The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [21]
But I’m not the only one who changed.
Melinda’s cello, which had cost them a thousand dollars to ship, sat in its case in the corner of their bedroom, unopened, growing a faint green tinge of mildew. Her address book hadn’t moved from its slot on the shelf above her desk in months. When he called their friends on the East Coast, waking them up after eleven at night, they asked, what the hell’s happened to her? It wasn’t just the seventy-hour weeks; it wasn’t the new secretaries she had to train every month, or the global trades that could happen at any hour of the day, in Tokyo, or Bombay, or Frankfurt, so that she often had to be on call overnight. She’d always worked hard, and complained about it, and fought Coopers for every bit of time off she was entitled to. Now they never discussed her schedule at all. If he asked her about vacation time, or free weekends, or made a casual remark about never seeing her enough, she would say, that’s the last thing I want to think about. Her face had taken on a kind of slackness, a faint, constant unhappiness, as if no disaster could surprise her. She slept with her knees tucked up to her chest; she was constantly turning off the air conditioner, even when the apartment was stifling, complaining she was cold. Despite the subtropical sun, her skin was becoming paler; she had to throw away all her makeup and start over with lighter shades. And in three months she had gone from two cigarettes to four to half a pack a day.
On a Sunday afternoon in March of that first year he convinced her to come shopping with him at the new underground supermarket in Causeway Bay. She wandered through the aisles like a sleepwalker, picking up items almost at random—a jar of gherkin pickles, a packet of ramen—frowning, and putting them back. Half-joking, he said, I think we’ve become a reverse cliché, don’t you? I’m the bored housewife, and you’re the workaholic businessman. Maybe my mother was right.
She stopped in front of a pyramid of Holland tomatoes and turned to look at him, her lips pressed into a tiny pink oval. Just before the wedding, his mother had said to him wryly, marry a career woman and all you’ll wind up with is a career, and they’d quickly turned it into a joke: when she kissed him, or touched him, she would say, how do you like my career now? But the joke isn’t funny anymore, he thought, and wished he could suck the words out of the air.
Is that what you really think? she asked. Do you think I arranged it all this way? So that you’d be out of work and frustrated and taking it all out on me?
Is this what you call frustrated? he said. Making a joke? Asking an innocent question every now and then?
I’m not a workaholic. She tore off a plastic bag and began filling it with broccoli rabe, inspecting each stalk carefully for flowers. A workaholic likes it.
No, he said. A workaholic can’t stop.
She turned away from him, sorting through mounds of imported lettuce: American iceberg, Australian romaine, all neatly labeled and shrink-wrapped.
Can’t you ask them for more time off? Lewis asked. Just one Saturday? I mean, it’s the same company, isn’t it? You’re in a more senior position than you were in Boston, and now you don’t have any flexibility?
Do you know what happened to the Asian markets last week? she asked. Did you even read the papers?
That isn’t the issue. That’s never been the issue. You’d be working this hard regardless.
I don’t know how to explain it, she said. Her face darkened, and she stopped in the middle of the aisle, her shoulders drooping, as if the bags of vegetables were filled with stones. It’s different here. She looked as if she would cry at any moment. A young Chinese woman passing them stared at her, then twisted her head to look at him. We have to fight for everything, she said. Clients. Market share. Out here we’re not the Big Five. Accounts don’t just fall in our laps here the way they do at home. And anyway, the whole economy’s in a goddamned meltdown. Nobody wants to open up a new account right now.
He should have taken the bags from her hands,