Chapter Twenty-Five
twenty-five
MAY 1990
LUCILLE heard tires skid over the driveway. Rennie flew down the staircase and waited by in the foyer as Lucille scanned the house around her. Everything was in place. She’d swept up the bottle shards on the terrace and collected beer cans the day before. Today she double-checked that were no wine stains, or none that she could see. She had painstakingly unfurled and replaced the rugs and moved back all of her mother’s brush paintings.
The front door unlocked and her parents swept in. Mā had a scarf over her dark, pinned-up hair, every tuck and pleat in place even after an international flight. Large sunglasses obscured half her face.
“Mā!” Rennie was the first to bound up to hug her. Mā set her suitcase down. “Bǎo bèi,” she said. She pulled away and adjusted her scarf, which wrapped around her high-collared blouse.
Ada and Sophie came down the stairs together. Lucille felt poisonous inside.
“How was the trip?” Ada asked.
Before Mā could answer, Rennie piped up. “Did you go see the Eiffel Tower? Can you speak French now? What kind of food did you have? How was cans?”
“It’s Cannes ,” Lucille said pointedly.
Dad laughed. “Save the questions for dinner.” He looked around. “Mā is going upstairs to get some rest for now. How did you girls do by yourselves? Seems like the house is still in one piece.”
“We were okay,” Lucille said quickly. “I cleaned the kitchen.”
She spent the rest of the afternoon in the library, reading. She could barely register the words on the page. Occasionally she looked over at the phone and willed it to ring. Two nights ago at her party, Reid found her before he left and made her give him her number. He called her that next morning and invited her to another party that night, this time at a house in Laurel Canyon. It was a friend of a friend’s, he said. They’d gone together and pulled away from the din of the crowd and sat at the edge of backyard pool, talking as the night cooled. He’d driven her back at two in the morning. They kissed in his car for what seemed like hours before she snuck back into the house. On the way to her own bedroom she passed Ada’s empty room. Was she out even later with Sophie? In that moment it didn’t matter to her much anymore.
Reid had said he would call. He wanted to take her to the beach this weekend, maybe. Lucille tried to read her book and not think about it all, which meant that this was actually all she thought about.
At some point they reconvened for dinner. Edith and Josiah were still up in San Francisco with Elaine, so Mā reheated dumplings from the freezer and made potstickers. Rennie kept asking questions about their trip. Mā seemed tired. Dad couldn’t stop talking about France; how beautiful the weather was, how everyone seemed more relaxed there. “I think we should live there,” he said. “I mean, it really is fantastic. How would you girls feel about living abroad for a few years?” He glanced around. “A nice international school? We spend our winter break skiing in the Alps, spend the summers traveling? You get to come with me on set? Rennie seems in, yeah?”
Lucille hesitated. This was coming out of left field. What, were they just going to uproot their entire lives? Dad had certainly been acting a little more spontaneous—or maybe Lucille would say harebrained—these days. He often skipped dinner because he was working. He wanted Rennie to star in his movies. He wanted to produce one movie after another, each one sounding more bizarre than the next. Sometimes he left on trips with little to no notice and it took Mā some time to figure out where he’d gone. And now this.
“So tell me,” Mā said when the dishes had been cleared away. Sophie leaned over and said something to Ada. Mā looked around the table. “Did you girls do anything this weekend?”
Ada and Sophie stopped whispering to each other. Lucille set down her chopsticks. “No,” Rennie said quickly. “Not much. We just hung out.”
There was a long silence. “Hm,” their mother said, turning back to her plate. There was a pause. She didn’t eat. She looked back up. “Then would anyone like to explain the three vases in the corner of my closet?”
Lucille’s heart dropped.
“And why there’s a whole shelf of wine missing from the cabinet?”
Everyone stared at Lucille. Dad shot her an incredulous look.
“I—” The words faltered on Lucille’s tongue. She was not the one who usually got scolded. “We—invited some friends over this weekend.”
“Whose idea was it?” Mā asked immediately.
Lucille looked around the table. Ada didn’t meet her eyes or jump to her defense. Sophie raised an eyebrow. She looked almost smug.
“Did—” Dad looked at Lucille, his expression unreadable. “Did our daughter… throw a party?”
Lucille swallowed.
And then he burst out laughing.
Mā’s gaze darted to him.
“Oh, come on, Vivian,” he said. He glanced over at Lucille, his eyes twinkling, his crow’s feet deepening. “She threw a real party.”
“This is unacceptable,” Mā hissed.
Dad was still laughing. “Now I really am surprised you didn’t burn the house down. Was it good?”
“Everyone is underage,” her mother practically spat. “Rennie is fourteen.”
“Rennie didn’t drink,” Lucille said quickly. “I made her promise.”
“Swear,” Rennie said, her eyes wide.
“Oh, what about the others, then?” Mā turned to Sophie. “Did you?”
Sophie raised her hands in innocence. “ I didn’t do a thing at this party.”
Bitch.
“What did I raise my daughters for?” Her mother snapped. Lucille clutched the chair under the table. “To be troublemakers? To invite strangers into my house without my permission?”
“Vivian.”
“You’re supposed to be doing something good this summer. Working like all of your classmates, not doing nothing and wasting your—”
“Stop overreacting,” Dad said sharply. Immediately Mā shrank. “When I was Lucy’s age, I threw all kinds of parties when my parents were away. Younger, even. I threw so many parties when I turned sixteen that I’ve forgotten half of them.”
“But she’s not—” Again, Mā stopped mid-sentence. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she fumed. Lucille wanted to know what the ending of that sentence was. Not—? “She’s my daughter.”
“She’s our daughter,” Dad said, and there was a finality to his tone. She could have sworn that he winked when he looked at her. “But don’t make a habit of it. Or at least let us know. All right?”
Lucille nodded gratefully. She tried not to look at her mother.
They ate the rest of dinner in silence. Afterward, she retreated to the library and stewed. She read in the armchair and watched the phone out of the corner of her eye. She stood and plucked the worn copy of Pride and Prejudice from the shelf. The cover fell open and a flattened violet fluttered into her palm.
To A— Page 571. – S
Lucille stared at the words. She recognized Sophie’s handwriting. She flipped to the page. There, underlined, were sentences that made her take in a sharp breath.
I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.
Lucille stared at those lines. She tried not to think about what she’d seen in the closet and what it meant. She didn’t know if she felt uneasy because she now knew her sister liked girls or because it was Sophie, of all people. Maybe Sophie was the one who came up with this whole idea and looped Ada into it. Lucille couldn’t tell if she should be angry or worried about her twin, if what Ada was doing was secretly devious or perverse. They’d grown up together. They knew everything about each other. But already she felt her own sister slipping away from her, hiding, keeping secrets. And it was all because of the gardener’s daughter.
At that moment the doors opened behind her.
“This can’t happen again.”
Lucille turned toward her mother, still holding the book.
“Listen to me,” her mother said quietly in Mandarin. “What you did was forbidden.”
Lucille gritted her teeth. “All my friends are throwing parties. Dad threw parties. You throw parties—”
“It’s different.”
Lucille tilted her chin. “Different how?”
“You are Chinese,” her mother said, jabbing a finger at her. “And you always will be Chinese. I will never let you turn into a soft American—”
“I don’t even know what that means. You’re American! I am! Dad is! We all are!”
“Yin Chen!” her mother shouted. Lucille jumped. “I don’t care what your dad says. Don’t ever do this in my house, and don’t bring your sisters into it. You should be setting the example, not drinking and getting into trouble. This isn’t the daughter I know. Even Ada knew better.”
Lucille was indignant. “You think Ada did nothing,” she said icily.
Mā looked exhausted. “It was your party. What did Ada do?”
A long silence passed. Lucille clenched her jaw. “Why don’t you ask Sophie?” She set the copy of Pride and Prejudice down on the desk with the cover open to the pressed flower so that her mother would see everything. Lucille marched out.
VIVIAN sat at her vanity and thought about what Lucille had shown her. Clearly she was hinting at something between Ada and Sophie. Why were they putting flowers in the bookshelves? And why were they writing messages to each other when they could just talk to each other?
She mulled over this when she applied her lipstick for the day. Makeup had become her armor. Foundation, eyeliner, brow powder. Her lipstick color depended on the day. Only bright red if the occasion allowed it. Today was audition day. She should appear modest. She chose a muted shade of pink.
There was a knock on the door. Before, Edith could come in at any time. But now, Vivian needed to make sure that everything was properly concealed by the time anyone else could see her.
“ 早 ,” Edith said. Vivian nodded in greeting. In the periphery of the mirror, she saw Edith dust the nightstand and the dressers. The housekeeper knelt next to the bed and straightened the sheets. Vivian put on her earrings and looked for her layered pearl necklace to match.
She stared at her open jewelry drawer. “My pearl necklace is missing.”
Edith met her eyes and her brows knit together. With the back of her hand, she brushed her hair from her forehead and stood. “You lost it?”
Vivian insisted, “No, it was here. And now it’s gone.”
There was a long and almost intolerable silence in which they could have had a whole conversation, and in a sense they did. Edith shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know where it could have gone. I’ll look around for it.”
Vivian nodded. She waited for Edith to retreat, but her figure grew larger in the mirror. Edith sat on the edge of the bed. “I wanted to talk to you about something, if you have a moment.”
Vivian turned.
Edith wrung her hands. “I want to ask you if everything is all right with your husband.”
Vivian steeled herself.
“I don’t know if it is my place. I know that sometimes there are… disagreements in a marriage. And I don’t mean to pry or intrude. But I saw what looked like a bruise the other day. Did he hurt you?”
Vivian went perfectly still.
Edith came forward and kneeled next to the vanity, clasping Vivian’s hands with her weathered ones. “You deserve a husband who is good to you, Lian-er. Come, tell me. What is going on? I know something is wrong. Both Josiah and I do.”
Vivian finally whispered, “What does Josiah say?”
Edith gave her a small smile and a squeeze. “We pray for you at church. For you both. 囍 . Double happiness, for both our families. Remember?”
It was pity, then. Or was it care? Either way, Vivian felt like she had been split open, stunned and defenseless. Edith cradled her hand gently. “Tell me,” she said in Mandarin.
囍 . Tears came to Vivian’s eyes. She imagined what it would be like to scrub away her makeup and tell Edith everything. She would have, at one point. She blinked furiously and saw the two of them sitting at the kitchen counter, laughing over a glass of wine. Walking in the garden together. Singing Shanghainese songs in the car when they went shopping, just the two of them. Watching the girls play in the garden from the terrace. She blinked again and remembered Edith and Josiah coming around the corner with a cake the night she won the Oscar.
It would be so easy to tell Edith everything. But Vivian looked upon the face of the closest person to family she had had in these last few lonely years, and thought of what her husband had said to her.
You’re going to abandon this life we built together. This family.
If she told Edith, then the truth would be out and they’d have to do something about it. This would become something she couldn’t control. Maybe they’d divorce. But they would all have nothing without him. Her family, the Dengs. He was their root, and without him they would shrivel.
“Your family is happy, aren’t they?” Vivian asked. “Elaine is enjoying college, isn’t she?”
Edith tilted her head in confusion. “Yes. But we’re not talking about—”
Vivian extracted her hand. “I’m going to be late for my audition.”
Edith stood up sharply. “Lian-er.” When Vivian didn’t respond, Edith tried again. “Lian-er, please, listen to me. I am worried for you. This isn’t normal.”
Vivian couldn’t stand Edith’s pitying expression. She snatched up her jacket and threw it over her shoulders. She stood up straight and looked Edith in the eye.
“I’m going to ask one thing of you. Don’t ever intrude into my marriage with Richard again. For your own good.”
Edith blanched.
“We’re fine.” Vivian’s lip trembled as she lied. “What goes on is between us.”