by Yiyun Li
The one person I do want to see again is Gilbert. I want to ask him: Do you think we took each other for better people than we were?
23 FEBRUARY 1943.
Quentin Jones told me about a possible opening at the Office of War Information,* in Washington. He thought someone with my experience would be a great fit. Do I want to go to the States now that I have found perfect peace, working at a perfect and boring job in a perfect and exhausting war?
I told Sidelle about the opportunity, talking about it with more enthusiasm than I felt. Did she get the impression that I wouldn’t mind leaving her?
[*OWI was previously known as the Office of Facts and Figures. How I wished I had worked for an agency called the Office of Facts and Figures. And lived a Life of Facts and Figures.
Sidelle and I sailed to America in the spring of 1943. I met Elmer Davis’s deputies in Washington, and secured a position in their London division, working on psychological warfare. Throughout my career I had the good habit of not keeping notes related to work. I can give a bare-bones version of my professional journey. It was in the London office that I befriended several card-carrying communists and their East European connections. In 1945, I left OWI and took on a job as a correspondent for the Daily Worker, but my ambition then was bigger than could be contained by either of those positions. The assistance I gave the East Europeans at the UN conference came from an honourable intention to help out the small countries caught among superpowers. East Europe, I thought then, would become a centre in the postwar Continent. I was not wrong. And the news these days continuously proves my foresight. The downfall of my professional fortune was caused not by my shortcomings, but by a disloyal ally, who set up an inconvenient meeting between me and one of his countrywomen. But there is no need to go into details. All I can say is that my diplomatic vision, like my writer’s career, was cut short by fate.—RB, 14 March 1990]
* * *
DO YOU THINK ROLAND was making up all these spy stories? But he was in California. And I did see him with the foreigners.
[June 1943: Sidelle and I travelled to Halifax from Washington, D.C. At her request.—RB 14 March 1990]
* * *
THIS PART IS MORE interesting. Don’t skip!
8 JUNE 1943.
En route to Halifax, bringing my not-bride-to-be Sidelle. On and off I have tried to get some sense out of her about our future.
Surely you aren’t, she said, speaking of marriage?
What if I were? I asked.
Hugh was four years older than you are, Sidelle said. Think what he would’ve said.
You never care about other people’s opinions.
Not even my own son’s?
A hypothetical son by now, though I did not point this out to her. What if I wanted to be a married man? I said. What if I wanted children?
Then you can find yourself a good wife to bear you your children.
I regretted at once that I had given her an easy way out. Well, perhaps I don’t care for children, I said.
Then why are we talking about something that doesn’t concern either of us? We can’t possibly end up in a marriage. Not—she studied me with her usual assessing look as though I were a hat or a pair of gloves—if we can help it.
What if we can’t help it?
You mean, what if you can’t help it? Sidelle said. Then marry a woman to end your folly. I don’t think we’ll be doomed by anyone you marry. The real question is, how much of our lives do we want to allocate to each other?
What she is not allocating to me—to whom do those parts belong?
9 JUNE 1943.
Hetty is—what can I say, Hetty surprised me. I did not remember that she is able to leave a deep impression on me. Perhaps I am becoming more impressionable? Or has she acquired some sort of witchcraft? If Hetty wore a crown of flowers she would be the opposite of Ophelia, with sweet peas and daisies and lilies and Nordic poppies adorning her hair, singing beguilingly simple tunes. Meticulous, sane, immortal.
Perhaps it is these years of butterflying among women that makes me see her in a new light. She is so sure of herself, so effortlessly sure.
Sidelle has taken a room at the Lord Nelson. I made a courteous visit at Elmsey but decided to stay with Hetty’s family. Jonathan is away in the navy. Thomas is still at school. Let us hope the war ends before it is his turn.
Out to lunch with Sidelle and Hetty today. One cannot imagine a better-mannered girl than Hetty, or a smoother woman than Sidelle. Yet anyone watching from above would pity me, a poor man with two expensive dishes thrust upon him, neither of which he could quite afford.
It occurred to me, while I was studying the menu and listening in to their conversation—exquisite like bone china of the finest quality—that with a novelist’s stroke of the pen, Hetty could have been married to Sidelle’s son. They could have been in-laws vying for the same man’s affection. The fact that the man had died would not have altered anything. They would have each maintained their exclusive rights to memories and mourning. Between an older woman and a younger woman there is bound to be a man.
And there I was, an almost-son to my lover, a brother to my almost-bride. How much easier it is for the novelist. How much more he can get away with. A novelist pays no hefty tax for his imagination as we do.
Next to Hetty, Sidelle looks her true age. That impermeable, marble quality of hers takes on a kind of coarseness. Subtle, yet still visible to a lover’s eyes. This thought startled me at lunch, but now I feel a sense of vindictiveness.
And Hetty? Not a mote of dust seems able to settle on her.
Later.
Hetty and I stayed up late talking, two children without adult supervision once again. Much has changed at Elmsey. Ethel left to live with a nephew when her cataracts worsened. Bessie is not young anymore. Without much choice she married Freddie’s grandson, who has now turned the livery stable into a mechanics’ garage. In no time their three children will start helping in the workshop. Old Freddie is dead. Some of his horses are, too. Others have been sold. Uncle William died soon after Aunt Geraldine. Uncle Victor had a stroke last year. All our cousins are doing well. The men are good at business. The women marry sensibly.
Now that the best brain surgeons have been dispatched to England, Hetty’s father has become unusually prosperous, his patients travelling from afar. Aunt Marianne has welcomed me with impeccable tepidness and has since remained more or less absent.
School friends and family friends: so many stories, so little difference. Marriage, children, enlistment, untimely deaths.
What is Mrs. Ogden’s plan? Hetty asked when the stories from home ran dry.
I told Hetty that Sidelle had no definite plan. A war can be exhausting, I said. She needs a break.
What does she do?
Nothing much, I said. I did not know if I should say that Sidelle is a poet, as she does not talk about poetry these days.
What a funny question I asked, Hetty said. If people asked that about me I would have to say, Nothing really.
Mrs. Ogden helped Mr. Ogden make some business connections when he was alive, I said. She travelled with him often on business trips.
Now she can’t even do that, Hetty said with a sigh. (Does she mean travelling is no longer available to Sidelle because there is a war, or there is not a husband anymore?)
It’s only temporary, I said.
Hetty smiled a consent. I waited for the question that I wanted her to ask so I could give her a vague answer. When she did not say anything I said, A woman doesn’t always have to do something.
Yes, she said. I think we women are better off just to be.
I couldn’t tell from Hetty’s tone if she was being sarcastic, but I thought not.
You don’t have just to be, I said. You could travel. What I didn’t say was that trav
elling would be a sure way for Hetty to find a husband, as sitting in this house would not help.
There is a kind of indifference in Hetty that I do not remember being there before. Is this what she is becoming, a spinster who will someday peer at a bride driven down to the church and instantly redirect her attention to her knitting? Hetty is thirty-one now. Soon we will be two middle-aged cousins, sitting by the fireplace and reminiscing about dead ancestors.
Seeing Hetty again confirms what I vaguely felt when I was younger. There is something in her that frightens me. I have always expected more from life than it is willing to give me. Most people do. Even Sidelle expects certain things and does not settle for less. Hetty is different. It is not that Hetty does not want something—she wants a lot, including me. But the way she wants me is like the way she wants everything, not by desiring, not by seeking, not even by preempting, but by prophesying. If a little girl spreads her arms wide in front of the Public Gardens and says, This whole garden is mine, we will smile, indulging her dream of ownership because it does no harm to us. Then we will walk around her and enter the garden, forgetting her right away. If the same little girl points to a piece of marshland and says, Here’s my garden, we can all agree that she is playing the same make-believe game, only in this case we have no desire to enter the garden. But what if we blink and then see that the marshland has become a garden, full of expensive cultivars and exotic imports? The girl only states something known to her as a fact. We cannot even say the word “witch” to that innocent face.
I have always wondered if the little girl Hetty looked at me once and said to herself, There is Roland, my future husband. The best I could do then is to vanish, leaving only a smile like the Cheshire cat.
We talk as though there were an urgent decision to be made about my life, Hetty said. I should really be asking you about that.
I told her about the position in Washington, and the possibility of transferring to London after the summer.
You’re fulfilling your dreams, Roland.
My dreams? I asked.
Writing for a living. Seeing the world. Having an adventurous life.
If she were any other girl she would deserve a slap in the face.
10 JUNE 1943.
Hetty took me to visit Aunt Geraldine’s grave. I had no tears to shed but got down on one knee to remove some moss from the headstone. Hetty stood behind me. Her shadow, elongated by the late afternoon sun, stretched beyond not one grave but many.
11 JUNE 1943.
I was thinking of your Hetty before you came, Sidelle said when I met her for tea.
Don’t make fun of her, I said. She’s the only one close to me from my family.
Yes, Sidelle said. We all reach that point, and the last one is often the person we hold on to like a buoy.
It’s not as dire as that, I argued. Hetty and I can both marry someone, to double our holdings.
Why don’t you suggest that to her? She should hurry. I was watching the buses leaving with the servicemen this morning. Imagine how many of them won’t be returning. She won’t compete with those girls who’ll lose their sweethearts.
You’re being unkind, I said.
Because I speak from practicality?
Hetty would’ve married long ago if practicality were ever a concern, I said.
I was reading Shakespeare earlier, Sidelle said. And I was imagining Hetty as poor Lavinia. Hetty wouldn’t even have to have her hands cut off or tongue torn out, she would just be wordless as Lavinia, no?
I shivered. I had foreseen this years ago, and vowed that they should not meet, and yet I let it happen. Why are you talking about Hetty as though you hate her? I said.
Have you known me to hate anyone? Sidelle asked.
You’ve found pleasure imagining her in pain.
Do you realise that I’m only doing you and her a favour? Even being a speechless heroine in a tragedy is better than being a nobody. You’re turning her into a nobody. And worse, she lets you.
Everyone is a nobody to you, I protested. Besides, I don’t think Hetty likes drama. She’ll be just fine in her drama-less life.
Someday, Sidelle said, the cigarette smoke shrouding her face, someday, Roland, you will know you are a fool to think so.
[Sidelle was right. I was foolish not to keep my own counsel and to let another meeting take place. Perhaps I even schemed to make it happen. Did I do it out of boredom? Or out of curiosity, wanting to see what I could do to both women? One of the most dramatic moments of my life—no, let me revise—one of the most dramatic moments of my affair with Sidelle occurred then.
And the only dramatic moment in my marriage with Hetty.
How young we almost let ourselves become, when all three of us were no longer young.
I kept a record of those days but have decided not to include the entries. I have known humiliations well and I have no intention to spare myself. But that meeting in 1954 is better never to be exhumed.—RB 6 May 1990]
* * *
THIS HAPPENED THE YEAR when Roland visited and I took Lucy to meet him. He came to California to get away from both Hetty and Sidelle.
Elaine said today that everyone’s life is a jigsaw puzzle, and only now, in their memoir class, was everyone finding “the wisdom and the courage” to fit the pieces together. Several people agreed. They all think they’re creating masterpieces. Master pieces? More like pupil pieces.
If a life is a jigsaw puzzle, where all the pieces fit together, then it must be a boring life. What could be worse? A puzzle for babies. A sheep into a slot for sheep, a dog into a slot for dog, a cow, a barn, a farmhouse. If I were forced to do that to my parents and siblings, my husbands and children and grandchildren, Roland and all the women in Roland’s diaries I know by heart now—if I were given no choice but to fit them into the right slots, I might as well wish to be dead.
This is not to say I’m not curious about what happened between Roland, Sidelle, and Hetty. In my earlier readings I was mad at him. What did he destroy? How could he have done this? Now I’m over my anger. How could my mother have lived such a miserable life? How could Lucy have left us in such a cruel manner? How could anyone have done anything? People asking such questions are only trying to make life into a solvable puzzle. Real life? It misses important pieces and has useless extras.
I saw in the newspaper today that they were to start the trial of that murder case. A Russian mail-order bride was strangled last year, allegedly by her own husband, in their living room, seen by their only child. The husband said the wife was not an ordinary bride ordered online but a former KGB agent. Still working as a spy for the Russians. She was dead so she could not defend herself. And they’re bringing that little boy back from his Russian grandparents for the trial. The only witness to the actual murder. Six years old last year, seven this year. How could his parents have allowed the marriage to deteriorate into a murder in front of their child? How could the judge think of letting the child relive the horror at the trial? But will these questions ever help anyone?
The word around is that Elaine went to Jean and asked if she could arrange a field trip for us to attend the trial.
Still, I have to say, it kills me not to know what happened at that meeting in 1954. Did Hetty slip poison into Sidelle’s tea? Did Sidelle point a pistol at Hetty’s heart? Did Roland beg both women to think of his happiness and reach a peace agreement? This is one time—okay, this is the only time—in my life that I can say I feel truly defeated. Whatever I can come up with would be what Roland would call a second-rate production.
16 JUNE 1943.
Today we took the boat out to Georges Island. A cloudless summer day. Picnic under the lighthouse. Beautiful basket and neatly prepared food. I think Sidelle made a mistake. Hetty is not a nobody. She specialises in invisibility. Were she given a place in Greek mythology no god w
ould approach her, and no goddess be jealous of her.
While we walked along the beach we passed a few young couples, the men wearing their bravery like the most spruce of uniforms, the girls their melancholy like the prettiest of dresses. So conscious of being together for what must feel like the last days of their togetherness that they all looked as if playacting. Everyone has an assigned role in a war. Everyone follows the script.
On the way home we ran into a Mrs. Bye, who moved back to town from Toronto after she was widowed. Aunt Geraldine befriended her and now Hetty has inherited her as one of those brainless perennials. Mrs. Bye told me she liked her name. It makes it easier for people to part with her: Goodbye, Mrs. Bye. People love to say that to her and why not, she said, make a farewell less sad in this time of ours.
Tomorrow Sidelle and I leave for New York. After all these years I still have not shaken off the notion that a train ride is a singular event. If a harmless trip on a train could kill my parents, it could happen to anyone. The Fergusons used to treat every journey with solemnity, with all the family seeing off Uncle Victor or Uncle William on the platform even if it was a short business trip. So long, Godspeed, come back alive.
I asked Hetty not to come to the station. I was disappointed when she agreed so readily.
* * *
HETTY WAS GOOD AT small revenges. Refusing to see Roland off. Bringing Roland to a reunion with their cousins. Pleasant days and nights at home and abroad. Beautiful birthday presents. She would accumulate her revenges like a girl counting colored beads. Against Roland, but she also waited long enough to have her revenge against Sidelle.