September 11 2001, Detroit Wayne County Airport, Michigan
With my own life precariously shaken, the next shock to hit is one that upends our entire nation and possibly the world. Normally, the TV in the break room plays on, silently and unobtrusively looping CNN as we putter around barely aware of its presence; but on this workaday Tuesday morning, the images of the news literally explode in our faces as the South Tower gets hit, live, right before our very eyes. This can't be – I've only seen such destruction in movies and on TV before, but yet, this is real. Even though it feels strangely surreal when I see the twin towers crumbling in smoke, I know it is real when I see the images of the firefighters on the ground with all the gnarled debris covered in grey soot. The towers keep crumbling in noxious clouds of black smoke all throughout the day, the footage playing back over and over again, and we stand riveted and unmoving, all else forgotten for the moment. Work feels irrelevant, when nearly three thousand people have lost their lives, and the very existence of our country feels threatened with the hit on the Pentagon. We see ordinary New Yorkers, office workers who were going about a day that was supposed to be just like any other, turned out on the streets escaping the wasteland that, just hours ago, stood proud as the World Trade Centre. Tears roll down my cheeks as I mourn the injustice of too many lives snuffed out in an instant, too quickly and too soon; and at the same time, I wonder, now what? What – or who – will be next? Is anyone safe at all, especially when we are here in an airport, not much different from the ones from which these instruments of devastation came? Suddenly, everything that was safe, everything that was hopeful, has vanished; the times when I was a child and then a student, when I wanted to travel far and wide and every new plane ride, every new city was a vista of adventures and possibilities, feels very far away, almost as if it was a dream. I realize that until this day, I have taken my safety and security for granted, and for days and weeks afterward, as the nightmarish footage runs incessantly on network news, I can't peel my eyes away. It haunts my days and nights, adding one more tally to the things that are irreversible, another part of the world I grew up in gone forever.
Nobody at home talks about the events of 9-11, even though it leaves its imprint on all of us. Mary asks me to sleep with her in her room at night, and though Grandma maintains an air of perfect composure, I see her sneaking peeks at her old black-and-white photo albums, semi-absently thumbing through pictures of her and Grandpa before they got married, when she was just a little younger than I am now, and World War II had yet to wreak havoc on her innocence. Maybe Mom was lucky after all, I think, for history has repeated itself two generations apart, and Mom was the only one of us sandwiched forever in that middle period, who only ever saw a world in forward motion: the post-war Baby Boom, the beginning of the Jet Age, the hippie era – and then there were the things she didn't fully get to see, like the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of apartheid, and the Digital Revolution. And what about my generation? We lived our childhoods only knowing a world that was growing safer, smarter, and richer, a world where people live longer and longer – and now, as we have barely stepped into adulthood, we find ourselves threatened with this new spectre, a stark reminder that in a war, lives are cheap.
"Maybe I ought to back out of active service," says Fred on the phone one night, as talk mounts on the news about launching a military response to the attacks. "I could try to get myself into the Reserves, or the National Guard, and serve out my ROTC commitment there instead. With all this going on, it'll be a matter of time before I get deployed, and I don't want to leave you here all on your own."
"You can't," I point out. "When you did UPT, that ship already sailed. If you break your contract, you'll have to pay thousands of dollars in damages, and it'd ruin your reputation, your career, and your entire future. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine."
And then I take a deep breath, before I carry on speaking, saying the hardest things I ever thought I'd have to say. "I'm never going to forget the day the twin towers fell. You won't, and I don't think any of us who saw it ever will. All this – it happened right in our world, desecrating places that were an actual part of our lives. Father used to bring me and my sisters up those towers when we were little and show us the view from the restaurant on top, whenever we went to New York for the weekend or the holidays. We spent years living and studying in Boston, just miles away from Logan Airport. What they did was sense - " I almost say the word "senseless", then stop dead in my tracks, for what must the lives of those people who did this be like, if they were driven to such desperation that they wanted to end the lives of thousands of people and their own by slamming a plane into a building? There has to be a reason for people to be driven to the belief that they had nothing to live for anymore, and if we think we're entitled to a life of peace and safety, so should everybody else around the world be as well. Only that's not the case, and it's warped, cruel and unfair. "Nobody deserves to go to their office in the morning, perfectly fine and healthy, and then never get to go home and see their children again. Now that the military has given you all this training, I have to accept that it's your duty to go out there and defend our safety, to do your best to make sure this doesn't ever happen again. You have to, and I will bear it, as best as I can."
"You're right," acknowledges Fred reluctantly. "I've got no choice, and I can't answer to my conscience if I ducked out of this moral obligation. But still, it really bothers me that you're already having to worry about your grandma and your dad, and now you'll have to worry about me too, with nobody around to help you."
"But will you promise me one thing?" he continues. "I've told Sophia and Edward all about you, and given them your email, your phone number, and your address so they can call and write to you. They've probably each already mailed you a letter with their picture, like I told them to, so you can get to know them. From now on, they're your brother and sister too, and anytime you need something, don't hesitate to call them."
"Thank you, Fred," I say; I'm so touched, I can barely find words. "When I get their letters, I promise I'll write back telling them everything about me, and it'll be wonderful to finally get to know them, after all the great things you've told me about your family. But why now? Why didn't you tell them about me before?"
"Because now is when I know we'll last," comes his reply in barely audible tones. "I was really terrified you'd leave me after we had to go our separate ways after college, especially when you moved back into your family home. It was only when I came up last month, and you went out with me to get that ring, that it all felt real again, and I knew for sure that you're also in it for the long haul."
"Of course, I am," I assure him. "I hope you know – I want you to know – that all the way since freshman year, ever since we were just nineteen, I was already sure that you're the only man I want in my life, and it'll always be that way. Don't ever doubt it, not ever again."
Father's tenants move in on the 29th of September, and even though we have all settled in at Grandma's, that day still makes us all feel a little sad when we think about giving up the big house.
"I'm extremely thankful that your father is finally living within his means," says Grandma primly, "but it's such a pity that Walter and Elizabeth are so far away, and our family is all scattered about now. The house used to be so dignified and respectable, and it was such a pleasant time when we were all together as an extended family. After all of you grew up, Elizabeth and Mary hardly ever want to have family time anymore, and you've been away for so long. It's been a very long time since the five of us even sat down properly together for dinner. But now, all I can hope for is that the new tenants will take as good care of the house and garden as we used to do."
"Grandma, please don't be too sad about it," I console her. "I mean, I really miss my old room, because the sky on the ceiling is all I have left to remember Mom with, but we all have to move forward, and if Father and Liz are happier saving money in Florida than they are here, we'll have fewer disagreements in the family, which will make all of us happier in the long run. Besides, you have me here to keep you company now, and I'm not going anywhere."
"Anne, it's wonderful to have you here, but have you been thinking about your future? Ever since you came back, you've hardly gone anywhere except to work and coming back home again. I'm feeling so good these days, that you really don't have to worry about me so much. You should go out more and meet more people; you haven't met anybody new ever since you got out of school, and I hope you'll find someone who appreciates you."
"I have all the friends I need, Grandma," I assure her. "Right now, my priority is to be here with you, and to make a home out of this house for you, Mary and me."
"But don't you ever think about finding someone suitable to settle down with, Anne?" she asks. "You've finished your education, and a kind, loving girl like you must be happiest if you could start your own family. I wish you had someone – if you could marry a nice-looking boy from a good background, it would put my mind so much more at ease. I'd worry a lot less about you if you had somebody to provide for you and give you some companionship, someone with a gentle personality like yours, because your father neglected you so dreadfully. He never gave you a fair share of his attention when you were a child, and it pained me so much that I doted on you all the more for it. Of course, it would be even more perfect if you could establish yourself somewhere nearby so we all can stay close, and I can still dote on you from time to time."
"I have plenty of time, Grandma," I parry. "I'm only twenty-three, and most of my friends aren't thinking of marriage yet either. And I made so many new friends in college – remember all the people who sent me birthday presents this year?'
"Sometimes, I wonder if we made the right decision to let you go to MIT," remarks Grandma. "Those were the best years for you to find your life partner, but even though MIT must have been wonderful for intellectual stimulation, everyone knows that smart people aren't necessarily the most social ones. And you missed your chance to meet a nice boy in college; when we talked about it after your first year there, I advised you to open your horizons and date more people, but you never found anyone after that. Maybe it's because all the young men at MIT are – what do you youngsters call it, nerds? Socially awkward. That's the reason why we sent you girls to prep school, to help you develop your social skills and meet the right people."
"I think the word you're looking for is 'geek', Grandma," I say, trying to hide my defensiveness behind a cheeky facade. It's exquisitely ironic how wrong she is in her assumption about the dearth of suitable life partner candidates at a place like MIT, though I suppose it's better for her to remain mistaken than to get a rude shock with the truth. "A geek is a nerd who's into tech stuff. Yeah, there were a lot of those people there, but not everyone's a geek at MIT, either. I had a lot of great fun, and I learned a lot too. MIT is where I had some of the best memories of my life, and I'll never regret going there."
"Well, perhaps it isn't too late now for you to start building your social network," says Grandma. "Winter is coming, and you could consider spending a weekend in Florida after it turns cold over here. I'm healthy enough for you not to need to watch over me all the time, and it'll be good for your health and spirits to have some warmer weather and meet new people."
"Grandma, I'm not sure that would necessarily make me happy," I point out. "I've never really liked Florida, somehow the vibe there is a bit – artificial. You know, Barbie Girl plastic. Ugh."
"You might change your mind, now that you're older," counters Grandma. "After all, you might find that you've outgrown the childish prejudices you had when you were a little girl, if you'll only give it a chance. When we used to go there often, you were following us as we took Elizabeth to her pageants, and understandably, you didn't have a good time when all the attention was on your sister and not on you. And I can imagine how disappointed you were when your father never kept his promises to take you to Disney World. But now it will be different, because you're an adult and you will be moving in entirely different circles."
Thankfully, this conversation gets interrupted by Mary bursting in from the front door before it gets any farther off the rails. "Anne! Isn't this the day the tenants are moving in? Thank goodness I never looked at the calendar all day, or else I'd have been miserable for so many more hours. What are we gonna do, now that we don't have a home anymore?"
"You do have a home, Mary," I state dryly and matter-of-factly, pouncing on this chance to move on and change the subject. "I'm here, and so is Grandma, and you'll always have a home with us. I promise."
My friends from MIT are not geeks and have not forgotten me, apparently, since I get mail from Elise in Cambridge after Halloween. It's a homemade card printed out on photo paper, with a collage of all the pictures they took partying the night out on Castro Street in their costumes, a piece of scrapbook paper pasted in with signatures from everybody, and "We miss you!" emblazoned right in the middle in a fancy font.
"Did you get one too?" I ask Fred. I wish we had video, so I can show him my card, but I figure that if they remembered me, they'd definitely remember him too.
"Yep, sure did. Just in time, too," he says. "I'll be able to bring it along with me."
"Bring it along - " I realize, with a thud, what this means. It's hardly a surprise, when waging war in Afghanistan has been all over the news, but now that it's real, I still can't stop myself from feeling a little shaken up anyway. "You mean, you're deploying?"
"Yes." One word, with all the certainty and all the finality in it. "I'm going out next week."
"Stay safe," I say, trying to keep my voice as steady as I can, to be brave for him because I have to, for his sake as much as for mine. "I'll always be here, and I'll be praying for you."
"I'm so sorry," he says, in a low, sorrowful voice. "I wish you didn't have to go through all this. It makes me feel so bad, that I never had much to give you, when you deserve so much better. You deserve the world, and I haven't been able to do anything for you."
"That's not true, Fred." My voice stops shaking, with all the conviction I feel. "Of all the people in my life, you've done the most for me, except for Grandma. You've been giving me everything you have, and everything I need, and nobody could possibly do better than that. You even shared your siblings with me, and I feel really awful that I can't reciprocate."
"Speaking of siblings, how's it going with Edward and Sophia? You got their letters yet?"
"Yep, I did, and I've written them back with a letter from me, too. I'll be emailing Edward and calling Sophia once a month. It's only been just one exchange of letters, but I love them already. I wish for the day when I can really call them my siblings; they're so much more approachable than the ones I was born with."
"You should take it that they are your siblings, to all intents and purposes, because if all this shit hadn't happened, that's what they would've been by now," he says. "Or we'd be getting pretty close to it, at least. And I mean it – if anything happens on your end, just call Sophia and don't worry about troubling her. She'll help you, because you are practically family to her, now that we're officially engaged. She's agreed to be the one to stand in for me, during the times when I can't be there for you."
"And four months isn't all that long," he continues. "It'll pass by before you know it, and then I'll be back. Whenever I can, I'll try to email and call from there, too."
He does keep his word to communicate when he can, though the emails are sporadic and the calls are terse; due to the time difference, he can't call at every opportunity, only when he's in his barracks at a time when I'm still at work so we can avoid detection by Grandma.
But several things happen to cushion the void of Fred's absence: the first of these is when Cheyenne comes to our house one weekend. And true to form, she brings food instead of flowers, which is the single most useful gift to any cancer household because it means that there is one less meal I need to cook. She says it was Charles who told her about Grandma's illness and Father's move, and so the minute she heard about it all from him, she decided she'd come to try and cheer me up. Which means he took almost half a year to send her my way after I got back from Baltimore, but I suppose it was Mary's incessant whining about how much she misses the big house that clued him in about my potential loneliness. She's now teaching middle-grade math and coaching track at our old school, and she's happily living on her own in a condo by the lake. We realize we're living only about five miles away from each other, a distance that felt huge when we were younger, but is eminently bridgeable now; every weekend, we agree, we'll meet for an early morning run by the lakeside followed by breakfast, and she'll get me back before Grandma rises for the day.
Next, an influx of books starts coming in, and every week I get something from someone or other in the MIT crew. They seem to be taking turns on purpose, because it'll be Harriet, then Emma, then Benwick, then Harville; and in between, I get a stream of DVDs from Netflix, curated by Elise. Everyone has been careful not to touch anything that could be too dark or depressing in any way, and it looks as if each of them took charge of a particular genre. I read some of the books to Grandma in the evenings before bed, and during the times when Fred gets to make quick calls to me, I give him five-minute summaries of them to keep his spirits up too. I wonder when they'll start getting too busy to do this, but the consistent stream of reading and entertainment material steadfastly keeps coming in.
Finally, Charles comes by every so often to hang out with Mary, getting her out of my hair and distracting her from her incessant moping about the loss of the big house. He gets Mary into a routine that's almost normal – swing dancing one evening a week, hanging out at the Musgroves' home every Sunday, and going for movies, bringing eight-year-old Hetty and Lulu along for the ones that aren't too mature for them. Eventually, I manage to persuade Mary to give up her PT Cruiser when he starts tag-teaming me to schlep her around. In the mornings, I drop her off at college before work, sending her off with a homemade latte in a colorful insulated cup and an English muffin with piping hot bacon and egg filling every time because she's barely managed to roll out of bed and get her clothes and makeup on before we need to leave the house. Then in the evenings, Charles picks her up and brings her back, often after they've spent some time hanging out together at his place or in town.
Despite all these distractions, there'll still be times when my worries about Fred break through the carefully busy schedule I've set up to get me through these four long months. Mostly it's when I'm alone in my room at night, and I unclasp the chain with his wing and my ring from around my neck, carefully putting it away in the padded faux leather box I bought specially for it as I get ready to go to bed. The tradition of the broken wing says that you break the wings apart because they're bad luck for the pilot for as long as he's alive; but when he dies, the two halves of the wings are supposed to be reunited with him to bring him good luck in the next life. Except at this point, in the eyes of the Air Force and their official records, I'm nothing to him. If any untoward event were to happen, I wonder how the wing I'm safekeeping could possibly find its way back to him, when they won't know how to notify me, and all his next-of-kin are also all living outside the country. I scan the news daily for any information I can get about the state of the deployed troops (which is scarcely any) while I await his calls as a periodic assurance of his safety.
As the shortest, darkest days of the year roll in and the dreariest Christmas of my life approaches, a bright yellow letter-size envelope comes with the return address marked from Harvile. As I feel the envelope, the contents seem a little mysterious; it's definitely too slim to be a book, and there's hard plastic in there, maybe a CD case. When I slit it open, I find a Peanuts greeting card with all my favorite characters, and Harville has pasted in scanned and printed handwritten messages with signatures from everyone else to supplement the Christmas greetings he's written for me. The plastic case does indeed have a CD in it after all; it's the Unconditional Love single by 2Pac, and I don't need any extraneous hints to guess whose idea it was to send that to me. The best surprise, though, is the letter on a nondescript sheet of white paper folded in half, tucked next to the CD, speaking to me across the thousands of miles that separate us. It's a handwritten note, dated from the day before his deployment, which apparently, he sent to Harville in advance to convey to me at Christmas, so a part of him can be with me even despite the silence and the distance.
Dear Anne,
As I write this, I haven't even left our home shores yet, and already I can no longer keep silent. My biggest wish would be to spend this Christmas together, yet the only means within my reach to speak to you is to send my words through Harville, so I can be sure they will get to you in time for Christmas Day.
I wish there was more I could do to set your mind at ease, but the only thing I can say is: this is not World War II, or even Vietnam; I believe the probability of my returning intact to you at the end of this deployment is about as high as it has ever been in history. Still, it weighs heavily on me that I'm adding to your many burdens when all I want to do is to alleviate them.
You pierce my soul with your quiet devotion to all the people you hold dear in your life. After all the hardships and sacrifices you have gone through this year, many of which were on my account, I can only offer you a heart even more your own than in the days when we were at college together, maybe more so even than when I offered the rest of my life to you on the day I received my commission, the most unforgettable day I've ever known.
You were the one who brought me hope at a time when I felt I was all alone in the world, by giving me a song. And now in reciprocation, I'm giving you this song for Christmas, the one that Tupac gave us to hang onto hope even beyond his grave, the one I never thought I would ever get from him during those days after his death. That was the time when I first met you, while I was still trying to make sense of my direction in life and find a sign that I'd be able to make it.
I must go, uncertain of my fate, but in the words of Tupac, 'we must remember that tomorrow comes after the dark', and come what may, a part of me will always remain with you. As in this song, you will always have my unconditional love, and for you alone I think and plan.
F.W.
How could I possibly recover from such a letter? If I had half an hour to process everything and allow it all to sink in, I might have been able to conduct myself with some level of calm; but in this house where I have almost zero privacy, it's hard to find even ten minutes of solitude. Even in spite of myself, I feel overwhelmed with a cathartic kind of happiness, for somebody has finally put words to all my suffering from this year, making me feel more seen than I've ever felt since I set foot back in Grosse Pointe. I bask in the feelings of hope and relief that wash over me, but before I can clear my mind and start functioning again, Charles, Mary and the twins, who were building a snowman in the front yard, all come piling in through the front door.
"It's awfully cold outside," declares Lulu. "Anne, can you please make us some hot chocolate? And don't forget the marshmallows."
Quickly, I slip the letter into the envelope, making a mad dash for my room to stash it into the first drawer I see before heading to the kitchen. My hand can't stop shaking as I stir the chocolate and milk in a saucepan; as I start pouring it out into the four mugs after it's done, I'm still visibly trembling even though I hang on to the handle with both hands.
"Don't spill it!" calls out Mary, as the twins chatter on, their high-pitched little-girl voices melding into indistinct white noise under my thoughts.
"Anne, are you sure you're feeling OK?" asks Charles, quickly grabbing the handle and relieving me of the saucepan.
"Sorry," I say, while I gladly relinquish the pan to him. "I – I don't think I'm feeling too well at the moment. If it's OK with you, I'll take a rest in my room; I should be fine after I lie down for a little bit."
Charles detains me, telling me I should at least get some of the hot chocolate before I go. He grabs one more mug to make five portions instead of four, drawing out the entire process as he squirts a generous dollop of whipped cream on top of each of them and then drizzles chocolate sauce a drip at a time to make perfect pencil-thin spirals around the whipped cream mounds. Then, he insists, he'll walk me to my room to make sure I get there without spilling my drink, with the twins tagging along behind us, audibly smacking their lips as they enjoy their chocolate.
After they all finally leave me alone in my room, to my immense relief, I close my bedroom door behind me. I retrieve the hidden envelope and play the CD on my laptop, listening to the song with my earbuds as I reread Fred's letter repeatedly. The song keeps looping over and over, imprinting the chorus deep into my mind, teaching me to hold on to hope even though I've progressively lost almost everything I had in the past twelve months.
In this game, the lesson's in your eyes to see
Though things change, the future's still inside of me
We must remember that tomorrow comes after the dark
So you will always be in my heart, with unconditional love
I'm irrationally thankful when New Year's Day comes; there's no solid evidence that 2002 is going to be any better than 2001 was, but still, tearing out the last page on my old calendar and throwing it into the recycling bin gives me the satisfaction of purging the last of that annus horribilis. As this tenuous equilibrium continues, I fall back into the rhythm of my days, watching winter turn to spring.
With the four months up, Fred comes back; I take half a day off from work and sneak into the passenger terminal so I can be there to meet him. I cling to him, drinking in his presence, relishing the fact that he's returned from his deployment safe and sound. He's here for more than one mission: of course, he wants to see me, but also, he always makes it a point to visit AJ's parents whenever he's here, as a proxy for AJ and Sophia. This time, he brings me along at last; he insists on renting a car instead of driving mine, and we stop outside a red brick apartment building just at the outskirts of the part of town that nobody ever allowed me to go to. Mr. and Mrs. Croft might be far from rich; he's been working for more than two decades in construction, and she still cleans house and babysits for a suburban white family, yet they are the friendliest people I've met, more welcoming even than the Musgroves. Mrs. Croft even remembers about the enquiries Fred made on my behalf to place Mr. Hill, Sarah and Jemima, and asks me about whether I've been successful at finding good families for them to work for.
"That's almost where I grew up in," explains Fred, and I know the reason why it's almost, is because we're still on the verge of the divide with the 'hood, whereas he was right in the heart of it.
"Why didn't AJ buy them a house in the suburbs?" I ask him. "He's been an officer for, what, five or six years now? 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001…" I count the years off on my fingers, "he should be, like, at least a full Lieutenant or something, right? Surely, he'd be making enough money to get them out of the city and retire?"
"That apartment's already nicer than the one they had when I was growing up," Fred replies. "AJ bought it for them several years ago, after he got his first promotion. They don't want to move away to a new place where they don't know anyone, and they'd be terribly bored if they retired barely into their fifties."
One of our nannies when I was little was Chinese, and she used to teach me this saying in Cantonese: yao qing yam sui bao[1], which means, "water is the food of love". Oh, how I wish it was really true; when Fred gets back to his base after that precious half a day we spend together, we end up having our first real quarrel, and of all things, of course, it's about money.
At work one afternoon, I get a small envelope delivered by courier and I have to sign for it; when I open it up, it's a cashier's check for a five-figure sum issued by Fred. At barely past my twenty-fourth birthday, anything above a thousand dollars is still a huge sum of money to me; this amount is almost as much as I had in my entire bank account when I moved back from Everett.
"I'm not going to cash that check, Fred," I tell him when he calls that night. "It's way too generous of you and I couldn't possibly thank you enough for the thought behind it, but my conscience won't allow me to take that much money away from you."
"Anne, stop thinking about the Elliot pride," he replies, an edge of exasperation creeping into his voice. "I don't see why you won't let me help you, when you know you need that money."
"The Elliot pride?" I retort. "I'll have you know, I never cared two hoots about the Elliot pride. But I do care about you – and all I want is for you to enjoy your money after you've worked so hard to earn it!" I realize I'm whisper-shouting and pause for a moment. "You've waited so long to get to this point, Fred," I continue in a more subdued tone. "You shouldn't ruin it just because of me."
"Anne, this is about the Elliot pride," says Fred in a studiedly and ominously slow and calm voice, as if he's deliberately willing himself to not yell at me. "I got a whole bunch of extra pay and allowances from my deployment, and you're shelling out a ton of money to pay for the help and your grandma's cab fares – expenses which your pay was never meant to support. All I'm doing is to divide our savings equally, so both of us have the same amount of money for a rainy day. That's the natural thing a man should do for his wife. And if you weren't an Elliot, you'd see that, instead of thinking you're the only person in the world who can't admit you're short of money and casting me as the poor boy who always needs your help."
"But hiring the help was my choice," I point out. "You wouldn't have done something bourgeois like that if you were in my shoes. So, I should bear the responsibility for my lifestyle decisions, instead of letting them affect you."
"Is that really a lifestyle decision, though?" he asks. "If you didn't have help, you wouldn't be able to work and look after your grandma at the same time. And if your grandma didn't have cancer, you wouldn't be hiring the help."
"That's true," I acknowledge. "But still, all this is because I wanted to work. That's still a choice – my choice."
"How long has it been now – a year and a half? That's a really long time for you to go without a job. And since you were just out of college when you left Boeing, the longer you don't work, the harder it'll be for you to find work when you want to. I want you to be able to find a job you'll like, something you're not over-qualified for, when you join me on base. And aircraft maintenance is perfect, because where there's planes, they'll always need people to do MRO[2]. So, the help to me is not a luxury, but an essential. When you boil it all down, you don't have a choice to not work if you don't want to end up screwing up your career prospects for the long term."
He's right, I realize; I've been so used to thinking of myself as the rich girl who's obligated to help everyone else because I was given so much just by an accident of birth, but now I'm not even that anymore. Fred continues to send me money every month, carefully calculating the sums so both of us have the same amount of cash in our bank accounts at the end of it. And my account keeps on growing healthily into a nest egg that neither of us have the ability to use, since the one thing we really want to use it for is forbidden from us.
With Grandma, things continue to stay on a plateau, until the slippery slope starts ever so imperceptibly. Over the course of 2002 we leave the house less and less frequently, but she still does her hair, makeup, and clothes perfectly, gets out of bed every morning to spend the rest of the day in the living room reading or watching TV, and comes to the dining room to eat with Mary and me at dinnertime without fail. It isn't until a day in early 2003, when she needs to hang onto the wall to get from the dining table to the bathroom, that I realize she's actually been getting slower bit by bit without me noticing it, and I feel terribly guilty because I wonder if I failed to pick it up because I unconsciously shut my eyes to whatever I didn't want to see. We travel to Hopkins, and that's when I learn the lesson that cancer isn't linear; for all the tumor markers had seemed to be under control, but now out of nowhere, there's an ugly lump shaped like a crumbly teardrop that's somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball at the bottom, spanning across two vertebrae in her spine. How those two tiny lumps could spawn a third, monstrous offspring like that, in such a short time no less, is completely beyond my comprehension. But at least now there is a clear plan of action, which is to get it out. They talk about surgery, and then radiation, and I get hope that we'll be able to get back to where we started from after we finish the course of treatment.
Everyone flies into Baltimore, for there's nothing like an operation to bring all the family together. With Father, Liz and Mary all crammed into the serviced apartment I've rented, I split my nights between two sofa beds: the one in Grandma's hospital room, and the one in the living room of our temporary digs. Fred and I have to go back to texts again, and everyone makes daily rounds to the hospital by rote, though nobody can think of any meaningful conversation, so we mainly pass the hours in silence staring at the TV. We try watching the news until it gets too depressing, and then we hop from channel to channel, watching reruns of old sitcoms and soaps until my ears begin to ring with all the canned laughter, even though none of us is in the mood to laugh at any of the jokes. The only respite I get is when Grandma takes her naps after her meals, and I catch a break at the food court downstairs. Father brings my sisters out to eat at Inner Harbor or orders takeout to bring back to the apartment, but I never join them, choosing instead to remain with Grandma until she goes to sleep.
The day of the surgery comes, a nail-biting five-hour wait brimming with anxiety. Mary whines, Liz grumbles, and Father buries himself in the latest issue of Tatler as we all bounce restlessly around the apartment; I've already got us a generous, upscale two-bedroom unit, but it feels suffocatingly small when all our pent-up nervous energy is filling it up like a pressure cooker. I've brought a few of the latest books I got from my MIT friends and try to distract myself with one of them but end up looking at my watch or my phone every five minutes or so. At the end of that interminably long day, though, we get the call telling us that the surgery was successful, and we can go visit Grandma in her room. She still hasn't come round yet from the anesthesia and there's tubes sticking out from her, a red one and a yellow one, but she looks like herself and that awful lump is out, so this is the beginning of the time when we can start healing again.
Things get better step by step: she wakes up, she recognizes us, she starts talking to us and they start taking the tubes out. They start cranking her bed into a more upright position, then show us how to help her sit up and move about without bending her back. As she gains more strength, they show her how to stand and walk with support. She gets up and about again, but now she has to use a walker, and I need to help her when she goes to the bathroom at night. There won't be enough bedrooms in the apartment when she gets discharged from the hospital, and the twelve weeks of FMLA leave a year that I'm entitled to aren't quite enough to get her through rehab, recovery and radiation, which means I need to spend some time in Detroit while she's here if I want to keep my job. Everyone else is intent on staying put too; it's almost become a competitive sport in the Elliot family to show off who cares more about Grandma. Elliot-ness, after all, is about showing the world that we're the most perfect family, and so with things getting better every day, everyone is in a positive mood and wants to claim a share of the credit for her recovery. Except for me – I don't really trust Father or my sisters to take on any concrete responsibilities, but yet I don't want to jeopardize my job by exhausting all my FMLA leave in one fell swoop because it'll be hard to find another local job in my field if I let this one go. And so now I realize why Fred has given me his siblings – because when things get too big for me to handle, at least I now have someone to talk to where I didn't before. I call Sophia on my cell phone from the hospital courtyard and give her a quick synopsis of the situation.
"Anne, how many adults are there in your family?" Sophia promptly asks.
"Um… three, I guess – Father, Liz and me. And then there's Mary – but she's only twenty, so I wouldn't count her if I were you."
"Twenty is plenty old enough to be helping out," states Sophia matter-of-factly. "So, let's start with the basics – you have a father and two grown sisters, and none of them are employed in full-time jobs. That means, they have all the time in the world to hang around in Baltimore to keep an eye on your grandma."
"True, they technically have the time to do it, but they haven't been following her treatment the way I have. And now she needs help with going to the bathroom, which they definitely won't want to do because they think it's gross."
"You've made it too easy for them, because you stepped in and took care of everything so efficiently. Since all of your grandma's needs were seen to without them having to lift a finger, why would they have done anything before? If you step back a bit, you might find that they might actually step up and surprise you. I agree you need to conserve your FMLA, because this is a marathon, not a sprint, and you won't be able to keep your job if you end up taking twelve weeks off more than one year in a row. So, you need to take care of yourself and leave your family to assume their rightful responsibilities. You can help them pick up the ropes, by writing things down and giving them simple and specific instructions to follow."
"But what if they get grossed out in the bathroom and let Grandma fall? Isn't it irresponsible for me to leave them with her like that when I know they've never done all this basic menial stuff before, and I'm dead sure they'll mess it up?"
"Girl, you've been holding down a job for a year and a half, and you managed to juggle everything precisely because you had the benefit of help. Your dad's now in Baltimore, not New York City or Palm Beach. There's only that much damage he can do to the family finances when there isn't that much shopping around in the first place, and he doesn't know anyone in that town to show off to. All the money they save by not buying anything and not going to parties can go towards hiring someone to take care of the practical stuff, and in the hospital, the nurses will know what to do. Because they're going to be a stone's throw away from Hopkins all the while, where there will be qualified people to advise them and care for your grandma's medical needs, there isn't a better time for you to leave her in their hands and do what you need to do for you."
"Besides," Sophia continues, "letting them step up doesn't mean you'll be shedding all your responsibility. Before you go back to Detroit, you can talk to the doctors about any concerns you've got and follow up again before you take her home after the treatment is done. And also, you've got a phone with you - you can always call your sisters anytime you want to keep them on track."
When I gather everyone in the family together to put together a game plan for Grandma's transition from inpatient to outpatient care at Hopkins, the Elliot competitiveness actually works in my favor, as many of my problems end up organically solving themselves even though the motives of the individuals in question might not be quite as altruistic as they profess to be.
"As the head of this family, I suppose it behooves me to set a good example and sacrifice my room," says Father pompously. "I shall book my air ticket to Miami immediately. Of course, Rowena is very dear to me, and I will suffer and worry so terribly, but this space is too small for all of us; and letting her have the master bedroom is the least I can do to give her due respect."
"Just wait and see, Anne," says Mary. "I'll show everybody you aren't the only one who's of any use around here, and I'll make sure they thank me, too! And now with Father going home, there'll be enough room for Charles if he wants to come up on the weekends."
"But I'm the eldest," argues Liz. "How can my younger sisters care more than me about Grandma, when I'm the one who's been with her the longest?"
"That's not fair! I can't help being the youngest, but I've got the most heart of all, because I stayed home instead of going away to college!" retorts Mary.
"Well, you win this one," I concede. "I need to go back to work if I want to keep my job, so if both of you can stay, I'd really be very thankful. I'll tell you what you need to do, and you can work out how to always have at least one person here with Grandma, and when you want to switch places if you wish. And if you need anything, I'll be just a phone call away."
Although they both make fun of me for not really caring about Grandma, I know nothing is farther from the truth; if I didn't have a job to keep, there's nothing I'd rather do than to be here personally seeing to Grandma's recovery. Every night from Detroit, I call them and give them the third degree; they both decided to stay put after all, and they've hired an hourly nurse to handle all the hands-on duties. At least they can drive, so they use the rental car I arranged to take Grandma to and from her radiation appointments. Other than that, they seem to see this visit as a kind of extended vacation and spend most of their downtime watching CSI and Friends, though it seems Grandma joins them in the binge-watching whenever she feels up to it, and it's keeping her spirits up.
After Grandma completes her radiation therapy, I go back to Hopkins to talk to her doctors and bring her home; she'll always need to use a walker to get around, but otherwise she's in a good mood and back in her usual routine. It's the beginning of summer by the time we return to Grosse Pointe, settling into a new normal where I increase Sarah and Jemima's hourly pay because they now have to help with Grandma's mobility needs in addition to the other stuff they're doing. Every night, after a rushed ten-minute catch-up with Fred whenever he's not away on duty, I open my door wide again so I can hear Grandma whenever she wakes up; I can't afford to be a heavy sleeper now because I need to be on standby to help her to her bathroom.
This summer is also the one when the report comes out for the China Airlines 611 crash a year ago; they find out that the plane broke up because there was a crack after it accidentally hit its tail on the runway twenty years ago, which never got properly repaired. And so, I realize, I actually have achieved one of my goals from that long-ago list after all, because even though I'm working in maintenance and not design, I'm still playing a big role in preventing plane crashes if I do my job carefully and diligently.
With sixteen months since Fred got back from his previous deployment, it's his turn to get called up again; but now that it's the second time, we both hold up better because we know what to expect. After almost two years, the stream of books, greeting cards and DVDs from our MIT friends is still going strong, and Cheyenne is still stopping by the house regularly to visit and talk to Grandma. And suddenly, an unexpected distraction arises when out of the blue, Elise calls.
"ARRRGGGHHH!" Elise is usually so cool and collected, she never loses it; but this time, she unleashes her frustration on me full force the second I answer my cell phone. "I quit - this is ENOUGH! The new program manager working with my team is so annoying, I can't believe he managed to get away with it for so many years. He insulted me outright, and that's not Googley at all!"
"Elise, cool it," I say. "You know you're not going to quit when you've just joined Google for less than three months, and this is the big break you wanted all along. Besides, you got in at L4[3], which is amazing when you're competing with all those other people who have Masters' degrees, and this is only your third year out of college. You can't give all of that up because of just one jerk. And maybe you'll feel better after you talk about it. Who is this guy, and what exactly did he say?"
"I wish," says Elise. "You're right, I did get in at L4, but what does it matter when this little Chinese puppet emperor is going around telling everybody I didn't deserve my grade? OK, I'll back up a bit here – his name is William Deng, and of all things, he calls himself 'William' because he thinks he's royalty. And right on the first day of the project, he told my boss Chase that I shouldn't be an L4 after he found an 'elementary' bug in my code, just because he happened to stumble upon my first draft. In fact, I heard him asking Chase if he could be re-assigned with another SDE[4], since he doesn't want anyone with buggy code working on his features."
"Aww… But Chase defended you, right? I mean, you're still on the project, so it can't possibly be that bad? And why do you say he thinks he's royalty, when just about anybody could be named William?"
"Well, yeah, I guess there's a lot of people named William out there, but he gave himself that name on purpose. The first time I tried to find his email, there wasn't anyone named William Deng in the staff directory, so I asked Chase about it, and he explained that I need to look for William by his Chinese name because 'William' isn't in his official ID. Chase told me, just like I know how to find him as Lin Chao officially, William should be there as Deng Fei[5]. And of course, his real name has to be snooty just like him – 'Fei' means 'to fly' in Chinese, and nobody could be more of a high flyer, naturally. Andover, then Harvard, then Silicon Valley, where he was a legendary SDE and one of the first Googlers in Mountain View, before they unleashed him on us unsuspecting souls here in Cambridge. Well, at least it'll be easy to remember, like how Chase taught me that 'Chao' means 'to surpass', so he gave himself the name 'Chase' to match the meaning of his Chinese name and because it sounds American. And Chase told me, William chose his English name because he's always been intrigued by the British monarchy, and he wanted to name himself after Prince William. Ugh."
When I search for "William Deng Fei" on LinkedIn, I find a Chinese guy with chiseled features and a baby-smooth face. His thick black hair is parted perfectly on one side and curls just a little bit, and he has a tiny hint of a smile. From his education and work history, I deduce that he's probably around thirty, but his looks are ageless - he could plausibly be anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, and still be considered incredibly handsome. One thing's for sure – Elise paints him out to be an absolute ogre, but his LinkedIn picture makes him look like a reasonably nice person. Before this, Elise has always been too busy with work to call, so we were keeping in touch with a text and email here and there; but now, she calls me every week with a litany of complaints against William Deng.
Specimen 1: "You know, writing code isn't even in his job description, but he's such a busybody he spends all day poking around in Piper. I honestly have no idea how on earth he has the time to get his real job done. All the engineers hate him because he points out all the bugs in everybody's code, and then he goes into the system and fixes them. Why can't he just stay in his own lane and focus on feature requirements? Nobody cares that he used to be this super SDE when now, he's in program management and he needs to let the engineers do their work."
Specimen 2: "So, I don't have a clue how Chase can possibly be so buddy-buddy with a jerk like William when he's just about the nicest, most down-to-earth guy in the world. Apparently, William is this blue blood from Beijing and his filthy rich, scholar-tycoon family originates from the northern part of China, while Chase's dad never went to college and operates a manufacturing plant in Shenzhen. That's how Chase got his name – his parents wanted him to do better than they did by going to college, so they named him 'Chao' so he would surpass their achievements. But other than them both being Chinese, they don't have anything in common at all. Chase said they became friends when they were both SDEs in Mountain View and used to go for hot pot in Cupertino together on the weekends. Well, that's men for you – all they care about is their stomachs. Good conversation, or even basic decency, apparently isn't a prerequisite for bromance."
Specimen 3: "So now, the puppet emperor thinks he's the boss of all of us. He took the whole team out for hot pot after work, saying it's a reward for meeting our milestones. The cheek of it when we've never officially reported into him! That stuff was so spicy we were all tearing up after two mouthfuls, and he ordered a huge plate of animal guts and dumped it into the soup. How gross is that! And when, in the name of small talk, I told him I have four sisters, he said, 'That's such a pity'. Great, now I'm stuck working with someone who's not only an arrogant prick, but also a misogynist. I couldn't stand talking to him after that, so I told them all I was going to head home early, and then I spent the rest of my evening with a bowl of mac and cheese and The OC. You can't fault me for indulging in some self-care, right? At least I got myself some proper food, instead of sitting there watching him stuff his face with pig intestines."
"Elise, aren't you letting this guy get a little too much under your skin?" I point out. "We've dissected every single one of your first dates since we were fifteen, and this man, who isn't even dating you, is ruffling you up in a way nobody has ever done before."
"Dating me? Perish the thought," she says. "I won't date William Deng even if he was the last man in the world."
The week before Fred is due to come back from deployment, Elise visits me, staying with me for the duration of her visit and lending a hand with the chores and cooking.
"We're going to watch Return of the King, before you get the return of your king," she whispers gleefully as we set up a blow-up mattress in the living room to camp out for a marathon session of the first two movies in the trilogy on Saturday, before we watch the third and last movie at the theatre on Sunday. "When Fred asked me to get the Lord of the Rings DVDs for you, he said that while he's away, the only competition for you he'll allow is Aragon."
We watch the two movies with the rest of my family, and then after Grandma and Mary have gone to bed, Elise launches into the latest instalment of her saga with William Deng, which leaves me pop-eyed in astonishment.
"Remember how I said he's the last man in the world I'd ever date? Well, heaven help me, because I did absolutely nothing to give him any ideas, and yet he still somehow got into in his head that I'd be willing to go out with him. After I shipped the feature he wanted from my team, he sat himself down next to me in the cafeteria and asked if he could get dinner with me sometime, now that he doesn't have any conflicts of interest from being on the same project anymore."
"Wait a minute," I say. "I thought you said he didn't want to have anything to do with you even in a working capacity? Somehow, I found it hard to believe he's as nasty as you think; I checked out his LinkedIn picture and he seems like a perfectly innocuous human being. In fact, he's probably one of the best-looking men alive, not that it seems to have made any difference with you."
"It gets worse," replies Elise. "Wait till you hear about how he asked me out. Of course, I thought he wanted nothing to do with me all this time – even when asking me for a date, he still made it a point to tell me exactly what he thought of my shortcomings as a software engineer. He said if we were to date each other, that would mean he couldn't be put on more projects with me, and so he wouldn't have to deal with my buggy code anymore!"
"Oh no," I facepalm. "But honestly, is it that surprising that he has no sense of tact? First of all, you have to make allowances for him being a geek. Handsomeness and geekiness are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as we can see with Exhibit A over here."
"If I thought he was merely gauche and tactless, I could've handled that. But what I hated most about him was his misogyny. And I lit right into him, telling him I'd never go out with a woman-hater who thought it was a pity that I come from a family of five daughters. That really knocked the wind out of him, when I gave him a dressing down right in the middle of the Google cafeteria."
"Ouch. Awkward. Will they let you ask to not be put on any more projects with him? I suppose it'll be even harder for you and him to be in the same office after this, and it's not like you can avoid each other for very long in a space the size of Google Cambridge."
"No, you're right there, it's not going to be easy to not talk to each other in an office of barely a hundred people. But I came because I wanted you to see this email he wrote me the day after that incident, so you can tell me what you think. Anne, you're the very epitome of discretion, so I know you'll keep it to yourself, but this is really top secret – after you read this email, please erase it completely from your brain and after tonight, we will both take it that none of this ever happened."
Elise logs into her laptop and opens up the email in its own window before settling herself so that we're sitting side by side, lotus style, on the blow-up mattress to read it:
Elise,
Yesterday was utterly awkward and embarrassing. I know that now, and I apologize. Please be assured that I have no intention of causing you further embarrassment or humiliating myself any more than I have already done, by pursuing that matter which was so repugnant to you.
You accused me of two things yesterday, and I hope you will hear me out on both of them, even though you might not wish to do so. It might be selfish of me, but I believe you are a fair-minded person and I want you to know the truth.
The first thing you said was that I have overstepped my boundaries as a program manager and interfered with the work of the engineering team. In all honesty, it was never my intent to do so. I grew up in a system that was rigidly perfectionist; as a child, I was made to sit for hours doing complicated speed arithmetic using only the fingers of one hand, and if I made any mistakes, I would get the cane when I got home. My parents always planned to send me to the US for my higher education, but my extended family and neighbors often gossiped that this was because they didn't think I would do well in the "gao kao" (college entrance examinations) and so they wanted me to escape from it. To prove them wrong, I was not allowed to get anything less than perfect scores, all the way until I started high school at Andover. It is difficult to get rid of habits long entrenched since childhood, and so I still cannot control myself. By sheer instinct, I feel compelled to fix every bug I find in our code base. But you are right, I should try harder to keep my hands to myself and leave the coding to the SDEs.
The second, and much worse, thing you said was that I am a casual misogynist and don't have any respect for women, especially women engineers. To make my position clear, I have no choice except to divulge a very personal matter, which I hope you will treat with the utmost confidentiality. As an alumnus of Andover and Harvard, my ties with the Boston area run strong, and one of the main reasons why I asked to come to the Cambridge office from Mountain View is because I consider this place as home. As an aficionado of classical music, I like to attend the performances of the Harvard-Radcliffe orchestra, and at the last concert I went to, just weeks before this unfortunate project started, they featured a brief solo from an amazing violinist who is just a freshman. I was so entranced by her skill that I Googled her when I got home and found the blog written by her adoptive mom. Specifically, I discovered that she is not an American-born Asian, as I had been led to believe because her name is Gianna Doherty; but rather, she was adopted as a baby from China, and her birth name, which is still her legal middle name, is Deng Jia[6].
I remember the year when I was twelve years old, which coincides with the year when she was born. Out of nowhere, my parents told me that they would be sending me to Heilongjiang to live with my grandparents for the school year. They said it was because they wanted to give me an appreciation for what it was like to live in the provinces, but with this new information, I suspected that they might have had something else to hide. When I raised the matter with them, they broke down and admitted that they had a second child, which might not seem like a big deal to you but would make them subject to heavy penalties from the government. They admitted that giving up their daughter for adoption was one of the most painful things they had done, but remained adamant that they had no choice, and now we should not look back. I am certain that Gianna is the sister I never knew, for she is the spitting image of me and my parents, and they confirmed that Deng Jia is the name they had given to the baby girl.
You can imagine how much anguish and remorse I feel on behalf of my family, and how torn I am about whether to connect with my biological sister. One thing my parents got right, I suppose, is our penchant for excellence: they now have two offspring who made it to Harvard, and they even gave us names to reflect our superlativeness. My given name, Fei, means "to fly", and it reflects my parents' wish that I should always be a high flyer. My sister's name, Jia, on the other hand, means "superior", and I can only say that in the virtuosity of her violin playing, she has lived up to that name every inch of the way. I suppose we, or at least I, must have unconsciously absorbed that sense of superiority, for I had no idea how offensive my comments were to you. When I said it was a pity your family has five daughters, it was in a moment of pain and thoughtlessness, for in my country, there are families who take all kinds of risks to have a son, and some of them end up heartbreakingly frustrated. If they are not blessed with a son on the first try, they will have to find all kinds of ways to skirt the policy: some give up their daughters to orphanages, others may declare their daughters as disabled so that they can have permission to try for a second child, and then there are those who are driven to infanticide. Because of all that has happened with my family, the pain of associating daughters with sacrifice is too close to my heart, and I cannot think of the subject without a great deal of turmoil.
I swear that everything I say here is true. Without knowing all of this, it is no wonder you thought the worst of me, but I hope that what I have shared will give you pause. I will only wish you all the best and hope you can put any offence I caused behind you.
Deng Fei
We're both crying by the time we scroll to the bottom of that email, and I hug Elise tightly as she buries her face in my shoulder.
"I was so wrong about him," she sobs. "And I feel terribly guilty about making a spectacle of him like that, even though I still don't think I would have agreed to date him anyway. What am I going to do?"
"Give it some time," I advise her. "It's probably a good thing you came out here and put some distance between you and the situation. He seems to be just as embarrassed as you are about it, so he'll probably lie low for a while. If you have to work with him again, take it as a clean slate; from the email he wrote, it looks like he knows how to behave like an adult and meet you on neutral ground."
Now I finally know how Joni Mitchell could've written that song, for since the year I turned twenty-three, I've lived on that other side of the clouds. Yet even through the darkest days of my life, hope and love are still the guiding light pulling me through; for it is only now, when I have been stretched to my very limit, that I know exactly what I treasure most of all.
END OF PART II
1 有情饮水饱 is a Cantonese saying which translates literally to, "If you have love, you will feel full even if you only drink water".
2 MRO stands for Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul. It's like how you bring your car to the dealer for scheduled maintenance, except they do it much more frequently for airplanes.
3 Most engineers joining Google straight out of school start at L3, and it takes anywhere from 1 to 5 years of experience for them to get to L4. Elise has gotten that first promotion relatively quickly, considering that she does not have a Master's degree.
4 SDE stands for Software Development Engineer, a computer programmer.
5 In Chinese characters, William's name is 邓飞 and Chase's name is 林超. Hopefully, the meanings of the names are in character for a modern-day Darcy and Bingley!
6 In Chinese characters, her name is 邓佳.