Lost in Translation

4

Alice hadn’t been able to find Spencer-he wasn’t in his room, or if he was, he didn’t answer the door-so she wrote the address of the restaurant out in Chinese and slipped a note under the door suggesting he show it to a cabdriver and meet her there.

Now she sat at their table in a side room, off the middle courtyard. The clean, tiny room was exquisite with the beauty of old China. High ceilings were crossed with intricately painted beams. The floors were antique tile. Doors and windows, open now to the breeze, were framed with scrolling woodwork and fitted with etched panes of glass: each pane depicting mythical beasts, or figures from legends, or scenes from famous Chinese novels. Outside she could see waiters bearing dishes to and from the many private dining rooms which ringed the courtyard. The summer night sounds of clinking dishes, laughter, and conversations swelled all around.

She liked coming to this Sichuan restaurant because it was housed in an historic old mansion, the former home of the warlord Yuan Shikai. He had controlled Peking for only a brief time-between the fall of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the ill-fated Republic-but he had certainly lived well, Alice thought. The mansion was right in the heart of the city, only a few blocks from Tiananmen, but like all old Chinese si-he yuan it was a timeless island of peace and removal. All the rooms faced inward, to the trees or ponds or rockeries in the yards. They were kept clean and perfect, even though the streets outside might be filthy. Often when she was in old Chinese houses, Alice reflected on the way in which the colloquial term foreigners had once used for the Forbidden City- the Great Within-so perfectly summarized the domestic sensibility of feudal China. Actually she knew that in old Chinese the Great Within, the Danei, referred to the part of the Forbidden City which housed the administration for eunuchs. The Danei. But foreigners found the metaphor so apt, so completely aligned with their image of the Chinese mind, that they adopted it to refer to the Forbidden City as a whole. Still today it rang true to Alice-and she could never look at the high-walled, mysterious palace complex without thinking of the words. The Great Within.

"There you are," said Spencer, stepping over the wooden doorsill. "Sorry."

"No problem," she answered. "Here." She began serving him the spicy dried tofu, shredded jellyfish, fried peanuts, and hot pickled cabbage that had been waiting on the table. Until he arrived she had not wanted to touch these leng-pan, cold dishes, but now she took some for her own plate and started eating.

He sank into his seat.

She looked up, chewing, and realized he was just staring at the table. "Something wrong?"

"I didn’t get the money," he blurted.

She finished chewing, put her chopsticks down. She took her napkin up off her lap and dabbed at her mouth, replaced it. "What did you say?"

"I didn’t get the grant. They turned me down."

She sat silent for a minute, then picked up the teapot. "Here." She poured. "Better drink some tea."

He looked at the cup as if he’d never seen anything like it before, and finally picked it up and drank from it. Then he smiled the soft, lopsided smile of someone who knows all about being hurt, who’s been hurt before and who knows this won’t be the last time either.

"So what are you going to do?"

"I’m going ahead."

"Be serious."

"I am serious. I can’t go back now. This is my chance to make something of myself."

She drew her brows together, trying to sort out this logic.

"I just have to figure out where to get the money."

"It’s going to be more than you think. You have to pay for these two extra guys now. And the vice director is sure to pile on a lot of fees and charges."

"He is?"

She shrugged. "I’m sure he wouldn’t have granted the permits unless he thought it’d be profitable."

"Hmm." He ran his hands through his pale hair and looked at his plate. "This any good?"

"Very. Try some."

He tasted the jellyfish. "Hey, you’re right. Alice, listen. I have a great project here. If I find Peking Man, it’ll transform the field. It’ll answer some huge questions. I can’t let the whole thing go just because the people back in Washington don’t understand it-can I?"

"I guess not."

"Right."

"Teilhard wouldn’t."

"What?" He looked at her.

"Teilhard wouldn’t let this go. Think about it. He had this vision of evolution-he saw it, saw the whole design, the spiral of life from the most primitive to the highest levels of development. He saw it, and he got the fossils to prove it. But his Jesuit order said no, no way. Littera scripta manet, Holy doctrine. So they exiled him to China. They forbade him to publish. But did he stop studying it and writing about it? No!"

"And he wrote books, and put them away, and then after he died they were read by millions of people."

"Exactly."

He thought about this. "So what was it, after all, that the Church objected to so much? What made them exile him?"

"Original sin. The Fall. His vision of man’s development didn’t jibe with the Adam-and-Eve myth-the idea that all humans are born soiled, sinners, and need to be redeemed. The Jesuits ordered Teilhard to sign a statement explicitly endorsing original sin. He refused. So they sent him to China."

"It sounds so insane," Spencer said. "The idea that we’re born with guilt."

"I don’t know," she said, uncomfortably aware of her own burden of shame. "Maybe some people still believe it."

"Well, he saw the truth-and he had the courage to be himself. I’ve got to have the same courage, Alice. I have to go ahead."

"But you don’t have the money."

"Look." He leaned across the table. "I think I can scrape up enough for the out-of-pocket. I’m not sure, but I think I can. What I want to ask you is this. Would you consider deferring your fee? It’s not like I wouldn’t pay you. I would pay you"-he swallowed-"I would pay you just as soon as I could."

She looked at the table, dismayed. I should back out, she thought. It’s his problem. Not mine.

"Listen," he rushed on. "Don’t answer me right now. Okay? Think about it. Please. Take your time."

She found herself remembering the things Teilhard had written-the carefully composed thoughts in his books and the more spontaneous lines in his letters to Lucile: I don’t believefundamentally in anything but in the awakening of spirit, hope,and freedom. And for some reason she saw, flitting across her mind, the profoundly reflective face of the Chinese archaeologist, Dr. Lin. His eyes, aware. His hands holding her name card, turning it over and over.

"Okay," she said. "I’ll think about it."

A waiter stepped over the doorsill and placed three dishes on the table. "Gan bian niu rou si," he declaimed. "Yu xiangqiezi. Siji dou."

"Dry-cooked shredded beef," Alice said quietly. "Eggplant in garlic sauce. Four-season beans."

"I can’t do this without you, you know."

She sighed. "I know."

"Here. I want to give you this. I copied it." He opened his notebook and removed a small square of paper with the pictograph traced on it, the disembodied monkey-head that looked like a sun. "I don’t know what it means yet, but-keep it with you. Ask people about it. Maybe you’ll run into someone who’s seen it before."

"Okay," she said, sliding it into her jeans pocket. "But I don’t know if I’ll be going with you. I mean, if you can’t pay me…"

"I know." He raised his hands to stop her going further. "I know. Just think about it. All right?"

They went together to the Bank of China counter in the hotel.

"Dr. Spencer wishes to draw cash advances on all these credit cards." She handed the three cards across the shiny new marble counter.

"In what amount?" The clerk had one hand on a computer keypad, the other on an abacus.

"How much?" she asked him in English.

"To the limit," he whispered back.

He watched her convey this in Chinese. It seemed effortless for her, all the strange singing syllables.

She leaned close to him again. "Altogether, she says there’s eighty-two hundred dollars available."

"What? I thought I had more. Ask her if she’s sure."

The woman shrugged, touched something on her keyboard, and the computer spit out a little slip of white paper. She passed it across the counter.

"Shit," Spencer said softly, studying his balance.

The woman let out a stream of Mandarin.

"You want all the eighty-two hundred?" Alice translated.

He chewed his lip.

Alice raised her eyebrows, waiting.

"What about you?" he said. "Are you coming with me?"

"I don’t know yet." She closed her face off, not wanting to commit either way. The truth was, she found herself wanting to go. Lucile had taken chances. So had Teilhard. Breakingsome respected boundaries means a torrent of new life, -then I feelsafer and stronger… "I haven’t decided," she said.

"Okay," he said, "keep thinking. Tell her"-he nodded toward the clerk-"tell her I want all of it."

She took a bus up to the quiet, leafy neighborhood where Bruce Kaplan lived and knocked on the round wooden gate. His old Ayi, gap toothed and steel haired, exchanged pleasantries with Alice as she led her over a succession of doorsills, under the clicking boughs of ailanthus, past wood-and-glass-walled si-he courtyard rooms that Alice knew had been closed and curtained for many years, back to the inner court. When she saw Bruce she ignored the Chinese conventions she knew he now followed-the protracted interchange of dispositions- and in a rush poured out the story of Adam Spencer and Peking Man. "I don’t know, Bruce. Should I go?"

"Bruce." He tried to form the English word with his mouth, smiled his moonlike smile, and lapsed into Chinese. "The world calls me Guan Bai now, you know. And I find I am no longer able to speak English-even with you. It dries up in my mouth."

"Chinese, then. Eh, I forgot. But hasn’t my memory long been pitiable? This letter from your mother." Alice reached into her purse and withdrew the letter she’d picked up at the American Express office. "Do you still read English or not? I could translate."

"Just leave it here." He lifted a hand toward a teakwood table, on which his Ayi had just placed a pot of tea.

Alice examined him compassionately. Bruce Kaplan- Guan Bai-lived in another world. Whenever Alice visited him she always found him seated in this same spot, under this plum tree; only the leaves changed with the seasons, and his clothing changed from the lumpish, thickly padded robes of winter to the thin, loose silks of summer. Now his hand played over the book he’d been reading, Mengzi, the Confucian masterpiece of Mencius. Written more than two thousand years ago. She checked the characters on the book’s cover. Archaic. Of course.

Bruce was far down the road, farther than she’d realized.

"What are the opinions of your other friends?" he asked her.

"Those I know in Beijing now are few."

"Is it so? What about Tom and Maureen, the journalists? And that German diplomat-Otto, wasn’t it?"

She shrugged.

"They’ve moved away?"

"No, they’re here. Things change." She felt she could not really explain to Bruce, who led the secluded life of a Chinese scholar, how her friends had grown up. How their concerns were different: the hardships of bringing up children in China, the struggle to find good Ayis, the schools, the apartments, the price of imported milk. And like a barb in the center of it all the fact that she herself was single, and over thirty; an almost unmentionable creature in China. The expatriates, like the Chinese, seemed almost not to know what to make of her now. In the States, not marrying might have been acceptable. Here it was an embarrassment. She couldn’t deal with her old friends. She stopped calling them.

"It would be interesting for you to see northwestern China," Guan Bai offered.

"That’s so."

He poured tea out of the ancient brown Yixing pot. A real one. "And what about this American archaeologist? Is he interesting?"

"Yes. Hapless in a way-but interesting."

"Not someone with whom you could be close."

"No."

"Why? Because he’s American?"

"Partly. You know I am not an American, not anymore, not really."

"I used to think that of myself," he said wistfully. "Now I’m not so sure. But the archaeologist-he’s not someone you could be interested in."

She shook her head. "No. Definitely-no. But"-she brightened-"I have been reading these last few days about a mesmerizing love affair that took place here, in Beijing, sixty years ago."

He hoisted his brows, amused.

"Between two people who agreed never to become lovers. The French priest Teilhard de Chardin and the American sculptress Lucile Swan."

"Ah, the philosopher. He lived here in the city, didn’t he? "

"Yes. Loved this woman. Really loved her. And she loved him. So she gave up the physical part, buying into this idea that they’d reach something higher. She went with him, you know?" God, Alice thought as she said it, what commitment.

"And did they reach something higher through this love? Or was it only his way of asking for her on his terms?"

Alice smiled, enjoying his intelligence. "Wo bu zhidao, " I don’t know.

"Was she happy about it?"

"Oh, no," Alice said promptly. "She wasn’t."

"Would you be happy in that arrangement?"

"Of course not." She bristled. "I’d go crazy."

He lifted his tiny brown sand-textured cup and looked at it lovingly. "I see. Yet I wonder whether Lucile Swan wouldn’t go crazy trying to live life the way you do. Ai-li, many are the years we’ve been friends. It is curious, is it not? The myriad eddies and whirlpools in the river along the way."

She waited at Mrs. Meng’s door, clutching half a Yunnan ham wrapped in brown paper.

No answer. She pressed her ear to the door. Voices within. She tapped once more. This time, footsteps. Laughter. A male voice gaining.

Fumbling, the doorknob, creaking open.

Jian.

His long oval face froze, the color running out of it.

Ah, she thought helplessly, it’s you.

In the next instant she saw how he’d aged in the couple of years since she’d last seen him. His skin showed the soon-to-crackle veneer of Chinese middle age and his eyes revealed a tired urbanity-the story of pain he’d endured and then given along to others.

He must hate me, she thought.

But hate was not his first feeling. "Ai-li," he whispered.

"Jian."

"Hao chang shijian, " Long time. A grin tugged at his rice-grain-shaped face. "Still beautiful."

She felt the pull to him, the pull they had always felt together. But she could also feel the other anchor, the one that dropped straight down into her private well of failure and regret.

He met her gaze, and she felt him remembering everything. His eyes hardened. "Yes. But what are you doing here?"

"I came to see your mother."

"My mother?" His composure faltered.

"I visit her often."

He looked at Meng Shaowen for confirmation. Then back, suspicious, angry. "How dare you come here?"

"Jian, please, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. But-I loved you."

"Don’t use such words," he said softly, repulsed now by her use of the word ai, love. Americans always used that word so freely. At first, with Alice, he had found such liberty exciting. Now he knew better.

Alice felt lost in him, staring at him, remembering what had happened nine years before.

She had written that she was in love with a Chinese intellectual, talking about marriage. Horace replied at once, by cable, instructing her to meet him in Hong Kong three days later. The ticket was prepaid, the room reserved. He had not booked one of the fantastically expensive hotels-not the Peninsula, not the Mandarin-but the Holiday Inn, Kowloon. Just to remind her who filled her rice bowl.

So she had flown to Hong Kong, checked in, taken the elevator up to her room. She changed her blouse, adjusted her jeans, and studied herself in the mirror. Why did she look so girlish and frightened? She should be strong, assured. She was a grown woman. Her father had no right to tell her what to do.

But he was going to try-that was obvious. He hadn’t come all the way over here to say, "Congratulations, honey: I’m happy for you." Alice steeled herself.

Jian had offered to come with her. She had said no. "First I have to see him alone. When he’s used to the idea, when he accepts it, then we’ll meet him together."

"What could he find so difficult to accept?" Jian had asked her, eyes narrow, not understanding.

"You’re Chinese!"

He shook his head. "But I am the one who should be worried about this. I am the one who should hope for you to be accepted. I am Chinese. You are-I’m sorry to say it-a Westerner."

She sighed. "My father sees things differently."

"And you?" The faintest edge seeped into his voice.

"What?"

"Do you see things as your father does? Does his mind live within yours?"

"No! No, no, no."

"Yet you don’t want me to come with you."

"No," she said heavily. "I don’t. I have to face him by myself."

He had looked at her for a long time, and then had finally nodded his agreement. And she was here, without Jian. The way she’d wanted it to be.

I don’t have to listen to my father, she thought now in Hong Kong, gazing into the hotel mirror. If he tries to turn me against Jian I’ll just leave, just turn around and walk out and let him go back to America…

She walked into the hotel restaurant, heart quickening. There he was, Horace, rising to his feet in slacks and an open sport jacket. He looked older. She put her arms around him, tentative at first. Then she felt the flash of warmth and gladness -through all the trepidation it was still good to see him-and hugged him a little harder.

He hugged her back. "Thanks for coming, Alice."

"You came the longest way."

"Well, I had to talk to you. This is a very big decision."

They took their chairs and she blinked, trying to adjust to the buzzing brightness of the Hong Kong restaurant. It looked so alien to her, everything from the packets of sugar in the metal holder to the ketchup bottles and the garish yellow light globes overhead. And Horace. He sat in his loafers like an affluent tourist, legs crossed, American. Am I from him? she thought. Am I really? She sighed. "I know marriage is a big decision."

Then the waitress was there, and Alice asked for coffee in passable Cantonese, pinning the tones-so different from those in Mandarin-a little too tightly to sound truly colloquial.

He listened. "That’s Chinese?"

"Cantonese," she said. "A different dialect than the one I speak-"

He waved the concept away with a patronizing smile. "They’re all the same. All sound the same."

She stared. "They’re not, I assure you."

He glanced at the ceiling, pulled his mouth to one side in a so-what expression. "Listen, sweetheart. I came over here because I was so shocked when I got your letter. You’re a grown-up woman. You also happen to be beautiful, intelligent, and worldly-but there’s a lot you don’t know about life. Obviously. So we need to talk about this marriage."

"There’s nothing to talk about," she said, swallowing back the pounding in her throat. "Jian is a wonderful man. He’s the kind of person any father would want his daughter to marry! He’s getting his Ph.D. in history-Chinese history. He comes from a brilliant family. And our children would have dual citizenship, when they grew up they could choose-"

"Children!" Horace’s voice shook. "Children!"

"Of course, children. I’m twenty-seven, Horace."

"That’s still young! Not that I don’t want grandchildren. Of course I do! Nothing would make me happier. But not like this!"

"You mean not Chinese. Right?" She spit her words out, the anger starting. "Is that what you mean?"

"People should stick to their own kind!" he shot back.

"Their own kind?"

"Yes. Race, creed, and color." He slapped his palm on the table. "Their own kind."

Conversations around them halted. People were staring.

Alice narrowed her eyes. "That is the worst kind of shallow, thoughtless prejudice-"

"No! It’s common sense. To marry a fellow like this-it’s like getting a tattoo. It’s exciting. At first it looks great. But you have to live with the damn thing for the rest of your life!"

She lifted her lip in a show of disbelief. "You are comparing Jian to a tattoo?"

"Alice! You know what I’m saying." He leaned forward. "You want me to be blunt? Very well. Don’t marry this man. If you do you’ll ruin your life."

The nerve! As if she had to ruin her own life. He’d already done it for her.

"I mean it, Alice."

"Listen. It’s my life, not yours. Anyway, who says this would be such a mistake? You? Your racist cronies? What about me? Doesn’t it matter at all what I want?"

"And what exactly do you want?"

She marshaled herself. "I want to settle down. I want to marry Jian. He’s a good man. We could be happy together. I could have someone, finally. I could have a family."

"You do have a family! Me."

"Horace-"

"And you’re my little girl, and I love you-why else would I fly all around the world to stop you making a mistake like this? Unless I loved you? Why else, Alice? Come on."

Mad as she was, something about what he said and the way he said it tugged at her. Of course she wanted his approval, of course; she wanted it terribly. She hated the idea of having to choose between a husband and a father. So if not approval, at least neutrality…

He sensed her wavering and pushed on. "We’re a family, Alice. I look out for you. I’m the only person you’ve ever known who’s cared for you, consistently. That’s why you could never marry a man without my blessing. Right? Because I’m part of you and you’re part of me."

"I’m not part of you. I have my own life."

He made a dismissive gesture. "You can’t even finance your own life! Speaking of which, can this man support you? I doubt it. How much money does he make?"

Now her eyes burned. "It doesn’t matter how much money he makes."

"Well. It’s not as if I can keep sending you money forever."

"Why do you have to make it about money!"

"I don’t," he said instantly. "I just want my little girl to be happy. Be happy and find the right man. And you will, Alice. If you’ll just come back to the States and look."

"This is where I live. This is where I want to find a man."

"I thought you already had. Find a man! Find a man! Maybe you don’t even love this man-what’s his name?- Jian?"

"I do love him! I told you that."

"No, you didn’t."

"Well, I do."

"I’m not convinced." He looked at her hard.

"How dare you!" She felt herself flaring, anger and discomfort all mixed up because in that unerring way of his he’d gone right to her weak point. Did she truly love Jian? She did, of course she did. He was the best, most appropriate Chinese man she’d ever met. But at her core she still didn’t feel they were completely connected. How could Horace know? It wasn’t something she even acknowledged to herself, consciously. "Don’t tell me what I feel."

"Then you tell me. What do you feel?"

"I feel that I love him and I want to marry him!" Inside, she knew it was not a clear certainty. It was messy, ambivalent, a hot-wire confusion of needs, desires, and ideals for the future. Do I love Jian? she thought desperately. Have I ever loved anyone?

"Alice." He was asking for her attention.

She looked up. Tears stood in his eyes. When was the last time Horace had cried? Ages. Years.

"I just want you to be happy," he was saying, quietly now, with feeling.

"Then don’t interfere! Let me marry him."

"Are you in love with him?"

"Yes, I told you-"

"No. Are you?"

"Horace-"

"Are you?"

She groaned and covered her eyes.

"I think that’s an answer."

"Stop it!" She was crying now. "It’s wrong for you to do this. You can’t force me!"

"Force you?" He looked at her hard, fully in control. "Of course I wouldn’t force you. I would never force you."

"But you-"

"Oh, no, sweetheart. I had to say what I’ve said, but you are a grown woman. You’ll have to choose for yourself. Here. When I got your letter I took all these out of the safe deposit." He removed a folder from his briefcase and reached into it.

Her eyes grew wide.

As she watched he slapped down her birth certificate, photos of herself as a child, alone, with Horace, as a baby with her mother.

"Take these, if you marry him. Leave this Mannegan family, this family of you and me. You want to be Chinese? Go ahead. Be Chinese. But you won’t be my daughter any longer."

She still remembered how, without anger now, without sharpness, but with infinite sadness and his eyes still brimming, he had clicked the briefcase shut, risen, and walked from the restaurant. As if it were not some personal, vengeful choice of his own but inescapable natural forces which drove him to do what he did.

Now, standing in the doorway of the Meng apartment, she suddenly remembered what she was holding. She thrust the grease-spotted, paper-wrapped ham into the Chinese man’s arms. "Jian," her voice came cracking out, "if I could say how sorry I-"

"Zenmole?" What is it? sang a pleasant female voice from the cooking area at the rear of the apartment. A woman in her twenties with a plump, tight-porcelain face sauntered out, baby riding her hip. Alice stared, feeling something die inside her. She knew about Jian’s wife, of course she knew, but she hadn’t seen Jian face to face since his marriage and she’d never seen the bride. Now here she was. With their baby. "Shui-a?" the young woman asked, glancing to Mother Meng, Who is this?

"A family friend," the old lady murmured.

"Jian?" the wife asked.

"Shi, " he clipped. It’s so.

Alice saw the young woman look openly at her, innocent of their whole situation. There must be a million things about him you don’t know, Alice thought in a brief, violent burst of satisfaction.

"Ta jiu yao likai-le," Jian added crossly, She’s about to leave.

Alice threw a desperate glance to Meng Shaowen. Mother Meng? she begged with her eyes. Must I go?

Mrs. Meng nodded once, a bowing of grass in front of wind. Jian was married to someone else now. Alice did not belong.

Jian stepped close to Alice. "Alice." He spoke in English, English she’d taught him during their year together. "You should not have come here. There’s no more to say about what happened. I understand now. You could not commit to me."

"Neither could you, to me."

"Shenmo?" What?

"It wasn’t all me. It was you too. Wasn’t it? You didn’t love me quan xin, quan yi. If you had you would have said: Forget your father. Marry me anyway. And I would have. But you didn’t."

He tightened his mouth, unwilling to respond.

I knew it, she thought, and the hurt blazed over her. Hurt and all its ripples of revelation. "Jian. You couldn’t bring your true self to me any more than I could bring mine to you."

"Naturally. You’re American. You’re white."

"Oh, come on, Jian-"

"Guoqu-de shi jiu rang ta guoqu-ba, " he retorted, reverting to Chinese. Let the past go.

She felt her cheeks reddening.

"Jian?" the wife queried.

"Anyway," he went on, ignoring his wife. "I have responsibilities to my ancestors. Now"-he motioned with his eyes to his Chinese baby, in his wife’s arms-"wo zuodao-le." He evaluated her one final time, as if to commit her to memory.

In some basal pit of herself Alice wanted to reach for him. She sensed he felt it too. If it were not for the tangle of the present day all around them, if what was inside them could have been free, they might have crumpled into each other’s arms. As it was he shook his head and spoke to her softly, sternly, in English: "Now don’t ever come here again."

Gently, he shut the door.

She lay in bed the next morning. The rush-hour mob of bicycles and cars and trucks on Changan subsided from a roar to a rumble. Spencer came to her door once, knocked. She couldn’t deal with him then; just couldn’t rise to it. She called out for him to come back later.

Seeing Jian again. Thinking about what she’d had with him, about almost being able to connect with her true heart. Lucile had found another self with Pierre, a self higher than man-woman love. Had she fulfilled her true heart? The worstfailing of our minds is that we fail to see the really big problemssimply because the forms in which they arise are right under oureyes.

And Adam Spencer was right. She was stalled. Years now she’d been working as a low-level translator when she should have been so much more-a scholar, a sinologist, an intelligent woman taking the four treasures-the brush, the ink, the inkstone, the paper-and turning them into a lifetime of insight and erudition.

She heard a movement outside the door. It was Spencer again. "Alice! I have to buy the train tickets. Are you coming with me or not?"

"Wait a minute!" She limped into the bathroom, threw cold water on her face. Examined herself, the water running from her cheekbones. Not young any longer. The years were starting to pull her face downward, she could already see where the lines and the sags were starting to form.

Thirty-six, she thought, touching her cheek. But I’m smart, really smart, and I have heart. I could love again. If I could only get the chance.

"Alice?" Spencer’s voice was muffled by the door.

She toweled off. With the canyons of scratchy cotton cloth pressed against her face she suddenly pictured the man she had met in the vice director’s office the day before. Dr. Lin. The man who had seemed to take in everything, and who had held her name card for such a long time, so attentively. She locked eyes with herself in the mirror. The forms in which they arise areright under our eyes.

"Alice."

She walked out of the bathroom. "All right! Dr. Spencer? Can you hear me? I’ll come with you."