The Love Wife
Page 40
It’s happy, so happy, and who knows?—just might stay happy. Look at us all hugging, after all, Lizzy and Bailey and Mom and Lanlan and me, and look now! How Lanlan grasps Mom’s hand, and Mom grasps hers. That’s happy!
But then they let go, and look away, blinking.
We made it! And yet we know now, too, what we know.
This world can disappear like any other.
It’s amazing how dark a room can suddenly get.
Acknowledgments
Eternal thanks to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lannan Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Fulbright commission for their timely and critical support.
I thank too, for their endless good nature and inexplicable faith, my agent, Maxine Groffsky; my editor, Ann Close; and my husband, David O’Connor.
This book draws to an unusual degree on the stories and perceptions of a large number of people. I thank you all for your patience and candor and enormous generosity.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gish Jen grew up in Scarsdale, New York. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Best American Short Stories of the Century. The author of three novels and one book of short stories, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two children.
ALSO BY GISH JEN
Who’s Irish?: Stories
Mona in the Promised Land
Typical American
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2004 by Gish Jen
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Hal Leonard Corporation: Excerpt from the song lyric “Sue Me” by Frank Loesser. Copyright © 1950 (renewed) by Frank Music Corp. All rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
New Directions Publishing Corp.: Excerpt from The Selected Poems of Li Po by Li Po, translated by David Hinton. Copyright © 1996 by David Hinton. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jen, Gish.
The love wife: a novel / Gish Jen.
p. cm.
1. Chinese Americans—Fiction. 2. Chinese—United States—Fiction. 3. Interracial marriage—Fiction. 4. Adopted children—Fiction. 5. Married people—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3560.E474L685 2004
813'.54—dc22
2004040917
eISBN: 978-1-4000-4379-8
v3.0