Meifeng’s heart beat in her rib cage like a trapped bird. America! The land of freedom! The land of abundant food and unlimited water and working electricity and great houses with twenty rooms. She never thought her daughters would have the opportunity to see such a place. Anywhere outside of Sichuan was as theoretical to her as heaven.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “You think Nan’s an easy target for you? She’s the only eligible woman left so she’ll accept any scum? Just so you know, I won’t have some penniless scoundrel take my daughter away from me.”
“I love her,” replied Shen, unfazed. “I’ve always known she would be my wife.”
Meifeng scrutinized him for the usual male ploys of dramatizing lustful yearnings under the guise of love and responsibility. What she saw instead was an honest and competent man, coarse around the edges but sincere in his words.
“Nan will never agree to marry you,” she said to test his resilience. “No one is good enough for her. She won’t ever love an ugly, poor man like you.”
“You’ll have to convince her then.”
“I can’t convince her of anything.” Meifeng prepared to slam the door in his face again, even as her arms shook with longing to usher him in.
Shen held her gaze with firm insistence. “I think you can,” he said.
Tears sprang to Meifeng’s eyes. “She hates me,” she muttered, unsure why she was spilling her innermost shame to this stranger standing at her door, with his high, knobby forehead and bulbous nose. But what could a mother do? There was no future for Nan in the village. Her older sister had married and gone away to Chongqing with her gambling drunkard of a husband. Nan’s younger sisters were in high school, still with the potential to realize their dreams of college; Meifeng spent all of her time squirreling away money for their tuition and pulling favors for their future job placements. Only Nan was stuck in the in-between, unable to move forward and unable to turn back.
Meifeng closed her eyes. “Be good to her. She deserves some happiness.”
“I will,” said Shen. “Thank you.” He had won the gamble. His hands were steady as he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one on Meifeng’s stoop, offering it to her. She took the cigarette from his fingers and took a long drag. Like this, they sealed the deal.
* * *
“AND SHORTLY AFTER that,” Meifeng concluded, “your parents got married.”
Ivy balked. “I thought Mama said she wasn’t ever going to get married. What changed her mind?”
Meifeng waved her hand. “She came to her senses and realized your father was a good man. She got pregnant with you in China. They saved some money, then sent for you to join them and Austin in Massachusetts. Now your aunt Ping is living in Pennsylvania with her family because of your parents’ help. And I got to see America before I died. It’s what I’ve always told you. One successful marriage can feed three generations.” Even a tragic love story, filtered through Meifeng’s eyes, boiled down to food and money.
Long after her grandmother’s snores filled the room, Ivy lay awake in bed haunted by the image of Anming Wu. Beautiful, aristocratic Anming Wu. Beaten to death for stealing a sweet potato. Was there a more sordid way to die?
For the first time, Ivy’s soul quivered in fear of the future. Wasn’t her mother proof that your first love wasn’t frivolous and fleeting, and that the loss of it could destroy you, leaving behind a bitter husk of a woman who resented her husband and children because they were not the family she was supposed to have? Maybe she was destined to share Nan’s fate. But didn’t the fact that she had sex with Roux and had felt no guilt afterward demonstrate she was tougher than her mother, who would have killed herself, probably, from shame, and that she was in fact an immoral girl capable of great transgression through sheer impulse? Meifeng said Nan was unbending, like a brittle tree toppled over by the first strong gust, but Ivy was a windmill; she might love and lose but she would never settle for a Shen Lin with the knobby forehead and bulbous nose. Not for her an inane existence governed by Meifeng’s tenets. Love would exist for its own sake, and not the sake of getting your sister and mother a United States green card.
5
THE FIRST THING THAT HIT Ivy was the smell: a dank airless cocktail of sweat, oil, boiled cabbage, which within seconds, like sawdust, clung to her clothes and hair so that when she lifted her ponytail from the nape of her neck, it seemed the odor was reeking from her own pores. Shen’s cousin Sunrin Zhao was supposed to pick her up from baggage claim. It occurred to Ivy she had no idea what Sunrin Zhao looked like. The crowd was one homogenous entity of crow-haired people scurrying like beetles among rope-wrapped suitcases, making it impossible for Ivy to distinguish any one face from another. She looked toward the line of portly men sweating profusely in their black suits, holding white placards with their visitor’s name, and scanned for her Chinese name: Lin Jiyuan. Someone called out, “Ivy!”
Ivy turned. Walking toward her was a tall woman in all white: white polo, white khakis, white strappy sandals, and enormous white-framed sunglasses studded with crystals perched on a rather long nose. “You’re all grown up now,” she said in perfect English through bright red lips, drawn in the shape of a strawberry. With her sleek hair set in waves on the sides of her ears, she looked like one of those old Hollywood starlets Liza Johnson and the twins had taped photos of inside their lockers.
“How’d you know it was me?” Ivy asked.
“Shen sent me your photo. Also—look at you. Even the shopgirls can tell the ABCs from locals. You must be careful because they’ll try to take advantage.” Sunrin took off her sunglasses. Her eyes crinkled into half-crescents. “You don’t look a bit like Shen though. What big eyes you have! You look like your mother when she was young.”
She told Ivy to call her Sunrin, asked after Ivy’s flight, the Lins’ health, apologized for the terrible heat. As she talked, she led Ivy to the parking lot, where a valet pulled up in a gray Mercedes, the car’s compact curves resembling a blown-up version of the toy cars Austin used to play with. The valet handed Sunrin the keys, muttering something about imported cars, to which Sunrin replied affably, “German.”
Sunrin drove like a man, fast, impatient, squeezing into nonexistent lanes between dusty cars and scooters crammed four to a seat, her manicured hands on the leather steering wheel painted the plump red-orange of a grapefruit. She played a tape of folk music she said she’d bought from a street performer in Dublin during her student days. The lively sounds of the violin and flutes made Ivy think of ruddy-cheeked peasant girls in starched plaid smocks and little brown moccasins, an absurd contrast to the gray smoggy highway around them, as they passed one rickety bus after another, the windows blackened by grime like the face of a woman with mascara streaking down muddy cheeks.
“Oh, before I forget—I have a present for you.” Sunrin reached into the backseat and handed Ivy a gift bag, much like the one Ivy had given Gideon on his birthday, from which Ivy pulled out a velvety pink box that felt like the skin of a peach.
“My kids love these,” said Sunrin. “They’re Japanese chocolates. Try one. If you like them, we can pick up some more in Hong Kong. They don’t sell them on the mainland.”