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Page 14.
Chapter 7. The Story of G
 Speaking of the Pacific Ocean, and windy San Francisco, here in our New England city is a small Asian community. Some are associated with the university, others with the restaurant business, and the rest in various occupations. The grandfather of G was an elderly doctor who had retired from surgery but still held a private general practice at nearly 80 years old. When I came to have my tonsils checked one winter day, it was like stepping into a back room in Canton or Shanghai. The building itself was severe and modern, western, but the décor was Chinese. There was even a small shrine with Confucius in the main waiting room. Scrolls with Chinese writing hung from the walls. Sketches from the Imperial era hung in various rooms. I was the only patient that morning, and I felt as if I were walking among ghosts in those many inward rooms. As I sat in the waiting room with a copy of China News, I looked up and saw a young woman working at a desk in an adjoining office. She picked up the phone and spoke in clipped Chinese. After she hung up she looked my way and smiled briefly.
An elderly woman in a nursing aide's uniform with face mask trudged out and signaled for me to follow her. She took me deeper and deeper into this labyrinth of rooms. Bamboo water wheels spilled trickling water into bamboo pipes, which dribbled it onto little pebbles in tubs of green plants. At the end of the hall, a very Confucian looking old man with a goatee and white lab coat stood waiting for me. With decades of skill, he assessed me from head to foot even as I walked down the hallway.
When I stepped into the office, the lady informed him in Chinese of my sore throat. He pinched my nose and lifted it while pushing a tongue depressor down on my lower jaw. I thought he was going to harm me for a moment. He had me sit down, took my blood pressure and temperature, prodded my ribs, listened to my heart and lungs, and said: "Listen, young man, the only thing wrong with you is that you party all night and don't get enough sleep. You don't have anything to worry about—just clean your sinuses and it will step the drip drip drip."
He opened his mouth like a fish, raised his head, and hooked his hand over himself to point down his throat. "That will be eight dollars, and let me give you some tea." He fussed about a steel counter and mixed something up. He gave me a little envelope to tuck in my pocket and handed me a medium sized cup without handles. It contained a steaming green broth. I smelled eucalyptus, fennel, licorice, ginseng, and who knows what else. I sipped this hot stuff as best I could, and it opened chambers in my skull that I didn't know existed. My ears popped as if I were driving down from the mountains.
"Wow!" I said.
He nodded. "Wow is right. You came to the right place. I've been dabbling in herbal medicine since I retired. A lot of it comes from Europe, too." He took my money, thanked me, and showed me the directions to the exit.
Along the way, I got lost and ended up in the young woman's office. She turned and looked at me as I came up behind her. She wore a white lab jacket and sat at a desk with a pile of manila folders crammed with records. She looked very Chinese, with yellow skin, almond eyes, and thick glossy black hair.
"I'm sorry," I said, "I got lost." I gesticulated. "Lost." I made circling motions with my arms and shrugged.
"Rost," she said. I nodded. Suddenly her face crinkled up in laughter and she rose. "That's pig-Chinese for lost. Sorry, bad joke."
"You speak English."
"Yes!" She really was cute, with all these dimples when she smiled. "Of course. I grew up here, just like you." She was compact, with an egg-shaped face tapering in a small round chin. "It's that way," she said pointing to the waiting room and the door beyond. She laughed again. She told me later that I really amused her. She thought I looked gaunt and needed feeding. "Did my grandfather give you his tea?"
"Yes, my head feels so much better."
"Good!"
When I got home that evening, there was a note under my door. Someone had called and left a message about forgotten medicine. I didn't have a phone in my little room, just a bed, a desk, a chair, a small closet, and a wide windowsill that was my pantry in winter. My idea of food to store was packages of freeze-dried soup, and I had a heating coil to bring water to a boil in a cup.
"It's G," said the girl from the doctor's office. "You forgot your tea! My grandfather found it as they were closing up." We discussed the matter briefly, and she agreed to drop it off at the corner. So I bundled up and went out into the dark street. At the corner were a few businesses and bright lights. It was actually a good part of town, a rundown adjunct to the university, and I was not ashamed to tell anyone I lived there. As she had promised, the woman pulled up in a long, sleek black car with skis tied to a rack on top. "Peter?"
I stepped off the curb and approached her driver's side window.
"I have your—" She looked around her, and appeared to have lost the small packet. A car honked behind her, and she pulled over. I jumped out of the way as some impatient person splashed past in a show of immaturity. She signaled for me to get in. The interior of the car was dark and luxurious. An expensive music player poured forth crystal clear soft rock music.
"You have a whole live concert in here, complete with people whistling and cheering," I said.
She laughed that wonderful crinkly smile again. "I have to get under a light. Your tea fell under the seat someplace."
I apologized, and she said "No trouble. I'm on my way to Stowe, Vermont for the weekend, and you're on my way."
I said: "That's great of you."
She drove to a supermarket parking lot, and we dug around under the seats, under the carpets, and everywhere. She looked stymied. "Maybe I forgot it." She laughed, as she often did. "Do you have some kind of amnesia you're spreading?"
I shrugged. "I forget."
She pointed to a restaurant. "Tell you what. I'm famished. You want to join me for a bite?" I was always hungry, and readily agreed. She was a postdoc chemistry student getting ready for a life of medical research, I learned over a matching set of meatloaf dinners with mashed potatoes, gravy, string beans, and lots of catsup. We shared a pot of tea. I told her about my struggle to find a niche, and my interest in certain historical and literary topics.
"I love reading the classics," she said. "I just wish I had more time. I have to squeeze things in. Do you ever do things impulsively?"
I had to admit that I did (most of my current life style was by impulse). She said: "How would you like to come to Vermont with me? I had the trip lined up with a girlfriend, but she bugged out at the last moment, and I'd love to have someone interesting and intelligent to talk to. There is a couch in the lodge that you can sleep on, and food and drinks will be on me."
That's how we got started. It was a long, pleasant drive up there. G was a great conversationalist, and I listened carefully because she really was a neat person. Even though (shock) she turned out to be ten years older than I was, she seemed the nearest thing to a regular date to me at that point, compared to other women older than myself that I dated now and then. "When you are Chinese-American," she said, "people think because you look totally Asian that they have to yell or you won't understand them. Sometimes they talk to me in funny accents that they think sound Chinese." She laughed. "Sometimes I get impatient and talk in funny accents just to baffle them and piss them off." We both laughed. "I'm as American as apple pie, at least I think so."
I assured her: "You are extremely apple pie."
G had worked for about seven years at a very high salary after graduating from Stanford and then Yale. She'd been engaged to a graduate student from Hong Kong, of whom her family had approved, but they had grown distant from each other. "Totally different cultures," she said. "At first I was gullible and naïve, and he just worked and studied all the time and had no ideas of his own, no personality, but worse yet—no sense of humor. He was a nice, shy, quiet guy, but I nearly died of boredom. So, to escape, I broke off our engagement and took jobs in large corporations. I kept moving every year or two, until he gave up and stopped trying to follow me around. Also," she said with a giggle, "I had Chinese girlfriends of mine set him up with dates until one day he met one and fell in love. That's when he went back to China and I started my studies at the university." I asked her if she played any sports, offhand, and she said "no, but I won a first place trophy in a beer chugging contest at Stanford."
I said: "Oh-oh, I won't challenge you on that."
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