Chapter 13 Magnolia
MAGNOLIA
Years passed, and in that time, the spark inside me dulled, the sharp lessons that Berkeley had taught me softening around the edges, turning sludgy.
Day after day, I logged in hours at the clinic, completing mindless odd jobs, a tiny cog in a well-oiled machine that nobody would miss if it clattered out of position.
Even though my job was nowhere near demanding, by the end of the workday, I would feel so exhausted that all I wanted to do was go home and veg out in front of the TV.
My mind was so numb I felt like a zombie.
On the weekends, my girlfriends and I went out clubbing or drinking at karaoke clubs, but over time, these waned as, one by one, my friends found serious relationships.
Sunday mornings, I gathered with my extended family for dim sum, and it really felt like every month, there was a new baby that yet another cousin had given birth to.
I was only twenty-three, but already I felt like a spinster.
And unlike Iris, or many of my Berkeley friends, I wasn’t even single because I was career obsessed.
I was simply unmoored, floating along placidly to wherever the tide took me.
Twice or three times a week, I sat down and wrote another letter to Ellery.
My letters from that time were repetitive, unfocused.
Mostly me wondering about her life and comparing it to mine, which of course I found unfulfilling.
So when I went to have dinner with a friend and found her sitting with her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s friend at the table, I was actually surprised. My friend Anabelle introduced the guy as Parker. He was very attractive—strong jaw, thick eyebrows, great smile.
“Parker went to UCLA,” Anabelle said. That was the extent to the introductions, and truth be told, it was enough to get the conversation flowing.
“I heard you went to Cal,” Parker said.
“I did, yeah. But before that, I lived in LA. I used to go to PCC.”
Parker’s eyebrows rose and his face lit up. “PCC! Me too. When did you go?”
“From 1998 to 2000. You?”
“Ah, I went a couple years before you did. Oh man. I loved PCC. Best years of my life.”
I smiled, but there was a sadness weighing it down, because it was only now that I realized that was true for me too.
People often say that college is the best time of their lives, but while I enjoyed Berkeley, it couldn’t compare to my PCC days.
Mostly because of Ellery. I had a flash of myself curled up on Ellery’s bed, next to her, just hanging out reading, neither of us talking but knowing she was there, listening to her breathe and reveling in the presence of her.
It was so vivid that my eyes filled up with tears, and I had to look down onto my lap to hide them. “Sorry, allergies,” I mumbled.
“Did you also live in San Gabriel when you went to PCC?” Parker said.
“Yeah. Of course. Where else?”
He laughed. “Good old SGV. My favorite place. I was in an apartment on Valley, oh man, it was the best.”
“I didn’t like that apartment,” Joseph, Anabelle’s boyfriend, piped up. “We were roommates,” he added.
“What didn’t you like about it?” I said.
Parker rolled his eyes. “Joseph here wanted the American experience, whatever that is. He kept moaning about how SGV was too Asian and felt like we never left Asia. Which I told him was pretty racist.”
“I’m just saying, if I’d wanted to be surrounded by Chinese supermarkets and restaurants, I would’ve stayed in Singapore,” Joseph said.
“Should’ve gone to U Mich, like me,” Anabelle said.
“I get what you mean,” I said. “When I first arrived, I was also surprised by how Asian the place was. I liked it though. I found it really comforting because I was so homesick.”
“Yeah,” Parker said. His eyes met mine, and his expression went surprisingly soft. “That was how I felt about it. I moved to Westwood when I transferred to UCLA, and man, I really missed SGV then. I felt so out of place in Westwood.”
I nodded. “I always thought it was funny how different all the neighborhoods in LA felt. And yet you wouldn’t know it if you’ve never been.
Before I moved there, LA was just…LA. I never thought about how you could drive down to a different city within LA and feel like you’re in a completely new place.
But yeah. I remember driving to Santa Monica once in a while and I enjoyed the place, but I never felt like I belonged there.
I was always relieved to go back to San Gabriel. ”
“Spoken like a true FOB,” Joseph said, not unkindly.
“Yep, that was what we were. FOBs and proud of it,” Parker said.
He grinned at me, and I found myself returning it without even thinking about it.
With a start, I realized I was having fun talking to Parker.
For the first time, I wasn’t annoyed at the sneak date setup.
I wasn’t on edge or defensive. I didn’t feel the need to know exactly where Parker stood on feminism or politics or anything.
I was happy, for the moment, to just have a good meal and a nice chat about pleasant things.
I feel it’s important to tell you, my dear Izzy, that at the time, I still wanted to have more control over my own life.
I still wanted to carve out a space of my own, to strive for something better than just being somebody’s wife.
But like I said, I was worn down, and my fight was without a clear cause.
I had no idea what equality might even look like, and so had no idea how to achieve it, and at a certain point, I just wanted to stop fighting.
I’m telling you this because I want you to know that it’s okay to feel tired and have a break from time to time.
Regroup and take a breather. Gather your thoughts.
I didn’t know that then though. I thought just because I was tired, it meant that I had given up.
Either or. All or nothing. That was me back then.
Either I was a feminist icon, swearing off all men, or I was a fifties housewife with zero rights.
So, then and there, I laid down my load.
I resolved to stop thinking about all those women’s studies classes I took at Cal, stopped picking apart everything Parker said, trying to look for flaws.
More importantly, I resolved to stop thinking of Ellery.
I might as well have resolved to stop breathing.
But while I never quite stopped thinking of Ellery, over the past couple of years, she’d stopped dominating the forefront of all my thoughts.
She took a back seat, letting me know of her quiet presence, and many nights, as I lay in bed, I reached out into the dark recesses of my mind and held her hand.
But I only did that when I was alone, when the world was quiet enough for me to breach the surface and step into the past, and so I thought I was okay, on the whole.
I was finally ready to open my heart up to someone who wasn’t Ellery.
· · ·
Mama and Papa were elated with Parker. As far as boyfriends went, he fulfilled their every requirement:
Came from a good, affluent Chinese-Indonesian family. Check.
Had a degree from a well-known US/UK college. Check.
Was hardworking, with a bright future ahead of him. Check.
To be fair, the last point was still in progress.
At age twenty-six, Parker was still unsure about his career path.
He’d spent the last two years working at HSBC’s private banking sector, which earned him a decent wage but was nothing compared to what the most affluent Chinese-Indonesian family companies could earn.
He did have a family company—a large corporation manufacturing baby products, but it was in its fourth generation, and by now, there were too many cousins and uncles and aunts already involved in the company.
“They’re always fighting each other too,” Parker told me. “I hate it. After college, I worked there for a couple of years, and oh man. I hardly spoke to my cousins outside of work. It was destroying our relationship. I had to leave.”
I liked that he’d decided to put family before a position at the company.
I liked a lot of things about Parker. He seemed different from most of the guys I’d come across in Indonesia.
He liked to discuss philosophical questions with me, we picked apart current events and found each other to be on the same side more often than not, and above all, I felt like he talked to me as an equal. Something that was sadly a rarity here.
In those days, there wasn’t much to do in Jakarta.
Jakarta was a metropolis designed for motorists.
There weren’t many sidewalks or parks or anything you could do outdoors.
On weekends, people just went to these huge indoor malls and hung out there.
But Parker opened up a whole new side of the city to me.
On Saturday mornings, he’d call and say something like “Wear something you don’t mind getting dirty.”
Then he’d pick me up and not tell me where we were going until we got there, and I’d discover a beautiful, airy little pottery shop that ran pottery classes on the weekends.
We’d spend the morning there, working with wet clay until we created cute little misshapen pots, after which he’d hold my hand as we wove through the unforgiving traffic to a nearby breakfast place that specialized in everything bacon—another rarity in Indonesia, which was a Muslim-majority country.
Another weekend, he told me, “Wear workout clothes and sneakers you don’t mind trashing.”
We ended up driving outside of the city to a place called Sentul.
Sentul was an area just outside of Jakarta that was surrounded by national parks.
Parker had arranged for us to go on a hike.
I’d never gone hiking in Indonesia before.
Back at Cal, I’d been to Tahoe and Yosemite a couple of times and considered myself a decent amateur hiker, but Sentul fully kicked my ass.
First of all, the tropical heat was no joke, and the trail was so muddy it was impossible not to keep falling down.
But I had fun anyway, because it had been years since I’d left the city and gone back out into nature, and the silence out here and the sweet air, free of pollution, cleared my mind.
“This is amazing,” I said to Parker.
He smiled, pulled me to him, and kissed me softly on the lips. “You’re amazing. Most people here hate hiking.”
I wondered how many girls he’d taken hiking out here but chose not to press, not wanting to ruin the moment.
One Friday evening, he texted, Pack enough hiking clothes for three days.
I freaked out then and demanded that he tell me where we were going, but all he would say was that it would be the best thing ever and that he’d asked my parents for permission and they’d granted it.
I ignored the churning in my gut and clung instead to the excitement sparking in my chest. I’d never been with anyone who cared so much about me that they would go to such lengths to plan surprises for me every weekend.
Parker picked me up and took us to the airport, where we caught a domestic flight from Soekarno-Hatta Airport to Juanda International Airport.
I still had no freaking clue where we were, except that we were in Indonesia, at least. When we landed and walked outside of the airport, Parker spread his arms, grinned, and said, “We’re going to hike up Mount Bromo, Maggie! ”
I didn’t like the nickname Maggie but never bothered to correct him because it seemed like a petty thing to do.
Anyway, I was floored by the reveal. “Holy shit, for real?” Aside from Bali, I had never been outside of Jakarta.
Sentul didn’t count. I was ashamed to admit that I had no idea what the rest of Indonesia was like.
It took no time for me to fall in love with the beauty of the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park.
The area was like nothing I’d ever seen, nothing like the rugged, lush terrain of Yosemite or the serenity of Tahoe.
Bromo felt more mystical, a cluster of volcanoes that feel like they’d been around since the earth was born, their peaks hidden by a blanket of clouds.
We stayed at a hotel overnight, and I was impressed to find how meticulously Parker had planned the whole thing, down to preparing water bottles and first aid kits for both of us.
He’d even hired a guide for the trek. We woke up at two thirty in the morning to start our hike.
It was rough going at first, mostly because hiking in the dark was a vicious and terrible thing.
I grumbled to myself and hardly spoke a word to Parker, secretly fuming that he’d pushed me into doing this.
But then we broke through the cloud cover just before the first sunrays kissed the skies, and it was as though we’d stepped from the mortal world into a celestial realm.
The clouds below us looked like a mystical blanket and Mount Bromo itself a sleeping god who might wake at any moment with a gentle roar.
And that moment, as I gazed with open-mouthed wonderment at the glorious sight before me, was when I fell in love with Parker.
Ellery was magic and air and sweet confusion.
Parker was the earth, solid and undeniable.
It was easy to lean on him. Later, I would find out it was easier still to break against him.
But I didn’t see that, not then. I didn’t see beyond the excitement of discovering every weekend what he’d planned for us.
I failed to grasp the fact that he, and only he, had been in charge of things.
He never once asked what I wanted to do, and at the time, as directionless as I was, it was a relief to let someone else take the wheel.
I blame myself as much as I blame Parker for the way our relationship was.
Even now, I sometimes imagine how things must have been from his point of view—how perfectly happy and placid I was in the months we dated, and how betrayed he must have felt when my spirit awoke from slumber and screamed back alive, burning everything in its way.
But for now, standing in each other’s arms at the top of Mount Bromo, the two of us were quiet, content, and happy with each other.