Squirrel Fish

I meet my future husband on the eve of the Lunar New Year. A forty-seven-year-old Beijing native: a decent job, two apartments, recently divorced, and seeking a stepmother for his preteen son—my auntie posted only this much in the family WeChat group. My father is cooking his signature Squirrel Fish, an exquisite dish reserved for important guests. My mother welcomes the man at the door, scrutinizing his height and weight. I pretend to watch the national gala on TV, careful not to look at his thin hair and greasy scalp.

At the dining table, Auntie praises my doctoral degree and youthful figure, calling it a perfect combination of beauty and talent. She is not my real aunt but my mother’s best friend, a woman who shares her anxiety and shame over having an unmarried daughter at thirty-two, a frightening number that classifies me as a 剩女, a leftover woman in the current marriage market. She and my mother have tapped all their social connections and vowed to marry me off in the Year of the Snake.

My father brings out the fish, crosshatched under the knife and then deep-fried, blooming like a flower in a puddle of sweet-and-sour sauce. He apologizes for the shabby hospitality, even though the table is so crammed that plates are stacked on top of each other. My mother goes on about my honesty and naïveté. Does she seriously think I’m still a virgin? Or is this her way of raising my market value and signaling to my future husband I am pure, fertile, not a clearance sale or secondhand junk?

Either way, the man seems to get her point. He peers at me, smiles, picks up another piece of roasted duck, and chews loudly. Sitting next to him, I can’t help noticing his argyle sweater, the same color and pattern that my professor often wears this season. He is not younger than this man but fitter, a runner since high school, yet he quivered and sweated when he rolled off me and tumbled to the side of the bed his wife owns. He still texts me—conference invitations and animated stickers, like the hilarious dancing green snake he sent earlier this evening.

I must have smiled, because my mother and auntie exchange a relieved glance across the table. My father and the man clink glasses and take another shot of liquor. I can see an assured life ahead of me: him buying groceries and making Squirrel Fish; me mopping the floor and doing the laundry; the two of us managing to have a child before menopause kicks in. I’m deciding on the child’s gender and name when the clock strikes twelve. Firecrackers go off all at once from every balcony as if the city, instead of celebrating prosperity and health, is determined to win a big battle. I’m distracted and forget about my plan.