(2001) The Bonesetter's Daughter

by Amy Tan

  At the time, Ruth thought the analogies and advice were simplistic. You couldn’t reduce real life into one-liners. People were more complex than that. She certainly was, wasn’t she? Or was she too complicated? Complex, complicated, what was the difference? Art, on the other hand, was the soul of understanding. Her friends often said as much: “You are so lucky.” She had been proud when she first heard that, believing she had chosen well in love. Lately she had considered whether they might have meant he was to be admired for putting up with her. But then Wendy reminded her, “You were the one who called Art a fucking saint.” Ruth wouldn’t have put it that way, but she knew the sentiment must have been true. She remembered that before she ever loved Art, she had admired him—his calm, the stability of his emotions. Did she still? Had he changed, or was it she? She drove toward the dry cleaner’s, mulling over these questions.

  She had met Art nearly ten years before, at an evening yoga class she had attended with Wendy. The class was her first attempt in years to exercise. Ruth was naturally thin and didn’t have an incentive at first to join a health club. “A thousand bucks a year,” she had marveled, “to jump on a machine that makes you run like a hamster in a wheel?” Her preferred form of exercise, she told Wendy, was stress. “Clench muscles, hold for twelve hours, release for a count of five, then clench again.” Wendy, on the other hand, had put on thirty-five pounds since her days as a high school gymnast and was eager to get back into shape. “Let’s at least take the free fitness test,” she said. “No obligation to join.”

  Ruth secretly gloated when she scored better than Wendy in sit-ups. Wendy cheered aloud at besting Ruth in push-ups. Ruth’s body-fat ratio was a healthy twenty-four percent. Wendy’s was thirty-seven. “It’s the enduring genetics of my Chinese peasant stock,” Ruth kindly offered. But then Ruth scored in the “very poor” range for flexibility. “Wow,” Wendy remarked. “According to this chart, that’s about one point above rigor mortis.”

  “Look here, they have yoga,” Wendy later said as they perused the schedule of classes at the club. “I hear yoga can change your life. Plus they have night classes.” She nudged Ruth. “It might help you get over Paul.”

  In the locker room that first night, they overheard two women talking. “The guy next to me asked if I’d like to go with him to that midnight class, Togaless Yoga. You know, he says, the nude one.”

  “Nude? What a scumbag! . . . Was he at least good-looking?”

  “Not bad. But can you imagine facing the naked butts of twenty people doing Downward-Facing Dog?” The two women walked out of the locker room. Ruth turned to Wendy. “Who the hell would do nude yoga?”

  “Me,” Wendy said. “And don’t look at me like that, Miss Shock-and-Dismay. At least it wouldn’t be boring.”

  “Nude, with total strangers?”

  “No, with my CPA, my dentist, my boss. Who do you think?”

  In the crowded workout room, thirty disciples, most of them women, were staking out their turf, then adjusting mats as stragglers came in. When a man rolled out his mat next to Ruth’s, she avoided looking at him, in case he was the scumbag. She glanced around. Most of the women had pedicured nails, precision-applied nail polish. Ruth’s feet were broad, and her naked toes looked like the piggies from the children’s rhyme. Even the man next to her had better-looking feet, smooth skin, perfectly tapered toes. And then she caught herself—she shouldn’t have nice thoughts about the feet of a potential pervert.

  The class started with what sounded like a cult incantation, followed by poses that seemed to be saluting a heathen god. “Urdhva Muka Svanasana! Adho Muka Svanasana!” Everyone except Ruth and Wendy knew the routines. Ruth followed along as if she were playing Simon Says. Every now and then the yoga teacher, a ropy-muscled woman, walked by and casually bent, tilted, or lifted a part of Ruth’s body. I probably look like a torture victim, Ruth thought, or one of those freaks my mother saw in China, boneless beggar boys who twisted themselves up for the amusement of others. By this time she was perspiring heavily and had observed enough about the man next to her to be able to describe him to the police, if necessary. “The nude yoga rapist was five-eleven, maybe a hundred and sixty pounds. He had dark hair, large brown eyes and thick eyebrows, a neatly cropped beard and mustache. His fingernails were clean, perfectly trimmed.”

  He was also incredibly limber. He could wrap his ankles around his neck, balance like Baryshnikov. She, in comparison, looked like a woman getting a gynecological exam. A poor woman. She was wearing an old T-shirt and faded leggings with a hole in one knee. At least it was obvious she wasn’t on the prowl, not like those who were wearing designer sports outfits and full makeup.

  And then she noticed the man’s ring, a thick band of hammered gold on his right hand, no ring on his left. Not all married men wore rings, of course, but a wedding band on the right hand was a dead giveaway, at least in San Francisco, that he was gay. Now that she thought about it, the signs were obvious: the neat beard, the trim torso, the graceful way he moved. She could relax. She watched the bearded man bend forward, grab the bottoms of his feet, and press his forehead to his knees. No straight man could do that. Ruth flopped over and dangled her hands to midcalf.

  Toward the end of the class came the headstands. The novices moved to the wall, the competitive types rose immediately like sunflowers toward the noon sun. There was no more room at the wall, so Ruth simply sat on her mat. A moment later, she heard the bearded man speak: “Need some help? I can hold on to your ankles until you get balanced.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass. I’m afraid I’d get a cerebral hemorrhage.”

  He smiled. “Do you always live in such a dangerous world?”

  “Always. Life’s more exciting that way.”

  “Well, the headstand is one of the most important postures you can do. Being upside down can turn your life around. It can make you happy.”

  “Really?”

  “See? You’re already laughing.”

  “You win,” she said, placing the crown of her head on a folded blanket. “Hoist away.”

  Within the first week, Wendy was off yoga and onto a home gizmo that looked like a rickshaw with oars. Ruth continued with yoga three times a week. She had found a form of exercise that relaxed her. She especially liked the practice of staying focused, of eliminating everything from her mind except breath. And she liked Art, the bearded man. He was friendly and funny. They started going to a coffee shop around the corner after class.

  Over decaf cappuccinos one evening, she learned that Art had grown up in New York, and had a doctorate in linguistics from UC Berkeley. “So what languages do you speak?” she asked.

  “I’m not a true polyglot,” he said. “Most linguists I know aren’t. My actual language specialty at Berkeley was American Sign Language, ASL. I now work at the Center on Deafness at UCSF.”

  “You became an expert on silence?” she joked.

  “I’m not an expert on anything. But I love language in all forms— sounds and words, facial expressions, hand gestures, body posture and its rhythms, what people mean but don’t necessarily say with words. I’ve always loved words, the power of them.”

  “So what’s your favorite word?”

  “Hm, that’s an excellent question.” He fell quiet, stroking his beard in thought.

  Ruth was thrilled. He was probably groping for a word that was arcane and multisyllabic, one of those crossword items that could be confirmed only in the Oxford English Dictionary.

  “Vapors,” he said at last.

  “Vapors?” Ruth thought of chills and cold, mists and suicide ghosts. That was not a word she would have chosen.

  “It appeals to all the senses,” he explained. “It can be opaque but never solid. You can feel it, but it has no permanent shape. It might be hot or cold. Some vapors smell terrible, others quite wonderful. Some are dangerous, others are harmless. Some are brighter than others when burned, mercury versus sodium, for instance. Vapors can go up your nose with a
sniff and permeate your lungs. And the sound of the word, how it forms on your lips, teeth, and tongue—vaporzzzzzz—it lilts up, then lingers and fades. It’s perfectly matched to its meanings.”

  “It is,” Ruth agreed. “Vaporzzzz,” she echoed, savoring the buzz on her tongue.

  “And then there’s vapor pressure,” Art continued, “and reaching that balance point between two states, one hundred degrees Celsius.” Ruth nodded and gave him what she hoped was a look of intelligent concentration. She felt dull and badly educated. “One moment you have water,” Art said, his hands forming undulating motions. “But under pressure from heat, it turns into steam.” His fingers flittered upward.

  Ruth nodded vigorously. Water to steam, that she understood, sort of. Her mother used to talk about fire and water combining to make steam, and steam looked harmless but could peel your skin right off. “Like yin and yang?” she ventured.

  “Duality of nature. Exactly.”

  Ruth shrugged. She felt like a fraud.

  “What about you?” he said. “What’s your favorite word?”

  She put on her idiot face. “Gosh oh golly, there are so many! Let’s see. ‘Vacation.’ ‘Jackpot.’ Then there’s ‘free.’ ‘Sale.’ ‘Bargain.’ You know, the usual.”

  He had laughed throughout, and she felt pleased. “Seriously,” he said. “What?”

  Seriously? She plucked at what surfaced in her mind, but they sounded trite: peace, love, happiness. And what would those words say about her? That she lacked those qualities? That she had no imagination? She considered saying onomatopoeia, a word that had enabled her to win a spelling bee in the fifth grade. But onomatopoeia was a jumble of syllables, not at all like the simple sounds it was supposed to represent. Crash, boom, bang.

  “I don’t have a favorite yet,” she finally answered. “I guess I’ve been living off words for so long it’s hard to think about them beyond what’s utilitarian.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I used to be in corporate communications. Then I started freelance editing, and a few years ago I took on more full-scale book collaboration, mostly inspirational and self-improvement books, better health, better sex, better soul, that kind of thing.”

  “You’re a book doctor.”

  Ruth liked that he said that. Book doctor. She had never called herself that, nor had anyone else. Most people called her a ghostwriter—she hated the term. Her mother thought it meant that she could actually write to ghosts. “Yes,” she told Art. “I suppose you could say that, book doctor. But I tend to think of myself as more of a translator, helping people transfer what’s in their brain onto the blank page. Some books need more help than others.”

  “Have you ever wanted to write your own book?”

  She hesitated. Of course she had. She wanted to write a novel in the style of Jane Austen, a book of manners about the upper class, a book that had nothing to do with her own life. Years before, she had dreamed of writing stories as a way to escape. She could revise her life and become someone else. She could be somewhere else. In her imagination she could change everything, herself, her mother, her past. But the idea of revising her life also frightened her, as if by imagination alone she were condemning what she did not like about herself or others. Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

  “I suppose most people want to write their own book,” she answered. “But I think I’m better at translating what others want to say.”

  “And you enjoy that? It’s satisfying?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. There’s still a lot of freedom to do what I want.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “I am,” she conceded. “I certainly am.”

  It pleased her to discuss such matters with him. With Wendy she tended to talk about peeves more than passions. They commiserated on rampant misogyny, bad manners, and depressed mothers, whereas Art and she talked to discover new things about themselves and each other. He wanted to know what inspired her, what the difference was between her hopes and her goals, her beliefs and her motivations.

  “Difference?” she asked.

  “Some things you do for yourself,” he answered. “Some things you do for others. Maybe they’re the same.”

  Through such conversations, she realized for instance that she was lucky to be a freelance editor, a book doctor. The discoveries were refreshing.

  One evening, about three weeks after she met him, their conversation became more personal. “Frankly, I like living alone,” she heard herself saying. She had convinced herself this was true.

  “And what if you met the ideal partner?”

  “He can stay ideal in his place, and I’ll stay ideal in mine. Then we won’t get into all that shit about whose pubic hair is clogging up the drain.”

  Art chuckled. “God! Did you actually live with someone who complained about that?

  Ruth forced a laugh, staring into her coffee cup. She was the one who had complained. “We were opposites about cleanliness,” she answered. “Thank God we didn’t marry.” As she said this, she sensed the words were at last true and not a cover-up for pain.

  “So you were going to marry.”

  She had never been able to confide fully to anyone, not even Wendy, about what had happened with her and Paul Shinn. She had told Wendy of the many ways Paul irked her, that she was tempted to break up with him. When she announced to Wendy that they had split up, Wendy exclaimed, “Finally you did it. Good for you.” With Art, the past seemed easier to talk about, because he had not been part of it. He was her yoga buddy, on the periphery of her life. He did not know what her earlier hopes and fears had been. With him, she could dissect the past with emotional detachment and frank intelligence.

  “We thought about marriage,” she said. “How can you not when you live together for four years? But you know what? Over time, passion wanes, differences don’t. One day he told me he’d put in for a transfer to New York and it had come through.” Ruth recalled to herself how surprised she had been, and how she complained to Paul about his not telling her sooner. “Of course, I can work almost anywhere,” she had told him, annoyed yet excited at the prospect of moving to Manhattan, “but it’s a jolt to uproot, not to mention leave my mother behind, and relocate in a city where I don’t have any contacts. Why’d you tell me at the last minute?” She had meant that rhetorically. Then came Paul’s awkward silence.

  “I didn’t ask to go, he didn’t ask me to come,” she told Art simply. She avoided eye contact. “It was a civil way to break up. We both agreed it was time to move on, only separately. He was decent enough to try to put the blame on himself. Said he was immature, whereas I was more responsible.” She gave Art a goofy grin, as if this were the most ironic thing anyone could have said about her. “The worst part was, he was so nice about it—like he was embarrassed to have to do this to me. And naturally, I spent the last year trying to analyze what it was about us, about me, that didn’t work. I went over just about every argument that we’d had. I had said he was careless, he said I made simple problems have difficult solutions. I said he never planned, he said I obsessed to the point of killing all spontaneity. I thought he was selfish, he said I worried over him to the point of suffocation, then pitied myself when he didn’t fall all over himself saying thank you. And maybe we were both right and that was why we were wrong for each other.”

  Art touched her hand. “Well, I think he lost a terrific woman.”

  She was flooded with self-consciousness and gratitude.

  “You are. You’re terrific. You’re honest and funny. Smart, interested.”

  “Don’t forget responsible.”

  “What’s wrong with being responsible? I wish more people were. And you know what else? You’re willing to be vulnerable. I think that’s endearing.”

  “Aw, shucks.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Well, that’s sweet of you to say. I’ll buy you coffee next time.” She laughed and put her hand over his. “How abo
ut you? Tell me about your love life and all your past disasters. Who’s your current partner?”

  “I don’t have one right now. Half the time I live alone, the other half I’m picking up toys and making jelly sandwiches for my two daughters.”

  This was a surprise. “You adopted them?”

  He looked puzzled. “They’re mine. And my ex-wife’s, of course.”

  Ex-wife? That made three gay men she knew who had once been married. “So how long were you married before you came out?”

  “Came out?” He made a screwy face. “Wait a minute. Do you think I’m gay?”

  In an instant, she knew her mistake. “Of course not!” she scrambled to say. “I meant when you came out from New York.”

  He was laughing convulsively. “This whole time you thought I wasgay?”

  Ruth flushed. What had she said! “It was the ring,” she admitted, and pointed to his gold band. “Most of the gay couples I know wear rings on that hand.”

  He slipped off the ring and rotated it in the light. “My best friend made it for my wedding,” Art said solemnly. “Ernesto, a rare spirit. He was a poet and a goldsmith by avocation, made his living as a limo driver. See these indentations? He told me they were to remind me that there are a lot of bumps in life and that I should remember what lies between them. Love, friendship, hope. I stopped wearing it when Miriam and I split up. Then Ernesto died, brain cancer. I decided to wear the ring to remind me of him, what he said. He was a good friend—but not a lover.”

  He slid the ring over to Ruth so she could see the details. She picked it up. It was heavier than she had thought. She held it to her eye and looked through its center at Art. He was so gentle. He was not judgmental. She felt a squeezing in her heart that both hurt her and made her want to giggle and shout. How could she not love him?