by Yiyun Li
No, I said. But don’t you think they’d want to know?
It’s been seventeen years. I can’t wear my widow’s weeds forever.
Why not, I thought, wait a few more years for me? How old is Aunt E? It surprised me that I never thought of that as a relevant question. With courage gathered from this heart-to-heart, I asked her.
Much older than you, Aunt E said.
How much older?
I’m thirty-nine, Roland.
And I am eighteen, almost a grown man—I wish I said that to her. I wish I made some confession. Instead I said cowardly, Oh.
* * *
THIRTY-NINE. STILL A SPRING CHICKEN. Gilbert often said the twentieth century was when the world began to become a better place. Here’s at least something positive that supports his opinion.People stay spring chickens much longer now than sixty years ago.
On the other hand, Gilbert didn’t see our twenty-first century. So far we’ve had many bad things, and they’ll only get worse. The world is running out of good news, so maybe we’ll all come to an end together, like that pastor in Oakland keeps warning us. I marked the date when I saw his bulletin board on the freeway. May 21, 2011. Let’s see if the world will end in six months.
23 JULY 1929.
Aunt E left today. Hetty and I saw her off at the station. The rest of the family conducted a perfunctory farewell. Ethel and Bessie both seemed to grieve her departure genuinely. They, like the furniture in the house, can only be the witnesses of the comings and goings of those they serve. Ethel, I think, has been with the family long enough not to mind Uncle Victor’s displeasure. And Bessie must be too young to believe that she might have to spend all her life in one house like Ethel.
* * *
I SHOULD TELL YOU about the stories my mother wrote. One of these days I will reread them. And perhaps you will like to read them, too.
My mother wasn’t a great writer. Not even a good writer. All her stories were romances about the same traveling woman, and the different men she met. She called her Miss Myrtle. You couldn’t tell where she was from or where she was going, but she was always on the move.
In one story Miss Myrtle walks into a salon and notices that the four-legged furniture is all standing on two or three legs. What happens before and after? Is it the same story in which she meets a Swede who is going to be executed because he stole his companion’s gold and murdered him? Her romance in that story is not only with the doomed miner. The pastor summoned for the sinner’s soul also falls for her. There is no salvation from lovesickness for either man.
I always thought that furniture was more interesting than Miss Myrtle and her lovers. I remember imagining our horses standing on only two or three of their legs all year round and thinking how funny it would be.
The idea of Miss Myrtle’s traveling must have come from my great-grandmother Lucille. She trekked from Missouri to California with my great-grandfather Matthew, who was a physician, and they lived in Blanco Bar and Dutch Bar among the miners for two years. But Miss Myrtle is not interested in being a wife. She travels by herself and strikes up a conversation with any man in sight. And every man falls in love with her. In one story, some miners are celebrating July 4th with a reading of the Declaration of Independence, and when the document they special-ordered from Sacramento is not delivered in time, who is there to recite the whole thing but Miss Myrtle? All the miners fall madly in love with her, right there and then. In another story, she discusses the history of revolution with a few French miners and one of them writes a poem for her afterward in French. I don’t know that my mother had any French. If she did, she certainly never told us. Even without it she had enough la-di-da for our father to laugh at.
And Miss Myrtle, you ask me, has she ever fallen in love? Almost, always almost, but then you reach the end of the story and she’s setting out for the next camp or the next town, leaving broken hearts behind. My mother thought she’d given Miss Myrtle beauty and intelligence and freedom. What can men give that she doesn’t already have? But my mother was wrong.
My mother must’ve dreamed of breaking a few hearts, too. But in reality she was like a piece of furniture that had to stand on two or three legs all her life. Writing those little tales must’ve been her way of polishing herself. But polish all she might, she was still like used furniture. Dented and scratched. And wobbly. Some women don’t know how to make themselves treasured.
Do better than my mother, Katherine. Do better than Lucy, too.
Aunt E left me an address in New York City. She will be visiting a cousin of hers before travelling west. The cousin has spent much of the past decade as a companion to a woman who is a novelist and musician. Anyone I’ve heard of, I asked, and Aunt E said no, she supposed not. While we had tea at the station I asked more about them. Cousin Cliona had been trained as a concert pianist, but she had played too much and destroyed her hands. Like Schumann, Hetty said, and Aunt E said not exactly. Cousin Cliona did not have Schumann’s madness. Of the other woman Aunt E did not say much.
So Aunt E has a life outside this house, with relatives and friends unknown to me, and stories that she sees no point in sharing. What a fool I am to have imagined I am indispensable to her.
I also spoke with Hetty about my future. A professor told me last term I might qualify for Colonial Status for a fellowship at Oxford, I said, to which she replied that it must be welcome news to me. I wanted to remind her that I was supposed to go, fellowship or no, but she cut me off with a melancholy look.
Soon you will leave, too, she said. I wish Aunt Evelyn and you could both stay.
That look on Hetty’s face: Where did she learn that expression?
Later.
There is, as Aunt E warned, no money to send me to England. Uncle Victor said they had been cautious with my money, but the economy has been volatile for months and a major part of the holdings Mother left, which were in wheat, has been greatly affected by the drought. What he meant, of course, was that I should remain grateful for what I do have.
The summer, already empty, became more so. There are plenty of girls in town, plenty of dances and picnics. The fleet will arrive, adding fresh navy officers. But Hetty and I, two old people living in our young shells, will let routine carry us. I am suffering from the internal bleeding caused by despair. Hetty, the anaemia caused by love.
* * *
THINK ABOUT THE SUMMER before the Great Depression. It’s like the supper before the great earthquake in San Francisco. My father liked to tell about that meal, about his mother giving a piece of badly charred meat to calm the family dog, who went cuckoo as animals do before an earthquake. After the earthquake, the dog disappeared. My father wanted to search for it, but his parents wouldn’t allow him. He was six then.
My father’s family didn’t pass down many stories. Just the opposite of my mother’s family. The longer you live the more you appreciate those who bury their stories.
My father talked about that lost dog several times. His great-grandfather was a cobbler in Lithuania. The family saved everything to send their oldest son to America. He worked in a Chicago shipyard for a year before joining the forty-niners. That’s all we knew of his family. Iola, you have a bit of Lithuanian blood in you. You should know where that country is on the map.
Who didn’t suffer in the Great Depression? But it was impossible for Roland not to take it personally. He was like a farmer’s wife, counting his lost chickens before they were hatched. My mother did that, too. People like them can never see there are other eggs that would become other chickens. There are never more beautiful chickens than the ones who refuse to be hatched. They cling to the unhatchable eggs.
Maybe that’s why they both wanted to write books.
My mother used to drive me into a rage with the things she said. Every day gone is a day lost, she would say when she was doing the dishes. Lost to wh
om, or what? I wanted to ask, but she was only talking to herself, even when I was right next to her, drying the plates. She was the worst kind of pessimist. It’s not a glass half empty or half full of water, but poison. The question she asked herself: Was there enough poison to kill someone?
There was a reason my father poked fun at her in front of others. How else could he have survived her pessimism? At least he got something out of her unhappiness.
I’m surprised that so few husbands and wives have murdered each other. It still amazes me that my parents didn’t. In grade school I thought they might do just that, though I wasn’t sure who would be the killer, or how they would do it. An ax or a piece of rope in the shed or the rat poison in our cupboard? Firearms? My father once had to shoot a gelding that had got free in the night and eaten a whole sack of oats—he was so bloated there was no other way to free him from the pain. But the only crime my parents had the courage to commit was to go on with their marriage. She gave in first, but she got her revenge. What better way to forget someone than by dying on him? He lived on for some lonely years. When the target of his meanness was gone, he was doomed to remember her.
Now here’s a lesson for you: It’s foolish to love just one person, but it’s more foolish to be nasty to just one person. If you want to be mean, it’s better to be mean to many people. I’ve known a fair number of people, both men and women, who are like my father. Nice enough to everyone but one person—sometimes it’s the spouse, sometimes it’s a child, sometimes it’s a friend.
24 JULY 1929.
Major Pilkington’s niece arrived today. A dance party will be held in her honour, with cases of champagne that arrived on the same train. This gossip, having reached many ears within a few hours, reminds one of the paltriness of all this town has to offer. One imagines life carried out in a different manner in New York, or in sunny California where Pilkington’s niece lives.
* * *
THIS IS THE FIRST TIME California is mentioned in Roland’s diary. I’m not sure that young lady represented us well. I didn’t have the good fortune to travel with cases of champagne, but I wouldn’t want to trade places with Major Pilkington’s niece. Some women have better luck even though they lack beauty or wit. And luck, if you ask me, makes a boring story.
I like to picture Roland at this age. So young! If I ask you to imagine me when I was sixteen, most likely you’d say, What’s the point?
The point? Because you came from who I was then. You also came from who he was.
Jane was complaining this morning that all she could remember were the things before she turned ten and after she turned eighty. Where did those seventy years ago? she asked me.
Maybe those seventy years weren’t real, I said.
That’s not true, she said.
Maybe they didn’t matter.
This afternoon I looked down at the street from my window and wanted to tell those people strutting around in their youth or middle age: Wait until you realize that these years you’re living won’t count.
26 JULY 1929.
Dance at the Pilkingtons’ last night. Almost everyone in town showed up. Miss Pilkington turned out to be a tremendous letdown: not much beauty, vulgarly loud, her teeth, however, flashily white.
Someone, whose name I didn’t catch but who’s from England and holidaying here, stayed close to Hetty. I should have felt relief but for the fact when Hetty was first whisked away, I, feeling pensive, watched the floor like an abandoned sweetheart.
Most of the young men at the dance will remain in Nova Scotia. They will inherit a business, marry, and have children, and their children will do the same. Am I too restless? I am, but one has to have something to one’s name before claiming the right to be restless. Talent, or wealth. These things are given.
Later.
I would have ended today in a starker mood if not for Aunt E’s telegram. She asked me if I would like to go to New York. I cannot help but think how truly fond of me she must be. She can’t be doing this merely for my parents’ sake.
* * *
THERE WAS A TIME when I thought I would see many parts of the world, but after Molly’s birth, I knew those places would have to wait for some time before they would see me.
And then Lucy died.
Katherine, for a few days after Lucy’s death, your father talked about bringing you back to Alaska to his parents or giving you up for adoption. We never told you this. I don’t think his parents were even interested in having you.
For a while we sent Steve a picture of you every year on your birthday and he sent us a check. Fifty dollars. Sometimes less. After a few years the checks stopped. I said we should stop sending him the pictures, but Gilbert said we shouldn’t hold your pictures hostage. I said it would look like we were using your cute face to beg him for money. Eventually an envelope was returned as undeliverable, so end of argument.
Katherine: Yesterday I said you came from who Roland was, and who I was. You also came from who your parents were. “Your mother Lucy”—I’ve never said these words aloud. I’ve never said “my daughter Lucy” either. She’s always been just Lucy.
At least when you read these words, I’m already dead.
Right after Lucy’s death I thought of walking away permanently. Not because I didn’t love my children, but other than Molly, they were old enough to be motherless, and Molly had a good father. Gilbert picked no favorite among his children. Everyone had his whole heart. I’m not like that. Love is like a savings account. You make a deposit, and use it here and there, sometimes subtracting an amount when you least expect it. You can say there is interest but that’s not much to speak of. The account was more or less in the balance until Lucy died. When Lucy died everything was drained from it. Then nothing was left.
I asked my sister Margot about airplane tickets. Her husband Ralph was a travel agent. When I called her, the first thing she said was: Are you running away, too? I told her I needed a break, and she said that was what Lucille had said before she left for Australia.
When I gave birth to Lucy, Lucille and Margot came to visit. Lucille and I were not close. In fact, Margot always blamed me for driving Lucille away from the country and from her life. In any case that’s a story for another day.
Lucy was five days old, and Lucille thanked me for giving the name to the baby. You’re welcome, I said. I was so happy that I didn’t bother to point out that in our family, in every generation there was a girl named after Great-grandmother Lucille. And then she said, It’s wrong that you’re not sharing anything Mother left us.
I was surprised. Our father was still healthy enough then. I told Lucille that our mother left nothing.
What about those papers you found in her trunk? Lucille asked.
I was sixteen and the twins thirteen when our mother died. I didn’t believe they needed to read the stories our mother wrote. I still don’t.
Father burned them, I said. With those letters from her friends.
You’re lying, Lucille said. I asked Father.
In fact, I burned them, I said.
She told me I had no right to destroy anything our mother left us, and I said that she didn’t leave them to us, and I imagine she would feel grateful that I had burned them. You don’t know what Mother wanted, Lucille said, and I said I knew it more than anyone in the family. We went on quarreling, and Margot tried to stop us. In the end both she and baby Lucy started to cry. That was the last time Lucille and I fought. She left the country and eventually settled in Australia. She sent postcards and letters to all her siblings but me. She started a family there. Margot missed her dearly and went there to visit a few times.
In the end I didn’t run away because you, Katherine, became the newest family member. And that’s one thing I don’t regret. But imagine, I could’ve traveled the world and knocked on Lucille’s door!
Knock, knock.
Who’s there.
Lilia.
Lilia who.
Lilia Liska from Benicia, California.
The last person to be expected at her door. She might’ve thought me a ghost. Or maybe we would have laughed together. Perhaps at the news of Lucy’s death she would have cried. Though Lucille has the same hardness I do. We don’t soak ourselves in tears.
If only Lucille and I hadn’t been born into the same family. We would’ve respected each other. We would’ve stopped each other doing silly things. But the best qualities in a close friend are the most difficult to accept in a sister. Or in a child.
Well, I didn’t run away. And I didn’t see Lucille again until Margot’s funeral. I’m wrong to say I have few regrets in my life. Lucille is a regret. Any day they could send news of her death.
I wonder if she thinks of me this way, too. Neither of us will say, it’s too late to do anything now. We’ll only say, it is what it is.
Later. (I like how Roland often used this word.)
Is it a regret that I’ve never traveled? Julie signs up for one international tour a year. Julie is not much younger than me. After each trip she shares her photos. If I were a weaker soul I would sit next to her like those little women, ooh-ing and ahh-ing and thinking about all the places we’ve missed in the world.
But I have no interest in sitting on a coach with thirty other men and women, all of them with one foot in their graves. I have no interest in being shepherded and corralled in St. Petersburg or Barcelona or the Ring of Kerry. No, that wouldn’t do for me. You should see the world with only one person, and to go away for so long that it stops being a mere holiday. A holiday is a dream, but even the best dream ends.