But it’s not zero.
A woman needs something else that is hers alone. Children leave. Children are not always yours.
Am I not yours? I asked slowly, staring down into my hot chocolate.
That’s a complicated question.
It’s a yes or no question.
You believe that, she said and then nothing. She tried to blow on her steam, but the hot chocolate had cooled.
* * *
—
THE SAME CABDRIVER CAME to pick me up and pulled over after the same red light. He asked after my mother, and I said her physical health was much improved.
Twenty minutes spent in thought and feeling the wind of passing cars rock the cab from side to side.
My brother’s type has always been Chinese, and not American born but mainland. The more money he made, the sleeker his girlfriends became. With Tami, I saw that he had perfected his type. The first time we met, they were both working in finance and living together on the southernmost tip of Manhattan, in Battery Park City. The apartment had a dead-on view of a green blip that turned out to be the Statue of Liberty. I had to move to New York, my brother insisted, since at the time I was still studying in Boston. Once I moved here, the three of us could be close and have meals together, and perhaps his hope was that his future wife and I would be friends.
Tami was the only child of high school teachers who had pushed her academically until she rose to the top of her class in every class and was sent to Beijing for college, where she continued to excel. Then from Beijing to New York for a master’s in data science and where, at a hibachi grill, she connected with Fang through mutual friends.
She liked to remind me that she was older, but she was not that much older, three years.
That half day spent at Tiffany’s, Tami was there to buy their wedding bands and to have her engagement ring cleaned. Both of us seemed to realize that we weren’t going to be friends but perhaps we could still be friendly.
She declared that she wanted to buy me something, anything that I liked. The saleswoman cooed after me. Lucky girl. More commission.
I said I didn’t need anything.
You won’t let me buy you a gift, snapped Tami. What do you have against Tiffany’s? The implication being what did I have against her.
Wearing something from here makes you legitimate. Status, she said, her silver bracelet jangling on her wrist like a price tag. Don’t be ungrateful, Joannie. When I was your age, I would have jumped at the chance to shop here.
When she was my age, three years ago, at twenty-four, she hadn’t yet met my brother. A short courtship began after their hibachi meal but since the work visa keeping her here was set to expire, a decision was made to speed up the process. I didn’t want to think this but I did. The most American of mentalities crept in. Beautiful and smart Chinese girl from Chongqing meets my brother, steals my brother, and uses him as a means to an end. Overlooking the fact that she was working many hours in finance as well and would for another two years, until she became pregnant with their first child. Overlooking also the fact that she and my brother had similar core values and were very much in love.
Height and physique–wise they were well matched. At five nine, my sister-in-law reminded me of an integral sign or the elegant f-holes of a violin. Fang somehow got the height gene and grew five inches past our father to six one. Then thanks to trainers and a high-protein diet, he bulked up to become the shape of his namesake, a square.
When I finally moved to New York for residency, they had already settled down in Greenwich with their first son, a second on the way. Greenwich, they said, that’s where you’re supposed to move next. To start your private practice, to buy your first home. The boys needed cousins. An aunt and uncle who lived close by. Fang believed that a family should grow in the most normal way possible. Weird was for later. Three or four generations down the line we could afford to be weird.
I lost my brother the day he decided to become my parent.
Obvious, of course. Immigrant father achieves very little and immigrant son, seeking to outdo the father, achieves the level of mind-boggling success that could only happen in America. Soon, Mind-boggling Rich Son starts a family of his own and becomes the new patriarch on this continent and assumes he knows best.
Interrupting my thoughts was the kind cabdriver, who had turned the heater up for me. How we doing back there? he said, shouted over the noise of the fan. Toasty? No rush.
* * *
—
TWICE IN DECEMBER, I heard, then spotted, in my neighborhood a caravan of festive RTVs rolling south down Broadway, then east along 110th. The RTVs were decorated in red and green gift wrap, their drivers were dressed in green onesies, with elf hats, and for a mile radius anyone could hear the song being blasted, Santa Claus was coming to town. Cars and buses made way; pedestrians stopped crossing the street. Then at the very end of the parade Santa Claus did come on the back of a red monster truck with monster wheels, dancing, hip shaking, in traditional red getup, with reflective aviator sunglasses and a full black beard. I was stunned each time I saw this but, like all the parents and children on the sidewalk, waved to Santa both times.