by Amy Tan
“Oh, very pretty!” GaoLing murmured, glancing at what Ruth held in her hand. “Let me see,” and before Ruth could think, GaoLing snatched the box. Her lips grew tight. “Mmm,” she said, examining the bauble. Had Auntie Gal seen this before? How many times had LuLing worn it to her house, bragging about its worth? And had GaoLing known all along that the necklace was fake, that Ruth, the good daughter, was also a fake?
“Let me see,” Sally said.
“Careful,” LuLing warned when Sally’s son reached for the pearls, “don’t touch. Cost too much.”
Soon the pearls were making the rounds at the other table as well. Art’s mother gave the necklace an especially critical eye, weighing it in her hand. “Just lovely” she said to LuLing, a bit too emphatically. Miriam simply observed, “Those beads are certainly large.” Art gave the pearls a once-over and cleared his throat.
“Eh, what wrong?”
Ruth turned and saw her mother scrutinizing her face.
“Nothing,” Ruth mumbled. “I’m just a little tired, I guess.”
“Nonsense!” her mother said in Chinese. “I can see something is blocked inside and can’t come out.”
“Watch it! Spy talk!” Dory called from the other table.
“Something is wrong,” LuLing persisted. Ruth was amazed that her mother was so perceptive. Maybe there was nothing the matter with her after all.
“It’s that wife of Art’s,” Ruth finally whispered in her American-accented Mandarin. “I wish Art had not let her come.”
“Ah! You see, I was right! I knew something was wrong. Mother always knows.”
Ruth bit hard on the inside of her cheek.
“Now, now, don’t worry anymore,” her mother soothed. “Tomorrow you talk to Artie. Make him buy you a gift. He should pay a lot to show that he values you. He should buy you something like this.” LuLing touched the necklace, which had been returned to Ruth’s hands.
Ruth’s eyes smarted with held-back tears.
“You like?” LuLing said proudly, switching back to the public language of English. “This real things, you know.”
Ruth held up the necklace. She saw how the dark pearls glistened, this gift that had risen from the bottom of the sea.
FIVE
Ruth held LuLing’s arm as they walked to the hospital parking garage. Her slack-skinned limb felt like the bony wing of a baby bird.
LuLing acted alternately cheerful and cranky, unchanged by what had just transpired in the doctor’s office. Ruth, however, sensed that her mother was growling hollow, that soon she would be as light as driftwood. Dementia. Ruth puzzled over the diagnosis: How could such a beautiful-sounding word apply to such a destructive disease? It was a name befitting a goddess: Dementia, who caused her sister Demeter to forget to turn winter into spring. Ruth now imagined icy plaques forming on her mother’s brain, drawing out moisture. Dr. Huey had said the MRI showed shrinkage in certain parts of the brain that were consistent with Alzheimer’s. He also said the disease had probably started “years ago.” Ruth had been too stunned to ask any questions at the time, but she now wondered what the doctor meant by “years ago.” Twenty? Thirty? Forty? Maybe there was a reason her mother had been so difficult when Ruth was growing up, why she had talked about curses and ghosts and threats to kill herself. Dementia was her mother’s redemption, and God would forgive them both for having hurt each other all these years.
“Lootie, what doctor say?” LuLing’s question startled Ruth. They were standing in front of the car. “He say I die soon?” she asked humorously.
“No.” And tor emphasis, Ruth laughed. “Of course not.”
Her mother studied Ruth’s face, then concluded: “I die. doesn’t matter. I not afraid. You know this.”
“Dr. Huey said your heart is fine,” Ruth added. She tried to figure a way to translate the diagnosis into a condition her mother would accept. “But he said you may be having another kind of problem—with a balance of elements in your body. And this can give you troubles … with your memory.” She helped LuLing into the front seat and snapped her seat belt in place.
LuLing sniffed. “Hnh! Nothing wrong my memory! I ‘member lots things, more than you. Where I live little-girl time, place we call Immortal Heart, look like heart, two river, one stream, both dry-out… .” She continued talking as Ruth went to the other side of the car, got in, and started the engine. “What he know? That doctor don’t even use telescope listen my heart. Nobody listen my heart! You don’t listen. GaoLing don’t listen. You know my heart always hurting. I just don’t complain. Am I complain?”
“No—”
“See!”
“But the doctor said sometimes you forget things because you’re depressed.”
“Depress ‘cause can not forgot! Look my sad life!”
Ruth pumped the brakes to make sure they would hold, then steered the car down the falling turns of the parking garage. Her mother’s voice droned in rhythm with the engine: “Of course depress. When Precious Auntie die, all happiness leave my body… .”
Since the diagnosis three months before, LuLing had come to Art and Ruth’s for dinner almost every night. Tonight Ruth watched her mother take a bite of salmon. LuLing chewed slowly, then choked. “Too salty,” she gasped, as if she had been given deer lick for the main course.
“Waipo,” Dory interjected, “Ruth didn’t add any salt. I watched. None.”
Fia kicked Dory. She made an X with her index fingers, the symbolic cross that keeps movie Draculas at bay. Dory kicked her back.
Now that Ruth could no longer blame her mother’s problems on the eccentricities of her personality, she saw the signs of dementia everywhere. They were so obvious. How could she not have noticed before? The time-shares and “free vacations” her mother ordered via junk mail. The accusations that Auntie Gal had stolen money from her. The way LuLing obsessed for days about a bus driver who accused her of not paying the fare. And there were new problems that caused Ruth to worry into the night. Her mother often forgot to lock the front door. She left food to defrost on the counter until it became rancid. She turned on the cold water and left it running for days, waiting for it to become hot. Some changes actually made life easier. For one thing, LuLing no longer said anything when Art poured himself another glass of wine, as he was doing tonight. “Why drink so much?” she used to ask. And Ruth had secretly wondered the same. She once mentioned to him that he might want to cut back before it became a habit. “You should take up juicing again.” And he had calmly pointed out that she was acting like her mother. “A couple of glasses of wine at dinner is not a problem. It’s a personal choice.”
“Dad?” Fia asked. “Can we get a kitten?”
“Yeah,” Dory jumped in. “Alice has the cutest Himalayan. That’s what we want.”
“Maybe,” Art replied.
Ruth stared at her plate. Had he forgotten? She had told him she was not ready for another cat. She would feel disloyal to Fu-Fu. And when the time was right tor another pet, an animal she inevitably would wind up feeding and cleaning, she preferred that it be a different species, a little dog.
“I once drive to Himalaya, long ways by myself,” LuLing bragged. “Himalaya very high up, close to moon.”
Art and the girls exchanged baffled looks. LuLing often issued what they considered non sequiturs, as free-floating as dust motes. But Ruth believed LuLing’s delusions were always rooted in a deeper reason. Clearly this instance had to do with word association: Himalayan kitten, Himalayan mountains. But why did LuLing believe she had driven there by car? It was Ruth’s job to untangle such puzzles. If she could find the source, she could help LuLing unclog the pathways in her brain and prevent more destructive debris from accumulating. With diligence, she could keep her from driving off a cliff in the Himalayas. And then it occurred to her: “My mother and I saw this really interesting documentary on Tibet last week,” Ruth said. “They showed the road that leads to—”
But Dory interrupted her to say to L
uLing, “You can’t drive to the Himalayas from here.”
LuLing frowned. “Why you say this?”
Dory, who like LuLing often acted on impulse, blurted, “You just can’t. I mean, you’re crazy if you think—”
“Okay I crazy!” LuLing sputtered. “Why you should believe me?” Her anger escalated like water in a teakettle—Ruth saw it, the rolling bubbles, the steam—and then LuLing erupted with the ultimate threat: “Maybe I die soon! Then everybody happy!”
Fia and Dory shrugged and gave each other knowing looks: Oh, this again. LuLing’s outbursts were becoming more frequent, more abrupt. Fortunately, they quickly abated, and the girls were not that affected by them. Nor did they become more sensitive to the problem, it seemed to Ruth. She had tried to explain several times to them that they shouldn’t contradict anything LuLing said: “Waipo sounds illogical because she is. We can’t change that. This is the disease talking, not her.” But it was hard for them to remember, just as it was hard for Ruth not to react to her mother’s threats to die. No matter how often she had heard them, they never ceased to grab her by the throat. And now the threat seemed very real—her mother was dying, first her brain, then her body.
The girls picked up their plates. “I have homework,” Fia said. “Night, Waipo.”
“Me, too,” Dory said. “Bye, Waipo.”
LuLing waved from across the table. Ruth had once asked the girls to give LuLing kisses. But she had stiffened in response to their pecks.
Art stood up. “I have some documents to look over for tomorrow. Better get started. Good night, LuLing.”
When LuLing toddled off to the bathroom, Ruth went to the living room to speak to Art. “She’s getting worse.”
“I noticed.” Art was shuffling papers.
“I’m afraid to leave her alone when we go to Hawaii.”
“What are you going to do?”
She noted with dismay that he had asked what she would do, had not said “we.” Since the Full Moon Festival dinner, she had become more aware of the ways she and Art failed to be a family. She had tried to push this out of her mind, but it crept back, confirming to her that it was not an unnecessary worry. Why did she feel she didn’t belong to anyone? Did she unconsciously choose to love people who kept their distance? Was she like her mother, destined to be unhappy?
She couldn’t fault Art. He had always been honest about their relationship. From the beginning, he said he didn’t want to marry again. “I don’t want us to operate by assumptions,” he had told her, cradling her in bed soon after they started to live together. “I want us to look at each other every morning and ask, ‘Who is this amazing person I’m so lucky to love?’” At the time, she felt adored like a goddess. After the second year, he had spontaneously offered to give her a percentage ownership in the flat. Ruth had been touched by his generosity, his concern for her security. He knew how much she worried over the future. And the fact that they had not yet changed the deed? Well, that was more her fault than his. She was supposed to decide on the percentage interest she should have, then call the lawyer and set up the paperwork. But how could you express love as a percentage? She felt as she had when a college history professor of hers had told the students in the class to grade themselves. Ruth had given herself a B- and everyone else had taken an A.
“You could hire someone to check on your mother a few times a week,” Art suggested. “Like a housekeeper.”
“That’s true.”
“And call that service, Meals on Wheels. They might be able to deliver food while we ‘re gone.”
“That’s an idea.”
“In fact, why don’t you start now, so she gets used to the food? Not that she isn’t welcome to dinner here whenever she wants… . Listen, I really have to get some work done now. Are you going to take her home soon?”
“I guess.”
“When you get back, we’ll have some rum raisin ice cream.” He named her favorite flavor. “It’ll make you feel better.”
LuLing had objected to the idea of having anyone come to her house to help clean. Ruth had anticipated she would. Her mother hated spending money on anything she believed she could do herself, from hair coloring to roof repairs.
“It’s for an immigrant training program,” Ruth lied, “so they won’t have to go on welfare. And we don’t have to pay anything. They’re doing it free so they can put work experience on their resume.” LuLing readily accepted this reasoning. Ruth felt like a bad child. She would be caught. Or maybe she wouldn’t, and that would be worse. Another reminder that the disease had impaired her mother’s ability to know and see everything.
A few days after the first housekeeper started, LuLing called to complain: “She think come to America everything so easy. She want take break, then tell me, Lady, I don’t do move furniture, I don’t do window, I don’t do iron. I ask her, You think you don’t lift finger become millionaire? No, America not this way!”
LuLing continued to give the immigrant good advice until she quit. Ruth started interviewing new prospects, and until someone was hired, she decided she should go to LuLing’s a few times a week to make sure the gas burners weren’t on and water wasn’t flooding the apartment. “I was in the neighborhood to drop off some work for a client,” she explained one day.
“Ah, always for client. Work first, mother second.”
Ruth went to the kitchen, carrying a bag of oranges, toilet paper, and other grocery essentials. While there, she checked for disasters and danger. The last time she’d been there, she found that LuLing had tried to fry eggs with the shells still on. Ruth did a quick sweep of the dining room table and picked up more junk mail offers LuLing had filled out. “I’ll mail these for you, Mom,” she said. She then went into the bathroom to make sure the faucets weren’t running. Where were the towels? There was no shampoo, only a thin slice of cracked soap. How long had it been since her mother had bathed? She looked in the hamper. Nothing there. Was her mother wearing the same clothes every day?
The second housekeeper lasted less than a week. On the days she didn’t visit, Ruth felt uneasy, distracted. She was not sleeping well and had broken a molar grinding her teeth at night. She was too tired to cook and ordered pizza several times a week, giving up her resolve to set a low-fat example for Dory, and then having to endure LuLing’s remarks that the pepperoni was too salty. Recently Ruth had developed spasms across her shoulders that made it hard to sit at her desk and work at her computer. She didn’t have enough ringers and toes to keep track of everything. When she found a Filipina who specialized in elder care, she felt a huge burden removed. “I love old people,” the woman assured her. “They’re not difficult if you take time to get to know them.”
But now it was night, and Ruth lay awake listening to the foghorns warning ships to stay clear of the shallows. The day before, when she picked up her mother for dinner, Ruth learned that the Filipina had quit.
“Gone,” LuLing said, looking satisfied.
“When?”
“Never work!”
“But she was at your house until what? Two days ago? Three days ago?”
After more questioning, Ruth deduced that the woman had not been coming since the day after she started. Ruth would never be able to find another person before she left for Hawaii. That was only two days from now. A vacation across the ocean was out of the question.
“You go,” Ruth told Art in the morning. They had already paid for the rental, and there was a no-refund policy.
“If you don’t go, what fun would that be? What would I do?”
“Not work. Not get up. Not return phone calls.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“You’ll miss me dreadfully and tell me you were miserable.”
Eventually, much to Ruth’s chagrin, he agreed with her logic.
The next morning, Art left for Hawaii. The girls were at Miriam’s for the week, and though Ruth was accustomed to working alone during the day, she felt empty and anxious. Soon after
she settled in at her desk, Gideon called to say that the Internet Spirituality author had fired her— fired, a first in her career. Although she had finished his book earlier than scheduled, he had not liked what she had written. “I’m as pissed as you are,” Gideon said. And Ruth knew she should be outraged, maybe even humiliated, but in fact, she was relieved. One less thing to think about. “I’ll try to do damage control with the contract and HarperSan Francisco,” Gideon went on, “but I may also need for you to document your time spent and outline why his complaints were not in keeping with reality… . Hello? Ruth, are you still there?”
“Sorry. I was a little preoccupied… .”
“Hon, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Not to imply that you’re somehow at fault for what happened. But I am concerned that you haven’t been your usual self. You seem—”
“I know, I know. I’m not going to Hawaii, so I can catch up.”
“I think that’s a good idea. By the way, I think we’re going to hear about that other book project today, but frankly I don’t think you’ll get it. You should have told them you had an emergency appendectomy or something.” Ruth had failed to show up at an interview because her mother had called in a panic, thinking her alarm clock was the smoke detector going off.