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The Foreigner: A Novel
The Foreigner: A Novel
The Foreigner: A Novel
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The Foreigner: A Novel

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Winner of the Edgar® Award for Best First Novel by an American Author

Set against the Taiwanese criminal underworld,
The Foreigner is Francie Lin's audacious debut novel. A noirish tale about family, fraternity, conscience, and the curious gulf between a man's culture and his deepest self

Emerson Chang is a mild mannered bachelor on the cusp of forty, a financial analyst in a neatly pressed suit, a child of Taiwanese immigrants who doesn't speak a word of Chinese, and, well, a virgin. His only real family is his mother, whose subtle manipulations have kept him close--all in the name of preserving an obscure idea of family and culture.

But when his mother suddenly dies, Emerson sets out for Taipei to scatter her ashes, and to convey a surprising inheritance to his younger brother, Little P. Now enmeshed in the Taiwanese criminal underworld, Little P seems to be running some very shady business out of his uncle's karaoke bar, and he conceals a secret--a crime that has not only severed him from his family, but may have annihilated his conscience. Hoping to appease both the living and the dead, Emerson isn't about to give up the inheritance until he uncovers Little P's past, and saves what is left of his family.
The Foreigner is a darkly comic tale of crime and contrition, and a riveting story about what it means to be a foreigner--even in one's own family.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 27, 2008
ISBN9781429938631
The Foreigner: A Novel
Author

Francie Lin

FRANCIE LIN, a former editor at The Threepenny Review, received a Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan in 2001-2002. She is the author of The Foreigner and lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

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Rating: 3.3076923076923075 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this book for its interesting blend of humor and thought-provoking story elements introduced by the unique narrator. Takes place in San Francisco and in Taipei and features a loveable ogre of a mom who reigns long after her death...
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Emerson Chang is a buttoned-up, forty-year-old Taiwanese-American. He's always known that his mother preferred his younger brother, Little P, even though Little P lost touch with the family ten years ago after moving back to Taiwan. But even so, it comes as a shock to Emerson when after his mother's death, he finds out that she left her motel to Little P. Emerson goes to Taipei to track down his brother, and enters a grimy, dystopian twilight world. The book then rapidly declines into foreigner-in-nightmarishly-incomprehensible-situation cliche. Walls drip with mould. Sinister comments are made. People Emerson has just met issue obscure warnings: "get out now ... I can't tell you why. I have an obligation." Terrified women are glimpsed in dark corners. And I, regretfully (because it would be nice to read a good book set in Taiwan), close the book and hurl it from me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is one of the first EarlyReviewers books I have read and thoroughly enjoyed. It was a wonderful first novel - gripping, solid, sharp & streetwise. I found the character & voice of Emerson compelling - certainly an interesting choice for a main character, and I think Lin pulls off both her portrayal of him and working through him as a narrative voice very well. The prose is beautiful without becoming overwrought or sugary, the plot is engaging, and the few drawbacks included a somewhat hazy sense of time and the characters of Little P and Angel, which I felt at times were somewhat strained, bordering on unrealistic. Overall, I excited to see what Lin will produce in the future.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a story about Emerson, a second generation Taiwanese-American who goes back to Taiwan in efforts to save his brother, Little P from the criminal inderworld of Taipei. His mother had dies suddenly and wants her ashes returned to her home country. Although this is a gast-paced multi-layered thriller, I feel that Lin's strength is in language. Her descriptions of Taipei were astounding and earthy. The plot development and characters were a little light but I feel she is going to be a great writer. I am looking forward to her next book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book reminded me of Adaptation (the movie) in the way its tone jarringly changes toward the end. The setting is vivid and the characters are compelling, if frustratingly naive in the case of the protagonist. But it ends like a Steven Segal movie, with superhuman bullet-dodging, plot twists inconsistent with the rest of the story ("it was so-and-so all along!") and even a chase over a rickety bridge. A better book could have been written if the author had developed the story to a natural conclusion instead of trying to Hollywood it up.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Ahhh, the deadly trap of the first person narrative! Francie Lin has chosen a forty-year-old, first-generation virginal Chinese bachelor named Emerson as the voice of her debut novel, The Foreigner. All Lin’s and our hopes are in Emerson’s naïve hands. Unfortunately, Emerson is also not the sharpest tool in the shed. God help us all!Thankfully, Lin knows how to write. There are some terrific gritty descriptions of Taipei and Lin handles scenes of violence and action quite deftly. And best of all, she shows promise as a writer who knows how to make stuff happen in a novel. There’s very little navel-gazing in The Foreigner, a common misstep in first person narratives. Lin juggles lots of balls with this novel and, by novel’s end, she catches all of them. There’s the unexpected death of Emerson’s mother, the surprise clause in the will that gives Emerson’s brother, Little P, the Bay Area family home (a love motel), and Emerson’s decision to travel to Taipei to find his missing brother and convince him to turn over the love motel to him (though Emerson is too sentimental to use it for his own love connections). Then, there is the subsequent mystery of Little P and the nature of his crime connections. And finally, the burning question -- will Emerson finally get laid? Little P is bad news, but Emerson is too lost in the fog of his mother’s death and sentimental images of his brother as a little boy sleeping with his stuffed animals to see that Little P has become involved with a kidnapping/prostitution ring and has lots of blood on his hands. In spite of his handicaps, Emerson makes some good decisions by befriending Atticus, Grace and Angel and our hopes are kept alive that he will wise up and get out of Taipei while he’s maimed but not yet in a coffin. And, by the way, thank goodness for Lin’s naming scheme to tip us off to who is good and who is bad; hint: anyone with an initial in their name or who uses a nickname is very bad. For most of the novel, I found myself not-too-irritated by Emerson, but then he decides to carry his mother’s cremated remains in a purse that hangs from his neck. Not only is this overkill on the Oedipus complex metaphor, but it reads like a clumsy attempt to give a comic crime novel deeper meaning, and its just too plain creepy for this reader. At novel’s end, Emerson heads off into his future, thankfully, sans purse, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The adventure is over, all the story’s balls, though fumbled, have been caught, and there’s a new novelist on the scene who shows promise. She just needs to beware the first person narrative – failings in that character can kill even the best of stories.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Emerson Chang is the son of Taiwanese immigrants. He leads a rather dull existance in San Francisco. When his widowed mother dies suddenly, her will requests that her ashes be returned to Taiwan,and that the family business, a motel, be left to Emerson's younger brother, Little P.The Changs still have family in Taiwan, including LIttle P,who has not been heard from in some ten years.Emerson, wanting to do the right thing, goes to Taiwan. There he discovers that he is indeed a stranger in a strange land. His mother's family does not seem to lead a stable existence,and it's difficult for Emerson to see why. Noone is glad to see Emerson,and any inquiries as to how the family is doing are met with evasive, "you don't want to know" replies.The family seems to consist of Uncle, Mrs.Chang's brother,and a variety of male cousins, primarily Poison and Atticus. The family business here is, on the surface, a karaoke bar.But as the story progresses,there's a lot more than karaoke to this bar. And Little P is heavily involved in whatever it is.The heart of the story is Emerson's attempt to come to terms with his mother's family, and fulfill his mother' s last wishes.Eventually, Little P appears, but he, like the rest of the family, thinks Emerson is crazy and should just go home.In the backdrop is the continuing saga of Taiwan's struggle to find a place in the world as an independent nation. Taiwan has always been the stepchild of whoever dominates Asia, which is usually China. Currently, they are independent, but that has not brought stability. The political turmoil thus created has deeply affected the Chang family, and Emerson is in the process of finding out just how deeply his family is involved in the dark underside of modern day Taiwan.Along the way, he meets Angel, a journalist who writes for a cut rate travel magazine now that she has fallen out with the local newspaper. She becomes Emerson's only real friend although even she, like everyone else, is not beyond suspicion.This story is an excellent example of modern day noir. The smoky bars, the rootless existences,the crooked dealings, the guns, the cheapness of life, the overall dark mood and the violence that hold it all together. Furtive inquiries concerning the Maltese Falcon would not be out of place here.If I remember correctly, Asia was one of the possible locations it had gone.For all I know, the Changs may be the current holders of the black bird.I found this to be a highly impressive debut novel.The author can describe such sordid events with such beautiful words. I found myself rereading certain parts just for the words.The plot, which could have been rather slow, is kept alive with a just-around -the -corner pace. An excellent addition to an Asian fiction collection.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I had a love/hate relationship with this book. I loved the descriptions of Taipei, especially the Taipei that no one sees. I felt that Emerson fell a little flat and didn't develop as much as he should have throughout the novel. I laughed out loud reading the description of the "Love Buddha." After living in Asia for four years, I know exactly the kind of men she was talking about.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Foreigner by Francie Lin is a wonderful first novel. Set primarily in Taipei, Taiwan, the book traces American Emerson Chang’s journey to uncover the mystery that has separated Emerson from his Taiwanese brother Little P. The book is a mix of humorous family episodes, a compelling noir mystery and a disturbing glimpse of the Taiwanese criminal underground. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys noir fiction or a good mystery or thriller.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is one of the best books I've read this year. As Francie Lin's first book, you can't help but wonder what she'll do as a follow up! It's absolutely brilliant, well-written and fast paced. Even with my hopelessly busy schedule, I simply couldn't put it down (it helped that our Internet service was out for a day!).One of the things I've realized lately is how much I love a book written in the first person. I love being told a story from the character's point of view, feeling almost as if I am the character as I'm living their story with them. And I'm amazed in this book (as I was amazed conversely at how great Arthur Golden wrote as a woman in Memoirs of a Geisha) at how Francie Lin writes from a man's perspective - a man's voice - so well. You'd think she was a man -- but the picture on the back cover says it's not so!Anyway, It's the story of Emerson Chang, a forty year old financial analyst in San Francisco. When his mother dies, he goes to Taiwan in search of his long lost brother. This begins a dramatic, suspenseful and beautiful journey with all kinds of twists and turns. Just trust me, you'll love it. It's going to be on my short list for the best book of the year. Here's an example of some of Francie Lin's gorgeous way with words:It was the hour of the night when cities show themselves. Traffic lights blinked, off-line; street dogs wandered in the alleys, carrying away trash and scraps, shitting in the gutters. The pavements gave off steam like a long, collective breath, and the smell of open drains hung in the air. In my mother's stories about the old country, Taipei had been a land with a single train going to and from school, a church and a priest, fresh sugarcane, candy stores, earthquakes, curfew. One more death, I thought vaguely, sleepy -- death of a memory, of an image.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    “But instead I heard a flat voice issuing a strange, fragmentary bulletin.‘My mother is dead,’ it said. ‘My mother is dead.’”—Emerson Chang, “The Foreigner”Death separates. It cleaves a vast chasm between living and dead in a person’s identity in a single moment. In the human experience, death is the ultimate dislocation: a dislocation from a living existence. However, this dislocation is not exclusive to the person who dies. Those people that the individual deeply touched are left behind, left alone, and left only with loss and fragments. Their existence now revolves around how to deal with the loss; the loss of that which was a piece of their self-identity. For we are constituted by others as much as by our sense of self. When something is lost, it is normal to see what remains. And what remains are usually shattered fragments of us.“The Foreigner” by Francie Lin tackles this idea of dislocation and loss, and what it means to feel apart from everything, not only a stranger to others but also a stranger to oneself. Furthermore, Lin explores how family may offer salvation in our quest to reunite or reconstitute ourselves. Is family the buoy which will help us float? At its heart, “The Foreigner” is an existential novel posing as a mild thriller. The existential questions it poses are more intriguing than the predictable nature of the story.Emerson Chang is a forty year old bachelor working as a financial analyst in San Francisco. He lives a simple, comfortable and regimented life, spending Sunday dinner with his mother, a Taiwanese immigrant who owns a cheap motel. Emerson conscientiously has played the dutiful son all his life, sacrificing his happiness for his mother’s ideals. These ideals have kept Emerson a virgin, since he’s been unable to find the “right” Chinese girl yet.When his mother suddenly dies, Emerson discovers that her motel, which was his childhood home, has been left to his younger brother, Little P.. But Little P. has been entirely absent from their lives, having left for Taiwan ten years earlier and being estranged from them since then. Emerson feels betrayed, denied his rightful inheritance for being the good son. On learning that his mother stipulated in her will that her ashes be returned to Taiwan, Emerson volunteers to chaperone his mother’s remains, sensing an opportunity to contact Little P. and convince him to sell the motel to Emerson.Finally arriving in Taiwan, Emerson discovers Little P. deeply involved with the criminal underworld as his younger brother is carrying out mysterious dealings for their uncle. Feeling an obligation to save his brother from a dishonorable lifestyle, Emerson struggles to convince Little P. to come back home with him, but Little P., who has his own money troubles, is looking only to sell the motel and stay in Taiwan. Emerson is completely dumbfounded why his brother wishes to stay. Needing more time to change Little P.’s mind, Emerson decides to stay until he can uncover the truth about Little P.’s desire to remain in Taiwan. But as Emerson continues to uncover more secrets about his brother and his work, he realizes he may be the only salvation his brother has left and that Little P. may be the only thing Emerson has left to lose.Lin paints a remarkable setting in the novel, a lovingly detailed portrait that casts an astute light into the movements of Taiwanese culture and life. The political and cultural dislocation suffered by Taiwan from China is mirrored in the existential plights of both Emerson and Little P. They are foreigners not only in the literal sense, but also in the existential sense too. The question for them is—what happens when everyday you feel like an outsider, even from your own life? Both have been changed dramatically by pivotal events in their lives, after which they both find themselves adrift, searching to re-establish connection. But is connection once again possible? For an internally focused novel, the pacing is brisk with Lin keeping the action steadily moving. The ending feels slightly rushed and disjointed, almost surreal in its execution, making the novel feel anticlimactic. Unfortunately, the ending doesn’t maintain the level of quality seen in the rest of the novel. It’s like Lin struggled finishing the story, before finally tacking on a pedestrian conclusion. Still, Lin displays great promise in “The Foreigner”, showcasing a bright talent whose best work is still to come.Last Word:A deeply affecting and profound intellectual journey, “The Foreigner” succeeds more as a novel dealing with existential questions than as a thriller. Beautifully written with an artist’s eye and excellent for its immersion in Taiwanese culture, “The Foreigner” is a fine novel by a young writer who promises better things in the future. Francie Lin is an emerging talent and one to watch.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Lin's retelling of the Cain and Abel story falls flat. When aging bachelor Emerson's mother dies, his lawyer drops a bomb concerning her will: the hotel she operated for years has been left to the son who got away, not Emerson the devoted one. So Emerson sets off for Taipei to scatter his mother's ashes and track down Little P, the brother he hasn't seen in over 10 years. Here is where Lin's story veers into the unbelievable. While she has a wonderful ability of capturing the smells and sights of this foreign land, the characters Emerson encounters are all too bigger than life. And his own transformation is not credible in the least.

Book preview

The Foreigner - Francie Lin

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY , my fortieth year. I am not a sentimental man, and my birthdays have always passed quietly, with a minimum of anguish and fuss, but for some reason, this year, a sense of dejection hung in my chest like a fog as I drove eastbound across the Bay Bridge to meet my mother for dinner. Rain lashed the windshield. A truck had overturned just past the 880 exit, encircled by flares. Farther on, a dog had been run over, the mangled carcass pulled off to the side and left with its golden fur matted and damp. All these things—melancholy, rain, a little accident, a little blood—all of them are, in hindsight, nothing: souvenirs of a happier time. But back then they seemed to me portentous. Maybe they were.

The Jade Pavilion reservation was for 8:00, and the dashboard clock said 7:52. The traffic budged forward. "Come on. Come on." My mother hated to be kept waiting; tardiness was the unforgivable sin. I hadn’t been late for dinner more than three or four times—respectable, considering that we had had dinner every Friday for fifteen years, with few exceptions. Dinner, usually followed by an overnight stay in my old childhood room, with a Hershey’s bar and a nip of whiskey to settle my dreams. I am being unnecessarily poetic here, for my dreams don’t need settling. When I was younger, I used to dream of palaces and kingships, and the sight of an enemy flotilla from the turret of a well-defended fort, but now, more often, I dream that I get up, have my breakfast, and take the Powell-Mason streetcar to my office downtown. My dreams and my reality are more or less the same, and I like the regularity and implied balance.

I was bothered, then, when I arrived at the restaurant late and breathless, and found the place nearly empty, my mother nowhere to be seen.

You want to sit down? asked the hostess, snapping her gum. Full-blown orange peonies bloomed in her dark hair.

No, I’ll wait outside. I tried not to stare at her. The flowers reminded me of the sweet, tangled sleep I used to have, full of a woman and damp sheets and sunset light spilling all over the floor. The starched white collar of her uniform framed a tender little hollow in her throat, where she fingered a string of milky glass beads.

I’ll . . . I’ll wait outside.

The restaurant was tucked into an elbow of a huge strip mall. Out in the mall concourse, I called my mother several times, but only got the reservations service. She owned a motel, the Remada Inn, where she had raised both my brother, Little P, and me. The name Remada was an inspired bit of trickery on her part, as people tended to mistake ours for the Ramada Inn, yet the misspelling protected us from charges of fraud. Not that the motel had too much business in any case; it was not convenient to the airport, and the customers were mostly long-term tenants stuck in various states of financial or emotional decline.

My mother despised them all. She had arrived in the United States from Taiwan about forty-five years ago, but in that time she hadn’t assimilated so much as grown a prickly, protective shell. Some immigrants were confused or frightened by their dislocation in America, but she tended to see her difference as a mark of the elect. Americans! she would say darkly when she heard reports of some social aberration like divorce or pedophilia. She prided herself on speaking very correct English without any slang, but her grasp of detailed grammar and connotations was slippery. In her private grammar, American was an epithet with dark, obscure associations, like bottom-feeders glimpsed in the depths of a dirty lake. Those Americans. That American. Those and that deployed like tiny bombs, her scorn and contempt decimating the weak, the dreamy, the lazy, the undecided and naïve—everything she associated with America, with Americans. Divorce, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, unemployment: these, she thought, were the provenance of weak American standards, of a long compromise between comfort and immortality.

Eight-fifteen, eight-twenty. I dialed my mother again: no answer. She had been determined that Little P and I should not be absorbed into the general culture, and accordingly, our childhoods had been strictly regimented, full of paranoia and dour regulations that seemed arbitrary to me now, though at the time I believed that there was some kind of system beneath her injunctions. We were not, for instance, allowed to wear shorts, jean jackets, baseball caps, or thin leather ties, nor were we allowed to stand on outdoor benches or decorative rocks, or the retaining walls of gardens in the park. Soda had to be sipped through a straw and could not be drunk while standing or walking. No girls. Certainly no boys. She had been obsessive about hygiene also, and well into our teens we had to submit to a full inspection of our nethers, back to front. On restless, unhappy nights I can still see the thinning part of her hair as I stand naked on the motel toilet lid, looking down at her probing my dickson clinically with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol.

Eight-twenty-five, eight-thirty. A small, mouse-haired Chinese woman with enormous glasses sat opposite me, finger-dipping into her change purse. She wore a shapeless gray skirt, and her pale, moon-shaped face was framed by thin, wistful plaits. About my age. A nice girl. An accountant, probably. Eight-thirty-five, eight-forty. I crossed my arms and tried to imagine taking her to the Metronome. Under dimmed lights, on the wide parquet, with the broad strokes of a waltz sweeping through the hall, perhaps I could love a woman like this. She didn’t look coordinated, but she might be good at the cha-cha at least. Coins spilled from her pocketbook onto the floor; she got down awkwardly on all fours to retrieve them. Perhaps just a waltz then.

The tip of an umbrella planted itself near my foot.

Hello, Mother.

She had come steaming up the concourse looking fierce, draped in an old blue silk dress and wielding her umbrella like a majorette’s baton. I was touched to see that she had put on makeup for the occasion, although her mouth was like a hard little knot in her face, her eyebrows sketched on at an angle of permanent displeasure.

Hair! she said, pointing the umbrella at my head.

I didn’t have time to comb it.

She took a tiny brush from her purse.

Mother! I ducked, backing away. Nobody is even looking at me.

Doesn’t matter. The brush hovered and jabbed. Don’t you want to look nice for yourself?

Mother—

We regarded each other silently for a moment, with the old, familiar suspicion and appraisal, so deep and habitual that they were, for us, a kind of love. Up close, the makeup made her look rather hollow and aged. I was wearing the shoes she’d given me as a birthday present, an expensive pair of soft suede Ferragamos, and their rich, understated luster stood in sad distinction to her frayed silk and battered handbag. Defeated, I bent my head and allowed her to groom me with quick, fastidious little licks of the brush, a bit of spit wetting down the hairs.

Was there a problem at the motel?

Police! she said with relish. "Raid! That guy, that Room 210, he is parolee from the north. Oregon. They track him down, they come to take him away. You know I like fairness, so at first I say no way! Are you kidding? You cannot just take my customer away like that! But then I check my book. Her mouth crimped down in a little caret. He have already paid up front for a week in cash. So take him, I say! Room 210. Here is the key. Not my affair." She gave a little moo of satisfaction and clicked her tongue, making a sound like faint applause.

The mousy woman had brightened when my mother appeared, sitting up straighter and adjusting her plastic frames attentively, and my mother now hailed her.

Mei Hua! I am glad you could come. She held out her hand to the girl.

Mother—

Just a friend, Emerson, she said casually, as she commandeered Mei Hua and steered her toward the restaurant. I invite her at the last minute. What is a birthday without friends?

But I only made a reservation for two.

She gave me a restrained but significant look. My mother wanted me to get married. This desire had consumed her for so long that it had ceased to be meaningful and was nurtured now with franticness, like a tire spinning uselessly in the snow. Over the years, she had presented me, humiliatingly, to a range of women she found appropriate—all Chinese or Chinese-American, though with variants: tall, fat, myopic, depressed—who appraised me with gimlet hardness behind their demure, almondlike eyes; you could hear pension and interest calculations being totted up in their heads. My mother herself had entered marriage purely as a matter of ritual and practicality. Love! she would say dismissively.

Mother, I repeated.

She gave me a dazzling smile full of teeth and breezed into the Jade Pavilion.

We clustered ourselves at one end of the huge round table, my mother sitting between the woman and me as if to broker the peace. In stony silence the three of us studied the menu, though this was only a formality, since my mother always did the ordering. She summoned the waitress with an impatient snap of the fingers, as one would call a dog, and when she had finished ordering and had wiped all the dinnerware pointedly with her napkin—she thought the Cantonese were dirty—she pinched me under the table.

Talk, she mouthed, her brows melting a little with the force of disapproval. I looked over at the woman. The plaits, the dull, round face. Eyes magnified alarmingly by the glasses. She had a weak, tremulous smile, and I saw that she had worn what was probably her nicest blouse. The obvious care she had taken with her appearance made me sad, and also enraged: I would have to be kind.

And what do you do, Mei Hua? It came out rather strangled. Mei Hua blinked at me.

I am the accountant. Blink, blink. Her English was not quite native in its propriety; she spoke as if reading from a primer. And yourself?

Myself?

Again, she blinked worriedly. What is your professional job?

Oh . . . Looking down, I licked my finger and rubbed at a dash of rollerball ink on my cuff. I work in finance. Corporate finance. The ink smudged, making blots. It’s not very interesting.

He is only modest, my mother said lightly, suddenly reaching over and dabbing at the ink with her wetted napkin. "He is the financial analyst."

The title, or perhaps just the hushed way my mother said it, must have rung a bell, for Mei Hua lit up like a signboard and regarded me with more confidence. This was irritating.

You can call it whatever you want. I tugged my sleeve away. It’s still a boring job. A job for peons and drones.

Modesty, my mother affirmed, giving Mei Hua a knowing glance.

And a little immoral.

Emerson!

I think it must be very interesting, said Mei Hua.

Sure. I look for ways to cut costs at mismanaged companies. I popped a shrimp chip in my mouth. Basically a nice way of saying that I cut jobs, and put honest people out of work so the board members can have their multimillion-dollar condos in Vail and spend their Christmas holiday dogsledding in the Arctic. Nothing more interesting than that!

But you are compensated, of course? asked Mei Hua.

Of course, of course. Well compensated. I mean, what’s a few thousand jobs here or there as long as I get some good scratch out of it? Dental and one annual eye exam too.

You see? said my mother, apologetic, as if I were not there. The food was arriving, and she began plying both Mei Hua and me with generous servings of rice and braised tendon and pea greens, almost purring in the warmth of her own benevolence. His heart is so tender, always caring about the others! Even strangers! And even though his work gives him the moral pain, he sacrifices his principle to support me, to support his family. A good man. A good head of household.

I can see, said Mei Hua, blinking her gigantic eyes.

He has always been the good boy.

Oh, pshaw. I made a self-deprecating moue, but she took me at face value.

The modesty again. An exchange of looks.

Listen to her. I chuckled, feeling a little crazed. Someone once said, ‘Mothers are the best lovers.’ I guess that’s true, if by ‘best’ they meant ‘blind.’ Who else would refer to me as a ‘boy’? It’s my fortieth birthday. Obviously.

Means nothing, my mother snapped. Then, regaining herself, she smoothed her hair and poured Mei Hua some more tea. A son is always the little boy to the mother, she explained, filling her own teacup. She filled mine last. Especially when the little boy is still not married.

"I am sure he will find the right woman soon," said Mei Hua. She had a very flat voice; it sounded like a threat. My mother clutched Mei Hua’s arm as if she were drowning.

You say so, but how? she said fervently. He has no interest in seeing the girls! Every day he just work, work, work, and then on Friday, all he want is to have dinner with Mother.

"What? The tea burned my lip. Hang on, this is for your benefit too, you know."

"So it is my fault you do not have a wife, is what you are saying." My mother’s lip quivered.

Oh, Mother, please.

No! she cried. Let us be honest with each other! Just say it, say it straight out! You think I am the bad mother.

"I didn’t say that."

"It is not the words but what they mean. She pressed her napkin to her lips. And it is true! I am the failure. I have failed." Tears rolled down her cheeks like rainwater, a sudden midsummer squall. Crocodile tears, I knew, for she never cried except to extract promises or confessions; when she was truly upset, she was dry as a bone, and dangerously still. Of course Mei Hua didn’t know that. She put an awkward arm around my mother’s shoulders.

I sighed. Mother . . .

To have failed after all my effort, she went on, lamenting. Everything I have done, all my life, has been for him. His father and I, we come to this country, we have nothing! We know nothing. But we come here for him to have the better life. I work the business. I buy the clothes. I buy the car. I send him to college. And for what? Her lips narrowed. Forty years old today, and no wife. No family. What will he do when I am gone, I ask you? A fresh burst of tears.

Mei Hua murmured something comforting in Chinese. Both of them looked at me, distant and hostile—me, callous, thick-skinned, the author of their misery.

What kept me from storming out of the restaurant at that moment, though, was the old, undeniable truth that trumped any complaints about injustice: she had sacrificed everything for me, and I had never repaid her. She had given up her relatives, her home, the direct line to her memories; a whole history had been lost, a huge rift in time had been made. How could I ever make that up to her? The question was always there. It had no answer.

Guilt turned quickly to resentment. I was tired of being the torchbearer of the Changs, tired of the low-hanging ghost that never lifted. I watched Mei Hua pour my mother more tea, my mother absorbed in this silly girl the way you pretend interest in your shoe when you are trying to avoid a confrontation.

What about Little P? I said.

Instantly, my mother’s tears dried up. What about him? She swallowed visibly.

"I suppose you think he’s done his duty by you. Why don’t you set up girls for him? Why don’t you needle him about marrying a Chinese girl, or carrying on the family blood? Maybe because he hasn’t been home in almost a decade? Maybe because he never calls or writes? If you think I’m the ingrate . . ."

But then I caught sight of her expression and trailed off. The shock on her face was painful to me, for it seemed to indicate how deeply she still missed him—even after his abandonment, even after all these years. Little P is my mother’s favorite. He came into her life so late that she considered him a gift, and I have never had the heart to dispute that claim. Even now I felt a sharp regret for having dredged up his name and wished I’d kept quiet.

Her mouth wobbled without sound as she fumbled with her chopsticks. In her confusion, she looked suddenly very old, and her arm shook a little, setting her rice bowl chittering against the edge of her plate. Mei Hua drew back, alarmed. Blindly, my mother reached out for her teacup. The hand was brown and disfigured by the heat and pain of arthritis. I put the cup in her hand for her and watched her lift it jerkily, slopping tea in her bowl.

I’m sorry, Mother. I touched her elbow.

She shrugged me off. I said nothing.

She turned to Mei Hua. How many years do you have?

Mei Hua frowned. I am thirty-one.

Thirty-one. She sniffed. "At your age, I have one son already. A husband. A family. Tell me, what do you have?"

I? Mei Hua looked stunned.

You young people, she went on harshly. You think my life is a joke. You look down on me, you pity me. You think the tradition, the marriage is a burden only. You are the little American child all your life, the little Peter Pan, never to grow up. No obligation. No loyalty. No sense of the future.

Mei Hua blinked. I—

I am not feeling well, my mother interrupted. She put a hand to her bony chest abruptly. I want to go home.

Mother—

But there was no stopping her. Holding her purse under one arm, she walked unevenly toward the door, trailing pride and hurt behind her like a veil. After a few paces, she turned.

I have never like this place, she said with passion.

Mother. I tried not to shout. We’ve been eating here for years. Come back and sit down.

She shook her head violently, wiping her nose with a tissue. Too dark in here. Too salty. A disappointment, she said, voice breaking. Every single time.

She left.

The check arrived at this juncture, on a scratched plastic tray. Mei Hua went to the ladies’ room while I paid the bill. The restaurant was nearly empty. All the other patrons had gone home, and the waitstaff had slipped into the insular, chatty world of stagehands, joking, shouting, confessing to one another as they swept the floor and stacked the chairs upside down on the tables. All of them were recent immigrants, and as I sat and waited for my receipt, I had a brief spasm of envy. They weren’t rich, but they knew where their pleasures and loyalties lay. They had memories of a damp summer in Guangdong, repeated over many years; the smell of a Chinese street; the look of a Chinese sun descending over a Chinese shop. All of these things, taken together, defined something true, something uncompromised about them.

My mother hadn’t waited for her fortune cookie. With a dull, familiar feeling of anomie, I cracked both cookies open and pulled out the little slips. The first one said: LOVE IS LIKE THE SPRING RAIN, TO AWAKEN ON THE UNPRODUCTIVE GROUND. The other said: YOU ARE THE GREATEST PERSON IN THE WORLD.

CHAPTER 2

IDROVE MEI HUA HOME AND WALKED her to her door, where she grabbed me by the shoulders and tongued me with some savageness.

For your birthday, she said, her breath ragged as she pulled back.

Oh, I said, dabbing the corner of my mouth discreetly with a thumb. Thank you. Sorry about all that. You know, at dinner. With my mother.

"But she is right, said Mei Hua. We are so selfish, the young people. We are wanting the dedication to everlasting family. We must start now." She hauled me in for another long kiss.

"Yes, I gasped, breaking away. Certainly very selfish. No dedication. Good-bye."

Will call you! Her voice echoed down the little alley of condos as I hurried to the car.

I debated driving back to the city, but the force of habit was too strong, and instead I went to the Remada for my usual overnight in my old room. When I reached the lot, the lights in the motel office were still on. I knew I should find my mother, should apologize, but I was too tired just then to summon up energy for the wheedling, the coaxing, the thousand little tricks that reconciliation would require.

I dragged my carryall up to balcony level, let myself in, poured a nip of Jack Daniel’s. Nothing dispelled the day’s melancholy, not the blue light from the TV nor the glow of the bedside sconces. Mei Hua’s strong, bitter licorice taste lingered in my mouth; even the whiskey didn’t chase it. She was annoying, and rapacious, and I felt nothing like love for her. But my body claimed otherwise, and continued to claim otherwise as I unwrapped my Hershey’s bar and sat down on the bed.

My mother pervaded the room. She was in the stiff curtains and dark ruched bedspread, the caustic smell of ammonia; you breathed her in wherever you went. I could have been married years ago, if my mother hadn’t interfered. J, the love of my life, twenty years older, sex and mystery embodied in her languorous, full form. That American girl, my mother called

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