The Expatriates (5 page)

As Mercy looked over at Margaret, something dawned on her. “Are you half?” she asked.

“A quarter,” Margaret said, a little surprised. “My father is, was, half-Korean—he passed away—but my mom is white. Most people can't tell.”

Barbara piped in, “I could tell right away.”

“Yeah, but others can't, really,” Mercy said. “Do you speak Korean?”

“Not at all,” Margaret said. “I feel bad about it, but I think it's usually the mother who does it, and my mother couldn't. And we lived in a very homogeneous neighborhood. My dad basically wanted to be white. He didn't like growing up Asian in California at the time. There weren't very many. Do you speak?”

“I understand everything, but talking is hard. I grew up in Queens.”

“Have you gone to Korea while you've lived here? It's so close.”

“Not yet,” said Mercy. “Soon.”

“I'll take the both of you,” said Barbara. “It is so wonderful now, you cannot imagine. I grew up there, and it is so changed now!”

“We're going soon,” Margaret said. “For school fall break, and Clarke needs to go see the office there.”

The conversation fizzed on in the hot summer sun. Mercy drank cold beer and listened in on the exchanges. She heard a woman slip up and say something about a helper's “owners,” instead of “employers.” Then her husband, embarrassed, made things worse by trying to make it academic, saying that throughout history, humans have always enslaved other humans. There was a pause after that statement. Then, being adults, they moved on. Mercy, being not quite so adult, meditated on it for a while, realizing that she would never view that woman in the same way again when she ran into her at the prepared-food counter at Oliver's or in the taxi queue in Central.

Jenny's husband, Bill, noticed that she wasn't speaking and kindly tried to pull her into conversation. He was interested in shamanism, he told her, having studied anthropology in university. He was telling her about shamanism and the place it had in Korean culture. “Why is it,” she said with a smile, “that it's always the white person telling the Asian person about their culture?”

When his smile faltered, she persisted.

“No, really,” she said. “It's funny, and I don't mean to be obnoxious, but haven't you noticed?”

“Not really,” he said.

“I think it's because of the study of anthropology,” she said. “It's a Western construct.”

As she spoke she knew she was off-putting to him, that she could not engage in the simple interchange most people lived and died by, that the casual, nonmomentous observations were anathema to her. She could also tell, as if she were looking from high above, that her approach was detrimental to her, but she couldn't help herself.

When she'd said this to a friend, he'd said, “Self-important much?”

But she couldn't change. She couldn't talk to people like they expected to be talked to.

“So what do you do, Bill?” she asked.

“I'm a lawyer,” he said. There was a brief silence. “And you?”

“I'm a friend of Barbara's,” she said meaninglessly. “Oh, and I do a couple of things. I used to write for
City Magazine
, before it closed down, did some restaurant and music reviews, then I was the hostess for Il Dolce for a while, and now I'm looking . . .” She trailed off.

“How interesting,” he said. “That must be really fun. You get to go out for a living, right?”

“I guess.”

Barbara rescued her with a request for her to open another bottle of wine.

There were times when you were at odds with yourself, when you couldn't carry on a conversation or when nothing you said came out right. This was one of those times, she told herself as she wedged the corkscrew in.

She opened the wine, got up, sat down next to Margaret, and asked her when she wanted her to come over and babysit her kids.

Then later, on the boat ride back, when everyone was on the top deck, wiped from the sun and the long day and the beer, she emerged from the bathroom to find the slavery-remarking man creepily, drunkenly waiting for her, then grabbing her butt and saying, “Your ass is so tight.” She looked at him and pushed past. She'd given up wondering what vibe she gave off so men think it's okay to do that to her, but she knew she was always going to be blamed. That was her life.

I
T
ALL
HAPPENED
because they had planned a trip to Korea that year. For the kids' fall break, and to meet some of her father's relatives for the first time, and also for Clarke to see some of his people in Korea. He told her she was expected to come to a lot of these lunches and dinners, and she was wondering what to do with the children. She didn't really trust hotel babysitters and had been told that most of them wouldn't speak fluent English and wouldn't know what to do in an emergency.

And then she met Mercy on the boat trip.

It seemed incredibly extravagant to bring a babysitter on a family trip, but she was finding that nothing in Hong Kong seemed extravagant. No one cared; that was the other thing. Raising her children in California, she and her fellow new moms had discussed ad infinitum how long to nurse, why women would hire nannies when they were at home, or why children needed their mothers around them all the time, but here those sorts of conversations tended to go nowhere, and women looked blank. She was learning that everything was contextual. Here, as in most of the world outside America, there was widely available help for the more privileged—and mostly every expatriate she knew was privileged—and those sorts of discussions were not interesting, like talking about sliced bread, because it was so taken for granted. It had taken her a while, but now she didn't feel guilty for having a girls' dinner with Daisy's class moms once a week, or going out for dinner with Clarke instead of doing a family meal.

The travel was one of the reasons they had come, after all. To get their kids more international exposure, in an increasingly global society.
The Christmas before, they had gone to India, to Rajasthan. There, at the maharajah's palace in Jaipur, they saw a pair of enormous silver urns, which a former prince had used to transport his own water when he sailed across the ocean to attend the wedding of the queen of England. (He had never drunk or bathed in anything but the water from his beloved Ganges.) Later that day, the children perked up when they went to the firearms section of the museum. It had weapons to crush an enemy's skull, huge poles with spiky iron heads, giant, weighty swords, an archery set. The dusty museum dwelled in shades of ochre and tan, the dust motes floating slowly in the refracted sunlight through the high windows. Philip stood in front of a scratched glass case and read “blunderbuss” from a label about a bronze weapon that Indian soldiers had used—a magical moment when she heard him utter the word and then recollected the term from some childhood book, perhaps Lewis Carroll? “Blunderbuss” echoing through the past and into the present, where they stood, the Reades, with their three children, and they went through the halls, looking at all the artifacts and clothes, including a pair of pants six feet wide for a particularly fat maharajah. Then they went out into the courtyard, none of the children complaining, with this new knowledge inside them, with the bright sunshine, a sun that had looked down on them in California, in Hong Kong, and now in India, and G ran into a flock of birds and they lifted off, flapping their wings, with him behind, mouth open with happiness. She loved him so much, this little man, with his small shoulders and tiny elbows and feet, his stomach still jutting out in the way of toddlers. Her son looked up in wonder at the life swirling and lifting around him, and she remembered thinking, This is life, too good to be true.

Margaret knows now that is not true. She knows that those moments are all false. They are just harbingers of disaster, as if they are there to remind you of all that you have to lose.

Mercy had seemed perfect. Young, but not too young to be responsible. A college graduate with a flexible job. Margaret hesitated to
bring it up, not wanting to offend, but Mercy leapt at the opportunity.

“You'll have to share a room with the children,” she said, but Mercy didn't care.

“I love to travel!” she said. “And I haven't been to Seoul since I was a baby. I'm sure I'll have the chance to take great photographs. I've been learning how to shoot.”

Margaret had her over a few more times before the trip to spend time with the kids, and they loved her. She was energetic and young and thought of great games to play with them, as well as always being available to read a book to them. She was an odd girl, for sure. Once she entered the house and said, out of the blue, “This area, the South Side, must have the highest density of bald white men driving convertibles that I have ever seen.” Margaret laughed, but Mercy was intense in a queer and, at the time, likable kind of way.

The first warning was at the airport. Mercy was an hour late, and they couldn't check in until she came. Clarke was livid, but when she showed up, wet-haired (she had taken a shower when so late!), Margaret said only, “What took you so long?” lest the trip start off on the wrong foot. Clarke nodded curtly at Mercy and then had not spoken to her again. They checked in and lined up for security in a thick, oppressive silence, the children uncharacteristically quiet as they absorbed the mood. Mercy had apologized, of course, but didn't seem to have a real excuse, so Margaret spent the whole airplane ride wondering whether she had made the right choice and whether they were now saddled with another child instead of someone who would make her life easier.

At the hotel in Seoul, Mercy was mildly helpful, corralling the children as they ran around the lobby while Clarke checked in, but she didn't stop G from climbing on top of the coffee table and jumping onto the sofa a dozen times while Margaret watched, frazzled, from the reception desk. Philip, eight, could still get remarkably immature if he was tired, and tried to join in, but Daisy sat and read a
book. G and Philip were wired from the soda Mercy had let them drink on the plane while Margaret was in the bathroom.

She remembers thinking that maybe she was a control freak, maybe she shouldn't have an opinion on what her kids did every second of the day, but what of it? She was their mother, for God's sake, and she had to have an opinion. She was the only one present enough to know when they had reached their limit on snacks or whether they were too tired to go to an activity. She had to shape their lives, a little this way, a little that, the constant wind shaping the particles of sand that were going to form their lives, their personalities.

So she watched her sugar-addled children jump all over the lobby at nine at night, and then she took them to their room, where Mercy was staying with them—the boys in one bed, Mercy in another, and Daisy on a roll-away. Margaret padded down the hotel hallway back to Clarke in her bare feet and went to sleep, still a little disturbed by the day.

She didn't know how much to tell Mercy. She couldn't tell if she knew anything about children. In the morning, Margaret opened the door to their room to find Daisy and Philip watching television in their pajamas and drinking orange juice from the minibar (the cost!) and G brushing his teeth, precariously perched on an upside-down garbage can he must have dragged over so he could reach the sink. Mercy was sitting in a chair by the window checking her e-mail on her phone.

“Uh, good morning,” she said. “Kids aren't ready for breakfast?” She had told her that it would be great if they could be ready to go at 8:00 a.m.

“Oh?” said Mercy. “What time is it?” She was wearing a watch. “My phone isn't working well here, must be the different networks. Had to go to Wi-Fi.”

“It's eight fifteen.”

“Oops,” she said. She was still typing into her phone. “One second,” she said. She finished tapping into the phone and looked up. “Good morning!”

“The kids sleep all right?” Margaret said.

“Didn't hear anything. They went to sleep around ten, and then I went down and had a drink.”

Margaret's look was misinterpreted.

“Oh, I didn't put it on the room,” she said. “I paid cash.”

“No! You can't leave the children in the room by themselves! G is only four! Are you kidding?” Her voice rose.

“Oh, really?” Mercy said, startled. “I'm so sorry. I really apologize!” She shook her head. “But Daisy is ten!”

“The whole reason I have you here is so that the children don't have to be alone and I can go to meetings and meals with my husband without worrying about them! Daisy is ten! She is not an adult and can't handle emergencies. That's what you are here for!” Margaret didn't know whether to go crazy or try to stitch everything back together again. Now that Mercy knew the transgression, surely she would be more careful. But the girl was so blank, so odd, sometimes.

Later, they went to Dunkin' Donuts for coffee and a snack—the stores were shiny and new in Seoul and filled with well-dressed customers, unlike back home. Mercy told Margaret that her mother had often left her in her crib to go out at night with other Korean couples. “She said everyone did it. One woman she knew came home to find her baby almost smothered in a blanket.”

Margaret watched G eat a chocolate-glazed tofu doughnut with a look of total contentment on his face. Daisy had lobbied for an iced coffee, sure that she was too old for hot chocolate and pastries, and had been talked down to some sort of fruity iced tea. Philip didn't eat sweets and opted for a ham-and-cheese croissant sandwich, an hour after breakfast. Mercy hovered, wanting to make amends for the morning, but Margaret found herself wishing that she would disappear.

“That's awful,” she said to Mercy absentmindedly. Clarke was at a meeting, and she had brought the children out to walk around. Seoul was immense! It reminded her of New York in that there was a density to it, which was awesome. On the sidewalk right outside their hotel, there were carts selling socks, cell-phone covers, doll clothes,
and kitchen towels, a riotous display of unnecessary abundance. The large avenue in front of the hotel could be traversed underground, and when you descended the stairs, there was an entire underground shopping arcade, which sold trendy clothes, eyeglasses, handbags, pharmaceuticals, anything you could think of.

And the smell! It smelled pungent and not unpleasant, like a thick soup of kimchee and garlic vapors, but it took her a while to get used to it.

“Listen,” she said, “I don't have anything until the evening, so why don't we meet back at the hotel at four, and you can have dinner with the kids and put them to bed.”

Troublesome babysitter dispatched, she breathed easier and moved into her usual rhythm with her children. She had never known how much she would love, really love, being a mother and having kids, how natural it was to her, how everything else paled in its intensity and pleasure of experience. Clarke asked her every once in a while if she minded that her career had come to a slow halt, but she assured him that these were the best years, the best experiences, she had ever had, that she never regretted it. Although she had definitely grown into it. It had not always been so easy.

She remembers her pregnancy with Daisy so well. Her first pregnancy. The one that changed her into a mother. The metallic but not unpleasant taste of Total cereal in skim milk, which she had eaten religiously every day for breakfast to get all the vitamins and minerals they told you were needed, plus the horse pill of a prenatal vitamin. The websites she lingered over, with pictures of your baby at different stages: the size of a grape, the size of a strawberry, the size of a peach. How she bought maternity clothes at three months, too excited to wait anymore, looking at her reflection in the mirror of the dressing room with a foam pillow tucked inside her shirt.

And she was alone. She remembers this. She stopped working because of an early scare, spotting bright red blood, and when that passed, they decided she wouldn't work after the baby, so she might as well quit. It was summer, and Clarke was at the office a lot. Most of her friends still worked or went to school, and so she spent a lot of time by herself. And
she had loved it, never felt lonely, with her child growing inside her, her constant companion. She had gone to movies to escape the heat, eating a small popcorn in the air-conditioned dark; read books in bed; ordered mayonnaisey BLTs with salty fries and a Sprite at diners, where elderly women smiled at her burgeoning belly. She remembered seeing an exhausted-looking woman at the supermarket just lingering at the edge of an aisle while children shouted, “Mom! Mom!” The woman had lifted a finger to her lips to Margaret,
shhh
, as she hid from her children for a moment's peace. Margaret remembers being thrilled by the assumption of their imminent sorority. She joined a health club and swam laps in the pool, afraid to do any other sort of exercise. It was a wonderful, simple time in her life, when she had time to think, and think mostly about herself and Clarke and the baby that was coming. The chlorine smell and echoey, enclosed sounds of an indoor pool could bring her instantly back to those unwieldy, but not unpleasant, last, late months of pregnancy. Those were the final moments of complete peace that she could remember. Then the birth came, like a bomb.

Daisy was born after three hours of pushing, the hardest thing Margaret had ever done. She remembers thinking that it would never end, and the terrible feeling that this was something that had to be done and she was the only person who could do it. There was no way out. Then Daisy came, squawling, as red as a beet and about as attractive, and as the nurse put the naked baby on Margaret's chest, she fell in love. In a desperate, intense, suffocating way. She couldn't stop looking at her, afraid Daisy would stop breathing, or get smothered. She didn't sleep more than ten hours total in the first week of Daisy's life.

The first few months after giving birth, Margaret felt nauseated, as if she were still pregnant. Her breasts, big and alternately baggy or rock hard, leaky and messy. The soft, shifting flesh of her belly—she was not one of those women who sprang instantly back into prepregnancy fitness—being squished into her jeans and marked with angry red splotches where the buttons pressed. Her hair was incredibly greasy, and then it all fell out. She sweat and sweat.