by Lisa See
Richard had something Carolyn craved—not marriage, not a house or even a family, but culture. Richard had culture in spades, because what other boy would take a girl to Union Station instead of a Joan Crawford movie? What other boy would laugh and be goofy? What other boy would listen to her when she talked about wanting to have a career? Who else would meet her halfway in these daydreams by saying that one day they would build a house on the Landa lot and live together forever, even if it was just a fantasy?
When Carolyn graduated from high school in June of 1951, Richard wrote in her yearbook, “If you have to have this to rember [sic] me by then there is no use of me writing this. I will see you after you graduate. If I do not see you, then you should not want this to remember.” He also sent her a two-page letter. At the top of the first page, its edges ragged where they’d been torn out of a binder, he wrote, “Twenty Years from Now, or Who in the Hell was He?” The letter began, “I am a fool perhaps, but I think there is a possibility that we will marry (each other that is), depending upon yourself, myself, and the millions of other people that influence our lives.” Further down he wrote, “All these things above and below were written by Richard See, God’s gift to the children of broken homes who are seeking, who are seeking perhaps, a father more than a husband, to give them security. Or perhaps they are seeking a child to give security to. I am both, and neither, father and child.” In the event she might get her hopes up, he added, “I don’t know if I’m in love now, but I do know that I’ve never been in love before. I’m not even sure I think I’m in love, but I’m sure that I am almost to the point of making myself believe that I am.” Carolyn guessed that he was still crazy about Sumoy.
Richard’s letter wasn’t the only ambiguous thing to happen to Carolyn after graduation. Within days, all that had been so tenuous slipped away. Carolyn’s dad didn’t exactly kick her out, but he didn’t invite her to stay, either. In this limbo state, Carolyn was taken to Barney’s Beanery by her friend Jackie Joseph. “I don’t want you to be sad,” Jackie said, “because we’re going to have a good time. We’re going to be okay.” By the end of the day, Carolyn had moved out of her dad’s apartment—with George promising to pay ten dollars a week for her upkeep—and into a one-room apartment in Atwater, near the Los Angeles River, with Jackie and her mother, Belle. Jackie and Carolyn shared one twin bed; Belle got the other.
Belle was hardly a typical fifties mom. She was gone most of the time, at the liquor store she owned down on Skid Row. She never cooked or cleaned. Jackie could only remember two things that her mother had ever cooked. Once, Belle had put a rabbit in the oven to bake. Months later, motivated by idle curiosity, someone had opened the oven and discovered the rabbit still in there, covered with so much mold that Belle had remarked, “Well, look at that. The bunny’s grown back his fur.” The other time, Jackie had come home to find her mother—dressed in black net hose, black patent-leather high heels, and a black bat-wing sweater—rolling out bread dough, twisting it into interesting bow ties and question marks. But again, Belle’s interest flagged and the bread was never baked. Meals were always of the open-the-can-and-eat-the-contents-cold-right-out-of-the-container variety. When it came time to clean up, Belle, who’d seen A Streetcar Named Desire one too many times, cleared dinner off the table by sweeping it off onto the floor like Marlon Brando. This lack of traditional domesticity translated as well into a vague detachment about who her daughter and her friend were seeing. Never once did Belle ask the girls of the many boys who came to pick them up for dates, “What are his intentions?” or even “Who is this bozo, anyway?”
All through that summer, Richard hung around. Carolyn and Richard even set up Jackie and Chuen for what would be a disastrous double date. Both Richard and Chuen were slight, small-boned, and shy. But where Richard was funny, Chuen was deadly serious. Where Richard knew a little something about Chinese furniture, Chuen was already fluent—trained as he was to take over his father’s store. Chuen had nothing to talk about with Jackie, and she had nothing to say to him.
But mostly Richard came over to Belle’s. The girls would heat him up a can of soup, and he’d say, “Do you have any Chinese soup spoons? I can’t possibly eat soup with these tin things.”
And Jackie would say, “This is an American house. Take it or leave it.”
He would shrug, then suck up his soup from the brim of the bowl. “This is how the Chinese do it,” he’d say. The girls would look at each other and think, How weird, how exotic.
Or he would come in with a pile of books—by H. Allen Smith or Max Shulman—and sit on the couch and read. Occasionally he’d slap his thigh and laugh, but never—not once—did he look up and say, “Hey, you guys should hear this.” Again, the girls would look at him, then at each other, and think, What a lunatic, too cool.
It was part of the American courtship ritual to drive a car, loaded down with your friends for moral support, over to some girl’s house and stand around on her lawn. Just like the white boys, Richard drove his car up onto Belle’s lawn. His Chinese buddies—the sleeves of their white T-shirts rolled up—piled out and stood around. This was the one time Belle drew the line. The woman who would permit nearly anything, who slept in her dress, who had bunnies “growing” in her oven and hundreds of chinchillas dying from neglect in her garage, said, “I can’t have this!” and “There goes the neighborhood!” and finally, “They’ve got to go!” Even Carolyn had to agree, because who were all those guys, anyway? They all had names like Haw and Maw and things she simply couldn’t understand.
Not long after this incident, Richard wrote the first of what would become many twelve-page letters, saying that Carolyn was a wonderful person, but that she would never understand the nature of love because she was too frivolous. He’s just thinking about Sumoy, Carolyn thought. If he doesn’t appreciate me, then I’ll find someone who does.
City College, 1952. Everything that had seemed strange and bizarre in high school now seemed absolutely normal. Carolyn, as had all her girlfriends, sheared off her curls to just a few cropped inches for a more “vogue-y” look. She eschewed her Peter Pan collars for black turtlenecks—important for making a statement about alienation and conformity, and practical because they didn’t require ironing. Men? Carolyn found plenty of new and different men to go around with, but she still liked Richard, who’d transferred to UCLA, where he was studying anthropology. Although Richard wasn’t around, Carolyn was reminded of him every time she saw Sumoy, who had also enrolled at City College.
Carolyn looked up Sumoy’s schedule in the admissions office and—as sedately as possible—stalked her rival from English to History to Psych. On nights when Carolyn had nothing better to do—few and far between as these might be, what with dates, studying, and night shifts at Van de Kamp’s—she went to New Chinatown, where she stared at the yellow lights of the upstairs apartment above the F. See On Company and wondered, What does Sumoy have that I haven’t got? Listening to the melodious tinkling of wind chimes hanging from balconies, she thought, Well, Sumoy’s Chinese, and I’ll never figure that one out.
Carolyn tried to forget about Richard, but Los Angeles was still basically a small town. While out on a double date with Jackie, one of the boys squealed, “Oh my God, will you look at that!” And there was Richard in his wacky car, alone, singing in full voice, “Be My Little Bumblebee.” Three people in the car became hysterical, laughing, crying, hooting. Then Jackie said, “Carolyn’s gone out with that guy!”
“Yeah, I know him. So?” Carolyn said. Years later she would reflect, “But who knows who those guys were and what ever happened to them, while Richard went on to live in memory.”
Soon afterward, Carolyn got up her nerve, called the F. Suie One Company, and asked for Richard. A Chinese person answered in words she couldn’t quite understand. It sounded like, “Lichald almy foo-day.” Richard had been drafted, and he hadn’t even told her. That’s that, Carolyn thought. So she took up with a fellow named Stan Guild, which would
n’t have meant much in the great scheme of things, except that Belle Joseph had her eye on him too. Carolyn was no longer welcomed by Belle. The way Carolyn reckoned it, she was batting 0 for 3. She’d been kicked out of her mother’s house, uninvited to stay with her father after graduation, and now pushed out of Belle’s. From here, Carolyn began living in a series of furnished rooms.
In 1952, four of Fong Yun’s children—Chong, Gai, Gim, and Choey Lon—decided they would open a little shop, Fong’s, in New Chinatown, just down the promenade from the F. See On Company. A few months later their father finally gave up on China City and moved his store next door to that of his children. This same year, Sissee and Gilbert bought an original Craftsman-style building—formerly a library—atop Mount Washington. They began turning the house into a showplace, with gold-leafed ceilings and exquisite pieces of Asian art. In December they would host their first Christmas party. (Over time this gathering would become known for its fabulous food, wonderful decorations, and joke gifts.) Ming and Sunny would miss this first Christmas party, because they were living in a small village outside Tokyo. This trip would convince the couple that they should alternate between spending a year abroad and a year at home.
A million light-years away from year-long trips to Asia, buying a house, or even opening a little shop in New Chinatown, Carolyn Laws continued to struggle and try to build a life for herself. She hooked up with Dick Jones—a Van de Kamp’s customer—and together they took a set of furnished rooms in Hollywood. Since it was 1952 and you were supposed to get married, buy a dishwasher, and have three kids, Carolyn didn’t tell her parents how or where she was living, and they never asked. She never mentioned Dick Jones—who said he was in the process of getting a divorce—and they never asked. Her parents didn’t call her, because that meant the landlady would buzz Carolyn’s room and she’d have to buzz back, then scurry downstairs to use the phone; and she didn’t call them, because, again, that meant going down to the front desk. For fourteen months, Carolyn waited on tables at Van de Kamp’s, played housewife with Dick, took English classes, and studied hard.
Things went along pretty smoothly—she ate breakfast at a little cafe on the corner, rode the streetcar to school, and went off in the middle of the night to watch Dick solder aquariums—until she developed a crush on a guy who worked the soda fountain at the restaurant. As a lark, a friend wrote in one of Carolyn’s notebooks, “You love Bill. Use your will.” When Dick saw that, he said, “You’re not getting out of this crummy apartment alive.” With his fingers around her throat, Carolyn had the presence of mind to lean on the telephone buzzer until the landlady came up, wanting to know what was going on and demanding that they stop making that infernal noise!
Carolyn went downstairs and called her dad, who came straight over. Instead of punching Dick in the nose, as some fathers might have done, George shook his hand and said, “I’m sorry we have to meet like this, pardner.” George helped Carolyn pack. He took her to lunch, told her to “stay out of trouble,” and dropped her off at another rooming house. Noticing that the place was inhabited by hookers, he suggested that she might not want to stay there too long. Then he drove off. Kate was equally unhelpful. Hearing the news that her daughter had been living with someone, Kate didn’t wash her hair for three weeks. “You’re just like your father,” she wailed.
Now batting 0 for 4, Carolyn moved into another furnished apartment, this one just two blocks from City College, which had a fake window with a curtain draped in front of it. From her new place, she began to write Richard, who was stationed in Newfoundland, and he wrote back.
[undated]
Dear Carolyn,
I am now a prisoner of the United States of America, in other words, I am still in the U.S. Army. I am now living on a sort of Arctic Devil’s Island. I’m stationed at McAndrews Air Base, in Newfoundland. The country is rather beautiful around here, but it is extremely difficult to see beauty when you are living under certain conditions. My main diversion has been drinking, with frequent intellectual discussions with numerous eccentric people added to spice up life, and perhaps the occasional pillow fight to get rid of pent-up aggressions. Otherwise life is quite dull….
BY ORDER OF PRIVATE SEE
December 11, 1953
Dear Child,
I must see you on my leave. Among other things I can make indecent proposals to you (or should I say propositions) and also insult you in all kinds of devious and subtle ways….
Sumoy, as an item of oblique interest, intends to get married within the next few weeks or months. This of course makes me extremely happy…. She is not marrying me by the way. Oh well.
December 23, 1953
You asked about Chiang and Mao, I prefer neither. The Chinamen I like are Chuen, Grandpappy, Tyrus Wong, Albert Wong, Sumoy, Buddha (who was an Indian—sorry), and a few others too obscure to mention. Mao and Chiang are just crazy mixed-up old gentlemen that I never met and therefore can form no definite opinion as far as my liking or disliking them.
Dicky Boy
Lover First Class See
January 1, 1954
I don’t know when in the hell I’ll get the goddamn leave now—I don’t know if I’ll get a leave at all…. The leave, it seems to me, wouldn’t accomplish exactly what I had planned—I had thought we might shack-up for approximately two weeks—but apparently I misjudged you—so to hell with it—Yes—you’re a person, a very wonderful fine person, you’re crazy, mixed-up, cool, you go to my head. You’re all kinds of nice-nice and goodie-goodie—but I don’t think I’m in love with you—and I’m pretty sure I’ll never marry you—and even more sure that if we did marry it would be a mess, but I think I’d like to sleep with you—or any other fairly good-looking girl between the ages of 13 and 52 (if well-preserved). By the way, how old is Marlene Dietrich? Did I tell you I was going to marry Pier Angeli, Eartha Kitt & Gigi (Audrey Hepburn), with sex and kisses….
January 25, 1954
I’m so happy to get out of this stinking hole….
P.S. My next play will be entitled, “How Wide Thy Pelvis!” or “How Wide They Pelvis?”
By the time Richard arrived in Los Angeles at the end of January and knocked at the door of Carolyn’s room, it was, as they say, a done deal. A mild feeling of doom surrounded the whole encounter. Richard driving up, climbing the stairs, expecting—what? Carolyn, sitting in her room, waiting, answering the door, and saying, “We have rules here. I can’t close the door if you’re in here. I can’t even have men in my room.” Then climbing in the car, driving desultorily through the city, stopping for dinner at a forgotten restaurant, going back to Richard’s parents’ house on Lantana, walking through the house to the screen porch behind the kitchen, and finally “doing it.” (Of this “it,” so long anticipated and hinted at, Richard has said, “That was the first time I’d ever done that sort of thing. I liked it a lot.”)
Carolyn and Richard spent the rest of the furlough together. They went to the beach. Richard, who had heard Charlie Parker, Les Powell, Lester Young, and Lionel Hampton in New York on his way to Newfoundland, took Carolyn to the Haig, on Wilshire Boulevard, to hear Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. Carolyn dressed in black, listened attentively, didn’t move a muscle, and got “very drunk.” They made themselves part of the arty crowd, knowing that if they weren’t, then who was? They went with Chuen and Allen Mock (a neighbor in Chinatown, who was studying to be an architect) to the Beverly Cavern. They went to see One Summer of Happiness, a Swedish film about young love, then spent the rest of the evening discussing adolescent awakenings. They went to see Ninotchka and ate pizza. Almost every other day of the first week, they drove up to the lot on Landa that Stella and Eddy had bought years before, sat on the rim of the ravine, and talked.
“My dad owns this land, and when we get married we’ll have Allen draw up plans,” Richard said.
And Carolyn, who hadn’t lived in a house with more than one bedroom since she was eleven, asked, “How many bedrooms shall we
have?”
“We don’t want bedrooms. We’ll just have one great room and live all together in it.”
“What about kids?”
“Eight, at least. Sixteen is better.”
“Isn’t that a lot?”
But Richard’s position was that he was a lonely child, practically an only child.
Carolyn, ever practical, asked, “How will we raise them? What will we do for money?”
“Should I work?” he mused. “I don’t think so. In the Chinese tradition, the son of a wealthy man is expected not to work as a sign that the father is rich.”