While Harper was resting in her room, Bì Yù was in the kitchen making pork and chive dumplings by hand. I was sitting at the dining table drinking whisky. Normally I hated the stuff, but today I relished the burn of the hot liquid in my throat and the way it quieted the swirling in my mind. Just when I felt myself growing calm, the phone rang. After I had taken it off the hook, someone must have placed it back. Harper?
‘Bì Yù, no!’
But it was too late. She had already answered.
‘Hello?… Oh, hi, Uncle James.’
I froze.
‘You’re in Beijing?… Oh, I see… Yes, I’ll let you know if I hear anything.’
‘I hate this,’ Bì Yù said.
All I could say was ‘So do I.’ I sounded so pathetic.
The phone rang again.
Bì Yù answered once more.
‘Mā ma!’ She spoke in Chinese to Aunt Lĭ Nà. All I understood was Bì Yù saying, ‘I don’t know.’ She was covering for me. When she hung up the phone, she didn’t bother coming out of the kitchen.
‘I’m ready to go home now.’
It was Harper, standing behind me. I didn’t want to turn and face her. I couldn’t.
‘I said I want to go home now… Marlowe? Why are you ignoring me? I want to go home I want to go home I want to go –’
‘Enough!’
I turned and saw the word strike her like a blow to the stomach. Her beautiful brown eyes filled with pain.
Who was I becoming?
‘I’m going home, Marlowe,’ she said, her voice subdued.
Taking her in properly now, I saw she had her coat on and was standing with her oxygen tank in one hand, backpack slung over her shoulder. For a moment, I fantasised about letting her walk out of the apartment. A refreshing sense of solitude washed over me, reminding me of the silence I relished in the lab when staring down a microscope lens at the compound eyes of the arion. I drew in a breath, a full and deep one, and then I saw my sister walking through the door.
‘Harper.’ I leaped up.
She walked down the corridor towards the elevator.
‘Harper!’
She ignored me and kept walking. The elevator doors opened and she stepped in. I followed.
‘Harper, please.’
She looked away, pretending I wasn’t there.
I grabbed her arm.
‘Let go of me!’ she shouted.
The doors were closing.
‘Harper, this is silly,’ I said sternly.
‘I want to go home. Why can’t you respect me?’
Respect. She hadn’t used that word with me much before.
‘How exactly do you plan to go home without me?’ Bitter. I could taste it.
She took her wallet from her backpack and showed me a wad of US hundred-dollar bills.
‘Where the hell did you get that?’
‘Louis. He took it from his dad. It’s money for our marriage.’ I could feel gravity in the pit of my stomach as the elevator descended. ‘I’m going back to my Louis. He looks after me when I’m sick. He loves me with his brave heart.’
‘How dare you,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘All I do is look after you!’
Harper folded her arms.
‘You used to look after me. Now you’re just… you’re just’ she took a breath from her oxygen mask – ‘an empty heart.’
I took one step too close. I laughed bitterly at the irony. It was thanks to me that tomorrow she would have a working heart.
‘You’d be dead without me,’ I said.
The elevator doors opened, but she didn’t move; she just stared at me without blinking or breathing. My words seemed to have winded her.
‘I’m only doing what’s best for you,’ I added.
She sank to her knees on the floor of the elevator.
I felt numb. The doors closed and we travelled back up. Time moved painfully slow, and all I could think about was how I was supposed to stop myself from becoming someone I didn’t know.