Kinder Than Solitude (35 page)

“But you’ve been unsettled.”

“Any death can do that,” Ruyu said. She unwound her scarf and asked if they could sit down. She could use a cup of coffee, Ruyu said, sending Celia into the kitchen ahead of her.

Was Celia right that Ruyu had not bothered to lie to Edwin because he did not matter to her? On the walk up, she had run into him at the bottom of the hill. He had stopped his car and rolled down the window. Would she like a ride to the house, he asked, and she said no, she would walk. He looked at the sky, as though disappointed by Ruyu’s decision to remain inconvenienced by the weather, so she added that she’d always liked to walk in the fog and rain. Why had she said that, Ruyu asked herself now: one does not talk about oneself without a motive. She liked the couple enough to have allowed some sort of permanency into her relationship with them, though Edwin—or Ruyu herself—had disturbed that balance, and in doing so had deprived her of what little luxury she had allowed herself in the Moorlands’ house: exemption from participating in life.

Ruyu watched Celia operate the shiny coffeemaker, which hissed professionally. “I’ve been thinking—I know this is sudden,” Ruyu said. “But what do you think of my going back to China?”

“Back to China? When? For how long?”

The thought of returning to Beijing—for what, Ruyu wondered, though that question could wait until later—had been on her mind since she had woken up this morning. “It’s only a preliminary idea,” Ruyu said.

“But why do you want to go to China now? Whom are you going to see there?”

A better question, Ruyu thought, was
what
she wanted to see. Over the years, she had given Celia some information about her history. With a vagueness that must have been taken as an unwillingness to stroll down memory lane, Ruyu had made Celia understand that she no longer had living parents in China; if she had friends or relatives, they were distant enough not to bind her to the place. “Not really anyone important,” Ruyu said.

“Is this trip prompted by this mysterious death that you’re not telling me about?”

One could never avoid having a history. Ruyu thought about how much truth she could give away without actually giving away anything. Such calculations had become second nature to her because she did not like to lie. Lying, like living, needs motives, however obtuse they may be. With Paul, she had had to make up stories, both about her parents’ deaths and about a childhood she’d never had: her parents had died in a traffic accident in Anhui Province, when a bus had missed a turn on a cliffside road and plunged into a river—a tragedy Ruyu had stolen from a newspaper article she’d read in college; her experience of being an only daughter she had borrowed from Moran, and a couple of childhood friends were modeled on Moran and Boyang—though naturally, Ruyu had told Paul, she had lost contact with them after so many years. What she could not produce as evidence—family pictures, snapshots of herself at different ages—she had explained as a natural and necessary loss resulting from emigration and a difficult divorce.

If Celia was right, the lies she had told Paul must have meant,
somehow, that he had had meaning to Ruyu, at least more than the other men in her past. With her first husband, she had not needed to make up anything: he had known she was an orphan, which he had welcomed as a bonus because he would be free from in-laws; he had met her grandaunts—that is, he had met with their disapproval, though long before that, they had, without withdrawing their financial support of Ruyu in high school and college, made it clear to her that she had let them down. They had not questioned Ruyu about Shaoai’s case. What they had heard, they said, had been enough, though for them the unforgivable was not that Ruyu had stolen, but that the crime was motivated by the sinful thought of suicide; it was the latter that had made them shake their heads and say that she was, after all, not related to them by blood, and they had no way to understand her. That Ruyu had decided to marry at nineteen—no doubt another violation of their vision for her—they had accepted with resignation; to marry at all constituted a betrayal of them, though betrayal caused less damage than sin. What would be less redeemable: to take one’s own life, or to take another’s life? It occurred to Ruyu that she had never really known the answer. She turned to Celia. “What is more sinful in Catholicism—suicide or murder?”

“Where did that question come from?” Celia said. “Is it inspired by this woman’s death?”

“I don’t think it’s particularly this person, or her death. I suppose I’ve always been puzzled,” Ruyu said. “Well, let’s forget about it.”

“Let’s not, yet. Is this why you want to go back now, to find out if she was murdered or she killed herself?”

“No, it has nothing to do with her,” Ruyu said.

“Then why China? Why now?”

“It’s just a mood. It’s been quite a long time since I last saw the country.”

“When was your last visit?”

“I haven’t been back since coming to America.”

“That’s what I remembered you told me,” Celia said. “And how long ago was that?”

“I came in ’92.”

“What a shame!” Celia exclaimed. Ruyu wondered what the shame was, exactly—to be gone for so long, or to be gone for so long yet still not thoroughly gone.

Celia handed a mug to Ruyu, and they carried their coffee to the table. “Now, you must say something good about this coffee. Edwin roasted the beans himself, the first batch.”

“When did he start getting into coffee?”

“Only about two weeks ago.”

“What happened to beer making?” Ruyu asked. For the past two years, Edwin had been experimenting in the basement with his home-brewing kit; there were a couple of bootlegging tales about his granduncles he liked to tell at parties, and Ruyu was certain she was not the only one to have heard them more than once. She had wondered why no one ever told him not to repeat the tales, but perhaps others, kinder than herself, believed that having anything to say was better than having nothing to say.

“Going well,” Celia said, “though a man is always in need of new things. Or else he’ll feel stale. A man is not like a cat that you can leave to its own entertainment. You have to help him find things to do. Speaking of cats, where’s Scooter?”

“He was by the garage door when I came in.”

“I just warned him this morning not to bring another dead bird into the house, though I’d bet ten dollars he didn’t hear me. Sometimes I think my problem is that I’m outnumbered in this household,” Celia said with an exasperated glance at the framed family pictures on the sideboard—a look that could only belong to a contented woman. “Technically speaking, Scooter can’t be called a man anymore, but he’s in every sense your average male. And how they can make you talk all the time without hearing a word you say. If you
decide to stay quiet just for one moment, they say, Mom, you didn’t tell me where my gym clothes were, or, You didn’t say the violin lesson was rescheduled. Or, like last night, Edwin said you looked terrible. I said, Oh, did she, and he said it surprised him that I hadn’t noticed your mood, or asked you more about your friend’s death. What friend, I said, and he said you told him yesterday that a friend in China died. He said he thought I had heard all about it, but wouldn’t I have told him if that had been the case?”

Ruyu sipped the coffee. It occurred to her that she would one day miss Celia’s company—or perhaps she had already begun to miss Celia, and the time sitting at this table, listening to Celia talk about her family trips and this or that complication with her sister and parents. Scenery that Ruyu had not seen with her own eyes she had seen through Celia’s; people Ruyu did not know—and did not mind not knowing—she had met in Celia’s tales. But all the same, the thought of leave-taking, once formed, pointed in one direction only; she had left plenty of people behind, and it did not bother her to add Celia and her family to that roster. Though Celia, the most unsuspicious one among them, gave Ruyu an odd feeling that she was burying something alive.

Celia observed Ruyu’s expression. “Is the coffee not so good?”

“It’s good.”

“You don’t look like you’re impressed.”

“You can’t rely on me for any judgment,” Ruyu said.

“That I already know,” Celia said and leaned closer, propping her head on her hand. “Seriously, is the dead woman an enemy of yours or something?”

Ruyu thought about it. “Not really. I don’t think I care enough about the world for anyone to be my enemy,” she said honestly.

Celia shuddered—or was it only Ruyu’s imagination?—and at once recovered. “But with her gone, are things going to be easier in China for you? Is that why you want to go back now?”

“What do you mean?”

Celia sat up abruptly, as if she could not contain her excitement. “So, this is my hypothesis—and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the most reasonable version of the story Edwin and I could come up with.”

“Whose story?”

“Yours. But before I start, you have to know I’m not the judgmental kind, so you don’t have to feel uncomfortable. For all I care, you could be anyone, or anything, and I would be your friend.”

Ruyu looked at Celia curiously. “For all I know, I’ve always been nobody and nothing.”

Celia ignored Ruyu’s words. “I’ve read in the newspapers that rich people and high-ranking officials in China keep their mistresses in California—have you heard of such a practice?” Celia said, looking into Ruyu’s eyes.

“Or New Jersey,” Ruyu said. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. But carry on.”

“You’re not uncomfortable where I’m going.”

“No.”

Celia nodded and said she was only making sure. “So my guess is that, however it happened, you met a married man when you were young—eighteen? nineteen?—and got yourself involved, but when things became complicated, he arranged for you to come here. And now, this woman—whoever she was, the wife most likely—died, and the hurdle is gone.”

“Did you and Edwin come up with this last night?”

“No, I always wondered, but Edwin never bought my theory until he saw you yesterday. I suppose what you said about the dead woman convinced him that I was right. Why, which part doesn’t make sense?”

“It all makes sense,” Ruyu said. “Except, how do you fit my two ex-husbands into the story?”

“Were you really married twice?”

“I see that you have started to question everything I’ve said.”

“We only have your word about the marriages.”

Ruyu sighed. “Why did you help me move if I looked so suspicious in the first place?”

“I didn’t know then!” Celia said. “But I wouldn’t have minded helping in any case. I thought you were only trying to move out. That arrangement with your former employer did look suspicious to me, though.”

“So how do you fit that part into your story?”

“That seems to make more sense than your marriages. I would say, unless you show me evidence, I prefer to believe that your marriages are not real.”

“Why? Do I look like the kind of woman who could only be a mistress?”

Celia laughed.

“No, I meant it as a serious question,” Ruyu said.

“What does a mistress look like?” Celia asked and studied Ruyu. “I don’t know, but I do think you look like someone who doesn’t know she deserves better.”

Ruyu wondered if part of her problem was that she could not imagine herself as a wife. Moran, for instance, always had that wifely look about her—she would never become anyone’s lover; she was born to be someone’s wife. “Carry on with your detective work. How do you explain the man in Twin Valley?”

“I thought the man in China stopped supporting you, so you needed to find someone else to support you, but Edwin said that the man might be a business partner of your man in China and only served as a guardian. But I would prefer that you’d moved on from the man in China—am I not closer than Edwin?”

“From the kept woman of a Chinese official to the kept woman of an American politician?”

“Is that what the man was, a politician?”

“He didn’t end up having a bright career in politics,” Ruyu said. “Though at one time, he seemed to think he would.”

“See, I was right! Is he someone we’ve heard of?”

Ruyu shook her head. There was no need to bring Eric’s name into the story.

“How did you meet him?”

“Who?”

“The failed politician. What’s his name?”

“John Doe,” Ruyu said. “I did a bit of bookkeeping for one of his businesses. And then he hired me as a housekeeper. No, Celia, you don’t have to sit there dying of curiosity. If you want to know more, ask.”

“What happened between you and him?”

“Nothing much. I suppose we tried to see if we could settle into each other’s lives, but it didn’t quite work out.”

“Why not?”

“Not enough love, I think.”

“On your side, or his?”

“On both sides,” Ruyu said. At least Eric had had the patience to put up with her for three years, though they had been the same three years he had gone through the legal battle for his divorce. Ruyu preferred to believe that he had offered her the cottage in the first place because he had needed convenience without complication. How he had chosen Ruyu—chosen wisely, both of them had later agreed—she had not asked; she had moved in because there had not been a better—or worse—place for her to be, then or ever. In a sense, they had enjoyed each other’s company, though something that had begun with a contract could only end within the terms, written or unwritten. Ruyu wondered now if either of them, at any moment, had been waiting for the other person to propose an amendment—though what difference would it have made? Neither had wanted to blunder, and, in the end, neither had been willing to give up his or her mildly sarcastic view of the relationship; it was as though they had been two business competitors who had admired each other, but had to laugh at themselves for that admiration, or else they would’ve embarrassed
themselves. They had parted ways amiably, both agreeing not to stay in touch.

“So,” Ruyu said, and glanced at the clock. “That’s all about my former employer.”

“Did you … not love him because of the man in China?”

Ruyu smiled. “You really do believe there’s someone in China.”