【Yu Fei · Wife】
Twenty-three below. The thermometer in the guesthouse yard was one Lao He had hung up, and every morning before I went out I looked at it first, then turned back to Lang Xiao. “See? It dropped again.”
“Dropped or not, you’re going up.” He took my goggles off the hook, snapped them onto my helmet and yanked the strap tight. “Three days and you still can’t hold a snowplow. It’s my face you’re losing.”
“You’re hurting me,” I said. He didn’t loosen it. At our clinic we coax a patient with a couple of soft words before we even give the numbing shot. He never coaxed me when he strapped my goggles on. He pulled them tight and pushed me out the door.
I’m twenty-eight. I work the front desk at a dental clinic, standing behind the check-in counter in a white coat all year, and the farthest I ever run is from the waiting area to the sterilization room. Lang Xiao is thirty-four, does engineering bids, has skied for eleven years, and every January he comes to this resort in Jilin called Wusongling. Other years I never came. This year he filed my annual leave for me, booked the flights, even bought the ski suit. Pink. “You’re easy to spot in pink.”
I said I wanted to go to Sanya. He said Sanya was wall-to-wall people. I said fine, then one lipstick for every fall. He said deal. Three days, twenty-seven falls. I have enough lipstick to last me till forty.
The second night I was lying face-down on the kang checking flights from Wusongling to Sanya on my phone, and he took the phone out of my hand. “Seven-thirty tomorrow. The lift.” I said you owe me. He said owe you what. I said three days, I want three days flat on a beach. He said next time. He always says next time.
【Lao He · The Other Man】
My name is He Guodong. Everyone at Wusongling calls me Lao He. Forty-six, run a guesthouse, and in ski season I take beginners on the side. The guesthouse sits at the end of the dirt road below the slopes. Six rooms, heated brick kangs, a yard full of firewood I split myself.
Lang Xiao’s wife, I had her figured the first day. She wasn’t here to ski, she’d been marched here. Pink suit, a strip of eyes showing under the helmet, goggles that kept fogging so every little while she had to push them up and wipe them. Every time they went up, the eyes were red. Couldn’t tell if it was the cold or if she’d just been crying.
“Coach He,” she said, bargaining with me on day one, “every time I get up on my own, you pull me up once. How about it?” “You fall, you get yourself up. That’s the rule.” “Then I’m not getting up.” She sat down in the snow and, sure enough, did not move. Lang Xiao hollered at her twice from the top of the slope. She shoved her goggles up and yelled back, “Come down here and carry me!”
Lang Xiao didn’t come down. He said let her get up on her own, she only learns it if she gets up on her own. I stood beside her, watched a while, then bent over and held out my hand. She grabbed it. A small hand inside the glove, and it held on tight. “Just this once,” I said. “Tomorrow’s tomorrow’s business,” she said.
The next day at noon in the resort cafeteria she walked up to my table with a bottle of water, didn’t look at her husband’s table, and set it down in front of me. “Can’t get it open.” I opened it. She took it back, drank a mouthful, and stayed standing there. “Coach He, your hands are so warm.” I said that’s the kang. She said then I’ll come warm myself on it tonight too. Lang Xiao looked over from his table. She acted like she didn’t see.
【Lang Xiao · Husband】
It’s always been like this with her: she fusses, I decide. Six years married. I picked the apartment, I picked the car, most of her clothes I ordered online myself, and I know her sizes better than she does. She doesn’t have to think about anything. She fusses a little, then she does as she’s told. That system ran smooth for six years at home. I didn’t expect it to stop working on snow.
The morning of the third day I took her up to the intermediate run. Lao He said she wasn’t ready. I said that’s exactly why she goes up now. People only get there if you push them.
She stood at the top with her goggles pushed up on her forehead, staring at the white strip below, hands shaking. “Xiao-ge, I don’t want to.” “Put your goggles on.” “I don’t want to!” “Put them on.”
She put them on. I had my phone out recording. I wanted to film her coming down and send it to the guys at the office.
She made it twenty meters, the skis crossed, she pitched forward, her helmet hit the snow, bounced, she rolled twice and stopped under a little tree.
I got the roll on video. I didn’t lower the phone. I was watching for whether she moved. She moved. She sat up. Then she just sat there, not moving. From that far away I could see her push her goggles up onto her forehead, face turned toward me. She didn’t call out.
【Lao He · The Other Man】
I cut over from the next run and stopped with my skis sideways in front of her. She was hugging her knees, snow packed down one trouser leg, lips white, no tears on her face.
“Where’s it hurt.” “Everywhere,” she said. “Knee, butt, back. And my face. The goggles pressed on it.”
I unclipped her skis. She wouldn’t stand, and I didn’t make her. I crouched down with my back to her. “Climb on.” “He said I get up on my own.” “That’s his rule,” I said. “My rule is, anybody who falls on the intermediate run, the coach carries.”
She climbed on. Through two layers of ski suit I could feel her shaking. Not crying. Cold. Her legs were clamped around my waist, not heavy, soft, and somewhere along the way I started thinking about what those two legs looked like under the ski pants, and as soon as I thought it I made myself watch the trail.
The wind on the slope blows uphill. She buried her face in the back of my neck, and the breath she let out was hot, ran down inside my collar, down my back, and my back started to sweat. By the stretch of dirt road at the guesthouse gate I could tell she’d stopped shaking. She was just buried there, not moving.
“Coach He.” “Mm.” “Your back is so warm.” “The kang’s warmer. You’ll see when we get there.”
Before I set her down she asked from my back, “Coach He, how many people have you carried?” I said off the intermediate run, just you. She said so did I come out ahead. I said you fell twenty-seven times, what’s there to come out ahead on. She laughed against my back, and another gust of hot air went down my collar.
【Yu Fei · Wife】
He set me on the edge of the kang with my legs hanging down. My feet were still ice, but under my butt it started to warm, then up, to my back. He came in with a roll of medicated plaster, crouched, and pushed my trouser leg up. The knee was already bruised, a patch the size of a cup mouth, and his hand was cold when it pressed down. I hissed. He laid his hand flat on the kang for a bit, then pressed again. Warm.
“Where’s your husband.” “Still up there skiing, I guess,” I said. “He doesn’t come down till he’s done three runs. His rule.”
Lao He didn’t answer that. He stuck the plaster on and held his palm over it until the plaster started to burn. His hand burned hotter than the plaster. While he held it, it crept up, just a little, to above the knee, and stopped there, and didn’t move. I didn’t tell him to take it away.
“Coach He, do I have to go up again tomorrow.” “That’s yours to decide. If you go up, I take you. Not the intermediate run.” “Then let me bargain,” I said. “I go up, you carry. Fall once, get carried once.” “Your husband won’t like that.” “His doesn’t count.”
I went blank for a second after I said it. So did Lao He. Then he laughed, that Northeastern laugh, every wrinkle on his face pushing outward. “All right,” he said. “Fall once, get carried once.” When he stood, his hand came off the place above my knee, and that patch of skin went cold all at once.
【Lang Xiao · Husband】
That night on the kang she lay on her stomach, one plaster on her knee, one on her butt, her back to me. I put my hand on her waist. She said it hurt. I took it away.
I told her something. Something I had been chewing on for three days.
The first day, when Lao He pulled her up, I thought it. The second day, when she asked Lao He to open her water bottle in the resort cafeteria, I thought it again. Today she rode down the mountain on his back with her face buried in the back of his neck, and I filmed the whole thing from the top, and when I watched it back I was hard.
“Let Lao He teach you something else.” She didn’t turn over. “Teach me what.” “You know what.”
A long time went by. The firewood under the kang popped. She said, “You decided for me again?”
“This time you decide,” I said. “With your goggles on, it’s a yes. Whoever pushes your goggles up, it stops. If I push, that counts. If he pushes, that counts.”
She turned over. The plaster scraped on the kang mat and she frowned, but didn’t say it hurt. She looked at me, and in the lamplight her eyes were bright.
“No,” she said. “No to what.” “If I push them up to my forehead, you both stop.” She said it one word at a time. “If you push mine, it doesn’t count.”
【Yu Fei · Wife】
Lang Xiao said nothing. In six years he had never heard me say those two words, doesn’t count, and in six years I had never said them. When I heard them come out of my own mouth my chest burned. Hotter than the kang.
“Then that’s how it is,” he said at last, his voice a little hoarse. “I’ll sleep in the room next door.” “You go tell him,” I said. “You brought it up. You go say it.”
He got up and dressed, his skin prickling up in the cold air. When the door opened, the cold from the corridor poured in, and then it shut again.
I sat up and the plaster on my knee tugged. My goggles were hanging on the hook at the head of the kang, pink frame, a film of white fog on the lens where the day’s sweat had frozen. I took them down, breathed on the lens, wiped it with my sleeve, wiped it clean, and breathed on it again.
Footsteps in the corridor. Two sets.
I put the goggles on, the strap biting into the back of my head, the lens against my face, icy. Then I pulled open the door.