Chapter 31
Emma lay in bed with Chen Huan, humming a folk song for him. Chen Huan laughed at her tone-deafness. Emma's eyes widened in surprise. "That's impossible! Henry said my singing voice is the most moving, like honey soaking into his ears..." Chen Huan covered his ears and rolled over. "Stop talking! I don't want to hear it."
"I want to talk more."
Emma met Henry when she was fifteen. Every year, Henry spent Thanksgiving at his grandfather, Ben Schumer's, home in Texas. Ben Schumer and Emma's grandfather, Raven Lawson, were both engineers stationed at the Port of Naples in southern Italy during World War II. It's said that during a mission to repair the docks, the two became friends over a bottle of cider that had been found in the ruins of a farmhouse.
"Of all the men who have pursued me," Emma said to Shen Huan, "Henry's eyes are the bluest."
Emma's home was near Hamilton Reservoir. She'd heard Henry was afraid of heights, so she invited him and a few friends—including two of her distant cousins—to go diving in the 70-foot waterfall near the reservoir. Standing on the ledge amidst the roaring water, she said she'd go to the movies with whoever jumped in first. And with that, she leaped.
"I surfaced and looked up. The sun was so bright that it made my eyes sore. I couldn't see clearly how many people were standing above. Figures were jumping down one after another. I thought, if he really didn't dare to jump, what should I do? I even told everyone else to wait for him!"
"But he jumped down for you." Shen Huan said, lying on the pillow.
"Oh, sweetheart," Emma said, laughing after her, "he would jump for me without a second thought in his life. I have no doubt of it now."
Chen Huan smiled quietly, her eyes moist. For the first time, she realized she envied them. She envied Henry's ability to talk to Emma about anything. She envied Emma for saying Henry called almost every day while stationed away. She envied herself for having to piece together the unknown Meng Zixian from Emma's story, like a child gathering breadcrumbs. She also envied Henry for having such a strong and optimistic wife, standing firm like a beacon, guiding him back home. She accepted his impermanence, his fragility, his bald butt, and so Henry trusted her without reservation.
Shen Huan couldn't do any of these.
Emma left in the early morning. When Chen Huan opened his eyes in the morning, a circle of white was drawn along the edge of the curtains, and the LCD clock on the bedside read five forty. Chen Huan hadn't slept so soundly in a long time, sleeping through the night. Maybe it was because there wasn't a Glock under the pillow next to him, or maybe it was because Meng Zixian wasn't there last night.
She turned over and realized that Meng Zixuan was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to her, shirtless, his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. When he heard her turn over, he sat up straight.
She didn't know what time he'd returned. She rubbed her eyes, pulled herself up, and moved to the edge of the bed. She turned on the lamp, then lay back on her back, resting her head on his knees, looking up at him from below. His profile was buried in the shadows, her expression invisible. She could only see the silver necklace on his chest, the cross hanging between the curves of his muscles, swaying slowly with his breathing.
Chen Huan reached out and touched his arm. Meng Zixian finally came back to his senses and turned his head slightly. His already thin face was pale in the light. Chen Huan asked vaguely if everything went well last night. He stared at Chen Huan's face, silent for a few seconds, and replied, "Not bad." If he said it was okay, it meant it was good. So it wasn't because of the skydiving.
Chen Huan woke up a little. Although Meng Zixian was not easy to serve, he always had a reason. Chen Huan asked him if he was tired. He shook his head expressionlessly. Chen Huan said, "You stay with me for a while," and she moved to the inside of the bed. He stayed for a while, as if he was a little conflicted, and finally lay down without saying a word, facing the ceiling, not looking at her. Meng Zixian asked her, "Who came to the house last night?"
"Emma."
"Who else?"
“It’s gone.”
"Who smoked the cigarette?" He reached out and picked up a cigarette butt from the bedside table.
Chen Huan's throat tightened unconsciously. She'd assumed Meng Zixuan didn't care how dirty the house was. Where had he found it? They'd clearly cleaned up last night. Did he always check every nook and cranny carefully when he came home?
Shen Huan didn't want to give Emma away. She didn't know if Meng Zixuan would tell Henry. Shen Huan bent her elbows, propped up her head and looked at him for a while. "No other man came last night."
Meng Zixuan turned his head and stared at her. After a few seconds, there was still suspicion in his eyes, but his jaw was no longer so tense.
"I'm sorry." He threw the cigarette butt on the ground and pressed his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I told myself not to let my mind wander. Most of the time I did. But sometimes..." He paused. Chen Huan was still looking at him, but he didn't seem to want to say anything more. After a while, he asked softly, "Can I hug you? Just a hug?" Chen Huan didn't say anything. She moved closer and pressed her body against his arm. He raised his hand to hold her shoulders and she rested her head on his chest. The only sound in the room was their breathing.
After a while, Meng Zixuan said, I love you.
Shen Huan said, I love you too.
The words sounded strange coming from her mouth. She hadn't said them in a long time, a year, maybe two years.
That morning, Meng Zixian got up and went to the kitchen, fried eggs and bacon, replaced the washer on the dripping faucet, waxed the window frames, and went to the repair shop to bring Chen Huan's car back. Although he only had four weeks left in North Carolina, he agreed to go to psychological counseling with her. He told her that we would be fine, and for a long time, she thought so too.
Last night at Villa Beverly, Samuel Levine knocked on her bedroom door. He yelled outside, "Meng, you know this is a wooden house, right? You should get some rest. I thought I was sleeping in the stable." After tormenting her all night, Meng Zixian woke her up in the morning and said he would take her to the airport. This made Chen Huan open her eyes and look at him. She thought: Oh, of course. I was your one-night stand. When the day comes, I should leave. She was angry, but there was no reason to show it. Meng Zixian sent a message at midnight. Could he be asking her to go to the movies tomorrow night and go shopping on the weekend? He already had a girlfriend who did these things with him. What was she expecting? Was he begging her to stay in the United States? She still had a husband in Hancheng.
But she still didn't want to go back and face Li Ting.
Li Ting woke up a week ago. The doctors told him to get out of bed and move around as soon as possible, but leaving the bed would require removing the catheter and the instruments strapped to his body, and he grumbled in frustration. Chen Huan accompanied him once a day to the bathroom, wash, and dry himself. Each trip took an hour. When Li Ting's eyelids were too tired to stay open, Chen Huan helped him back to bed to rest. Having spent the past month or so in bed, he had lost most of his hair, and his skin and flesh hung loosely on his bones, like soaked and dried cardboard.
At first, he was awake for an hour each day. After two days, he felt more alert. When Chen Huan spoke to him, he hummed and uttered, but he couldn't form complete sentences, just one or two words. Chen Huan asked the doctor if this was due to the facial paralysis. The doctor said it was more likely aphasia caused by cerebral ischemia, and that further imaging would be needed to determine the diagnosis.
Li Ting was transferred from Kangyang Hospital to the Municipal Hospital for a CT scan and MRI. He was placed on the examination table like an old baby. The doctor spoke to him patiently, asking him to pinch his hand and hold up a finger in front of Li Ting's face to measure his gaze.
Chen Huan wasn't sure how much Li Ting understood, but she continued to talk to him every day. She read to him from her books and browsed the gossip on her phone—meaningless things, but she wondered if that was the way lovers should be, connecting with each other through meaningless conversations every day, and that gave them meaning. Ever since she'd known Li Ting, he'd been a busy man, with subordinates waiting outside, endless meetings, endless phone calls, and countless urgent matters to attend to. These rare moments when he was completely hers were precious to her, and Chen Huan cherished them.
The only thing she didn't talk about was company matters. She couldn't see the situation clearly, nor could she understand the interests involved. She thought that if necessary, Lou Hetai would talk to Li Ting. Lou Hetai had come once, but he didn't mention Xuan Tao.
Occasionally, Li Ting would open his mouth and have something to say, but before he could utter two words, his brain seemed to have forgotten what he was going to say.
Shen Huan got a new phone, figuring that if Li Ting couldn't speak, he could still type. Li Ting took the phone, brought his face close, and rested his thumbs limply on the screen. The doctor told Shen Huan that he might not be able to type; it was a problem with his speech center, not his mouth.
But the next day, Li Ting pointed towards the bedside, and Chen Huan took the phone in the direction of his finger. Li Ting took the phone, threw it aside, frowned, and reached out again, saying "ahh". Chen Huan understood that he wanted the pen on the bedside. She brought a piece of white paper and gave it to him. Li Ting wrote on it, stroke by stroke, not in the same place. But he wrote and wrote, stopped after more than ten strokes, and wrote again from the beginning. Chen Huan followed his strokes and drew on her palm. She understood that he wrote "Yue".
Chen Huan thought the word "Yue" could mean many things, but besides Chang Yueqing's name, she couldn't think of any other meaning. She sat in a chair beside the bed, her right sleeve dripping wet from helping him brush his teeth. She lost consciousness for a few seconds, then returned to the room to find Li Ting staring at her with a sharp gaze. He felt she understood.
Chen Huan asked him if it was Chang Yueqing, her voice soft enough that Li Ting seemed unable to hear. Not wanting to mention that name again, she took the paper from him and slowly wrote on it, "Chang Yueqing." She wrote every stroke, and before turning the paper over, she, like a donkey with its hoof hammered into the dirt, added a question mark after the three words. Li Ting saw it and nodded immediately, smiling for the first time in days. The left corner of his mouth lifted, the corner of his left eye wrinkled, but the right remained frozen, motionless.
Chen Huan promised Li Ting that she would call Chang Yueqing, but upon leaving the ward, she first went to see his attending physician. She asked if it was possible that he could read but not speak. The doctor said that this was certainly possible, and that imaging showed that his brain injury was not serious and that he would gradually recover.
While talking to her, the doctor walked from the nurses' station to the elevator. The doctor pressed the up button. Shen Huan asked again, "Is it possible that his memory is a little confused, like he's forgotten recent people and events and only remembers things from the past?" The doctor looked at Shen Huan again, and his eyes let Shen Huan know that he understood what she was asking.
He asked Shen Huan how long they had been married.
"Two and a half years."
"He didn't recognize you when he woke up?"
Chen Huan didn't say anything. Of course Li Ting knew her. In the morning, Jin Tuo came to the hospital to deliver something and placed a tray of dumplings on the bedside table. The nurse rocked the bed, and Li Ting opened the lid, took a look at the steaming dumplings, and pushed it towards Chen Huan. He always hid some good things for Chen Huan these past few days. The orange juice box given by the hospital, the chocolates in the bouquet sent by the company. When Chen Huan left, he would hold it in his hand until she came back, for fear that the nurse would steal it.
The doctor glanced at Shen Huan and comforted her, saying that it was okay and the hardest part was over.
Shen Huan was speechless. She told herself this every day, but it was always a little harder the next day.
Like she had asked Emma all those years ago, "Will it get easier?"
"What are you asking about, the army or marriage?"
“Both.”
Emma thought for a moment and said calmly, "It won't be easier, but you will be stronger than you think."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com