pebblesusestag

pebblesusestag
Originally uploaded by carrie.purins

trying this video thing

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

here's a passage i wrote today that i don't know where i'll put.

There was only one time she could think of when she consciously did
something for Laney. Something that helped her. She and Warren were 22,
staying with his parents in Michigan for a long two-week vacation. He had just
three months left in the Army, unless he decided to re-up.
They had been there 10 days, and it had been difficult for Judy.
Warren's mother had taken over Laney's feeding, saying that she'd have
the baby sleeping through the night by feeding her plenty of cereal
last thing in the evening. And she needed prunes, Dolores told Judy,
because a baby should be pooping more than once a day. Warren's father
was kind enough but he talked marathons with such intensity that his
own family would just drift away and leave him talking and talking to
Judy, who didn't know how to escape.
But Laney was having the time of her life. She was walking already, and
she staggered naked through the grass in pursuit of any bird or
grasshopper that happened by. The Cooks put Warren's old hobby horse
out on the lawn, and she loved to be sat up on it and held while they
rocked it back and forth.
One afternoon they were all sitting on the
patio, in lounge chairs, when a thunderstorm arrived as suddenly as an
earthquake. There was only a moment of holding up hands, negotiating
with the rain, before they were all driven inside, Judy towing her
child under one arm.
Inside, she held Laney up to the screen door and they watched the rain
together. It was sheeting off the eaves and flowing from each point of
the picnic table umbrella. On the table the fat zucchinis that Warren's
father had picked gathered beads of water that merged and separated
again. Warren's old hobby horse stood stoicly on the grass, its main
and tail limp with water.
"Will they get ruined?" Judy asked.
"What?" Dick asked back, stepping close and putting his hand on his
granddaughter's head.
"The zucchinis."
Dick laughed, keeping his cigarette in one corner of his mouth and
laughing out the other side. "You wash them before you eat them, don't
you?" A moment ago, he had been telling them all the plot of the book
he was reading, blow by blow, but the rain had washed the talk right
out of him.
Judy felt dumb. Before the fruit were baking in the sun, now they
looked wet and slimy, and she imagined them rotting like flesh in a
jungle.
But really nothing seemed rotten here. Just as things got hot and
blooming and you could smell everyone else's shampoo on the humid air,
fall would begin and before you knew it the grass was crunching under
the children's feet on their way to school. There were no cockroaches
or ants in the house or gigantic spiders like in San Diego, only
mosquitoes and fireflies. She saw a mosquito bite on Laney's arm and
rubbed it with her pinky finger.
Laney put her palms on the screen, reaching for the rain.
"Rain," Judy told her, and Laney sang it back to her.
"Rain, rain, rain."
Just before thunder cracked, and Dick shooed them away from the screen
door, Judy made up her mind. This was a place for a child to grow up,
this place with wide, soft fields of grass between each house, with the
checks and balances of the four seasons keeping everything from getting
out of hand. They wouldn't be able to afford anything in San Diego
anything once they had to give up the military house.
She told Warren that night on the pull-out sofa his mother had bought
second-hand for his old bedroom. Let's move in here at first, we can
get our own place as soon as you find a job, she whispered to him. The
baby was asleep in the crib two feet from her head.
Warren was surprised and grateful, and they never discussed it again.
They were both afraid she would change her mind. Just before Christmas,
she put the last of her fragile things into the back of their Rambler.
With Laney sitting eager and alert between them, they set off on a
2,000-mile drive from her home. It was never her home again.

decision 2005

based on the advice of many good friends, i decided to go with the 2 short stories. maybe next year the novel will be ready to submit. thanks to all!

Digging Up Laney: abridged

ok, now i've cut out all the boring parts of the novel segment i'm thinking of submitting. so anyone logging on to help me, please read THIS version, not the previous ones, and then read The Lease and Photocopy and tell me which TWO you think i should submit. and sorry, but pasting it into this form took out most of the paragraph breaks this time.

summary of plot up until segment begins:
Judy Pfifer, age 50, is a dental hygenist in Michigan. Her 25-year-old daughter, Laney, dies in Beijing where she's been living with her husband, and Judy is not satisfied with the explaination that her daughter was hit by a car. Her daughter's passport is missing. She decides to leave the United States for the first time to get to the bottom of what happened to Laney.

Segment one: There was plenty of food available outside, for sale on the sides of the little road arching out from the back of the hotel. There were brown sticks of bread emerging glistening from woks of boiling oil, and bowls of white liquid that men slurped, their lips on the rims, their eyes following her progress down the street. People were sitting on the curb, or on tiny stools arranged around the beds of freight bicycles. She was the only white person awake at this hour.

No one here, she noticed, had been taught not to stare at those who look different. Judy was hungry, but she was afraid to eat food sold on the street and she didn't have any Chinese money. She'd felt sure they would take American money here -- her girlfriends had gone to Mexico and on cruises to the Caribbean and assured her that everyone wanted dollar bills. Yet when she saw the Chinese, wearing hand-knitted sweater vests, chatting, some of them washing themselves in red plastic basins at the edge of the street, she knew she could not offer them her $20 bills. The money she saw passed from hand to hand was tiny and wrinkled and the color of dishwater.

Several people called out word as she passed: “Laowai!” One person smiled at her: It was an old woman built like a tree stump, wearing a sweater vest over a flowered blouse, helping a toddler balance as he squatted to poop in the street. Judy felt her mouth's stillness. She hadn't spoken a dozen words in this country, except for her brief phone call to her husband Warren. She appreciated the language barrier, because since Laney died, she had nothing to say to anyone. Even on the phone long distance, she and Warren had sat silent for a dozen seconds at a time. When Laney used to call, they had chattered nonstop, she on the bedroom receiver, Warren in the living room, not wanting to waste a moment of long distance on dead air.

She returned to the 20th floor, looking hungrily during the elevator ride at the photographs of roast duck on the car's wall, and locked her room's door. She lay on the bed and read her daughter's diary. The diary held some poems, which Judy read but did not understand. Laney had written her first poem at age 4, in crayon, and had won contests all through school for her writing. Judy still had a poem published on the children's page of a magazine when Laney was in third grade. Judy always told Laney she enjoyed her poems, but really she was not smart enough for that kind of thing. Raising Laney was the only thing Judy had ever showed talent for, really. But that had been enough. Other women at work would have problems with their teenagers -- drugs, petty crimes, car accidents, pregnancy -- and they would ask Judy, how did you do it?

She fell asleep while reading a long description, written on one of Laney's first days in the country, of a bicycle leaning against the wall of a traditional Chinese house. She dreamed that Laney was waiting for her in just such a house, which according to the description had four apartments connected by a courtyard. In the dream, Judy was always looking for Laney in the wrong apartment, and when she did see her daughter, the girl would only speak to her in Chinese.

segmetn 2: (Judy confronts her son-in-law at his office)
The taxi stopped in front of a building that looked like another hotel, in a business district. The Chinese people walking down the street here looked very different than the people selling things on the street near her hotel. Instead of hand-knitted sweaters they wore tailored jackets and pressed, creased slacks, or tight blue jeans and midriff-baring tops, with English name brands everwhere. She saw Gucci, J. Crew. The Playboy bunny winked at her from a woman's high-heeled shoes. There were other white people too, lots of them.

She stood on the sidewalk in front of the building. This couldn't be it. Laney didn't live in a hotel. She'd lived in an apartment in a housing development where only foreigners and "overseas Chinese" lived. But the taxi was gone, with her 50-yuan note. He hadn't given her any change, and she didn't know how to ask for it. So she went in. She showed the tattered envelope to a man in what looked like a soldier's uniform, sitting at a desk inside the door.

He waved her over to an elevator and held up three fingers. "Tree," he said deliberately. His teeth were three shades of brown. He didn't smile, and Judy didn't blame him.

The elevator let her out on the third floor directly in front of another desk, where a young woman about Laney's age, with a large, round face, smiled at her. She was Chinese, but her skin was very pale. Her computer monitor was covered with stuffed animals. Beanie babies.

"Can I help you ma'am," she said. She had an accent, but she spoke each word correctly in a girlish voice, and smiled as if Judy was a teacher she hoped to please.

"I'm sorry," Judy said. "I was looking for this address, and the man downstairs told me to come to the third floor."

"Yes, this is Worldwide SOS," she said, and looked at Judy expectantly. That was the name of the company where Peter worked, the reason he and Laney had moved to Beijing.

Suddenly Judy remembered Laney telling her that they did not have a mailman who came to their house. She got her mail at Peter's work. The young woman watched her, looking a little uncertain. Judy didn't want to confront Peter at work. She felt stupid here, surrounded by well dressed and intelligent-looking people. The kind of people Laney was comfortable with, but not her. She was wearing a navy windbreaker with the name of Warren's union local on the back of it. But this address was all she had.

She took a breath and told the woman who she was looking for. The woman's face brightened.

"Oh, are you a friend of Mr. Nelson's?" she asked. Judy hesitated.

"I'm .. " she couldn't lie. She was terrible at it. "I'm his mother in law." The girl's face switched abruptly to a sad look, and Judy knew she knew all about Laney. Of course she did. Judy felt her grief come into view as if her clothing had been stripped from her body. She realized that, talking to these strangers all morning, she had shed her "bereaved mother" look, or at least a layer of it. Now she felt the weight of the look settle on her face like a coat of cold cream.

"Is he here?" The young woman picked up a phone on her desk. "Mr. Nelson," she said. "You have a guest." She covered the receiver and looked questioningly at Judy. Judy nodded miserably. "It's your mother-in-law," she said, and listened for a moment. The receptionist's white skin grew paler, and an acne scar stood out boldly in the middle of her forehead. She stood and took Judy's arm, her upper arm, not her elbow where Adam had held her. These people, Judy thought. Always touching you. She liked it. They walked slowly down a long hallway between cubicles. It could have been an American office. Inside Peter's office, she confronted the very same combination of sadness and stubborn distance that she had seen on her son-in-law's face in her own kitchen two weeks earlier. She was here, really, because Peter had been able to give her so little explanation for Laney's death. She had been hit by a car, was about all he'd told Laney's family. His own family lived in Denmark, and they didn't come to the funeral. "Judy," Peter said, and forced a smile that made him seem as if he should have a small, clipped mustache. Warren used to make fun of Peter, calling him Herr Hitler, although he was Danish, not German. Judy used to defend him. They were a family where most of the men worked in auto plants, and the women were nurses or worked in stores, and here Laney's husband was the president of this company's whole China division. Now she wanted to reach across the desk and choke Peter. He wasn't going to speak. "Peter," she said. "I came to find out more about what happened to Laney. I can't sleep until I know." "Well," he said. She thought of Warren and his “Huh” in the dark bedroom. Then Peter looked at the secretary. "Let's go to the Summer Palace."***Judy spends a polite afternoon sightseeing with Peter and Judy but fails to get any information.*** The next morning she rose at dawn again. She was sick. She emerged from the bathroom weak-legged, wondering how long she had until the next attack struck. But she allowed Adam to put her in a taxi headed for the Phoenix and Dragon Villas. She would see Peter alone this time. She knew from Laney's diary that he left at about 8:30 for work, because Laney sometimes started her entries with the date and time.One of them read8:40 P. gone to work. Didn't tell him I'm going to orphanage with” here was a Chinese character “again today.” Laney had told her about volunteering at an orphanage outside the city. She taught English to school-aged kids and even helped translate for some European doctors who came to fix orphans' harelips. Judy's taxi left the hotel's circular drive at 7 a.m., and the traffic was worse than the day before. Bicycles streamed past the taxi on either side. This driver spoke to her continually, although she gave no encouragement. When traffic slowed to a stop, he would turn to her in the back seat and gesture to emphasize whatever it was he was saying. Her bowels ached. She sucked them in. Laney had written in her diary with such fondness for the people she met in China. They had Chinese names, sometimes just characters that Judy could not guess how to pronounce. But everyone she'd met so far seemed to have a American name. And Judy could not feel fond of them. She wanted to feel that. In Lansing, Warren went to work and came home, and ate a pizza from the freezer, barely remembering to take the plastic off it before putting it in the oven. He watched cable television. He knew that people got enjoyment from these programs, and he wanted to feel that. He smoked some more cigarettes. They were no good either. If Judy were in a giant game of hot and cold, as her taxi inched into the eastern suburbs, toward the Dragon and Phoenix villas, a voice would have told her, you're getting cold-er. Laney's passport was in one of the glum villages attached to the western side of Beijing. It was already 8:45 a.m. when she reached the complex, and Judy felt wasted time hemorraging out of her. Peter was probably already at the office by now. It was like when you overdrew your checking account and got slapped with a fee; not having enough money cost you more money, and taking so long to get her would cost her half the day for a wasted trip out and back. But now that she was here, there was nothing to do but look for him. The villas were nothing like what Judy had imagined her daughter living in. It looked like a movie set portraying a suburban American neighborhood, with square green lawns fronting identical two-story houses, evenly spaced in rows that extended farther than she could see. The guard in the booth by the driveway waved the taxi in, and when she got out a hunched old man apeared, grinned emphatically, and asked her where he could direct her. "Peter Nelson," she said, and he trotted ahead of her, turning to give her a canine grin over his shoulder. She followed. He brought her not to one of the two-story houses but to a larger building, and up an outdoor concrete staircase. He stopped outside number 305, grinned and actually panted once or twice, and then trotted away. She tried the knob, and walked into her daughter's home. She didn't knock. She didn't want to give Peter any escape routes this time. She had two weeks to get to the bottom of this, and she didn't even know if she was headed toward the bottom. She was so disoriented, she may well have been headed toward the side or the top. In the living room her eyes landed on the art, modern splotches of paint on a white background. It looked sophisticated to Judy, but Laney had written about it with disgust. She hated the decor of this prefurnished apartment. She'd wanted to move to somplace more "authentic," but Peter's company paid for the apartment and would pay for no other. Judy saw a desk with a computer at the far end of the living room. Computers, she knew, had e-mails in them, like the e-mails from Laney that her sister-in-law, Laney's aunt, would print out and mail to her. There was a printer. If she could only work the computer, she thought, she could print out pages and pages of Laney's e-mails. She smiled. She was thinking like a detective. Then she jumped because a shadow reached around the arched doorway. A small figure topped with a white towel appeared, framed by the arch, and it was not Peter. It was Janice. Once again Judy felt herself stirred toward violence. Here the woman had acted nice to her yesterday, all the while knowing she would go home and sleep in Laney's bed that night. But instead of pulling that towel off her head and strangling her with it, Judy pushed past Janice and let herself into her daughter's bathroom. She couldn't help herself, she was overcome by diarrhea. She wanted to die. When she came out, the apartment was empty. She lay on the couch until she gathered enough strength to cry. She knew now that you could achieve a tiny dose of comfort once those tears started flowing. She let them drip off her cheek onto the couch, without bothering to sob. Where would she file this blow? In the hierarchy of grief, does your daughter getting cheated on – in death or in life, she didn't even know how long this had been going on – rank just below her death, or somewhere down and to the left, below not being able to mourn over her body, or the creeping horde of questions that attacked her at night? If mourning Laney was her new occupation, Judy thought, she needed an assistant to deal with all the incoming work. After 35 minues she stood up, feeling as if every ounce of water had left her body from one end or the other. She almost floated to the computer and sat in the desk chair, staring at it. She touched the keyboard and every other button she could find, first tentatively, eventually pounding the keys, wishing she could make something happen.Suddenly – she didn't know what she did -- the screen lit up and the thing began humming. But that was all she could do. No key she hit made anything happen on the screen, not even the "enter" key. And what did she want to do but enter the computer and find the things inside? She gave the thing up and walked through the apartment, the bedroom, and another room with a television and a couch in it. Nothing looked like Laney. There were no women's clothes in the closet, not even anything that she could attribute to Janice. The place was like a hotel. She found a pitcher of water in the refrigerator and sat at the table, drinking several glasses in a row. The kitchen, too, lacked any sign of her daughter. There were magnets on the refrigerator, but no photos or postcards displayed there. As her body absorbed the water she drank, she felt more tears on her cheeks. These tears, she thought, were for Laney's lost clothes and possessions. Peter had only brought home a small box of her things. He had not even asked Judy and Warren before getting rid of everyone else. She hated him now. Her footsteps echoed hollow on the cement stairs on her way out. The same taxi driver who had brought her still sat in his cab near the entranceway. She spent the rest of the day in her hotel bed and in the bathroom. She couldn't cry anymore, so she closed her eyes and let the questions walk all over her like ants. What, what, why, why. She slept, but her dreaming felt the same as lying in bed awake. What, what. Why, why. Where? The next day Judy leafed through the diary. She felt she couldn't face her son-in-law without hurting him now that she knew what he was doing. Maybe he had been sleeping with this receptionist while Laney was still alive. Even if he hadn't, his wife had been dead for less than a month. Didn't he miss her? All this time she and Warren had thought Laney was happily ensconced here with a husband who adored her, and now it looked like he hadn't loved her at all. She had been a negligent mother, assuming Laney's happiness without any direct evidence. She thought she might stay in bed for the rest of the two weeks. She was stupid to have come. It was as if she had confused herself with her daughter, who was brave and adventuresome and not afraid of anything. Judy -- how could she have forgotten? -- was not very bright, and afraid of a lot of things. Over the past 25 years, Judy realized, she had grown a bigger and bigger ego, all based on how beautifully her only child had turned out. Before Laney, there hadn't been any big accomplishments. Dental hygenist school. Big whoop. She was kind of a no one person before Laney came along. But with Laney, teachers looked at her with glowing eyes. "Oh Mrs. Pfifer, Laney is a special girl." She'd heard that one plenty of times. Judy picked up the diary again and opened it to the one page that fascinated her most.
Wondering what motherhood would be like. Peter doesn't want to do it but I do. I doubt I'd ever be the kind mom was, totally selfless, I just don't see me erasing myself like that. I'll always want my own life. Anyway, must work on P. Lili isn't getting any younger and Ma Ni doesn't know it but those kids get more damaged by lack of interaction than they do by malnutrition.
Judy wanted to tell Laney that motherhood had done the opposite of erasing her. It had drawn her in full color where previously she was a drab silhouette. Could Laney have been pregnant? Judy guessed not, since it said "Peter doesn't want to do it." She must have been talking about future plans. The entry wasn't dated. Back in Lansing Judy thought she would track these people down, this Lili who wasn't getting any younger, this Ma Ni. Now that seemed like a ridiculous dream. Judy didn't go out the next day. She watched television, even Japanese movies dubbed into Chinese, with disturbingly violent sex scenes. Warren had left a message for her while she was out at the villas, but she didn't call him back. She didn't know if he had felt hopeful at all about her trip, but in case he did she couldn't bear to tell him that she had learned nothing. She thought of changing her plane ticket. Eleven more days of eating room service and watching television seemed an even worse kind of purgatory than the one waiting at home. At home, Warren unlocked the front door after work and went right upstairs to bed. None of the things that once brought him comfort: eating, bathing, even pornography, did anything for him now. He had seen a television commercial about group support for people suffering from grief and depression. That was the kind of thing that Judy would have made him do if she were here. He stared at the telephone on the bedside table, thinking of calling his wife, but he didn't. He couldn't think of what to say, and anyway she hadn't called him back the last time yet. On her fourth afternoon in China, Judy walked outside the hotel, praying she would not get lost. She soon came to apartment blocks lined up like a platoon of tanks, all the same, all with hundreds of windows like honeycombs, hundreds of balconies with wet clothes hanging. She sighed, imagining for the first time how many people there must be in the world. She thought of all the families in these identical apartments who all thought they were important, who all had their own grandparents, their own daughters who they thought were especially bright. She held in her mind qualitative indicators of how special Laney really had been, reminding herself that it wasn't just her mother's bias. Laney received a full scholarship to play the oboe in the University of Michigan orchestra. Warren had been disappointed when Laney got married after college and announced that she was following Peter to China, instead of looking for a job or maybe going to graduate school. But Judy was proud to tell people that her daughter resided in China, and that no, her husband wasn't in the service. Judy told her friends at the dentist office where she worked how Laney studied Chinese and did volunteer work while other wives of executives spent their time shopping and complaining about the help. She passed an old man, dressed in the familiar blue suit with a matching cap. The man carried a bird cage of brown wood, with a tiny chirping bird inside. He smiled at her, and said a word she presumed meant hello, she'd heard it so many times: "Lao wai." She thought, sir, you have no idea who I am. You should have seen my daughter. Back at the hotel, Janice stood in front of the revolving door. The dish ran away with the spoon, Judy thought, picturing Janice's wide brow as a porcelain dinner platter. Judy walked past her, through the revolving door, and toward the elevator. Janice followed. “Mrs. Pfifer,” Janice touched her arm. Judy pushed the up button. “Mrs. Pfifer, please come to my home, I invite you,” she said. Judy stared ahead as if she didn't hear. She owed it to Laney to hate this girl. “Mrs. Pfifer, Peter didn't want me to talk to you about Laney, but I feel very painful that you lost your daugther. I want to help you find out the things you want to know.” Judy was torn. What if she ignored this girl and none of the phone numbers in the diary panned out? It seemed clear that Peter wasn't going to sit down and talk to her. It might be that she went with Janice, or she went home a complete failure. She nodded, mutely, and followed Janice out of the hotel, to a busstop. The two women avoided one another's eyes. Janice, it was clear, was embarrassed about what Judy had found out. When the bus came, Janice hustled them on and plucked a single bill out of Judy's jumbled handful of Chinese money to buy her a tissue-thin ticket from a tiny woman elbowing her way through the crowd. The only way they could stand in the crush of people was with their faces pointing in opposite directions. Janice kindly kept a hand on Judy's shoulder, helping to steady her when the bus jostled over potholes, but Judy could not see her face. That was fine with her. After about 20 minutes they got off and walked through several blocks of drab apartment buildings that looked about the same as the ones around her hotel. Finally they entered a dark and narrow doorway and got in an elevator. In the corner of the elevator was a middle-aged woman, sitting on a stool, knitting. Janice exchanged a few words with the woman, but didn't smile. The woman looked up from her knitting long enough to examine Judy unflinchingly, then returned to her work. The hallway leading to Janice's door was concrete and dark. The air smelled of rotting vegetables and clogged pipes. Outside the door was a mat and several pairs of shoes. Janice opened the door and called out something in Chinese. “My mother,” she told Judy, as a hunched, plump woman with tightly curled hair appeared in the hall. The woman clutched her hand hard and looked into her eyes and said a long chain of Chinese words directly at her. She knew about her loss, Judy saw. She tried to smile in gratitude, although she felt the woman's effusiveness an intrusion. “Mama says she is sorry your daughter died,” Janice said. No one had ever said that to her, since that first day when Peter's parents said it. Your daughter died. Judy liked the acknowledgement. In America, people who spoke to her seemed mortified if the word daughter even came up in conversation around her. As if she might have forgotten what happened to her, and they didn't want to remind her. The hallway had prepared her for a dump, but the apartment was nice. The floors were a light wood, the walls mirrored. Janice led her into a living room and sat her down on a small pink couch, covered in plastic. The end tables and a coffee table were made of a glossy black plastic. There was a clock shaped like a cartoon cat above the television set, and stuffed animals covered a chair. They sat silently, and Judy heard scraping and shuffling sounds coming from another room, and a man's voice talking. The mother's voice answered. Judy thought she should get some conversation going, but all she could think to ask was, “How long have you been sleeping with my daughter's husband?” After Janice had been so nice, she felt she couldn't ask that now. Even though she really wanted to know. “You and your mother live together?” Judy finally asked. “My mama, and my sister, and my father,” she said. “We are from a village about 100 miles north of Beijing. I bought this apartment so they could live here with me.” Judy looked around with new appreciation for the place. Janice was a good daughter, she had to admit. Janice's mother brought in a tray with a small teapot and two skinny glasses. Janice poured a glass of tea and Judy held it on her knee, feeling the hot circle through the leg of her slacks. “So,” Janice said finally. “What do you want to know about Laney?” Judy thought about how to answer. Surely, having flown all this way, she must know what she was trying to find out, she told herself. Finally she said, “I want to know how she died.” Janice looked surprised. “She was hit by a car,” she said. “Traffic in this city is very dangerous.” She said this simply and gently. “But Peter said she was in a neighborhood far from their home, alone. And that people who saw her get hit said she was riding a bicycle. Yet her bicycle was at home that day. I feel like Peter isn't telling me something.” “You know, I can tell you that Laney had several Chinese friends who were students,” Janice said. “The accident happened in the student part of town, near the universities. I don't know, but I would guess that Laney was maybe riding on the back of a student friend's bicycle.” “Do you know the names of these friends?” Judy asked hungrily. One hand reached into her purse for a pen. “I'm sorry, I don't,” Janice said. Judy felt frustrated. She wasn't asking the right questions, or Judy didn't really know anything. “Laney's passport is missing. Do you have any idea what might have happened to it?” Judy asked. “I'm sorry, I don't. The things I told you are things that Peter told me before Laney died. Since then, he doesn't want to talk about it. It is painful for him.” Judy chuckled, and she could see her laughter made Judy feel uncomfortable. “Janice, did Peter love my daughter?” “He loved her very much,” the girl said, and she stopped, her voice trembling a little. “Mrs. Pfifer, you think I am a very bad woman. And my mother” -- she glanced at the doorway -- “she would think I am so bad too if she knowed this. But I have tried to be a friend to Peter, because even before Laney died, he was sad.” Judy stared. The girl's English, she noticed, went downhill as she lost her composure. “Why was he sad?” Janice swallowed. “I don't know,” she said. And though Judy didn't belive her, she had come to like the girl enough that she didn't want to make her cry. She stopped questioning her, and they sipped their tea, and Janice told her a few more things about Laney's life in Beijing. How her daughter hated having to eat dinner with visiting business associates and going to expatriate parties. “You know, when I saw Laney she was usually talking about many things she was doing here in China, and she wanted to travel more in China,” Janice said. “Um, living in this country, she said it was an adventure. And to many American people working here, especially wives of men working here, they call it ...” she paused to think of the word -- “hardship.” Janice walked her to the busstop, in a gloomy early evening, and waited with her until the bus came lumbering up, without headlights on. Janice spoke to the bus driver, and when the bus came to Judy's stop, the driver shouted something out, and, seeing her hotel at the end of the block, she exited the bus. She felt proud of herself. She was getting around. Back in her room, Judy felt reenergized by her visit with Janice. Meeting her mother had turned the girl from an adulteress into someone's daughter to her, and she now considered that she had one friend in this dust-choked, lonely city. She remembered now, after days of inactivity, that she still had several phone numbers out of Laney's diary that she could try calling. It wasn't too late in the evening to call.
The phone numbers in Laney's diary were these:Grant 8644-7838(Chinese character) 8699-0025(no name) 8400-9198Tina 8422-8825(no name) 8677-9900(no name) 8648-8104
They were scattered on different pages, in between poetry and sketches and journal entries. Judy transcribed the numbers onto a sheet of hotel stationery, then sat next to the phone, staring at them. She had no idea if these people were close friends of Laney's or taxi drivers or what. She dialed the number for Tina first, thinking that a woman would be easier to talk to. There was no answer. *** Judy calls a number that turns out to be a massage and moxibustion practitioner, and inadvertently gets a treatment due to a failure to communicate. The experience, at first bizarre and frightening to her, ends up bringing her some comfort as she is engulfed in memories of tending to her daughter during a preteen illness and having intimate conversations with her in the throes of fever. She calls Peter and demands that they meet. He agrees to see her the next evening for dinner. ** Judy managed to flag down her own taxi. She said to the driver, “Great Wall Sheraton,” and to her relief, he nodded and drove in the right direction. On the ride home she fumed about the man wasting her time, thinking of how much every minute cost her. The hotel room was costing her $150 a night. She spent $20 or $30 a day on room service, and that much again on taxis many days. And she had taken leave from her job, she was earning nothing. She thought for the first time since Laney's death of the mortgage payment, and the other bills, and wondered of Warren knew to pay them. She almost liked the idea of having their home taken away, of becoming destitute in the wake of Laney's death. Any fresh misfortune would help her generate fresh tears, and crying was something to do. After awhile, it became impossible to cry simply about Laney. She had to think of something new, like the warbling sounds Laney made at six months old, or the day that a preschool teacher she met at the park told her that two-year-old Laney was using words that her four-year-olds didn't know. She tried the number for Tina again, but this time a woman answered who spoke no English. Even so the conversation lasted several minutes, with the woman saying, “Ti-na? Ah, Ti-na, Ti-na,” and then unleashing long Chinese sentences at her. While they attempted to communicate the red message light on Judy's phone began to glow. It was a message from Peter. “Judy, you are going all over Beijing trying to investigate something about Laney and her life here. You know, I felt this instinct too at first. But you know Judy, I don't advise that you do this. I have found it much more therapeutic to focus on the happy memories of life with Laney, and not obsess to much on the details of this one day, when she happened to die. You know? Anyway, Judy, that's what I think. And I'm afraid I can't make it for dinner tomorrow night, but we should certainly have lunch while you are here in Beijing, and I will have Janice schedule this with you, OK? Bye bye, Judy.” She sat with the receiver against her ear, thinking about what she had just heard. Someone had called Peter to tell him she'd been asking questions. Maybe someone at the art center. She played the message again, and decided that Peter's voice was not at all one of kind concern. He wanted to stop her from snooping around. “You are so stupid,” she told herself aloud, and she began to pace around the room, a panicked feeling dancing in her chest. Peter did not want her to find out anything about Laney's death. Why had it never occurred to her that Peter might have killed her daughter. He was having an affair. He wanted to get rid of her. He had been so cold at the funeral, he had rid his apartment of all her things. It was all so obvious. “Oh Laney,” she said. In the past she might have thought it was crazy to talk to yourself alone in a hotel room, but she didn't care what was crazy anymore. “Stupid mommy.” That was something she used to say to herself if she accidentally bumped Laney's head as a baby when she carried her around, or once when she'dropped Laney's birthday cupcakes upside down in the snow and they'd gotten all mashed. “Stupid mommy.” She didn't know what to do now. She couldn't let on to Peter what she suspected, or he would never speak to her at all anymore. She called Peter's work number, hoping to speak to Janice, and figured that if Peter answered she would simply say she was calling to schedule their lunch. As she dialed she was trying to think of ways to figure out if Janice were involved in this whole ugly thing. And should she be calling the police? The prospect of that filled her with so much fear that she just squeezed her eyes shut and listened to the ringing in the phone receiver. Janice answered. Judy almost hung up. When she heard the young woman's kittenish voice, the idea that she could be an accessory to murder seemed ridiculous. She took a breath, and knew she had to say something or Janice would hang up. “Janice?” she finally said. “Judy,” the young woman said, nervously. “How are you doing?” “Janice, did Peter kill Laney?” she burst out. How did that happen? Stupid mommy. Janice laughed a small laugh. An uncomfortable one. “Judy, Laney had a friend. Maybe her friend could tell you more, what you need to know." Judy felt both excited and angry. When she went to Janice's house, the woman had told her she didn't know the phone numbers of Laney's friends here. “I'm afraid her friend is a little shy," Janice went on. "I will go to his school and ask him to talk to you. OK?" "Now?" Judy asked her. Janice paused. There at the SOS office, she chewed her finger as she thought. "I will go to his school this evening, and ask if he will talk to you tomorrow, ok?" That meant more waiting. But Judy agreed. Judy picked up Laney's diary again and read from the beginning, scouring it for clues that Peter had ever abused her daughter or of fighting between them. But there was very little mention of the couple's relationship. There were several names that were mentioned more than the P. for Peter. Mostly Y. and Ma Ni. Was one of these people the one that Janice was going to track down for her? She hadn't even asked the name of this friend. She wondered why Judy had kept this from her before. It seemed obvious that this friend was someone important. Unless Janice was just buying time so she could tell Peter that Judy was onto them. She put down the book and lapped the room several times. Here she was, waiting trustingly, while they might be packing up and leaving the country. Then again, what country could they hide in better than this crazy place. She could barely order a sandwich outside the walls of this hotel, how could she have someone arrested for murder? After four hours of agony and doubt, Judy heard her phone ring and leapt to it. Janice was calling to tell her they could meet Laney's friend the next night, at 5 p.m., on the campus of Beijing University, where he was a student. “He will tell you everything,” Janice said. They hung up and Judy was condemned to another full day of wondering if she was being duped. And once again, she had failed to ask the friend's name. The next afternoon Judy wasn't sure whether she should start waiting for Judy in the lobby good and early, or stay up in her room until the last minute so she woudln't miss a phone call. She had left several messages with numbers she's found in the diary, and yet no one was calling her back. When she went down to the lobby at 10 minutes before their 4 p.m. appointment, Janice was already standing outside the revolving doors. It was raining lightly. “Why didn't you come in?” Judy asked. Seeing Janice, her suspicion again faded into silliness, and her maternal habits rose. “You know, they don't like Chinese to come in here, if we are not accompanied by foreigners,” Janice told her. “Really?” Judy said. She couldn't believe that. She felt like she was the inferior, the outsider in this country, and yet it was the natives who were being discriminated against. Actually, Laney had written about that in her diary, she realized, in a passage that she hadn't much understood until just now. “What is this friend's name?” she asked Janice as they walked toward the busstop. “His name is Yong,” Janice said. Y! Judy pulled the diary out of her shoulder bag and flipped to one of the “Y” entries: “Went to Y.'s for dinner. His mother is such a good cook! She's somewhat suspicious of me, this foreign woman hanging around her son. But I think we began to break through to her when we persuaded her to taste the cheesecake I brought. She said she hated it, but she couldn't stop watching us eat it. She pressed her chopsticks through it, and smelled it, and did anything but take another bite. Next time she's taking us where she works --” The bus came, and Janice found to her disappointment that it was so crowded that she could not raise her arms to read further in the diary. She felt jealous of this Yong's mother, if he was indeed the Y in the book. This woman had spent time with her daughter more recently than she had. All these people, she thought, glaring around at the mass of heads and shoulders she could see, had the opportunity to spend time with my daughter, when I couldn't. She resented them all. They hung onto bars and straps on the bus, looking tired and oblivious to her resentment. They rode a bus together for about half an hour. Janice said they were going to the University of Beijing. At the university they passed a pair of guards in uniforms that looked military. They walked across long stretches of grass that could have been on any of the campuses they'd driven Laney to her junior year of high school. Then they walked up a broad set of stone steps, into a class building. Janice led her into a classroom and turned her head, looking up and down the long row of desks. Then she took Judy's hand and walked toward one of them. Judy followed along, feeling like a little girl crossing the street with her babysitter. Judy thought she spotted Yong when she saw a strikingly handsome student with long bangs framing his eyes. She was watching him write characters in a vertical line on graph paper when she heard a scuffle and chair scrape from the other side of the room. Janice was pulling her along before Judy realized that Yong was the student who was walking in long, jerky steps out toward the hallway. The two women stopped following him after a few moments and stood hand in hand, embarrassed, in the middle of the hall. She had barely glimpsed the young man, except to see that he was medium height, and had a thick head of slightly wavy hair. In each classroom they passed, students were whispering to one another and there were low titters. They love to laugh at people in this country, Judy thought, her cheeks burning. Janice was angry. "I told him we were coming on the phone," she said. "He agreed to talk to you." They walked to the bus stop just outside the campus' grand gates. Yong was not in sight. Spending this hour with Janice, Judy felt her suspicion of the murder plot wilting away. It all seemed so paranoid. She had been thinking about delaying her return flight, but now it seemed there was no point. Even if Laney had been murdered, how would she ever know? And what would it help to stay here wandering in confusion? "Well, I'm going home tomorrow," Judy told Janice, the decision becoming definite as she voiced it. “It was nice to see some of China.” "You have to talk to Yong," Janice said. “No,” Judy said. “I have to go home. I think I decided to come here when I was just crazy from the shock of Laney's death. I spent a lot of money, and it didn't help anyone. I have to go back to work.” Janice took a deep breath, and Judy looked over at her. “Judy, you think Peter hurt Laney. And I have to tell you, it was Laney who hurt Peter.” Judy stared at her. “What are you talking about?” “Yong, he was Laney's ...” she paused, obviously searching for a word. “Lover.” Judy slapped the woman, her hand fitting easily on the woman's broad cheek. Then they stared at one another, and Judy looked at the outline of her hand on Janice's pale skin. Janice's eye teared a little on the side she had been hit. “You're the slut,” Judy said. “Not my daughter.” Janice turned on her heel and began walking away briskly, and Judy stared after her. Now what is going to happen, she asked herself. You're just going to let your only information source walk away? She chased Judy, and as she got closer she heard that the girl was crying. She grabbed her shoulder, trying to be gentle this time. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm afraid I'm a little crazy.” And she giggled a little, because it was a crazy thing to say. “My mama, she slapped me too when she found out,” Janice bleated. Judy found herself hugging the girl. “No, no,” she said. “Tell your mother she's lucky she has you.” She felt so confused and churned up. “Janice, I have to talk to Yong,” she said after the girl's tears had subsided, and Janice scribbled a number down on a piece of paper and put it in her hand. “Judy, I'm sorry I went with Peter,” she said, and whimpered as more tears came out. “I went with him before Laney died, too. He was so unhappy, because his wife never home, and he know his wife has a boyfriend. I'm sorry.” The girl walked away, and Judy saw students turn to stare at her as she went. She must have still been crying. Funny, Judy thought, that people thought crying was something to stare at. In her world, it was more normal than drinking a glass of water. Judy read the numbers on the scrap of paper. She had no idea where she could go to make a phone call. She had to see Yong tonight and find out if this were true, this story about her daughter having an extramarital affair. She had rarely even considered the fact that Laney had sex with her own husband, much less someone else. Maybe this was just part of the ploy to distract her from investigating a murder. She walked about 10 blocks, and saw the trees and iron gates of the campus area give way to more of the boxy buildings that seemed to occupy every neighborhood of this city. One gunmetal colored building after another, the kind of places that would be called tenements in the United States. No lawns. The sky was a listless blue-gray, on what should have been one of the brilliant late afternoons in the end of September. But there was never any brilliant sunlight here, she'd noticed, just smoggy and less smoggy. In Michigan, it was just the kind of sunny morning she was thinking of, with a touch of apple-crisp to the air. Warren had pulled their Ford Bronco over to the side of the road. Adrenaline coarsed through his veins, and he welcomed the undeadening sensation. He had just driven across a bridge, intending to steer the Bronco right over the side, into the river. But his own arms bucked him, insisted like a meddling Boy Scout that his 53-year-old, spiritually bereft body must be saved. As he sat behind the wheel, panting, he realized that one of the things he'd been looking forward to about death was not having to arrive at work at the Ford plant that morning. Huh, he thought. Compared to being dead, any consequences of not showing up to work seemed like chickenshit. He made an illegal U-turn – really, what's the worst that could happen? -- and went back home. After Judy had walked 20 blocks, a young man walked up to her out of the blue. “Hello, foreign friend,” he said. “Can I help you?” He was about the same height as she, with that jovial presence that slightly fat people have. Judy wondered if this was really happening. It was like she the occasional dream she had where she realized halfway through that this was a dream and that she could make anything she wished happen. Just in case, she wished she'd see Laney walk up the sidewalk too, but this didn't happen. “I need to make a phone call,” she told the smiling young man. He grabbed her elbow. “International call, let's go now to the Friendship Hotel,” he said, and started to drag her toward the bus stop. “No, just a local call.” “Beijing phone call?” he asked. “Not an international phone call?” “Right,” she said. He brought her halfway down the block, where an open window in an apartment wall gave onto a tiny shop. A red plastic telephone sat just inside the window. Judy picked up the receiver and dialed the number Janice had written. The woman behind the window picked up a stopwatch and began timing her call. Judy's chubby helper chatted with the woman, intermittently beaming at Judy as if he worked in customer service. She realized that the young man must have simply wanted to practice his English on her. From time to time as he talked to the storekeeper, he gestured to her, perhaps, she thought as the phone rang, telling the story of how he had just encountered her on the street and brought her here. A woman anaswered the phone in Chinese. Judy hand't expected this and her heart stopped for a moment. “I'm calling for Yong?” she said. It occurred to her that the young man might not have gone home after fleeing from their meeting at the school, or that his home was far away and he was still on his way there. Maybe she wouldn't be able to talk to him, and – the chickenship part of her perked up at this idea – she would just go home tomorrow without being able to talk to him. But the woman called, “Yong!” and in a moment she heard a male voice through the red plastic receiver. “Hello, is this Yong?” she asked. Silence, and the chickenshit part of her hoped he would just hang up. “Yes.” he said. Silence. The woman behind the counter watched her timer click. “Yong, this is Laney Nelson's mother. You were a friend of hers?” “Yes.” “Well, I was told that it was very important to meet you. I'm trying to ...” she had not been able to adequately explain this mission she was on to anyone. “I'm trying to understand a few things about her death.” His breath drew and released, drew and released, through the phone. The timer clicked. The traffic roared behind her head. “I am sorry I ran away,” Yong said, suddenly sounding like a vulnerable child. “That's all right,” she told him. Another pause. “I need to meet you today, Yong. I'm going home tomorrow. Where can I meet you?” He asked where she was now, and she didn't know. He asked to speak to the owner of the telephone, and she handed over the red receiver. The woman spoke and listened in several intense bouts, her words frequently punctuated by interjections. “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” she said, looking Judy up and down. “Ah, ah, ah.” When the receiver was handed back to her, Yong told her to take bus 42 to the Beijing Zoo. He would meet her at the entrance. The telephone woman, after handing her many large fistfuls of small bills in exchange for her 100 yuan note, sent a small girl with pigtails tied up in plastic ribbons out front to guide Judy to the busstop. The girl took her hand and led with authority. When the bus pulled up, the small girl boarded with her and pushed through several layers of adults to address the driver. She spoke to the driver in a loud, bossy voice, gestured to Judy, then turned and trotted back to the little store. She and the storekeeper waved at her through the bus window as she passed. After a 10 minute ride, the bus driver called out to her, and two passengers took her hands and practically dragged her to the bus' exit. She found herself standing in front of what must have been the zoo, where bored ticket sellers stood selling no tickets, probably because the place was about to close. There was Yong, smoking a cigarette, which he tossed aside abashedly when he saw her and took her hand. They looked at one another, and then Yong turned to a plump teenaged girl behind the ticket window and spoke. He and Judy pushed through the turnstile and entered without paying. “My cousin,” he said. They walked in the opposite direction of all the other zoogoers, who were trailing toward the exit, each one or two adults clutching the hand of one child, often a plump little boy in school uniform, eating ice cream in the evening chill. Now that she was finally faced with someone who could probably answer her questions, Judy felt tired of asking them. They walked in silence for awhile, squinting as the direct light from the lowering sun struck their faces. “Laney was a good friend. A nice girl,” Yong said finally, and although his words didn't reveal much, Judy heard in his voice a fellow mourner. Suddenly she believed what Janice had told her. This boy loved her daughter. They stopped and leaned against an iron rail outside the panda enclosure. Paper cups, Coca-cola cans and ice cream wrappers littered the grass where two pandas lolled, eating bamboo. “Yong, how did you know Laney?” “She teach me English.” “Were you, well, an orphan?” she asked, confused. He chuckled. “No, my mama, my mother, she is works at the orphanage,” he said. “When Laney come to the orphanage, she teach the little children, and I also listen. And I also learn. And now because of Laney I can attend Beijing University, because I can pass English test. And also, Laney hope I will go to study in United States.” When they turned away from the pandas, the bits of sky visible between buildings and enclosures had turned red. As they walked they saw cleaners sweeping the zoo, very short old people wearing white surgical masks and caps, with long sleeve protectors over their arms, whisking around brooms that looked to be made of branches and stirring up more dust than they got into their dustpans. “Yong, were you in love with Laney?” The darkness made it easier for him to speak. “Yes, I love Laney,” he said. “I am sorry.” She almost laughed. She couldn't both hate one man for not loving her daughter and this one for loving her. “That's all right, Yong,” she said. It sounded like the wrong thing to say. She didn't think it was alright that Laney would cheat on her husband. She still couldn't really believe it. Peter must have been so bad to her, Judy decided, so abusive, that Laney was forced to go against own morals and seek comfort elsewhere. She thought she'd wanted to find this young man to ask about the day that Laney died. But now that he walked by her side, she just listened gratefully to what he wanted to say. “Laney, you know, she loves music. We play music toghether at the Keep In Touch bar, I would like to take you there.” “I have to go home to America tomorrow morning,” she told him. “OK, let's go to Keep in Touch right now,” he said, and he led her to the zoo exit. Then they were in the backseat of a taxi together. Now, surrounded by lights from other cars and streetlights, she was able to really get a good look at him. His hair was short and had a slight wave, it was thick, and despite his youth there were gray hairs peppered here and there. He wore glasses that looked more expensive and sophisticated than any she had seen on Chinese people. He had a mole on his left cheek. He was handsome, his mouth as sweet as an orange wedge, and his eyes soft and puppyish. She could see how Laney could love this boy. The Keep in Touch was a small bar and restaurant tucked in an alley between large hotels, not really far from her own hotel, Judy realized with a shock of recognition. A beautiful Chinese woman with very long, loose hair hugged Yong when they arrived, and after they exchanged brief words in Chinese, she turned to Judy, solemn-eyed, and hugged her too. The woman's arms were felt as thin and light as noodles around her shoulders. “Your daughter was a wonderful, talented girl,” the woman said. Judy felt the closest approximation to happiness that she had since the day she'd learned of the tragedy. They were seated in a quiet corner and Chinese food appeared on the table moments later, along with a bottle of red wine. Judy had never drunk wine, and it tasted sour to her, but she sipped it. She was used to having a drink or two in the evening, and with all the strange people around her, and her nervousness over the unknown evening ahead of her, she was grateful to have a drink now. Yong gestured to the small stage in front of the tables, empty now as people ate dinner. “We would perform there, sometimes. You met the owner, Wang Xina, she sometimes play with us too. Laney play Chinese flute, I play guitar, Wang Xina play violin and sometimes sing. I have Laney's flute. I can give it to you.” “Did you see Laney every day?” “Well, many days,” Yong said. He drank his own wine quickly and poured himself another glass. As the red liquid filled the glass, his ears turned pink as if they too were filling up with liquid. “Laney, she have to do some things related to Mr. Nelson's office. She have to go to dinner with clients, and Mr. Nelson like her to take their wives to activities – to Great Wall, to Chinese art projects, to Chinese opera.” Judy nodded. Her daughter had told her how much she hated to do this kind of thing. A lot of schmoozing came with Peter's job. “But Laney like to come to the orphanage with my mama, my mother,” he said. “I would like to take you there. And Laney like to help my, my mother cook dinner, and learn Chinese cooking. And learn more Chinese. My ma, my mother, she does not speak Engligh.” “Did Laney correct you when you called you mother Ma?” Judy asked. Yong chuckled shyly, and blushed. In the light of tabletop candles, his blush seemed to glow. “Yes, she corrected many things. Sometimes, she is a very mean teacher.” They both laughed. “Yong, I want to meet your mother.” “Yes, but ...” his voice trailed off. “Don't you want me to meet her?” “Yes, I want you to meet her, but I am afraid there is a problem.” He stopped again. People in this country, Judy realized, did not like to say no. “What is the problem.” “My ma-mother, she have to spend the night at the orphanage tonight, and tomorrow night, and there is no bus to there now. It is outside Beijing, somewhat far. Laney, sometimes she have the SOS driver take us there.” Thinking about SOS, Judy remembered her suspicion that Peter could have killed Laney. It seemed a little crazy now that she sat here in this very civilized restaurant, eating chicken and broccoli and rice with a fork. Judy wondered if the company's driver might also be a good person to talk to. She needed more time! “Yong, do you know what happened the day that Laney died?” There was a long silence. When she looked across the table at him she saw that tears were running down his face. She reached across and held his hands. He was the first person who she had comforted about her daughter's death. Peter hadn't seemed to need it, and Warren? She didn't really know what Warren was feeling. His face had seemed like a blank chalkboard when he'd dropped her off at the airport, and she hadn't given it more thought. “Yong, we need more time, don't we?” He sniffled and nodded, and she felt her maternal self stirring inside her. “But my flight home is tomorrow morning, and I only have a 14-day visa. Seven days are already gone. And I still don't know what happened to Laney.” For some reason, his weeping allowed her to stay dry-eyed. After a few minutes Yong pulled himself together. They left the restaurant without paying – Wang Xina smiled and waved them out – and Yong took her arm. “Which is your hotel?” he asked, and he walked her there. “Mrs. Pfifer,” he said, “We could get you a longer visa if you postpone your flight. But we would have to go to Hong Kong.” She grasped at this idea and agreed immediately, despite all the obstacles to this plan – her work, Warren, everyone expected her back tomorrow, the airline would charge her more money for changing the ticket, and this sudden prospect of a trip to Hong Kong. All she knew is that she'd found the boy who loved Laney, and she wasn't about to turn around and go home without knowing more. Besides, she still thought it possible that Laney might have been murdered. “When could we go to Hong Kong?” “I could see about the tickets tomorrow, and perhaps we can leave in two days or sooner,” he said. “But,” he said shyly. “The trouble is, I don't have the money to buy train tickets to Hong Kong.” They had reached the Great Wall Sheraton and sat on the lobby couch. She pulled out her wallet. “How much money will it cost, for both of us?” She asked. He stood next to her while she cashed five more traveler's checks, $300 for him and $200 for herself. “I will go to Beijing Train Station early tomorrow morning and call you as soon as I have the tickets, Mrs. Pfifer,” he said. “Please, call me Judy,” she told him, hugging him. He hesitated. “May I call you, Ayi?” he asked. “That means Auntie.” She nodded, and watched him leave through the revolving door and disappear abruptly behind its reflective glass. She realized when she returned to the room, wanting only to sleep, that she hadn't spoken to her husband since that first day. It was morning there now, and she could catch him before she went to work. But first she wanted to call the airline, so that the ticket would already be changed when she called Warren, so he could not change her mind. Calling the airline from China was more difficult than she expected, and it was 10 p.m. by the time she had moved her flight date back two more weeks, at the cost of an additional $100. It would be midday at home, and Warren would be at work. She called her own number anyway, feeling relieved that she would have to leave a message instead of speaking to her husband. But Warren answered. “Why aren't you at work?” she asked as soon as he said hello. “Oh, I don't know,” he said softly. He was obviously not coping well, and a wave of guilt washed over her like nausea. There was no one there to help him. “Warren, I have to stay over here a little longer,” she said nervously. She hoped he wouldn't yell at her. “I met a close friend of Laney's and, you know, I'm not at all sure that Laney didn't meet with foul play over here. Warren, Peter is sleeping with another woman.” She paused to let this news sink in. She couldn't bring herself to tell him that Laney, too, had been having an extramarital affair. She had already come to understand why Laney did it, but Warren, she knew, wouldn't understand. “Oh,” he said. “Warren, how long have you been staying home from work?” she asked. “Oh, not long,” he said. “Warren, listen to me, I can't come home right now. I know you're sad, I'm sad too, but I need you to hold it together over there, OK?” “OK,” he said. And they ended their conversation. She sat, feeling exactly like she did in a recurring dream she used to have when Laney was a toddler. She'd dreamt she was bathing the little girl when she remembered some errand, and she'd slipped out of the house, forgetting the baby in the bath until hours later. She'd awake sweating and cringing with guilt, only to realize with sweet relief that it was only a dream. She thought of Warren, sitting at home alone, and knew there would be no waking up from this. If he something bad happened to him while she was out of the house, it would be her fault. She called her sister-in-law and asked, begged her to look in on Warren. Her sister-in-law lived two hours away. “What are you doing over there, Judy?” the woman asked. Judy didn't really like either of Warren's sisters, but this one, Penny, was the one she could stand. “Settling Laney's affairs,” Judy said stiffly, and, once she had hung up, laughed at the double entendre. She slept, and for the first time in 20 years, she had the bathtub dream. Two days later she was settling into a sleeper car with Yong and two other Chinese people. Her heavy soul felt a little lighter, the way it always felt when she set out on a journey. She smiled as she watched Beijing give way to scrubby fields and dirt lanes traversed by men in straw hats, some of them with a single donkey. Looking out the window was like watching the National Geographic channel, and she aborbed for the first time that images like this, of people using animals to till the fields, were contemporary, not some re-enactment of times gone by. “Yong,” she said, when the sky had darkened and they saw their own reflections in the window. “My daughter's passport is missing.” She had been looking at her own passport, and the photo in which she looked so grief-stunned. “I think maybe she was murdered. Do you think that Peter could have murdered my daughter?” He looked at her, startled, and repeated the word. “Murdered?” “I mean, do you think he got angry at her and killed her?” “Yes, murdered,” he said. “No, he did not murder her. And, Ayi, I have Laney's passport. It is at my house.” “What?” she half stood. She hadn't expected this. “Laney gave me her passport, because, she wanted me to have the photo changed, and to use this passport to go to America.” He looked terrified at her reaction, but he kept speaking. “Lane can be a name for a girl or a boy, yes? You see, I tried to get visa from the U.S. Embassy three times. Every time, I pay $80 US money. I have full scholarship at Univeristy of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Laney helped me get this. But I cannot get visa from U.S. Embassy.” “You have Laney's visa.” “Yes.” The two Chinese strangers in their compartment stared unabashedly at this exchange as their voices rose. One even whispered commentary to the other, apparently translating. “So you know how Laney died,” she said as the realization came to her. “Ayi,” he said, looking levelly into her eyes. “I will tell you.” He took a breath. But after all this seeking, she did not want to sit and listen. She stood up. “Give me Laney's passport.” He cringed. “I don't have it here, but --” She took her small bag and walked down the train's aisle, seeing all the Chinese eyes leaning out from their bunks to stare at her. She wanted to go to the police, or at least to Yong's mother, and make them give that passport back. She thought he was a friend, and he was a thief all along. Maybe he was the one who killed Laney, for her passport, she thought. She got off the train at the first stop, not knowing where she was, and let herself mix with the crowd on the platform. A man and woman in uniform yelled at her as she went through a turnstile to exit the station. They grabbed at her bag and yelled louder. But she just pushed right past. If there was some law she was breaking, what difference did it make? Obviously people didn't give a whit about laws in this country. She was in a small town that was no less crowded than Beijing. There were more animals there, a team of horses pulling a cart loaded with orange fruit, and many little open-front shops. In Beijing some of the people stared at her, but here everyone stared. Judy herself stared at a few images in her mind, as if they were floating in front of her face: Laney's passport, with the postage-stamp-sized photo of the girl in mid-laugh, taken in a photo booth in Ann Arbor before she left for her junior year abroad in Italy. Yong, looking suddenly shifty-eyed and mean, the passport in his hand. She felt she had been the victim of a scam. She came to a stream that reeked of urine, walled by concrete, and walked past several boys holding fishing poles, onto a concrete bridge. She stopped and looked out over the rank water. This seemed to be the end of the town. What was she going to do, walk back to Beijing? Just keep walking for the rest of her life? Once again she realized that her own stupidity had gotten her into a jam. She didn't know how she was going to get back to her hotel room, or home. And who cared? Then she saw Yong, red faced, running with his own and her suitcase, one in each hand. He didn't seem to know that he could pull out the handle and roll her bag along. “Mrs. Judy,” he said, and she realized that she'd been waiting for him to appear. After all, what did she think she was going to do here all alone if he didn't show up? He poured out his story before she could go away again. “Laney was with me when she died. We were riding on my bicycle. She was riding on the back. A small bus turned, driving very fast, and it hit us. My bicycle hit the windshield. My head was bleeding. But Laney,” a sob cut off his breath. “Laney was hurt in her neck. And I was trying to hold her still. And the people were lifting her into a taxi for going to the hospital. And,” his tears of the night before returned, this time with choking, hiccuping sobs. “And police were coming, and I walked away, and no one was looking at me. Because, that day, we had the photo on Laney's passport changed to be my photo. And I was afraid that if I went to the hospital, police would find this passport and ...” Judy's hand reached out and smacked the boy square across the jaw. He let his head reel back, and she did it again. It felt so good, she wished she could beat him more. But a small crowd had gathered, and a man grabbed her arm, making cajoling noises, and held it back. “You stole her passport from her dead body,” Judy told him. She was sure that her version was the true one. He was trying to twist it around to make him look better. “You give me that passport back.” He was cowering against the seat. “I will give it to you. It is at my house,” he said between sobs. Then there was nothing else for them to talk about. The crowd stayed, waiting for more, then began to mutter to one another and chat, probably about the day's events in this nowhere village, Judy thought. Eventually she started to walk back toward the train station, and he followed, looking relieved. The boarded the next train to come along, and Yong showed the conductor their torn ticket from before and gave a long explaination. At first they stood outside the train's door, and Judy wondered if they would be able to board, but after a long exchange the conductor allowed them past, and they sat down on two new bunks. They didn't speak the entire night as they rolled toward Hong Kong. Judy wonderd why she was going. After all, she'd come to find out what really happened to Laney and to retrieve her passport, and suddently she had all but succeeded on both counts. They could turn around and go back to Beijing, fetch it, and she could go back to Warren. But instead she lay on her bunk, watching Yong after he fell asleep. No more questions bubbled up in her mind, although there were a thousand details about Laney's death that he probably could have added. She wondered if he was still planning to try to get to the University of Michigan. Of course, she'd be taking back Laney's passport, so maybe there would be no way for him to go. Part of her wished he could go, so she could have him over to the house, introduce him to Warren, and, when she was ready, ask more about their relationship and the awful day. But Warren was never going to know about this boy, she reminded herself. There were things that had always remained between her and Laney, like the time she had picked her daughter and her friends up from a school dance and they'd all been drunk, and she'd had to pull over to let Laney vomit in the gutter. Warren had been out bowling that night, and Judy had never, ever told. **When they arrive in Hong Kong, Judy has to go get her visa alone because Yong has no passport and can't leave Mainland China. She manages it despite several obstacles and returns to Beijing with new confidence.** Judy agonized over what to wear for dinner at Yong's house. She wanted to look her best in front of the woman who had been like a second mother to Laney. And yet she didn't want to flaunt what she was coming to realize was her great wealth compared to most people here. She put her gold necklace and pearl earrings away in their boxes, and settled on navy slacks and a sweater with an image of a bird sitting on a limb knitted into it. She even ventured out onto the street near her new hotel and searched for a gift to bring this other mother. Much like outside the Sheraton, there was a street lined with booths nearby. She found a toothless woman in that familiar blue suit selling paper-wrapped candies out of a large bucket. She pointed to them, and shared a smile with the vendor as she piled candies into a thin plastic bag for her with heavily creased and none-too-clean hands. She held out some of the small bills she'd gotten from the telephone woman as change back before their Hong Kong trip, and the old woman looked into her eyes as she plucked two bills from the bunch. Maybe Judy was imagining things but she thought the look said that the woman knew about Judy's pain, and she'd been there. The woman squeezed Judy's right hand, and hung the handles to the plastic bag on her fingers. One month into being a childless 50-year-old woman, it occurred to Judy: There are other women out there whose babies have died. There are millions of us everywhere. And in this country, she thought, looking up and down a street where construction workers ran welders with no eye protection, where children and adults rode in the backs of big blue trucks and everyone breathed the smoggy air that blackened her lips as the day progressed, there are more than where I come from.

the novel -- new version

This is the latest edit of my novel chapters. Please read this one, not the earlier post.

(UPDATED 12/27)

People told her that she would love a second or a third child as much as she loved Laney. But Judy never believed that, and as her daughter grew more and more remarkable each year, she felt that she had been right. So when Laney's death transformed Judy from proud mother to childless 50-year-old woman, Judy closed her ears to the things people told her. To accept. To begin the healing.
Judy chose instead to get to the bottom of it. When your son-in-law tells you that your daughter died in Beijing, China, where they had lived, in a traffic accident in a strange part of town, you don't just sit back and say, “Oh, OK. So now I have no daughter.” In her 25 years as a mother, Judy had challenged teachers who mistook Laney's prodigious work for plagiarism; she had second-guessed the doctor and diagnosed her daughter's own curvature of the spine. She wasn't going to accept something like this.
Besides, there was Laney's missing passport. Its absence had caused a two-week delay in the return of the Laney's remains to the United States. She had had to be cremated, and Judy had never seen Laney's lifeless body. A primative part of Judy's brain believed that her daughter still lived in the Beijing she imagined when she read her e-mails and talked to her on the phone. She had not come home dead, she had just not come home. Judy would have liked to add the word “yet” to the end of that thought, but she wasn't going to sink into a respite of craziness. She was going to get to the bottom of it.
So, she told her husband Warren, a childless 51-year-old man. She was going to China.
It was 2 a.m. on the morning after Laney's funeral, and neither of them felt as if they would ever sleep again. Their house still smelled of people, of the buffet their friends and relatives had laid out, of perfume and smoke and human breath. Usually after seeing the family they would sit up talking, comparing notes about who was hitting the bottle pretty hard and who had lost weight. Now they lay two inches apart like like dead fish in a grocer's case.
Warren said, “Huh.”
So that was it. The next morning, she'd called a travel agent, paid an extravagent airfare with her credit card, and sent away for a rush passport. None of these were things she would have previously attmepted without Laney's guidance; she was sure Laney would have found a much cheaper ticket using the Internet. Without a visa, she could only stay in China two weeks.
At the end of that frenzy of activity Judy stood wrapped in the curtain of a hotel room, mutely watching Beijing emerge from darkness. She'd gone to bed in the early evening the night before after a rapid and careening taxi ride from Beijing International Airport.
On Judy's pillow lay a hand-sized book bound in red silk: Laney's diary. She had counted on this book to guide her to the answer, to help her explain how on earth a vivacious, beautiful girl could disappear from the planet at the age of 25. The diary entries were disappointing -- inconsistent, and heavier on poetic description of places than on information about how Laney spent her days as the wife of an international businessman. But the book contained a few phone numbers that Judy would call.
She moved her face closer to the glass and saw the outline of a row of shacks leading up to the towering hotel across the street. There was no pinkness of sunrise, but a tiny bit of light had seeped into the sky. Judy was glad. She was anxious to get started.
When a little more light came, a squadron of elderly people filed into the hotel parking lot and began doing exercises. From the 20th floor she couldn't hear anything, but they seemed to be following orders like square dancers. Every little old lady or man moved in exactly the same way. She wished she was down there, bending her knees in time, wearing a little denim-blue jacket and matching pants, a polka dot scarf on her head.
Warren lay in bed in Lansing, Michigan, although it was 2 p.m. there. Toadlike in a velour running suit, he was trying his first cigarette at the age of 51. He had found the cigarettes in their own little purse, a gold clasp at the mouth, on his kitchen counter. Someone left them after the funeral. Ordinarily he would have been angry to find evidence that people had been smoking in his home. Now, he felt his lungs burn, and he coughed. And sucked the cigarette again, going for that burn.
But it was no good, because like everything, smoking a cigarette reminded him of Laney. Of the way the nurse at the hospital admonished them in 1970, “Don't smoke in bed,” when they were about to carry the little bundle of her home in the car, leaning against Judy's breast in the passenger seat.
Laney's passport was still in bed as well. It was pressed between a small hard pillow and a mattress not thicker than a winter duvet, in an apartment in the suburbs of Beijing, miles away from where Judy stood, swaddling herself in a curtain as heavy as a lead apron, leaning her cheek against the cool window, and waiting for light.
Four hours later Judy too was in bed after a failed food-finding expedition, sucking on one of the breath mints she'd brought in her purse, wondering if the water in the sink was safe to drink.
She had dressed herself and ventured into the hotel lobby, which was deserted save a teenaged boy drowsing at a podium near the front door.
"Taxi?" he asked her as she stepped outside.
She shook her head, blushing.
There was plenty of food available outside, for sale on the sides of the little road arching out from the back of the hotel. There were little brown sticks of bread emerging glistening from woks of boiling oil, and bowls of white liquid that men slurped, their lips on the rims, their eyes following her progress down the street. People were sitting on the curb, or on tiny stools arranged around the beds of freight bicycles. She was the only white person awake at this hour. No one here, she noticed, had been taught not to stare at those who look different.
Judy was hungry, but she was afraid to eat food sold on the street and she didn't have any Chinese money. She'd felt sure they would take American money here -- her girlfriends had gone to Mexico and on cruises to the Caribbean and assured her that everyone wanted dollar bills. Yet when she saw the Chinese, wearing hand-knitted sweater vests, chatting some of them washing themselves in red plastic basins at the edge of the street, she knew she could not offer them her $20 bills. The money she saw passed from hand to hand was tiny and wrinkled and the color of dishwater. Several people called out word as she passed: “Lao wai!” One person smiled at her: It was an old woman built like a tree stump, wearing a sweater vest over a flowered blouse, helping a toddler balance as he squatted to poop in the street.
Judy felt her mouth's stillness. She hadn't spoken a dozen words in this country, except for her brief phone call to Warren. She appreciated the language barrier, because since Laney died, she had nothing to say to anyone. Even on the phone long distance, she and Warren had sat silent for a dozen seconds at a time. When Laney used to call, they had chattered nonstop, she on the bedroom receiver, Warren in the living room, not wanting to waste a moment of long distance on dead air.
She returned to the 20th floor, looking hungrily during the elevator ride at the photographs of roast duck on the car's wall, and locked her room's door. She lay on the bed and read her daughter's diary.
The diary held some poems, which Judy read but did not understand. Laney had written her first poem at age 4, in crayon, and had won contests all through school for her writing. Judy still had a poem published on the children's page of a magazine when Laney was in third grade. Judy always told Laney she enjoyed her poems, but really she was not smart enough for that kind of thing. Raising Laney was the only thing Judy had ever showed talent for, really. But that had been enough. Other women at work would have problems with their teenagers -- drugs, petty crimes, car accidents, pregnancy -- and they would ask Judy, how did you do it?
She fell asleep while reading a long description, written on one of Laney's first days in the country, of a bicycle leaning against the wall of a traditional Chinese house. She dreamed that Laney was waiting for her in just such a house, which according to the description had four apartments connected by a courtyard. In the dream, Judy was always looking for Laney in the wrong apartment, and when she did see her daughter, the girl would only speak to her in Chinese.
Judy got up sometime later, and the floor seemed to sink below her. She filled a glass from the tap and took a tiny sip. Nothing happened. She drank the whole glass gratefully and prayed she wouldn't get sick. She hadn't eaten anything since the tray meal on the airplane, when was that, a day ago? She looked in the mirror, half expecting her cheeks to have hollowed out. She was surprised to see that she looked normal: her hair still freshly blond from her pre-funeral appointment, her face still plump with the extra weight that she had forgotten about losing the day her son-in-law's parents had called her on the phone with the news.

Downstairs she approached the young man by the door, who had asked her, "taxi," so nicely that morning.
"Do you speak English?" she asked in a tiny voice.
"Yes," he said, with little accent, and smiled easily. She felt like a dope. This was the Sheraton hotel! Of course people would speak English. Yet she hadn't tried to speak to anyone, except the girl at the front desk, who had only said a couple of words to her.
"How can I get some Chinese money?"
"Right here, ma'am," he said, and took her elbow to lead her to a counter behind the elevators, where a bored-looking young woman got to her feet as she approached. They all wore navy blazers.
The young man spoke to the girl softly in Chinese and she smiled. He stood by Judy's side while she changed a $100 traveler's check, and then asked her, "Now what would you like to do?"
She wanted to hug him.
"I would like to eat at the hotel restaurant," she told him, feeling she should speak formally.
"Of course," he said, and delivered her there.
After she had eaten a plate of runny eggs and drunk a cup of coffee with cream, she approached him again at his podium by the door.
"What is your name?" she asked shyly.
His name was Adam. A gold tag on his navy blazer said so, she noticed after he had told her. She showed Adam the return address from Laney's letters, and in moments Adam had her in a taxi.
"You will pay 30 yuan," he told her. "No more, OK?" He said something to the driver, and in moments the car was dodging in and out of traffic. The traffic was made of bicycles and other taxis. She reached for a seatbelt and found none. He didn't need to drive so fast, she thought. She was in no hurry to present herself to Peter, her son-in-law. He didn't know she was coming.
The taxi stopped in front of a building that looked like another hotel, in a business district. The Chinese people walking down the street here looked very different than the people selling things on the street near her hotel. Instead of hand-knitted sweaters they wore tailored jackets and pressed, creased slacks, or tight blue jeans and midriff-baring tops, with English name brands everwhere. She saw Gucci, J. Crew. The Playboy bunny winked at her from a woman's high-heeled shoes. There were other white people too, lots of them. She stood on the sidewalk in front of the building. This coudln't be it. Laney didn't live in a hotel. She'd lived in an apartment in a housing development where only foreigners and "overseas Chinese" lived. But the taxi was gone, with her 50-yuan note. He hadn't given her any change, and she didn't know how to ask for it.
So she went in.
She showed the tattered envelope to a man in what looked like a soldier's uniform, sitting at a desk inside the door. He waved her over to an elevator and held up three fingers.
"Tree," he said deliberately. His teeth were three shades of brown. He didn't smile, and Judy didn't blame him.
The elevator let her out on the third floor directly in front of another desk, where a young woman about Laney's age, with a large, round face, smiled at her. She was Chinese, but her skin was very pale. Her computer monitor was covered with stuffed animals. Beanie babies.
"Can I help you ma'am," she said. She had an accent, but she spoke each word correctly in a girlish voice, and smiled as if Judy was a teacher she hoped to please.
"I'm sorry," Judy said. "I was looking for this address, and the man downstairs told me to come to the third floor."
"Yes, this is Worldwide SOS," she said, and looked at Judy expectantly.
That was the name of the company where Peter worked, the reason he and Laney had moved to Beijing. Suddenly Judy remembered Laney telling her that they did not have a mailman who came to their house. She got her mail at Peter's work.
The young woman watched her, looking a little uncertain.
Judy didn't want to confront Peter at work. She felt stupid here, surrounded by well dressed and intelligent-looking people. The kind of people Laney was comfortable with, but not her. She was wearing a navy windbreaker with the name of Warren's union local on the back of it. But this address was all she had. She took a breath and told the woman who she was looking for.
The woman's face brightened.
"Oh, are you a friend of Mr. Nelson's?" she asked.
Judy hesitated.
"I'm .. " she couldn't lie. She was terrible at it. "I'm his mother in law."
The girl's face switched abruptly to a sad look, and Judy knew she knew all about Laney. Of course she did. Judy felt her grief come into view as if her clothing had been stripped from her body. She realized that, talking to these strangers all morning, she had shed her "bereaved mother" look, or at least a layer of it. Now she felt the weight of the look settle on her face like a coat of cold cream.
"Is he here?"
The young woman picked up a phone on her desk.
"Mr. Nelson," she said. "You have a guest." She covered the receiver and looked questioningly at Judy. Judy nodded miserably.
"It's your mother-in-law," she said, and listened for a moment. The receptionist's white skin grew paler, and an acne scar stood out boldly in the middle of her forehead.
She stood and took Judy's arm, her upper arm, not her elbow where Adam had held her. These people, Judy thought. Always touching you. She liked it.
They walked slowly down a long hallway between cubicles. It could have been an American office.
Inside Peter's office, she confronted the very same combination of sadness and stubborn distance that she had seen on her son-in-law's face in her own kitchen two weeks earlier. She was here, really, because Peter had been able to give her so little explanation for Laney's death. She had been hit by a car, was about all he'd told Laney's family. His own family lived in Denmark, and they didn't come to the funeral.
"Judy," Peter said, and forced a smile that made him seem as if he should have a small, clipped mustache. Warren used to make fun of Peter, calling him Herr Hitler, although he was Danish, not German. Judy used to defend him. They were a family where most of the men worked in auto plants, and the women were nurses or worked in stores, and here Laney's husband was the president of this company's whole China division. Now she wanted to reach across the desk and choke Peter.
He wasn't going to speak.
"Peter," she said. "I came to find out more about what happened to Laney. I can't sleep until I know."
"Well," he said. She thought of Warren and his “Huh” in the dark bedroom. Then Peter looked at the secretary. "Let's go to the Summer Palace."
The girl smiled bleakly and made to disappear down the walkway between cubicles, but Peter followed close at her heels. He didn't intend to be alone with her, Judy realized. Then she had another thought: The son in law she'd always felt awkward around because his English grammar was better than her own, because of his genteel upbringing and the fact that he did not drink, this son in law was afraid of her. She felt a little air puff in her chest, and she almost smiled.
The secretary came along in the car. Her name was Janice, Peter told her. The only conversation in the car was between the taxi driver, Janice and Peter. Peter seemed to speak Chinese haltingly, Judy noted with satisfaction. Laney spoke it beautifully. Once when they were dropping the young couple off at the airport after Christmas, Laney had helped a Chinese woman who spoke no English. The words had trilled out of her mouth like a funny song. And Peter had studied Chinese in school; Laney -- so smart -- had only started taking classes after moving here two years earlier.
The Summer Palace turned out to be a large park with a huge lake and some fancy Oriental buildings. Peter still didn't speak much. Judy didn't have the nerve to hit him with more questions. It was like making new loans to someone who never paid you back.
Janice pointed out to Judy the beautiful features of the imperial gardens they were walking through, and Judy did like looking at the lake, with mist gathering on its surface. This was the kind of place she'd imagined Laney, sitting in one of those elaborate wooden boats, writing in her diary. She stole some long looks at her son-in-law when she was supposed to be looking at the sights. He certainly didn't look happy. But she wasn't sure if he looked sad or angry or what. After going through the last three weeks she knew that you couldn't judge grief so easily. You'd think people who'd suffered a loss like theirs would be crying all the time. But you couldn't cry 24 hours a day, no matter how crushing the grief.
The walked dusty paths in silence. Peter was wasting her time, and she only had two weeks. To tell the truth, Judy was grateful of the deadline. At home, since the terrible phone call from Peter's parents, Judy's whole life had loomed ahead of her. She'd dreaded the years the way her alcoholic brother Ned said he dreaded a lifetime without drinking, before he got into that one-day-at-a-time AA thing. She had fourteen days, and feeling that the time was too short would make it pass quickly.
The next morning she rose at dawn again. She was sick. She emerged from the bathroom weak-legged, wondering how long she had until the next attack struck. But she allowed Adam to put her in a taxi headed for the Phoenix and Dragon Villas. She would see Peter alone this time. She knew from Laney's diary that he left at about 8:30 for work, because Laney sometimes started her entries with the date and time.
One of them read
8:40 P. gone to work. Didn't tell him I'm going to orphanage with” here was a Chinese character “again today.”
Laney had told her about volunteering at an orphanage outside the city. She taught English to school-aged kids and even helped translate for some European doctors who came to fix orphans' harelips.
Judy's taxi left the hotel's circular drive at 7 a.m., and the traffic was worse than the day before. Bicycles streamed past the taxi on either side. This driver spoke to her continually, although she gave no encouragement. When traffic slowed to a stop, he would turn to her in the back seat and gesture to emphasize whatever it was he was saying. Her bowels ached. She sucked them in.
Laney had written in her diary with such fondness for the people she met in China. They had Chinese names, sometimes just characters that Judy could not guess how to pronounce. But everyone she'd met so far seemed to have a American name. And Judy could not feel fond of them. She wanted to feel that.
In Lansing, Warren went to work and came home, and ate a pizza from the freezer, barely remembering to take the plastic off it before putting it in the oven. He watched cable television. He knew that people got enjoyment from these programs, and he wanted to feel that. He smoked some more cigarettes. They were no good either.
If Judy were in a giant game of hot and cold, as her taxi inched into the eastern suburbs, toward the Dragon and Phoenix villas, a voice would have told her, you're getting cold-er. Laney's passport was in one of the glum villages attached to the western side of Beijing.
It was already 8:45 a.m. when she reached the complex, and Judy felt wasted time hemorraging out of her. Peter was probably already at the office by now. It was like when you overdrew your checking account and got slapped with a fee; not having enough money cost you more money, and taking so long to get her would cost her half the day for a wasted trip out and back. But now that she was here, there was nothing to do but look for him.
The villas were nothing like what Judy had imagined her daughter living in. It looked like a movie set portraying a suburban American neighborhood, with square green lawns fronting identical two-story houses, evenly spaced in rows that extended farther than she could see. The guard in the booth by the driveway waved the taxi in, and when she got out a hunched old man apeared, grinned emphatically, and asked her where he could direct her.
"Peter Nelson," she said, and he trotted ahead of her, turning to give her a canine grin over his shoulder. She followed.
He brought her not to one of the two-story houses but to a larger building, and up an outdoor concrete staircase. He stopped outside number 305, grinned and actually panted once or twice, and then trotted away.
She tried the knob, and walked into her daughter's home. She didn't knock. She didn't want to give Peter any escape routes this time. She had two weeks to get to the bottom of this, and she didn't even know if she was headed toward the bottom. She was so disoriented, she may well have been headed toward the side or the top.
In the living room her eyes landed on the art, modern splotches of paint on a white background. It looked sophisticated to Judy, but Laney had written about it with disgust. She hated the decor of this prefurnished apartment. She'd wanted to move to somplace more "authentic," but Peter's company paid for the apartment and would pay for no other. Judy saw a desk with a computer at the far end of the living room. Computers, she knew, had e-mails in them, like the e-mails from Laney that her sister-in-law, Laney's aunt, would print out and mail to her. There was a printer. If she could only work the computer, she thought, she could print out pages and pages of Laney's e-mails. She smiled. She was thinking like a detective.
Then she jumped because a shadow reached around the arched doorway. A small figure topped with a white towel appeared, framed by the arch, and it was not Peter. It was Janice.
Once again Judy felt herself stirred toward violence. Here the woman had acted nice to her yesterday, all the while knowing she would go home and sleep in Laney's bed that night. But instead of pulling that towel off her head and strangling her with it, Judy pushed past Janice and let herself into her daughter's bathroom. She couldn't help herself, she was overcome by diarrhea. She wanted to die.
When she came out, the apartment was empty.
She lay on the couch until she gathered enough strength to cry. She knew now that you could achieve a tiny dose of comfort once those tears started flowing. She let them drip off her cheek onto the couch, without bothering to sob. Where would she file this blow? In the hierarchy of grief, does your daughter getting cheated on – in death or in life, she didn't even know how long this had been going on – rank just below her death, or somewhere down and to the left, below not being able to mourn over her body, or the creeping horde of questions that attacked her at night? If mourning Laney was her new occupation, Judy thought, she needed an assistant to deal with all the incoming work.
After 35 minues she stood up, feeling as if every ounce of water had left her body from one end or the other. She almost floated to the computer and sat in the desk chair, staring at it. She touched the keyboard and every other button she could find, first tentatively, eventually pounding the keys, wishing she could make something happen.Suddenly – she didn't know what she did -- the screen lit up and the thing began humming. But that was all she could do. No key she hit made anything happen on the screen, not even the "enter" key. And what did she want to do but enter the computer and find the things inside? She gave the thing up and walked through the apartment, the bedroom, and another room with a television and a couch in it. Nothing looked like Laney. There were no women's clothes in the closet, not even anything that she could attribute to Janice. The place was like a hotel.
She found a pitcher of water in the refrigerator and sat at the table, drinking several glasses in a row. The kitchen, too, lacked any sign of her daughter. There were magnets on the refrigerator, but no photos or postcards displayed there. As her body absorbed the water she drank, she felt more tears on her cheeks. These tears, she thought, were for Laney's lost clothes and possessions. Peter had only brought home a small box of her things. He had not even asked Judy and Warren before getting rid of everyone else. She hated him now.
Her footsteps echoed hollow on the cement stairs on her way out. The same taxi driver who had brought her still sat in his cab near the entranceway. She spent the rest of the day in her hotel bed and in the bathroom. She couldn't cry anymore, so she closed her eyes and let the questions walk all over her like ants. What, what, why, why. She slept, but her dreaming felt the same as lying in bed awake. What, what. Why, why. Where?
The next day Judy leafed through the diary. She felt she couldn't face her son-in-law without hurting him now that she knew what he was doing. Maybe he had been sleeping with this receptionist while Laney was still alive. Even if he hadn't, his wife had been dead for less than a month. Didn't he miss her? All this time she and Warren had thought Laney was happily ensconced here with a husband who adored her, and now it looked like he hadn't loved her at all. She had been a negligent mother, assuming Laney's happiness without any direct evidence.
She thought she might stay in bed for the rest of the two weeks. She was stupid to have come. It was as if she had confused herself with her daughter, who was brave and adventuresome and not afraid of anything. Judy -- how could she have forgotten? -- was not very bright, and afraid of a lot of things. Over the past 25 years, Judy realized, she had grown a bigger and bigger ego, all based on how beautifully her only child had turned out. Before Laney, there hadn't been any big accomplishments. Dental hygenist school. Big whoop. She was kind of a no one person before Laney came along.
But with Laney, teachers looked at her with glowing eyes.
"Oh Mrs. Pfifer, Laney is a special girl." She'd heard that one plenty of times.
Judy picked up the diary again and opened it to the one page that fascinated her most.

Wondering what motherhood would be like. Peter doesn't want to do it but I do. I doubt I'd ever be the kind mom was, totally selfless, I just don't see me erasing myself like that. I'll always want my own life. Anyway, must work on P. Lili isn't getting any younger and Ma Ni doesn't know it but those kids get more damaged by lack of interaction than they do by malnutrition.

Judy wanted to tell Laney that motherhood had done the opposite of erasing her. It had drawn her in full color where previously she was a drab silhouette.
Could Laney have been pregnant? Judy guessed not, since it said "Peter doesn't want to do it." She must have been talking about future plans. The entry wasn't dated. Back in Lansing Judy thought she would track these people down, this Lili who wasn't getting any younger, this Ma Ni. Now that seemed like a ridiculous dream.
Judy didn't go out the next day. She watched television, even Japanese movies dubbed into Chinese, with disturbingly violent sex scenes. Warren had left a message for her while she was out at the villas, but she didn't call him back. She didn't know if he had felt hopeful at all about her trip, but in case he did she couldn't bear to tell him that she had learned nothing. She thought of changing her plane ticket. Eleven more days of eating room service and watching television seemed an even worse kind of purgatory than the one waiting at home.
At home, Warren unlocked the front door after work and went right upstairs to bed. None of the things that once brought him comfort: eating, bathing, even pornography, did anything for him now. He had seen a television commercial about group support for people suffering from grief and depression. That was the kind of thing that Judy would have made him do if she were here. He stared at the telephone on the bedside table, thinking of calling his wife, but he didn't. He couldn't think of what to say, and anyway she hadn't called him back the last time yet.
On her fourth afternoon in China, Judy walked outside the hotel, praying she would not get lost. She soon came to apartment blocks lined up like a platoon of tanks, all the same, all with hundreds of windows like honeycombs, hundreds of balconies with wet clothes hanging. She sighed, imagining for the first time how many people there must be in the world. She thought of all the families in these identical apartments who all thought they were important, who all had their own grandparents, their own daughters who they thought were especially bright. She held in her mind qualitative indicators of how special Laney really had been, reminding herself that it wasn't just her mother's bias. Laney received a full scholarship to play the oboe in the University of Michigan orchestra. Warren had been disappointed when Laney got married after college and announced that she was following Peter to China, instead of looking for a job or maybe going to graduate school. But Judy was proud to tell people that her daughter resided in China, and that no, her husband wasn't in the service. Judy told her friends at the dentist office where she worked how Laney studied Chinese and did volunteer work while other wives of executives spent their time shopping and complaining about the help.
She passed an old man, dressed in the familiar blue suit with a matching cap. The man carried a bird cage of brown wood, with a tiny chirping bird inside. He smiled at her, and said a word she presumed meant hello, she'd heard it so many times: "Lao wai."
She thought, sir, you have no idea who I am. You should have seen my daughter.
Back at the hotel, Janice stood in front of the revolving door. The dish ran away with the spoon, Judy thought, picturing Janice's wide brow as a porcelain dinner platter.
Judy walked past her, through the revolving door, and toward the elevator. Janice followed.
“Mrs. Pfifer,” Janice touched her arm. Judy pushed the up button.
“Mrs. Pfifer, please come to my home, I invite you,” she said.
Judy stared ahead as if she didn't hear. She owed it to Laney to hate this girl.
“Mrs. Pfifer, Peter didn't want me to talk to you about Laney, but I feel very painful that you lost your daugther. I want to help you find out the things you want to know.”
Judy was torn. What if she ignored this girl and none of the phone numbers in the diary panned out? It seemed clear that Peter wasn't going to sit down and talk to her. It might be that she went with Janice, or she went home a complete failure.
She nodded, mutely, and followed Janice out of the hotel, to a busstop. The two women avoided one another's eyes. Janice, it was clear, was embarrassed about what Judy had found out.
When the bus came, Janice hustled them on and plucked a single bill out of Judy's jumbled handful of Chinese money to buy her a tissue-thin ticket from a tiny woman elbowing her way through the crowd. The only way they could stand in the crush of people was with their faces pointing in opposite directions. Janice kindly kept a hand on Judy's shoulder, helping to steady her when the bus jostled over potholes, but Judy could not see her face. That was fine with her.
After about 20 minutes they got off and walked through several blocks of drab apartment buildings that looked about the same as the ones around her hotel. Finally they entered a dark and narrow doorway and got in an elevator.
In the corner of the elevator was a middle-aged woman, sitting on a stool, knitting. Janice exchanged a few words with the woman, but didn't smile. The woman looked up from her knitting long enough to examine Judy unflinchingly, then returned to her work.
The hallway leading to Janice's door was concrete and dark. The air smelled strongly of rotting vegetables and clogged pipes. Outside the door was a mat and several pairs of shoes. Janice opened the door and called out something in Chinese.
“My mother,” she told Judy, as a hunched, plump woman with tightly curled hair appeared in the hall.
The woman clutched her hand hard and looked into her eyes and said a long chain of Chinese words directly at her. She knew about her loss, Judy saw. She tried to smile in gratitude, although she felt the woman's effusiveness an intrusion.
“Mama says she is sorry your daughter died,” Janice said.
No one had ever said that to her, since that first day when Peter's parents said it. Your daughter died. Judy liked the acknowledgement. In America, people who spoke to her seemed mortified if the word daughter even came up in conversation around her. As if she might have forgotten what happened to her, and they didn't want to remind her.
The hallway had prepared her for a dump, but the apartment was nice. The floors were a light wood, the walls mirrored. Janice led her into a living room and sat her down on a small pink couch, covered in plastic. The end tables and a coffee table were made of a glossy black plastic. There was a clock shaped like a cartoon cat above the television set, and stuffed animals covered a chair. They sat silently, and Judy heard scraping and shuffling sounds coming from another room, and a man's voice talking. The mother's voice answered.
Judy thought she should get some conversation going, but all she could think to ask was, “How long have you been sleeping with my daughter's husband?” After Janice had been so nice, she felt she couldn't ask that now. Even though she really wanted to know.
“You and your mother live together?” Judy finally asked.
“My Mama, and my sister, and my father,” she said. “We are from a village about 100 miles north of Beijing. I bought this apartment so they could live here with me.”
Judy looked around with new appreciation for the place. Janice was a good daughter, she had to admit.
Janice's mother brought in a tray with a small teapot and two skinny glasses. Janice poured a glass of tea and Judy held it on her knee, feeling the hot circle through the leg of her slacks.
“So,” Janice said finally. “What do you want to know about Laney?”
Judy thought about how to answer. Surely, having flown all this way, she must know what she was trying to find out, she told herself.
Finally she said, “I want to know how she died.”
Janice looked surprised.
“She was hit by a car,” she said. “Traffic in this city is very dangerous.” She said this simply and gently.
“But Peter said she was in a neighborhood far from their home, alone. And that people who saw her get hit said she was riding a bicycle. Yet her bicycle was at home that day. I feel like Peter isn't telling me something.”
“You know, I can tell you that Laney had several Chinese friends who were students,” Janice said. “The accident happened in the student part of town, near the universities. I don't know, but I would guess that Laney was maybe riding on the back of a student friend's bicycle.”
“Do you know the names of these friends?” Judy asked hungrily. One hand reached into her purse for a pen.
“I'm sorry, I don't,” Janice said.
Judy felt frustrated. She wasn't asking the right questions, or Judy didn't really know anything.
“Laney's passport is missing. Do you have any idea what might have happened to it?” Judy asked.
“I'm sorry, I don't. The things I told you are things that Peter told me before Laney died. Since then, he doesn't want to talk about it. It is painful for him.”
Judy chuckled, and she could see her laughter made Judy feel uncomfortable.
“Janice, did Peter love my daughter?”
“He loved her very much,” the girl said, and she stopped, her voice trembling a little. “Mrs. Pfifer, you think I am a very bad woman. And my mother” -- she glanced at the doorway -- “she would think I am so bad too if she knowed this. But I have tried to be a friend to Peter, because even before Laney died, he was sad.”
Judy stared. The girl's English, she noticed, went downhill as she lost her composure.
“Why was he sad?”
Janice swallowed. “I don't know,” she said. And though Judy didn't belive her, she had come to like the girl enough that she didn't want to make her cry. She stopped questioning her, and they sipped their tea, and Janice told her a few more things about Laney's life in Beijing. How her daughter hated having to eat dinner with visiting business associates and going to expatriate parties.
“You know, when I saw Laney she was usually talking about many things she was doing here in China, and she wanted to travel more in China,” Janice said. “Um, living in this country, she said it was an adventure. And to many American people working here, especially wives of men working here, they call it ...” she paused to think of the word -- “hardship.”
Janice walked her to the busstop, in a gloomy early evening, and waited with her until the bus came lumbering up, without headlights on. Janice spoke to the bus driver, and when the bus came to Judy's stop, the driver shouted something out, and, seeing her hotel at the end of the block, she exited the bus. She felt proud of herself. She was getting around.
Back in her room, Judy felt reenergized by her visit with Janice. Meeting her mother had turned the girl from an adulteress into someone's daughter to her, and she now considered that she had one friend in this dust-choked, lonely city. She remembered now, after days of inactivity, that she still had several phone numbers out of Laney's diary that she could try calling. It wasn't too late in the evening to call.

The phone numbers in Laney's diary were these:
Grant 8644-7838
(Chinese character) 8699-0025
(no name) 8400-9198
Tina 8422-8825
(no name) 8677-9900
(no name) 8648-8104

They were scattered on different pages, in between poetry and sketches and journal entries. After her burst of activity, Judy sat and stared at the numbers, which she had transcribed onto a sheet of hotel stationery. She had no idea if these people were close friends of Laney's or taxi drivers or what.
She dialed the number for Tina first, thinking that a woman would be easier to talk to. There was no answer.
Synopsis:
Judy calls a number that turns out to be a massage and moxibustion practitioner, and inadvertently gets a treatment due to a failure to communicate. The experience, at first bizarre and frightening to her, ends up bringing her some comfort as she is engulfed in memories of tending to her daughter during a preteen illness and having intimate conversations with her in the throes of fever.
Feeling empowered, she calls Peter and demands that they meet. He agrees to see her the next evening for dinner. Then she visits an art center that caters to expatriate wives and children, and finds to her frustration that the teacher who had met Laney there is on a two-month trip to rural China collecting native handicrafts. She makes a scene when the director gives her a long tour and offers to let her take a pottery class for free, wasting her time when he has no information for her. The story picks up again as she is returning from the art center.
***
Judy managed to flag down her own taxi. She said to the driver, “Great Wall Sheraton,” and to her relief, he nodded and drove in the right direction. On the ride home she fumed about the man wasting her time, thinking of how much every minute cost her. The hotel room was costing her $150 a night. She spent $20 or $30 a day on room service, and that much again on taxis many days. And she had taken leave from her job, she was earning nothing. She thought for the first time since Laney's death of the mortgage payment, and the other bills, and wondered of Warren knew to pay them. She almost liked the idea of having their home taken away, of becoming destitute in the wake of Laney's death. Any fresh misfortune would help her generate fresh tears, and crying was something to do. After awhile, it became impossible to cry simply about Laney. She had to think of something new, like the warbling sounds Laney made at six months old, or the day that a preschool teacher she met at the park told her that two-year-old Laney was using words that her four-year-olds didn't know.
She tried the number for Tina again, but this time a woman answered who spoke no English. Even so the conversation lasted several minutes, with the woman saying, “Ti-na? Ah, Ti-na, Ti-na,” and then unleashing long Chinese sentences at her. While they attempted to communicate the red message light on Judy's phone began to glow.
It was a message from Peter.
“Judy, you are going all over Beijing trying to investigate something about Laney and her life here. You know, I felt this instinct too at first. But you know Judy, I don't advise that you do this. I have found it much more therapeutic to focus on the happy memories of life with Laney, and not obsess to much on the details of this one day, when she happened to die. You know? Anyway, Judy, that's what I think. And I'm afraid I can't make it for dinner tomorrow night, but we should certainly have lunch while you are here in Beijing, and I will have Janice schedule this with you, OK? Bye bye, Judy.”
She sat with the receiver against her ear, thinking about what she had just heard. Someone had called Peter to tell him she'd been asking questions. Maybe someone at the art center.
She played the message again, and decided that Peter's voice was not at all one of kind concern. He wanted to stop her from snooping around.
“You are so stupid,” she told herself aloud, and she began to pace around the room, a panicked feeling dancing in her chest. Peter did not want her to find out anything about Laney's death. Why had it never occurred to her that Peter might have killed her daughter. He was having an affair. He wanted to get rid of her. He had been so cold at the funeral, he had rid his apartment of all her things. It was all so obvious.
“Oh Laney,” she said. In the past she might have thought it was crazy to talk to yourself alone in a hotel room, but she didn't care what was crazy anymore. “Stupid mommy.” That was something she used to say to herself if she accidentally bumped Laney's head as a baby when she carried her around, or once when she'dropped Laney's birthday cupcakes upside down in the snow and they'd gotten all mashed. “Stupid mommy.”
She didn't know what to do now. She couldn't let on to Peter what she suspected, or he would never speak to her at all anymore. She called Peter's work number, hoping to speak to Janice, and figured that if Peter answered she would simply say she was calling to schedule their lunch. As she dialed she was trying to think of ways to figure out if Janice were involved in this whole ugly thing. And should she be calling the police? The prospect of that filled her with so much fear that she just squeezed her eyes shut and listened to the ringing in the phone receiver.
Janice answered. Judy almost hung up. When she heard the young woman's kittenish voice, the idea that she could be an accessory to murder seemed ridiculous. She took a breath, and knew she had to say something or Janice would hang up.
“Janice?” she finally said.
“Judy,” the young woman said, nervously. “How are you doing?”
“Janice, did Peter kill Laney?” she burst out. How did that happen? Stupid mommy.
Janice laughed a small laugh. An uncomfortable one.
“Judy, Laney had a friend, and I know her friend. Maybe her friend could tell you more, what you need to know."
Judy felt both excited and angry. When she went to Janice's house, the woman had told her she didn't know the phone numbers of Laney's friends here.
“I'm afraid her friend is a little shy," Janice went on. "I will go to his school and ask him to talk to you. OK?"
"Now?" Judy asked her.
Janice paused. There at the SOS office, she chewed her finger as she thought.
"I will go to his school this evening, and ask if he will talk to you tomorrow, ok?"
That meant more waiting. But Judy agreed.
Judy picked up Laney's diary again and read from the beginning, scouring it for clues that Peter had ever abused her daughter or of fighting between them. But there was very little mention of the couple's relationship. There were several names that were mentioned more than the P. for Peter. Mostly Y. and Ma Ni. Was one of these people the one that Janice was going to track down for her? She hadn't even asked the name of this friend. She wondered why Judy had kept this from her before. It seemed obvious that this friend was someone important. Unless Janice was just buying time so she could tell Peter that Judy was onto them. She put down the book and lapped the room several times. Here she was, waiting trustingly, while they might be packing up and leaving the country. Then again, what country could they hide in better than this crazy place. She could barely order a sandwich outside the walls of this hotel, how could she have someone arrested for murder?
After four hours of agony and doubt, Judy heard her phone ring and leapt to it. Janice was calling to tell her they could meet Laney's friend the next night, at 5 p.m., on the campus of Beijing University, where he was a student.
“He will tell you everything,” Janice said. They hung up and Judy was condemned to another full day of wondering if she was being duped. And once again, she had failed to ask the friend's name.
The next afternoon Judy wasn't sure whether she should start waiting for Judy in the lobby good and early, or stay up in her room until the last minute so she woudln't miss a phone call. She had left several messages with numbers she's found in the diary, and yet no one was calling her back. When she went down to the lobby at 10 minutes before their 4 p.m. Appointment, Janice was already standing outside the revolving doors. It was raining lightly.
“Why didn't you come in?” Judy asked. Seeing Janice, her suspicion again faded into silliness, and her maternal habits rose.
“You know, they don't like Chinese to come in here, if we are not accompanied by foreigners,” Janice told her.
“Really?” Judy said. She couldn't believe that. She felt like she was the inferior, the outsider in this country, and yet it was the natives who were being discriminated against. Actually, Laney had written about that in her diary, she realized, in a passage that she hadn't much understood until just now.
“What is this friend's name?” she asked Janice as they walked toward the busstop.
“His name is Yong,” Janice said. She didn't offer any more information. Judy pulled the diary out of her shoulder bag and flipped through it, searching for a mention of Yong, and noticed that many entries mentioned a “Y.”
“Went to Y.'s for dinner. His mother is such a good cook! She's somewhat suspicious of me, this foreign woman hanging around her son. But I think we began to break through to her when we persuaded her to taste the cheesecake I brought. She said she hated it, but she couldn't stop watching us eat it. She pressed her chopsticks through it, and smelled it, and did anything but take another bite. Next time she's taking us where she works --”
The bus came, and Janice found to her disappointment that it was so crowded that she could not raise her arms to read further in the diary. She felt jealous of this Yong's mother, if he was indeed the Y in the book. This woman had spent time with her daughter more recently than she had.
All these people, she thought, glaring around at the mass of heads and shoulders she could see, had the opportunity to spend time with my daughter, when I couldn't. She resented them all. They hung onto bars and straps on the bus, looking tired and oblivious to her resentment.
They rode a bus together for about half an hour. Janice said they were going to the University of Beijing.
At the university they passed a pair of guards in uniforms that looked military. They walked across long stretches of grass that could have been on any of the campuses they'd driven Laney to her junior year of high school. Then they walked up a broad set of stone steps, into a class building.
Janice led her into a classroom and turned her head, looking up and down the long row of desks. Then she took Judy's hand and walked toward one of them. Judy followed along, feeling like a little girl crossing the street with her babysitter.
Judy thought she spotted Yong when she saw a strikingly handsome student with long bangs framing his eyes. She was watching him write characters in a vertical line on graph paper when she heard a scuffle and chair scrape from the other side of the room. Janice was pulling her along before Judy realized that Yong was the student who was walking in long, jerky steps out toward the hallway.
The two women stopped following him after a few moments and stood hand in hand, embarrassed, in the middle of the hall. She had barely glimpsed the young man, except to see that he was medium height, and had a thick head of slightly wavy hair. In each classroom they passed, students were whispering to one another and there were low titters. They love to laugh at people in this country, Judy thought, her cheeks burning.
Janice was angry.
"I told him we were coming on the phone," she said. "He agreed to talk to you."
They walked to the bus stop just outside the campus' grand gates. Yong was not in sight.
Spending this hour with Janice, Judy felt her suspicion of the murder plot wilting away. It all seemed so paranoid. She had been thinking about delaying her return flight, but now it seemed there was no point. Even if Laney had been murdered, how would she ever know? And what would it help to stay here wandering in confusion?
"Well, I'm going home tomorrow," Judy told Janice, the decision becoming definite as she voiced it. “It was nice to see some of China.”
"You have to talk to Yong," Janice said.
“No,” Judy said. “I have to go home. I think I decided to come here when I was just crazy from the shock of Laney's death. I spent a lot of money, and it didn't help anyone. I have to go back to work.”
Janice took a deep breath, and Judy looked over at her.
“Judy, you think Peter hurt Laney. And I have to tell you, it was Laney who hurt Peter.”
Judy stared at her.
“What are you talking about?”
“Yong, he was Laney's ...” she paused, obviously searching for a word. “Lover.”
Judy slapped the woman, her hand fitting easily on the woman's broad cheek. Then they stared at one another, and Judy looked at the outline of her hand on Janice's pale skin. Janice's eye teared a little on the side she had been hit.
“You're the slut,” Judy said. “Not my daughter.”
Janice turned on her heel and began walking away briskly, and Judy stared after her. Now what is going to happen, she asked herself. You're just going to let your only information source walk away?
She chased Judy, and as she got closer she heard that the girl was crying. She grabbed her shoulder, trying to be gentle this time.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm afraid I'm a little crazy.” And she giggled a little, because it was a crazy thing to say.
“My mama, she slapped me too when she found out,” Janice bleated. Judy found herself hugging the girl.
“No, no,” she said. “Tell your mother she's lucky she has you.” She felt so confused and churned up.
“Janice, I have to talk to Yong,” she said after the girl's tears had subsided, and Janice scribbled a number down on a piece of paper and put it in her hand.
“Judy, I'm sorry I went with Peter,” she said, and whimpered as more tears came out. “I went with him before Laney died, too. He was so unhappy, because his wife never home, and he know his wife has a boyfriend. I'm sorry.”
The girl walked away, and Judy saw students turn to stare at her as she went. She must have still been crying. Funny, Judy thought, that people thought crying was something to stare at. In her world, it was more normal than drinking a glass of water.
Judy read the numbers on the scrap of paper. She had no idea where she could go to make a phone call. She had to see Yong tonight and find out if this were true, this story about her daughter having an extramarital affair. She had rarely even considered the fact that Laney had sex with her own husband, much less someone else. Maybe this was just part of the ploy to distract her from investigating a murder.
She walked about 10 blocks, and saw the trees and iron gates of the campus area give way to more of the boxy buildings that seemed to occupy every neighborhood of this city. One gunmetal colored building after another, the kind of places that would be called tenements in the United States. No lawns. The sky was a listless blue-gray, on what should have been one of the brilliant late afternoons in the end of September. But there was never any brilliant sunlight here, she'd noticed, just smoggy and less smoggy.
In Michigan, it was just the kind of sunny morning she was thinking of, with a touch of apple-crisp to the air. Warren had pulled their Ford Bronco over to the side of the road. Adrenaline coarsed through his veins, and he welcomed the undeadening sensation. He had just driven across a bridge, intending to steer the Bronco right over the side, into the river. But his own arms bucked him, insisted like a meddling Boy Scout that his 53-year-old, spiritually bereft body must be saved. As he sat behind the wheel, panting, he realized that one of the things he'd been looking forward to about death was not having to arrive at work at the Ford plant that morning. Huh, he thought. Compared to being dead, any consequences of not showing up to work seemed like chickenshit. He made an illegal U-turn – really, what's the worst that could happen? -- and went back home.
After Judy had walked 20 blocks, a young man walked up to her out of the blue.
“Hello, foreign friend,” he said. “Can I help you?”
He was about the same height as she, with that jovial presence that slightly fat people have.
Judy wondered if this was really happening. It was like she the occasional dream she had where she realized halfway through that this was a dream and that she could make anything she wished happen. Just in case, she wished she'd see Laney walk up the sidewalk too, but this didn't happen.
“I need to make a phone call,” she told the smiling young man.
He grabbed her elbow. “International call, let's go now to the Friendship Hotel,” he said, and started to drag her toward the bus stop.
“No, just a local call.”
“Beijing phone call?” he asked. “Not an international phone call?”
“Right,” she said.
He brought her halfway down the block, where an open window in an apartment wall gave onto a tiny shop. A red plastic telephone sat just inside the window.
Judy picked up the receiver and dialed the number Janice had written. The woman behind the window picked up a stopwatch and began timing her call. Judy's chubby helper chatted with the woman, intermittently beaming at Judy as if he worked in customer service. She realized that the young man must have simply wanted to practice his English on her. From time to time as he talked to the storekeeper, he gestured to her, perhaps, she thought as the phone rang, telling the story of how he had just encountered her on the street and brought her here.
A woman anaswered the phone in Chinese. Judy hand't expected this and her heart stopped for a moment. “I'm calling for Yong?” she said. It occurred to her that the young man might not have gone home after fleeing from their meeting at the school, or that his home was far away and he was still on his way there. Maybe she wouldn't be able to talk to him, and – the chickenship part of her perked up at this idea – she would just go home tomorrow without being able to talk to him.
But the woman called, “Yong!” and in a moment she heard a male voice through the red plastic receiver.
“Hello, is this Yong?” she asked.
Silence, and the chickenshit part of her hoped he would just hang up.
“Yes.” he said. Silence. The woman behind the counter watched her timer click.
“Yong, this is Laney Nelson's mother. You were a friend of hers?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I was told that it was very important to meet you. I'm trying to ...” she had not been able to adequately explain this mission she was on to anyone. “I'm trying to understand a few things about her death.”
His breath drew and released, drew and released, through the phone. The timer clicked. The traffic roared behind her head.
“I am sorry I ran away,” Yong said, suddenly sounding like a vulnerable child.
“That's all right,” she told him. Another pause.
“I need to meet you today, Yong. I'm going home tomorrow. Where can I meet you?”
He asked where she was now, and she didn't know. He asked to speak to the owner of the telephone, and she handed over the red receiver. The woman spoke and listened in several intense bouts, her words frequently punctuated by interjections. “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” she said, looking Judy up and down. “Ah, ah, ah.”
When the receiver was handed back to her, Yong told her to take bus 42 to the Beijing Zoo. He would meet her at the entrance. The telephone woman, after handing her many large fistfuls of small bills in exchange for her 100 yuan note, sent a small girl with pigtails tied up in plastic ribbons out front to guide Judy to the busstop. The girl took her hand and led with authority. When the bus pulled up, the small girl boarded with her and pushed through several layers of adults to address the driver. She spoke to the driver in a loud, bossy voice, gestured to Judy, then turned and trotted back to the little store. She and the storekeeper waved at her through the bus window as she passed.
After a 10 minute ride, the bus driver called out to her, and two passengers took her hands and practically dragged her to the bus' exit. She found herself standing in front of what must have been the zoo, where bored ticket sellers stood selling no tickets, probably because the place was about to close. There was Yong, smoking a cigarette, which he tossed aside abashedly when he saw her and took her hand.
They looked at one another, and then Yong turned to a plump teenaged girl behind the ticket window and spoke. He and Judy pushed through the turnstile and entered without paying.
“My cousin,” he said.
They walked in the opposite direction of all the other zoogoers, who were trailing toward the exit, each one or two adults clutching the hand of one child, often a plump little boy in school uniform, eating ice cream in the evening chill.
Now that she was finally faced with someone who could probably answer her questions, Judy felt tired of asking them. They walked in silence for awhile, squinting as the direct light from the lowering sun struck their faces.
“Laney was a good friend. A nice girl,” Yong said finally, and although his words didn't reveal much, Judy heard in his voice a fellow mourner. Suddenly she believed what Janice had told her. This boy loved her daughter.
They stopped and leaned against an iron rail outside the panda enclosure. Paper cups, Coca-cola cans and ice cream wrappers littered the grass where two pandas lolled, eating bamboo.
“Yong, how did you know Laney?”
“She teach me English.”
“Were you, well, an orphan?” she asked, confused.
He chuckled.
“No, my mama, my mother, she is works at the orphanage,” he said. “When Laney come to the orphanage, she teach the little children, and I also listen. And I also learn. And now because of Laney I can attend Beijing University, because I can pass English test. And also, Laney hope I will go to study in United States.”
When they turned away from the pandas, the bits of sky visible between buildings and enclosures had turned red. As they walked they saw cleaners sweeping the zoo, very short old people wearing white surgical masks and caps, with long sleeve protectors over their arms, whisking around brooms that looked to be made of branches and stirring up more dust than they got into their dustpans.
“Yong, were you in love with Laney?”
The darkness made it easier for him to speak.
“Yes, I love Laney,” he said. “I am sorry.”
She almost laughed. She couldn't both hate one man for not loving her daughter and this one for loving her.
“That's all right, Yong,” she said. It sounded like the wrong thing to say. She didn't think it was alright that Laney would cheat on her husband. She still couldn't really believe it. Peter must have been so bad to her, Judy decided, so abusive, that Laney was forced to go against own morals and seek comfort elsewhere.
She thought she'd wanted to find this young man to ask about the day that Laney died. But now that he walked by her side, she just listened gratefully to what he wanted to say.
“Laney, you know, she loves music. We play music toghether at the Keep In Touch bar, I would like to take you there.”
“I have to go home to America tomorrow morning,” she told him.
“OK, let's go to Keep in Touch right now,” he said, and he led her to the zoo exit. Then they were in the backseat of a taxi together. Now, surrounded by lights from other cars and streetlights, she was able to really get a good look at him. His hair was short and had a slight wave, it was thick, and despite his youth there were gray hairs peppered here and there. He wore glasses that looked more expensive and sophisticated than any she had seen on Chinese people. He had a mole on his left cheek. He was handsome, his mouth as sweet as an orange wedge, and his eyes soft and puppyish. She could see how Laney could love this boy.
The Keep in Touch was a small bar and restaurant tucked in an alley between large hotels, not really far from her own hotel, Judy realized with a shock of recognition. A beautiful Chinese woman with very long, loose hair hugged Yong when they arrived, and after they exchanged brief words in Chinese, she turned to Judy, solemn-eyed, and hugged her too. The woman's arms were felt as thin and light as noodles around her shoulders.
“Your daughter was a wonderful, talented girl,” the woman said. Judy felt the closest approximation to happiness that she had since the day she'd learned of the tragedy.
They were seated in a quiet corner and Chinese food appeared on the table moments later, along with a bottle of red wine. Judy had never drunk wine, and it tasted sour to her, but she sipped it. She was used to having a drink or two in the evening, and with all the strange people around her, and her nervousness over the unknown evening ahead of her, she was grateful to have a drink now.
Yong gestured to the small stage in front of the tables, empty now as people ate dinner. “We would perform there, sometimes. You met the owner, Wang Xina, she sometimes play with us too. Laney play Chinese flute, I play guitar, Wang Xina play violin and sometimes sing. I have Laney's flute. I can give it to you.”
“Did you see Laney every day?”
“Well, many days,” Yong said. He drank his own wine quickly and poured himself another glass. As the red liquid filled the glass, his ears turned pink as if they too were filling up with liquid.
“Laney, she have to do some things related to Mr. Nelson's office. She have to go to dinner with clients, and Mr. Nelson like her to take their wives to activities – to Great Wall, to Chinese art projects, to Chinese opera.”
Judy nodded. Her daughter had told her how much she hated to do this kind of thing. A lot of schmoozing came with Peter's job.
“But Laney like to come to the orphanage with my mama, my mother,” he said. “I would like to take you there. And Laney like to help my, my mother cook dinner, and learn Chinese cooking. And learn more Chinese. My ma, my mother, she does not speak Engligh.”
“Did Laney correct you when you called you mother Ma?” Judy asked.
Yong chuckled shyly, and blushed. In the light of tabletop candles, his blush seemed to glow. “Yes, she corrected many things. Sometimes, she is a very mean teacher.” They both laughed.
“Yong, I want to meet your mother.”
“Yes, but ...” his voice trailed off.
“Don't you want me to meet her?”
“Yes, I want you to meet her, but I am afraid there is a problem.” He stopped again. People in this country, Judy realized, did not like to say no.
“What is the problem.”
“My ma-mother, she have to spend the night at the orphanage tonight, and tomorrow night, and there is no bus to there now. It is outside Beijing, somewhat far. Laney, sometimes she have the SOS driver take us there.”
Thinking about SOS, Judy remembered her suspicion that Peter could have killed Laney. It seemed a little crazy now that she sat here in this very civilized restaurant, eating chicken and broccoli and rice with a fork. Judy wondered if the company's driver might also be a good person to talk to. She needed more time!
“Yong, do you know what happened the day that Laney died?”
There was a long silence. When she looked across the table at him she saw that tears were running down his face. She reached across and held his hands. He was the first person who she had comforted about her daughter's death. Peter hadn't seemed to need it, and Warren? She didn't really know what Warren was feeling. His face had seemed like a blank chalkboard when he'd dropped her off at the airport, and she hadn't given it more thought.
“Yong, we need more time, don't we?” He sniffled and nodded, and she felt her maternal self stirring inside her. “But my flight home is tomorrow morning, and I only have a 14-day visa. Seven days are already gone. And I still don't know what happened to Laney.” For some reason, his weeping allowed her to stay dry-eyed.
After a few minutes Yong pulled himself together. They left the restaurant without paying – Wang Xina smiled and waved them out – and Yong took her arm.
“Which is your hotel?” he asked, and he walked her there.
“Mrs. Pfifer,” he said, “We could get you a longer visa if you postpone your flight. But we would have to go to Hong Kong.”
She grasped at this idea and agreed immediately, despite all the obstacles to this plan – her work, Warren, everyone expected her back tomorrow, the airline would charge her more money for changing the ticket, and this sudden prospect of a trip to Hong Kong. All she knew is that she'd found the boy who loved Laney, and she wasn't about to turn around and go home without knowing more. Besides, she still thought it possible that Laney might have been murdered.
“When could we go to Hong Kong?”
“I could see about the tickets tomorrow, and perhaps we can leave in two days or sooner,” he said. “But,” he said shyly. “The trouble is, I don't have the money to buy train tickets to Hong Kong.”
They had reached the Great Wall Sheraton and sat on the lobby couch. She pulled out her wallet. “How much money will it cost, for both of us?” She asked. He stood next to her while she cashed five more traveler's checks, $300 for him and $200 for herself.
“I will go to Beijing Train Station early tomorrow morning and call you as soon as I have the tickets, Mrs. Pfifer,” he said.
“Please, call me Judy,” she told him, hugging him.
He hesitated.
“May I call you, Ayi?” he asked. “That means Auntie.”
She nodded, and watched him leave through the revolving door and disappear abruptly behind its reflective glass.
She realized when she returned to the room, wanting only to sleep, that she hadn't spoken to her husband since that first day. It was morning there now, and she could catch him before she went to work. But first she wanted to call the airline, so that the ticket would already be changed when she called Warren, so he could not change her mind. Calling the airline from China was more difficult than she expected, and it was 10 p.m. by the time she had moved her flight date back two more weeks, at the cost of an additional $100. It would be midday at home, and Warren would be at work. She called her own number anyway, feeling relieved that she would have to leave a message instead of speaking to her husband.
But Warren answered.
“Why aren't you at work?” she asked as soon as he said hello.
“Oh, I don't know,” he said softly. He was obviously not coping well, and a wave of guilt washed over her like nausea. There was no one there to help him.
“Warren, I have to stay over here a little longer,” she said nervously. She hoped he wouldn't yell at her. “I met a close friend of Laney's and, you know, I'm not at all sure that Laney didn't meet with foul play over here. Warren, Peter is sleeping with another woman.”
She paused to let this news sink in. She couldn't bring herself to tell him that Laney, too, had been having an extramarital affair. She had already come to understand why Laney did it, but Warren, she knew, wouldn't understand.
“Oh,” he said.
“Warren, how long have you been staying home from work?” she asked.
“Oh, not long,” he said.
“Warren, listen to me, I can't come home right now. I know you're sad, I'm sad too, but I need you to hold it together over there, OK?”
“OK,” he said. And they ended their conversation.
She sat, feeling exactly like she did in a recurring dream she used to have when Laney was a toddler. She'd dreamt she was bathing the little girl when she remembered some errand, and she'd slipped out of the house, forgetting the baby in the bath until hours later. She'd awake sweating and cringing with guilt, only to realize with sweet relief that it was only a dream. She thought of Warren, sitting at home alone, and knew there would be no waking up from this. If he something bad happened to him while she was out of the house, it would be her fault.
She called her sister-in-law and asked, begged her to look in on Warren. Her sister-in-law lived two hours away.
“What are you doing over there, Judy?” the woman asked. Judy didn't really like either of Warren's sisters, but this one, Penny, was the one she could stand.
“Settling Laney's affairs,” Judy said stiffly, and, once she had hung up, laughed at the double entendre. She slept, and for the first time in 20 years, she had the bathtub dream.
Two days later she was settling into a sleeper car with Yong and two other Chinese people. Her heavy soul felt a little lighter, the way it always felt when she set out on a journey. She smiled as she watched Beijing give way to scrubby fields and dirt lanes traversed by men in straw hats, some of them with a single donkey. Looking out the window was like watching the National Geographic channel, and she aborbed for the first time that images like this, of people using animals to till the fields, were contemporary, not some re-enactment of times gone by.
“Yong,” she said, when the sky had darkened and they saw their own reflections in the window. “My daughter's passport is missing.” She had been looking at her own passport, and the photo in which she looked so grief-stunned. “I think maybe she was murdered. Do you think that Peter could have murdered my daughter?”
He looked at her, startled, and repeated the word.
“Murdered?”
“I mean, do you think he got angry at her and killed her?”
“Yes, murdered,” he said. “No, he did not murder her. And, Ayi, I have Laney's passport. It is at my house.”
“What?” she half stood. She hadn't expected this.
“Laney gave me her passport, because, she wanted me to have the photo changed, and to use this passport to go to America.” He looked terrified at her reaction, but he kept speaking. “Lane can be a name for a girl or a boy, yes? You see, I tried to get visa from the U.S. Embassy three times. Every time, I pay $80 US money. I have full scholarship at Univeristy of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Laney helped me get this. But I cannot get visa from U.S. Embassy.”
“You have Laney's visa.”
“Yes.”
The two Chinese strangers in their compartment stared unabashedly at this exchange as their voices rose. One even whispered commentary to the other, apparently translating.
“So you know how Laney died,” she said as the realization came to her.
“Ayi,” he said, looking levelly into her eyes. “I will tell you.” He took a breath.
But after all this seeking, she did not want to sit and listen. She stood up.
“Give me Laney's passport.”
He cringed. “I don't have it here, but --”
She took her small bag and walked down the train's aisle, seeing all the Chinese eyes leaning out from their bunks to stare at her. She wanted to go to the police, or at least to Yong's mother, and make them give that passport back. She thought he was a friend, and he was a thief all along. Maybe he was the one who killed Laney, for her passport, she thought.
She got off the train at the first stop, not knowing where she was, and let herself mix with the crowd on the platform. A man and woman in uniform yelled at her as she went through a turnstile to exit the station. They grabbed at her bag and yelled louder. But she just pushed right past. If there was some law she was breaking, what difference did it make? Obviously people didn't give a whit about laws in this country.
She was in a small town that was no less crowded than Beijing. There were more animals there, a team of horses pulling a cart loaded with orange fruit, and many little open-front shops. In Beijing some of the people stared at her, but here everyone stared. Judy herself stared at a few images in her mind, as if they were floating in front of her face: Laney's passport, with the postage-stamp-sized photo of the girl in mid-laugh, taken in a photo booth in Ann Arbor before she left for her junior year abroad in Italy. Yong, looking suddenly shifty-eyed and mean, the passport in his hand. She felt she had been the victim of a scam.
She came to a stream that reeked of urine, walled by concrete, and walked past several boys holding fishing poles, onto a concrete bridge. She stopped and looked out over the rank water. This seemed to be the end of the town. What was she going to do, walk back to Beijing? Just keep walking for the rest of her life? Once again she realized that her own stupidity had gotten her into a jam. She didn't know how she was going to get back to her hotel room, or home. And who cared?
Then she saw Yong, red faced, running with his own and her suitcase, one in each hand. He didn't seem to know that he could pull out the handle and roll her bag along.
“Mrs. Judy,” he said, and she realized that she'd been waiting for him to appear. After all, what did she think she was going to do here all alone if he didn't show up?
He poured out his story before she could go away again.
“Laney was with me when she died. We were riding on my bicycle. She was riding on the back. A small bus turned, driving very fast, and it hit us. My bicycle hit the windshield. My head was bleeding. But Laney,” a sob cut off his breath. “Laney was hurt in her neck. And I was trying to hold her still. And the people were lifting her into a taxi for going to the hospital. And,” his tears of the night before returned, this time with choking, hiccuping sobs. “And police were coming, and I walked away, and no one was looking at me. Because, that day, we had the photo on Laney's passport changed to be my photo. And I was afraid that if I went to the hospital, police would find this passport and ...”
Judy's hand reached out and smacked the boy square across the jaw. He let his head reel back, and she did it again. It felt so good, she wished she could beat him more. But a small crowd had gathered, and a man grabbed her arm, making cajoling noises, and held it back.
“You stole her passport from her dead body,” Judy told him. She was sure that her version was the true one. He was trying to twist it around to make him look better. “You give me that passport back.”
He was cowering against the seat. “I will give it to you. It is at my house,” he said between sobs.
Then there was nothing else for them to talk about. The crowd stayed, waiting for more, then began to mutter to one another and chat, probably about the day's events in this nowhere village, Judy thought. Eventually she started to walk back toward the train station, and he followed, looking relieved.
The boarded the next train to come along, and Yong showed the conductor their torn ticket from before and gave a long explaination. At first they stood outside the train's door, and Judy wondered if they would be able to board, but after a long exchange the conductor allowed them past, and they sat down on two new bunks. They didn't speak the entire night as they rolled toward Hong Kong. Judy wonderd why she was going. After all, she'd come to find out what really happened to Laney and to retrieve her passport, and suddently she had all but succeeded on both counts. They could turn around and go back to Beijing, fetch it, and she could go back to Warren.
But instead she lay on her bunk, watching Yong after he fell asleep. No more questions bubbled up in her mind, although there were a thousand details about Laney's death that he probably could have added. She wondered if he was still planning to try to get to the University of Michigan. Of course, she'd be taking back Laney's passport, so maybe there would be no way for him to go. Part of her wished he could go, so she could have him over to the house, introduce him to Warren, and, when she was ready, ask more about their relationship and the awful day.
But Warren was never going to know about this boy, she reminded herself. There were things that had always remained between her and Laney, like the time she had picked her daughter and her friends up from a school dance and they'd all been drunk, and she'd had to pull over to let Laney vomit in the gutter. Warren had been out bowling that night, and Judy had never, never told.
There was an entire day and night left on the train ride, but the two of them managed to speak as little as possible. Every few hours a woman came by with a cart and they bought and ate more instant noodles in styrofoam bowls. Judy followed Yong's example and poured steaming water from the car's thermos over her food.
Soon after it got light the next morning Yong put on his shoes and put the book he had been reading -- “For Whom the Bell Tolls” -- and Judy followed his cue, using and putting away her toothbrush and hairbrush. She had already hidden away Laney's diary before she went to sleep the night before, because she did not want Yong to see even the outside cover holding her daughter's intimate thoughts. She realized, of course, that Yong may have seen or even read from the diary. The thought made her burn with jealousy and resentment.
Then the train stopped and the passengers all around them, who'd seemed so sedate and friendly the night before, turned into an insane mob and pushed them toward the car's doors. They were separated, and Judy was one of the last people to make it off the train. Outside, she found Yong waiting, looking nervous.
“OK,” he said, he voice sounding odd after more than 24 hours of silence. “I did not tell you before, but you must go to Hong Kong alone. I cannot leave mainland China.”
She squinted at him, not understanding.
“Hong Kong, you know, it is British until next year. And I have no passport, I cannot leave China. It's OK. You can go to this address --” he handed her a card with English on one side and Chinese on the other -- “and you can get same day express visa. I will wait for you here in train station, and buy our return ticket, and we can go back tonight.”
She couldn't believe this was happening. She had felt like she couldn't wait to get away from Yong, and suddenly she wanted to cling to him like a baby monkey clutches its mother. She could not do this thing alone.
But he told her she could.
Synopsis:
Judy goes to Hong Kong, deals with obstacles, but manages to get the passport and get back to the train station in the nick of time. She gains some self confidence as she realizes how much she has done on her own in this foreign country.
Return to narrative:
Back on the train, Judy turned to Yong and said, “This is what we are going to do.”
She felt flush with power after having gotten her visa all by herself.
Yong looked to her, waiting to follow her orders.
“I'm going to ask you some more questions about Laney.”
She did, and Yong allowed her to cooly pump him for information, although their former feeling of closeness did not return. He and Laney had known each other for 18 months, most of the two years she'd lived here. No, he had not met Peter, but Peter knew about their affair. Peter had discovered e-mails between the two lovers while Laney was alive, and had even attempted to call the University of Beijing to report Yong's behavior, something that could have gotten him kicked out of school. Fortunately for Yong, Peter's Chinese was so poor that he was never able to get through to the appropriate person at the Univeristy, and Janice refused to help him. He wouldn't have wanted anyone else at his office to know about the embarrassing matter, so he'd dropped it.
Yong had been surprised to hear from Janice, whom he had never met. But Laney had told him about her. Yes, Laney had known that Peter and Janice were sleeping together; it had happened after Peter found out about her and Yong. Laney hadn't liked it, although she had liked Janice. But she didn't feel she was in a position to object.
Back in Beijing, she told Yong she wanted to move to a less expensive hotel before they went to his home to get Laney's passport. She didn't know how long she would be staying, she just knew she wasn't ready to go. There was something more she was hoping to get out of Yong, she didn't even know if it was more information or a feeling, or maybe she just wasn't ready to walk away from this person who had been close to Laney, no matter how morally reprehensible he was. Anyway, now she had a three-month visa, so she could stay as long as it took.
Yong helped her check into a less expensive hotel, near the zoo, which was closer to the western suburb where he lived. He offered to come fetch her from her hotel on his bicycle that evening, so she could meet his mother over dinner.
“The same bicycle?” she asked. He nodded.
“I'm sorry Yong,” she said. “But I don't think this old lady's behind is going to fit on the back of your bike. And I don' t think my old joints could take it.”
It wasn't very funny, but they both laughed, trying to push out of their heads the accident Yong had described. Yong gave Judy written instructions so she could take a taxi to his home instead. He rode a minibus to the subway station where his bicycle was parked, and rode home, cursing himself with every pedal: “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Just when the woman had seemed to relax and begin to trust him again, he had suggested she ride on the very bicycle on which Laney had died.
Judy agonized over what to wear for dinner at Yong's house. She wanted to look her best in front of the woman who had been like a second mother to Laney. And yet she didn't want to flaunt what she was coming to realize was her great wealth compared to most people here. She put her gold necklace and pearl earrings away in their boxes, and settled on navy slacks and a sweater with an image of a bird sitting on a limb knitted into it. She even ventured out onto the street near her new hotel and searched for a gift to bring this other mother. Much like outside the Sheraton, there was a street lined with booths nearby. She found a toothless woman in that familiar blue suit selling paper-wrapped candies out of a large bucket. She pointed to them, and shared a smile with the vendor as she piled candies into a thin plastic bag for her with heavily creased and none-too-clean hands. She held out some of the small bills she'd gotten from the telephone woman as change back before their Hong Kong trip, and the old woman looked into her eyes as she plucked two bills from the bunch. Maybe Judy was imagining things but she thought the look said that the woman knew about Judy's pain, and she'd been there. The woman squeezed Judy's right hand, and hung the handles to the plastic bag on her fingers.
One month into being a childless 50-year-old woman, it occurred to Judy: There are other women out there whose babies have died. There are millions of us everywhere. And in this country, she thought, looking up and down a street where construction workers ran welders with no eye protection, where children and adults rode in the backs of big blue trucks and everyone breathed the smoggy air that blackened her lips as the day progressed, there are more than where I come from.
***
Synopsis: Judy meets Yong's mother, Ma Ni, they get along great, through Yong's translation, and the woman shares her good opinion of Laney. Judy learns more about Laney's life in Beijing. She ends up spending the night in their little apartment so they can all go to the orphanage the next morning, because she wants to see the children that Laney would help take care of.
Late in the evening, after Yong has gone to bed, Ma Ni tries to talk to Judy about possibly letting Yong keep Laney's passport. Judy pretends not to understand.

“Zhei she Lili,” Yong's mother said, lifting a baby girl with shaved black black stubble all over her head. The girl clung to the woman's scrawny neck, and her black eyes moved to check Judy out.
Judy felt the ground move below her, and she reached out and touched the wall behind her to steady herself. The wall felt gritty and damp.
“Lili,” Judy said. This name was in Laney's diary. “Laney knew this girl.”
Ma Ni looked at her with those warm eyes that seemed to absorb and accept everything Judy said, even though she knew she couldn't understand a word. The mother gave her son a little gesture, and Yong told her: “Laney was planning to adopt Lili.”
Judy felt a dam break in her, as if every tear she'd shed since her daugther's death had simply gathered in an underground well that now ruptured. This would have been her grandchild in the future she should have had. Her grandchild was now an orphan.
Lili also started crying, but Judy could barely see or hear the child. Ma Ni lead Judy by her shoulders out of the room, and Yong trailed behind, wishing his mother could speak English because he didn't feel qualified to translate the terms of a grieving woman. They sat Judy down on a plastic wrapped couch in a cramped office and she allowed Yong's mother, a woman her own age and half her size, cradle her head against her shoulder as if she were a baby.
When Judy finally got ahold of herself she felt thirsty and weak, as if she'd been swimming for her life in stormy water. Then she saw Yong and his mother looking at her expectantly, and there was another tiny woman in the room who she hadn't seen before. They all looked at her expectantly, and Judy became angry. This was a set up.
“You can't expect me to take responsibility for this baby,” she said. “I'm 50 years old.”
Yong translated and Dama laughed and picked up Judy's hand and stroked it, speaking long paragraphs to her son. But his translation was short.
“She said, Of course, no one expects you to do that. Actually, she says, they could not understand why Laney wanted to take on this girl since she must be able to have her own babies instead.”
And as soon as she realized that she had misunderstood, Judy wanted to do it. She didn't say so, because she knew she'd have to talk to Warren, but she felt it was absolutely essential that she take this baby home. They went back into the nursery and she played with Lili, who didn't shriek and babble the way Laney had done at 8 months. She couldn't crawl either. But she did sit up and wave her arms when Judy came toward her. The other babies she saw of the same size were just lying quietly in their tiny cribs, some of them staring out at her unblinkingly, some crying in kittenish whimpers.
That night she sat by the phone, preparing for her conversation with Warren. But she couldn't focus, with the image of all those stationary babies staring out through crib bars. She felt so powerless. She finally understood a page of Laney's diary that had confounded her, a series of notes like “don't cry” and “delayed speech and motor skills” and “not held = susceptible to infection.” She knew Laney must have seen what she had seen that day, the way some babies desperately lifted their arms up when Ma Ni or one of the other workers passed by, and worse, the way some did nothing. Ma Ni said she tried to pick up each baby once a day besides changing them, but that it was not always possible. There were only the three women working there, and Laney's proposal to solicit groups of foreign executives' wives as volunteers had been denied by the local Secretary of Family Planning and Health.
Thinking of all those babies reaching out to her gave her vertigo, unless she focused on Lili, her brown eyes engaging and not deadish like the others. It was Laney who had saved this baby so far. She couldn't save all those babies, but she could save Lili.
Warren answered the phone after five or six rings.
“Honey?” he said. Since it was the middle of night there, he'd guessed who was calling.
His voice sounded as dead as those babies' eyes. Judy's resolve began shifting under her before the conversation even began.
“Warren, we have to adopt a Chinese baby.”
Silence, and then a grim noise. At first she thought he might be hanging himself. That was really the first thing that crossed her mind. Then she realized he was laughing.
“Honey, I am not joking. Laney was going to adopt this little girl. An orphan. Our granddaughter.”
“Please come home,” he said.
She didn't have an answer to that. But she did realize that she couldn't save all those babies with the dead eyes, or even Lili, or even Yong. And for god's sake, when was she going to realize that she coudln't save Laney? Warren, here was someone she was responsible for.
“OK,” she said, and after some more of that $5-a-minute dead air, they hung up.