Across a Green Ocean. Wendy Lee
after hanging up the phone, he turned off her computer, handed her purse to her, marched her out of the office, and put her in a cab. Afterward, he had sent flowers, offered to come to the funeral, but she refused. It was enough that he had understood, in those first blinding minutes, how she’d needed to be treated—not to be asked questions, not even to be comforted, but to be told what to do.
Now, as Emily was getting ready to leave her office, she heard Rick’s measured footsteps in the hallway before he knocked on her door and came in.
“Still here?” she said, although she knew he stayed at work as long as she did.
“I just heard from the doctors.”
Emily knew she’d be at work a while longer. “Sit down.”
She and Rick had both been assigned to the case of a thirty-eight-year-old man named Gao Hu, who had legally come to the States as a student and overstayed his visa. Since then, he had graduated from technical college, worked for over ten years at the same computer-support company, married a naturalized American citizen, purchased a house in Queens, and had a son, who was now eight years old. He had been applying for a green card through his wife when a red flag went up with Homeland Security. His name had been matched with a years-old notice to appear in immigration court for a deportation hearing, which had followed him around for years from one old address to the next, always a step behind until now. This infraction was enough for him to be arrested, and he had been taken to a detention center upstate, where he had been held for the past three months.
It was during this period, when it became clear he wasn’t going to be released, that Gao’s wife, Jean, had sought legal help. Emily and Rick had periodically gone to the detention center to see him, and two weeks ago, when Emily had gone alone, Gao had complained of leg pain. After some back and forth with the authorities, who claimed he was making it up in the hopes of being pardoned on medical leave, he was examined by an independent doctor, whose results Rick had just obtained.
“His leg is fractured,” Rick said. “It isn’t clear how it happened.”
“The bastards,” Emily said. “They kept saying he was faking.”
Rick held up his hands. “Wait, it gets worse. When the doctor did the MRI on his leg, they discovered a defect in his heart. He’s probably had it for years and never felt any symptoms, or thought they weren’t worth checking out. It’s possible it’s been exacerbated by his current situation.”
Emily briefly thought of her own father and his aversion to doctors, then tamped it down. “Are they allowing him medication?”
“He’s been prescribed painkillers, but when medication’s distributed at the center, the inmate has to be able to stand in line to receive it. Of course, Gao’s leg has gotten so bad that he can’t stand. And they won’t give him a wheelchair.”
Emily exhaled a breath. “Okay, what do we do?”
“First, we have to file a report. It’s a criminal case now. Willful neglect, obstruction of justice, whatever we can throw at them. Next, Gao has to be allowed to get immediate treatment, for his heart as well as his leg. Once that’s done, we have to find a way to get him out of that place. Maybe move him closer to the city, so we can monitor his condition.”
“We should make some phone calls,” Emily said, beginning to turn her computer back on. “Every single freaking congressperson. They should all know about this.”
Rick reached across the desk and placed his hand on her arm. “It’s late, there’s no point in doing that now. We’ll start drawing up the lists tomorrow, so we can make the calls first thing on Monday.”
Emily grinned, adrenaline beginning to replace outrage. “Another working weekend.” She enjoyed this about her job most of all, when it made any other problem in her life seemed petty in comparison. Suddenly contrite, she asked, “Did you have any plans?”
“The boys have a soccer game, but no matter—Lisa can go without me. How about you?”
“Julian wants to see some new documentary, but he’ll have to do that by himself.” She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Our poor spouses.”
“Indeed.” Rick paused and removed his hand quickly, as if he’d just realized he was still touching her. “Well, since we’re going to be working all weekend, how about getting a drink?”
Emily glanced at her watch. “I’d love to, but I promised my mother I’d stop by my brother’s apartment. He hasn’t returned her calls in a week, so she thinks he’s been kidnapped or mugged or something. Of course, he’s probably just ignoring her.”
Rick laughed. “Oh, to be young and without responsibilities.”
They said good night, and Emily finally left work.
Outside, the sidewalks were littered with the detritus of the day: wadded-up newspapers, peanut shells, plastic bags. A few men were outside smoking cigarettes; a pair of tourists stopped in front of a lit store display and then strolled on. She passed a café in which a young Asian couple in the window dreamily split a shaved ice. In the distance, the Manhattan Bridge shimmered like a faraway promise. To Emily, these things were more romantic than any image of New York that her teenage, suburban imagination could have conjured up. She knew most people would think she was delusional, but what she enjoyed most about working in Chinatown was the way it smelled. Sure, in the summer the odors could get overwhelming, but she liked how the moment she got off the subway, even if she were blindfolded, she could tell where she was from the redolent mix of dead fish, rotting vegetables, and other assorted trash. There was a distinctly human element to it. She liked to think it was the blood and sweat of the thousands of immigrants who had passed through its streets. Whereas now it was probably the blood and sweat of tourists looking for the right knockoff bag, but she still liked to think of it that way.
Since she was running late, Emily decided to take a cab to Michael’s apartment. It took her several more minutes to dig the unfamiliar address out of her phone’s memory and flag down a vehicle. As the cab wound through the festively decorated tenements of Little Italy, across Houston Street, and up First Avenue, she tried to think of the last time she had been in this part of the city—possibly not since her twenties. Occasionally, Julian came in for his work, but for her, the city had been telescoped to Chinatown. She got in at seven in the morning on the train and left at seven at night, leaving no opportunity for anything else. She hadn’t gone for a drink in ages. Maybe she should have taken Rick up on his offer. She absently touched her arm where his hand had been.
Looking out the window at the restaurants and bars and the young people strolling down the streets, Emily remembered when she and Julian had gone to a screening almost every weekend, something by one of his old film school buddies, or by a filmmaker he hoped to network with. She had sat through endless question-and-answer sessions, desultory after-parties with bad wine. When Julian introduced her to other people as a lawyer, they would give her a cool nod and then turn away, as if she came from a different world. Look, assholes, she’d think. My work has more influence on the real world than your five-minute films about someone’s antique camera collection or some guy who makes sculptures out of trash. Later, she and Julian would laugh about the earnestness of some of these people, but she couldn’t help wondering if he preferred that she be like one those red-lipsticked grad students who hung on to his every word if he so much as mentioned that he knew a distributor.
For the most part, though, she remained the supportive girlfriend, and subsequently, supportive wife. Then, since they had moved to the suburbs, these social events had gradually tapered off. Julian would go to some of them alone, and Emily would beg off, saying she’d had a long week and couldn’t bear going back into the city again. She said she’d prefer to stay at home and work on legal briefs. In reality, she sat on the couch, ordered in dinner, and watched bad movies late into the night until she heard a car in the driveway, and then she’d switch off the television and snatch up a book, or at least a serious-looking magazine, for when Julian entered the house.
As the streets signs for Alphabet City flashed by, Emily wondered if her brother enjoyed