Chapter 13 Sausage
He Xiaolan saw Ge Lin's WeChat Moments on the high-speed train, liked it, and commented, "Happy birthday, bright future." Yueyue hadn't seen He Xiaolan in a week, and upon seeing her at the station, she threw herself into her arms, calling her "Mommy" nonstop. She talked about everything from the black and white magpie she'd seen on her way to school that morning to how angry she was when her deskmate knocked her eraser on the ground after class, because she didn't apologize. She kept on talking like this for a full thirty minutes on the subway.
The good thing about Tianjin's subway is that after rush hour, the carriages are so empty they feel at ease. When they first got married, Wang Qingwei and He Xiaolan lived in Dahongmen. While the resettlement housing they rented wasn't very comfortable, it was conveniently located. The subway station was only seven or eight bus stops away, and they could catch Beijing's tightrope, Line 10, and easily reach the office. They were lucky in the lottery; they won the first two times, but with only one car, how could they split it? They had to drive farther and more unreliably to work, while the other took the subway.
Later, she bought a house and moved outside the Sixth Ring Road. The subway station was seven or eight kilometers away. Riding an electric scooter was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. After riding the scooter for a week, He Xiaolan couldn't stand it anymore. Finally, she had to take the bus and transfer to the subway. To go to work at 10 o'clock, He Xiaolan had to get up at 6:30, wait for the bus, transfer, and squeeze into the suffocating subway car. When she arrived at the company, she felt that she had no strength left.
So, every weekend, as long as she doesn’t have to work overtime, He Xiaolan just wants to lie at home, lying motionless. The sofa is her wireless charger, supporting her will to live until next Monday.
Since Yueyue was born, He Xiaolan's life has become more crowded. Originally, she could lie down at home for a whole day on weekends, but the child could not stay at home with her for a whole day. On weekends, she had to take her to the children's activity areas of major shopping malls. After the child played for a day and exhausted her energy, He Xiaolan and Wang Qingwei's day was completely wasted.
Yueyue lay in bed, listening to He Xiaolan tell a bedtime story. She said, "The newly built auditorium was packed with people. We graduates sat in the first eight rows, and I was in the middle seat in the very front row. There was a pink oleander on my lapel. My mother had picked it from the yard and pinned it on me before I came. She said, 'Your father planted this oleander. Wearing it, it's like your father seeing you on stage!'"
Yueyue touched He Xiaolan's face and said, "Mom, I don't blame you for not coming. Many of my classmates' parents didn't come either." He Xiaolan didn't want to cry in front of Yueyue. She wanted to be a super mom who could handle any trouble in life. But her eyes were sore and it was hard to control the bitterness in her heart.
"Mom, your eyes are raining. Let me hold an umbrella for you." Yueyue raised her hands to cover He Xiaolan's face and looked at her with a smile. Her hands were still small and could not cover her face, but this small piece of space was enough, enough for He Xiaolan to support her numb body and live to seventy or eighty years old.
He Xiaolan once held an umbrella for Zhang Xinrong. That day, He Guoqiang's lover showed up at her house, pregnant, demanding a divorce. Her usually sharp-tongued mother sat there in silence, as if someone had strangled her vocal cords. Seeing Zhang Xinrong's silence, the woman turned and set her sights on He Xiaolan, who was standing nearby. The frightened quail received an innocent slap in the face.
It was raining heavily that day. Ms. Zhang Xinrong walked in front, and He Xiaolan followed behind her, holding an umbrella, but she couldn't catch up with her mother. Mother and daughter sat in the county's only Western restaurant, clumsily shoveling a slightly burnt steak made of synthetic meat with a knife and fork. Her mother's wetness attracted everyone's attention, but she didn't care at all. She just ate, the water from her hair dripping down her cheeks onto the steak. Her mother didn't care, and neither did He Xiaolan.
Throughout the meal, Ms. Zhang Xinrong only said one sentence: "Don't come back. Never come back."
At this time, Ms. Zhang Xinrong was studying her own song score in the living room, and the porridge was still steaming.
"Drink it quickly and go to sleep, but don't eat too late in the future, or you'll gain weight."
"I've put the house up for sale. When the time comes to sell it, I just need to go back and handle the paperwork."
"You don't have to tell me. You're forty, you have your own opinions. You've been in Beijing for so many years, you've seen a lot. Just decide how to handle it." Ms. Zhang Xinrong always said this. She didn't want others to see her failure. She wanted to be a proud mother, a beautiful kingfisher, not just a pitiful woman ridiculed for her failed marriage.
Why is today's porridge a bit salty?
The phone rang. It was a message from Hua Hudie. She directly sent a link to He Xiaolan's WeChat, saying that she would take Qin Tiantian to Tianjin early the next morning. She saw from Xiaohongshu that Tianjin's Education Park was particularly suitable for camping.
"You don't need to prepare anything, I've bought everything." Hua Hudie loves to organize things and can't sit still. When Hua Hudie decided to open a shop, He Xiaolan and Qin Tiantian tried to persuade her that her previous job was good and that opening a shop would be stressful and tiring, as she would have to take care of everything herself. But Hua Hudie found it interesting. Her life's mission was to not be idle, and she had to accomplish something big to prove her ability.
To be honest, He Xiaolan envied Hua Hudie very much. After all, she had a family background, so she could do whatever she wanted. If she was unhappy, she could find something to make herself happy. She wouldn't be trapped in the cycle of making money, paying off loans, running out of money, and then continuing to make money.
However, the biggest hurdle in her life was probably marriage. She was attracted to Qian Helin because he was fun and knowledgeable. But after marriage, things became more and more complicated, and work was not going well. Qian Helin, on the other hand, initially pursued his dream of becoming a movie star, investing all his previous earnings into making a film. In the end, he replaced the film with a bunch of useless images, and he didn't even want to watch the film a second time on his TV.
Wang Qingwei heard that Qian Helin moved back to his parents' house, and they refused to let Qian Helin take their corgi, Butterfly, away. The two had another big fight over this, and finally decided that Butterfly would take a walk on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th, and Qian Helin would take a walk on the 2nd, 4th, and 6th. On Sundays, Qian Helin would take the morning, and Butterfly would take the afternoon. This was fair.
"If you guys are coming, please come early. We can even have breakfast. I've never been to the northwest corner. We can go there and have a big pancake with everything."
Ms. Zhang Xinrong came out of the bathroom drying her hair, bringing out a puff of warm mist.
"You are going out to play with Xiaoxiao and the others tomorrow, so let Yueyue go with me to have lunch with our choir friends at noon."
"No need, I can take her with me. We are going camping in the park tomorrow. After a week of classes, she needs to go out and have some fun. I will come back to pick her up at 10 o'clock in the afternoon, and you can just make breakfast for her."
He Xiaolan tossed and turned in bed, always feeling that she had forgotten something, until she saw Qian Helin at the breakfast stall in the northwest corner, then she remembered that she had forgotten to tell Wang Qingwei not to bring Qian Helin with him when he returned to Tianjin on the weekend. Qian Helin was now like Wang Qingwei's tail, and he could not do without him wherever he went.
"You called him?" Hua Hudie's eyes could kill. He Xiaolan and Qin Tiantian were so scared that they threw away the fried dough sticks in their hands and waved their hands quickly.
"No, no, it was Wang Qingwei who called me that. It has nothing to do with me."
"I didn't know you two were coming..."
Wang Qingwei was very calm, and Qian Helin pretended to be calm. Even in this situation, Qian Helin still had to add fuel to the fire.
"If I had known you were coming, I wouldn't have come. This meal was so boring."
"Haha, it's much more powerful than you in bed," Hua Hudie said as she took out the ham sausage from the pancake and shook it in front of Qian Helin's eyes, "It's still hard..."
Qin Tiantian's eager eyes and He Xiaolan's pitiful gaze were cast at the same time on Qian Helin. After scanning him up and down, they gave him a knowing smile, which made him a little anxious and pale. He couldn't speak clearly, "Then you go with Xianggan."
"Yes, I want to divorce you quickly so that I can find true happiness." I have to say that Hua Hudie's emphasis was really good. Qian Helin wanted to overturn the breakfast stall and fight Hua Hudie today.
He Xiaolan quickly stuffed the pancake on the table into Hua Hudie's mouth, fearing that she would say something irrelevant the next second. She gave Wang Qingwei a panicked look, asking him to quickly persuade Qian Helin to stop talking. Wang Qingwei didn't understand what He Xiaolan meant at all, and even smiled warmly in return.
"Today's game is decided by me, you better go back to Beijing." Before he could even finish his pie, Butterfly launched another offensive.
"Why? I came here with Lao Wang. This is Tianjin, not Songjin. I don't need your signature or approval."
The weather in the park was beautiful, sunny, with white clouds and a perfect temperature. How could I describe my mood? It was strange. Yueyue leaned against He Xiaolan, watching the two men guarding the grill like door gods, one on each side. Wang Qingwei was the true master of the grill, his hands busily turning over and over, grilling his daughter's favorite chicken wings. Yueyue tilted her head to observe the two door gods for a long time, then leaned over to He Xiaolan's ear and whispered her doubts.
"Mom, are Aunt Xiaoxiao and Uncle Qian getting divorced?"
"How did you, a first grader, learn the word divorce?"
Yueyue moved her own camping chair and sat next to He Xiaolan, even crossing her legs, but her father, who came over to deliver chicken wings, straightened her sitting position.
"If two people sit far apart, it means they're divorced. Li Zhengzheng and Fang Huiyi from our class had a fight, and they sat far apart. Nini said that meant they were divorced."
Qin Tiantian floated over from a distance and stuffed the ice cream cone into Yueyue's hand. The teacher's inherent majesty made Yueyue unconsciously stick closer to He Xiaolan, "Sooner or later I will throw all your cell phones into the sea."
"Mother……"
"Don't be afraid. You don't have a cell phone. If you want to throw something away, you should throw it to your godmother, right, Miss Qin?"
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