Kinder Than Solitude (36 page)

“Why else …” Celia said, and then caught herself.

“Why else what?”

“Why else do you want to go back to China now?”

Ruyu studied Celia. “Is that what you were going to say before you stopped yourself?”

Celia sighed. “Why else do you not want to have a real life?”

Perhaps Celia’s version was better: a story of loyalty and betrayal, of scheming and innocence. For a moment, Ruyu could see herself in Celia’s—and Edwin’s—eyes: a life lived under the spell of a first encounter, if not a first love; years spent, or misspent, waiting for another woman to die. The romance and the tragedy would be perfect footnotes for her insubstantial life; without such drama and mystery, she would have been too commonplace. Yet how could she explain that being on her own—and not someone’s property—was the only thing she had wanted? Once upon a time, she had been her parents’ possession, however momentarily, and after that she had belonged to her grandaunts, in whose minds she had belonged more to their god than to them; all sorts of people had since tried to claim her, but to stay unclaimed was to be never disowned again.

“Hello,” Celia said. “Hellooo.”

Ruyu looked at the clock again and finished her coffee. “I don’t mean to interrupt our conversation, but I need to leave soon for the shop.”

“There’s still time,” Celia said. “I’ll drive you down. Now, don’t look so rattled. As your friends, we are genuinely concerned about you. That’s why we’re asking these questions.”

“I know,” Ruyu said.

“And however you feel at this moment, don’t rush into a decision,” Celia said, and when Ruyu did not seem to understand, Celia leaned closer. “Don’t go back to China.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you feel you deserve something better than what you’ve had? Why do you want to return to some bastard who has kept you in limbo for twenty years?”

Ruyu wondered if she should acquiesce to the story, take ownership of something that did not belong to her, so that when she vanished from their world, Celia and Edwin could go on imagining her living that heroic tale of love and stupidity. But stupidity was easier to live with than love, and if Celia and Edwin ever thought about her in the future, she would prefer not to have anyone connected to her. Perhaps she was more egotistic than she realized: she could not stand sharing even the space of someone’s imagination with another person. “Very wise advice, Celia, but my life has been much more boring than your version. There is no person in China as you thought,” Ruyu said. “I don’t have a family. I don’t travel. I don’t eat at restaurants. I don’t go to movies. There were two marriages, and both failed. And there is no one now, in this or another country. You may be tickled to know that I don’t have health insurance. What do you Americans call a person like me? A loser, no?”

“You don’t have health insurance?”

“I can’t afford it, Celia. Do you really believe selling chocolates and dog-sitting are my hobbies?”

“But you don’t look like you’re struggling,” Celia said. “I mean, financially.”

“So there must be someone secretly funneling money into my bank account?”

Celia looked painfully baffled. To be a mistress in hiding, Ruyu thought, was certainly to be somebody; her being nobody must be a disappointment for Celia.

“But why don’t you want to have a life?” Celia said after a moment.
“For all I know, you could have many things if you wanted them.”

What if, Ruyu could not help thinking cruelly, she wanted Edwin? She stood up abruptly. “Seriously, we have to leave now—and thank you in advance for the ride, as I do need it.”

Celia was quiet as she backed the car out of the driveway. She must feel deceived, though people always cast Ruyu this or that way; it was not Ruyu’s fate to play the proffered part, and she saw no reason to apologize. In a lighter tone, she asked Celia about her upcoming trip—a Caribbean retreat with Edwin’s company, for which Celia had bemoaned her less-than-ideal skin tone and the loss of her perfect bikini body.

“Speaking of that,” Celia said, her grip on the steering wheel loosening a little. “You do remember that you’ve promised to take care of my children while we’re gone.”

“Are you worried that I’ll take off and leave you stranded at the last minute?”

“How would I know?” Celia said. “With all your talk about going back to China.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret so you don’t worry: I don’t even have a passport to travel on.”

“The more you tell me about yourself, the less I feel I know you. Who knows? You may even be a secret agent for North Korea.”

So rarely did Ruyu laugh that when she did now, Celia turned to look at her for a prolonged moment before returning her attention to the road. “Seriously, are you a Chinese citizen or American, or both?”

“American,” Ruyu said. “I can show you my naturalization papers if you want to see them.”

Celia sighed as she pulled into the small parking lot behind the shop. “The thing is,” she said, turning to look at Ruyu, “it feels odd now to think that we don’t know a lot about you.”

“You certainly know more about me than most people do. And the things you don’t know are not worth knowing,” Ruyu said, feeling
all of a sudden melancholy. To have an identity—to be known—required one to possess an ego, yet so much more, too: a collection of people, a continuous narrative from one day to the next, a traceable track linking one place to another—all these had to be added to that ego for one to have any kind of identity. “Well, many thanks for the ride, and do tell Edwin I loved his coffee.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call Rebecca and tell her you don’t feel well?” Celia asked. “You look awful.”

“Maybe I’m coming down with something, but I should be fine.”

“If you need to talk more, you know I’m always around,” Celia said. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you didn’t really tell me the story of the dead woman.”

“Maybe another time?”

“In fact, why don’t you come to our Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Your parents will be here,” Ruyu said.

“The more reason for you to come. They’re harmless if there is another guest present. I think Edwin would be happy to have someone to distract them.”

Ruyu turned to look at Celia, feeling a strange sensation that this was the last time they would be seeing each other. Of course it would not be so, Ruyu thought, trying to shake off the fatalistic shadow. Normally she would have found an excuse to decline the invitation, but today, as if to prove to herself that there was no finality in anything, she said yes.

The thought of leaving, though, began to take a more definite shape. Ruyu saw little point in resisting, just as she had found it natural to answer an ad for a nanny position when she had needed a reason to withdraw from Eric’s life. The next day, she sent off an application for a passport. Flights between Beijing and San Francisco were booked—the only reason she purchased a round-trip ticket was that it was cheaper than a one-way ticket. The return date, which she had chosen randomly, offered her a sort of comfort, as if the decision to vacate her present life was reversible, though that illusion was easily
overridden by the concreteness of the steps leading up to the exit: the acquisition of a passport that lawfully identified her; the stamping of her visa, which categorized her as a traveler in her home country; the assigning of a seat on the plane, one next to a window—nothing could be undone now.

The loose ends that she could not neatly tie up she had to accept as her debt, mostly to Celia, which would confirm her belief that those who mattered would be owed, just as they would be lied to. Ruyu could not give Rebecca advance notice of her resignation, but Rebecca would easily find someone else to install in the shop. The lease to the cottage would have to be broken, but Ruyu would leave an extra month’s rent, and that, along with her security deposit, should be enough compensation for her landlords, who were Celia’s friends, and who might not be in a hurry to rent the place out again. Various women for whom Ruyu did babysitting or pet-sitting would have to wait to hear the news from Celia, but none of them would consider Ruyu irreplaceable.

But Celia—and Edwin too—belonged to a different category; their curiosity toward her, like their kindness, Ruyu could not return with any curiosity or kindness of her own. When she saw them again it was at their Thanksgiving dinner, and Ruyu, without Celia’s prompting, took on the role as the audience to Celia’s parents, who talked at length about their other daughter, a high-powered attorney in Dallas. Jittery, fearful of any detail that could go wrong with the dinner, Celia looked exhausted when it was time for her parents to withdraw to the guest room. The older couple, having artfully praised everything about the evening, nevertheless managed to leave a critical imprint before turning in for the night: Jake, who had just turned sixteen and obtained a driver’s license, was planning to leave the house before midnight and participate in the Black Friday shopping craze with a few friends; Celia’s mother good-humoredly commented, reaching for the rail on the staircase, that she wondered if such an adventure would be of any use to Jake’s getting into Stanford, and
Celia’s father chuckled before placing a hand on his wife’s elbow and guiding her upstairs.

“Touché,” Edwin said when the older couple was out of hearing.

Celia moaned and poured herself a drink before asking Edwin if he needed one, too, and he said yes at once. He turned to Ruyu and said she should join them, even though he knew Ruyu never touched alcohol.

She declined the offer and said it was time for her to go. Edwin placed the drink on the counter. “I’ll drive you back,” he said.

Ruyu said no, a little too harshly, so she tried to soften the tone by adding that he should relax and have a drink with Celia. If he found Ruyu’s voice unnatural, he did not show it. Celia, having spent much of the evening watching her parents’ every move, was in a daze, ready to be left alone perhaps, even though being left alone was the last thing she wanted from life.

“Think of the Caribbean next week as your reward,” Ruyu said at the door, with copies of the keys to the house and Celia’s car in her purse. The mention of their upcoming trip brought a whiff of tropical air to the cold, drizzly night. The couple looked momentarily cheered up, as though it was only their husks that had to endure a few more days of the visiting parents.

Celia said she would leave detailed instructions about the boys’ schedules, and Edwin promised to send pictures. Ruyu, wishing them a fun time and giving each of them a good-bye hug, felt as though she were a mother feigning a smile, lest her children detect any abnormality. In first grade, she had seen a film at school—the first film of her life, as her grandaunts had not believed in the merit of going to the movies—about how life had been bad before the Communist era. At the end of the film, a mother, who had lost her job in a fabric factory and who had no hope left, gave her last few coppers to her two young children. She told them to buy a bun to share, and when they returned, they found that she had drowned herself in the river.

On the way back to her cottage, looking through unpulled curtains at other Thanksgiving dinners that were still lingering, Ruyu felt an urge to go back, to say a proper farewell to Celia and Edwin. Her flight to Beijing, on the same day as their flight back home, would be preparing to take off as they were landing at SFO.

But what could she say to the couple? Be brave, and be happy, you orphans with parents, you parents to future orphans.

18

Against his better judgment, Boyang did not stop pursuing Sizhuo. He recognized the peril of his persistence. What did a man want when he courted a woman? With his ex-wife, he had believed in a fresh start, that they could bring what they liked from their separate pasts and build a new world with only those good things; he had not realized that in choosing what to contribute, he had already cordoned off part of his life. Having erred age-befittingly, his only guilt was that the divorce had affected his ex-wife more; but that should be expected, as it was always a greater risk to be a woman than to be a man.

What about Sizhuo and himself, though? Boyang could not see their transaction with clarity. Her impertinence, her scrutiny of her surroundings, and her unsmiling expression at times reminded him of Ruyu, but Sizhuo’s heart was too affectionate, her view of the world too moral, her dreams too many. Or was he only grafting some of Moran’s qualities onto a person that he wished to be his first love? Boyang recognized the absurdity of this possibility: if he did not watch out, one day he would become one of those dotty old men who looked in every young woman’s face for his dead wife or his lost first love.

Once upon a time, Boyang had thought that he had fallen in love with Ruyu, but what he had wanted, he understood now, was to be seen by her, not only in that moment but also in those moments before
and after. Call it youthful conceit, but to be seen—and to be seen as someone with a past and a future—is that not our most sincere design for love? Our greediest, too: in wishing for such continuity, one places oneself—with arrogance and delusion—beyond the erosion of time.

The wish to be seen by Sizhuo, however, baffled Boyang more: he was torn between the desire for her to see him in his world, in which he could flirt with a business partner’s lover (just as he would allow Coco to be flirted with, all within mutually acceptable terms), and the desire for Sizhuo to know nothing about that part of his life. Certainly he could not singlehandedly protect her from this already corrupt world, which he had felt no aversion to, except when it threatened that strange unworldliness in Sizhuo. In a sense, what he wanted from her was impossible: he wanted her to stay unchanged, to remain the only resident in her impracticable habitat, which he alone would have the right to guard—and perhaps to taint—with his own worldliness. He wanted to be a good person for her, and he wanted only her to know that he was a good person. If she noticed any discrepancy between his behavior and his intentions, she should understand it, because in his design, she was there to see him not as who he was, but who he could have been.