by Yiyun Li
A telegram came today from Madame Z and Cousin C. A cousin of Madame Z’s, Mrs. Sidelle Ogden, is visiting New York. Could I make myself available in case she needs hospitality? Heartening to think that within a week of arrival I can play host.
* * *
YOU CAN READ FROM this page on to the end and maybe you’ll still feel as I do—I cannot picture Sidelle as Roland’s lover. I hope this is not a spoiler for you. Yes, Sidelle and Roland were lovers for some years.
After Lucy died, I asked Mrs. Anderson, the librarian, about a poet named Sidelle Ogden. She couldn’t find any poetry by Sidelle. I then asked my neighbor Holly’s daughter, who was in graduate school. Roland mentioned Sidelle’s name once, but I didn’t know her story until I read this book, which happened much later.
When Lucy died, the women in my life—my sister Margot, my in-laws, friends and neighbors—they all tried hard to say the right things. But the right things are often the least helpful. I wondered then what Sidelle would’ve said—Roland had made her sound special.
Holly’s daughter found a book in the university library for me. A biography of some woman poet who I can’t remember now. She seemed much more famous than Sidelle but even that woman, Holly’s daughter said, was out of fashion and no longer read.
Poets are not like movie stars. Had Roland had an affair with Joan Fontaine or Joan Crawford he would’ve become immortal. But he didn’t get himself the right mistresses. He had this strange loyalty to Sidelle, as if nobody could be compared to her. So he chose other women he could forget easily, to sing and dance behind Sidelle like a chorus.
In that biography, there were a few pictures of a scrapbook the woman poet made of her friends. One page belonged to Sidelle, six photos. I should’ve taken the book to a copy shop and asked them to photograph that page for myself, but I was too prideful then. I didn’t want to feel that I was becoming obsessed with Sidelle. I regret it now.
I don’t remember the name of the poet, so I can’t tell you where to look. The lesson: Things you talk yourselves out of now, one day they may be the exact things you want. I don’t have many lessons to give, so pay attention whenever I offer one.
Without the pictures in front of me, I can only tell you what I remember of Sidelle. In one photo she was smoking, dark short hair, wearing a man’s jacket. In another she wore a long dark robe with a fur collar, and a fur cape outside the robe. Eyes deep, nose narrow, chin pointed. A sharp woman. The other pictures were taken with friends, men and women. She wasn’t smiling in any one of them.
Was she beautiful? Some people may think so, but that’s not my concern. My problem is I can see Roland serving her a glass of wine or fetching her a fur coat or lighting her cigarette. I can see him walking with her in a park or sitting with her in a cab, and I can see him murmuring to her as in one of those scenes in an old Hollywood movie. But try as I may, I can’t see them in bed.
Sidelle had this fierce look on her face that I liked. I have a similar look. Old Jonny, one of the hands on our ranch, used to say that a man would have to go to an ironsmith to get armor before marrying me. I was not older than seven or eight, or else I would have kicked him hard. Look at yourself in the mirror, he said. You look at everyone like you’re going to pounce and kill them. Like a lion? I asked. Like a leopard, Old Jonny said.
That was when I started to study myself in the mirror. All my life I’ve known my face well.
On our second date I told Gilbert about Old Jonny’s words, and Gilbert laughed. You’re not a leopard, he said. You’re a kitten. How genuinely he let himself be deceived. Sometimes I think I miss him quite a bit.
16 AUGUST 1929.
Once again Aunt E left. I now wonder if my so-called passion for her was only an outcome of living in the unnatural atmosphere of Elmsey. If a divine hand picked us up and placed us back there, would I still feel the same way for her?
I have not felt such disarming comfort with her as I felt in the past few days. We moved about, equally unimportant to the world at large yet equally central to our own worlds. Thus looked at we are not different from two goldfish in two tiny bowls, temporarily placed next to each other.
I was reminded of Anna Karenina when I watched Aunt E’s train depart. All trains and all platforms remind me of the terror of romance. For a moment I wanted to ask the man next to me if the same thought ever occurred to him.
[When I came to know Sidelle better, this question about train stations arose in one of our conversations. No, it had never occurred to her that there was any terror in Anna’s death, Sidelle said. It’d be a terror if Anna were left to live on. She then told an anecdote about meeting Constance Garnett at her countryside house. CG peeked at everyone through thick lenses. For someone who didn’t know who she was, Sidelle said, she must have looked as benevolent and as dumb as the pumpkins in her garden.—RB, 5 April 1989]
Later.
I should record the conversation Aunt E and I had a few days ago, but before that I want to remind myself of this line I marked when I was reading the other day:
Prosperum et felix scelus virtus vocatur.* [*Vice, when successful, is called virtue.]
I asked Aunt E about those things that were never discussed back at home, my parents particularly.
Your father was from a decent background, Aunt E said. What upset your uncles was that simplistic pride he had in being an American.
Was he a simple person? I asked.
No, far from it. But you see, that was the problem. The utmost American vice, as your uncles saw it, is that an American can hold on to his American-ness as though it’s a magic spell.
But do you believe he had that vice? I asked Aunt E.
Anyone from a single culture falls victim to a certain silliness. People like you and me—you know my mother’s side was American, people born to two races are better at being sceptics.
I didn’t know Aunt E had an American mother. Is that where you’re going to go, to see family on your mother’s side? I asked.
I’ve stayed away for too long. They’re more like strangers now.
Is that how I should treat the Bouleys?
You should try to establish a relationship with them. One of them may be able to help you. But don’t set your expectations high. They didn’t approve of your father.
Because he married my mother?
Because all his life he did worthless things that led him to pointless places. And you should take caution not to be like him, Aunt E said.
I tried not to look hurt. Should all sons be inoculated against their fathers? Is Aunt E doing this in my mother’s stead?
This was the story Aunt E told me: Father met Mother at Port Royal, during the celebration of the 300th anniversary of French settlement. She was a schoolgirl then, travelling with her choir from Halifax. He crossed the border from America because he had nothing else to do at the time. How he had singled her out and made her fall in love with him god alone knows. When she came back home, she told her older brothers that she was planning to go to America to pursue a degree in Sanskrit, at Cornell University.
None of your uncles understood. What followed was, as you know, a marriage that nobody approved of, and a child. You should be glad that they didn’t bring you with them on the trip.
Where did they leave me?
With a nanny in Ithaca. We sent for you right away. It took a while for the news to reach the Bouleys. And they didn’t make any effort to get you back.
Aunt E didn’t tell me much about her own marriage. Necessity creates opportunity, was all she said. I must remember that.
* * *
I OFTEN WONDER WHY Aunt E stayed in that house in Nova Scotia for so long. Yes, true, she had to raise her daughters, but she could have married and brought them with her. She could have made things happen if she wanted—that’s how I like to think of her. Roland never
considered that question. He was too busy thinking about himself. That’s one drawback about reading his diaries. Everywhere you turn there is a question. It’s a crowded book, like a crowded city. But all those questions you bump into, well, sooner or later they become dead ends.
What happened to Aunt E? There’s not much more to learn from the rest of the book. Roland didn’t forget her. Or else he wouldn’t have kept the entries about her. But he remembered her and he kept her in the diaries because she made him look like an interesting young man. She was an interesting woman. This he forgot.
20 AUGUST 1929.
A sultry day, the kind of summer I’ve learned about from novels set in New York. To experience something that has long been known to me through words—oddly the effect is diluted.
I’m sitting here at the Biltmore, waiting for Mrs. Ogden. The grandiosity of the hotel is exactly as I imagined, and for that reason I decide that I am disappointed. Arrogant as I am, I don’t think I possess a first-rate imagination. (First-rate observation I would allow myself.) I wonder if the whole world is not a second-rate production.
Later.
A memorable evening with a memorable woman.
Can Mrs. Ogden be called good-looking? I have little confidence in my judgement. Women endowed with beauty tend to carry themselves like Kitty in her exquisite dress. How many women can carry themselves with such striking ease as Mrs. Ogden, a remarkable Anna in an ordinary dress?
We had tea. Mrs. Ogden asked me questions about my family and my background. I embellished my story a little: Father and Mother’s marriage against both families’ wishes, my orphanhood, and me now, out by myself in the world. I did not say I was a prospectless man in New York. To see the world a little, I said when Mrs. Ogden asked me my plan. And to write. I made it sound as though I was a Hamlet sans irresolution, or a Quixote strengthened by cynicism. I even made fun of those books I would write one day.
Mrs. Ogden also asked me about Cousin C and Madame Z. I described them as I believe a great novelist would describe his favourite characters. I made a fond imitation of their parrot. I added a few lines about Aunt E. Like Tolstoy, not missing a single detail.
After tea we went up to the rooftop and took a stroll in the garden. I tried to show nonchalance. (But what will Hetty think, when she reads about such decadence in my letter?)
Imagine their thinking that they were building a Louvre here, I said. I have not been to the Louvre but I considered this a worldly comment.
We need to remember that there was a time when the Louvre itself was being built, Mrs. Ogden said. Anything we take for granted comes from something lesser.
Right away I regretted speaking too flippantly, but Mrs. Ogden let it pass without further comment. She doesn’t relish embarrassing people. She does not need to, because one feels embarrassed in front of her already.
She suggested that we meet again on Thursday. She is not as eccentric as Cousin C or Madame Z. She must have plenty of people to see in this city. Why me? Why again?
* * *
HERE’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Roland and me. I would never ask that question, Why me?
No law forbids disasters to happen to you. The flip side is that no law forbids happiness to happen to you. Another mother in my shoes could have wailed at the death of a child: Why me? The real question is: Why not me?
Katherine, you have heard your grandfather talk about meeting me at the UN conference. He visited the week after we met, and I liked him well enough to go on a date with him. He took me for a picnic on the Municipal Pier. We watched the fishermen, their heads wrapped in scarves or rags even though it was June. We tried to see the guards and prisoners on Alcatraz. Gilbert told a story about a man being imprisoned there for kidnapping a girl. He was an avid newspaper reader, he said. He then showed me an advertisement for the ranch. This is how I’ve found you, he said. I smiled and said nothing. He wouldn’t have known where to look if I hadn’t pointed the ad out at our first meeting. But it doesn’t cost a woman to let a man feel proud.
What else did we do? We chatted. Parents, siblings, his nephews and nieces, the last movies we saw. Then a fisherman nearby, an old gentleman, asked if we wouldn’t possibly mind moving farther down the pier. We thought our talking had frightened away his fish, but even before we could say anything, he apologized. He didn’t intend to be rude, he explained, but he had worked all his life as a manservant. When you’re a servant people expect that you don’t listen unless you’re spoken to, he said, but it’s rather the opposite. My hearing was sharpened by my vocation. Now people don’t think I can hear them because I’m old, but I happen to have exceedingly good hearing. I’m not proud of it.
I asked him about his work because I was always curious what people did for a living.
The man said he would have to start from the beginning, from the day he had been orphaned in Japan. He was writing a poem narrating his life, he said, a saga about his life. It would end when he was forced to be evacuated to the interior with other Japanese.
But your life is still going on, Gilbert said. You’re free to do many things now. Don’t finish the poem at a sad moment.
The old man said it was better to finish on a sad note than a hopeful one. I could see Gilbert wanted to disagree. I pinched him and asked the old man how long it would take him to finish the poem.
A few more months, he said. He recited a couplet. I forgot the exact words, but it had something to do with sailing to America with a heavy heart and a light wallet. He said he had only written to the part where he had started with his third employer, a woman he disliked because she had treated all her servants badly. What happened? I asked. Did you find a better place after?
The old man only smiled and asked me to be patient. He offered to post a copy to us. Gilbert wrote down his address for the man. We said goodbye to him and took a walk along the shoreline. Then Gilbert said something about the man that made me stop. You’re not interested in reading the poem? I asked.
It doesn’t hurt to make an old man happy, Gilbert said. It’s important to make others feel good about themselves. I always laugh whenever someone tells a joke, even if it’s not funny or I’ve heard it.
There is no law forbidding a man to be curious—but Gilbert didn’t see it that way.
He then told me a story about a joke writer at a small-town newspaper going to a big city, where all his jokes about pants and ants fell flat. Finally an old man handed him a dictionary and said, Unless you can make trousers rhyme with ants, this is no place for you.
What rhymes with trousers? I asked.
Gilbert made a show of thinking hard, and turned his face to me, looking long-faced and dejected. Schnauzers, he said.
It was then when I realized he might be more fun than I thought. So, when a man puts his heart into making a woman laugh, just say, Why not me?
22 AUGUST 1929.
This morning I woke up with a heaviness on my chest. At first I blamed the oppressive heat and unbreathable air, the ceaseless whistling and honking and screaming from the street. I thought I would go to Central Park, which I had noted as a place where I could think real thoughts rather than trifles. But when I did eventually lie down in the shade, no breeze alleviated the heat, nor did any poetic thought enlighten my mind. I have been in New York City for a fortnight now. The letters I sent to the people on Aunt E’s list remain unanswered. I imagine that all those who can help me are out of town at the moment. What am I going to do with myself when Madame Z and Cousin C return? Do I have the courage to trek back to Elmsey, pretending that I am ready to resume my life under that indifferent roof?
But the day brightened up. I overheard two young women conversing in French. One insisted that the other had told a lie, which the latter denied, quoting someone about truth, which I did not catch. I asked her to repeat the saying. They could laugh at my French but it is sti
ll better than most people can manage here. That I was eavesdropping turned them unfriendly, but I was able to charm them. The livelier one with dark hair and dark eyes, whose name is Yvette (the other one is Amelia, much plainer and shorter), asked my opinion.
Here their story goes:
They are dressmakers, previously apprenticed at some place in Paris. Yvette spoke of the fashion shop as though it were a household name, and I feigned familiarity and admiration. They arrived six months ago. They did not speak English, and worked for a shop on Twenty-third Street, where the forewoman speaks English but also takes a large part of their pay from them. Today Yvette and Amelia had taken the day off and, equipped with better English than when they arrived six months ago, went to peddle themselves on Fifth Avenue. The proprietress of the first shop they entered, upon hearing where they had apprenticed, was interested right away. She asked how much they were paid, and Yvette said twenty-four dollars a week.
The proprietress said, I’ll pay you thirty a week if you come and work for me.
The whole time Yvette was narrating her triumph, Amelia was covering her cheeks with both hands. She lied, she said to me. They pay us each twelve dollars a week on Twenty-third Street.
Well, I said, she was not not telling the truth. Twenty-four was what you made.
Exactement, Yvette said.
We took a walk together. How did you decide to come to America, I asked them, and Yvette said that in the shop where they apprenticed, they saw a nice young woman, a regular patroness from America, whose father was said to own ten thousand miles of telegraph wires. Why can’t we be rich like him, I thought. So we decided to come to America, Yvette said. Right? she said to Amelia.