Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
Aside from her parents, Joan did not inform anyone of her divorce.
She hated to be the subject of gossip—and oh, how people would gossip!
She and Milton were the first Chinese couple she knew of to actually divorce, in a community where even a broken engagement could fuel speculation for months.
Joan hoped withholding comment would be her best defense against rumors; deprived of oxygen, the topic would naturally wither.
Milton, however, was not so discreet, and quickly and widely aired his side of the story.
Joan realized too late the tactical advantage she’d allowed.
Soon those whom Joan had believed her friends began to avoid her on campus; she was still invited to the larger Chinese gatherings, but Milton attended nearly all of them.
Milton was also far better at working a crowd than Joan—a storyteller, a presence, beleaguered at the moment, sure—but still a winner, always a winner, and most of the Stanford Chinese Student Union, as it turned out, preferred to stick with winners.
Only Kailie stayed loyal, meeting Joan when she could.
They had lunch one afternoon at Lotus Garden, when Joan was on break, and Kailie shared her news.
“I’m four months along,” she said. “I have no idea what to do with a baby.”
“I’ll help,” Joan promised. “I can babysit.”
“You’re such a good friend,” Kailie said.
But Joan could see how Kailie’s hand hesitated over the minuscule slope of her stomach; Kailie’s husband, Anthony, was friends with Milton.
The next time Joan asked Kailie to dinner, Kailie paused to speak with Anthony, her voice muffled as if a palm were over the phone.
When Kailie returned, she asked for a rain check. “I’m so tired these days.”
Of course, Joan said. She understood. Joan had some pride—she tried to keep her voice from trembling.
Joan’s world, already small, shrank to school and work. She’d returned to her original lodgings in Palo Alto, though Mrs. Mahoney neglected to decrease Joan’s chores—either Iris had forgotten or was simply reneging on her word.
Each morning, as she had before, Joan prepared Iris’s breakfast and lunch.
After school she manned the hostess stand at Lotus Garden before returning home.
Saturdays, Joan worked an all-day shift; on Sundays, she was off, as Sam Wu, the owner of Lotus Garden, closed the restaurant each week for what he called the “Sabbath” (but was in fact an illegal card game held in the banquet rooms).
Before, these Sundays had not been a problem.
Joan had used the time to run errands, take the bus to Chinatown, and once she’d met Milton, well—Sundays were for him.
But now Sundays represented hours of torpor, of endless time used poorly.
Of the minutes crawling as she wandered the discount grocer and couples and families whizzed past, everyone already grouped off, assured of their place.
In short: Joan was lonely.
Outside the main entrance of Hoover Library was a cork bulletin board edged in steel.
This board had been useful to Joan over the years: it was how she’d discovered the Chinese Student Union and her room at Mrs. Mahoney’s.
Departing the library one afternoon, Joan stopped and looked at the board; her gaze lingered on the bottom corner, which advertised community classes.
Bike repair and safety course , she read. Learn Spanish in three months. Ping-pong. Beginners’ cooking. $20. $10. Free. Free.
She started small: a public speaking course, dropped when she learned she’d be required to make a speech in the style of Abraham Lincoln.
Then a glass workshop, in which she made a ceiling lamp.
There was no space to hang the lamp in the attic, so it sat in a padded box in the corner.
Next Joan enrolled in a painting course.
For her first project, she painted herself.
At the end of the first week, the instructor approached Joan. Charisma had long white hair that she kept in a bun, and she wore a silver chain with a dangling amethyst that Joan liked to look at. Charisma stood behind Joan and examined her portrait.
“Why are you older in this? Are you portraying your future self?”
Joan looked at the painting. She did appear old, she realized—she had painted herself with short permed hair, which resembled her mother’s, and wearing a long floral dress.
Joan had not worn this dress since she’d left Taiwan.
It had once been her “fancy” dress, a hand-me-down from her beautiful aunt.
“I don’t know,” Joan said. “I suppose I didn’t realize.” She tried to keep her voice from wobbling. She had paid twenty-six dollars for the course, and now all she had was a painting in which she looked old.
“You can change it,” Charisma said. “This needn’t be final. You can add some length to the hair. And adjustments can be made to the clothing.” Joan made some tentative strokes with the brush.
“And the background. The yellow, it’s a harsh contrast. That is, if there isn’t any cultural significance to the color yellow,” Charisma added hastily.
On weekdays, Charisma was a graduate student at Berkeley; she had enrolled last semester in one of the country’s first Asian studies courses.
“Or you could simply like the color yellow! I hear describing your favorite color is like describing your favorite flavor of ice cream! Could you describe vanilla? It’s hard, isn’t it? ”
Joan didn’t like vanilla, or ice cream in general; she began to boldly paint over the background.
The greens and taupes she chose cooled the portrait, as did the flowing black hair she allowed to curve into waves at the bottom (her own hair was stick-straight).
After Joan finished the portrait, she hung it on the attic wall, where it was of comfort—the painting was as real as could be, a marker of her time so far on earth.
Were she to disappear tomorrow, Joan imagined Mrs. Mahoney would just leave it on display for the next tenant.
After the painting class, Joan enrolled in a small-business course.
She would have liked to continue in the arts but was running out of storage.
Also, there was the not negligible issue that art courses cost money, and Joan was in a financial position where she tried not to part with money unless necessary.
In fact, she not only wanted to spend less, she also wished to earn more—it was always good to have money, she was beginning to understand.
While she did not miss Milton, she did miss certain aspects of him, specifically the use of his VW Rabbit.
Aside from the usual conveniences, Joan had felt safer with a car.
Lotus Garden was located in an old strip mall that was decent by day, but the nights could be treacherous.
After dinner shifts, one of the bus boys usually walked Joan to her bike, but Hugo and Quan weren’t always available.
Twice there’d been strange men who appeared as she pedaled around the corner.
“You bitch,” one screamed last week after Joan failed to stop at his command. “You goddamn sneaky bitch!”
The business course was free, run by a national nonprofit out of a classroom in the biology building.
Inside, next to enlarged prints of the human heart, students proposed jewelry stores and home repair businesses.
The volunteer mentors, three men, gave feedback and taught them to draft business plans.
Joan did not have a business idea but enjoyed the classes.
Participation was voluntary, so she could simply observe.
A fidgety woman with short curled hair wanted to open a dog grooming shop—Joan remembered her because she looked like a poodle.
There was an aspiring carpenter who crafted beautiful end tables; Joan appreciated him because of his calm, monklike air (Devin was usually on mushrooms).
After class, Joan would buy a cup of coffee and take it outside to a group of benches in a small grove.
There was a man who set up a blanket in front of the grove each Sunday, known locally as the Screamer.
While she sipped her coffee, Joan would listen to the Screamer rave about Communists, chemicals in the water, the aliens at Area 51; he especially hated groups of young men and would direct his raving at any who crossed his path.
“Virgins, oh, check out this pack of virgins !” he would yell, pounding a drum.
Joan was interested in the Screamer, whose ravings she found a little too observant for a presumed madman.
She’d heard that on the weekdays he had a job, a regular office position where he filed papers and spoke politely to others.
If the rumor were correct, Joan wondered which the Screamer considered the true heart of himself: the office worker Monday through Friday, or the man who shouted on weekends.
After a few weeks Joan became aware of a man who watched the Screamer at the same time she did.
He sat on the opposite bench and was thin and tall, with a sharp nose and a shock of gray-brown hair.
As the weather had cooled, he almost always wore a navy coat.
It was the coat Joan noticed first; the material was thick and beautiful.