Chapter 17
Vivi didn’t notice how dim the light had gotten in her studio apartment. She’d been staring for what felt like hours into
a satellite view of a town buffeted on the east by the squiggle of a river and hugged by fields of malachite in every other
direction.
In the early days of the twentieth century, back when South Viet Nam was still known as French-occupied Cochinchina, Long Xuyên was a developing outpost. Over time, the city grew, until it eclipsed its neighbors and became the capital city of the An
Giang Province, an urban center that drew young people and, occasionally, tourists into the Mekong River Delta.
Long Xuyên was also her father’s birthplace, the place he referred to often and with great longing as his true home. She hadn’t remembered
until recently. When they were younger, Tu?n had occasionally traveled to Long Xuyên over the years whenever there was money to spare.
The city was approximately a hundred and eighty kilometers southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, hovering toward the tip of the country’s
rattling tail. Multistory buildings and strips of residences sprung up on either side of the floating market. Flat warehouse
roofs and evenly spaced agricultural boundaries gridded the spaces beyond the concentrated city center.
The house on the ravine. Tam had mentioned such a house in her journal.
But how many houses like that existed in 1943?
Blanc’s entry seemed to indicate that the description was specific enough for the shipment to find its destination.
But there were hundreds of tributaries spawning from the mother river, the mighty H?u, and no way for her to know which held the secrets of her family’s past.
Vivi’s eyes began to cross. Was that the flexuous river where her great-grandmother staged her death? Did she give birth to
Vivi’s grandfather under that brown awning on the western edge of the bank? Or was it that corrugated roof on the northern
side? She spent the night at her desk, forgetting dinner and sleep to research everything she could about Long Xuyên and its surrounding areas.
By morning, she had made her decision. She’d go to Viet Nam and fumble her way around once she was there. Her roots had been in art scholarship, in panning for the specks of gold
from meaningless sediment. If there was something left to find, she might be the one to find it. But she wouldn’t do it without
Calla. In the eternal ledger between sisters, Vivi was deep in the red. Before that, however, she had one last thing to settle.
She texted Wayland. Can we meet? I have some things to tell you in person.
The dreaded ellipses. But then—
The Point. I’ll be there in an hour after my run.
There was a peninsula on the south side of the city where a graying seawall curved into the amorphous outline of a toadstool.
On one side, sunbathers lay with knobby knees and tortoiseshell sunglasses that left medallions of pallor after their removal.
On the other, Lake Michigan, blue as cornflowers in some lights, turbid laurel in others. Clouds strung across the invisible
loom of the sky, while dogs huffed as their paws slapped the water.
Once, before their rift, Calla would sit on the rocks in her red bikini, counting Vivi off as she dived into the lake.
Ready, steady, go! Calla could not swim well, but she liked to watch Vivi’s purposeful strokes cutting through the waves.
She’d remark that Vivi seemed more mechanical than human out there, arms pulling so vigorously they seemed driven by horsepower.
Vivi was proud to be seen this way by her sister. Indomitable.
Even when the shoreline emptied of swimmers and became littered with tumbling fast-food wrappers, when winter began to whistle
its fluty song, the sisters would meet at the Point. Over the years, as work and marriage and distance wedged between them,
those meetings dwindled. And yet Vivi would always think of it as their spot.
Now she waited for Wayland on the stone revetment that stood against Lake Michigan. She closed her eyes against the sting
of the wind, imagining herself enfolded within the woods of Deer Creek, swimming in another, less magnificent and more potent
body of water.
She was kicking inside the artery of gold that stretched through the pines and birches until it met the Wolf River in a rushing
exhale. Her toes sinking into the soft give of the creek floor. Instinctively, she listened for the echoes of two children
who did not yet know all that awaited them on the untrammeled banks of the future.
The sisters were floating on their backs, pinkies hooked. Every time one of them began drifting, the other tugged her back
with a crook of the finger. Out, and back again. The effortless rhythm of salvation.
From a faraway place, Calla asked, “You know why Dad is afraid of water?”
“He’s not afraid. He just doesn’t like to swim. Like you.”
“That’s what he says. Because: can you imagine him admitting any weakness?”
“Guess not.” Vivi paused to concede the point. “Okay then, why is he afraid?”
“Mom told me. One of his relatives drowned in the river near their home. Or maybe it was the bath.”
“You can’t drown in a bath, Button.”
“Anyway, Dad’s family started thinking of it as a curse. No one was allowed to go near water after she died. They even moved away from the river, into the city, and as for Dad . . .”
Calla’s voice was fading. When Vivi turned to her, Calla had already disappeared. Vivi strained her fingers, searching for
her sister’s hot clasp, the revelations that were just out of reach. What else was she going to say? Vivi dove under, parsing
through the waves for Calla, but her hands met emptiness.
She was holding her breath. A burble, a press of pain. Just a bit longer. Her body could hold so much—the past, the present,
the unknowable spaces in between—so long as she kicked against the inexorable tug of the darkness beneath her.
When Vivi finally gasped up for air, reality descended like a star shower. The moment at the creek slipped away and she was
back on Lake Michigan, alone, dreaming along the seawall. She scooted back from the rocks.
“Viv? What are you doing out there?”
In the distance, a figure stood against the white light. Wide shoulders, a daredevil slouch to his stance. Vivi raised her
hand in greeting. She was shaken but determined not to show it. More and more, reality felt like a room she could slip in
and out of, its walls porous and suggestive.
Wayland jogged to her side. He wore a pair of loose sweatpants, a shirt that bore the logo of his filmmaking union. Once he
reached the wall, he shook his hair. Dark wings framed his features. Upturned eyes, a gift from his Chinese mother, and pale
skin from his Irish-Welsh-everything-else father.
“If it isn’t my former sister-in-law.”
“I prefer friend.” She smiled despite the awkwardness. With Wayland, happiness was habit.
“Is that what we are? Friends who avoid each other for a year?” But he was already pulling her in for a hug, rubbing his cheek
against her hair like a collie finding its favorite spot.
They settled next to each other in the grass. He stretched his legs in front of him and watched the runners panting on the paths in their sleek, neoprene gear.
“I’m sorry,” Vivi said. “For never answering your texts or calls.”
“I knew why.”
“Calla told me the divorce was final. Sorry for that too.”
“Why? It wasn’t your fault. We were never going to make it.” He took a long blade of grass between his fingers and tied it
into a bow, then placed it on Vivi’s knee.
“Why did she paint Clio?”
He sighed. “Now?”
“Please.”
“She found a video that I made.” He took out his phone. “Do you want to see it?”
Vivi hesitated for a moment, then nodded. The bow of grass blew from her knee.
The video was in black-and-white. There was no sound. It began with a cloudy haze sharpening into Vivi’s fourteen-year-old
face, young and a little startled, a crewneck hugging her thin torso. It was the first photo Wayland took of her, the same
portrait trapped within Clio. As soon as Vivi registered the image, the photograph transitioned into a new one. In the next, two gloved hands hung together
against the sky, thumbs hooked together. Fingers splayed like the wings of a bird, snow in the distance. Then, a shot of Vivi
in the midst of jumping off a stone pillar. Bent over a book on Wayland’s swinging bench, flicking him off with chipped fingernails
on the way to school. And later yet, at Rathmore, Vivi side-eyeing some pretentious senior’s joke at a house party; sleepily
dancing with a groomsman at Wayland and Calla’s wedding. The photos cut so quickly between one another that the impression
left was one of urgency and decline, like a rocket hurtling too swiftly into an abyss.
With each image, Vivi heard the faint ringing surrounding those lost moments, all those snatches of confessions and laughter
and arguments that defined their trio’s story.
The video ended. It couldn’t have been longer than thirty seconds. There was no title, no credits, only the rush of white finality. Wayland put the phone away.
“I don’t know why I made that goddamn video. I found a box of photos of you, all the ones I’d taken over the years, and I
wanted to do something with them. Calla thought that the video was evidence of how much I loved you. How she’d always be second
best.”
“That’s not true, though.”
He didn’t answer. Vivi intuited in a place deeper than knowledge what Calla must have feared. It was the same fear as hers.
That, taken alone, she wouldn’t be enough to make someone stay. Suddenly, Vivi felt a crushing anger toward Wayland.
“Was she right? Did you sleep with all those women, the ones she painted over in Enmeshment?”
Wayland swallowed and moved restlessly. Sitting up, laying back down. He was, at once, remorseful and defiant. She could see
him wrestling with which version of the story to give her.
“Our marriage wasn’t what you think. Neither Calla nor I were faithful. It wasn’t something we talked about. But I knew about