The Wangs vs. the World Read online

  Hot. If only she wasn’t so freaking hot. With those plush lips and the little freckles on her nose and that beach volleyball body. And now her red-and-pink-striped panties—panties! Andrew loved that word!—and his black boxer briefs were the only barriers keeping him from everything he’d ever wanted. Sliding his hands down her upstretched arms and slipping his tongue between her lips, Andrew tried to stop himself from pressing into her too much. But just a little. And a little more, and more, and, oh, another torturous bit. Just enough to feel exactly how they’d fit together, so easily.

  “Andrew,” she whispered, breathing out on the first syllable. “C’mon. Let’s.” She tugged at the waistband of his underwear and then slid her hand inside, reaching for him.

  “Emma.” One warm hand around his penis.

  “Oh Andrew. Come on. You’re leaving. Let’s just . . . let’s.”

  He felt the rest of his body tighten and his erection loosen a bit in response.

  “Em, you know. We talked about this.”

  “I have condoms in my bag over there.”

  “Look, I think you’re amazing, and you’re so, so hot. And not just hot, you’re beautiful, too.”

  “But you don’t love me.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Dude, I don’t care! Who cares! I’ve had sex with tons of guys I don’t love! I mean, not tons, but a few. A couple.”

  “And that’s okay!”

  “Is it because you think I’m a slut?”

  “No! No, no, no. I don’t even like that word.”

  “Stop being such a feminist, Andrew, it’s gay.”

  “I’m not gay!”

  Emma laughed. “I didn’t say you were. I know you’re not gay. Would this happen if you were?” She gripped him again, tugging him towards her, and he immediately sprang to attention. “See? Your body knows what you want. Aren’t you tired of being a virgin?”

  Andrew turned away from her and put a hand over his penis, willing it to quiet down. He was tired of being a virgin, but that didn’t mean that he was just going to have sex with Emma without being in love with her first. Andrew just wished that love wasn’t so difficult to figure out. It had been simple with his first girlfriend, Eunice, whose Groucho Marx eyebrows had just made her even more beautiful. For the last two years of high school and the first year of college, they’d been in love—he’d felt buoyed by her very existence and fascinated by the smallest detail of her being—but they’d never once had sex because Eunice’s father was a minister and she loved Jesus just a little bit more than she loved Andrew. They’d done everything but—“But not everything butt,” he’d joked to his high school friends—and in a way he’d relished his relatively chaste devotion to her. It meant that he was nothing like his father, who didn’t even bother to hide his affairs from Andrew, though it seemed like Barbra and his sisters didn’t know about them.

  “Em, have you ever been in love?”

  “We’re in college. We have plenty of time to fall in love. And that’s got nothing to do with sex anyways.”

  “But shouldn’t it?”

  Emma was quiet for a moment. She sat and hugged her knees to her chest, not seeming to care that she was still nearly naked. Just as Andrew started to think that she might tell him she actually was in love with him, Emma made a gazelle leap over him, out of bed, and yanked her sundress off the closet door.

  “Hey! No! Stop! Are you mad? Why are you getting dressed?”

  “You have to pack. Don’t let me stop you.”

  “It’ll take me twenty minutes. They’re just leaving L.A. now—we still have—”

  “You know, I know where Bel-Air is. You could say that they’re leaving Bel-Air.”

  “Well, but Bel-Air is in L.A.”

  “Ha ha. Funny. You’re so funny. You should be a comedian.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “No, I mean it. It’ll be awesome. You can hang out with Long Duk Dong and Harold and Kumar. Have a good time. Make tiny-dick jokes. Oh, and Margaret Cho. Good thing she’s a lesbian. You won’t have to have sex with her.”

  “Actually, I think she’s bisexual. She went out with Quentin Tarantino.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Emma shrieked, hurling one of her lethal heels at him. It skidded against the stucco wall like a nail on a chalkboard and landed, innocent, on his pillow. What was wrong with her? Emma was usually so uncomplicated, so easy to be with. She didn’t confuse him like most girls. Why was she being so mean? And why did she care if Margaret Cho was bisexual?

  “Whatever, Andrew,” said Emma, quiet again. “I’m not going to beg you to fuck me. And you are the last hot guy I’m dating. My mom was right.” And then she turned and walked out, shoeless, slamming the dorm room door so hard that his Lenny Bruce mug shot poster slipped off its nail.

  Andrew let himself fall back on the bed, his elbow narrowly missing Emma’s spike heel. Well, that was that then. Another breakup. At least Emma thought he was hot, too. But already this year there had been Jocelyn, and then the end of Jocelyn, a rekindled fling with Soo-Jin, and then the end of Soo-Jin, and now Emma and, very soon after, the end of Emma. And fall semester had just started.

  It was really hard to fall in love when everyone kept breaking up with him. Eunice had broken up with him, too, because she’d met someone on a mission trip who was as devoted to purity as she. “It’ll be better this way,” she’d said over video chat, as he’d stared at his own face in the corner of the screen, willing himself not to cry as she enumerated all the reasons he should forget about her. Andrew thought that he’d spend his newfound singlehood on finally having sex already, but when the opportunity presented itself after a drunken make-out session with a cute nursing major at some fraternity’s ’70s party, it had all felt sordid and desperate and coercive in a way that it never would have with Eunice, and he’d left before either of them could fully disrobe, deciding then that he’d rather wait until he had something closer to love. Who knew it would take so long to find?

  Andrew was just reaching for his phone to call Grace back—she’d sounded so wounded that he couldn’t talk—when Saina’s name flashed on the screen.

  “Hey.”

  “Angie, did you talk to Dad?”

  “Saina! You can stop calling me that already.”

  “Drewly?”

  “This is serious.”

  “Seriously serious.”

  “It is.”

  “God, I know. Did you ever think—”

  “Let’s call Gracie.”

  “Wait, Andrew, before we do. How do you think Dad is?”

  “Oh, you know. How is Dad always?”

  “He almost cried when I talked to him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cried. Like actual sadness tears.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing! I couldn’t. I felt weird even hearing it.” They were quiet for a minute. Andrew picked up Emma’s heel and tapped it lightly on the wall. How could girls walk in those things?

  “Andrew.”

  “Huh?”

  “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “I guess it just doesn’t feel real. Out of nowhere Dad just tells us that everything’s gone and he wants to go back to China to reclaim our ancestral lands or some bullshit? That he doesn’t have enough money left for ASU tuition? How does any of that happen? I know we’re not billionaires, but he always said, you know—”

  “‘Be happy that Daddy is rich man.’”

  “Yep. So what the hell now?”

  “Wait, he didn’t tell me that he wanted to go to China. That’s insane. He’s never even been to China,” said Saina, sounding surprised.

  “Well, you know, he always said he wouldn’t go back until he could do it properly. But, yeah, it was on the message he left—I haven’t actually talked to him yet—”

  “I have a whole conversation with him and he doesn’t tell me, but he leaves you his master plan on a voicemail?�
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  “Maybe he’s getting real Chinese in the face of adversity. I am the firstborn son.”

  “But not the firstborn.”

  “XY trumps XX.” Saina laughed and he felt that old relief. Before he could make another joke, something to keep her from sounding tense and worried, she spoke.

  “Hey, Andrew, do you want me to pay your tuition? Look, I have my whole trust, everything that’s vested so far anyways, it’s not tied up with the bankruptcy as far as I know. And I still have money. I mean, you know, I made a good amount of money. So I could if you wanted.”

  Stay at college. Let Saina deal with Dad. Pay her back when he could get at his money, if it still existed. It probably didn’t exist anymore. Whatever, pay Saina back when he earned some money. Make up with Emma. Do some more open mic nights. Decide to be in love with her. Maybe even try an open mic in L.A. some weekend. Fall in love with her. Write more material. Who knows, he could already be in love with her, and he wouldn’t know unless he stayed. And then sex, sex with Emma.

  “Oh wait, here’s Grace calling again. She’s going to go crazy if we don’t talk to her already,” said Saina. “Hold on, let me merge calls.”

  Andrew heard a beep and quickly shut down his Emma fantasy.

  “Saina!” It was Grace, at her Gracie-est. “I’m so annoyed. Why haven’t you been picking up? Where have you been all day?”

  Before Saina could respond, Andrew leapt in. “Did the king of the Watusis drive a car?”

  “Andrew! How come you guys are talking to each other already? How long have you been on the phone without me?” demanded Grace.

  “Barely at all,” said Saina. “Like, two minutes.”

  “Well, why did you call each other first?”

  “Gracie,” said Andrew. “Aren’t you going to answer?”

  “No! I’m mad.”

  “Then how do we know it’s you?” he teased.

  “Fuck you, Andrew.” She really was mad. Grace always jumped to the angriest place without warning. She was capable of conjuring up a fury that felt like a living beast—a palpable, pulsating thing that crouched next to her—and the only way to stop it from appearing was to head it off with lightness.

  “Language, language,” he said. “Now: Did the king of the Watusis drive a car?”

  “No,” pouted Grace. “He was a savage. A noble savage.”

  “Bzzzt! I’m sorry, that is not the correct answer. You may not enter.”

  “Okay! Fine! Yes. He drives a specially built 1954 Pontiac.”

  “Thank you very much, Bunny Watson.”

  This was how he wanted them to remain, the careless, carefree brother and sisters that they had always been, that they had made themselves be. As long as they could do that, maybe nothing was different, maybe everything wasn’t ruined.

  “Poor Gracie. Andrew, stop torturing her,” said Saina.

  “This is brotherly love in action, yo. No torture.”

  “Guys,” said Grace. “They’re on their way to pick me up. What should I do?”

  “Stall!” said Andrew and Saina together, jaunty. It was their old routine, born of a hundred, a thousand, summer afternoons spent piled on the slipcovered couches in the media room, shivering in the air-conditioned house, hypnotized by the whirr of the film projector. That’s what L.A. kids do on sunny days: shut the doors, crank the air, pull the shades, dim the lights, and pop in the movies. For the three of them, it was a pile of old Katharine Hepburn movies in metal film canisters that Andrew found the year their mother died. All three of them could reenact the licorice gun scene in Adam’s Rib, knew every insult in Woman of the Year, and used the research questions in Desk Set as passwords. The films had been stacked in the dusty crawl space under the stairs and were marked PROPERTY OF BREEZY MANOR. Andrew pictured Breezy as a sexy sixties dollybird sort of lady until Saina told him that a manor was a house and that it was probably what the last owners had called their house.

  “What is wrong with everybody? Saina! Andrew! Why aren’t you guys upset? Do you just totally not care about this? We’re. Poor. Now.”

  “Well, not exactly,” said Andrew. “Saina’s still rich.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “She hasn’t had the Talk,” said Saina.

  “Dudes, I’m sixteen. I know how babies are made.”

  “Not that one, the money one,” said Andrew.

  “Wait, did any of you actually get a birds-and-bees talk?” asked Saina.

  “I think that’s what moms do,” said Grace. “Babs isn’t ever going to give us the Talk.”

  “I don’t know, girls, maybe she’s just dying to be asked. Maybe all she’s ever wanted to do is explain the wonders of menstruation to you both.”

  “Gross, Andrew. Stop,” said Grace. “Will you both just be adults for a minute? What talk? And what money? Saina, why do you have money? Do you mean, like, besides from your art and stuff?”

  “It’s the seventeenth-birthday talk. Dad takes you to the Polo Lounge and tells you about your trust, and then you sign something that says you won’t get to touch it until you’re twenty-five,” said Saina.

  “Actually, Dad took me to the Palm,” said Andrew. “You know, steaks. And he let me drink a martini.”

  “If he’s going to wait, why not wait until we’re eighteen?” asked Grace.

  “I guess he figured seventeen was old enough. You have to sign before you actually turn eigh—”

  “Wait,” interrupted Grace. “How much money?”

  Andrew waited for Saina to answer. She took a moment, and then said: “Two million at twenty-five. And then it was going to be another five million when we turned thirty-five.”

  Suddenly, Andrew felt sick. Hearing Saina say the number out loud made it crunch in his head.

  Seven. Million. Dollars.

  Holy fuck.

  Somehow, he had kept himself from thinking about that number. In the abstract, he’d actually found it a little embarrassing, to be due seven million dollars just for being the product of his father’s sperm. “I’ll earn my own way,” he might have said, knowing that the money would still be there and everyone would just think he was even cooler and more honorable for turning it down at first. But now, to lose seven million dollars without having done anything wrong—one day to have it and the next day not—it just wasn’t fair.

  He could have been rich. And so what if he hadn’t earned any of it? He was going to be rich. He was going to be rich. No more.

  Grace wasn’t saying anything. Neither was Saina.

  “Guys,” said Andrew. “We’ll be cool, yeah? Gracie?”

  “That was a lot of money,” she said. “And I didn’t even know I had it.”

  九

  Helios, NY

  “BABY, YOU OKAY OUT THERE?”

  Oh. Right. Grayson.

  “Are you coming back to bed?”

  She’d have to get him out before the family got there.

  “Saina, baby—I’m cold here without you! Come in and get snuggly.”

  Now. It would be easier if she did it now. They would feel the stink of him if she waited too long, and her siblings would look at her in that new way they had, like they couldn’t understand why her life had stopped being amazing but didn’t want her to know it. They hated Grayson now. Andrew—sweet, peacekeeping Andrew—had responded to Grayson’s betrayal by asking her: “Am I supposed to come to New York and beat him up now? Because I will if you want me to. I really will.” And Gracie had offered to bomb his Facebook fan page with mean comments, offered it so seriously, like a battle tactic, that Saina had laughed and incurred further Gracie wrath on Grayson’s behalf.

  Would he go? Saina was half afraid that he wouldn’t. Half hoped it, too. He’d shown up on her doorstep a week ago carrying a rucksack stuffed with rumpled T-shirts, offering up a fistful of wildflowers that he’d picked off her front lawn. Even before she heard the knock, Saina knew it was him. She’d felt it: a quickening, a shimmering, a pitched batt
le between her red and white blood cells and then boom boom boom—his closed-fisted pounding. Her wineglass squeaked against itself as she set it down, its molecules crowded tight, the liquid inside turning to blood, then vinegar, then back to an organic local blend. That glass had held together, but she’d fallen, fallen out of her carefully molded resistance and—hair down, bra off, legs splayed—into him.

  It was over fast. Afterwards, Saina had half slumped against the leather chesterfield, looking up at the raftered ceiling, blinking as Grayson buried his face in her neck. “You still smell the same,” he’d said, lips against skin. She’d blinked again. The ceiling needed work, but it was hard to find someone willing to leave the beams undisturbed.

  Grayson had let himself go slack against her, taking the weight off his own knees. His arms tightened around her shoulders and he’d fallen damply against her leg.

  There was a place in sex that emotion didn’t quite reach. No matter how great the betrayal, how intense and inflamed the anger, how long the separation, there was a place that was just bodies fitting into each other—unquestioning, uncomplicated. Easy. It felt so easy to lie here, joint and groove. Maybe they should do this. Make a new life in the Catskills. It would be far enough from the people they’d messed up being. Grayson could share the little barn that was going to be her studio, or maybe he could have it and she’d take the attic, with all that good light.

  Easy.

  Easy?

  Is that what Grayson thought?

  Did he come here thinking that it would be this easy? His head felt greasy against her clean skin and his three-day beard pricked her neck. He hadn’t even bothered to clean himself up for her, probably came straight from Sabrina’s bed. What kind of beds do mattress heiresses sleep in? Saina had pictured Sabrina lying atop an impossibly high pile of satiny mattresses, her golden hair fanned out across a mound of pillows, Grayson leaping off the top and landing at Saina’s door. And he’d known that all he had to do was knock.

  “Is this what you thought?” she’d asked, furious. “That you’d show up at my door and I’d just welcome you with open legs? Do you really think you’re that irresistible?”