Beautiful as Yesterday Read online

  Today, with Grandma Li next to her, Fenglan kneels in front of Ru Lai, saying her prayers silently. “Please, Mighty God, take care of my husband, my parents, and my sister in heaven, and make them sleep and eat well, spare them any worry; please, Mighty God, send happiness, health, and harmony to my older daughter, Guo-Mei, and her family in the U.S.; please, Mighty God, find a responsible husband for my second daughter, Guo-Ying, and give them smart kids.” On second thought, she repeats her prayers for her two daughters, this time using their English names, which they assumed as soon as they left China. After she finishes her prayers, she shakes her head, wondering why her daughters decided to take English names. Can Chinese gods remember those odd-sounding and meaningless foreign names?

  After leaving the temple, Fenglan realizes that she has forgotten to pray for herself. But her old bones, as she refers to herself, won’t get any younger or healthier because of a prayer. So she decides to let it be.

  She has knelt in front of Ru Lai, Guan Si Ying, Guan Gong, Earth God, Fortune God, Dragon King, and other gods she cannot name, and she has followed some grannies she knows from her morning exercise in the park to Taoist temples to pray to Xu Xun, a Taoist transcendent. Like her, they pray to just about any god they can find. Their rationale: if those gods are revered in a temple, they must be powerful, and praying to them is better than not. Perhaps those gods are looking down from heaven to see if they are pious. Who knows?

  She has lived long enough to know that nothing is guaranteed.

  THREE

  May

  THE ALARM CLOCK GOES off like a fire siren. A quarter to six. Ingrid opens her eyes but stays in bed, covering her head with the blanket, extending a hand from under the blanket to shut off the clock. Two minutes later, she leaps out of bed and scuttles to the bathroom to wash quickly—no time for a shower. Then she returns to her bedroom, slips off her sleepwear—an oversize T-shirt—and changes into a black and white striped top and a pair of pale blue jeans. Before leaving, she glances in the mirror, frowning at the dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. Good morning, panda, she teases herself.

  She jumps into a taxi. “Chinatown,” she says, her voice crisp and urgent. The taxi stops outside a travel agency on Mott Street at her direction. She pays, with a good tip. Inside the office, she is handed a small triangular flag printed with the agency’s logo and a bag of identical white caps with the same logo. An air-conditioned bus takes her to the Manhattan Broadway Budget Hotel in the Garment District, where a dozen Chinese tourists—men in suits and shiny leather shoes, women in print dresses and makeup, as if they were going to a wedding rather than on a sightseeing tour—are waiting at the entrance.

  It’s the tenth time this month that Ingrid has guided a tour group from China. May is a good time to visit New York, not too hot, not too cold.

  “The bus is here! Let the leaders and female comrades get on first.” A burly man with a conspicuous stomach waves his hand to the others, speaking Mandarin with incontrovertible authority. “Don’t push. Keep in line. You don’t want Americans to laugh at us, do you?” He then chuckles good-humoredly.

  “There’s a seat for everyone. Get on one by one. Watch your step.” Ingrid stands beside the door, also speaking Mandarin, and gives a cap and a bottle of Arrowhead water to each person, smiling. Though she knows little about this group’s background, her experience tells her that these people are government employees, who, typically, visit the United States in the name of attending a conference or investigating business opportunities, their expenses paid either by the government bureau they work for or an American company eager to win a contract from the government bureau, while their main purpose is sightseeing. Over the course of the week, the group will visit Florida, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, accompanied by other tour guides.

  The bus lurches off. Standing in the front, Ingrid welcomes her guests and announces the itinerary. As they approach each point of interest, she talks about its history and the facts appealing to first-time tourists. Times Square, the Empire State Building, Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, Union Square…she knows her speeches by heart.

  Only a few people listen to her, something she has gotten used to: many Chinese tourists seem to know quite a bit about New York’s landmarks, thanks to Hollywood movies and TV travel programs. Also, they are more interested in poking their heads out the windows, taking pictures, and commenting on what they see. Ingrid does her best to talk over the chatter:

  “That building is just okay. The Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai is much taller and looks much grander.”

  Ingrid: “The Empire State Building was the world’s tallest building from 1931 to 1972. It has 102 stories…”

  “You can bet that someday those billboards in Times Square will have some Chinese brands on them, like Tsingtao beer and Haier.”

  Ingrid: “Times Square is the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and it’s famous for its giant billboards and bright lights in the evening…”

  “Did you see that big pile of garbage by the road? I don’t understand. Manhattan is so rich. Why doesn’t the mayor hire more street sweepers?”

  “Hey, hey, look at that white woman! There, at the bus station we just passed. Oh, my heaven! She’s huge! Her arm is thicker than my waist.” The person making the remark flashes her camera, taking a photo of the fat woman.

  At midtown, after a brief stop at Rockefeller Center, the tour continues. An old man wants to go to the bathroom. Ingrid explains that it is hard to park, and even more difficult to find a public bathroom—unless they stop at Macy’s or Saks Fifth Avenue. She asks him to wait until the driver can stop. The old man mumbles crossly, as if it were Ingrid’s fault that he cannot go to the bathroom right away.

  The bus finally arrives at Battery Park and Ingrid leads the group to the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. After showing them around a little, she tells everyone to explore by themselves and meet her in an hour. She sits on the curb facing the Manhattan skyline, and—thirsty from the heat and all the talking—drinks half a bottle of water in one gulp. Then she leans back on her elbows, looking at the sky. It’s a beautiful day, the cloudless sky a piece of smooth silk. She looks down at the peaceful bay, at the circling seagulls, feeling rejuvenated and relaxed. She breathes the salty air and stretches her back.

  Before her, the twin towers thrust into the sky, modern and spartan. New York’s monument, Ingrid thinks. The smell of fresh air and the sight of the open space always remind her of the wonderful things about New York: theaters, museums, shopping, dining, and its diverse population, and make her forget the misery of being stuck on a steamy subway train in the summer or the stress of worrying about next month’s rent. In her eyes, this enormous place, with its charm and energy, even its congestion, pollution, and high crime rate, seems to promise endless freedom and hope, attractive not only to its residents but also to its visitors. She certainly thought so when she landed at JFK Airport: whatever the difficulties she encountered here, she felt, she could get over them sooner or later.

  She closes her eyes, again pleased by her freedom and relaxation. And it occurs to her that she likes herself, her attractive looks and offbeat, free-spirited personality. She’s five foot seven, tall for a Chinese female, with a small head, a long neck, wide and thin eyes, resembling a nimble feline. Both dignified and enthusiastic, she loves a wild party but is also perfectly content in solitude. Other things about her tend to be two-sided as well. She can enjoy a five-course banquet at an exclusive, candlelit French restaurant as much as she can appreciate a buttered poppy-seed bagel. She shops at Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenue but also at H&M or T. J. Maxx. She won’t go to secondhand stores, though, for she feels that she wore enough hand-me-down clothes from her sister when she was growing up.

  “A beautiful day, isn’t it?” she hears a man’s voice behind her.

  She opens her eyes, turns, and finds a man in his late thirties sitting several steps to her left, in a white Che Guevara T-
shirt and a pair of kahki shorts. Deeply tanned, he wears tawny aviator-style sunglasses, and his hair and eyebrows are bleach blond. He must be into surfing or diving, Ingrid thinks. He smiles at her charmingly, his perfectly aligned, porcelain-like teeth glittering. She notices the ring mark on his left ring finger, despite the fact that he has discreetly placed his right hand on top of his left.

  She smiles back. “Yeah, it’s beautiful.” On normal days, she wouldn’t mind a little harmless flirtation with a stranger, especially one as handsome as this guy, but now she wants to be alone to enjoy her free time, a rarity these days since she’s taking on more jobs than she can handle comfortably. She feigns a yawn, then takes a big gulp from her water bottle. Just as she is wondering how to get rid of this intruder without appearing rude, two plump middle-aged women wearing flower-decorated straw hats and beaded sandals hurry over, waving affectionately at the man.

  The man stands unwillingly, addressing the two women. “Didn’t know you’d come back so soon.” They must be his mother and aunt. He gives Ingrid a frustrated and helpless smile as their eyes meet.

  After the man disappears with the two women, Ingrid thinks of the night she spent one month ago with Marvin Allen, a guest pianist with the New York Philharmonic, at the Ritz-Carlton. She leaned down to kiss his forehead, and he smiled up at her contentedly. His face was no longer young; there were wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, along the ridge of his nose, and around his eyes, like musical staffs. But whenever he sat at the piano, his hands on those black and white keys, he looked like a young man in love, his deep-set blue eyes full of wisdom and life. Half a year back, outside Carnegie Hall, those eyes had mesmerized her; she knew she had caught his attention too, with her sequined empire-style chocolate gown and her smiles. Marvin said he had separated from his wife and was waiting for the divorce papers, seemingly suggesting a future for him and Ingrid. Despite the fact that her instinct told her Marvin’s affection would change as often as his music, she embraced the risk: she was in love, to her surprise.

  It was, however, their last night together, though she didn’t know it then. Two days later, she got a call from a woman through her travel agency. The woman, with her soothing voice, claimed to be Marvin’s wife and said she wanted to meet Ingrid. The day before, Marvin had left for California for a performance. Ingrid accepted the invitation, and Marvin’s wife, Victoria, received her in their rented apartment near Central Park. She cooked and served dinner in their spacious and brightly lit dining room. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, above the cherrywood table that could sit ten people. Tall red candles stood on either end of the table, their silver bases meticulously polished. On the wall facing the door was a massive landscape oil painting, signed by the artist at the right bottom corner. As they dined on filet mignon, vegetables, and French wine, they chatted about light topics, Victoria adding anecdotes about how she and her husband met, how she had sacrificed her career for his, how they planned to spend three months in London to be with their college-age son next year. There was no bitterness or hostility in Victoria’s face or voice; she treated Ingrid like an old friend. Two hours later, Ingrid left the apartment after being hugged good-bye by the hostess. As she roamed the park, burning with shame, she knew it was the end for her and Marvin. Since then, he hasn’t called or written; neither has she. And she has sworn that she won’t see anyone for a while.

  Relationships should follow a natural course, shouldn’t they? Ingrid reflects as she lowers her cap to block the sunlight. If they must end, it is for the best.

  She had met other men before Marvin, like Ahraf Victor, an assistant professor at City College of New York, intelligent, garrulous, witty, holding two Ph.D.’s from Cairo University. He could talk for hours about art, history, politics, travel, or any other subject with unfailing exuberance. Also Frank Blanc, a French management consultant at McKinsey who loved beluga caviar and Huître plate oysters and told everyone that China was the best place to invest in in the twenty-first century. There had been several flings before Frank, but they hadn’t amounted to anything.

  She seems incapable of maintaining a relationship, and none of the men she has seen is right for her, as Ingrid has come to realize on this sunny afternoon, overlooking the bay. “Conceited popinjays,” she suddenly recalls the expression from a story by Conrad. And she sees her vanity, which she used to deny. She had rarely questioned her taste in men, though admitting that she often ended up with men who were either too smug, or too egocentric, or both. And a high percentage of her dates were non-Americans, expatriates, which meant that they often had no control over the length of their stay in New York, or even in the United States. She blamed neither those men nor herself for the doomed relationships; she actually felt lucky to have remained single and independent.

  She never saw herself as unserious or flirtatious, yet being in a committed relationship somehow daunted, even suffocated her. It didn’t bother her not to have a stable partner, though sometimes, after a stressful day or a particular unpleasant incident, she longed for a passionate embrace or a shoulder to lean on. But there were always things to do and places to visit. She knew how to get around in the city, and, with her flexible work schedule, she had undertaken many spontaneous trips, hopping on a plane to another state, or another country. That was probably why her bank account was often overdrawn. She had friends—only a few close ones, but enough. She had troubles and frustrations, though you wouldn’t know it by looking at her shimmering, youthful face and her confident stride.

  Mary used to tell her that she was too emotional and too irrational. “Your love only flowers, but bears no fruit,” she said.

  “Why does one have to bear fruit? Is getting married and having children your only measurement of love?” Ingrid asked.

  “If I had known you were so decadent, so debauched, I wouldn’t have brought you to the United States,” Mary had said more than once.

  Decadent and debauched. That is how Ingrid is in her older sister’s eyes.

  With her mood dampened and perplexed at herself, Ingrid finishes her bottled water and wipes the sweat from her cheeks with the backs of her hand. The sun is scorching, but she’s too lazy to move to a shadowy area; also, she has told the tour group to find her here. She closes her eyes.

  If being decadent and debauched is the opposite of what Mary has achieved in her life, Ingrid thinks, she wouldn’t mind. Mary is easily satisfied! To her, the meaning of life is in a detached single-family house in a suburb surrounded by well-trimmed trees and blooming flowers, a responsible husband, an obedient and clever kid, and a stable job at a Fortune 500 company. And her religious devotion.

  Loud laughter interrupts Ingrid’s ruminations. She opens her eyes and sees people from her tour group posing for photos not far from here. They are talking, laughing, jostling, blocking other tourists’ views, utterly unaware of those tourists’ glances. Though Ingrid sits quietly, alone, she has also received a few such unfriendly glances: she is wearing the same white cap.

  “Huh, these Chinese!” an old Caucasian man in a Bermuda shirt mumbles indignantly when passing her, a remark not unfamiliar to Ingrid. She doesn’t think this old man understands any Chinese; it’s just that to him all Asians are Chinese. On other occasions, in other places, she has heard this comment made about a loud Korean or Vietnamese group.

  She considers telling the people from her group to lower their voices and mind their behavior. But on second thought, she decides not to bother—her experience has told her that doing so would only arouse hostility toward herself. Even if they quieted down, their compliance wouldn’t last; soon they would go back to their boisterous behavior. Ingrid knows that people in China are used to talking loudly in public; it’s not uncommon for two people to chat comfortably about private matters on a jostling bus, over many strangers’ shoulders. Moreover, her tour group members are government employees, who tend to be arrogant and intolerant of criticism.

  She doesn’t want to intervene also f
or another reason: this group is from the city where she was born and raised. It is the first time that she has guided a group from her hometown. Hearing their local dialect amuses her, though she admits that the dialect is harsh and unmusical—sounding as though the speakers are arguing, not conversing normally. When they talk about the odd and funny things that have happened in China, she listens attentively, smiling, nodding, or frowning depending on the content. When she went to college in Beijing, she stopped speaking her dialect. Even when she talked with her sister and her parents, she spoke Mandarin.

  Of course, if she tries to speak her dialect now, she will likely remember it; she might even be able to guide the tour in it. But she has decided to speak Mandarin only—she doesn’t want to be close to the tour group, to let them call her ya tou, the way they would local unmarried girls. She feels momentary guilt about distancing herself from these compatriots, recalling the old Chinese saying “When hometown fellows meet in a foreign place, they cry buckets.” But apart from having once lived in their city, she is so different from them.

  She observes them with curiosity, knowing that they are watching her the same way. In their eyes, she is an American-educated Chinese who has lived in the United States for ten years, on both coasts, who has a blue-bound American passport that lets her travel to Europe, Oceania, or Latin America without a visa, who perhaps eats hamburgers and steaks more often than rice, who speaks English as if born with it. She senses the young people’s jealousy, especially that of the girls: her shoes, clothes, jewelry seem more stylish than their own. Perhaps because of this jealousy, they like to criticize America and Americans to her face: the littered garbage, fat or homeless people, run-down neighborhoods, high tax rates, unimpressive food…They seem to want to tell her: don’t think you’re superior because you live in the United States. The United States is no big deal! China will be the next superpower!