The Heart Principle

by Helen Hoang

  Instead of commenting, Anna shrugs and stuffs more noodles into her mouth. Little wisps of hair are hanging in front of her face, but I don’t tuck them behind her ear. She doesn’t like that.

  “Really? Never?” Priscilla asks in disbelief. When I shake my head, she continues, “Not even her YouTube video?”

  “There’s a YouTube video?” That’s the first I’ve heard of it, and now I’m kicking myself that I never searched her name on the Internet.

  “You didn’t show him?” Priscilla asks Anna.

  “No, it’s not like that’s an accurate representation of how I play,” Anna says in that same careful soft voice from before. I didn’t make it up. She changes into someone else around her sister. “It’s just a trick of clever editing and—”

  “Oh my God, we have to show him.” Priscilla pulls her phone from the pocket of her tight jeans and opens YouTube, where she searches for “anna sun vivaldi” before saying, “You can’t just search her name because this pop song comes up.”

  “Your name is a song?” I ask.

  Anna grins at me, and in a voice that’s closer to regular—but not quite there—she says, “That sounds like a line from a poem. You must like me a lot.”

  Priscilla rolls her eyes. “You guys are too cute. Okay, here it is.” She holds her phone out for me to take.

  As I accept it, I see a thumbnail picture of Anna on a stage with her violin. It has more than a hundred million views.

  “Holy shit,” I say.

  Priscilla smiles at me. “Impressive, right?” She elbows Anna again, affectionately this time.

  Anna makes a point of stuffing her mouth with the biggest wonton in her bowl, but even as she acts like she’s ignoring us, I can tell she’s paying close attention.

  I start the video and watch as a woman in a black dress, unmistakably Anna, carries her violin across the stage. And trips on a cellist’s music stand, almost falling over. Flustered, she rights the music stand, picks up all the sheet music that fell to the floor, and stuffs it back where it was.

  “So, so sorry, Mr. Music Stand. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Video Anna says, patting the music stand while the offended cello player stares at her with his mouth hanging open and the crowd breaks into laughter.

  Next to me, Real Anna presses a hand over her eyes. “I have a bad habit of talking to inanimate objects.”

  That’s so like her that I have to bite my lip to keep from grinning. It only gets harder when Video Anna reaches center stage and self-consciously addresses the audience. “Hi, thank you, everyone, for, um, coming here tonight. I regret to inform you that world-renowned violinist Daniel Hope and several of our finest San Francisco Symphony violinists were in a car accident earlier today. Rest assured, the doctors say that while there are some broken bones, Daniel, along with everyone else, is expected to make a full recovery and play again in the near future. Anyway, because of this, I’ll be, um, soloing for you tonight. My sincerest apologies to those who came here to listen to Daniel. I’m disappointed, too.”

  There’s a long pause, and the camera zooms in on faces in the audience, showing their grimaces and expressions of regret. Then Anna nods at the musicians behind her on the stage and lifts her violin to her chin. Her posture straightens. Her eyes focus. Her awkwardness falls away.

  She plays.

  And she defies every single expectation that the first part of the clip could have led someone to have. She’s not the Asian equivalent of a dumb blonde. She’s not a second-rate backup player.

  Anna is talented.

  The music builds like a storm and pours from her violin with a violence that’s all the more impressive for how controlled it is. Her fingers are precise. They don’t slip. Her movements are perfectly fluid. But more than that, what I hear and see, what draws me to her more than anything else, is passion. She’s lost to the music. The look on her face, it’s pain, it’s pleasure, joy, sorrow, everything all at once.

  She’s beautiful.

  When the video finishes, I can’t speak.

  “Amazing, right?” Priscilla says.

  I clear my throat and swallow before I say, “Yeah.” I look at Anna, and it’s like I’m seeing her for the first time all over again. “I had no idea . . .”

  She meets my eyes for the barest second before she glances away. “Don’t look at me like that. After that beginning, I only needed to be passable to impress people. I’m just a regular violinist.”

  “I don’t think you’d have gotten a hundred million views if you were just passable,” I say with a laugh.

  “It’s the story that people like. Airhead girl exceeds expectations.” She grimaces and carries everyone’s bowls to the sink.

  “It’s more than that. You—”

  Priscilla grabs my arm and shakes her head at me. “Just leave it.”

  I’m not sure why I should leave it, but I figure she knows Anna better than I do. Switching topics, I ask, “Do you want me to get your violin for you? You usually practice every day, right?”

  She turns the water on and washes the dishes by hand, keeping her head bent over the sink. “That’s really nice of you, but no, thanks. I can’t practice here.”

  Priscilla aims an impatient look at her sister. “Oh, come on, that’s an excuse if I ever heard one.”

  “The piece isn’t coming along well. I don’t want anyone to hear me,” Anna says.

  Priscilla makes a scoffing sound. “I’ve heard you play a million times.”

  “I know. I just . . .” Anna doesn’t finish. She focuses on stacking the dishes on the dishrack and wiping down the stove and counter.

  “You should play for Dad. He’d love that,” Priscilla says. “Actually, his birthday is coming soon. We should throw him a party, and you should play his favorite song. I’m going to tell him and see what he thinks. I know Mom will be excited. We can put him in his wheelchair and take him outside, too.”

  Priscilla hops down from her barstool and disappears only to reappear on the baby monitor’s screen.

  “What do you think about having a birthday party, Ba?” she asks, her words gentle, like she’s speaking to a baby. She sits next to him on the bed, picks up his hand, which is curled up in an uncomfortable-looking way, and massages it. “We’ll invite everyone over and cook—okay, probably cater—and Anna will play the violin for you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Their dad doesn’t respond.

  “Wouldn’t you, Ba?” she presses him. “You’d like that, right? Ba? A birthday party? We’ll put you in your chair, and you can get around?”

  Without opening his eyes, he makes the barest moan, and she beams.

  “We’ll do it!” she says. “Did you guys hear that? Dad wants a party.”

  Anna turns the baby monitor off and looks out at the nighttime darkness beyond the window, a deep frown on her face.

  “You okay?” I ask, walking to her side.

  “I don’t think I can play if there’s a party,” she says.

  “You don’t want to?”

  She flattens her hands against the granite counter and then fists them. “It’s not that. I do want to. It would be a good thing to do. I just don’t think I can.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated,” she says with a tight sigh.

  “Complicated how?”

  She glances at me for an instant before she looks down at her hands. “Over the past six months, I haven’t been able to make it all the way through a single piece. I play in circles, starting, making mistakes, returning to the beginning, making new mistakes, over and over. I can’t finish anything I start. Something in my brain isn’t right.”

  “You can’t mess up . . . and just keep going?” I ask, reminded of that first night when she couldn’t finish the date with me because it started off wrong.

  She sha
kes her head slowly. “I can’t.”

  “Why, though?”

  “People have expectations now. Because of that video. They think I’m a big deal,” she says.

  “You are.”

  Her eyes turn glassy, and her mouth turns down at the corners. “I’m not. But I keep trying to earn things for real this time.” Her tears spill over, and I pull her into my arms and hold her, wishing I knew how to make things better.

  “Why do you think you didn’t earn it before?”

  “I got that solo spot because Daniel Hope got hit by a car, and all the violinists who would have been next in line, too. And then after that, the composer, Max Richter, invited me to tour in Daniel’s place because his ribs were broken and my video went viral, which was only because I tripped and talked to the music stand. That’s some horrible kind of luck, not hard work, and definitely not talent,” she says.

  “Okay, yeah, I get what you’re saying. Luck had a lot to do with it, but you had to be a strong violinist in order to make success out of the opportunity. Not everyone could have done that,” I say, hoping cool logic will help her feel better. “And I don’t know anyone else who would have spoken to that music stand. That’s all you.”

  She makes a half-laughing, half-sobbing sound. “That’s my true claim to fame—talking to things that aren’t alive.” Pushing away from me, she wipes a sleeve across her face. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess. This can’t be fun for you.” She takes a breath and puts on a smile that’s bright and happy. It’s so convincing that I can’t tell it’s fake, and that’s kind of terrifying.

  “I didn’t come here to have fun. I just wanted to be with you,” I tell her. “I don’t need you to pretend to be anything other than what you are, even if you’re sad.”

  Her smile immediately fades, but she takes my hand in hers and holds it to her chest, over her heart, as fresh tears track down her face and her chin wobbles. She doesn’t say anything, but I understand what she means.

  I kiss her temple and her cheek, wipe her tears away with my fingers, trying to comfort her, trying to let her know that I care. She turns toward me so our lips meet, and the kiss is slow and aches with feeling. It says the things I didn’t say earlier.

  You’re a big deal—to me. You’re amazing—to me.

  This yearning for her, this craving, it’s sunk so deep into me that it’s part of me now. This is how Quan is now. He’s crazy about this one girl.

  There’s a loud clanging as something hits the floor, and we both turn toward the sound. Anna’s mom stares at us in her floral-print old-lady pajamas, her short hair standing up all over like she just rolled out of bed. On the floor, sitting on its side in a small pool of water, is a large metal cup, the insulated kind that keeps things hot or cold for hours.

  “Hi, Ma,” Anna says before she rushes to get a towel and clean up the mess while her mom watches without moving. “You’re up early.”

  I smile at Anna’s mom like I wasn’t just caught kissing her daughter and kind of bow my head without saying anything. I don’t know how to address her. “Mrs. Sun” feels too formal, but even if I knew her name—which I don’t—I wouldn’t feel comfortable using it. She’s at the same level as my mom, and calling my mom by her name is the kind of disrespectful thing that would get me smacked in the mouth.

  “Are you hungry? Quan brought food from his mom’s restaurant. I’ll heat it up for you,” Anna says quickly.

  “Not yet.” Her mom finally moves and walks over to the island by the fridges and peeks inside the boxes. “From your mom?” she asks me in surprise.

  “Yeah, the wontons freeze really well,” I say. “When you want to eat them, you just boil them until they float.”

  “Tell her thank you for us, please,” Anna’s mom says, looking genuinely touched.

  “Sure, she’ll—”

  A shout from the other side of the house interrupts me. “Anna, I need help pulling Dad up.”

  Anna sets her mom’s freshly washed metal cup on the table and hurries off. “Be right back.”

  I can’t stand around doing nothing, so I start sorting through the food that didn’t make it into the fridges. “Priscilla said there’s another fridge in the garage. I’ll take this out there if you show me the way.”

  “No, no, leave it there. I’ll take care of it.” Anna’s mom shoos me away from the boxes with her hands. Giving me a considering look, she asks, “Quan. How do you spell that?”

  Immediately, I know she’s not asking because she wants to write me a letter someday. She wants to know where my parents came from and thinks she can guess it from the spelling of my name.

  “Q-U-A-N. It’s Vietnamese,” I say, making it easy for her, and though she nods and smiles, I can tell that wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear. I’m the wrong variety of Asian for her daughter. We’re really not all the same.

  Anna returns to the kitchen. “Priscilla wants to give my dad a bath, and I should help.”

  “I’ll get going, then,” I say. I’ve only been here about an hour and it took just as long to get here, but I know when I shouldn’t hang around.

  Her forehead wrinkles with worry. “Are you sure—”

  “It’s no problem.” I squeeze her hand once so she knows I mean it, but when I sense her mom is watching us closely, and disapproving, I let her go.

  “It was good to see you,” I tell her mom before Anna walks me back to the front door, where we stand in the doorway, not ready to part yet.

  “Text me when you get home?” she says.

  That makes me smile. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Is that a clingy-girlfriend kind of thing to ask?”

  “I don’t think so, but maybe I like clingy girlfriends,” I say. Whatever kind of girlfriend Anna is, that’s the kind I like. “Good night.” I kiss her mouth once, just once, and words—I don’t know where they came from—catch in my mouth, wanting to be freed. I don’t let them go, though. They’re scary.

  “Drive safe.” She touches my face wistfully, and I leave the house and return to my car.

  Once I start the engine, I sit there a moment, thinking about the words that I almost said. I’m glad I held them back, but not because I don’t feel them. I do feel them. I just don’t think Anna is ready to hear them.

  I need to win her family over first.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Anna

  As Priscilla scrubs our dad’s feet with a soapy washcloth, I shave the shady-looking mustache and beard from his face with an electric razor. I’m not good at this. I keep worrying he’ll breathe in his shavings, so I wipe his mouth repeatedly. I can tell he doesn’t like it. He keeps grimacing and trying to turn away from me, and it feels like I’m torturing him.

  “Are you sure we need to do this?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Priscilla says in the brusque, annoyed tone that she often uses with me. “Stop being a baby and get it done. He hates it because you take too long.”

  “Sorry, Daddy,” I whisper as I shave the last bit of hair from his upper lip and then wipe it away.

  Our mom enters the room, her favorite cup in hand, steam rising from the hot tea, and sits on the sofa close to our dad’s bed.

  “What happened to Julian?” she asks.

  Before I can answer, Priscilla does—in Cantonese, so I have no idea what she’s saying. Judging by our mom’s face as she absorbs the information and the tone of her voice as she replies, she doesn’t like what she heard.

  “It’s an open relationship, Ma. People are doing it these days,” Priscilla says, switching to English for my benefit.

  “Julian wanted this? An . . . open relationship?” our mom asks in disbelief.

  I nod and quietly finish shaving our dad’s chin.

  “And what does this Quan do for work?” she asks.

  “He started an apparel company with his cousin.”
r />   Priscilla glances up from our dad’s feet, arching her eyebrows at me. “You mean he sells T-shirts out of his trunk?”

  “I don’t know, actually. He doesn’t talk about his work very much.” I try to sound matter-of-fact about it, but I’m squirming inside. Selling T-shirts from a trunk is a very far drop from investment banking for Goldman Sachs.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I know what you guys spend your time doing, and it’s not talking about work,” Priscilla says with a smirk.

  “We still haven’t done that,” I reply, perversely happy that my sexual hang-ups—and Quan’s—led to me getting one over on my sister. I squirt shampoo into my hand and carefully work it into our dad’s hair.

  “And what did I see in the kitchen?” our mom asks indignantly.

  “Skank,” Priscilla says, but she looks envious. “I hope I don’t need to remind you that what you two are doing is just for fun. Don’t go getting attached.”

  It’s too late for that, but I keep that to myself.

  “Just for fun.” Our mom shakes her head, looking like she can barely understand the concept.

  “Oh, come on, Ma,” Priscilla says. “You never dated before Ba?”

  Our mom gives a tired sigh. “No, Ba was my first and only.” She reaches past me and touches our dad’s hand, a soft remembering smile on her face, before she focuses on me. “I thought Julian would be your first and only, Anna.”

  “I thought so, too, but . . .” I shrug because I honestly don’t care anymore. I soak a towel in warm water, ring it out, and then use it to get the soap out of our dad’s hair. He likes this, I think. His facial muscles are relaxed, and his breathing is slow and calm. Bath time is the only time he looks this way.

  “Are you guys still talking at all?” Priscilla asks.

  “He’s been texting recently.” The reminder has my mouth flattening. I have a bunch of texts from him to reply to, but I’ve been putting it off because it’s so exhausting.

  “Anna, that’s a good sign,” Priscilla says. “He might be getting ready to settle down.”