Face (44 page)

They came through en masse. While Mum stood by with her prescription gruel, my father bit into his Whopper as if it were take-out
from Lutèce.

Before he left that night my brother gave me a letter. He said it was the only mail I’d received that looked personal, and
therefore interesting.
It was written in Tai’s even handwriting, though there was no return address. I took it into the bedroom after Henry was gone,
while my mother and Anna were in with Dad.

I was still reeling from my father’s story, trying to decide whether he’d told me in the hope that I would tell the rest of
the family or to stop me from telling what little I already knew. I didn’t feel as if there was enough space in my head to
think about Tai along with all the other spinning fragments of my life. But the letter seemed to be waiting, almost breathing.

It was not, after all, Tai’s fault that I’d bolted the way I did. Not his fault everything had turned inside out, or that
I was afraid to see him. I wondered if Dad had had some of the same feelings about going back to China to find his father—the
need for his love fighting against the dread that meeting him again would unleash some horrible truth. And even more horrible
consequences.

But that was Dad’s story, not mine. My fear of Tai was as irrational as my terror of Chinatown had proven to be. As my pursuit
of young blond men had been. Something I demanded and then rejected or fled from.

The envelope smelled faintly of garlic. Tai’s cooking. Like the smells at the back of Li’s shop. No fish. That, too, was in
my head.

Dear Maibelle,

David told me about your father. Thank you. It makes me worry less—and more—for you. I remember when my mother died, and then
when my father had his stroke, I tried to think of something people could say that might cheer me. There was nothing. I remember
feeling so powerless. And guilty. When people said they were sorry, I wanted to say, yeah, me too. In the end it’s only words.
And the words are only as meaningful as the feelings underneath them. Nothing words can mean the world sometimes. Eloquent
statements can ring hollow as bamboo. I’m sorry.

I keep seeing you, Maibelle. And maybe this isn’t the
time for me to say it, but I need you to know. You said you were surprised I remembered about your childhood sweetheart in
Wisconsin, but of course I do. That day I saw you in the street after he died, you ran away from me but I saw what was in
your eyes. I remember thinking as I handed you my handkerchief. I remember thinking how beautiful you looked. I remember thinking
maybe Lao Li’s matchmaking scheme wasn’t so crazy after all.

It went on a little. He was confused. Hurt and afraid he’d hurt me. He didn’t understand. I folded the paper carefully into
thirds, following his own creases. White onionskin. His ink was blue. The writing slanted on the lineless page and seeped
through to the back in spots. I imagined him sitting in that bare white cube of his, leaning into these words. Meaning them.

I imagined the cool, smooth sweep of his skin against my face, the rounded motion of his arms. And then it was as if an iron
gate crashed down, and I couldn’t think anything at all.

Dragonflies

My
sister and I are sharing a room for the first time in thirteen years. She lies kitty-corner to me, with her feet near my
head, and tells me the real reason she joined all those cults was that she loved the colors. Any colors. But bright. Rose,
orange, mustard, even white. Anything but black and gray, or, God forbid, neutrals. She stares at the ceiling. Beige. The
whole room is done in what my mother calls earth tones. I see I’m not the only one with fantasies of bloodred paint.

“How does it feel to be back, Anna? I mean, if you can separate Dad’s being sick.”

“Like a large question mark.”

“Didn’t it always?”

“No. For me it felt like a blank wall at the end of a tunnel.”

She sits and pulls her knees to her chin, wraps her arms around them. “After I left I got into some places where the wall
wasn’t just blank, it was made out of concrete, and the only way out was to go back through the dark and start over. I did
that. Over and over. But coming home this time, I realized the wall here is just cardboard.”

“And the question mark?”

“What’s on the other side if and when I work up the nerve to push through.”

Propped up on one elbow, snug in an old flannel nightgown of my mother’s, Anna resembles none of her past incarnations. Her
hair is shorter than I’ve ever seen it, her neck longer and skinnier. Her normally dark eyes have acquired a golden tinge,
like a cat’s. It never, ever occurred to me that nerve was my sister’s problem.

“You still believe memories don’t matter?”

“Hmm. Maybe not that they don’t, but I do believe they shouldn’t. You have trouble with that, don’t you?”

“Saying they shouldn’t is like insisting we repress them.”

“Is that so bad? You get on with your life. Every day’s a clean start.”

“Or a new tunnel.” I lean against the wall and listen to the apartment’s quiet. Mum and Dad have been asleep for hours. “I
know why Dad quit photography.”

She twists a sliver of hair between her fingers and trains her cat’s eyes on me.

“He thinks his father was targeted for assassination because of some photographs he took. He’s carried that guilt around all
these years and never told anyone. Not even Mum.”

Anna frowns. Then shrugs. “Maybe especially not Mum. So how come he told you?”

“He didn’t exactly come right out—I’ve sort of been badgering him since I came back from California. For information.”

“Probing his memories.”

“Didn’t you always want to know?”

“You said it yourself, all the remembering has done is prolong his guilt.”

“But you
cant forget
something like that!”

“I guess he never did.”

“You sound bitter.”

“Well, he wasn’t exactly around for us, was he?” Anna gets out of bed and stands with her back to the wall, slides down to
a sitting position.
Her nightgown hangs over her knees to the floor, so you can’t see there’s no chair beneath her. “This is good for the hamstrings.”

“You don’t even want to know the details, do you? But you blame him.”

“No, I don’t. Want the details or blame him. I’m just sorry he’s wasted so much of our lives blaming himself.” She grunts
and staggers up out of her seat. “Stings.” She squats, rummages through her duffel bag. “Dad’s an innocent. Like you. Here.”

A small round object flies across the room and lands between my knees.

“I’ve kept it for years, but never really felt it belonged to me. I realized watching you with Dad. I was keeping it for you.”

The size of a half-dollar but heavier and octagonal, bronze maybe, with a hatchwork of symbols, characters.

“This is the coin you found in Columbus Park!”

“Take it back to Chinatown. Find somebody who can tell you what it is. It might be worth something.”

“You don’t want to sell this!”

“That’s my point. If you hang on to things too long, you can’t move on. Everybody loses. Look at Dad.”

I slide the coin under my pillow as I wait for an answer to form. Somewhere she’s acquired the habit of staring straight into
the person she’s talking or listening to. It is almost impossible to catch her blinking, but I am painfully aware when I close
my eyes, or look away. I sit up and wrap the blanket around me. A draft is coming beneath the window.

“You’re having nightmares again, aren’t you, Maibelle?”

I flinch. “Again?”

“You had them as a little girl. I think it was the way you dealt with things that bothered you. You never said anything, but
you dreamed it. Used to get into bed with Mum and Dad, remember?”

“Yes.”

Anna turns to plump up her pillow.

“But that’s not what you mean, is it?”

She eases back, covering herself. She presses down on the blanket to force all the air out and answers slowly. “No. The worst
were after that time you got pregnant. You would call me at school, sometimes in the middle of the night. You’d be crying.
I remember I could actually hear your teeth chattering over the phone. You said I was the only person you could tell, but
all you ever told me were your dreams.”

“What are you talking about? I never called you—and you weren’t in school then, anyway. You’d been out for years.”

“I was a sophomore. I remember I had to rush back for an exam on Flaubert.”

“I never told you about being pregnant.”

I’m starting to spin. Or the room is. Shadows dance around hidden corners and holes. Her letter. In the chaos of the past
weeks I’ve forgotten all about it.

Anna gets up and comes over to my bed. She doesn’t touch me, but she sits close enough that I can see the whitened tips of
her eyelashes. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of her body brushing the solid cold of mine.

“Of course you did,” she says.

“Henry must have told you.”

“You never told this to Henry.”

“He’s the only one I told.”

“Maibelle.” She reaches for my shoulder. I shrug away, suddenly shivering so hard my bones are rattling.

“Maibelle, what happened to it?”

“I had a miscarriage.”

“How old were you?”

Why is she interrogating me like this? Our father is dying. I was just trying to tell her about Dad, and she’s turned it around
on me.

“Twenty-two,” I say. “I was twenty-two.”

“No. Well, maybe, but what about the first time?”

My heart sounds like a vacuum cleaner. The room is darkening, red around the edges. I can’t breathe.

“You were fourteen, Maibelle. You called me, made me drive down
from school to help you, not let anybody know. You never told Henry about this, or Mum or Dad. You couldn’t have.”

“Who?” is all I can manage.

“You wouldn’t say. I figured it was some jerk at your school. Fortunately some of my friends had gotten knocked up, I had
the name of a doctor in Pennsylvania. You really don’t remember?”