Across a Green Ocean by Wendy Lee

Author:Wendy Lee [Lee, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2014-12-29T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Ling stood in the driveway, her hand raised to wave good-bye to Emily. She only lowered it when the car had vanished around a curve. A couple of hours ago she had been surprised to hear a car pull up to the house and to look out the window to see that it was the maroon Buick she had driven so many years ago. For a moment she thought that time had been turned back, and she would see her younger self emerge from the car, in a pantsuit and permed hair. But it had been her son-in-law, and Ling realized that Julian and Emily must have switched cars. Apparently, they had switched back before he had left.

Although she knew there was still a lot that Emily hadn’t told her, this was the most Ling had ever heard about her daughter’s marriage. They were not much for discussing things in the Tang family, Ling had come to realize. Maybe if she’d told Emily what her own marriage had been like, her daughter would be more forthcoming. But now there was no point; Emily seemed to have made up her mind about leaving Julian. Perhaps someday she would reveal more, but for now, Ling would just have to have faith that her children would solve their own issues.

For example, Michael and his issue, if you could call it that. After she had left Emily and Julian to talk upstairs, Ling had gone down to the living room, where she’d had to sit down on the sofa to absorb the fact that her son, her sensitive little boy, liked other boys. How could that be? Michael had never showed any inclination for fashion or interior design, and his room had always been the picture of slovenliness. Wasn’t that the opposite of what gay people were like? She had no idea, aside from what she saw on television. No family she knew had a gay son, or daughter, for that matter. There was that boy in church, Carl Cheung, whose voice soared higher than any of the sopranos; that was suspiciously feminine, wasn’t it? But who knew what that meant?

As she was pondering this, Julian appeared in the doorway. He looked even more disheveled than when he had arrived, his shirt untucked, his face grim.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Tang,” he said. “I tried my best.”

Tried what? she wanted to ask him, but sensed by the look on his face that she should pose this question to her daughter. Instead, she just nodded, and Julian left through the front door. She heard a car start and pull out of the driveway, and it was quiet. Then the pipes above her started to thrum as Emily turned on the water to take a shower. Ling wondered just what her daughter was trying to wash away from her life.

The stillness enveloped Ling again as soon as Emily’s car turned the street corner and she could no longer hear its familiar sputter. She had thought she’d gotten

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