been a kiss, although entirely one-sided, and she had stopped him as soon as it started, so it wasn’t really that she had kissed him at all.
Fitzgerald called three times a night. He called at random times and asked Ming where she had been when she hadn’t picked up the phone. He fell behind in listening to lecture tapes, until she reminded him that he had to study if he wanted to get into medical school and come to Toronto. We should cool down, she said, see what happens in the next year.
“Slow down, cool down, it’s all you say now.”
“I’m going to answer the phone once every two days. I got call display.”
A week later, Ming said that Chen had tried to kiss her again, and she hadn’t stopped him. Did Fitzgerald want to break up because of her lack of faithfulness, she asked. She would understand. She explained all of this in one very long expectant breath, with no pause. Fitzgerald said that he wanted to come see her.
“Our first plan was the right one, to just be study friends. I wish we hadn’t got so off track,” said Ming.
“I need to see you. You owe it to me.” He felt an urgent need to bed her harshly and memorably if it should be the last time.
“If you’re going to be angry, it’s better for us to make a break.”
Fitzgerald said that he needed her to get through everything—the exams, the interviews. Ming warned him not to twist things into being her responsibility.
“Don’t make me into your mother,” said Ming. A long, mutual silence. Then, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, I’m not sure why I said that.”
“Is that what you think this is about?” asked Fitzgerald. He had once told Ming that the loneliness he felt after his mother died was like living in a house frame that would never be clad with walls or a roof.
“Look, that was wrong of me. Pretend I never said it.”
“That hurts, you know? And then it hurts more that you want to pretend you never said it.”
“You’re not going to lay a guilt trip on me,” said Ming, suddenly hard again. “I don’t do guilt.”
“No, you don’t, do you?”
“Let’s stop.”
“We’re not done talking,” said Fitzgerald.
“We are done. What else do you have to say?”
“Lots.”
“Do you have anything good, anything positive to say, or are we just going to hate each other more? I’m sorry I mentioned your mother, which was wrong. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. That’s all I can say on that subject.”
“Well, you meant more, but now you won’t own up to it.”
“Let’s stop, let’s not hate each other.”
“Hate? I thought we loved each other. I don’t know why you’re bringing hate into it. As for my mother—”
“Good night.”
“No, don’t you, Ming—”
“Good night, Fitzgerald.”
When he called back, the phone rang until it went to her answering machine. Five minutes later, he dialed and the phone rang until her machine picked up. An hour later, her machine answered still.
Ming answered his calls every second night. She told Fitzgerald that she still thought he was a beautiful person, as if this was a dreary but proven scientific principle and therefore she could not deny it despite its uncomfortable implications. She maintained that he was the only person she could trust telling “everything” to, which meant the intimate aspects of her tutoring by Karl. Fitzgerald wanted to ask whether he, too, would become an uncomfortable secret, but feared that the asking would make it come true. At the end of each call one of them would be crying, and the other angry. In December, Ming said that although it was a “fact” that she loved Fitzgerald “as a person,” they should no longer speak.
“You need me more than I can deal with, and more than you can handle, frankly.”
“But if you weren’t trying to run away, I wouldn’t need you so bad.”
“It’s not my fault. I won’t allow that.”
“What about next year, when I come to Toronto?”
“If you come to Toronto, next year is next year. I suppose anything is possible.”
In the following weeks, Fitzgerald left monologues on Ming’s answering machine, emotional diatribes examining their relationship’s dynamics. He left messages saying he wanted to discuss medical school application issues with her, and when she didn’t call back he left further messages in which he discussed his thoughts about her possible responses to his issues. Sometimes he described his day’s study progress, subject by subject. Fitzgerald pleaded with Ming to call him. He addressed the reasons he imagined she might have for not calling him, and promised that if she called, he would be calm and neither of them would cry. He would be silent for a few days, and then call to leave a message saying that he was finally getting beyond their relationship, that it was wonderful that things had cooled down a bit to give them both space, so it would be great if she would call and they could talk like good old friends. Like colleagues, he said.
Fitzgerald began calling to hear her voice on the machine. In the middle of the day, when he felt lonely, he would call just to hear the recording.
Hi. You’ve reached Ming, but I’m not here. Leave a message.
One day, at two in the afternoon, she picked up the phone.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hi.”
Her voice was sticky. “I was napping. I just grabbed the phone. Why are you calling in the afternoon?”
“I’m addicted to the idea of you.”
“Oh, I didn’t check my call display,” she said with a mix of annoyance and apology, as if to explain why they were actually talking.
“We’re meant for each other. We decided.”
She said nothing, and then came the dial tone.
The next day, Ming’s number was out of service. The new one was unlisted.
It was an early March day in Ottawa. Fitzgerald rode his bicycle under a noon sun that chewed gleaming wet facets into snowbank peaks as streaks of black sediment crumbled toward the curb. Fitzgerald had just checked the midterm exam results, and was near the top of each of his classes. Tomorrow he would go to Toronto for his interview. The invitation had come from the Faculty of Medicine in a stunningly ordinary white envelope.
Fitzgerald pedalled away from campus along the canal, through lakes of slush toward the red light at the intersection of Sussex and Rideau. He chewed upon the imperative of acceptance into medical school, and scripted the shining, clear conversation with Ming that would set aside all the misunderstandings that had separated them. For months now, Fitzgerald’s mind had alternated between studying and allowing his speculations to spin like wheels stuck in a rutted path of Ming and medicine, digging the tracks deeper and deeper. Everything would fall into place once he was accepted to the University of Toronto. That was it, the end point after which career, perfect words, heroic acts, and true love would come naturally as a matter of course.
She might call tonight to arrange to see him in Toronto tomorrow. He prepared himself for the things she might say, thought about what response would show tenderness, strength, and more maturity than when they last spoke five months ago. Fitzgerald pedalled slowly, timing the lights. Spinning his legs backwards, he judged the crosswalk with its orange hand flashing, then the traffic signal that turned yellow as he came closer, then red. Now his light was green, and he stood up