fourteen
As we got farther away from Los Angeles, the sea breeze drifted in, pushing away the sallow air. Our drive was lined with
blue mountains and ocean on one side, palm trees and red-tiled roofs on the other. The colors were more vivid and sharp here,
no sign of the haziness that drifted over the city.
Leaving Los Angeles felt like a brand-new start. Already my limbs were lighter, my mood uplifted. Maybe the beautiful climate
was finally beginning to thaw my frostbitten Midwestern exterior. I had even gotten a fairly decent night’s sleep by my standards
before we departed from Uncle Wang and Auntie Chao’s house. They’d sent us off in the morning with tight hugs and full thermoses
of coffee for the road. I had a tinge of sentimentality about them as we left. They had been such good hosts. I could see
the younger versions of them through their present selves. For some reason, it made me feel closer to my parents in a way
I hadn’t before.
I rolled down the window and felt deliciously awake from the salt tang of the sea.
“I don’t get it,” I said after a moment, continuing my conversation with Alan, who was impatiently awaiting my response. “So
other people can see the ghosts playing baseball?”
“Yes.”
“Why isn’t the entire movie about how ghosts are real? That seems like a big deal. Wouldn’t there be national news stations
reporting about how there are ghosts playing baseball in the middle of Iowa?”
He sighed. “It’s not really about the ghosts, Stella. It’s a movie about second chances and the relationship between fathers
and sons.”
“But the main character guy—”
“Ray.”
“Whatever. He saves his farm from the debt collectors because he builds a baseball field in the corn and people pay to see
the ghost baseball players play? Is that not the main plot of the movie?”
“You’re really focused on the mechanics of ghosts in real life. It’s about him getting to play catch with his dad one last
time.”
We were somewhere between Santa Maria and San Luis Obispo, after a long leisurely stop for lunch. I had put on my sunglasses
to cut the glare, and Alan had a pair of clip-ons over his glasses.
I frowned. “I thought this movie involved ghosts helping a baseball team win a championship improbably. Against all odds.
Like all sports movies.”
Alan almost choked. “Are you talking about Angels in the Outfield ?”
“Is that the one?”
“ Field of Dreams and Angels in the Outfield are completely different movies. Like, how could you possibly confuse them? Field of Dreams is an actual classic, with Kevin Costner, that makes grown men cry. Angels in the Outfield is a schlocky movie made by Disney that nobody likes,” he said heatedly.
I adjusted my seat farther back and lowered my sunglasses. “Oh, sure, no way I could confuse those two movies. Just both old,
about baseball, and involving ghosts.”
“Ghosts are not angels. They’re different things.”
“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that there are multiple baseball movies involving ghosts and bonding with your family?
I mean I feel like one is probably enough, right?”
“Ghosts aren’t angels!” he said, pounding the steering wheel.
“Close enough.”
He shook his head in despair. “You’re hopeless. You don’t get the magic. One day, we’ll watch Field of Dreams , and then you’ll understand.”
I smiled, amused at the idea of us spending time together in a basement again, like old times. It was a small and delicate
hope, like a snowflake on cold glass. It was a thing that could dissolve easily, of course. Still, I let myself imagine it,
suspended for a moment in a limitless future.
“One eight eight, Viejo Pass, Montecito, California,” I said later, reading the address into the GPS as we got back in the car after a gas refill. “Auntie Yang and Uncle Ma live in Montecito, not Santa Barbara?”
“It’s just in the hills. It’s fancy.”
Santa Barbara was like a city on a postcard.
We drove along its picturesque streets until the GPS took us up a hill to a neighborhood where the houses dotted the incline
with generous plots. It was a gated community. We had to punch in a code we had been given to get inside. These houses didn’t
so much have “yards,” as much as they had “land.” The houses themselves were modest in size but were very pretty in design.
My mouth must’ve been agape. Alan grinned.
“Welcome to Montecito. You should check Zillow.”
I googled their address on my phone. The house came up. It had sold five years ago for four million dollars. Real estate in
California was wild. “Wow, they’re rich, huh?”
“Uncle Ma is the head of the MatSci department at UCSB,” he answered.
Eventually, we approached the top of the hill and turned onto Viejo Pass. We drove through a large plot landscaped with gorgeous
trees and arid shrubs. The house was a one-story hacienda-style home. It had a brick exterior and a red-clay-tiled roof, but
the brick was whitewashed in front.
We parked in front on the gravel driveway and stepped outside.
I blinked a couple of times, as the landscape all around was surreal.
Auntie Yang’s place had a stunning view of the mountains, the harbor, and the ocean.
I thought it was the most beautiful property I’d ever seen, like the kind of place a Hollywood celebrity would have as a summer home.
I hadn’t ever met them before. Both my and Alan’s parents all ran in the same circles in graduate school, but I knew that
Auntie Yang in particular was a close friend of Mama’s at the time. It was only much later that she met Uncle Ma. She had
done so through, of all people, Alan’s father. Alan’s father was a professor as well, and they had both worked at the same
university for their postdocs. Because Auntie Yang and Uncle Ma married later, their one child was also much younger than
Alan and me.
We brought our suitcases up a neatly maintained gravel walkway to an arched wooden door with iron hinges and rang the bell.
Uncle Ma answered. He had black hair shot through with silver, a crooked nose, and a pronounced Adam’s apple in a long neck.
He was wearing pale linen pants and a white shirt, very coastal and high end. “Ah, you’re here. Alan and Stella, right? Welcome,
welcome.”
He had better English than my parents. His accent was barely noticeable. Made sense, since he had spent almost two decades
as a professor in the United States. He seemed more American than any of my parents’ other friends.
He stepped aside and ushered us through the front door.
The inside of the house was like a gorgeous, sunlit little jewelry box.
There was a high-vaulted ceiling of wood planks and exposed wood beams. A big rounded vertical wood beam held up a loft area with an iron railing.
The living area was open-concept, with a grand fireplace, two sitting areas, and a chef’s kitchen of polished wood and stainless steel.
The decor was themed in warm brown leather and wood and soft white fabrics.
I felt dusty and out of place in this cozy, clean wonderland.
Two women and a child around the age of four emerged from the back patio inside. One of the women was Chinese and my parents’
age. She exclaimed, “Yah! Our guests are here and you didn’t tell me,” and bustled over to give us hugs.
“They just got here,” Uncle Ma said.
Auntie Yang held me at arm’s length. The corners of her eyes crinkled with pleasure. “You look just like your ma.”
I had never had anyone tell me that before. People usually said I looked like Baba. I wasn’t sure whether that was the type
of comment that merited gratitude—was it more flattering to be told I looked like Mama or Baba? I didn’t say anything in response.
“I talked to her just this morning,” she said.
“You did?” Mama hadn’t even bothered to message me.
“We got carried away with the time, as we usually do. I’m so happy to meet you at last.”
I tried to visualize how Mama behaved around this gregarious, stylish woman, who was supposedly her good friend. Before I
could ask for more on what they talked about, Auntie Yang had turned to her companion.
The other woman was a young white woman, her pale brown hair tied up in a high ponytail. She was wearing yoga pants and a white tank top, and she was holding the child’s hand.
“This is our nanny, Juliet,” Auntie Yang said. “She’s a grad assistant in Peter’s program.” She motioned for the boy to come
over too, which he did reluctantly, hiding behind Auntie Yang’s leg. “And this is James. James, can you say hi?”
He shook his head.
“He’s a little shy right now,” Auntie Yang said apologetically.
Alan knelt down and held up his hand. “You wanna give me a high five instead?”
At first, James didn’t move, but Alan was patient and stayed in the same position a beat longer than was comfortable. Slowly
and deliberately, James reached out and smacked Alan’s outstretched hand with his own.
“Yeah!” Alan said. “Great job.”
We all clapped, and James looked bashfully pleased.
Alan had a particular knack for talking to children. I was insecure around them, and I swore they could sense it.
Uncle Ma clapped him on the back. “Your father doing well?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied solemnly. His spine straightened. He stood the way I remembered when he talked to his own father.
“Good. Glad to hear it.”
“Thank you for letting us stay here, Uncle Ma and Auntie Yang,” I said.
“Please, call us Peter and Molly,” Uncle Ma said. “We’re not formal like that.”
“Okay,” I said, not repeating it back to them.
I couldn’t imagine actually calling Chinese people of my parents’ generation by their first names.
I’d be seventy years old, and I would still call the hundred-year-olds uncles and aunties.
On the other hand, my parents’ other friends tended to still speak Chinese among themselves and to me.
Uncle Ma and Auntie Yang spoke only English to us.
Auntie Yang’s was mildly more accented, but she spoke without halting or searching for words, the way Mama did.
Should we give you the tour?” Auntie Yang asked. Juliet took James back out to the patio so he could run around.
Uncle Ma and Auntie Yang had a big master suite at the end of the hallway, layered in gauzy blue linen, with a sea view. James’s
room was next door, tastefully done in forest greens with an animal motif.
“I’m sorry we have only one guest room with a bed,” Uncle Ma said. “We have a pullout couch in our exercise-meditation room.”
He showed us both. The guest room had a big white queen-size bed with double glass French doors that opened into the garden.
The “exercise-meditation” room was next door and smaller. It had a Peloton, a rack of hand weights, a pullout couch, and a
yoga mat next to a table full of incense sticks. Alan took the exercise-meditation room, and I took the real guest room.
Auntie Yang clapped her hands together. “Shall we have lunch?”
We all sat around a rectangular reclaimed wood dining table. Juliet was seated next to James and attending to him while he
ate.
Auntie Yang had prepared grilled chicken and fajitas rather than Chinese food. My parents’ repertoire of non-Chinese food was zero, if you didn’t count jarred marinara sauce and boxed pasta.
“We bought this house right when I was pregnant with James,” she said. “Total renovation and had to do it all in under a year.
We moved in when James was three months? I was on maternity leave.”
I couldn’t recall what Auntie Yang’s job was. “What is your work?” I asked.
“I’m a paralegal at a law firm in town. Horrible,” she said.
“I keep telling you that you can quit,” Uncle Ma says, pained. “We don’t need the money, if you don’t like it.”
She shrugged. “I have to do something. What would I do around here, now that James is in school? Just hang around here and
water the plants?” She forked another chicken breast off the center platter. “Lifesaver that we have Juliet here to help.
What will we do when she graduates?”
“Well, she still has two years,” Uncle Ma said. He was the quieter of the two of them. Cerebral and reserved, he spoke up
sparingly.
There was a long pause. Our silverware clinked loudly against their custom clay plates.
“Pity you will only stay two nights,” Auntie Yang said. “It’s so beautiful here. You should certainly use tomorrow to enjoy
yourselves in Santa Barbara.”
“You both applied to UCSB?” asked Uncle Ma.
Alan looked at me quickly.
“Yeah,” I said. No reason to explain my situation. “He’s doing early acceptance at Stanford, though.”
“Well, I can’t begrudge him that,” Uncle Ma said approvingly.
The two of them began engaging in a separate conversation about the college application process.
On our side of the table, Auntie Yang smiled at me, her eyes unwavering from my face. I started to feel mildly self-conscious,
as if perhaps I had something in my teeth. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “It’s just so wonderful to meet you at last. Like seeing
a celebrity. Your mother used to talk about you all the time before you came here with your brother.”
Strange. Not that a version of me had existed in someone’s mind before I had come. It was the fact that Mama talked about
me to other people. She was so circumspect about those years in America before we arrived, so openly unemotional. Up until
this moment, I realized that I hadn’t ever considered whether she had missed us at all.