The Dissident Page 13

  The sadness I experienced, laying Meiling out in my mind, felt pure and satisfying, unalloyed by jealousy or anger. My thoughts moved backward from the pregnant madonna, past the radical troublemaker, struggling against policemen from the Chaoyang Branch, and settled on the practical student whom I met on the third day of our first year at Beijing Normal University.

  We met in the library. For our English class we had to listen to a cassette in the language laboratory; to borrow the cassettes, however, you needed to leave your library card with the clerk; to get the library card, you needed a student ID. All of the new students were falling behind since our red identification booklets were still stacked up in some office, waiting for their registration stamps.

  I listened to Meiling explaining this to the clerk. I noticed the way her short haircut exposed her elegant neck and shoulders, her neat blouse and sweater, and her cheap jeans, made of thick cotton washed to look like denim. Her belt was the kind you could buy anywhere on the street: imitation leather in a variety of gaudy colors—hers was lime green—designed to add a bit of style to an ordinary outfit. Five years later, working for my father’s company in Shanghai, I would be able to take out girls who worked for foreign companies, who wore genuine designer clothes and drove their own mopeds, wearing white surgical masks to protect their delicate lungs from the city air. But what my roommates and I each wanted then was a girl to study with, to steal kisses from late at night, when the library was deserted, a girl who would be happy with a date at the Dongbei restaurant in a lane behind the music building, which was a treat for us, and one of the only places we could afford.

  Meiling looked and sounded like this kind of girl, based on what I could glean from the back of her head. Even from that limited vantage, I could see she was stubborn. She pretended to agree, and each time came back with an argument.

  “It’s hard for me to do my job,” the clerk grumbled. “Everyone always asking me to break the rules.”

  “Hard is hard,” Meiling said. “Although you don’t want to stand in the way of the students’ progress.”

  “I don’t give a fart about the students’ progress,” the clerk said. “You think I got everything handed to me? You don’t know how easy it is for you kids—sleeping in your dormitories, eating in your canteens, sitting on your bottoms in your classes all day.”

  I felt that the reference to bottoms was unnecessary. Meiling ignored it.

  “The canteen has been closed by the district sanitation inspector,” she said calmly. “Women’s Dormitory Five is infested with flying ants.”

  Women’s Dormitory Five: I made a mental note.

  “It’s not possible,” the clerk said.

  “We have a test next week,” I told the clerk, stepping up to join Meiling at the counter. Then I was able to see her face for the first time. Meiling has the kind of face that short hair flatters; the way she had it cut then, the ends curled up a little underneath her ears. (On the postcard with the model in the wedding dress, Meiling wears her hair long, in braids—a style that is supposed to be more authentically Chinese—but I think she looks much less pretty, strange and unlike herself.) Her nose isn’t especially wide, and it turns up a bit: she has a small mouth with a full lower lip—a mouth that can easily look unhappy. That might have been why her smile was always so sudden and spectacular: every time it was like she’d been storing it up, waiting for the right moment (or the right person) to release it.

  You could see the clerk losing patience; already he was looking past us, to the next pair of students pressing forward.

  “Here is my ID.” Meiling handed the clerk a letter on official school stationery. “I didn’t want to give you my only identification, but I suppose I have no choice.”

  “Move back, move back!” the clerk said to the students who were now standing all around us, pushing their library books across the desk. “What is this?” he said to Meiling, holding the letter between two fingers, as if it were trash.

  Meiling looked startled. “My temporary ID,” she said. “By order of the university president. Until the permanent IDs are stamped, all new students will use their Confirmation of Student Housing letters in place of identification.”

  The clerk gave her a suspicious look. “I haven’t heard of that.”

  “Effective until the stamped IDs arrive.”

  Meiling sighed. “They say not to part with it, no matter what. Now there’s no way to verify that I’m a student at all.”

  “I’ll have to confirm—”

  “Oh yes,” said Meiling. “The head librarian will know all about it.”

  The clerk looked back toward an open office door, from which we could hear people chatting and having their lunch. There were good aromas: of tea and boiling soup, and meat frying on a hot plate. Even before the canteen had closed down, anyone who could had brought their own food; as new first-years we heard stories of insect legs floating in the soup, or the student who’d found fingernail parings scattered, like a garnish of leeks, across the top of a bowl of noodles.

  To my surprise, the clerk accepted Meiling’s letter. “We may not have the correct tapes,” he warned, but when he returned, a few moments later, he was holding the complete set. “This is the last student,” he announced, pointing to me. “The rest of you come back after lunch.” He looked at me. “And make it quick. I’ve already wasted a quarter of an hour on this one.”

  “I’m with her,” I said. “Thanks anyway.” Meiling was still standing there, perhaps astonished by her success. “I need those tapes too,” I explained. The crowd around the desk was still waiting, even though the clerk had gone into the back and closed the door. I followed Meiling away from the desk.

  “I didn’t know about that letter. I’m not sure I still even have mine.”

  “Oh, I just said that. I don’t think it would work on anyone other than that goon. Although, when you think about it, we should be allowed to use those letters.”

  There was an awkward pause, in which I tried to think of some way to continue the conversation, and Meiling looked at the ground, embarrassed. This was at a time when I was beginning to think I might attract a girl, and paying attention to my personal appearance for the first time. I had seen some of the art students from CAFA hanging out at a particular teahouse near the Confucius Temple, and I’d admired the special way they dressed: there was one who always knotted a bright silk cravat underneath his army jacket, and another who used a strip of white bandage to hold back his shaggy hair. In imitation of those young men, I stopped getting haircuts (an economy mea sure, I told my roommates); and although I was intimidated by the headband, I bought a little scarf that I tied cravat-style underneath my jacket, prompting my roommate Little Gao to ask whether I was getting a cold.

  A part of me wanted to bolt from the library, but I stood my ground. Often this is the only way I can manage to do things; I have to be forced into the position where doing something is inevitable. Often then, I acquit myself pretty well.

  “That was really impressive,” I told Meiling. “I wouldn’t have thought of it.”

  “Don’t be silly. That guy just wanted to have his lunch.”

  “What do you do, now that the canteen is closed?”

  Meiling made a face. “I never ate in the canteen. Did you hear about the guy who found a button in the red-braised beef?”

  I nodded. “But how do you eat?”

  Meiling smiled proudly. “All five of us roommates are Chongqing people. We cook Sichuan food on a hotplate in our room.”

  “But aren’t you afraid of getting caught?”

  “Not as much as I’m afraid of the canteen.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “We mostly eat buns.”

  “That’s unhealthy,” Meiling said. “That’s why you’re so skinny.”

  I must’ve blushed then, and she obviously felt sorry for me. “You can share the tapes,” she said. “You can even use them first, if you want.”

  “I don’t really ne
ed them,” I said. “My mother was an English teacher, so that class is easy for me.”

  Meiling gave me a slightly mocking smile. “So then why are you majoring in English?”

  “I need to maintain my skills.” For some reason I felt compelled to tell her the truth: “Also, I didn’t get into art school, so I’m concentrating on that as my minor subject here.”

  We were standing in the middle of the library floor, students bumping around us. I was trying desperately to think of some justification for staying in touch; now that I’d stupidly admitted I didn’t need the tapes (bragging, in order to impress her), I had eliminated my one sound reason to see her again.

  “So you want to be an artist,” Meiling suggested innocently.

  “Oh no,” I said. “But my cousin is a successful painter. He even teaches.”

  “Really?” Meiling asked. “What are his paintings like?”

  “They’re abstract,” I said. “Sort of hard to describe.” I had been supposed to go and see X the minute I arrived; now it was almost October, and I hadn’t even found his address. I believed (wrongly, as it turned out) that he lived in the dormitory at CAFA, where he was an assistant teacher. If you want to study art someday, my mother had said, he is your connection, but I didn’t want to tell anyone about my ambitions in that regard. I realized I’d been delaying getting in touch with X until I had something to show for myself, so that I wouldn’t be coming to my sophisticated older cousin as a blank slate.

  “I’m not a good artist, but I’m interested in fashion design,” Meiling told me. “Where does your cousin teach?”

  “At CAFA,” I said. “Have you ever been there?” I was trying to change the subject, but Meiling misunderstood.

  “No,” she said. “But I’d love to. We could go next weekend, if you’re free?”

  Because that first encounter with Meiling could, on paper, give the impression that she took an immediate interest in me, I should correct any suggestions too flattering to myself. Meiling had a way of giving you the feeling that she was taking care of the conversation, that there was no need to be nervous and you should just relax and enjoy yourself; then, suddenly and casually, she would ask a question that edged dangerously close to the one thing you were trying to conceal. After Meiling and I split up, I sometimes wondered whether the secretive tendency I’d developed as a child was the thing that had attracted her to me; if you are a hider, you have to be careful of seekers, who are drawn to you simply for the challenge of discovering something. But of course, hiders are drawn to seekers too; there is always some part of us that yearns to be found out.

  21.

  I WOKE UP WHEN MAX GOT HOME. IN MY DREAMY STATE IT TOOK ME A minute to recognize the sound that came next: the mechanical bleeps of the alarm system, which someone was turning off from outside. The code was punched in, and a robotic voice pronounced, “House Alarm Off.” The digital clock by my bed read 2:47. I got up and looked out my window.

  The back staircase led up to a narrow landing. There was a heavy wooden door that opened into the hallway between Max’s room and my own. I could see two figures in the shadows on the landing: he was with a girl. I knew that the Traverses didn’t allow Max to come and go as he liked, and I hoped he wouldn’t be punished for disobeying them. I listened for the sound of footsteps in his parents’ end of the house, but all I could hear was the wind in the tree outside my window, knocking the dry brown seedpods against the screen.

  Now that I was out of bed, I had to use the bathroom, but I was afraid they would hear me if I went into the hall. I waited, and because there was nothing else to do, I listened:

  “It’s too cold.”

  “It’s heated. It’s like, ninety degrees.”

  “I can’t go naked.”

  “Wear your underwear.”

  There was a pause here, for some moments, then a giggling voice:

  “In your parents’ pool?”

  “It’s my pool too.”

  Another long pause. Then squealing.

  “Shh,” Max teased. “The Chinese guy.”

  “Is he in there?”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “Give me my…”

  I really had to go to the bathroom. To distract myself, I looked through the window: Max had taken the girl’s shirt, and was holding it over her head. The girl was grabbing at it. She had large breasts, a small, soft belly, and her jeans fit tight on her hips and bottom. She was wearing a white leather belt; in the light from the driveway, only the belt and her white bra stood out. The bra wasn’t one of those lacy things you saw in magazines: it was thick and solid, something like the ones Meiling used to wear. This girl’s skin was darker than Meiling’s; she blended into the shadows.

  “If you come swimming…”

  “I don’t want to anymore.” The girl suddenly turned her back and sat down on the top step. “I gotta go home.”

  “Now?”

  “Carlos only lent me the car for a little while. And I want to take her home.”

  I wondered whom she was referring to, and I strained my eyes, looking for someone else in the dark. But Max and his girlfriend were certainly the only ones on the landing. Max let his arm drop, defeated, the shirt in his hand like a kite when the wind has suddenly gone. They seemed to be continuing a previous conversation.

  “You better not tell her.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Yes you will. You tell them stuff.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “You better not.”

  “I won’t. Just come in for a second.”

  They came in through the hall to Max’s bedroom. I waited until the door shut and I heard the music. Then I got up (noisily, on purpose), went into the bathroom, and locked the door. I turned on the tap. I took off my pajamas and stepped into the glass shower. I closed my eyes, leaned against the cool tile, and let my imagination take its course. Faintly, on the other side of the wall, I could hear the thump thump of the music.

  Perhaps there is something wrong with what I did in the bathroom of my hosts. But at least I wasn’t thinking of Cece, or her daughter, or the girl I’d just seen leaping around in her underwear. I was imagining Meiling—not in her army jacket and boots, nor (God forbid) in the thin black maternity dress she wore the last time I saw her, but the first night she let me kiss her, underneath the overhang of the closed-down canteen.

  I’ve had many first kisses since then, but with Meiling it was different. It felt familiar from the beginning, as if everything I’d loved my whole life had been incarnated in a strange and exciting new body. At the time I was inexperienced, and I wasn’t suspicious of this feeling; in fact, I felt it was my due, exactly what I’d been anticipating throughout my uncomfortable, ordinary adolescence. By the time I knew Meiling well enough to be wary, it was too late: my whole happiness was cupped in her casual hands.

  The elation of that remembered kiss stayed with me while I got back into my pajamas, crept down the hall (which was dark and silent now—maybe they had gone to sleep?), and locked my door. But once I’d gotten into the narrow guest bed, and pulled the stiff, unfamiliar coverlet over me, I had a sinking feeling. I worried Meiling had been wired into the part of my brain that fell in love. I was afraid I would never be free of her. I’d traveled ten thousand kilometers, and I hadn’t lost her; in fact, once I was alone among strangers, I missed her more than I ever had before.

  22.

  MAX HAD GONE OUT. CECE HEARD THE ALARM BEING TURNED OFF WHEN he came in at three, and she knew immediately. Probably he’d gotten a friend to drive him, or else Jasmine had come to pick him up in her cousin’s car. Now she would have to ground him for going to the party. Grounding, a practice Cece hated—why would you make being at home a punishment?—had worked its way into their family code. Gordon agreed with her, but somehow he’d managed to show his distaste for it without actually offering an alternative.

  She figured that Max had slipped out around eleven, just after she’d said good night an
d before they turned on the alarm. Gordon had already been in bed, wearing his Brooks Brothers pajamas and reading the AJP. Her husband had thick, prematurely white wavy hair. He had a receding hairline, but wasn’t otherwise balding. He was one of those men who get better-looking as they get older; if he had once been a little on the skinny side, disinclined to exercise (he believed exercise outside of organized sports to be intellectually moribund), he now looked solid and confident, in a way that inspired respect from ser vice people and maître d’s. Since he’d bought the convertible Allante, he even had a bit of a tan.

  Cece’s friends found Gordon distinguished-looking, even handsome—why then did the sight of him, there in bed with his journal, provoke in her only a mild feeling of distaste?

  “Anything interesting?” she asked.

  “Some letters about the APA Ethics Conference,” Gordon said. “I wonder if I should’ve gone.”

  There was a pause, which reminded her of how she’d once worried that they wouldn’t have enough to talk about. Now she believed that the problem had more to do with communication than with an actual lack of topics. Her parents had been silent on all but practical matters for the better part of forty years. On the other hand, her parents had been married in 1952; they hadn’t expected to talk much. Perhaps it was realism, rather than innocence, that Americans had lost in the last fifty years? Everyone’s expectations were now so high.

  “It’s fascinating, actually,” Gordon continued. “Less than ten percent of respondents claim to have received more than six hours of ethics training in the course of their education. More than seventy percent believe that training was sufficient. And yet, eighty-three percent report at least one boundary violation in the years they’ve been practicing.”

  “What’s a boundary violation?” Cece asked, hurrying into her nightgown.

  “An instance of inappropriate contact between therapist and patient,” Gordon said.