Typical American by Gish Jen Page A

called the phone number at the back" finished Helen. "There's an oil tank under the ground that needs filling every so often."
    "Really!"
    "Fete has an account to pay for it."
    Theresa shook her head. "That was pretty smart," she said.
    Helen modestly declined the compliment. Still Theresa mused all night, and the next day too. She'd always respected Helen, but she had never felt the kind of overwhelming admiration for her that she did now. What different kinds of intelligence there were in the world! Who was to say which mattered most? One couldn't say, couldn't begin to say, although this much was certain — what mattered in China was not necessarily what mattered here.
    The third day, she came home resolved. In front of the apartment door she dabbed at her eyes with an onion peel, then entered in tears.
    "What's the matter?" Helen asked. "Sit down."
    Theresa balled up her handkerchief. "My scholarship has been cancelled," she lied.
    "Cancelled?" said Ralph. Cancelled!"

    "Impossible" Ralph sat up. "How can it be!"
    "It does seem impossible, right*"
    "Unfair!"
    "That's what I said. It's horribly unfair"
    Helen made tea and filled a hot-water bottle for Theresa. Everyone went to bed early.
    But Ralph lay awake in the dark, wide-eyed. "I can't sleep," he told Helen.
    "Really."
    "Maybe I've been sleeping too much," he said. "I'm tired of sleeping."
    "So get up," she said.

    filing for permanent residency under the Displaced Persons Act), she was disarmed by Janis's efforts to stay in touch. Weren't they genuine? Janis was so easy to talk to, having so much to say herself; any awkwardness she smoothed over with accounts of all kinds of Chinese-student affairs. Picnics, dances. She invited Helen and Ralph to everything. "You should go out more, see more friends," she said. "Don't lock yourself up in the house"
    They never went. Helen wasn't sure exactly why; it had something to do with the fact that Janis's husband had not only been sponsored by the Chinese government to come to the United States, but was almost done with his Ph.D. already. "A record," ventured Helen.
    "Hmm," said Ralph.
    "If he's done by next September that'll be only five years. Including his master's! Of course, he was able to transfer a lot of credits from China."
    "Hmm," said Ralph again.
    "Janis says you and her husband are old friends. Classmates."
    "Really f" Ralph scratched his head. "What's his name again? Henry Chao?"
    Did that mean Helen shouldn't be too friendly with Janis? Helen didn't know — which was to say that Ralph was aware that they were in touch, but not that they chatted some three or four times a week, nor that she had visited Janis's place, and that Janis had visited hers. No husbands involved, Janis had said, proffering the idea as though it were an hors d'oeuvre. And Helen had agreed, reluctant but excited — it would almost have been rude to refuse — though a part of her wondered if Janis's husband did know, not only about their visits, but about everything she told Janis. Her throat dried to think that she might have revealed things about her husband to another man.
    Yet such was the pleasure of confiding, of sharing the daily stuff of her existence — it made her feel somehow accompanied in life — that for the most part she relegated Henry Chao to a

    kind of netherworld, in which he was not so much a person and potential threat as a spirit that could be scared off by a good loud noise. This was especially easy on the telephone. On the telephone, even Janis sported a flickering reality. And when, after all, would Henry and Ralph ever meet? In China, Helen had been taught enormous circumspection; the world there was like a skating rink, a finite space, walled. Words inevitably rebounded. Here the world was enormous, all endless horizon; her words arced and disappeared as though into a wind-chopped ocean.
    A relief. "The only thing I worry about is, what if he finds out that Theresa's scholarship wasn't cancelled," said Helen.