robyn Wexler. At the boys’ school, I am so grateful to Julie Lawton, principal extraordinaire, and a group of amazing teachers: Diba Kader, Detra Watson, Amy Carlson, and Carmel Byrne.
Back in the States, I bow down to the friends and family who sent us off to China and then helped us out when things got dicey: to Annie Anderson, Jenepher Burton, Ania Camargo, my cousin Jennifer Chittick, Tyler Clements, Don Cohon, Jenna Conley, Jane Conover, Paige Cox, Sara Crisp, my cousins Elisabeth Dekker and Hans Dekker, my aunt Lynne Dekker, Becky Dilworth, Susannah Dubois, Rich Dubois, Mary Fitzgerald, Jon Fitzgerald, Maribeth Hourihan, Patty Howells, Celine Kuhn, Chris Kuhn, Winky Lewis, Monty Lewis, Katie Longstreth, Jill McGowan, Alex Millspaugh, Sarah Moran, Genevieve Morgan, Tom Morgan, Jos Nicholas, Maryanne O’Hara, Nick O’Hara, Peggy Orenstein, Susan Partridge, Derek Pierce, Judith Redwine, Gillian Schair, Electa Sevier, and Sara Woolf. To the entire Kieffer family for their support, as well as to the Meisters and the Davis family. And to all the Crouters out there, and to all the Conleys for their help, especially Chrissy Wakefield for her singing and her cheerleading (literal and otherwise) all these years.
To Sara Corbett, again, for her wisdom and friendship and for building the Telling Room with me.
To Mike Paterniti for his friendship and for his Telling Room genius. Thanks for inviting Tony to drive a Ferrari across Inner Mongolia with you. It all starts there. And thank you for sharing a small bit of your writing brilliance so I could find my way to this book.
To Lily King, this time for her knowingness and her great friendship. I am so grateful.
To Carole Baron, for her incredible insights and her joy in the process and for understanding all parts of this journey. It has been my deepest pleasure to work with her. Thank you also to Emily Milder at Knopf for her amazing smarts and savvy; to Pat Johnson, for her intuition and support; and to Gabrielle Brooks, Lydia Buechler, and Erinn Hartman; I have been so fortunate to work with each of them.
Stephanie Cabot makes talking about writing one of the world’s greatest delights. I am so lucky.
And then to the boys, Aidan and Thorne. This book has always been for them and to them. May I always be able to ask them if they know how much. And here at the end, to Tony Kieffer, for everything. And for making it all so much fun.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Susan Conley lived in Beijing for over two years, and returned to Portland, Maine, with her husband and two sons in December 2009. She is cofounder of the Telling Room, a writers’ workshop and literary hub for the region. She previously worked as an associate editor at Ploughshares and led creative writing and literature seminars at Emerson College in Boston. Her work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, The Harvard Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. She is currently working on a novel and settling back into life in the States.
