Free Typical American by Gish Jen

authoritatively obliged.
    So it went, back and forth, Ralph playing at husband, Helen at wife.
    Later, the game over, Ralph approached Helen as she chopped vegetables. He had in the meantime gone to school to meet with his new advisor, who was not Pinkus — he missed Pinkus, who was consulting full-time now — but Pierce, a Professor Rodney S. Pierce, who with his greased goatee looked more like an artisan than an engineer. A bird-boned, finicky man. Anyway, Ralph had gone to meet with him, as he was supposed to, and had walked back, and now was supposed to be studying. And he would be, if Pierce's voice were not roaring in his ears. The ocean in a seashell. "Detail, Mr. Chang." So now what was he going to do? "It's a matter, shall we say, of inclination." Inclination. "There are engineers and there are engineers. I wouldn't presume to predict. But I should tell you. A favor, believe me. Nothing you don't realize yourself."
    Nothing he didn't realize himself. This was, consequently, his fourth trip to the kitchen in an hour. The first trip he had tasted the soup; the second, he had asked Helen to make him a cup of tea; the last, he had had more soup. "Needs salt," he had said then. To this she'd answered affectionately, as she tasted it herself, "What do you know?" She'd called him a fan tong, just

    what his father used to say. Of course, she was teasing. She wasn't a big teaser, but sometimes she did tease, and then she called it "ribbing." An odd word; sometimes he wondered whether she kept words like that among the other secrets of her drawers. Anyway, this time she had her chin stuck out over the sink in case she dripped as she ribbed, and when he'd tickled her Adam's apple, she'd laughed, which gladdened him.
    But now, as he stood in the doorway again, homing to her presence, he thought he saw her shoulders rise with apprehension, her elbows draw in. "No more, no more," she said without turning around, or at least that's what he thought she said; and when he came in anyway, she said, "More soup?"
    He shook his head and simply stood, wanting to tickle her Adam's apple again but not knowing how to get to that. There was a way, he knew, but he knew it the way he knew that boat captains could navigate by the stars. He gazed up at the fluorescent circle blinking overhead. Unfathomable. "Sure," he said, after a moment. "Soup."
    She ladled him some.
    "Needs salt." He smiled.
    But this time she didn't call him a fan tong. Instead she said okay, in English, patiently, and reached for the salt shaker. She was going to add salt. What wasn't proper? Still, as he watched her salt with one hand, scratch the side of her nose with the other, he felt himself to be, not the head of the family, a scholar, but a child on a high wooden stool, helpless, bright air all around him. He heard a patient voice. Your father will beat me too.
    The room resounded with patience.
    "Not right."
    "Not right?"
    He heard himself talking. "Your breathing."
    Their marriage so young, yet already it was easier to say what they'd said before. "Show me again" she said. No tilt of her head. He demonstrated. She imitated him perfectly, chopping carrots.

    "What's so interesting about those carrots?"
    "Not right?" Still chopping.
    "You didn't even look."
    She watched.
    "Good" he said then. "I want you to breathe that way all the time"
    She agreed. But ten minutes later, he caught her holding her breath again.
    "You were listening?" asked Helen. "From around the corner?"
    He nodded, barely.
    '7s there something wrong?"
    "You hide things" he said.
    "Hide what?"
    "Everything. There are things you don't tell me."
    She scraped a ragged peel off a turnip.
    "Say something. I want you to say something."
    She thought. "Would you like some soup?"
    "No."
    "Would you like some tea?"
    "No."
    "Would you like some — "
    "No!" he yelled, and left.
    What kind of love was theirs, that it brought strife instead of peace? They fought again a few days later, and then again the next