Free The Foremost Good Fortune by Susan Conley

woman at the visa office yesterday say Beijing lacks charm. Lacks history. She’s holed up in a French diplomatic compound outside the city. She’d lived in Shanghai the whole year before, she said. “Shanghai has flavor,” she explained to her friend seriously. “It’s so much better. But Beijing”—she shook her head—“no. I won’t live here.”
    There are government initiatives to make the air better before the Olympics—they have a “blue sky” goal of 150 days in 2008. This seems like a high number. Each day you can check pollution levels on a government Web site, but I don’t need to look at the ratings. It might be helpful to understand that the Clean Air Act in the United States limits healthy “fine particle pollution” concentrations to thirty-five micrograms per cubic meter. Levels between fifty-one and one hundred are moderate, and anything over a hundred is harmful to “sensitive groups,” including children and the elderly. It’s weird to live like this, but I’ve decided to make friends with the pollution. It’s like a Down East fog rolled in from the outer banks. Soupy. Which is a word we say in Maine when the fog won’t burn off.
    Pollution here seems to have a lot to do with wind. The city sits at the northern edge of the North China Plain, bounded on the northand west by mountains. Wind blowing south or east pushes things out of the city. North or west winds leave things over the city, along the mountain front.
    Tony likes to check the ratings. He calls me at the playground on my cell phone and asks if I want to know today’s pollution numbers. “No,” I say. “I don’t want to hear it. I’m sure it’s worse than I think.”
    He isn’t listening. “One hundred fifty and rising,” he says, as if I’m interested. As if I can’t already tell it’s bad by the headache I feel coming on, and the fact that I can’t see the trees across the street.
    “Thank you for that,” I say. “I’m hanging up now. You’ve made my day.”
    That night, after the boys go to bed, Tony opens a bottle of wine and we sit on the couch so our legs are touching and look down over the Fourth Ring highway and farther out to the crowded skyline. It’s Friday, and it feels like we haven’t been alone together in weeks, because we haven’t. I’ve missed him. Before we moved here I forgot to plan for his absences and all the work he’d have.
    “How are we doing?” Tony asks and takes my hand in his and kisses it. He’s a stealth romantic. We forget our wedding anniversary for years in a row. But, as we both like to say, our love is the key to the whole operation. And right now the operation is stationed in China, where Tony likes to keep a running score of our wins and losses. “Is China beating us this week?” he asks, and smiles.
    “On Monday,” I answer. “We won. Clearly we won because we had the good luck to hire Xiao Wang.” I take a sip of wine and try to smile. “But today was different. Today it was too smoggy for the boys to play outside at recess.”
    Tony nods. “One for us. One for China.”
    Sunday morning comes, and the boys eat French toast at the dining table. Tony walks in from the hall and kisses them good-bye. He’s flying to Shanghai for meetings all week. Right before he leaves he gives Thorne and Aidan a speech: “Be kind to each other and more important, be kind to your mother.” I stand by the table and feel like our family issome throwback to the fifties. I’m the housewife whom the kids are badgered into being nice to? I’m more dependent on my husband than I’ve ever been.
    I’ve learned that needing Tony and feeling close to him are not the same—need is about practicalities; intimacy is a mysterious underwater current. I bet Brie, the astrologer back in Maine, would attest to this difference. I wouldn’t be surprised if Saturn wants me to cleave to Tony like some helpless bride and never give Neptune a chance.
    Tony kisses me on the lips and