North of Beautiful (28 page)

“Wait,” I called to him softly.

Jacob turned back around, groaned. “Oh God, Mom. Just wait, she’ll have your mom out there in a second.”

“I doubt that.”

Mom stood uncomfortably beside Norah, the two of them adjacent to the group. I didn’t want to leave her, an outsider when all the other kids had been chosen for a team, when the game had already started without her. But Norah beckoned her silently. Slowly, slowly, Mom raised an arm. She stood there, immobilized, while the others flowed to the next position.

Oh Mom.

And then, Mom kicked out a foot, slow, graceful. She swooped low, a diving swan.

“She looks good,” said Jacob, surprised.

She did. And as she spun slowly, her arms winding, I remembered when I was a little girl, Mom would turn on music to clean the house before Dad came home. I loved the way she had twirled me, admired the way her hips swiveled effortlessly one way and then another.

“She used to dance,” I said and wondered when she had stopped. And why.

“She is again,” Jacob said.

I could have stayed there all morning, forgotten the museum, just to watch Mom. But she noticed me there a ways up the path, stopped, and tucked her hair behind her ear self-consciously.

I knew Mom wouldn’t continue while I stood there. The last thing I wanted was for my presence to rob her of this moment. “Let’s go,” I told Jacob, swallowing hard. Quickly, I yanked around, hurried along the path, not daring to look back.

Jacob caught up to me and said softly, “It’s not you. Sometimes you can be more yourself with people you hardly know.”

“But I want her to be herself with me,” I whispered.

“It takes two.” He held out his hand, not to hold mine, but to give me his GPS.

“What are you doing?”

“We,” he corrected. “We are going geocaching.”

I held the device away from me as though it were a poisonous snake and grimaced. Even though I had tried geocaching on my own, I couldn’t make sense of the coordinates, somehow ending up north when I meant to go east. I admitted reluctantly, “You know I can’t read these things.”

“It’s easy once you get the hang of it.” Standing behind me, Jacob wrapped his hand around mine so that both of us held the device. If we could geocache all day like this, then sign me up. I could feel the heat of his body against mine. God, how easy it would be to lean back into him, forget the stupid cache. I wanted his arms around me, and I had to close my eyes against the strumming of my body.

One problem: Jacob didn’t seem to notice me at all. He nudged me forward as though I were a marionette. “Watch the northern coordinates.” According to the GPS, the last few digits on the latitudinal coordinates were growing smaller. “So if north and south run this way” — he pointed — “which way do we go?”

“This is a math problem,” I accused him.

“You’re good at math. Which way?”

I took a tentative step forward, then another, and this time, he slid his warm hand in my free one that wasn’t holding the GPS. We continued hiking through another patch of grass, stepping over flower beds and squeezing through shrubs. So absorbed in feeling his hand in mine, wondering exactly what he thought about me, I completely forgot why we were foraging through a park until Jacob pulled his hand away. He reached for the GPS and said, “Bingo.”

I blinked at him.

“We’ve reached the exact southern coordinates,” he explained, and gave me back the GPS. Forget the device, I wanted his hand. “Now the eastern coordinates. Which way?”

“You’re testing me again.”

“No, proving to you that you’re less directionally challenged than you think. So which way?”

Sighing, I turned to my right, walked a few steps. The last digits of the longitudinal coordinates increased, instead of decreased. So I backtracked, went the opposite direction, holding the GPS out like a divining rod.

“Okay, try not to look so obvious,” he remarked from behind.

I spun around. “Hello? Let the driver drive, please.”

We tromped across the grass, straying from the paved path. We passed countless flower beds, scarred park benches, old men playing chess. We circled around a lotus pond, all platter-sized leaves, no blooms. It was too early in the season for flowers. And through all of that, I kept thinking about why Jacob had held my hand . . . and why he wasn’t holding it now.

“Okay, cruise director, we must be getting pretty close,” said Jacob, ambling along so close to my side now that our arms brushed against each other. I have to admit, I was navigating by instinct as well as by GPS device. Before us was a tiny enclave made up of a park bench positioned some ways from a statue. The site looked promising, so I stopped, checked the coordinates. Astonished, I said, “I think we’re here.”

“You think or you know?”

“We’re here.” I held up the GPS. “Look for yourself.”

He didn’t. He had already dropped to his knees, scouring around the bronze statue when a man in jeans and a goatee walked past, eyed us suspiciously before moving on. He cast another accusatory look over his shoulder before dialing a number in his cell phone.

“So do you think he’s calling the police?” Jacob asked me.

“Hurry, find that stupid cache!”

Jacob laughed. “Most people would abandon this about now.”

“I’m not most people.”

When Jacob started shaking the shrubs, I snickered and called out, “Okay, try not to look so obvious, will you?”

All the caches I had found with Jacob were hidden in sneaky, clever places: tucked inside a log, welded to a bolt, lodged inside a fake electrical box nailed to a tree. So I stood there, in a wedge of sunlight, and got my bearings, studying the surroundings. Jacob had moved to the bench, now peering underneath it, behind it. And then I saw it — or saw what looked like the ideal hiding spot for a crafty geocacher. The cache wasn’t on the bench, but behind it. I hurried to the conspicuous clump of dead leaves under the spiky shrubs, used my shoe to brush away the debris, and there it was: a small metal green box.

“Found it!” I cried, proud of myself. But the treasure I most cherished was Jacob’s answering grin.

Something must happen to women’s plumbing when they reach a certain age, because both mothers needed to use a bathroom when we returned to collect them. This, after they’d just visited the facilities at breakfast. And no, they couldn’t wait for the museum to open in just fifteen minutes. Luckily, Jacob remembered seeing a bathroom while we were geocaching. I could have located it by its odor alone. The reek was even worse inside: no toilet, just two holes. In the ground. With nary a sheet of toilet paper in sight.

“You know, the toilet in the Venice train station is even worse,” said Norah conversationally as she dropped her pants.

On so many levels this was wrong. First, forget the toilets-around-the-world retrospective. This facility was bad enough; I didn’t want to imagine worse. And second, I really didn’t need to see Jacob’s mother or my own — oh God, she was sliding down her elasticized pants, too — doing their business. Me, I needed to pee now, too, but was afraid to use the holes. This was not a good traveler moment. Or even a good tourist one. I had become the epitome of stupid American visitor, the one I vowed not to be, the one who was squeamish and judgmental of local customs.

“I don’t suppose you have any tissue left?” Mom asked Norah.

“No, I used it all yesterday.”

“Oh.” Both women stared at each other, stumped. Then, Mom: “My legs are shaking; I don’t think I can hold this position for much longer.” They started cackling. Then came the snorts when Norah bounced a couple of times, to dry off, I suppose.

And me, the girl who thought she had prepared for every contingency, was caught without my Kleenex. I had left it in my backpack when I changed to the more chic messenger bag.

I knew who had a cache of napkins. So I told the moms to wait a moment, which elicited some groaning. Why they had already squatted and used the toilet without fully sussing out the situation, I don’t know. Quickly, I flew out, breathing in big gulps of fresh air. Jacob was waiting outside.

“What’s with all the laughing?” he asked.

I shook my head, grudgingly asking him, “Could I have a napkin? Better make that three.”

He grinned, removed a handful from his pocket. “Thought you’d never ask.”

“Trust me, I never thought I would,” I said, and all but sprinted back to the bathroom.

Let’s just say there’s a reason why Chinese women have such svelte figures. It takes awesome thigh muscles to squat.

When I came out of the bathroom, I squirted half my antibacterial cleanser into my palm, rubbed vigorously. And then I pushed the tiny bottle on Mom and Norah, who were standing next to Jacob, watching an old man holding a calligraphy brush three feet long. He dipped the brush in a bucket of water, and with one hand behind his back like a fencer, he began writing on the pavement, his movements every bit as graceful as the tai chi practitioners, deft, assured, meditative.

I approached the man slowly, not wanting to interrupt his flow, glad that the mothers had quieted, too, as if they knew whatever this man was doing was special. I don’t think the calligrapher would have noticed me anyway, so lost in that moment. Not lost, I corrected myself. Found. I had never seen a person more present than this man, writing that vertical drop of characters over and over.

“What’s he writing?” Mom whispered to Norah, trying but failing to be quiet.

Norah stepped closer to the words, the watery characters already fading, deciphering them in silence. I was drawn to those words myself, traversing the length of the sidewalk. But I wanted those dancing characters to remain a mystery, draw what meaning I wanted from those unknown glyphs before they vanished like poems recited into the wind.

“His name,” Norah said. “Wisdom. Gentle wisdom.”

His name. I was surprised. What had I thought he’d be writing? Some Buddhist koan? An ancient Tang poem? With one last downward stroke, a subtle flick of his wrist, he finished the final character — was it gentle? Or wisdom? Then he dipped the brush in water and held it out to me.

I smiled, shook my head, embarrassed. Me?

Again, without a word, he urged the brush on me.

I glanced at Mom, feeling foolish, about to step away from this old calligrapher, his face the wrinkled bark of an ancient tree. On the path, Mom shifted, her movement reminding me of her practicing tai-chi, the first time I could remember her trying something new. Even without Dad here, my presence had censored her. Made her self-conscious.

I didn’t wait for the calligrapher to offer his brush to me for the third time. I inclined my head respectfully and took the brush from him, its weight unfamiliar in my hand.

What to write? What to write? As beautiful as the calligrapher’s name was, it was fast evaporating in the sun. In another fifteen minutes, those watery marks would be gone, almost as if they had never been there.

Memento mori.

I had yet to sign a single piece of my work, had never thought myself worthy of a cartouche, never claiming my creations. Or that I was the creator.

I held that long brush, and I wrote my name on this forgiving canvas. My first attempt was clumsy, one thick line, no swoops, all blurs. But it, like the master’s beautifully formed name, started to fade.

So I tried again. Terra, I wrote. Better.

Terra.

I forgot about Mom watching me. I forgot about Norah. And even Jacob. This moment was mine. And it would last until it merged fluidly with the next beautiful moment and the next. What was there but this moment, this brush, the sidewalk as my scroll, and my name?

Terra

Terra

TERRA

Chapter twenty-four

Wanderlust

HALFWAY DOWN THE NARROW COBBLESTONED street, flanked on either side with long flags naming the expensive boutiques and trendy restaurants within the old buildings, I could hear Mom and Norah cackling. And then Mom’s voice, incredulous, brayed loud above all the other dinner conversations: “There’s a naked spa? In Lynnwood? Really?”

“You’d think they were in college,” Jacob said as though he were divining my thoughts.

“Where’d they get their energy?”

“Shopping high. They must have found some bargains.”

Clearly, Jacob understood women — or at least our mothers.

Was I the only one flagging, my head fogging with weariness? After spending the entire morning in the Museum and then sharing a lunch of dumplings, the moms had split off to — what else? — hit the Pearl Market while Jacob and I found another geocache, this time on the Bund, Shanghai’s waterfront.

Mere feet away from their patio table, our mothers still hadn’t noticed us, too engrossed in talking about Norah’s monthly trips to some Korean spa outside of Seattle. A half-empty bottle of yellow rice wine sat on the table between them. Jacob held the restaurant door open for me. Like the rest of the Xintiandi neighborhood, this restaurant was located inside a refurbished stone gatehouse, the kind the majority of Shanghainese lived in up until the Second World War.

Inside was the most exquisite restaurant I had ever seen, a world apart from the rustic brew pub in Colville with its sticky scarred tables and rifles mounted on the walls. These walls were painted a soft brown, and the far wall a deep eggplant purple. Votive candles nestled in thick glass vessels, orange as a sunset, flickering on the modern wood tables around the dining room. Carved screens hung from the walls and created intimate alcoves for couples whose heads were bent close together. Slabs of smooth stone, worn from time and use, lined the floor. I wondered if they had been salvaged from ancient villages.

“So much for third-world country,” I whispered to Jacob.

“Welcome to the new China,” he said as a hostess glided to us, a young woman dressed in the restaurant colors, her tailored dress of brown edged with purple clung to her tiny figure. “For better or worse.”

“Better or worse?” Was he ogling the hostess? Was she the better? Her waist was so tiny, I could have encircled it with my hands. With her hair pulled on top of her head, she looked every bit the city sophisticate, and I felt country gauche in my dark jeans, Pumas, and black T-shirt. I wished now that we had made time to go back to Merc’s so that I could have changed into the one dress I had packed. It may have been shapeless, but it didn’t wrinkle and it was black.