by Yiyun Li
Of Lilia’s children, Molly was the most accomplished, the headmistress of an all-girls’ school, and before that, the admissions officer for a prep school. It was typical of Katherine not to see the long-term benefits of being on friendly terms with Molly.
“Iola, send your parents our love,” Molly said, and handed a bag of persimmons from her backyard to the girl. “And thank you for the pumpkin brownies you made.”
“I didn’t help making the brownies,” Iola said.
“You helped eating them,” Lilia said. “And you did a fabulous job with that.”
Molly asked Iola to use the bathroom one more time. “I know you just went, sweetie, but it’s a long drive.” When the girl was out of their sight, Molly said, “Mom, you need to be nicer to Iola. And to Katherine, too.”
“As if I’m an evil stepmother!”
“No, but people like Katherine and Iola are sensitive,” Molly said.
Lilia did not like how Molly sounded. “Any girl can look traumatized to you,” Lilia said. “That’s your occupational hazard.”
“What I’m saying is, you have to make an extra effort with certain people.”
“You mean, Katherine and Iola are little dainty eggs that I should handle with extra care?”
“You can’t deny their history.”
“What history?”
“Well, Lucy.”
“You don’t even remember Lucy.”
“Of course I do. A little, but we talked about Lucy later.”
“Who is this ‘we’?”
“Dad. Also Tim and Will and Carol.”
“And what did you all conclude? That I mistreated her so she killed herself?”
“No, not that. We just thought Lucy might be more sensitive to things.”
Lilia didn’t speak right away.
“You’ve done so much for us,” Molly said. “Nobody could change anything about Lucy, but it’s not an easy situation for Katherine. We should all try our best for her and for Iola.”
The girl, summoned, appeared from behind Molly soundlessly.
Lilia insisted that they wait by the curb. She had nothing more to say to Molly. Other than Roland’s diaries and her own memories, she did not probe people’s recollections of the past. They could have their own histories, worthwhile or not, but they were like shop windows Lilia had no interest in studying. No, my dear, thank you but no.
“Where is Mommy?” Iola asked.
“Stop kicking,” Lilia said, and moved the bag of persimmons away from the girl’s toes. “Take a seat on the suitcase if you’re tired.”
“I’m not tired, I’m bored,” Iola said.
Sometimes Lilia thought Iola had the ability to take a single look at the world and claim that god made a fundamental mistake when creating it: Everything is pointless, everything is boring. Are all children born with such a divine negation of life? Lilia could not remember her siblings or her children behaving this way. She herself had never found life boring for a moment.
“You always say that,” Lilia said.
“Because I’m bored.”
That’s what she should do, Lilia thought. Before her death, she should make a list of the favorite sayings of her offspring and embroider a sampler for each of them. Iola would get a rainbow-colored one with the busiest pattern of twigs and flowers and butterflies and crab apples and squirrels and lizards, all surrounding that protest: I AM BORED. Molly would get one with ivory lace and fine feathers and cunning little wrens: WITH ALL DUE RESPECT.
“Can I have your phone?” Iola asked, despite having asked for it several times that morning and having been told that Lilia did not carry one with her.
“Want to hear a story?” Lilia asked.
Iola looked at Lilia as though she could not decide if it was a trick question.
“I mean it as a yes or no question. Do you want to hear a story?”
“That sounds babyish,” Iola said.
“I’m not talking about baby stories,” Lilia said. She had plenty of stories. The problem was she had never wanted to share them with her children, and now they seemed to have fabricated their own versions to make up for that loss. How could Molly think Lilia had mistreated Lucy and been responsible for her death?
“What do you know about your grandma?” Lilia asked. “No, not Grandma Paula, Grandma Lucy.”
“Grandma Lucy?” Iola said. “Isn’t she already dead?”
Lilia opened her mouth. She had no words. She had never before in her life been in a situation where she could not find any words.
LILIA DECIDED TO LEAVE A record for Katherine and Iola. No, she wasn’t thinking of Molly’s accusation. Lilia had no interest in acquitting herself of unfounded charges. But Katherine and Iola deserved something more than confusion. They couldn’t just have stories from Molly.
Lilia asked Nikko, the floor manager, for a composition book. “What color,” Nikko asked, showing her a stack on the shelf. “Everyone needs a composition book these days.”
“Give me two of them,” Lilia said. “Black and red.”
Katherine and Iola: I decided to leave something for the two of you, along with this book written by Lucy’s birth father. His name is Roland Bouley, and here’s his story, Lilia wrote on the first page of the composition book. She tried to make her letters stay between the lines. I met Roland in 1945 and Lucy was born in 1946. I was a small part in his life, and Lucy was not in his life at all. But that’s all right. Remember, only weak souls look for rewards from others. We’re our own rewards.
She then cut out the note and glued it carefully to the inside cover of Roland’s diaries.
[I embarked as a diarist on 12 November 1925, right before I turned fifteen. Rereading the first four years of my diary I experienced a not unpleasant giddiness, as though getting drunk on a wine too green. They were evidence that a boy’s ego could be as colossal and fatalistic as a Greek tragedy. I stand by that ego but have enough humility not to burden readers. My real life, as seen here, began in the summer of 1929.—RB, 2 March 1989]
1 JULY 1929.
At teatime Aunt E joked about cousinhood being the only dangerous neighborhood, and I pretended that I did not notice Hetty’s twisting fingers. There is plenty of time for her to outgrow her ardour for me. For now, she comes in handy. When she is here for the summer, the role of chaperone falls to Aunt E. To spend time with Hetty means to live nearer Aunt E than at any other time of the year. My cousinly duty to Hetty is a convenient pretext. My love for Aunt E, the context of my existence.
Reading Ovid last night, I wondered what plant or beast I deserved to be transformed into if I announced my passion. Will Aunt E remain my sole love? One must be careful not to place one’s heart in a cage that can be unlocked by only one key.
I desire, however, for Aunt E to acknowledge my love. Accept it even? No matter, my poor dead parents would not have approved, nor would any of my relatives. Yet is this not the world’s due to an orphan, who must be granted the rights to the uncommon, even the forbidden? One is not orphaned for nothing.
What a scandal we could make. I do believe I shall be able to make a great novel out of this love for Aunt E.
* * *
Aunt Evelyn is the widow of Uncle Albert, the eldest brother of my mother. He died from blood poisoning a year after my birth. The two daughters born in that marriage, Annabel and Dorothy, both chose marriages that allowed them to leave Halifax—Annabel to Toronto, Dorothy to Boston.
Uncle Victor married a good woman. He and Aunt Geraldine, with two sons, have saved the Fergusons from extinction, a misfortune that has befallen several old Nova Scotia families. George and Harold are both at school in England, and are spending the summer travelling to places still unknown to me. Emma, the eldest, is properly installed as the wife of a thriving solicitor in Halifax.
U
ncle William is a bachelor, his romantic history unknown to me. A mistress abandoned and dying in an unheated room? A bastard son growing up in poverty? But Uncle William is a raging bore. One can hardly place him in a novel with even the most cliché plot.
My mother, Rosaline, married David Bouley from Boston, against her family’s wishes. They were punished by untimely deaths, in a train crash. Marianne, Hetty’s mother, married discerningly, to a surgeon whose patients come from all over the maritime provinces. They have four perfect children, and they lead a flawless life. Hetty is the eldest of the siblings, and two years younger than I am. Of all my cousins she is the closest to me in age and in friendship.
This house on the hill, overlooking Halifax Bay, is called Elmsey. It is not beautiful but utilitarian, built in 1829 and expanded when the Fergusons prospered. Relatives visit, sometimes for an extended period, but none is a hanger-on like me—poor relatives should never congregate. No novel I have read features five orphans brought up in a house by their benefactors. An orphan is a singular event. Had there been five Rolands, where could we find the courage to feign dignity when we competed to peck from the hands of our patrons?
[While going through my diaries one last time, I have added some lines to explain family relations and events. One can fabricate one’s memories when young; old age demands truthfulness at the cost of one’s ego.—RB, 5 January 1990]
* * *
—
Lilia’s notes taped next to the corresponding entries
A WARNING: THE FERGUSONS’ family tree seems clear here but as you will see later, cousins pop in and out, once removed or twice removed or a hundred times removed. Had Roland been a big name someone would have done the work, with the Fergusons and the Bouleys traced back to however many generations. And we could add Lucy, and you two, a precious branch. But what’s a branch to a tree? A tree has little remorse when it sheds a branch.
My own family—you’re part of that, too. We have reliable roots.
They’re starting a genealogy club. You see flyers everywhere. “Meet twice a week. Led by Professor Roberta M. Lynch, a renowned historian” with a list of her achievements. My theory: It’s designed as a competition to the memoir class, which Professor Lynch calls an incubator for unhatchable eggs.
Later.
Hetty dropped in with a letter while I was in the middle of typing—my first novel, which is, in fact, my fourth, though this is going to be my first mature novel. Working on your writing, Hetty asked, and I could not help but joke that the book, once completed, would be dedicated to someone whom I have known all my life. She blushed (not knowing, of course, it is another woman I have in mind). If only she could stop that. No, I do not oppose the female virtue of blushing. What would I not give to see Aunt E blush? But Hetty’s blushing has the effect of plain water. When one craves champagne.
I scanned the letter, which was from Arthur. He was talking about the coming term with what already seemed like nostalgia. Each day brings us closer to England, he wrote.
I discussed this with Hetty. Summer is so short, she said. Unbearably so, I agreed, and said perhaps some boy will capture her heart next term. She denied vehemently this possibility. No one at St. Mary’s, she said, would fall for an Edgehill boy. What’s wrong with them, I asked. They’re still babies, she said.
I wonder if Aunt E would say that about me. Roland is only a baby, and will always be a baby: Roland the orphan, Roland the changeling, Roland whose only hope is to grow up into a decent enough man so he can marry Hetty.
No. That is not how my life will turn out. Roland Victor Sydney Bouley: You will become a man of fame and fortune through your own endeavours. You will not marry a woman out of obligation or convenience.
* * *
ROLAND MARRIED HETTY. THIS is hardly a spoiler.
Roland once introduced me to someone as his cousin. This was in 1954, the last time we met. He wrote to our Roosevelt Road address, which he said he had found in the telephone book. He was visiting someone at the navy base in Vallejo and asked if we could meet nearby.
It wasn’t the first time he wrote me out of the blue. And I don’t deceive myself that I was the only woman who’d received an unexpected letter from Roland. He might not have known what he wanted when he posted these letters. But when I agreed to see him, I knew what I wanted.
It was August, right before school started. Lucy was eight, and already difficult, more difficult than either Gilbert or I could understand. I told him that I would take Lucy out for a day by herself and have a serious talk with her. Gilbert looked nervous. What? I asked, and he said he was reminded of Hansel and Gretel. I laughed and said I wasn’t a stepmother to my own children.
Timmy and Willie wanted to come, too. But I promised them toys or comics so they stayed home. I didn’t want to bring Gilbert’s sons with me. We met Roland at a beach in Benicia. Some fathers recognize their children right away. Roland was not one of them. He was patient and indifferent to Lucy, the way a man is with a neighbor’s dog as long as the poor beast doesn’t bark. Lucy could not be relied on to stay out of anyone’s way, but on that day she mostly combed the beach, walking back and forth and mumbling to herself. I had given her plenty of warnings beforehand. Still, it amazed me that she did not clamor for my attention. Perhaps life began to defeat her right then, with a father who felt nothing for her.
Roland and I talked. We behaved with each other like former neighbors. When Lucy got bored we went to a diner. The waitress must have seen Roland there before. She looked at me with a nasty interest and studied Lucy’s face rudely. Roland said I was his cousin from San Francisco. I knew the waitress saw through his lie and I could tell he didn’t care.
Roland doesn’t mention other women in California on this trip. He does write about our meeting. Only two lines. “L didn’t come alone but with a child, a girl whose prettiness is marred by her moodiness. Shall we say this is the end of one Californian dream?”
We agreed to stay in touch, but he wasn’t one to keep his promises. I wasn’t feeling hopeful. I had thought when he asked about Lucy’s age he might get an idea why I wanted them to meet. But bringing her was a mistake. What Roland and I had was like a kayak for two. Add one more person and it capsizes.
On the way home I told Lucy that she shouldn’t mention to Gilbert or the boys about meeting my cousin. Why can’t I? she asked, and I said she was welcome to tell them anything but then she shouldn’t expect a new dress when school started. He’s my cousin then, she said. Yes, I said. She shrugged and said she didn’t understand why we had to come all the way to meet a cousin. Like father like daughter, I thought. They saw nothing in each other.
Who knew you can remember things better when you start to put them into words. If I keep this up, Roland’s diary will be twice its thickness when I finish. It’s like I’m getting this book pregnant. What about that, Roland?
2 JULY 1929.
People from two races have a better chance for real romance. How else to explain the marriage between Mother and Father? Now that I have reached the age when I should start having a love life of my own, I have become obsessed with analysing marriages and love affairs. All couples hold secrets that I have yet to learn. My poor parents of course are at the centre of my contemplations.
* * *
DO YOU NOT FIND it interesting that he called Canadians and Americans two races? But let me leave race and romance aside and tell you something entirely different. There are two kinds of people. The first kind, they need dreams like they need air and water. The second kind, they treat dreams like breadcrumbs or cobwebs. Take two people from these two different tribes, and they often end up in a long-lasting marriage.
For example, Roland and Hetty. There was a time in my life when the thought of Hetty made me grind my teeth, but I now understand Roland needed a woman who did not dream. When he burned a hole in the curtain with his cigarette or uns
ettled a dinner plate while daydreaming she was there to put things right again. He did just that. More than once. Intentionally, in my opinion. A mistress’s letter laid out on his desk. A telegram from Sidelle left in the pocket of his pajamas. How else could he put up with Hetty?
My mother was a dreamer. She once wanted to become a writer and wrote some stories. Nothing came of that pursuit. But does a dream stop being a dream when it fails? My mother and Roland shared an ambition—it never occurred to me until now. So in a way my father and Hetty were dreamless comrades—imagine that!
Katherine: You know some of my siblings, but you haven’t met my sister Lucille. She and I, we are both dreamers. Margot, Lucille’s twin, lived in her shadow. Margot may have had some hand-me-down dreams. Our brothers inherited our father’s dullness. It should be that way. Dreaming is a costly habit, especially for a man.
Roland was an expert in believing he had many lives. I don’t have many lives, I don’t deceive myself into thinking so, but I know how and when to dream.
Lucy inherited something from both Roland and me—you mix two dreamers and who knows what you get.
Later.
Cousin Petra visited on her way to Cape Breton. She feigned surprise at finding me grown into what she called a good-looking young man worth ten Lord Byrons combined. Of Hetty she said a dozen sonnets were in order.
I wonder, I said, if I would have turned out the same man had I been sent back to the Bouleys. I have learned not to mention Father’s name in the house, but I thought Cousin Petra might offer some accidental insight into my parents’ marriage.