by Yiyun Li
She continued talking about the dinner. She had gone because she was curious to see if the sculptor was still in love with a cousin of hers, who was said to have been Trotsky’s lover once.
Is she Russian? I asked.
Part English, part continental, Mrs. Ogden said. We are, like all people, from everywhere.
Not me, I said. I’m a provincial boy from Nova Scotia.
You remind me of this cousin of mine. Once, at a house party, she sat down for five minutes and then, to everyone’s horror, fetched her winter coat, which she’d just left with the maid. She wrapped herself tightly throughout the evening. She’d have been considered outright rude if not for her reputation of being an eccentric.
Perhaps she was cold? I said. Perhaps she had a chill?
The point is not how one feels but how one makes a hostess feel, Mrs. Ogden said.
I was stung by her words. I said that I didn’t suppose I was in the position to make her feel anything.
It’s my cousin Elizabeth I was telling you about, your Madame Zembocki.
Oh, what happened then?
I imagine she was forgiven in the end. People forgive her. Some people inspire admiration, others pity, others annoyance. She inspires forgiveness.
What about…? I was going to say, what about you, or perhaps I was going to say, what about me. Either way I cut myself off in time.
The truly dangerous people are those who inspire a mix of everything—those are the people you must avoid.
Why?
When someone inspires a mix of things in you, you’d mistakenly think of yourself as being in love. Do you not agree?
I thought of Aunt E. I haven’t had the good fortune of having fallen in love, I said.
I wouldn’t call it a loss.
Not even at my age? I said. Immediately I knew that I had misspoken.
If a person hasn’t thought through much of life by the age of thirteen or fourteen, I don’t think he stands a chance, Mrs. Ogden said.
But what if, I said, someone does inspire everything? What if I do think of myself as falling in love?
In that case offer nothing.
Nothing will come of nothing?
How else does one manage a life?
Is that how you do it?
No, but I have my experience to rely on.
I have nothing to rely on? I asked.
You have my friendship.
Mrs. Ogden is not a better storyteller than Amelia, but she knows I listen to her with a ravenousness. She knows that I will always prefer one Mrs. Ogden to a thousand Amelias or even a thousand Yvettes. I resent her for knowing that, but I would resent it more if she didn’t know.
Does this make me meek? No, it takes ten times more courage for one to stay close to a woman like Mrs. Ogden than to run away. I would be a meek man if I looked for comfort and love only among the Amelias and Yvettes of the world.
* * *
SIDELLE WAS RIGHT THAT the dangerous people are those who get you into a hodgepodge of feelings. Roland was fortunate to have that explained to him. Nobody warned me. I knew it by instinct.
They both did well, I mean Sidelle and Roland. For years I’ve been puzzled by something Roland wrote after Sidelle’s death: “We, Sidelle and I, have been lifelong practitioners of that art of subtraction. Whatever has come up between us we agree we can do without. Show me one person who can rival my skills and hers. No one comes close. Not even Hetty.”
But I think I understand it now. When two people decide that they could do without everything and anything, and they make that decision together, well, in the end they cannot do without each other. Things you don’t need for your daily upkeep—they’re the true luxury, what makes a difference to your life. Did Roland care for all those nights of listening to classical music next to Hetty on the sofa, or the dinners he had to attend with her when she served on this or that charity committee, or the trips they took, when they packed up their orderly life and unpacked it in a holiday house thousands of miles away? Do we remember every single piece of toast we eat for breakfast?
I once wanted a dream from Roland, and he did give me that. A lot more than that.
Imagine going to dear old Gilbert for a dream. It would be like searching a cereal box for a diamond.
29 AUGUST 1929.
I paid a visit to Yvette and Amelia in the evening, catching them both in this time. I told them I was to be out of town for a few days. Yvette turned to Amelia with a knowing look, as though I was failing already, and in a way predicted by Yvette (or both?).
The visit was short and lukewarm. Afterward, Amelia came downstairs to the door with me. When are you leaving? she asked.
In the coming week, I said.
A pause. Unnerved by her quietness I felt the need to say something. I asked her if she would not mind seeing a film together on Saturday.
Oh, she said as though startled by the direction of the conversation. I was only looking at your shirt, she said, pointing to my sleeve. That button is coming loose. Do you want me to get the needle and thread? It won’t take a minute.
Something about Amelia alarmed me, that willingness to serve before one even asks. Another man may take advantage of such a trait, but am I that sordid? I told Amelia she need not worry about the button.
But who will take care of it? she asked.
I almost said Bessie. Oh, someone will, I said. The landlord’s daughter, I lied.
Amelia looked at me with her grey eyes. So then, we’ll see a film together on Saturday? she said, smudging the divide between a question and a statement.
* * *
LATER IN THIS BOOK Roland admits that he sometimes lies in his diary. Or changes the sequence of events. Exaggerates. Anything a man can do to make himself feel “first-rate.” Do you think this may be a case of that?
31 AUGUST 1929.
I am no longer a virgin. Am I recording this in a celebratory or a mourning mood?
Yvette seduced me. No, I let her seduce me, and she made sure Amelia caught us. Did I act dishonourably, and if so, toward whom? I am banished from their little shared nest now. One imagines that whatever rift came between them would be fixed through a combination of Yvette’s resourcefulness and Amelia’s loyalty. Their friendship must flow on with the same smoothness as before, as if disturbed only momentarily by a fallen tree branch or an inconvenient boulder.
* * *
WHEN I WAS IN kindergarten, there was a teacher my best friend Amy and I both loved with a passion. Her name was Miss Corey. Was she a good teacher? I don’t remember having learned much from her. What we loved most was her red hair, kept short, done with perfect finger waves.
Miss Corey had a habit of drawing little flowers and animals in our workbooks. She must have done it to make our work look better, even when we had the worst handwriting. But she never did it consistently. And you never knew whose workbook would be chosen on a given day. In the end, Amy and I both believed Miss Corey favored the other. I don’t think Miss Corey even knew the damage she caused. The same with Roland, but I trust that the two French girls were smarter than Amy and me. He was right. They would remain friends, Roland or no Roland.
Here’s a lesson: Don’t become a casualty of other people’s casual behavior. If someone puts his heart into hurting you or destroying you, you have to at least respect him. But more often people hurt others because they’re thoughtless. They elbow and push you because it never occurs to them you can possibly exist in that space. Iola, you must remember this.
Thoughtlessness is the eighth deadly sin.
2 SEPTEMBER 1929.
Dinner with Mrs. Ogden at her hotel. Cooler at the rooftop. Still, my collar was completely out of shape by the end of the night. I wonder if the waiters have been changing their collars every hour. They look sharp and pr
istine and unperturbed. All qualities that I associate with being a real, mature man. But then look at the service positions those good qualities have landed them.
Our talk started slowly like any languid summer conversation. By and by Mrs. Ogden was able to pry me open like a clam. Out spilled the story with Yvette and Amelia, hardly a pearl.
I don’t see why this troubles you so, she said.
I explained that I felt unfairly used.
You didn’t lose much, Mrs. Ogden said. This French girl, according to you, is a beauty.
I said I would not have lost anything had she had some genuine affection for me.
But the other girl is interested in you. Would you be happier had she been your lover?
I hesitated and then said no.
Because she is plain-looking?
Yes, I said.
Mrs. Ogden lit a cigarette. I am always a beat too late when I try to light it for her. I studied her face. Would she consider that as a criticism of herself? She is not a beautiful woman, though she is the last woman you would call plain.
Not only that, I added hastily. I don’t harbour any romantic feeling toward her so it’d be ungentlemanly to engage her in any dishonourable manner.
You have a long life in front of you, Roland. Don’t develop a habit of fretting over anything unnecessary.
What’s necessary, then?
Living as best as we can. We have so little control over anything that it makes us pure fools if we fret. For instance, what if our train derailed between here and Pittsburgh tomorrow? Would you still be upset about your imperfect romance?
(At our first meeting I told Mrs. Ogden that my parents died in a train crash. Was she being forgetful, or intentionally cruel?)
Living well is an easier business for you, I said.
Do you mean living is an easier business for me?
You have what you want, I said.
But I also have what I don’t want.
A queen can suffer from an imperfectly set ring, I suppose? A princess can lose sleep over a pea, I said.
Mrs. Ogden waved the smoke away from in front of her eyes. Think about it, Roland. Among the very first words we learn to say as children is no, but does our protest do us any good? We’re still at the mercy of parents and nannies and governesses and then what? God? Fate? What if we say yes to everything?
Say yes to everything?
Good or bad, sweet or bitter, kind or cruel, Mrs. Ogden said, what’s the difference?
The difference, I thought, is that if I lived by that creed I would never have left Halifax. That solid sameness I already have, in the form of Hetty. Like a lighthouse, she speaks of the unchanged and the unchangeable: Let the sky be stormy or be starry, and I see no reason to be different; the world is a dangerous place but I’ll give you all the assurance within my capacity; yes, I’m here, come to me; yes, come to me and all will be well, but leave me, leave me at your own risk.
Thinking of a woman? Mrs. Ogden said, and when I tried to deny it, she said she could tell when a man’s attention had drifted to another woman. The absent one always finds a way to join the party, she said. Who is the lucky girl?
Oh, just a cousin, I said. We’ve grown up together.
Mrs. Ogden smiled. Many a marriage occurs between cousins, she said.
She’s only a little girl, I said. We love each other like brother and sister, nothing more.
Many a marriage happens without the kind of love you believe to be a prerequisite.
Is that how it is with your marriage? I said. It was foolish always to be cornered by her.
Do you mean my marriage to Mr. Ogden, or the one before?
You were married before?
Widowed, too, she said.
Mrs. Ogden made it sound as though we were discussing someone toward whom we should only feel a clinical interest. I have always taken pride in being able to treat all things in life as potential material for the books I will write one day. But that pride vanishes in front of Mrs. Ogden. She has ten times more material, but she dismisses the past as easily as she dismisses my ambition.
I didn’t…I’m sorry to hear.
You don’t have to feel sorry. It happens to be a fact of my life. Yes, a young woman could marry a young man for love and happiness, but there is no guarantee that he could survive a war when several other millions died. Yes, she could marry again, to a man too old to be thrown into another war—there will be one, mark my words—but there’s no guarantee that this man in his civilian clothes won’t perish from disease.
Mr. Ogden, I don’t— I stammered, I don’t suppose his health problem is that dire?
No one knows death’s mind when it comes to an older man, she said. Well, not when it comes to a child, either.
Did you…?
Yes, I had a son. Not much younger than you. But perhaps it’s better for a mother to lose a child than for a child to lose his parents. Hugh died before his father. Or, I should say, Charles went to the war to forget his son’s death.
Being orphaned, I said, trying to find my voice, is not that difficult.
One supposes you’re right. But you see what I mean, saying no won’t stop illness or death or war or any of my little miseries.
But one can’t possibly welcome these misfortunes with open arms, I said.
Not with open arms, but with indifference.
And then what?
You just live whatever life comes next. For instance, we might not have crossed paths if it weren’t for my cousin. But would it matter? Hardly. I might be sitting here talking with another young man, and you with another woman.
I tried not to look hurt, but my face must have betrayed me.
* * *
I WISH SIDELLE AND I had met. It may sound unfair that someone has lived in your head for so long while you’ve never existed for her. But the truth is, I wouldn’t want a stranger to know my life. Sidelle wouldn’t have liked that, either, but she could do little about my knowing her.
She lost a child. So did I. You could say she lost her only child, but there is no good math in a child’s death. She lost two husbands. I lost three. No good math there, either.
We’re not in the habit of saying no to anything. Sidelle was right: Protest all you can and it gets you nowhere.
One thing I wish I knew better is what kind of mother Sidelle was. You may get an impression from Roland’s diary that she wasn’t a warm woman, but he never knew her as a mother. Possibly she didn’t show that side to him.
Here’s another possibility. Roland grew up without a mother, so the door to the world of mothers never opened itself to him. A different person might’ve got a sense of Sidelle as a mother. You don’t have to see a woman with her child to know. Perhaps I’ve been wrong to think Hetty couldn’t give him a child. Perhaps he couldn’t give her a child because he couldn’t imagine his wife as a mother. For once let’s blame him instead of her.
For all the time Roland was infatuated with Sidelle, there would have been more things he didn’t know about her than he did. I’ve made it a game to think about the things he didn’t know. Some are big, some are little. It’s the little ones that I still wonder about. Did she throw away a bouquet of flowers when the first petal dropped? (Hetty, I imagine, would only keep the freshest flowers in their house.) Did she wear a wig toward the end of her life? (Hetty would, don’t you think?) Did she wiggle her toes when she was anxious? (This I still do, one of my very few weaknesses.) Did she have moments, like me, when she couldn’t remember Roland’s face? Or his voice? Or if not Roland, her two dead husbands? Did she miss her child and relive the days when he was alive? But he died young, and she didn’t have that many years at her disposal.
A dead child doesn’t grow old. Lucy was twenty-seven and she’s still twenty-seven.
I can’t make up a life for her past that age, but I’ve relived those twenty-seven years many times.
Every morning since Lucy’s death, I wake up and say to myself: Here’s another day that Lucy refused to live. Not a day she gave up. If she gave up something I could give it up, too. But she refused flatly to have today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. All the more reason for me to live each day, to prove a point: I refuse to accept her refusal.
I didn’t cry much when she died. I fought back more tears than I imagine any mother in my position would do. If there were an Olympic race for that, I could’ve won a gold medal. But not crying does strange things to a person. It’s not like all those tears are held up behind a dike, and you live your life like a watchwoman on duty. Day and night. Making sure there’s no crack, no leak, no danger of flooding. You would be doing everyone a good service if that were the case. But you watch that dike for years and one day you say to yourself: I would like to take a look at the water again. The dike says, What water, ma’am? So you climb to the top. What water indeed? It’s a desert on the other side.
I would say—oh, I’ve never said this before: Lucy really broke my heart. She broke my heart in a way I never imagined a heart could be broken. Perhaps if I had shed those tears, they would have kept the broken pieces floating around in me. Not for mending, but it would have been good to keep the pieces in sight.
Well, no reason to cry over cracked eggs. Sidelle didn’t cry over the death of her son, either. Don’t ask me how I know it. I just do.
3 SEPTEMBER 1929.