Chapter Twenty-Seven
twenty-seven
JUNE 1990
VIVIAN searched the house the next morning, but the letters were gone. In the kitchen she saw Edith talking to Richard. Their heads lifted when they saw her. Her husband had his hands on his hips. His sleeves were rolled down. He held his bag at his side.
“Morning.” His gaze lingered to the scarf she’d tied around her neck. He kissed Vivian’s forehead and then left. Vivian tried not to recoil from his touch. Edith didn’t meet her eyes. She busied herself with breakfast. In the kitchen, Lucille, Ada, and Sophie sat at the table. Edith had driven Rennie to her theater camp. Ada stared into her bowl of cereal. Vivian looked at her. Was her daughter going to say something? Had she told everyone? How could Vivian possibly explain it away? She tried to think of what she could say to comfort her daughter. “Does anyone need breakfast?”
Lucille spoke up. “ā Yí already made us hard-boiled eggs. What’s wrong with your voice?”
“Just a cold,” she said. “I’m not feeling very well.” It hurt so much to speak that tears came to her eyes. So she poured a cup of white tea and retreated to the library. She sat at the desk and stared ahead listlessly.
She’d start calling up directors herself. She would be spare with the details: marriage troubles, a husband who would fly into a rage. That’s not the Richard I know , they would say, and she would brace herself for the answer. I know. That’s not the man I married.
She had to try.
She rifled through the drawers and pulled out the magazine feature she’d done with him.
The Power of a Dramatic Duo.
“What a beautiful couple,” the photographer had said. He’d told Richard that he could run for president, and Vivian had known exactly what the photographer meant; Richard captivated. You wanted to confide in him. Do anything for him. Before, she’d been proud. Possessive. Now she felt sick. She felt like she was going to vomit. She closed her eyes and waited for the room to stop spinning.
Richard came back in the late afternoon. She greeted him with a cool kiss. He made dinner for the girls, which she skipped, saying she had a headache. She lay in bed for hours as dusk sank into night, her head pounding, feeling like the room was still spinning. There was still that buzzing sound in her ears, that low roar. She heard her husband come in. He kissed her shoulders, the top of her head, the back of her neck, and she felt revolted.
In the middle of night she lay awake, still thinking about the rejection letters. She went downstairs and searched her husband’s briefcase for any remaining copies. She had to know that she didn’t make this all up, but she came across something else instead.
PALISADES PSYCHIATRIC CENTER
RECOMMENDATION FOR VIVIAN YIN LOWELL
She stared at her name on the paper. She remembered how her daughters couldn’t look her in the eye. How Edith was whispering to Richard. Her own family thought she was crazy.
When she finally fell asleep that night, she dreamed that she stood in the doorway of her bedroom. This time, Laura Dalby just sat on the bed. Her bloodied nightgown hung from her in shreds. She looked directly at Vivian with an empty gaze. Her eyes were sunken, her lips pale. She bared her neck and Vivian could see the flesh slashed at her throat, exposing the severed tendons.
“He killed me,” she said, as blood spurted between her teeth and splattered onto her nightgown. “He’ll kill you too.”
Vivian was not safe. The next day she woke up and was possessed by a numb sense of dread. When she drove, her hands shook at the steering wheel until she had to pull over. She felt like she was wading through fog. That night, and then the next, and the next, she let herself be held by her husband. He didn’t raise his voice at her again. His kindness felt like a threat. A truce forced by sheer will.
He’ll kill you too.
She sat at her vanity that morning and stared at her reflection.
Her skin was uneven and dry. Divots probed between her brows and wrinkles lined her eyes. Her eyes were puffier than they used to be. The skin on her neck, once taut, now sagged slightly. She pressed her fingers lightly to the splotches of bruises that trailed down the left side of her neck and on her collarbone. They were just beginning to yellow around the edges.
It was still painful to swallow. She started to feel light-headed again. What day was today? In the mirror, a hand slipped around her throat. Panic clamped down on her. She couldn’t breathe. Vivian clawed at her throat, yelping in pain when she scratched into flesh.
The dizziness passed and suddenly she was able to draw a breath again. Vivian looked back up at the mirror and the hand was gone. She had dug her nails into herself and scratched her own throat. She was safe. There was no one else here.
“ 神经病 ,” she muttered to herself. She was ill in the nerves. She was seeing things that were not there. No wonder her husband wanted to put her into a mental institution. But she couldn’t leave him alone with her daughters. Not ever. She saw how he’d acted toward Ada. If she wasn’t around, Vivian couldn’t begin to think about who he might take his anger out on instead.
That night, after she finally sank into sleep, she opened her eyes to find that she was being buried in an open grave. Dirt piled up on her body as she screamed her daughters’ names. They stared at her with blank eyes. When Rennie turned, she saw that the side of her jaw was covered with bruises. Her mouth filled with earth.
Vivian lurched up from her nightmare. She went to Rennie’s room and eased open the door. Her daughter slept peacefully, her hand curled up next to her on the pillow. Vivian closed the door in relief.
She went downstairs, then down the terrace steps and felt the dirt crumble under her feet. Sophie was trying her best, but in Josiah’s absence, a few weeds had sprouted. Vivian knelt. She couldn’t shake herself from her nightmares. The one she just had, with her daughter being hurt. The one she had nights ago, where Laura Dalby was murdered.
She stared around her. Everything—this serene garden, the house they’d built, was not a peaceful place. Amos Dalby had died in this garden. Laura Dalby had died in the house.
She shuddered with another horrifying speculation. What if the robbery had not been random after all? Even if Amos had been out of the house at the time, that didn’t mean he couldn’t have arranged his wife’s death. That notion was no longer an impossibility. Vivian now knew her own husband could kill her. He might. His jealousy had festered for years and now it was lethal. If he couldn’t kill her for it, he would take everything from her and leave her to rot in a facility, and then he was going to hurt her children.
She ground her fist into the soil. She remembered how long ago she had heard stories from an old woman in the city where she grew up about how Ming dynasty concubines were buried with their emperor when he died. Vivian, Yin Zi-Lian then, had asked her how they all happened to die at the same time.
The woman had looked at her with a chilling expression. “They were buried alive, child. They had no choice.”
But Vivian did. She was not going to let her husband ruin her or her children. Vivian Yin had fought tooth and nail to survive in this country. To make sure her children survived. She would not die a good wife.