“I won’t let it get that far.”
“What about—”
“Jinzhao.”
They both breathed heavily.
“It is wrong,” Jinzhao asserted.
“What’s wrong?”
“To selfishly insist on one’s individual gain at the expense of others. To have others suffer for my secrets. They’re my responsibility; to make others bear them is immoral.”
“Tsk. Who knew Mei Jinzhao would be such a martyr? Have you always been this bad at sharing your things?”
Tinseng closed his eyes and waited for the rebuttal, then drifted a little until he sensed something wrong about Jinzhao’s silence; he couldn’t articulate why, only that he’d learned the sound of his silences, a dialect all its own. Tinseng peered over to find pain twisting Jinzhao’s face like silk clenched in a fist. Tinseng immediately dropped into a state of panic, agitated into an explosion of movement that propelled him in front of Jinzhao.
“Hey, hey, no, no, no being sad.” He shook Jinzhao’s shoulders a little, as if he could rattle the sadness out of him. “No, you hear me? I can’t handle it. Don’t do this to me. I really will go kill him, Jinzhao; don’t think I won’t.”
Peeking out from his pretense, he tentatively asked, “Is it just Yukying being in danger?”
Jinzhao slowly shook his head.
“Is it what I said about being a martyr?”
A slight shrug, so he was getting closer.
“I didn’t mean it, and it’s not like you to listen to me anyway—who told you to start now? You should listen to Yukying, she’s much—”
Jinzhao’s shoulders tensed under his hands.
“It’s what Yukying said?”
A nod.
“About us? About . . . I know she assumed too much, but it didn’t seem worth it to correct her, but I’ll go now, to correct her, obviously—”
He cut himself off as Jinzhao raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot as if he’d been crying, though no tears had fallen. Jinzhao’s voice was so quiet Tinseng had to lean in to hear.
“I,” the words came slowly, “am going to ruin another family.”
Fuck, Tinseng swore in his head. Fuck you, Mei Hankong, Li Xifeng; you never deserved him. He didn’t know if that was actually true—Jinzhao seemed to have really loved his mother—but from where Tinseng was standing, all that house seemed to produce was pain. He thought of his dream and struggled not to wince.
“Ridiculous, Jinzhao. I haven’t ruined the family, so how could you?”
That was the wrong tactic to take, from Jinzhao’s expression.
Tinseng immediately tried another: “And arrogant, too, to think it was you alone who ruined things. It seems like your parents were doing most of that work themselves.”
Jinzhao shook his head again, though it seemed more reflex than rejection. They were getting closer; just a little more work, and maybe Tinseng could coax out a smile.
“Hey, aren’t we supposed to be on vacation? Like Yukying said, we have all day today, all day tomorrow, Málaga, then Barcelona. Villefranche isn’t for four whole days. What are we doing, worrying so much?”
“We’re worrying the correct amount,” Jinzhao said, but it was petulant, clinging to sadness already half-dissipated.
“Well, you can worry in the pool, can’t you?” Tinseng took his hand and pulled him up. “Come on, I need to be out of this room.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Four Years Ago. December, 1959. Hong Kong.
It was all because she’d forgotten her datebook. Nobody was supposed to be home that afternoon, and the laughter when she opened the front door surprised her. Curious, she walked toward the sound.
Tinseng’s bedroom door was cracked open, and she peered through. Tinseng was on the bed with another man. Both their shirts were off. Tinseng was the one laughing, his head thrown back, as the other man . . .
She slipped away quickly, unobserved.
The rest of the day passed in a fog. As she floated through her errands, she could smell hay; around corners, when she tilted her head, a phantom smell lodged in her nostrils. They’d hidden in the back of a cart to get to the border. She had been sixteen. The hay had tickled her nose, and she’d been so afraid of sneezing. She thought about Tinseng getting caught and dragged out into the street, being beaten or worse—she thought she might throw up.
What was she supposed to do? Should she confront Tinseng? Pretend she hadn’t seen anything? That would be easier, but she was the oldest; she had to be responsible.
A small, young part of her missed her mother so much she wanted to cry.
The other volunteer at church sent her home early, and Yukying didn’t fight the decision. She left in a daze and started down the street. She still had to buy ingredients for the ching po leung tonight. With a head full of noise, Yukying went to the market and tried to think of what to say.
The pot was at a rolling boil when Tinseng walked in, threw his bag on the floor, and yelled a welcome.
“Tinseng, come here,” she called to him.
