Transparency

by Frances Hwang

  “But how do you know they’re talking about you?” I asked.

  Andrea frowned slightly. “Well, I hear them.” She looked down at her hands. “I shouldn’t have said all this,” she said quietly.

  “No, I’m glad you did.”

  “You probably think I should be in the loony bin.”

  “No, I don’t think that.” But I felt a chill inside me, a sick, empty feeling as if all at once I was falling.

  I moved out of the colony at the end of May. I never did finish my story and left the drafts behind in a box in the deadend storage space of my studio.

  Sometimes I received postcards from Martin hastily clacked out on his Underwood. The letters were always animated, full of misspellings and unfinished sentences. He lived in the present, and other faces delighted him. I imagined his conversations unfolding slowly through the night, taking shape by dawn. He said his greatest sympathies lay with Neville in The Waves, but I always thought of him as Bernard, rushing off to catch the next train without a ticket.

  I saw Andrea again two years later, after I had moved to New York. It was on a foggy December morning as I was coming out of my studio in Brooklyn. The city seemed insubstantial, barely formed in the pale morning light. She was bent over on the sidewalk tying her shoe, her face obscured by her thick hair. “Andrea,” I said, and she straightened up and looked at me with a solemn smile. The glasses she wore took up half her face. “Andrea,” I repeated, but she turned away and began walking down the street. I followed her a few steps and touched her arm. “Won’t you say anything?” I asked her. “Why don’t you speak to me?” But she kept walking with her head down, though the curious smile remained on her lips, and finally I let her go, watching her disappear into the traffic on the street.

  GARDEN CITY

  No one wanted to rent the Chens’ apartment. It sat vacant for three months, collecting dust and heat. Footsteps now and then echoed along the wood floors. Voices came and went. Sometimes the drone of a fly butting itself against glass. Until silence fell, and the fly—its legs as thin as eyelashes—dried on the kitchen windowsill.

  In August, when Mr. Chen opened the door, he felt the apartment’s hot breath as he entered, the Christian lady following behind. The windows had become as cruel as a magnifying glass. Mr. Chen’s head swam, as if it were severed from his body and floating in the ocean. He blinked, trying to see the woman more clearly.

  “A good apartment, this one,” he heard himself saying. “Everything paid for. Garbage. Electricity.”

  His eyes were watering. For a moment, he could not remember what he was going to say. He walked over to the windows and began pulling down the blinds. Light glinted off cars and trees from the parking lot.

  “Garden also,” Mr. Chen murmured.

  His wife called the apartment their worst investment. “Other than you and I getting married, this apartment has been the biggest mistake of our lives,” she said.

  No one wanted to live there. The rent was too high, even though the Chens kept lowering their price, stopping at eight hundred to break even. People called, but lost interest when they heard it wasn’t near the subway station. The ones who actually saw the apartment examined the scratched floors, smiled politely at the 1970s plastic cabinets, inquired whether there was a dishwasher. There wasn’t. Washing machine? Dryer? Mr. Chen shook his head. The laundromat was next door. After that, there was only the bedroom left to see. This was the moment Mr. Chen dreaded the most. He always felt an urge to apologize for how small it was. The previous owner had called it “quaint” when he showed it to the Chens eight years ago. If the people were kind, they went through the motions of opening the closet door and peering inside. A short while later, they thanked Mr. Chen, saying they would think about it. The door closed, and Mr. Chen was left standing alone in the apartment. He was a stout man, but at such moments his body seemed to cave in, as if his bones were softening. The apartment was quiet and hollowed out. A part of him wanted to rest on the dull wood floor, the same color as earth. He didn’t want to go home to his wife and tell her of another failure.

  They had bought the apartment because Mr. Chen thought it would be safe to invest in real estate. It wasn’t like the stock market, where you bought what you couldn’t touch, your money rising and falling with intangible economic winds. Mr. Chen had a literal mind. He promised his wife that they would earn four or even five hundred dollars a month once they paid off the mortgage. He hadn’t realized that the apartment management would raise their maintenance fee every year, that the value of the property would fall, and that no one would be interested in renting. It was a bad sign that most of the people living there were the apartment owners themselves.

  When Mr. Chen thought about it carefully, he was convinced that he had been fooled into buying the apartment. He blamed the garden, a conservatory adjoining the lobby, which was always pungent with the smell of overripe flowers. Eight years earlier, he and Mrs. Chen had been beguiled by the magenta-speckled lilies as they sat together on one of the wooden benches. Mr. Chen had gotten out of his seat once or twice, pacing the garden in an excited manner. “Who wouldn’t want to live here?” he said in Chinese to his wife.

  Mrs. Chen knew that her husband was naïve, that he had a habit of promising things he couldn’t deliver. When he began exaggerating, her lips would wrinkle in disgust. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she would say, waving her hand impatiently in front of her face. Sitting in the garden, however, Mrs. Chen was distracted by the huge lavender peonies that looked as clear and delicate as watercolors. She couldn’t help but be lulled by the fragrances wafting beneath her tingling nose as she listened to her husband’s boastful talk, all his plans for them and their son. She could not deny that the garden was a beautiful thing. In the end, she agreed that they should invest their savings in the apartment.

  Eight years had gone by, and their son was now dead. Whenever Mrs. Chen saw the garden, she felt a bitterness rise up to her mouth. The smell of lilies reminded her of funerals now. Their rich, exhausting perfume made her want to claw at her throat. The transplanted flowers were crowded too close together, and their thin, transparent petals gave off a ghostly luster. This was not a living garden, Mrs. Chen decided. Not a place where things came back.

  When he first met the Christian lady, Mr. Chen was startled by the coldness of her fingers. He wondered if she had poor circulation. She slipped her bony hand out from his, glancing quickly around the lobby. She wore a dark blue suit in spite of the heat and a thin white blouse with faux-pearl buttons. Though she was respectably dressed, the suit was too large for her and made her seem almost pitiful, as if she were wearing another person’s clothes.

  When Mr. Chen first called the woman to set up an appointment, he got her answering machine. A listless recorded voice spoke to him. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. There was a pause and then a beep. Mr. Chen hung up the phone, for some reason too embarrassed to leave a message. He called back later that night after he and Mrs. Chen had closed the grocery store.

  A soft voice answered the phone.

  “Yes. Hello,” he said abruptly. “I am calling you back. You say you interested in the apartment? Garden City Apartments, 26 Harrison.”

  Mrs. Chen listened on the extension as her husband spoke. It was a constant regret of hers that she had not married a more cultured man. Mr. Chen’s brusqueness always became more apparent when he spoke English. It was even worse when he was on the phone, for then he shouted his responses as if he were deaf. What must these Americans think? she wondered. The woman said she was interested. Her name was Marnie Wilson, and she agreed to meet Mr. Chen at noon the next day. Mrs. Chen heard a click at the other end as the American lady hung up, and then she, too, put down the receiver.

  “Did you hear?” Mr. Chen said to his wife.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Chen said, “but will she rent it? Bargain with her if yo
u have to, but don’t show her you’re desperate. That will only scare her away.”

  Mr. Chen remembered his wife’s words now as he stood in front of the shaded windows of the apartment, nodding and smiling at the Christian lady. He noticed that she stepped gingerly around the empty rooms, as if she were afraid of setting off echoes with her heels. Mr. Chen judged that she was twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven years old. Her formality and meekness made her seem old-fashioned. Maybe she came from another country, though to Mr. Chen’s ear she spoke perfect English.

  As they rode down in the elevator to see the garden, Mr. Chen learned that the Christian lady worked as a receptionist at World Wide Travel. Had Mr. Chen heard of it? The office was only three or four blocks away. Mr. Chen said he had not. He didn’t know of any office buildings close by. The woman wrapped her hand tighter around her purse strap and stared at the glowing display of numbers as they descended eleven floors. Mr. Chen scratched his forehead with the tip of his pinkie. He was hoping she wouldn’t care about the subway station.

  The elevator doors slid open, and Mr. Chen gestured for the woman to go ahead. They walked through the lobby, past the double glass doors that led into the garden. As had happened before, Mr. Chen experienced the curious sensation of leaving behind some part of himself. Everything suddenly was light and color and air. So many flowers he didn’t know the names of, the same color as autumn leaves, gold and burgundy and rust. Sunlight streamed through the glass vault of the ceiling, yet because the conservatory was air-conditioned it was cooler here than inside the apartment.

  “Beautiful garden,” Marnie Wilson said, staring at the chrysanthemums.

  “Yes, beautiful,” Mr. Chen agreed.

  They stood in silence for a minute longer, and then Mr. Chen awkwardly cleared his throat. The moment had come to ask whether she was interested in the apartment, but before he could speak, he saw her pale lips moving slowly. “ ‘And their soul shall be as a watered garden,’ “ she murmured, “ ‘and they shall not sorrow any more at all.’ “

  Mr. Chen flushed but did not say anything.

  She turned toward him, gently patting her skirt, which clung to the flowers. “I would like to live here,” she said.

  Mr. Chen showed his wife the security deposit check for eight hundred dollars. They had signed the lease that very afternoon, and the Christian lady would advance the first month’s rent by the end of the week. Mrs. Chen was happy, but she pretended to find fault with her husband. “You were too hasty,” she said. “Why didn’t you check her references?”

  “She looked respectable,” Mr. Chen said. “She works at a travel agency near the apartment.”

  “And how did she dress?”

  “A suit. Like she was educated.”

  Mrs. Chen snorted. “Christians are crazy, smiling at you all the time. Your child dies, and they say you should be happy.”

  Mr. Chen sighed, looking out the front window. “She didn’t seem like that.” From the living room, he could see one of the two cypresses that grew beside their front door. Twelve years ago, when they first moved into their house, the trees had barely reached Mr. Chen’s hip, but over the years they had grown into dark, thin spires. When their son was diagnosed with cancer, Mrs. Chen wanted her husband to cut them down. “They’re bad luck,” she said. “They overshadow our house.”

  Mr. Chen grew angry at his wife’s suggestion. “Don’t be silly. Chopping down two trees won’t make his sickness go away.”

  The tumor steadily advanced until the doctors told the Chens that their son’s only chance at recovery was surgery. The Chens relented because by this time they were hoping for a miracle. But how stupid they had been, Mrs. Chen wept to her husband. A person cannot live when his head is sliced open like a watermelon, Western medicine or not. Why had they let the doctors touch him? He had died on the operating table with no one to comfort him. A terrible death that no one deserves, and he was only fifteen years old.

  Mrs. Chen’s tongue grew more venomous after their son died. When she opened her mouth, it was as if she were spitting out words to rid herself of life’s bitter taste.

  In contrast, Mr. Chen became softer, less defined. He rarely talked now, and the wrinkles on his face deepened so that Mrs. Chen said his forehead resembled a tic-tac-toe board. Mrs. Chen made her words sharp to wake him up. She didn’t like to see him wading through the motions of life.

  Neither of them mentioned the cypresses, which continued to twist toward the sky. It was as if their mutual silence were a tacit agreement to let them grow, each willing the bad winds to keep blowing.

  In October, Mr. Chen received a four-hundred-dollar check from Marnie Wilson, accompanied by a note of apology. “Not two months and already she can’t pay,” he muttered, showing the check to his wife. When he called her number, he heard the same toneless voice recorded on her answering machine. And God shall wipe away all tears ... Mr. Chen did not wait for the message to end before he hung up the phone.

  A week went by with no additional check in the mail. On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Chen decided to let his wife manage the store without him and he drove to Garden City Apartments. It usually took him forty-five minutes to drive into the city, and he had come to regard all the driving back and forth as a waste of gas and time. The worst was when people made appointments to see the apartment but then didn’t show up. He would wait in the lobby, looking up from his newspaper at each person who came through the revolving doors. When an hour passed, Mr. Chen was forced to fold up his paper and drive back home. It was on such days that he believed people had no respect for each other.

  In the lobby, Mr. Chen asked the doorman whether he knew if Marnie Wilson was in. “If you’ll just wait a second,” the doorman said, “I’ll call up and see if she’s there.”

  “No, no, I go up,” Mr. Chen said. “She go out every morning?”

  The doorman shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

  Mr. Chen took the elevator to the twelfth floor and walked down the close, dimly lit hallway. The walls were painted the color of dark moss, and the carpet was confusing for him to look at with its intertwining flowers. He knocked on the apartment door. “Miss Wilson?” He wondered if she was going to pretend not to be in.

  A door opened loudly across the hallway. A large woman in a robe and sneakers peered at him from her doorway. Mr. Chen could hear her breathing through her mouth. He smiled and nodded, and the woman closed her door without saying anything.

  “Miss Wilson?” he said, more softly this time. He put his ear against the door and tried to turn the knob. He hesitated before taking the key out of his pocket. If she was there, he would apologize, say that he remembered a previous tenant complaining about a leak.

  “Hello,” he called as he opened the door.

  It was late afternoon, and a dusty gold light filtered through the windows. Mr. Chen could tell from the hushed stillness that no one was inside. He was surprised by the apartment’s emptiness. Two chairs, a card table with rusting legs, a small bookcase with slanting paperbacks. A clock on the wall had stopped at 6:35. For a moment, Mr. Chen panicked, thinking the Christian lady had left her most worthless possessions behind. But then he noticed a small blue silk rug that changed to a silvery green when he walked to the other side of the room. It was the only valuable-looking thing in the apartment and at odds with the rest of her furniture.

  Through the window, Mr. Chen could see the parking lot, a few trees, and the eight-lane highway. From twelve stories above, behind sealed windows, the cars glided soundlessly past.

  In the bedroom, Mr. Chen was startled by the mirrors that the Christian lady had hung along the wall, at least a dozen of them, some as small as the palm of his hand. Oval and rectangular mirrors, mirrors in the shapes of triangles and suns, mirrors with smooth silver faces and dark blemishes reflecting hardly anything at all. They flickered to life whenever he moved. There was a single mattress with a wool blanket on the floor. An upturned box that she had decorated with an embr
oidered handkerchief and used as a night table for her Bible,lamp, and radio. He pushed open her closet door, saw her few clothes drooping from their hangers. The shelf above the rack was empty except for an old maroon hat with a wilted black feather. When he took it off the shelf, the hat was stiff and light in his hands, the velvet marred by dark, oily spots.

  On his way out, Mr. Chen saw two sun-faded photographs on the refrigerator door. Two little girls in orange bikinis were standing in a plastic pool in the front yard of a house. One girl’s mouth was open in a scream of delight, her hands clutching her hair, her child’s belly exposed to the camera, as the older girl gazed quietly on. In the second photograph, the same two girls were dressed in bright-striped shirts and bell-bottoms and together held a large squash in their arms. The younger one squinted in the sun, her lips parted, showing two large front teeth. Mr. Chen thought the older one, the girl who seemed more distant and self-possessed, was Marnie Wilson.

  He let himself out of the apartment, quietly shutting the door behind him.

  He found the Christian lady downstairs in the garden. She sat on a bench beside the roses, her head bowed over a book, her lips moving silently over the words. She wore a plaid gray dress and short black-laced boots. There was a painstaking neatness in her appearance, which for some reason made Mr. Chen feel sorry for her. Her smooth brown hair was pulled back too tightly, revealing a high, pale forehead. She looked up at him, and Mr. Chen began to smile, but she hastily glanced down at her book, her index finger moving rapidly across the page.