Chapter Two #2
“No, no. It’s just I’ll be moving in with my husband.”
“Keep in touch, please .” To Joan’s surprise, Iris grabbed her hand. Joan couldn’t recall Iris touching her before.
“I will, Mrs. Mahoney.” As she waited out front for Milton, Joan waved to Iris, who stood in the window; she wore her red velvet robe and looked especially diminutive from the street.
She’s not so bad, Joan thought. She met me, and reckoned she could get more from the situation, and so she did. I suppose it’s human nature.
Milton drove up in his yellow Volkswagen, and together they placed her suitcase in the trunk.
There was a celebratory feeling between them; they had spent nights together, but now she would truly be moving in.
To mark the occasion, they drove to a Chinese deli downtown and bought takeaway boxes of fried pork cutlet and shredded pickles and rice dotted with black sesame seeds.
They ate at a table outside, with sodas Milton had brought from home.
After they finished, Milton checked his watch.
“Let’s go to the video store again,” he said. “We can walk.”
This time Joan studied over a dozen options before deciding.
Her final selection was titled Swedish Hostilities , though this might have been a mistranslation—the font was light pink, and the cover reflected a distinct Victorian air, the men in morning suits and women in pastel gowns.
The film promised an intricate plot: the woman’s father owned a steel company, and she had recently started working at the factory as well.
There, the woman discovered that her father was actually a gangster, with debts to powerful mafia men.
An unexpected liaison…
A man as charming as he is dangerous…
A woman as innocent as she is sensual…
Joan would have read on, but she and Milton were no longer alone; another customer had slipped behind the curtain. She could see in her periphery that the man was nearing, and she was moving away when Milton laughed.
“Joan,” Milton said. “Joan! This is Kenny. He’s a friend.”
Joan stopped and turned. Kenny smiled at her. He had slick black eyes and a long, anemic mustache.
“Come say hi.”
“Hi,” Joan said. Kenny took her hand. His fingernails had dark half-moons of dirt and Joan thought she could discern a hot, oily scent from either his clothes or his skin.
Kenny commented to Milton how attractive she was. “So fair-skinned. And she’s taller too, not one of those who disappear if you stand straight.”
“Oh, she has a presence,” Milton agreed, laughing.
“Are you from Stanford?” Joan was prepared to force herself to like Kenny if so.
She was a snob about Stanford, which she wholly adored (her ardor had survived her learning of the moral transgressions of Leland Stanford, whom she’d now forgotten about).
There was just too much to admire about the institution (the buildings, sculptures, and gardens), and by extension she loved the people who learned and taught there too.
“No, we met at work.” While Milton studied for his architecture license, he worked at a lab, where he did something with mainframe computers.
“Oh.”
“Kenny,” Milton said, “is single.”
“Do you want me to introduce you to someone?” Joan silently went through her list of contacts. For the best chance of success, it would have to be a person not so beautiful and not so smart—either one and the woman likely would not enjoy Kenny, and would possibly be upset with Joan for the match.
“Sure,” Kenny said. He seemed to be waiting for something.
“Well,” Joan said lightly, “it was nice—”
“I told him,” Milton interjected, “how we like to watch videos.”
Only a second passed before Joan understood Milton’s meaning. Once she did understand, she was so stunned by the casualness of his disclosure that her mind could only return a numb blankness. Appalled and dazed, she exhaled and took a step back.
After all: it had only been little over a month since Joan had sex for the first time.
She’d lost her virginity on the wedding night and judged the initial experience between neutral and unpleasant.
On Milton’s double bed, examining the goose bumps on her arms as her new husband loomed from above, she had bled, and afterward suppressed her impulse to immediately soak the sheets, as Milton was already snoring.
With more iterations, however, more nights and some weekend afternoons, Joan began to enjoy lovemaking.
When Milton started to play the videos, she watched with an out-of-body detachment, though once he’d turned them off (they didn’t always watch to the end), she found herself left with a vague discomfort, this tension slowly giving way to a searing, urgent internal focus that had been missing in prior encounters with Milton.
So this is why people go crazy over sleeping together, she’d thought. This is why they make reckless decisions and ruin perfectly good plans. Back in Taiwan, it was because Alfred had impregnated his girlfriend that Joan was allowed to emigrate. Thus, sex had even brought her to America.
Though things weren’t perfect. Days earlier, Joan had edged painfully close to a UTI; there were also certain aspects of Milton’s performance, even with the videos, that had left her with the distinct impression that more —though she was not clear what more entailed—was possible.
But who was to say Joan wasn’t lacking herself?
She knew nothing of sex; her education matched that of the other students of Taipei First Girls’ High School, in that they were merely informed sex was a tawdry act conducted by the base and uneducated, a group certainly not to include graduates of the number one girls’ school in Taiwan.
She’d never had a class on sex education, never seen a man’s private areas, until their wedding night.
Kenny released a fake-sounding cough. “Kenny said he can watch with us,” Milton said. He was gazing upon Joan frankly—lovingly, she thought. “And stay for whatever happens after.”
Joan looked at Kenny again. He had dark raised moles on the side of his neck, and his eyes were like little black marbles. These features, combined with his mustache, lent him the appearance of one of the unhealthier catfish in the tanks at Lotus Garden.
“I don’t think so,” Joan said faintly.
“Don’t be a tease,” Kenny moaned. He moved toward her, and she shuffled back. There’d been a ding-ding of the bells earlier, of the owner going outside to smoke, and from Joan’s prior visits she knew he would be at least ten minutes.
She crossed her arms. “I don’t think this is appropriate.”
Kenny sighed in Milton’s direction. Between them there passed a silent exchange Joan couldn’t decipher. Milton turned to Joan. “Sweetie,” he said.
“I don’t like this,” Joan blurted. Out of instinct she hit Milton, on the side of his shoulder.
Joan had never hit anyone before. Though as recently as a few years earlier, Joan had been smacked, quite often, by her mother.
Mei had a habit of silently stewing and then, without warning, suddenly losing her temper and striking.
When Milton didn’t respond, Joan prepared to slap him again. He caught her by the wrist. “I love when you fight back. You always fight. That is, at first.”
Joan gasped. These were private matters! Activities between a husband and wife, ones not to be shared! Her indignation broke her fugue, and she righted herself and pointed at Kenny. “I don’t want him here.” Kenny wet his lips and leered.
“Now, come on. Kenny is my friend.”
“He makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like it.” To her surprise—as Joan wasn’t normally a crier—her eyes began to water. Kenny at least had the decency at this point to look ashamed. He went to the end of the aisle and began to examine a stack of videos.
“Won’t you at least consider it?” Milton said gently. He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You might like it. Isn’t everything worth trying at least once?” Joan shook her head.
“I know you are nervous. You are nervous, aren’t you?” It was only once Milton began whispering that she realized how loudly he’d been speaking before. “Sometimes I forget how inexperienced you are. I will tell Kenny to leave.”
Relief swept through her. “Thank you.”
“But in the future you’ll have to listen to me, eh? I’m your husband. I understand things you don’t—I know about the world.”
Joan tilted her head up at Milton. He was so elegant and handsome, even in that harsh fluorescent light; though Joan wore heeled sandals, he was still nearly a head taller.
His shirts, even his T-shirts, were always pressed.
His eyes, his mouth, his soft colors, all reminded Joan of the husband of her favorite aunt in Taipei.
The aunt who, with her heart-shaped face and full lips, was the sort of beautiful to regularly have her looks remarked upon by strangers, and smart to boot (she too had gone to Taipei First Girls’ High School), had married well, her husband a naval officer from a well-to-do family.
The man went abroad to work and died shortly thereafter, and for the rest of her life Joan’s gorgeous aunt had remained a widow.
Joan had not thought this unusual at the time. You married, and then there was no more. Sometimes the outcome was lucky and sometimes unlucky, but either way, once married you were done.
There were many women who’d been interested in Milton, Joan reminded herself. She recalled her triumph the first time they’d held hands in public. The thrill of his touch as he tugged her, gently, toward him for her first kiss.