by Yiyun Li
Those who didn’t know Lucy well always liked her. Thought of her as witty and pretty. Even if she wasn’t as pretty as I was at her age, she certainly outwitted me.
Roland once said happy people should not be allowed to live past a certain age. I disagree. Happy people should live as long as they want. It’s the unhappy ones who should think twice before getting past forty or fifty. I must give Lucy that credit. Young people’s unhappiness is like fireworks. As long as you’re at a safe distance you may even enjoy the spectacle.
Unhappiness in middle age or old age: It’s much worse. You become moldy and infect others. Sometimes it’s more than dampness. It’s humiliation. Like what Dorothy had to endure a few nights ago, when she got the bed wet and was too ashamed to summon an aide. A princess in her own pee, but there’s nothing wrong with that when you’re old. What was wrong was that she apologized the next morning, not only to the aides and the nurses but to anyone she thought might find it embarrassing on her behalf. You know that’s one woman who has lived her life apologizing.
Generally speaking it’s no fun to be my age, but I think I’ve done better than most. Here are a few tips about unhappiness. I hope you both learn from me.
First, don’t mope. Unhappiness starts like water spilled or a manageable leak. But if you don’t mop it up at once or fix the problem, what do you get? Water damage, mold infiltration, floor bending and creaking, going all the way down to the foundation.
If you want me to go on, I have the knowledge. I was married to Milt, a man who knew houses. After he retired, he liked to look through the inspection files he had kept. He showed me his notes, all in print. He talked about those houses like a father talking about his children attending college or finding a job or starting families of their own. Oh, Milt loved houses. Peter Wilson would think Milt repetitive, too. But Peter Wilson didn’t understand that when you get older, anything you can put in between you and your final breath is not a waste of your breath. I bet he, too, repeats things to his wife: Maybe how he doesn’t like the smell of the soap even though she’s been buying the same brand for fifty years, or how he’s annoyed by the creamed corn because the grits get into his dentures. I have a sense he is not a pleasant man. And Anne Wilson, she must be a wife in the same mold as Hetty Bouley. Why else did Hetty favor her among all her nieces?
Norman was a different case. Milt remembered all those houses lovingly, but Norman never talked about a single student from his forty-seven years of teaching driver’s ed. They were all the same to him, the pumpkins and turnips and cabbages of each year’s harvest, some handsome, some lopsided, some rotten from the beginning. What he couldn’t let go of was the lawsuit Vallejo lost to Fairfield to be the county seat. In 1873! Who cares—anyone would say. But it was important to Norman, so I let him talk. Toward the end of Norman’s life he said several times to me, Lilia, you’re a patient woman. I’m not, I know, but I didn’t demur when he said it. I’d simply performed an act of kindness.
A woman has to allow a man to live for something useless or something impossible: Milt’s memory of those houses, Norman’s obsession with county history, Gilbert’s dream of world peace. In that way I was a good wife to all three of them.
Just a thought: Hetty was perhaps not as dumb as Roland and Sidelle thought she was. She let Roland be.
* * *
[In the summer of 1932, I left Shanghai for London. With Sidelle’s help and with my experience in New York and the Far East, I secured a position in an advertising agency. For the next few years, I never orbited far from Sidelle. I met, through her, friends, liaisons, and acquaintances. I joined the Ogdens for a few holidays. I began to spend more time with Harry Ogden. He was convinced that there was an economic approach to preventing the war. I was convinced that he was wrong.
History has vindicated my pessimism. A war has to be fought. It has to be won or lost. But a war is not as interesting, in retrospect, as a garden party, a quick glance across the concert hall at an unfamiliar face, or a prolonged cab ride. With this as my guiding principle I have made the following selection from my diaries. History, the egotist that refuses to leave the centre stage of anyone’s life, is, among these pages, banished to a prompter’s corner.
In this way a man claims his final triumph over history, not by outliving it but by revision.—RB 4 April 1990]
1 JANUARY 1933.
Lord, have mercy on me.
Had I had a pistol by my hand I might have turned myself into a young Werther, but Sidelle is no Charlotte. She would raise an eyebrow at my graveside and say to the person next to her—and heaven knows there is always someone next to her—I don’t see how adding a bad ending to a mediocre drama can make it less so.
Nothing is commoner to her than speaking of one’s heart. How did I let her ambush me in my youth? How did I let myself slip and say the thing that I should never, ever, have said to any woman, let alone Sidelle?
Roland, you know the only person whom you can trust is yourself. Let us sift out all the things that drag you down, and let us, you and me, turn all these things into what will lift you up. Trust that our intelligence and willpower will act as the alchemist.
Lead to helium. Here we go.
What bothers you? That Sidelle has too many men and women around?
—It does not bother me that Sidelle is not a loyal wife. But I would like her to be a loyal mistress.
Loyal to whom?
—To me, of course.
Bravo, Roland. Such audacity. Are we to forget you have other lovers?
—She always comes before other women.
Harry Ogden, as you know, always comes before other men.
—Harry Ogden is harmless. He is like Count Bezukhov, except likely he will leave Sidelle a widow one day.
And you have set your heart on replacing him?
—I do not want to replace any husband.
Are you afraid that other men will replace you? No one is irreplaceable, if I may remind you. Even Sidelle.
—It is not about being replaceable. How many times do I have to say this?
Is there something you find lacking in her love for you?
—Her love? She is not a woman who loves.
Perhaps that is an unfair statement.
—A person who loves cannot remain unassailable as she does.
Have you undertaken any action to assail her?
—Yes.
By speaking your heart and demanding her to speak hers?
—One has to take a risk.
And now eating this bitter bread of banishment by thyself?
—Self-banishment. She did not banish me.
What is the difference?
—One has to have some dignity.
Dignity is snake oil for the wounded soul. What do you want from her, truly?
—The only thing I want is…everything.
Ah. Here we are nearer the truth. Wanting everything is better than wanting nothing.
—Is it? This is, I think, what gives Sidelle the advantage over me. She wants nothing.
From you, or anyone?
—I do not know! From me for sure.
And you want her to want something, Roland.
—I want her to want everything, Roland, and I want her to want everything from no one but me.
* * *
WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU, Roland? I’ve known only mothers wanting what you want. From their children. And it’s a horrible thing, even for a mother.
Gilbert’s mother was like that with him. My mother with Kenny, too. A curse put on the last born. Some sons raised by mothers greedy for love become greedy men. Like Kenny. But it’s not always the case. Gilbert gave more than he received. It wasn’t just generosity. People can be demanding even if they’re generous. Some want so much because they think they shoul
d be awarded especially for their generosity. They’re often the bitterest souls.
A few days before Gilbert’s mother died, he and I were in her house with her. I was doing the dishes, and he was on the phone with one of his siblings. And his mother said, What are you making all those noises for, Gilbert? I said, It’s me, I’m in the kitchen. She said, What are you doing in my kitchen, Lilia? Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it the wrong way.
To my surprise, I cried at her funeral. I didn’t cry at my own mother’s funeral. I thought it was the tears of Gilbert and his siblings and all those grandchildren that made my mind go weak. What a crocodile you are, I said to myself even as I was wiping my eyes.
Gilbert’s mother was not fond of me. I was not a real person to her, only the woman her son married. Gilbert loved me, but had he married another woman he would’ve loved her as unselfishly as he loved me. My mother treated us well enough, but other than Kenny, we were just her children. Give her another set of children and she wouldn’t have felt any difference. You see the pattern here? You can live a long life, surrounded by people, but you’ll be darn lucky if one or two of them can take you as you are, not as who you are to them.
In our marriage Gilbert and I didn’t make that mistake. We were always Gilbert and Lilia, not Gilbert’s Lilia or Lilia’s Gilbert.
Both Sidelle and Hetty took Roland as he was. What he was to them didn’t matter. They saw through him. And they made a place in their lives for the person they saw through.
I see through him, too, but only now. Before his death and before reading his diaries I didn’t take him for who he was, but for who he was to me, and to Lucy. Perhaps I also took Lucy as who she was to me, and to Roland, instead of who she was.
But who was Lucy?
2 JANUARY 1933.
Stayed in—calmer after a few drinks by myself. The intense emotions I have experienced in the past month feel like nothing but trifles.
I am like one of those people invited onstage by a magician. He deals the cards and says, Pick one. If I were smarter I would cross my arms and say, No, I cannot and I will not help you. Whatever card I pick is the card you have meant for me.
Yet I am an idiot. I am the person that any magician would use as a prop. I cannot not pick the card. I cannot not believe I have been chosen for a reason.
I start to think that my resentment of Sidelle is a resentment of her position: She is in control of her fate. I am not.
* * *
LUCY WAS IN CONTROL of her own fate, too. The woman Roland could not have in his life and the daughter he did not know was his—they both had what he wanted. I do, too.
But Sidelle did not like extreme feelings or actions. Neither do I. In a sense she and I are alike.
Lucy, or poor Lucy, she was in control of her fate but she, like Roland, could not live without extremes.
12 JANUARY 1933.
Waiting for M’s arrival. She reminds me of Hetty, but with Hetty at least I do not have to make any effort. M is not as unruffled as Hetty. Perhaps it is for that reason I let myself stay interested in M. On the other hand, I do not have the respect for her I have for Hetty. Or call it pity.
Now I see a danger in Sidelle that I did not see two years ago. Most women are disproportional: Either their minds are too meagre to make their physical lustre last, or their bodies are miserably unfit to sustain their minds. Sidelle is the rare case where mind and body do not undermine each other.
Has Sidelle always been this way? Was she once as inexperienced as M? Did she ever deceive herself with a love interest that offered nothing in return, as Hetty insists on doing? When am I going to stop comparing everyone to her? It’s unfair that one has to start with a woman like Sidelle. Nothing is crueller than telling a gambler that he has made the best bet of his life at the first try. The joy is to think that there will always be a bigger win.
I have not seen Sidelle since that disastrous conversation on New Year’s Day. How long will this abstinence last?
In a sense M should be a perfect choice for me. She has enough love for me. We are compatible physically. I can imagine myself contentedly married to her. Infidelity may arise as an issue, but if neither of us thinks too much about it…She does not seem the kind who would make a good mother, but I have no interest in becoming a sire.
What if I proposed to M? I could show up at Sidelle’s drawing room with the triumphant news.
* * *
PEOPLE OVERESTIMATE THEMSELVES, BUT not much harm comes from that if you know how to laugh about it. Do you think Sidelle would feel hurt if he proposed to any random woman?
The real harm comes from people who underestimate themselves. My mother convinced herself that she could not be a good wife and a good mother, and she acted accordingly. Lucy had the same conviction and she acted more absolutely. She was unhappy in a marriage like my mother and she died young like Roland’s mother. Sometimes I find that odd.
I had vowed to have a different life long before I was old enough to think of marriage. I’ve done that, being all that my mother was not: a good wife, a good mother, a grandmother, and at the same time being myself, too. But all those lessons you learn from your mother don’t mean you can save your daughter’s life.
3 FEBRUARY 1933.
Back to Sidelle. The reunion began with a discussion of amputations in wartime and ended with an intimate afternoon in my bachelor’s nest.
Rest assured you won’t lose a limb in any war, Sidelle said afterward.
I asked her where the assurance came from.
You love yourself too much for that to happen.
What if I lost my life? I said. I might have been killed when they bombed Shanghai.
Bad luck then, she said. But to you losing a life is much less of a consequence than losing a limb.
I wondered if she was right. If one’s love for oneself could not be freed from one’s love for one’s physique in its perfect and intact form, then any alteration—the greying of hair, the weakening of legs, the waning of one’s prowess, not to mention a wound, a scar, a permanent mark—would be a challenge to that love. Will I still love myself in this way sixty years down the line? A woman may love a man through his inevitable decline. At least one hopes that is the case. Does it mean that her love of him is less than his love of himself?
I remembered an oriental tale that Hetty once told me, a love story between the most beautiful lady of the empire and her royal fiancé. When some disaster deformed her face—fire? illness?—she wanted to break the engagement. He blinded himself so her heavenly voice alone would sustain his memory of her beauty. Thus they lived happily ever after. I recounted the story to Sidelle.
What a tiresome couple, she said.
Does such a tragedy not move you? I asked.
What’s the point of him blinding himself when he already loves with blindness?
You don’t see the beauty in such an extreme action?
I don’t see any beauty in extremity. Losing a limb is a hideous business. Blinding yourself willingly is unsightly. Acting unnaturally in the name of love is a horrendous insult to love.
How does one act in the name of love? I said.
Sidelle stretched her legs out straight and crossed her feet, a ballerina in repose. When I leaned over to trace the contour of a knee, she said, We’re not in a play. I’m not a theatrical woman.
The theatrical effect is all mine, then?
Do you behave this way with your other women?
I don’t know, I replied. I don’t think so.
One hopes not, Sidelle said.
Why, because this makes you cherish your command of my life?
I don’t command, she said. It’s you who has chosen to become commanded.
You should’ve thought twice before you picked me out of a pool of nobodies, I said. I suppose it won�
�t take much for you to throw me back.
Roland, don’t court unreal problems, Sidelle said.
You mean this—I gestured toward her and myself—this is not real life?
I don’t deceive myself into thinking that you treat this as real, she said. Then: Is it real?
Is it not real to you? I asked.
Anything can be as real to me as I want to make it, but you, Roland, you take pride in making everything as unreal as you want, no?
I did not know—still do not know—if I should feel hurt or consoled by her words. Do I treat this life of mine as real? It is the only one I have.
* * *
DO YOU THINK IT’S a genetic trait that some people can’t tell the real from the unreal?
One day when Lucy was three, she told me that she was planning to move out. Out to where, I asked, and she said to the pet store on Harrison Street. Nobody’s there at night, I said. There’re nighttime nannies there, she said. Really, I asked, for pets or for children? For anyone younger than five, she said. Where did you hear that? I asked. And she wouldn’t say. She just smiled that smile of hers, meaning she was smarter than me. She had the same smile when she told me about a man giving birth to a baby in the park down the street. I thought that there must be a homeless man defecating where he should not. Turned out it was only a harmless old man peddling a few wooden dolls. Still, I confronted him about talking to unaccompanied girls. When he didn’t show up again Lucy said the man had moved away with his baby.
I was disturbed. Children’s fantasies, Gilbert insisted. All children have a phase. No doubt he was right. But the thing is, after a child dies, you can’t stop thinking of those fantasies, as if they carried important messages. What made Lucy talk about leaving long before her time? Was Roland the man who gave birth to his daughter? He was theatrical. He wanted to be seen by many people. He gauged the world by what it did to him. Lucy had all those traits. But there was one thing he didn’t pass on. He loved himself so much that he wouldn’t risk even the smallest possibility of hurting himself. Why didn’t Lucy inherit that?