Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
In college, Lee would date a string of older men: restaurant managers and law school students and the occasional lecturer.
When she graduated, she went to work for an accounting firm, and after two listless years at a Big Four, she answered a job posting for a brand called Peony, run by a former professional tennis player with a penchant for ruffles and lace named Sugi Atkin.
Sugi had no actual design experience and instead dictated her ideas to a team who executed her visions.
Sugi hired Lee after learning her mother was Chinese; she claimed it was because Lee spoke Mandarin, although Lee never used it at work.
Peony was funded by Sugi’s husband, a pleasant software executive named Tim who made quarterly inquiries as to how Sugi was spending his money. Sugi always directed such inquiries to Lee.
“You tell Tim whatever he needs to hear,” Sugi said. She seemed in a constant state of irritation with her husband. “What we do is serious, it’s a serious business. He doesn’t understand.”
It was serious; fourteen months after Lee began working for Sugi, Tim withdrew funding, and the business shuttered.
Lee could no longer afford rent on her apartment in Oakland Hills.
Lee was also dumped by Kenneth Agha, a venture-capitalist friend of Tim’s who resided in a six-bedroom historical Tudor in Piedmont and—by rather suspicious coincidence—had broken up with her the day she was fired and in need of subsidized lodging.
Lee went home to Joan, who was thrilled enough to have a child near (and no longer dating a forty-two-year-old) to compartmentalize Lee’s unemployment.
Back home Lee settled into a routine, buying a monthly pass to Sunrise Pilates and applying for a new library card.
Lee was surprised that a single decision which had appeared fine at the time (quitting accounting) could leave her jobless and single, sleeping in her high school bedroom; it seemed to her she should have at least received some type of warning, of bad outcomes ahead.
But Lee was not a whiner (or rather, she knew Joan hated whiners) and, that as long as she was home, she should hand-wash her dishes and escort Joan to the Chinese supermarket without complaint.
Besides, there were some interesting distractions.
After much deliberation, Joan had finally begun work on Falling House, hiring both a builder and an interior designer.
Lee particularly liked the meetings with the designer, a Swiss German named Leonard Spruch who appeared to subsist entirely on avocados and protein bars.
He and Joan had a sibling-like relationship and constantly squabbled.
Recently they’d been debating bathroom walls, with Joan balking at the price of Calacatta marble.
“It’s just so expensive,” Joan said.
“It’s not that much,” Leonard countered, “compared to what the entire house is going to cost.”
“That’s what you say about everything.”
“Because it’s true.” Leonard unwrapped another one of his bars.
He had once been very big, he said, and now ate very little.
He was a large man, tall and quite broad despite his strict diet; he exclusively wore black athletic clothes and white sneakers and costly watches.
Lee would never tell him, but she thought Leonard might look better with a few extra pounds; his face was slightly gaunt, and he seemed constantly on edge.
“There’s something strange,” Joan said, “about spending so much on a place for only one person. I suppose it feels selfish.”
“It cost at least this much to build it the first time. And you were fine living there before,” Leonard said without mercy.
“When I was younger, I thought I would be happy for the rest of my life if I could just stay in Falling House. But now that it’s just me, I wonder if it’s a waste.”
“It’s not just you. Lee will be there too, won’t she?”
Joan and Lee had both gone silent then; Lee didn’t say she didn’t intend to live with her mother forever—and she certainly didn’t want to know if that’s what Joan believed.
Brent, the general contractor, called. The building permits had been approved. He drove to the townhouse, and Joan gave him the check for the deposit.
“You’ll be glad to get out of here, I’m sure,” Brent said, looking around.
“It’s not so bad,” Lee said hotly. She didn’t like Brent. He wore visors indoors and had a way of speaking to Joan very slowly, overly enunciating his words. When Joan asked clarifying questions, he often addressed the answers to Lee.
“Why does he talk to you instead of me?” Joan asked. “Does he not understand my English?”
“Your English is great, Mom.”
“He doesn’t like you, does he?”
“Gross,” Lee said.
With the deposit paid, Joan launched into one of her organizational sprees. She began to pack and sort, lining the sturdiest of her cardboard-box collection along the walls.
“Why are you doing that?” Lee asked, watching Joan tear through a closet. “They haven’t even started building. It’s going to be years before you can move.”
“I like to be organized,” Joan said. “We have too many things.”
“Maybe I’ll go to Japan,” Lee mused. She was getting tired of Pilates and trips to the Chinese grocers and cleaning out broken Christmas decorations from the garage—it made her feel old, as if she’d made a wrong turn and detoured straight to retirement.
Her job applications so far had yielded embarrassing results, and a light but pervasive malaise had descended, which she was desperate to shake off.
“What’s in Japan?” Joan asked suspiciously.
Joan didn’t like Japan, as she said the Japanese had not apologized enough for the war.
Because of this, Joan had a comprehensive yet rather porous embargo against the country: she refused to purchase a Japanese vehicle but enjoyed sushi.
And of course she adored Patty Sugimoto, whom she still met for coffee.
“The food. The sights. I always wanted to visit the temples in Kyoto.”
“The food,” Joan repeated. “You know, some Americans say they don’t like Chinese food because it is greasy. There is greasy Japanese food too. Just like there is light and elegant Chinese food.”
“Right,” Lee agreed. She watched Joan open a large file box containing what looked to be all of Lee and Jamie’s art projects from elementary school and dump the contents into a garbage bag.
“I’ve never seen Japan. I think I should go at least once, shouldn’t I?” Joan knotted the bag. “I will come on your trip,” she announced.
“Oh, wow,” Lee said helplessly. She had not anticipated this.
“Do you think we should ask Patty and Gene for an itinerary?” Joan regarded Lee with an eagerness that Lee understood with doomed gravity meant she would indeed be traveling with her mother.
“I’ll plan it,” Lee said. “I can ask friends. Patty and Gene are in their sixties, they haven’t lived there for decades.”
“Time passes faster than you would imagine.” Joan stiffened. “You don’t think they have valuable insights?”
“I’ll talk to them.” Lee had imagined her trip as a solo endeavor, one where she would eat and shop and, if she were lucky, have a fling with an exciting stranger.
Maybe it isn’t so bad if Mom comes, she thought, but she was already planning what indulgences might come after—how she would reward herself for spending this time with her mother.
There were advantages to traveling with Joan.
The yen was strong; a dollar went only so far.
Over the years Joan had managed her money with care—she spent modestly but invested in companies whose names she recognized, Coca-Cola and Home Depot and Procter she’d forgotten how their pairing confused strangers.
Were they friends, coworkers, Joan an eccentric wealthy Asian, Lee her white assistant?
Back in California, when they went out with Jamie, it was often assumed that Lee was Jamie’s girlfriend.
That was the only way the equation made quick sense to strangers (which was disgusting).
Out on the street, Joan tried to decipher some of the signs with Chinese characters while Lee stared stupidly at the crowds crossing the intersection. “You should have studied more in Chinese school,” Joan remarked.
“Well, I didn’t.” Lee consulted her guidebook for where to eat. According to Fodor’s, there was a $$$$ French restaurant, a $$$ Japanese restaurant, and a $$ café within walking distance.
“Why are you looking at the dollars? Just choose what is good.”
“Everything is so expensive,” Lee said.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Joan, the same woman who at home rinsed out plastic sandwich bags to dry in the sun; who kept a bucket in each of the showers as well as beside the kitchen sink to collect water for her plants.
“How about this place?” Lee had found an upscale okonomiyaki within a kilometer. “It’s supposed to have a nice sake selection.”
“Lee! We are still recovering from jet lag. Don’t you know alcohol isn’t good for that? It dries your skin too.”
What I need is to find people my own age, Lee thought. I need to connect with someone who isn’t my mother!