She looked at her feet.
He was choked. Seven years of marriage.
How had it fallen apart?
Vienna had something to do with it. Those days of him issuing visas, Grace’s accident, the loss of their unborn child, the loss of his job, and maybe even Miss Schnitzler. Yes, her friend. Even today, he still believed that her death was preventable, had Grace tried harder. And he had told himself countless times that it was all in the past and he must forgive his wife, a young, vulnerable woman with a fragile mind. But it was difficult. It was as though a perfect silk strip of their relationship had been rent in the center, and when he looked at her, he could always detect the fissure, the emptiness, the disappointment, and the discontent.
What were her thoughts about Vienna? He had never asked her, but now it was confirmed. Vienna never left her mind.
He had never foreseen this: Vienna had upended many aspects of people’s lives while he was there, and now, hundreds of miles away, years later, after the losses of everything, his unborn child, his career, the memory of Vienna had dissolved his marriage.
He stood up, put his hand on Grace’s shoulder, and turned away as tears rolled down his cheeks.
CHAPTER 69
GRACE
I supposed I knew it was coming. The past year had been challenging for Fengshan as a civilian in Brooklyn. No German, no polite conversations with dignitaries, no phone calls with his superior, no visas to issue, and, worst of all, no friends. He spent most of his days in the library, researching President Roosevelt, and analyzing the country’s racism, and when he came home, he checked Monto’s homework; on Sundays, he went to church. He laughed less, became more reserved, and jogged often.
I had changed as well. My body had fully recovered, and I was healthy again. But strangely, the body that I was in became a shell, a burden; it no longer belonged to me. I began my menopause at twenty-seven; I no longer had menstruation, felt no sexual desire, and was repelled by the thought of intimacy. When Fengshan touched me in his way that had once melted me, I stiffened, even panicked—the discomfort, the pain. His look made me ashamed, and I had avoided him since.
Sleep also became troublesome, with unexpected hot flashes during the days and nights. Many nights I lay awake, drenched in excessive sweat, tormented by insomnia.
Did Fengshan know? He might; he might not.
We seldom talked, living in a tacit agreement of silence, and when we did talk, I was not interested in his opinions. He looked surprised at my lack of interest. And then we raised our voices a notch too high, and then we scoffed at each other unknowingly, but then knowingly. Lying in bed in the dark, listening to his breathing, I thought of those drugged, lonely days in Vienna as he buried his head in visas, so busy that he never thought to push my wheelchair or walk in the park with me. But visa issuance was not the salt on our marriage, I could see, for even before the issuance, I was that forgettable aide in his life. The husband must sing the melody and the wife must play the accompaniment, he had said, but why must it be so? Shouldn’t the wife carry the melody once in a while, now and then?
If the seed of our disharmony had been sown in Vienna, then in Brooklyn, it had grown to be a giant, malignant tree.
Life was still tolerable, however, with poetry and Monto, my sweet Monto. He was the most intelligent boy in the entire school; after years of taking courses in German, he now read and studied lessons in English, and all the classes, math, science, and history, were easy for him. I packed peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for him, which he grew to like, and walked him to school every day. When a bully at school taunted him about his looks and his German-accented English, I reported it to the principal. During the winter break, I took him to the movie theaters and Broadway shows. He was my American boy.
“What about Monto? Will he leave with you?” I asked, wiping my eyes.
“Of course.” Fengshan was looking out the window.
I said carefully, “China is warring with the Japanese. It’s not suitable for a child to grow up there. How would he receive his education?”
Fengshan was always concerned about education.
He rubbed his face, looking tormented. He had only thought of his future, not Monto’s needs. He knew Monto would be much better off in bustling Brooklyn, not war-torn China.
“If he stays here with me, he’ll still be able to attend school. And I’ll take care of him.”
“He’s my son, Grace.”
“But I love him too. He’s only fourteen. He needs a home, a mother, and a future. In China, how can you keep him safe? Where will he go to school?”
Fengshan rubbed his face again. He knew I was right.
“Perhaps you might want to ask him? He has the right to decide.”
“I’ll ask him,” he said.
That evening we sat at the table, Monto in the middle. He listened, looking distressed, weighing his father and China on one side and me and America and a good education on the other. In the end, Monto gave me a firm hug and said he would go to China with his father. I stood on tiptoe and kissed his forehead—he was taller than me. How fast he had grown.
A few days later, Fengshan and Monto sailed to Hong Kong, since the port of Shanghai was closed, and I waved them goodbye. After a year of seeing it coming, I still couldn’t believe that our marriage had indeed ended. Maybe my reluctance to stop Lola from carrying out her mission had made Fengshan see me in a different light, or maybe his devotion to visas and his mission had made me see him in a different light—I had been so lonely and depressed after the surgery. It didn’t matter anymore. We had lost the belief in each other, in marriage. It was impossible to move forward in Brooklyn.
Start anew.
I called my mother in Chicago, hoping to visit her. A man answered and said she had moved back to Boston after she’d divorced again, and he gave me her address. So I went to Boston and discovered she was in the hospital for a slipped disk. She was not a cooperative patient, complaining and yelling as she crawled on the floor under the doctor’s order to strengthen her joints; she also refused the nurses’ care. So I brushed her teeth, changed her bedpans, gave her a bath, and kept her company while she napped. When she was awake, she frowned at me, saying I was all skin and bones and looked like a woman in my fifties. I didn’t take offense. Mother hadn’t changed.
To take better care of her, I rented an apartment with the money Fengshan gave me and found a waitressing job at a café nearby. During the day, I worked; after work, I went to see Mother. Life was quiet. I took the cues of my body, grew accustomed to rising early, watched the sunrise at four o’clock in the morning, and indulged in freshly brewed coffee and fresh seafood at the market. Sometimes I chatted with the fishermen.
Boston was different from the city I remembered. It was beautiful, with the quiet brilliance of summer where the air was clear like a diamond, with alluring tall red poppies and yellow colonial buildings that stood like a revolution. I was glad I had returned.
Dickinson was still my companion, and now that Lola was part of my poet, I read Lola’s messages at the margin and then Dickinson’s. They calmed me. And sometimes, when thoughts infused my mind like the summer sun, I jotted them down to compose something here and there.
Sometimes I went to the library and bookstores, looking for information on Viennese Jews, Eichmann, the Nazis, and the war in Europe. There were few mentions of Jews or Eichmann, but the war in Europe was all over the papers.