Kinder Than Solitude

17

“So,” Celia said the moment Ruyu entered the house. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing much.”

“Then who was this woman who died?”

“That,” Ruyu said, “is a long story.”

“Just as I thought, but the question is”—Celia paused and studied Ruyu’s face before handing her a clothes hanger for her raincoat; it was a drizzly morning, the fog dense, threatening to stay all day—“are you going to tell me the story? See, I knew something was up when you came over the other night. I asked Edwin, and he said he couldn’t tell. But you know how men are. Or you don’t know. In any case, they can’t see anything unless you point out to them where to look, and even then you can’t guarantee that they see what you want them to see.”

Edwin had indeed concealed part of his conversation with Ruyu from Celia, though for what reason? “Did you send him to check up on me again yesterday?” Ruyu asked.

“Yes, to look and to ask.”

Ruyu sighed. “You could’ve asked me without going to all that trouble.”

“You could’ve told me without my going to the trouble,” Celia said. “I didn’t want you to feel that I was intruding. On the other hand, I wanted to know what happened, and I thought it’d be best to have Edwin ask.”

“Why?”

“Because he’d be okay if you didn’t tell him anything,” Celia said. “And since you know he doesn’t care much, you might have chosen to tell him the truth — and I’m saying this not only about you but about everyone. Those who are lied to are the ones to whom truth matters, don’t you think?”

Celia, by simply being herself, was sheltered from doubt, and Ruyu admired Celia for that: anything concealed from her was done so because she cared too much. In life we have all met those like Celia, and sometimes we have befriended one or two, but never too many: if they are not the sole reason for the events around them, they at least have a part in everything that happens or does not happen. Their commitment to life is to be indispensable, a link between one thing and another; what they cannot connect to themselves — inevitably someone, something, will fail them by falling out of their range — will stop existing in their world. But was this a bad arrangement for Celia, or for those around her? Without Celia, Edwin, who had no tentacles of his own, would perhaps have had a less solid grasp on many things, though what did Ruyu know about Edwin’s marriage? What did she know about him while he had, at least for a few days, kept their conversation a secret?

The thought that at some moment she had been on his mind was alarming in itself. Ruyu’s ease with the couple relied on Edwin’s keeping an incurious distance and Celia’s having enough drama in her life for Ruyu to watch; as much as Celia enjoyed the attention, Ruyu enjoyed watching, and at moments did not stop herself from imagining, as all audiences do at one time or another, being on stage. Without difficulty, Ruyu could see herself in Celia’s position: at the hub of things, adding, expanding, until the bubble becomes the entire universe for its maker — a world as infinite as one’s ego will allow.

Ruyu did not regret not choosing that position. If she had ever felt anything close to passion, it was a passion of the obliterating kind: any connection made by another human being, by accident or by intention, had to be erased; the void she maintained around herself was her only meaningful possession.

Ruyu had thought Celia, oblivious, would be safe from that erasing. Unlike Shaoai, who had deemed it both her right and her responsibility to teach Ruyu how to feel; unlike Moran, to whom Ruyu’s happiness and unhappiness had taken on a burdensome weight; unlike Boyang and the men after him, who saw things in her that she did not care about — Celia did not mind Ruyu’s being an anomaly. Or she had not minded before today. Impatiently, waiting for an explanation, today’s Celia had dragged Ruyu off the spectator’s seat. “I didn’t think the dead woman was relevant to anything,” Ruyu said.

“But you’ve been unsettled.”

“Any death can do that,” Ruyu said. She unwound her scarf and asked if they could sit down. She could use a cup of coffee, Ruyu said, sending Celia into the kitchen ahead of her.

Was Celia right that Ruyu had not bothered to lie to Edwin because he did not matter to her? On the walk up, she had run into him at the bottom of the hill. He had stopped his car and rolled down the window. Would she like a ride to the house, he asked, and she said no, she would walk. He looked at the sky, as though disappointed by Ruyu’s decision to remain inconvenienced by the weather, so she added that she’d always liked to walk in the fog and rain. Why had she said that, Ruyu asked herself now: one does not talk about oneself without a motive. She liked the couple enough to have allowed some sort of permanency into her relationship with them, though Edwin — or Ruyu herself — had disturbed that balance, and in doing so had deprived her of what little luxury she had allowed herself in the Moorlands’ house: exemption from participating in life.

Ruyu watched Celia operate the shiny coffeemaker, which hissed professionally. “I’ve been thinking — I know this is sudden,” Ruyu said. “But what do you think of my going back to China?”

“Back to China? When? For how long?”

The thought of returning to Beijing — for what, Ruyu wondered, though that question could wait until later — had been on her mind since she had woken up this morning. “It’s only a preliminary idea,” Ruyu said.

“But why do you want to go to China now? Whom are you going to see there?”

A better question, Ruyu thought, was what she wanted to see. Over the years, she had given Celia some information about her history. With a vagueness that must have been taken as an unwillingness to stroll down memory lane, Ruyu had made Celia understand that she no longer had living parents in China; if she had friends or relatives, they were distant enough not to bind her to the place. “Not really anyone important,” Ruyu said.

“Is this trip prompted by this mysterious death that you’re not telling me about?”

One could never avoid having a history. Ruyu thought about how much truth she could give away without actually giving away anything. Such calculations had become second nature to her because she did not like to lie. Lying, like living, needs motives, however obtuse they may be. With Paul, she had had to make up stories, both about her parents’ deaths and about a childhood she’d never had: her parents had died in a traffic accident in Anhui Province, when a bus had missed a turn on a cliffside road and plunged into a river — a tragedy Ruyu had stolen from a newspaper article she’d read in college; her experience of being an only daughter she had borrowed from Moran, and a couple of childhood friends were modeled on Moran and Boyang — though naturally, Ruyu had told Paul, she had lost contact with them after so many years. What she could not produce as evidence — family pictures, snapshots of herself at different ages — she had explained as a natural and necessary loss resulting from emigration and a difficult divorce.

If Celia was right, the lies she had told Paul must have meant, somehow, that he had had meaning to Ruyu, at least more than the other men in her past. With her first husband, she had not needed to make up anything: he had known she was an orphan, which he had welcomed as a bonus because he would be free from in-laws; he had met her grandaunts — that is, he had met with their disapproval, though long before that, they had, without withdrawing their financial support of Ruyu in high school and college, made it clear to her that she had let them down. They had not questioned Ruyu about Shaoai’s case. What they had heard, they said, had been enough, though for them the unforgivable was not that Ruyu had stolen, but that the crime was motivated by the sinful thought of suicide; it was the latter that had made them shake their heads and say that she was, after all, not related to them by blood, and they had no way to understand her. That Ruyu had decided to marry at nineteen — no doubt another violation of their vision for her — they had accepted with resignation; to marry at all constituted a betrayal of them, though betrayal caused less damage than sin. What would be less redeemable: to take one’s own life, or to take another’s life? It occurred to Ruyu that she had never really known the answer. She turned to Celia. “What is more sinful in Catholicism — suicide or murder?”

“Where did that question come from?” Celia said. “Is it inspired by this woman’s death?”

“I don’t think it’s particularly this person, or her death. I suppose I’ve always been puzzled,” Ruyu said. “Well, let’s forget about it.”

“Let’s not, yet. Is this why you want to go back now, to find out if she was murdered or she killed herself?”

“No, it has nothing to do with her,” Ruyu said.

“Then why China? Why now?”

“It’s just a mood. It’s been quite a long time since I last saw the country.”

“When was your last visit?”

“I haven’t been back since coming to America.”

“That’s what I remembered you told me,” Celia said. “And how long ago was that?”

“I came in ’92.”

“What a shame!” Celia exclaimed. Ruyu wondered what the shame was, exactly — to be gone for so long, or to be gone for so long yet still not thoroughly gone.

Celia handed a mug to Ruyu, and they carried their coffee to the table. “Now, you must say something good about this coffee. Edwin roasted the beans himself, the first batch.”

“When did he start getting into coffee?”

“Only about two weeks ago.”

“What happened to beer making?” Ruyu asked. For the past two years, Edwin had been experimenting in the basement with his home-brewing kit; there were a couple of bootlegging tales about his granduncles he liked to tell at parties, and Ruyu was certain she was not the only one to have heard them more than once. She had wondered why no one ever told him not to repeat the tales, but perhaps others, kinder than herself, believed that having anything to say was better than having nothing to say.

“Going well,” Celia said, “though a man is always in need of new things. Or else he’ll feel stale. A man is not like a cat that you can leave to its own entertainment. You have to help him find things to do. Speaking of cats, where’s Scooter?”

“He was by the garage door when I came in.”

“I just warned him this morning not to bring another dead bird into the house, though I’d bet ten dollars he didn’t hear me. Sometimes I think my problem is that I’m outnumbered in this household,” Celia said with an exasperated glance at the framed family pictures on the sideboard — a look that could only belong to a contented woman. “Technically speaking, Scooter can’t be called a man anymore, but he’s in every sense your average male. And how they can make you talk all the time without hearing a word you say. If you decide to stay quiet just for one moment, they say, Mom, you didn’t tell me where my gym clothes were, or, You didn’t say the violin lesson was rescheduled. Or, like last night, Edwin said you looked terrible. I said, Oh, did she, and he said it surprised him that I hadn’t noticed your mood, or asked you more about your friend’s death. What friend, I said, and he said you told him yesterday that a friend in China died. He said he thought I had heard all about it, but wouldn’t I have told him if that had been the case?”

Ruyu sipped the coffee. It occurred to her that she would one day miss Celia’s company — or perhaps she had already begun to miss Celia, and the time sitting at this table, listening to Celia talk about her family trips and this or that complication with her sister and parents. Scenery that Ruyu had not seen with her own eyes she had seen through Celia’s; people Ruyu did not know — and did not mind not knowing — she had met in Celia’s tales. But all the same, the thought of leave-taking, once formed, pointed in one direction only; she had left plenty of people behind, and it did not bother her to add Celia and her family to that roster. Though Celia, the most unsuspicious one among them, gave Ruyu an odd feeling that she was burying something alive.

Celia observed Ruyu’s expression. “Is the coffee not so good?”

“It’s good.”

“You don’t look like you’re impressed.”

“You can’t rely on me for any judgment,” Ruyu said.

“That I already know,” Celia said and leaned closer, propping her head on her hand. “Seriously, is the dead woman an enemy of yours or something?”

Ruyu thought about it. “Not really. I don’t think I care enough about the world for anyone to be my enemy,” she said honestly.

Celia shuddered — or was it only Ruyu’s imagination? — and at once recovered. “But with her gone, are things going to be easier in China for you? Is that why you want to go back now?”

“What do you mean?”

Celia sat up abruptly, as if she could not contain her excitement. “So, this is my hypothesis — and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the most reasonable version of the story Edwin and I could come up with.”

“Whose story?”

“Yours. But before I start, you have to know I’m not the judgmental kind, so you don’t have to feel uncomfortable. For all I care, you could be anyone, or anything, and I would be your friend.”

Ruyu looked at Celia curiously. “For all I know, I’ve always been nobody and nothing.”

Celia ignored Ruyu’s words. “I’ve read in the newspapers that rich people and high-ranking officials in China keep their mistresses in California — have you heard of such a practice?” Celia said, looking into Ruyu’s eyes.

“Or New Jersey,” Ruyu said. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. But carry on.”

“You’re not uncomfortable where I’m going.”

“No.”

Celia nodded and said she was only making sure. “So my guess is that, however it happened, you met a married man when you were young — eighteen? nineteen? — and got yourself involved, but when things became complicated, he arranged for you to come here. And now, this woman — whoever she was, the wife most likely — died, and the hurdle is gone.”

“Did you and Edwin come up with this last night?”

“No, I always wondered, but Edwin never bought my theory until he saw you yesterday. I suppose what you said about the dead woman convinced him that I was right. Why, which part doesn’t make sense?”

“It all makes sense,” Ruyu said. “Except, how do you fit my two ex-husbands into the story?”

“Were you really married twice?”

“I see that you have started to question everything I’ve said.”

“We only have your word about the marriages.”

Ruyu sighed. “Why did you help me move if I looked so suspicious in the first place?”

“I didn’t know then!” Celia said. “But I wouldn’t have minded helping in any case. I thought you were only trying to move out. That arrangement with your former employer did look suspicious to me, though.”

“So how do you fit that part into your story?”

“That seems to make more sense than your marriages. I would say, unless you show me evidence, I prefer to believe that your marriages are not real.”

“Why? Do I look like the kind of woman who could only be a mistress?”

Celia laughed.

“No, I meant it as a serious question,” Ruyu said.

“What does a mistress look like?” Celia asked and studied Ruyu. “I don’t know, but I do think you look like someone who doesn’t know she deserves better.”

Ruyu wondered if part of her problem was that she could not imagine herself as a wife. Moran, for instance, always had that wifely look about her — she would never become anyone’s lover; she was born to be someone’s wife. “Carry on with your detective work. How do you explain the man in Twin Valley?”

“I thought the man in China stopped supporting you, so you needed to find someone else to support you, but Edwin said that the man might be a business partner of your man in China and only served as a guardian. But I would prefer that you’d moved on from the man in China — am I not closer than Edwin?”

“From the kept woman of a Chinese official to the kept woman of an American politician?”

“Is that what the man was, a politician?”

“He didn’t end up having a bright career in politics,” Ruyu said. “Though at one time, he seemed to think he would.”

“See, I was right! Is he someone we’ve heard of?”

Ruyu shook her head. There was no need to bring Eric’s name into the story.

“How did you meet him?”

“Who?”

“The failed politician. What’s his name?”

“John Doe,” Ruyu said. “I did a bit of bookkeeping for one of his businesses. And then he hired me as a housekeeper. No, Celia, you don’t have to sit there dying of curiosity. If you want to know more, ask.”

“What happened between you and him?”

“Nothing much. I suppose we tried to see if we could settle into each other’s lives, but it didn’t quite work out.”

“Why not?”

“Not enough love, I think.”

“On your side, or his?”

“On both sides,” Ruyu said. At least Eric had had the patience to put up with her for three years, though they had been the same three years he had gone through the legal battle for his divorce. Ruyu preferred to believe that he had offered her the cottage in the first place because he had needed convenience without complication. How he had chosen Ruyu — chosen wisely, both of them had later agreed — she had not asked; she had moved in because there had not been a better — or worse — place for her to be, then or ever. In a sense, they had enjoyed each other’s company, though something that had begun with a contract could only end within the terms, written or unwritten. Ruyu wondered now if either of them, at any moment, had been waiting for the other person to propose an amendment — though what difference would it have made? Neither had wanted to blunder, and, in the end, neither had been willing to give up his or her mildly sarcastic view of the relationship; it was as though they had been two business competitors who had admired each other, but had to laugh at themselves for that admiration, or else they would’ve embarrassed themselves. They had parted ways amiably, both agreeing not to stay in touch.

“So,” Ruyu said, and glanced at the clock. “That’s all about my former employer.”

“Did you … not love him because of the man in China?”

Ruyu smiled. “You really do believe there’s someone in China.”

“Why else …” Celia said, and then caught herself.

“Why else what?”

“Why else do you want to go back to China now?”

Ruyu studied Celia. “Is that what you were going to say before you stopped yourself?”

Celia sighed. “Why else do you not want to have a real life?”

Perhaps Celia’s version was better: a story of loyalty and betrayal, of scheming and innocence. For a moment, Ruyu could see herself in Celia’s — and Edwin’s — eyes: a life lived under the spell of a first encounter, if not a first love; years spent, or misspent, waiting for another woman to die. The romance and the tragedy would be perfect footnotes for her insubstantial life; without such drama and mystery, she would have been too commonplace. Yet how could she explain that being on her own — and not someone’s property — was the only thing she had wanted? Once upon a time, she had been her parents’ possession, however momentarily, and after that she had belonged to her grandaunts, in whose minds she had belonged more to their god than to them; all sorts of people had since tried to claim her, but to stay unclaimed was to be never disowned again.

“Hello,” Celia said. “Hellooo.”

Ruyu looked at the clock again and finished her coffee. “I don’t mean to interrupt our conversation, but I need to leave soon for the shop.”

“There’s still time,” Celia said. “I’ll drive you down. Now, don’t look so rattled. As your friends, we are genuinely concerned about you. That’s why we’re asking these questions.”

“I know,” Ruyu said.

“And however you feel at this moment, don’t rush into a decision,” Celia said, and when Ruyu did not seem to understand, Celia leaned closer. “Don’t go back to China.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you feel you deserve something better than what you’ve had? Why do you want to return to some bastard who has kept you in limbo for twenty years?”

Ruyu wondered if she should acquiesce to the story, take ownership of something that did not belong to her, so that when she vanished from their world, Celia and Edwin could go on imagining her living that heroic tale of love and stupidity. But stupidity was easier to live with than love, and if Celia and Edwin ever thought about her in the future, she would prefer not to have anyone connected to her. Perhaps she was more egotistic than she realized: she could not stand sharing even the space of someone’s imagination with another person. “Very wise advice, Celia, but my life has been much more boring than your version. There is no person in China as you thought,” Ruyu said. “I don’t have a family. I don’t travel. I don’t eat at restaurants. I don’t go to movies. There were two marriages, and both failed. And there is no one now, in this or another country. You may be tickled to know that I don’t have health insurance. What do you Americans call a person like me? A loser, no?”

“You don’t have health insurance?”

“I can’t afford it, Celia. Do you really believe selling chocolates and dog-sitting are my hobbies?”

“But you don’t look like you’re struggling,” Celia said. “I mean, financially.”

“So there must be someone secretly funneling money into my bank account?”

Celia looked painfully baffled. To be a mistress in hiding, Ruyu thought, was certainly to be somebody; her being nobody must be a disappointment for Celia.

“But why don’t you want to have a life?” Celia said after a moment. “For all I know, you could have many things if you wanted them.”

What if, Ruyu could not help thinking cruelly, she wanted Edwin? She stood up abruptly. “Seriously, we have to leave now — and thank you in advance for the ride, as I do need it.”

Celia was quiet as she backed the car out of the driveway. She must feel deceived, though people always cast Ruyu this or that way; it was not Ruyu’s fate to play the proffered part, and she saw no reason to apologize. In a lighter tone, she asked Celia about her upcoming trip — a Caribbean retreat with Edwin’s company, for which Celia had bemoaned her less-than-ideal skin tone and the loss of her perfect bikini body.

“Speaking of that,” Celia said, her grip on the steering wheel loosening a little. “You do remember that you’ve promised to take care of my children while we’re gone.”

“Are you worried that I’ll take off and leave you stranded at the last minute?”

“How would I know?” Celia said. “With all your talk about going back to China.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret so you don’t worry: I don’t even have a passport to travel on.”

“The more you tell me about yourself, the less I feel I know you. Who knows? You may even be a secret agent for North Korea.”

So rarely did Ruyu laugh that when she did now, Celia turned to look at her for a prolonged moment before returning her attention to the road. “Seriously, are you a Chinese citizen or American, or both?”

“American,” Ruyu said. “I can show you my naturalization papers if you want to see them.”

Celia sighed as she pulled into the small parking lot behind the shop. “The thing is,” she said, turning to look at Ruyu, “it feels odd now to think that we don’t know a lot about you.”

“You certainly know more about me than most people do. And the things you don’t know are not worth knowing,” Ruyu said, feeling all of a sudden melancholy. To have an identity — to be known — required one to possess an ego, yet so much more, too: a collection of people, a continuous narrative from one day to the next, a traceable track linking one place to another — all these had to be added to that ego for one to have any kind of identity. “Well, many thanks for the ride, and do tell Edwin I loved his coffee.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call Rebecca and tell her you don’t feel well?” Celia asked. “You look awful.”

“Maybe I’m coming down with something, but I should be fine.”

“If you need to talk more, you know I’m always around,” Celia said. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you didn’t really tell me the story of the dead woman.”

“Maybe another time?”

“In fact, why don’t you come to our Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Your parents will be here,” Ruyu said.

“The more reason for you to come. They’re harmless if there is another guest present. I think Edwin would be happy to have someone to distract them.”

Ruyu turned to look at Celia, feeling a strange sensation that this was the last time they would be seeing each other. Of course it would not be so, Ruyu thought, trying to shake off the fatalistic shadow. Normally she would have found an excuse to decline the invitation, but today, as if to prove to herself that there was no finality in anything, she said yes.

The thought of leaving, though, began to take a more definite shape. Ruyu saw little point in resisting, just as she had found it natural to answer an ad for a nanny position when she had needed a reason to withdraw from Eric’s life. The next day, she sent off an application for a passport. Flights between Beijing and San Francisco were booked — the only reason she purchased a round-trip ticket was that it was cheaper than a one-way ticket. The return date, which she had chosen randomly, offered her a sort of comfort, as if the decision to vacate her present life was reversible, though that illusion was easily overridden by the concreteness of the steps leading up to the exit: the acquisition of a passport that lawfully identified her; the stamping of her visa, which categorized her as a traveler in her home country; the assigning of a seat on the plane, one next to a window — nothing could be undone now.

The loose ends that she could not neatly tie up she had to accept as her debt, mostly to Celia, which would confirm her belief that those who mattered would be owed, just as they would be lied to. Ruyu could not give Rebecca advance notice of her resignation, but Rebecca would easily find someone else to install in the shop. The lease to the cottage would have to be broken, but Ruyu would leave an extra month’s rent, and that, along with her security deposit, should be enough compensation for her landlords, who were Celia’s friends, and who might not be in a hurry to rent the place out again. Various women for whom Ruyu did babysitting or pet-sitting would have to wait to hear the news from Celia, but none of them would consider Ruyu irreplaceable.

But Celia — and Edwin too — belonged to a different category; their curiosity toward her, like their kindness, Ruyu could not return with any curiosity or kindness of her own. When she saw them again it was at their Thanksgiving dinner, and Ruyu, without Celia’s prompting, took on the role as the audience to Celia’s parents, who talked at length about their other daughter, a high-powered attorney in Dallas. Jittery, fearful of any detail that could go wrong with the dinner, Celia looked exhausted when it was time for her parents to withdraw to the guest room. The older couple, having artfully praised everything about the evening, nevertheless managed to leave a critical imprint before turning in for the night: Jake, who had just turned sixteen and obtained a driver’s license, was planning to leave the house before midnight and participate in the Black Friday shopping craze with a few friends; Celia’s mother good-humoredly commented, reaching for the rail on the staircase, that she wondered if such an adventure would be of any use to Jake’s getting into Stanford, and Celia’s father chuckled before placing a hand on his wife’s elbow and guiding her upstairs.

“Touché,” Edwin said when the older couple was out of hearing.

Celia moaned and poured herself a drink before asking Edwin if he needed one, too, and he said yes at once. He turned to Ruyu and said she should join them, even though he knew Ruyu never touched alcohol.

She declined the offer and said it was time for her to go. Edwin placed the drink on the counter. “I’ll drive you back,” he said.

Ruyu said no, a little too harshly, so she tried to soften the tone by adding that he should relax and have a drink with Celia. If he found Ruyu’s voice unnatural, he did not show it. Celia, having spent much of the evening watching her parents’ every move, was in a daze, ready to be left alone perhaps, even though being left alone was the last thing she wanted from life.

“Think of the Caribbean next week as your reward,” Ruyu said at the door, with copies of the keys to the house and Celia’s car in her purse. The mention of their upcoming trip brought a whiff of tropical air to the cold, drizzly night. The couple looked momentarily cheered up, as though it was only their husks that had to endure a few more days of the visiting parents.

Celia said she would leave detailed instructions about the boys’ schedules, and Edwin promised to send pictures. Ruyu, wishing them a fun time and giving each of them a good-bye hug, felt as though she were a mother feigning a smile, lest her children detect any abnormality. In first grade, she had seen a film at school — the first film of her life, as her grandaunts had not believed in the merit of going to the movies — about how life had been bad before the Communist era. At the end of the film, a mother, who had lost her job in a fabric factory and who had no hope left, gave her last few coppers to her two young children. She told them to buy a bun to share, and when they returned, they found that she had drowned herself in the river.

On the way back to her cottage, looking through unpulled curtains at other Thanksgiving dinners that were still lingering, Ruyu felt an urge to go back, to say a proper farewell to Celia and Edwin. Her flight to Beijing, on the same day as their flight back home, would be preparing to take off as they were landing at SFO.

But what could she say to the couple? Be brave, and be happy, you orphans with parents, you parents to future orphans.