Chapter Nine
nine
FEbrUARY 1975
VIVIAN Yin met Richard Lowell at a film festival in Los Angeles.
She had been invited because of her role in Song of Lovers , and now she found herself nominated for an award, draped in a red satin jacquard dress she’d borrowed from one of her aunt’s friends. It fit well enough. It showed off her delicate collarbones, which she considered one of her best features. She stood unsteadily on the red carpet trying to conjure her old confidence as she tilted her body to face the flashes of the cameras.
Back in Hong Kong, Vivian had loved movie premieres and festivals. In San Francisco, she enjoyed the premieres in Chinatown, which eventually became cozy after-parties that flooded a director’s favorite restaurant’s back room, with dishes loaded upon the circular tables. Los Angeles was foreign to her and surreal in its beauty. But here she didn’t know a soul aside from her co-stars, and even then, the only one she felt comfortable with was Daisy. There were other Chinese actors working in film, too, but most of them were extras and weren’t invited to the parties. So she followed her cast and crewmates around, hearing them laugh and joke in English, their vowels drawn out and flattened in the American way.
She hadn’t won the award and she was partly relieved, because the thought of speaking in front of the crowd made her want to vomit up the water she had taken small sips of prior to the event. She hadn’t eaten anything in the afternoon so she could fit into the dress. Sweat collected at the nape of her neck, and a hidden metal clasp dug into her rib. Her body had changed after the children, and she wasn’t quite sure what looked flattering and what didn’t, so she contracted in her stomach and hoped for the best.
She had half considered not coming at all. Maybe she should go home and try to see if her hotel room had a phone so that she could call her family before bed. For the past year and a half, she and her daughters had been crammed into a one-bedroom in San Francisco with her aunt and uncle. Her aunt was good at taking care of them, but still, it pained Vivian, being this far away. She felt light-headed from all the lights, the perfumed air, the sequins and satin and bright camera flashes.
But this was a chance to get noticed. And at least she had Daisy. Daisy Rubin had an endearing gap-toothed smile, a heart-shaped face framed by loose, deep red curls, and a loud, warm voice. But now Daisy was across the room talking to someone, her sequined dress winking all around her, so Vivian ordered herself a cocktail that Daisy told her would keep her awake.
The drink the bartender handed her was sweet and creamy. She stood at a table with her co-stars and noticed a lean, dark-haired man with a double-breasted suit across from her, another table over. When he looked up, their eyes met until she looked away, embarrassed. She watched her co-stars drink and laugh. Eventually they drifted off, leaving Vivian standing alone.
All she could think about now were her pinched feet. Maybe this was the moment to make an early exit. She had an entire, luxurious room to herself at the hotel. She could even draw a nice, hot bath.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lean in, his arrival marked by a deep, smoky cologne.
“Is that any good?”
His voice was surprisingly light. Vivian turned slightly and found the handsome man she’d made eye contact with earlier gesturing toward her drink. A quick scan revealed a smart, fitted blue suit filled out by broad shoulders, a checkered tie, a clean-shaven profile, and slicked-back hair that was so dark it was almost black. A silver watch peeked out of his sleeve.
Vivian met his eyes. Through his rounded glasses they were the most remarkable jade green flecked through with brown, framed by long lashes. He was young, Vivian thought. Or he had this tentative, inquisitive smile that made him seem so. Another actor, perhaps.
Maybe she had looked lonely and he felt bad for her. In crowds like these, Vivian was used to being all too conspicuous while feeling invisible at the same time. She looked into her glass and tried to keep her voice steady. “It’s strong.”
“Seems about right,” the man said. “Should I get one?”
“I recommend it,” Vivian said.
“Good. I hold your recommendation in high regard.”
Vivian chuckled.
He tilted his head. “What?”
“You put lots of trust in strangers.”
“I don’t usually,” he said. “But you seem like you know what you’re doing. When everyone else is drinking champagne, a white Russian stands out.”
“Oh, I’m just trying not to fall asleep.”
He was silent and Vivian looked up.
He smiled. “Bored to death, are you?”
Heat flooded her cheeks as his words drifted in. “Oh!” She blurted out. Had she offended him? “No, I don’t mean that , I mean—” She searched for words. English could escape her when she was nervous. “I haven’t been sleeping good lately. That’s all. This is wonderful.” She searched his eyes. They glittered mischievously.
“I was just giving you a hard time. Don’t worry. I’d be happy to get you another one if it’ll keep you out longer?”
She smiled politely. “I’m okay with just one.” She hurriedly added, “Thank you, though.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. Vivian felt like she was under a spotlight. She wondered if he was going to start asking her questions, the ones the others did when they were drunk, or sober, if they were the more brazen type. Would he ask her where she was from or just start guessing?
Instead, he held out his hand. “I’m Richard Lowell. It’s nice to meet you.”
Richard Lowell. That name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t remember why. He had to be an actor. She shook his hand. “Vivian Yin.”
“I figured,” he said. “You were great in Song of Lovers , by the way. A brilliant performance. You’re a natural.”
Vivian lowered her eyes. English-speaking movies were new for her, but she had more experience than people imagined. She’d been training since childhood and acting in operas all her life. What surprised her was that he recognized her. And watched her movie. “We had a great director,” she demurred.
“Sure, I know Don Corcoran’s work. But it takes a certain beautiful talent to bring his vision to life.”
The air between them stilled. Vivian looked up. Ah. Heat bloomed up her neck and across her cheeks. She hadn’t flirted in a long time, but here she was. “Well, I’m glad you saw it,” she said, offering what she hoped was a beguiling smile.
“Of course.” He took a breath. Vivian fidgeted with her glass, trying to think of what to say next. Her heart raced and she was very, very awake now. She watched him take out a pen from his inner suit pocket. He wrote something on the napkin and slipped it to her, face down.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t want to keep you up. But I would love a chance to chat with you more about movies. Give me a call if you happen to have some free time tomorrow. If you’d like.” Vivian could see that he was starting to get flustered. It thrilled her to see the boyish tinge of pink on his cheeks.
“That would be nice,” she said. “Well, it is good to meet you, Richard.”
“Likewise.” He looked at her, hesitantly, then again, and slipped away into the crowd. Vivian clutched the napkin dizzily as Daisy fluttered back to the table. How she could walk in such high heels, Vivian had no clue. Her co-star was a natural on the red carpet. Her dress’s sequins flowed like liquid gold over her curves.
“Oh. My. God. What did Richard Lowell say to you?”
Vivian looked up. “What movie is he in?”
“Vivian!” Daisy arched a thick eyebrow. “He was in The Great Gatsby . He knows everyone. ”
“ Oh .” And it hit her then that he was Hollywood’s new rising star, barely under thirty, or around it. She’d heard her own notoriously difficult director discussing him like he was a beloved son.
“Tell me everything ,” Daisy whispered, tucking her hair behind her ears. “What did he want from you?”
Vivian considered what she’d say. She didn’t want rumors to swirl, not while she was just about to head home. “Nothing much. Just wanted to tell me he watched our movie and appreciated my performance.” Her hand was under the table, his phone number clutched in her sweaty palm. “I was thinking I might take a taxi home.”
“Aw.” Daisy frowned. “You’re okay?”
Vivian gave her a smile and matched Daisy’s warm tone. “Fabulous.” Daisy liked saying that.
“If you say so.” Daisy smiled back and blew a kiss.
“Good night,” Vivian said. She wobbled toward the entrance on her lower, but still-terribly-painful heels.
Back in her hotel, it was too late to call home, so she filled the tub with water and soap and stretched out her limbs. She reveled in the space. This one hotel room was the size of her aunt’s apartment. She held the napkin up to the light. The faintest bit of his cologne still lingered on it, and something inside Vivian unfurled at the scent.
She went to bed with the napkin on her nightstand. In the morning she woke up early and stared at his phone number.
At the very least, it was smart to get to know someone well-connected in the industry. Especially one who thought she was talented. But that wasn’t the only thought pushing her to reach for the phone.
She wondered what exactly compelled her toward him. There was something about him that she wanted to be near, to look level. Maybe it was his smile or his confidence, his playfulness, how he seemed at once uncertain and also completely at ease. She watched the clock hit nine and reached for the phone.
The last time Vivian was with a man, he had abandoned her and the life they’d built together.
She didn’t know what to tell Richard Lowell about that, and so she revealed none of it. They sat a table in the poolside hotel cafe that he’d chosen—it was a well-known place, he said, where famous writers from New York liked to frequent, where studio executives met investors, where business magnates stayed on and off over years. He even discreetly pointed out Diane Keaton across the room.
She wore a simple sleeveless pink dress with a knotted collar. Drinking her white wine, she let her head tip back when she laughed. She wanted him to see her as a young and promising actress; and an attractive one, too. That morning she’d dabbed red on her full lips and lined her eyes, applying just a bit of shimmery powder to her eyelids. It couldn’t hurt for her to shine a little. Vivian wanted another role. And he knew people. He could help her.
“Tell me about how you got to Hollywood,” he said.
She set down her glass delicately and watched the afternoon light cut ribbons on the water’s blue surface. Everything was so full of color. It reminded her of Fujian, except here there was no thick, humid blanket of heat. She didn’t sweat much. “I was performing in some theaters in San Francisco,” she said. “And a casting director was looking for a Chinese actress to put in his movie. So he found me and signed me on.”
“You grew up in San Francisco, then? Or abroad in China?”
Vivian paused. She couldn’t pretend like she grew up in San Francisco. Surely he heard her accent. But how much did she want to reveal? How her family was from Fujian but had moved to Hong Kong right before she was born? How her bà, who was an English teacher, and her mā, who was a store clerk, had called her the songbird of the family and enrolled her at the opera to train as a performer? She’d gone to movie theaters and seen Shaw Brothers productions after her classes with her friends. She dreamed of acting in Xianxia films and palace dramas. Bà took her to Hollywood movies on the weekends, where she had picked up English. Her mā, a proud, exacting woman, told her: “Be glad I gave you my beauty. It’s a gift.” According to her parents, Yin Zi-Lian was destined to be an actress.
And so she was. When she was eighteen she was cast in a film production of Dream of the Red Chamber as Lin Daiyu. She was performing one of her last nights at the opera when the man who would become her husband walked in. His hair was cropped short, and he had a quiet, solid presence. He sat at a table and watched her, never taking his eyes off her. Then he would leave. Every time she looked back at him and their eyes met, she felt this pull toward this man who would only look upon her but never speak. After one of her shows, he had finally gone up to the manager and asked for her name, and when she came out of the dressing room after taking off her makeup, he was there waiting for her.
Yin Zi-Lian was twenty and in love. He was a twenty-six-year-old business owner who worked in kitchen supplies. He bought things for her: a dress, jewelry. He was discreet about it. Vivian married him quickly. On their wedding night he brought up the idea of moving to America, to San Francisco, to expand his business. He always had grand dreams, and Vivian was drawn to that. The thought of America thrilled her. Chinese movies were made there too, someone had told her. She had family there. One of Bà’s cousins had settled in California a long time ago.
After Vivian wrapped up filming on Dream of the Red Chamber , they flew to San Francisco. Her mother didn’t come to see her off; she didn’t approve of Vivian’s husband and felt like Vivian was abandoning her. Bà sent them off instead, with the gift of a Chinese-English dictionary.
They moved into a small, one-room apartment in Chinatown. The ocean was close enough to walk to. Sometimes Vivian would go to the pier and just look out at the fog and the sea. San Francisco was a marvel, but still she felt untethered. The English she’d picked up from the movies and from her bà was no match for how fast Americans spoke. She stayed in neighborhoods where she would be surrounded with the familiar sounds of Cantonese or the Mandarin that her parents had spoken to her. At night she made dinner for her husband. He talked about his plans with her, his business. They saw movies at the local theater.
Vivian asked around to see if she could meet any producers. She had just started auditioning when she felt sick one morning and realized she was pregnant. She stopped auditioning. By the following spring of 1973, a year and a half after she had arrived in this country, she had given birth to twin girls.
Acting slipped from her mind as she took care of her daughters. Lucille, whom she named after Lucille Ball, whose show Vivian’s neighbor always played, and Ada, a name that sounded beautiful to her. Seasons passed. Her husband worked, often taking trips to and from Hong Kong. Vivian stayed behind with the children. She’d reconnected with Bà’s cousin, her aunt, and her aunt’s husband, her uncle. They’d immigrated into the country five years before. Now they lived just blocks away and came over to help with the twins.
She loved her daughters and adored being a mother, but she could not face herself in the mirror. She could no longer squeeze herself into her old clothes. Her breasts swelled and her nipples cracked and bled. She wanted desperately to get back into acting, but how? Her life was now consumed with the care of not one, but two infants. And her husband had become absent and irritable. When he was home, he talked about moving them back to Hong Kong. Vivian was lost. It was hard enough to come here; how could they move their young children across the ocean? He said his business was going through hard times. In June 1973 he went on a trip to Hong Kong. He was due to return in two weeks. He never came home.
First, Vivian was angry. Then she grew anxious. She wrote letter after letter. She placed frantic international calls that cost a fortune. She begged her parents to ask around, but no one had seen him or heard from him. And then someone wrote back and said that they’d seen her husband. He’d been gambling. She waited for him for weeks. One month stretched into two. Alone, in a foreign country, with two babies. She thought about going back to Hong Kong. But what was there for her? She would be returning a single mother, with a missing husband. The landlord put up an eviction notice. She was running out of time.
And then her uncle offered to house them.
With rent taken care of, she was ready to build herself anew. She moved into her uncle’s apartment by the end of summer. They all lived in the apartment, above an apothecary where she got a temporary job. The twins cried and fussed. Ada didn’t sleep well. Lucille wailed during the day, loud, piercing shrieks that seemed to flatten every thought.
Vivian changed diapers. She changed her children’s English and Chinese surnames to hers. Lucille was Yin Chen, named for a silver dawn. Ada was Yin Xue-Hua, named for snow and flowers. If her husband wasn’t going to be around in their lives, then her daughters would inherit her own family name. Yin Zi-Lian became Vivian Yin. And all that time she kept watching movies, Chinese ones down the street and American ones in Nob Hill. She pitched down her tone and taught herself to form the words slowly in her mouth, flattening them so she sounded like an American. She auditioned to perform at the opera place down the block and got a small role. She could still sing. She could perform. And it was at the opera house where an American director first saw her. Don Corcoran was directing a noir film set in Chinatown: Song of Lovers , a feature film about a lovesick opera singer in Chinatown whose affair ended in tragedy. He wanted to cast her as the supporting character.
Hollywood was where the money was. But as she got more and more into acting, each following role that she fought for, each part that barely had any lines, came with a sour feeling: they had her play a spy, a prostitute, a crime lord’s daughter. They had her amplify and distort her Chinese accent instead of trying to speak English like an American. Directors told her how to sound. It didn’t feel right. But most of her sets were around San Francisco, which allowed her to be near her family. And she was making enough of a living to help pay for her part of the rent. So she swallowed the bitterness and kept going. One role gradually led to another. Song of Lovers released, to praise on her role. Suddenly her name appeared in reviews in newspapers. The film led her to the awards show where she met Richard, and then to this very cafe at the hotel where he was staying.
Now she set down her wineglass and looked directly at him. She would tell him none of this. The sunlight glittered off the swimming pool. “I have family in San Francisco,” she said with practiced ease. “What about you? Where are you from?”