The Bonesetter's Daughter

ONE

Mr. Tang was in love with LuLing, though he had never met her. Ruth could sense this. He talked as if he knew her better than anyone else, even her own daughter. He was eighty years old, a survivor of World War Two, the civil war in China, the Cultural Revolution, and a triple coronary bypass. He had been a famous writer in China, but here his work remained untranslated and unknown. A linguistics colleague of Art's had given Ruth his name.

"She is a woman of strong character, very honest," he said to Ruth on the telephone after he began to translate the pages Ruth had mailed to him. "Could you send me her picture, one when she was a young woman? Seeing her would help me say her words in English the way she has expressed them in Chinese."

Ruth thought that was an odd request, but she complied, mailing him scanned copies of the photo of LuLing and GaoLing with their mother when they were young, and another taken when LuLing first arrived in the United States. Later, Mr. Tang asked Ruth for a picture of Precious Auntie. "She was unusual," he remarked. "Self-educated, forthright, quite a rebel for her time." Ruth was bursting to ask him: Did he know whether Precious Auntie was indeed her mother's real mother? But she held off, wanting to read his translation all at one time, not piecemeal. Mr. Tang had said he would need about two months to finish the job. "I don't like to just transliterate word for word. I want to phrase it more naturally, yet ensure these are your mother's words, a record for you and your children for generations to come. They must be just right. Don't you agree?"

While Mr. Tang translated, Ruth lived at LuLing's house. She had told Art of her decision when he returned from Hawaii.

"This seems sudden," he said as he watched her pack. "Are you sure you're not being rash? What about hired help?"

Had she downplayed the problems over the past six months? Or had Art simply not been paying attention? She was frustrated by how little they seemed to know each other.

"I think it would be easier if you hired help to take care of you and the girls," Ruth said.

Art sighed.

"I'm sorry. It's just that the housekeepers I get for my mother keep quitting, and I can't get Auntie Gal or anyone else to take care of her except for an occasional day here and there. Auntie Gal said that the one week she spent with her was worse than running after her grandkids when they were babies. But at least she finally believes the diagnosis is real and that ginseng tea isn't a cure-all."

"Are you sure something else isn't going on?" he asked, following Ruth into the Cubbyhole.

"What do you mean?" She took down diskettes and notebooks from the shelves.

"Us. You and me. Do we need to talk about something more than just your mother's mind falling apart?"

"Why do you say that?"

"You seem-I don't know-distant, maybe even a little angry."

"I'm tense. Last week I saw how she really is, and it frightened me. She's a danger to herself. She's far worse than I thought. And I realize the disease is further along than I first thought. She's probably had it six or seven years already. I don't know why I never noticed-"

"So your going to live there has nothing to do with us?"

"No," Ruth said firmly. And then in a softer voice, "I don't know." And after a long silence, she added, "I remember you asked me once what I was going to do about my mother. And it struck me. Yes, what am / going to do? I felt it was all up to me. I've tried to handle it the best I can, and this is it. Maybe my moving out does have to do with us, but now, if there's anything wrong with us, it's secondary to what's wrong with my mom. That's all I can handle right now."

Art looked uncertain. "Well, when you feel you're ready to talk…" He drifted off, so miserable, it seemed to Ruth, she was almost tempted to assure him that nothing was really wrong.

LuLing was also suspicious as to why Ruth needed to live with her.

"Someone asked me to write a children's book, with illustrations of animals," Ruth said. She was now accustomed to telling lies without feeling guilty. "I was hoping you'd do the drawings, and if you did, it would be easier if we worked together here, less noisy that way."

"How many animal? What kind?" LuLing was as excited as a child going to the zoo.

"Anything we want. You get to decide what to draw, Chinese style."

"All right." Her mother looked pleased at the prospect of being vital to her daughter's success. Ruth sighed, relieved yet sad. Why hadn't she ever asked her mother to make drawings before? She should have done it when her mother's hand and mind were still steady. It broke her heart to see her mother trying so hard, being so conscientious, so determined to be valuable. Making her mother happy would have been easy all along. LuLing simply wanted to be essential, as a mother should be.

Each day, she went to her desk and spent fifteen minutes grinding her inkstick. Luckily, many of the drawings she did were of subjects she had drawn many times for scroll paintings-fish, horse, cat, monkey, duck- and she executed them and the characters from a neuromotor memory of the strokes. The results were shaky yet recognizable renditions of what she once had done perfectly. But the moment LuLing attempted the unfamiliar, her hand flailed in synchrony with her confusion, and Ruth became as distressed as her mother, though she tried not to show it. Every time LuLing finished a drawing, Ruth praised it, took it away, then suggested a new animal to draw.

"Hippo?" LuLing puzzled over the word. "How you say in Chinese?"

"Never mind," Ruth said. "How about an elephant? Do an elephant, you know, the one with a long nose and big ears."

But LuLing was still frowning. "Why you give up? Something hard maybe worth more than easy. Hippo, what look like? Horn right here?" She tapped the top of her head.

"That's a rhinoceros. That's good too. Do a rhinoceros, then."

"Not hippo?"

"Don't worry about it."

"I not worry! You worry! I see this. Look your face. You not hiding from me. I know. I your mother! Okay-okay, you don't worry hippo anymore. I worry for you. Later I remember, then tell you, you be happy. Okay now? Don't cry anymore."

Her mother was good at being quiet when Ruth was working. "Study hard," she would whisper. But if Ruth was watching television, LuLing, as she always had, figured she was not doing anything important. Her mother then gabbed about GaoLing, rehashing her sister's greatest insults to her over the years. "She want me to go love-boat cruise to Hawaii. I ask her, Where I have this kind money? My Social Security only seven hundred fifty dollar. She tell me, You too cheap! I tell her, This not cheap, this poor. I not rich widow. Hnh! She forget she once want marry my husband. Tell me when he die, lucky she choose other brother…"

Sometimes Ruth listened with interest, trying to determine how much of the story LuLing changed in each retelling, feeling reassured when she repeated the same story. But other times Ruth was simply irritated by having to listen, and this irritation made her feel strangely satisfied, as if everything was the same, nothing was wrong.

"That girl downstair eat popcorn almost every night! Burn it, fire alarm go off. She don't know, I can smell! Stink! Popcorn all she eat! No wonder skinny. Then she tell me, this not work right, that not right. Always complaining, threat me 'lawsuit in-jury, code vio-la-tion'…"

At night, as Ruth lay in her old bed, she felt she had come back to her adolescence in the guise of an adult. She was the same person and yet she was not. Or perhaps she was two versions of herself, Ruth₁₉₆₉ and Ruth_1999, one more innocent and the other more perceptive, one needier, the other more self-sufficient, both of them fearful. She was her mother's child, and mother to the child her mother had become. So many combinations, like Chinese names and characters, the same elements, seemingly simple, reconfigured in different ways. This was the bed from her childhood, and still within were those youthful moments before dreams, when she ached and wondered alone: What's going to happen? And just as in childhood, she listened to her breathing and was frightened by the idea that her mother's might one day stop. When she was conscious of it, each inhalation was an effort. Expiration was simply a release. Ruth was afraid to let go.

Several times a week, LuLing and Ruth would talk to ghosts. Ruth pulled out the old sand tray stored on top of the refrigerator and offered to write to Precious Auntie. Her mother reacted politely, the way people do when offered a box of chocolates: "Oh!… Well, maybe just little." LuLing wanted to know if the children's book was going to make Ruth famous. Ruth had Precious Auntie say that LuLing would be.

LuLing also asked for updates on the stock market. "Dow Jones go up or down?" she asked one day.

Ruth drew an upward arrow.

"Sell Intel, buy Intel?"

Ruth knew her mother watched the stock market mostly just for fun. She had not found any letters, junk mail or otherwise, from brokerage firms. Buy on sale, she decided to write.

LuLing nodded. "Oh, wait till down. Precious Auntie very smart."

One night, as Ruth held the chopstick in her hand, ready to divine more answers, she heard LuLing say: "Why you and Artie argue?"

"We're not arguing."

"Then why you not live together? This because me? My fault?"

"Of course not." Ruth said this a bit too loudly.

"I think maybe so." She gave Ruth her all-knowing look. "Long time 'go, you first meet him, I tell you, Why you live together first? You do this, he never marry you. You remember? Oh, now you thinking, Ah, Mother right. Live together, now I just leftover, easy throw away. Don't be embarrass. You be honest."

Her mother had said those things, Ruth recalled with chagrin. She busied her hands, brushing off stray grains of sand from the edges of the tray. She was both surprised by the things her mother remembered and touched by her concern. What LuLing had said about Art was not exactly right, yet she had pierced the heart of it, the fact that Ruth felt like a leftover, last in line to get a helping of whatever was being served.

Something was terribly wrong between Art and her. She had sensed that more strongly during their trial separation-wasn't that what this was? She saw more clearly the habits of emotion, her trying to accommodate herself to him even when he didn't need her to. At one time she had thought that adjustment was what every couple, married or not, did, willingly or out of grudging necessity. But had Art also accommodated to her? If so, she didn't know how. And now that they had been apart, she felt unweighted, untethered. This was what she had predicted she might feel when she lost her mother. Now she wanted to hang on to her mother as if she were her life preserver.

"What bothers me is that I don't feel lonelier without Art," she told Wendy over the phone. "I feel more myself."

"Do you miss the girls?"

"Not that much, at least not their noise and energy. Do you think my feelings are deadened or something?"

"I think you're worn out."

Twice a week, Ruth and her mother went to Vallejo Street for dinner. On those days, Ruth had to finish her work early and shop for groceries. Since she did not want to leave her mother alone, she took her along to the store. While they shopped, LuLing commented on the cost of every item, questioning whether Ruth should wait until it was cheaper. Once Ruth arrived home-and yes, she reminded herself, the flat on Vallejo Street was still her home-she seated LuLing in front of the television, then sorted through mail addressed to her and Art as a couple. She saw how little of that there was, while most of the repair bills were in her name. At the end of the night, she was frazzled, saddened, and relieved to go back to her mother's house, to her little bed.

One night, while she was in the kitchen cutting vegetables, Art sidled up to her and patted her bottom. "Why don't you get GaoLing to babysit your mom? Then you can stay over for a conjugal visit."

She flushed. She wanted to lean against him, wrap her arms around him, and yet the act of doing so was as scary as leaping off a cliff.

He kissed her neck. "Or you can take a break right now and we can sneak into the bathroom for a quickie."

She laughed nervously. "They'll all know what we're doing."

"No they won't." Art was breathing in her ear.

"My mother knows everything, she sees everything."

With that, Art stopped, and Ruth was disappointed.

During the second month of their living apart, Ruth told Art, "If you really want to have dinner together, maybe you should come over to my mother's for a change, instead of my schlepping over here all the time for dinner. It's exhausting to do that all the time."

So Art and the girls started to go twice a week to LuLing's house. "Ruth," Dory whined one night as she watched her making a salad, "when are you coming home? Dad is like really boring and Fia is all the time like, 'Dad, there's nothing to do, there's nothing good to eat.'"

Ruth was pleased that they missed her. "I don't know, honey. Waipo needs me."

"We need you too."

Ruth felt her heart squeeze. "I know, but Waipo's sick. I have to stay with her."

"Then can I come and stay here with you?"

Ruth laughed. "I'd like that, but you'll have to ask your dad."

Two weekends later, Fia and Dory came with an inflatable mattress. They stayed in Ruth's room. "Girls only," Dory insisted, so Art had to go home. In the evening, Ruth and the girls watched television and drew mehndi tattoos on each other's hands. The next weekend, Art asked if it was boys' night yet.

"I think that can be arranged," Ruth said coyly.

Art brought his toothbrush, a change of clothes, and a portable boom-box with a Michael Feinstein CD, Gershwin music. At night, he squeezed into the twin bed with Ruth. But she did not feel amorous with LuLing in the next room. That was the explanation she gave Art.

"Let's just cuddle, then," he suggested. Ruth was glad he did not press her for further explanations. She nestled against his chest. Deep into the night, she listened to his sonorous breathing and the foghorns. For the first time in a long while, she felt safe.

Mr. Tang called Ruth at the end of two months. "Are you sure there aren't any more pages?"

"Afraid not. I've been cleaning out my mother's house, drawer by drawer, room by room. I even discovered she put a thousand dollars under a floorboard. If there was anything else, I'm sure I would have found it."

"Then I've finished." Mr. Tang sounded sad. "There were a few pages with some writing on them, the same sentences over and over, saying she was worried that she was already forgetting too many things. The script on those was pretty shaky. I think they were more recent. It may upset you. I'm just telling you now, so you know."

Ruth thanked him.

"May I come over now to deliver my work to you?" he asked formally. "Would that be all right?"

"Is it too much trouble?"

"It would be an honor. To be honest, I would dearly like to meet your mother. After all this time of reading her words, day and night, I feel I know her like an old friend and miss her already."

Ruth warned him: "She won't be the same woman who wrote those pages."

"Perhaps… but somehow I think she will be."

"Would you like to come for dinner tonight?"

Ruth joked with her mother that an admirer was coming to see her and she should put on her pretty clothes.

"No! No one coming."

Ruth nodded and smiled.

"Who?"

Ruth answered vaguely. "An old friend of an old friend of yours in China."

LuLing pondered hard. "Ah, yes. I remember now."

Ruth helped her bathe and dress. She tied a scarf around her neck, combed her hair, added a touch of lipstick. "You're beautiful," Ruth said, and it was true.

LuLing looked at herself in the mirror. "Buddha-full. Too bad Gao Ling not pretty like me." Ruth laughed. Her mother had never expressed vanity about her looks, but with the dementia, the modesty censors must not have been working. Dementia was like a truth serum.

At seven exactly, Mr. Tang arrived with LuLing's pages and his translation. He was a slender man with white hair, deep smile lines, a very kind face. He brought LuLing a bag of oranges.

"No need to be so polite," she said automatically as she inspected the fruit for soft spots. She scolded Ruth in Chinese: "Take his coat. Ask him to sit down. Give him something to drink."

"No need to trouble yourself," Mr. Tang said.

"Oh, your Chinese is the Beijing dialect, very elegant," LuLing said. She became girlish and shy, which amused Ruth. And Mr. Tang in turn poured on the charm, pulling out LuLing's chair to seat her, serving her tea first, filling her cup when it was half empty. She and Mr. Tang continued to speak in Chinese, and to Ruth's ear, her mother began to sound more logical, less confused.

"Where in China are you from?" LuLing asked.

" Tianjin. Later I went to school at Yenching University."

"Oh, my first husband went there, a very smart boy. Pan Kai Jing. Did you know him?"

"I've heard of him," Ruth heard Mr. Tang answer. "He studied geology, didn't he?"

"That's right! He worked on many important things. Have you ever heard of Peking Man?"

"Of course, Peking Man is world-famous."

LuLing looked wistful. "He died watching over those old bones."

"He was a great hero. Others admired his bravery, but you must have suffered."

Ruth listened with fascination. It was as if Mr. Tang had known her mother years before. He easily guided her to the old memories, to those that were still safeguarded from destruction. And then she heard her mother say, "My daughter Luyi also worked with us. She was at the same school where I lived after Precious Auntie died."

Ruth turned, startled then touched that her mother included her in the past.

"Yes, I was sorry to hear about your mother. She was a great lady. Very smart."

LuLing tilted her head and seemed to be struggling with sadness. "She was the daughter of a bonesetter."

Mr. Tang nodded. "A very famous doctor."

At the end of the evening, Mr. Tang thanked LuLing elaborately for some delightful hours of remembering the old times. "May I have the honor of visiting you again soon?"

LuLing tittered. She raised her eyebrows and looked at Ruth.

"You're welcome to come anytime," Ruth said.

"Tomorrow!" LuLing blurted. "Come tomorrow."

Ruth stayed up all night to read the pages Mr. Tang had translated. "Truth," the account began. She started to enumerate all the true things she was learning, but soon lost count, as each fact led to more questions. Her mother was really five years older than Ruth had always thought. So that meant she had told Dr. Huey the truth about her age! And the part about not being GaoLing's sister, that was true as well. Yet her mother and GaoLing were sisters, more so than Ruth had ever thought. They had had more reason than most sisters to disavow their relationship, yet they had been fiercely loyal, had remained irrevocably bound to each other by grudges, debt, and love. She was elated to know this.

Parts of her mother's story saddened her. Why did she feel she could never tell Ruth that Precious Auntie was her mother? Did she fear that her own daughter would be ashamed that LuLing was illegitimate? Ruth would have assured her that there was no shame, that it was practically fashionable these days to be born a love child. But then Ruth remembered that as a girl she had been terrified of Precious Auntie. She had resented her presence in their lives, had blamed her for her mother's quirkiness, her feelings of doom. How misunderstood Precious Auntie had been-by both her daughter and her granddaughter. Yet there were moments when Ruth sensed that Precious Auntie had been watching her, that she knew when Ruth was suffering.

Ruth mused over this, lying in her childhood bed. She understood more clearly why her mother had always wanted to find Precious Auntie's bones and bury them in the proper place. She wanted to walk through the End of the World and make amends. She wanted to tell her mother, "I'm sorry and I forgive you, too."

The next day, Ruth telephoned Art to tell him what she had read. "It feels like I've found the magic thread to mend a torn-up quilt. It's wonderful and sad at the same time."

"I'd like to read it. Would you let me?"

"I want you to." Ruth sighed. "She should have told me these things years ago. It would have made such a difference-"

Art interrupted: "There are things I should have said years ago too."

Ruth fell silent, waiting.

"I've been thinking about your mother, and I've also been thinking about us."

Ruth's heart started to race.

"Remember what you said when we first met, about not wanting to have assumptions about love?"

"I didn't say that, you did."

"I did?"

"Absolutely. I remember."

"Funny, I thought you did."

"Ah, you assumed!"

He laughed. "Your mother isn't the only one with memory prob lems. Well, if I said it, then I was wrong, because I do think it's important to have certain assumptions-for one thing, that the person who's with you is there for the long haul, that he'll take care of you and what comes with you, the whole package, mother and everything. For whatever reason-my having said that about assumptions, and your going along with it-well, I guess I thought it was great at the time, that I had love on a free ride. I didn't know what I was going to lose until you moved out."

Art paused. Ruth knew he was waiting for her to respond. In part, she wanted to shout with gratitude that he had said what she had been feeling and could not express. Yet she was scared that he was saying this too late. She felt no joy in hearing his admission. She felt sad.

"I don't know what to say," she finally admitted.

"You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know… The other thing is, I really am worried about your taking care of your mother over the long term. I know you want to do this, that it's important, and she needs someone around. But you and I know she's going to get worse. She'll require more and more care, and she can't do it alone, and neither can you. You have your work and a life too, and your mother would be the last person to see you give that up for her sake."

"I can't keep hiring new housekeepers."

"I know… That's why I've been reading up on Alzheimer's, stages of the disease, medical needs, support groups. And I've thought of an idea, a possible solution… an assisted-living residence."

"That's not a solution." Ruth felt as she had when her mother showed her the ten-million-dollar check from the magazine sweepstakes.

"Why not?"

"Because my mother would never go for it. I wouldn't go for it. She'd think I was sending her to the dog pound. She'd threaten to kill herself every single day-"

"I'm not talking about a nursing home and bedpans. This is assisted living. They're the latest concept, the wave of the baby-boomer future, like senior Club Meds-meals, maid service, laundry, transportation, organized outings, exercise, even dancing. And it's supervised, twenty-four hours. It's upscale, not depressing at all. I've already looked at a bunch of residences, and I've found a great one, not far from where your mother lives now-"

"Forget it. Upscale or not, she would never live in a place like that."

"All she has to do is try it."

"I'm telling you, forget it. She won't do it."

"Whoa, whoa. Before you dismiss the idea outright, tell me the specific objections. Let's see if we can move forward from there."

"There's nothing to move forward. But if you must know, for one thing, she'd never leave her own home. And second, there's the cost. I assume these places aren't free, which is what it would have to be for her to even consider it. And if it were free, she'd think it was welfare, so she'd refuse on those grounds."

"All right. I can deal with those factors. What else?"

Ruth took a deep breath. "She'd have to love it. She would have to want to live there as her choice, not yours or mine."

"Done. And she can come stay with you and me anytime she wants."

Ruth noted that he said "you and me." She let down her guard. Art was trying. He was telling her he loved her in the best way he knew possible.

Two days later, LuLing showed Ruth an official-looking notice from the California Department of Public Safety, on letterhead generated from Art's computer.

"Radon leak!" LuLing exclaimed. "What this mean, radon leak?"

"Let me see," Ruth said, and scanned the letter. Art had been very clever. Ruth played along. "Mm. It's a heavy gas, it says, radioactive, dangerous to your lungs. The gas company detected it when they did a routine inspection for earthquake dangers. The leakage isn't from a pipe. It comes from the soil and rocks under the house, and they need to have you move out for three months while they do an environmental assessment and hazard removal via intensive ventilation."

"Ai-ya! How much cost?"

"Hm. Nothing, it says. The city does it for free. Look, they even pay for the place where you stay while they do the ventilation. Three months' free rent… including food. The Mira Mar Manor-'located near your current residence,' it says, 'with amenities typical of a five-star hotel.' That's the highest rating, five stars. They're asking you to go there as soon as possible."

"Free five-star? For two people?"

Ruth pretended to search the fine print. "No. Looks like it's just for one person. I can't go." She sighed, sounding disappointed.

"Hunh! I don't mean you!" her mother exclaimed. "What about that girl downstair?"

"Oh, right." Ruth had forgotten about the tenant. So had Art, evidently. But her mother, brain disease and all, hadn't let that slip by.

"I'm sure she got a similar notice. They wouldn't let anyone remain in the building, not if it can give them lung disease."

LuLing frowned. "Then she live my same hotel?"

"Oh!… No, it's probably different, a place that isn't as nice, I'm sure, since you're the owner and she's only the renter."

"But she still pay me rent?"

Ruth looked at the letter again. "Of course. That's the law."

LuLing nodded with satisfaction. "Okay, then."

By phone, Ruth told Art that his plan seemed to have worked. She was glad that he didn't sound smug.

"It's kind of scary how easily fooled she was," he said. "That's how a lot of old people get swindled out of their homes and savings."

"I feel like a spy right now," Ruth added. "Like we succeeded at a covert mission."

"I guess she and a lot of other people will buy into any idea that involves getting something for nothing."

"Speaking of which, how much will this Mira Mar place cost?"

"Don't worry about it."

"Come on. Tell me."

"I'll take care of it. If she likes it and stays, we'll figure it out later. If she hates it, the three months are on me. She can move back into her old place, and we'll think of something else."

Ruth liked that he was thinking "we" again. "Well, we '11 share the cost of the three months, then."

"Just let me do this, okay?"

"Why should I?"

"Because it feels like the most important thing I've done in a long time. Call it a Boy Scout good deed for the day. Mitzvah-gathering, mensch remedial training. Temporary insanity. It makes me feel good, like a human being. It makes me happy."

Happy. If only her mother could be happy as well, living in a place like the Mira Mar. Ruth wondered what made people happy. Could you find happiness in a place? In another person? What about happiness for herself? Did you simply have to know what you wanted and reach for it through the fog?

As they parked in front of the three-story shingled building, Ruth was relieved to see that it did not look like an asylum. LuLing was at her sister's for the weekend, and it was Art's idea that they visit Mira Mar Manor without her, so that they could anticipate what objections she might raise. Mira Mar Manor was flanked by windswept cypress trees and looked out on the ocean. The wrought-iron fence held a plaque declaring that this was a San Francisco landmark, erected as an orphanage after the Great Earthquake.

Ruth and Art were ushered into an oak-paneled office and told that the director of care services would be with them soon. They sat stiffly on a leather sofa, facing a massive desk. Framed diplomas and health certifications hung on the wall, as well as old photographs of the building in its original incarnation, with beaming girls posed in white frocks.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," she heard someone say in a British accent. Ruth turned and was surprised to see a polished-looking young Indian man in suit and tie. "Edward Patel," he said, smiling warmly. He shook hands and handed them each a business card. He must be in his early thirties, Ruth thought. He looked like a stockbroker, not someone who concerned himself with laxatives and arthritis medication.

"I'd like to start here," Patel said, taking them back to the foyer, "because this is what our seniors first see when they arrive." He began what sounded like an oft recited spiel: "Here at Mira Mar Manor, we believe home is more than a bed. It's a whole concept."

Concept? Ruth looked at Art. This would never work.

"What does the 'P and F' in P and F HealthCare stand for?" Art asked, looking at the business card.

"Patel and Finkelstein. One of my uncles was a founding partner. He's been in the hospitality business a long time, hotels. Morris Finkelstein is a doctor. His own mother is a resident here."

Ruth marveled that a Jewish mother would allow her son to put her in a place like this. Now that was an endorsement.

They stepped through French doors into a garden surrounded by hedges. On each side was a shady arbor with a latticed covering of jasmine. Underneath were cushioned chairs and opaque glass-topped tables. Several women glanced up from their conversations.

"Hello, Edward!" three of them sang out in turn.

"Morning, Betty, Dorothy, Rose. Wow, Betty, that's a spectacular color on you!"

"You watch it, young lady," the old woman said sternly to Ruth. "He'll sell the pants off you, if he can." Patel laughed easily, and Ruth wondered whether the woman was only joking. Well, at least he knew their names.

Down the middle of the garden was a reddish pathway lined with benches, some shaded by awnings. Patel pointed out amenities that might have gone unnoticed to an untrained eye. His voice was resonant, familiar, and knowledgeable, like that of an English teacher Ruth had once had. The strolling path, he explained, had the same covering used for indoor running tracks, no loose bricks or stones to catch a feeble walker off guard, no hard concrete. Of course, if a senior fell, she could still break a hip, he said, but it was less likely to shatter into a million pieces. "And studies show that's what is so deadly to this population. One fall, boom!" Patel snapped his fingers. "Happens a lot when the elderly live alone and in the old family home that hasn't been adapted to their needs. No ramp-ways, no handrails."

Patel gestured to the flowers in the garden. "All thorn-free and non-toxic, no deadly oleander or foxglove that a confused person might nibble on." Each plant was identified by staked marker at eye level-no bending down necessary. "Our seniors really love naming the herbs. On Mondays, the afternoon activity is herb collecting. There's rosemary, parsley, oregano, lemon thyme, basil, sage. The word 'echinacea' gives them a hard time, though. One lady calls it 'the China Sea.' Now we all call it that."

The herbs from the garden, Patel added, were used in the meals. "The ladies still pride themselves on their cooking abilities. They love to remind us to add only a pinch of oregano, or to rub the sage on the inside not the outside of the chicken, that sort of thing." Ruth could picture dozens of old ladies complaining about the food, and her mother yelling above the rest that everything was too salty.

They continued walking along the path toward a greenhouse at the back of the garden. "We call this the Love Nursery," Patel said, as they stepped into a blast of color-shocking pink and monk-robe saffron. The air was moist and cool.

"Each resident has an orchid plant. The flower pots are painted with the names they've given their orchids. As you may have already noticed, about ninety percent of our residents are women. And no matter how old they are, many still have a strong maternal instinct. They adore watering their orchids every day. We use a dendrobium orchid known as cuthbertsonii. Blooms nearly year-round, nonstop, and unlike most orchids, it can take daily watering. Many of our residents have named their orchids after their husbands or children or other family members who've already passed. They often talk to their plants, touch and kiss the petals, fuss and worry over them. We give them tiny eyedroppers and a bucket of water we call 'Love Potion.' 'Mother's coming, Mother's coming,' you'll hear them say. It's quite touching to watch them feeding their orchids."

Ruth's eyes welled up. Why was she crying? Stop this, she told herself, you're being stupid and maudlin. He's talking about a business plan, for God's sake, concept-sanctioned forms of happiness. She turned away as if to inspect a row of orchids. When she had collected herself, she said, "They must love it here."

"They do. We've tried to think of everything that a family would think about."

"Or wouldn't," Art said.

"There's a lot to think about," Patel said with a modest smile.

"Do you ever find any of them reluctant to be here, especially in the beginning?"

"Oh, yes indeed. That's expected. They don't want to move out of their old homes, because that's where all the memories are. And they don't want to spend down their kids' inheritance. Nor do they think they're old-certainly not that old, they'll say. I'm sure we'll be saying the same thing when we're their age."

Ruth laughed to be polite. "We may have to trick my mother into coming here."

"Well, you won't be the first family members to do so," Patel said. "The subterfuges people have used to get their parents here-wow, pretty ingenious. It could fill a book."

"Like what?" Ruth asked.

"We have quite a few folks here who don't know it costs anything to live here."

"Really!" Art exclaimed, and gave Ruth a wink.

"Oh, yes. Their sense of economy is strictly Depression-era. Paying rent is money down the drain. They're used to owning a house, paid free and clear."

Ruth nodded. Her mother's building had been paid up last year. They continued along the walkway and went inside and down a hall toward the dining room.

"One of our residents," Patel added, "is a ninety-year-old former sociology professor, still fairly sharp. But he thinks he's here on a fellowship from his alma mater to study the effects of aging. And another woman, a former piano teacher, thinks she's been hired to play music every night after dinner. She's not too bad, actually. We direct-bill most families, so their parents don't even know what the fees are."

"Is that legal?" Ruth asked.

"Perfectly, as long as the families have conservatorship or power of attorney over the finances. Some of them take out loans against the principal on the house, or they've sold their parents' homes and use the money in trust to make the payments. Anyway, I know all about the problems of getting seniors to accept the idea of even considering living in a place like this. But I guarantee you, once your mother has lived here for a month, she '11 never want to leave."

"What do you do," Ruth joked, "spike the food?"

Patel misunderstood. "Actually, because of all the dietary needs of our population, we can't prepare anything too spicy. We do have a nutritionist who makes up the monthly menu. Many of the choices are low-fat, low-cholesterol. We also offer vegan. The residents receive printed-out menus every day." He picked one off a nearby table.

Ruth scanned it. The choice today was turkey meatloaf, tuna casserole, or tofu fajitas, accompanied by salad, rolls, fresh fruit, mango sorbet, and macaroons. Suddenly another problem loomed: No Chinese food.

But when she brought it up, Patel was ready with an answer: "We've encountered that issue in the past. Chinese, Japanese, kosher food, you name it. We have a delivery service from approved restaurants. And since we have two other Chinese residents who get takeout twice a week, your mother can share the selections we get for them. Also, one of our cooks is Chinese. She makes rice porridge on the weekends for breakfast. Several of our non-Chinese residents go for that as well." Patel returned smoothly to his rehearsed patter: "Regardless of special diets, they all love the waiter service, tablecloths at the meals, just like a fine restaurant. And no tipping is necessary or allowed." Ruth nodded. LuLing's idea of a big tip was a dollar.

"It's really a carefree life, which is how it should be when you're this age, don't you agree?" Patel looked at Ruth. He must have picked her as the stumbling block. How could he tell? Did she have a crease in the middle of her brow? It was obvious that Art thought the place was great.

Ruth decided she should get hard-nosed. "Are any of the people here, you know, like my mother? Do any of them have, well, memory problems of some sort?"

"It's safe to assume that half the general population over age eighty-five likely has some memory problems starting to show. And after all, our average age here is eighty-seven."

"I don't mean just memory problems. What if it's something more…"

"You mean like Alzheimer's? Dementia?" Patel motioned them into another large room. "I'll get back to your question in just a minute. This is the main activity hall."

Several people looked up from a bingo game being conducted by a young man. Ruth noticed that most were nicely dressed. One was wearing a powder-blue pantsuit, a pearl necklace and earrings, as if she were going to Easter services. A beak-nosed man in a jaunty beret winked at her. She imagined him at thirty, a brash businessman, confident of his position in the world and with the ladies.

"Bingo!" a woman with almost no chin shouted.

"I haven't called enough numbers yet, Anna," the young man said patiently. "You need at least five to win. We've only done three so far."

"Well, I don't know. Just call me stupid, then."

"No! No! No!" a woman in a shawl yelled. "Don't you dare use that word in here."

"That's right, Loretta," the young man added. "No one here is stupid. Sometimes we get a little confused, that's all."

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Anna muttered under her breath, as if she was cursing. She gave Loretta the evil eye. "Stupid!"

Patel did not seem perturbed. He quietly led Ruth and Art out of the room and to an elevator. As they ascended, he spoke. "To answer your question, most of the residents are what we call 'frail elderly.' They may have problems seeing or hearing or getting around without a cane or a walker. Some are sharper than you or I, others are easily confused and have signs of dementia due to Alzheimer's or what have you. They tend to be a little forgetful about taking their pills, which is why we dispense all medications. But they always know what day it is, whether it's movie Sunday or herb-picking Monday. And if they don't remember the year, why should they? Some notions of time are irrelevant."

"We might as well tell you now," Art said. "Mrs. Young minks she's coming here because of a radon leak in her home." He presented a copy of the letter he had created.

"That's a new one," Patel conceded with an appreciative chuckle. "I'll keep that in mind for other family members whose parents need a nudge. Ah yes, free rent, courtesy of the California Department of Public Safety. Quite good to make it official, mark of authority, like a summons." He swung open a door. "This is the unit that just became available." They walked into an apartment overlooking the garden: a compact living room, bedroom, and bathroom, empty of furnishings, smelling of fresh paint and new carpets. It occurred to Ruth that what Patel meant by "just became available" was that the last resident had died. The cheeriness of the place now seemed ominous, a façade hiding a darker truth.

"This is one of the nicest units," Patel said. "There are smaller, less expensive rooms, studios, and some without an ocean or garden view. We should have one of those available, oh, in about another month."

My God! He expected someone else to die soon. And he said it so casually, so matter-of-factly! Ruth felt trapped, frantic to escape. This place was like a death sentence. Wouldn't her mother feel the same way? She'd never stay here for a month, let alone three.

"We can provide the furniture at no extra charge," Patel said. "But usually the residents like to bring their own things. Personalize it and make it their home. We encourage that. And each floor is assigned the same staff, two caretakers per floor, day and night. Everyone knows them by name. One of them even speaks Chinese."

"Cantonese or Mandarin?" Ruth asked.

"That's a good question." He pulled out a digital recorder and spoke into it: "Find out if Janie speaks Cantonese or Mandarin."

"By the way," Ruth asked, "how much are the fees?"

Patel answered without hesitation: "Thirty-two to thirty-eight hundred a month, depending on the room and level of services needed. That includes an escort to a monthly medical appointment. I can show you a detailed schedule downstairs."

Ruth couldn't keep from gasping over the cost. "Did you know that?" she asked Art. He nodded. She was both shocked at the expense and amazed that Art would be willing to pay that for three months, nearly twelve thousand dollars. She stared at him, openmouthed.

"It's worth it," he whispered.

"That's crazy."

She repeated this later, as he drove her to her mother's.

"You can't think of it the same way you think of rent," Art replied. "It includes food, the apartment, a twenty-four-hour nurse, help with medication, laundry-"

"Right, and a very expensive orchid! I can't let you pay that, not for three months."

"It's worth it," he told her again.

Ruth exhaled heavily. "Listen, I'll pay half, and if it works out, I'll pay you back."

"We already went through this. No halves and there's nothing to pay back. I have some money saved and I want to do this. And I don't mean it as a condition for us getting back together or getting rid of your mother or any of that. It's not a condition for anything. It's not pressure for you to make a decision one way or the other. There are no expectations, no strings attached."

"Well, I appreciate the thought, but-"

"It's more than a thought. It's a gift. You have to learn to take them sometimes, Ruth. You do yourself wrong when you don't."

"What are you talking about?"

"The way you want something from people, some kind of proof of love or loyalty or belief in you. But you expect it won't come. And when it's handed to you, you don't see it. Or you resist, refuse."

"I do not-"

"You're like someone who has cataracts and wants to see, but you refuse to have an operation because you're afraid you'll go blind. You'd rather go blind slowly than take a chance. And then you can't see that the answer is right in front of you."

"That's not true," she protested. Yet she knew there was some validity to what Art was saying. It was not exactly right, but parts of it were as familiar as the tidal wave in her dreams. She turned. "Have you always thought this of me?"

"Not in so many words. I didn't really think about it until these past few months you've been gone. And then I started wondering if what you said about me was true. I realized I am self-centered, that I'm used to thinking about me first. But I also realized that you tend to think about you second. It's as though I had permission from you to be less responsible. I'm not saying it's your fault. But you have to learn to take back, grab it when it's offered. Don't fight it. Don't get all tense thinking it's complicated. Just take it, and if you want to be polite, say thank you."

Ruth was tumbling in her head. She was being swept and tossed, and she was scared. "Thank you," she finally said.

To Ruth's surprise, her mother seemed to have no objection to staying at Mira Mar Manor. Then again, why would she? LuLing thought it was temporary-and free. After she had toured the place, Ruth and Art took her to a nearby deli to have lunch and hear her reactions.

"So many old people have radon leak," she murmured with awe.

"Actually, not all of them are staying there because of radon leaks," Art said. Ruth wondered where this was leading to.

"Oh. Other problem their house?"

"No problem at all. They just like living there."

LuLing snorted. "Why?"

"Well, it's comfortable, convenient. They have plenty of company. In a way, it's like a cruise ship."

LuLing's face broke into a look of disgust. "Cruise ship! GaoLing always want me go cruise ship. You too cheap, she tell me. I not cheap! I poor, I don't have money throw in ocean…"

Ruth felt Art had blown it. Cruise ship. If he had been listening to her mother's complaints these last few years, he'd have known this was precisely the wrong comparison to make.

"Who can afford cruise ship?" her mother groused.

"A lot of people find staying at the Mira Mar cheaper than living at home," Art said.

One of LuLing's eyebrows rose. "How cheap?"

"About a thousand dollars a month."

"T'ousand! Ai-ya! Too much!"

"But that includes housing, food, movies, dancing, utilities, and cable TV. That's thrown in for free."

LuLing did not have cable TV. She often talked about getting it, but changed her mind when she found out how much it cost.

"Chinese channel too?"

"Yep. Several of them. And there are no property taxes."

This also captured LuLing's interest. Her property taxes were in fact low, stabilized by a state law that protected the holdings of the elderly. Nonetheless, each year when LuLing received her tax bill, the sum seemed agonizingly huge to her.

Art went on: "Not all of the units are a thousand a month. Yours is more expensive because it's the number-one unit, the best view, top floor. We're lucky that we got it for free."

"Ah, best unit."

"Number one," Art emphasized. "The smaller units are cheaper… Honey, what did Mr. Patel say they were?"

Ruth was taken by surprise. She pretended to recollect. "I think he said seven hundred fifty."

"That how much I get Social Security!" LuLing said smugly.

And Art added: "Mr. Patel also said people who eat less can get a discount."

"I eat less. Not like American people, always take big helping."

"You'd probably qualify, then. I think you're supposed to weigh less than a hundred and twenty pounds-"

"No, Art," Ruth interrupted. "He said the cutoff was a hundred."

"I only eighty-five."

"Anyway," Art said offhandedly, "someone like you could live in the number-one unit for the same as what you get each month for Social Security. It's like living there for free."

As they continued with lunch, Ruth could see her mother's mind adding up the free cable TV, the big discounts, the best unit-all irresistible concepts.

When LuLing next spoke, she gloated: "Probably GaoLing think I got lots money live this place. Just like cruise ship."

TWO

They were celebrating Auntie Gal's seventy-seventh birthday-her eighty-second if the truth be known, but only she, LuLing, and Ruth knew that.

The Young clan was gathered at GaoLing and Edmund's ranch-style house in Saratoga. Auntie Gal was wearing a silk-flower lei and a hibiscus-patterned muumuu, in keeping with the luau theme of the party. Uncle Edmund had on an aloha shirt printed with ukuleles. They had just returned from their twelfth cruise to the Hawaiian Islands. LuLing, Art, Ruth, and various cousins were sitting poolside in the backyard-or lanai, as Auntie Gal referred to it-where Uncle Edmund had fired up a grill to barbecue enough slabs of spare ribs to give everyone indigestion. The outdoor gas-fueled tiki torches were wafting warmth, making the outdoors seem balmy. The kids weren't fooled. They decided the pool was too cold and improvised a game of soccer on the lawn. Every few minutes they had to use the long-handled net to fish the ball out of the water. "Too much splash," LuLing complained.

When GaoLing went to the kitchen to prepare the last side dishes, Ruth followed. She had been waiting for an opportunity to talk to her aunt privately. "Here's how you make tea eggs," Auntie Gal said, as Ruth shelled the hard-boiled eggs. "Use two big pinches black tea leaves. It must be black, not Japanese green, and not the herbal kind all you kids like to drink for health purposes. Put the leaves in the cheesecloth, tie it tight.

"Now put these cooked eggs in the pot with the tea leaves, a half-cup soy sauce for twenty eggs, and six star anise," GaoLing continued. She sprinkled the mixture with liberal amounts of salt. Her longevity was obviously a tribute to her genetics and not her diet. "Cook for one hour," she said, and set the pot on the stove to simmer. "When you were a little girl, you loved to eat these. Lucky eggs, we called them. That's why your mommy and I made them. All the kids liked them better than anything else. One time, though, you ate five and got very sick. Big mess all over my sofa. After that, you said no eggs, no more eggs. You wouldn't eat them the next year either, not you. But the year after that, eggs were okay again, yum-yum."

Ruth didn't remember any of this, and wondered whether GaoLing was confusing her with her daughter. Was her aunt also showing signs of dementia?

She went to the refrigerator and took out a bowl of scalded celery, cut into strips. Without measuring, she doused the celery with sesame oil and soy sauce, chatting as if she were on a talk show for cooks.

"I've been thinking one day I might write a book. The title is this, Culinary Road to China-what do you think, good? Easy recipes. Maybe if you're not too busy, you can help me write it. I don't mean for free, though. Course, most of the words are already in my head, right here. I just need someone to write them down. Still, I'd pay you, doesn't matter that I'm your auntie."

Ruth did not want to encourage this line of thinking. "Did you make those same eggs when you lived in the orphanage with Mom?"

GaoLing stopped stirring. She looked up. "Ah, your mother told you about that place." She tasted a piece of celery and added more soy sauce. "Before, she never wanted to tell anyone why she went to the orphan school." GaoLing paused and pursed her lips, as if she had already divulged too much.

"You mean that Precious Auntie was her mother."

GaoLing clucked her tongue. "Ah, so she told you. Good, I'm glad. Better to tell the truth."

"I also know both you and Mom are five years older than what we always thought. And that your real birthday is what, four months earlier?"

GaoLing tried to laugh, but she also looked evasive. "I always wanted to be honest. But your mommy was afraid of so many things-oh, she said the authorities would send her back to China if they knew she wasn't my real sister. And maybe Edwin wouldn't marry her, because she was too old. Then later you might be ashamed if you knew who your real grandmother was, unmarried, her face ruined, treated like a servant. Me? Over the years, I've become more modern-thinking. Old secrets? Here nobody cares! Mother not married? Oh, just like Madonna. But still your mommy said, No, don't tell, promise."

"Does anyone else know? Uncle Edmund, Sally, Billy?"

"No, no, no one at all. I promised your mother… Of course Uncle Edmund knows. We don't keep secrets. I tell him everything… Well, the age part, he doesn't know. But I wasn't lying. I forgot. It's true! I don't even feel like I'm seventy-seven. In my mind, the most is sixty. But now you remind me, I'm even older-how old?"

"Eighty-two."

"Wah." Her shoulders slumped as she pondered this fact. "Eighty-two. It's like less money in the bank than I thought."

"You still look twenty years younger. Mom does too. And don't worry, I won't tell anyone, not even Uncle Edmund. Funny thing is, last year when she told the doctor she was eighty-two, I thought that was a sure sign something was wrong with her mind. And then it turned out she did have Alzheimer's, but she was right all along about her age. She just forgot to lie-"

"Not lying," GaoLing corrected. "It was a secret."

"That's what I meant. And I wouldn't have known her age until I read what she wrote."

"She wrote this down-about her age?"

"About a lot of things, a stack of pages this thick. It's like her life story, all the things she didn't want to forget. The things she couldn't talk about. Her mother, the orphanage, her first husband, yours."

Auntie Gal looked increasingly uncomfortable. "When did she write this?"

"Oh, it must have been seven, eight years ago, probably when she first started worrying that something was wrong with her memory. She gave me some of the pages a while back. But it was all in Chinese, so I never got around to reading them. A few months ago, I found someone to translate."

"Why didn't you ask me?" GaoLing pretended to be insulted. "I'm your auntie, she's my sister. We are still blood-related, even though we don't have the same mother."

The truth was, Ruth had feared her mother might have written unflattering remarks about GaoLing. And it occurred to her now that GaoLing might have also censored the parts that dealt with her own secrets, her marriage to the opium addict, for instance. "I didn't want to bother you," Ruth said.

Her aunt sniffed. "What are relatives for if you can't bother them?"

"That's true."

"You call me anytime, you know this. You want Chinese food, I cook for you. Translate Chinese writing, I can do this too. You need me to watch your mommy, no need to ask, just drop her off."

"Actually, remember how we talked about Mom's future needs? Well, Art and I looked at a place, Mira Mar Manor, it's assisted living, really nice. They have staff twenty-four hours a day, activities, a nurse who helps with medication-"

GaoLing frowned. "How can you put your mommy in a nursing home? No, this is not right." She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head.

"It's not what you think-"

"Don't do this! If you can't take care of your mommy, let her come live here with me."

Ruth knew that GaoLing was barely able to handle LuLing for a couple of days at a time. "Nearly gave me a heart attack," was how she had described LuLing's last visit. Still, Ruth was ashamed that her aunt saw her as neglectful, uncaring. All the doubts she had about the Mira Mar bobbed to the surface, and she felt unsteady about her intentions. Was this really the best solution for her mother's safety and health? Or was she abandoning her mother for convenience' sake? She wondered whether she was simply going along with Art's rationale, as she had with so many aspects of their relationship. It seemed she was always living her life through others, for others.

"I just don't know what else to do," Ruth said, her voice full of the despair she had kept pent up. "This disease, it's awful, it's progressing more quickly than I thought. She can't be left alone. She wanders away. And she doesn't know if she's eaten ten minutes ago or ten hours ago. She won't bathe by herself. She's afraid of the faucets-"

"I know, I know. Very hard, very sad. That's why I'm saying, you can't take it anymore, you just bring her here. Part-time my place, part-time your place. Easier that way."

Ruth ducked her head. "Mom already went for a tour of the Mira Mar. She thought it was nice, like a cruise ship."

GaoLing gave a doubting sniff.

Ruth wanted her aunt's approval. She also sensed that GaoLing wanted her to ask for it. She and her mother had taken turns protecting each other. Ruth met GaoLing's eyes. "I won't make any decision until you think it's the right thing. But I would like you to look at the place. And when you do, I can give you a copy of what Mom wrote."

That got GaoLing's interest.

"Speaking of which," Ruth went on, "I was wondering whatever happened to those people you and Mom knew in China. Mom didn't say anything about her life after she left Hong Kong. What happened to that guy you were married to, Fu Nan, and his father? Did they keep the ink shop?"

GaoLing looked to the side to make sure no one was close enough to hear. "Those people were awful." She made a face. "So bad you can't even imagine how bad. The son had many problems. Did your mother write about this?"

Ruth nodded. "He was hooked on opium."

GaoLing looked momentarily taken aback, realizing that LuLing had been thorough in her account. "This is true," she conceded. "Later he died, maybe in 1960, though no one is sure-for-sure. But that was when he stopped writing and calling different people, threatening this and that to get them to send money."

"Uncle Edmund knows about him?"

GaoLing huffed. "How could I tell him that I was still married? Your uncle would then question if we are really married, if I am a bigamist, if our children are-well, like your mother. Later, I forgot to tell him, and when I heard my first husband was probably dead, it was too late to go back and explain what should be forgotten anyway. You understand."

"Like your age."

"Exactly. As for the Chang father, well, in 1950, the Communists cracked down on all the landlords. They put the Chang father in jail and beat a confession from him for owning many businesses, cheating people, and trading in opium. Guilty, they said, and shot him, public execution."

Ruth pictured this. She was against the death penalty in principle, but felt a secret satisfaction that the man who had caused her grandmother and mother so much misery had met a fitting end.

"The people also confiscated his house, made his wife sweep the streets, and all his sons were sent to work outdoors in Wuhan, where it's so hot most people would rather bathe in a vat of boiling oil than go there. My father and mother were glad they were already poor and didn't have to suffer that kind of punishment."

"And Sister Yu, Teacher Pan. Did you hear from them?"

"My brother did-you know, Jiu Jiu in Beijing. He said Sister Yu was promoted many times, until she was a high-position Communist Party leader. I don't know her title, something to do with good attitude and reforms. But during the Cultural Revolution, everything got turned around, and she became an example of bad attitude because of her background with the missionaries. The revolutionaries put her in jail for a long time and treated her pretty hard. But when she came out, she was still happy to be a Communist. Later, I think she died of old age."

"And Teacher Pan?"

"Jiu Jiu said the country one year held a big ceremony for the Chinese workers who helped discover Peking Man. The newspaper article he sent me said Pan Kai Jing-the one your mother married-died as a martyr protecting the whereabouts of the Communist Party, and his father, Teacher Pan, was present to receive his honorable-mention award. After that, I don't know what happened to Teacher Pan. By now, he must be dead. So sad. We once were like family. We sacrificed for each other. Sister Yu could have come to America, but she let your mommy and me have this chance. That's why your mommy named you after Sister Yu."

"I thought I was named after Ruth Grutoff."

"Her too. But your Chinese name comes from Sister Yu. Yu Luyi. Luyi, it means 'all that you wish."'

Ruth was amazed and gratified that her mother had put so much heart into naming her. For most of her childhood, she had hated both her American and her Chinese names, the old-fashioned sound of "Ruth," which her mother could not even pronounce, and the way "Luyi" sounded like the name of a boy, a boxer, or a bully.

"Did you know your mommy also gave up her chance to come to America so I could come first?"

"Sort of." She dreaded the day GaoLing would read the pages describing how she had wangled her way to the States.

"Many times I've thanked her, and always she said, 'No, don't talk about this or I'll be mad at you.' I've tried to repay her many times, but she always refused. Each year we invite her to go to Hawaii. Each year she tells me she doesn't have the money."

Ruth nodded. How many times she had had to suffer listening to her mother complain about that.

"Each time I tell her, I'm inviting you, what money do you need? Then she says she can't let me pay. Forget it! So I tell her, 'Use the money in the Charles Schwab account.' No, she doesn't want that money. She still won't use it."

"What Charles Schwab account?"

"This she didn't tell you? Her half of the money from your grandparents when they died."

"I thought they just left her a little bit."

"Yes, that was wrong of them to do. Very old-fashioned. Made your mommy so angry. That's why she wouldn't take the money, even after your Uncle Edmund and I said we could divide it in half anyway. Long time ago, we put her half in T-bills. Your mommy always pretended she didn't know about it. But then she'd say something like, 'I hear you can make more money investing in the stock market.' So we opened a stock market account. Then she said, 'I hear this stock is good, this one is bad.' So we knew to tell the stockbroker what to buy and sell. Then she said, 'I hear it's better to invest yourself, low fees.' So we opened a Charles Schwab account."

A chill ran down Ruth's arms. "Did some of those stocks she mentioned include IBM, U.S. Steel, AT T, Intel?"

GaoLing nodded. "Too bad Uncle Edmund didn't listen to her advice. He was always running after this IPO, that IPO."

Ruth now recalled the many times her mother had asked Precious Auntie for stock tips via the sand tray. It never occurred to her that the answers mattered that much, since her mother didn't have any real money to gamble with. She thought LuLing followed the stock market the way some people followed soap operas. And so when her mother presented her with a choice of stocks, Ruth chose whichever was the shortest to spell out. That was how she decided. Or had she? Had she also received nudges and notions from someone else?

"So the stocks did well?" Ruth asked with a pounding heart.

"Better than S and P, better than Uncle Edmund-she's like a Wall Street genius! Every year it's grown and grown. She hasn't touched one penny. She could have gone on lots of cruises, bought a fancy house, nice furniture, big car. But no. I think she has been saving it all for you… Don't you want to know how much?"

Ruth shook her head. This was already too much. "Tell me later." Instead of feeling excited about the money, Ruth was hurt to know that her mother had denied herself pleasure and happiness. Out of love, she had stayed behind in Hong Kong, so GaoLing could have a chance at freedom first. Yet she would not take love back from people. How did she become that way? Was it because of Precious Auntie's suicide?

"By the way," Ruth now thought to ask, "what was Precious Auntie's real name?"

"Precious Auntie?"

"Bao Bomu."

"Oh, oh, oh, Bao Bomu! You know, only your mother called her that. Everyone else called her Bao Mu."

"What's the difference, 'Bao Bomu' and 'Bao Mu'?"

"Bao can mean 'precious,' or it can mean 'protect.' Both are third tone, baaaaooo. And the mu part, that stands for 'mother,' but when it's written in bao mu, the mu has an extra piece in front, so that the meaning is more of a female servant. Bao mu is like saying 'baby-sitter,' 'nursemaid.' And bomu, that's 'auntie.' I think her mother taught her to say and write it this way. More special."

"So what was her real name? Mom can't remember, and it really bothers her."

"I don't remember either… I don't know."

Ruth's heart sank. Now she would never know. No one would ever know the name of her grandmother. She had existed, and yet without a name, a large part of her existence was missing, could not be attached to a face, anchored to a family.

"We all called her Bao Mu," GaoLing went on, "also lots of bad nicknames because of her face. Burnt Wood, Fried Mouth, that sort of thing. People weren't being mean, the nicknames were a joke… Well, now that I think of this, they were mean, very mean. That was wrong."

It pained Ruth to hear this. She felt a lump growing in her throat. She wished she could tell this woman from the past, her grandmother, that her granddaughter cared, that she, like her mother, wanted to know where her bones were. "The house in Immortal Heart," Ruth asked, "is it still there?"

"Immortal Heart?… Oh, you mean our village-I only know the Chinese name." She sounded out the syllables. "Xian Xin. Yes, I guess that's how it might translate. The immortal's heart, something like that. Anyway, the house is gone. My brother told me. After a few drought years, a big rainstorm came. Dirt washed down the mountain, flooded the ravine, and crumbled the sides. The earth holding up our house broke apart and fell, bit by bit. It took with it the back rooms, then the well, until only half the house was left. It stood like that for several more years, then in 1972, all at once, it sank and the earth folded on top of it. My brother said that's what killed our mother, even though she had not lived in that house for many years."

"So the house is now lying in the End of the World?"

"What's that-end of what?"

"The ravine."

She sounded out more Chinese syllables to herself, and laughed. "That's right, we called it that when we were kids. End of the World. That's because we heard our parents saying that the closer the edge came to our house, the faster we 'd reach the end of this world. Meaning, our luck would be gone, that was it. And they were right! Anyway, we had many nicknames for that place. Some people called it 'End of the Land,' just like where your mommy lives in San Francisco, Land's End. And sometimes my uncles joked and called that cliff edge momo meiyou, meaning 'rub sink gone.' But most people in the village just called it the garbage dump. In those days, no one came by once a week to take away your garbage, your recycling, no such thing. Course, people then didn't throw away too much. Bones and rotten food, the pigs and dogs ate that. Old clothes we mended and gave to younger children. Even when the clothes were so bad they couldn't be repaired, we tore them into strips and weaved them into liners for winter jackets. Shoes, the same thing. You fixed the holes, patched up the bottoms. So you see, only the worst things were thrown away, the most useless. And when we were little and bad, our parents made us behave by threatening to throw us in the ravine-as if we too were the most useless things! When we were older and wanted to play down there, then it was a different story. Down there, they said, was everything we were afraid of-"

"Bodies?"

"Bodies, ghosts, demons, animal spirits, Japanese soldiers, whatever scared us."

"Were bodies really thrown in there?"

GaoLing paused before she answered. Ruth was sure she was editing a bad memory. "Things were different then… You see, not everyone could afford a cemetery or funeral. Funerals, those cost ten times more than weddings. But it wasn't just cost. Sometimes you couldn't bury someone for other reasons. So to put a body down there, well, this was bad, but not the same way you think, not as though we didn't care about who died."

"What about Precious Auntie's body?"

"Ai-ya. Your mommy wrote everything! Yes, that was very bad what my mother did. She was crazy when she did that, afraid that Bao Mu put a curse on our whole family. After she threw the body in there, a cloud of black birds came. Their wings were big, like umbrellas. They nearly blocked out the sun, there were so many. They flapped above, waiting for the wild dogs to finish with the body. And one of our servants-"

"Old Cook."

"Yes, Old Cook, he was the one who put the body there. He thought that the birds were Bao Mu's spirit and her army of ghosts and that she was going to pick him up with her claws and snatch him up if he did not bury her properly. So he took a large stick and chased the wild dogs away, and the birds stayed there above him, watching as he piled rocks on top of her body. But even after he did all that, our household was still cursed."

"You believed that?"

GaoLing stopped to think. "I must have. Back then I believed whatever my family believed. I didn't question it. Also, Old Cook died only two years later."

"And now?"

GaoLing was quiet for a long time. "Now I think Bao Mu left a lot of sadness behind. Her death was like that ravine. Whatever we didn't want, whatever scared us, that's where we put the blame."

Dory flew into the kitchen. "Ruth! Ruth! Come quick! Waipo fell in the pool. She almost drowned."

By the time Ruth reached the backyard, Art was carrying her mother up the steps of the shallow end. LuLing was coughing and shivering. Sally ran from the house with a pile of towels. "Wasn't anyone watching her?" Ruth cried, too upset to be more tactful.

LuLing looked at Ruth as though she were the one being chastised. "Ai-ya, so stupid."

"We're okay," Art told LuLing in a calming voice. "Just a little whoopsie-daisy. No harm done."

"She was only ten feet away from us," Billy said. "Just walked in and sank before we knew it. Art dove in, beer and all, as soon as it happened."

Ruth swaddled her mother in towels, rubbing her to stimulate her circulation.

"I saw her down there," LuLing moaned in Chinese between more coughs. "She asked me to help her get out from under the rocks. Then the ground became sky and I fell through a rain cloud, down, down, down." She turned to point to where she saw the phantom.

As Ruth glanced where her mother gestured, she saw Auntie Gal, her face stricken with new understanding.

Ruth left her mother at Auntie Gal's and spent the next day at her house sorting out what should be moved to Mira Mar Manor. On the take list she included most of her mother's bedroom furniture, and the linens and towels LuLing had never used. But what about her scroll paintings, the ink and brushes? Her mother might feel frustrated looking at these emblems of her more agile self. One thing was for certain: Ruth was not moving the vinyl La-Z-Boy. That was destined for the dump. She would buy her mother a new recliner, a much nicer one, with supple burgundy leather. Just thinking about this gave Ruth pleasure. She could already envision her mother's eyes aglow with wonder and gratitude, testing the squishiness of the cushion, murmuring, "Oh, so soft, so good."

In the evening, she drove to Bruno's supper club to meet Art. Years before, they often went there as prelude to a romantic night. The restaurant had booths that allowed them to sit close and fondle each other.

She parked around the corner a block away, and when she looked at her watch, she saw she was fifteen minutes early. She did not want to appear too eager. In front of her was the Modern Times bookstore. She went in. As she often did in bookstores, she headed to the remainder table, the bargains marked down to three ninety-eight with the lime-green stickers that were the literary equivalent of toe tags on corpses. There were the usual art books, biographies, and tell-alls of the Famous for Fifteen Minutes. And then her eyes fell on The Nirvana Wide Web: Connections to a Higher Consciousness. Ted, the Internet Spirituality author, had been right. His was a time-sensitive topic. It was already over. She felt the thrill of guilty glee. On the fiction table were an assortment of novels, most of them contemporary literary fiction by authors not well known by the masses. She picked up a slim book that lay obligingly in her hands, inviting her to cradle it in bed under a soft light. She picked up another, held it, skimmed its pages, her eye and imagination plucking a line here and there. She was drawn to them all, these prisms of other lives and times. And she felt sympathetic, as if they were dogs at the animal shelter, abandoned without reason, hopeful that they would be loved still. She left the store carrying a bag with five books.

Art was sitting in the bar at Bruno's, a retro expanse of fifties glamour. "You're looking happy," he said.

"Am I?" She was instantly embarrassed. Lately, Wendy, Gideon, and others had been telling her what she appeared to be feeling, that she seemed bothered or upset, puzzled or surprised. And each time, Ruth had been unaware of any feelings in particular. Obviously she was showing something on her face. Yet how could she not know what she was feeling?

The maître d' seated them in a booth that had recently been redone in clubby leather. Everything in the restaurant had managed to stay as though nothing had changed for fifty years, except the prices and the in clusion of uni and octopus appetizers. As they looked over the menu, the waiter came with a bottle of champagne.

"I ordered it," Art whispered, "for our anniversary… Don't you remember? Nude yoga? Your gay buddy? We met ten years ago."

Ruth laughed. She had not remembered. As the waiter poured, she whispered back, "I thought you had nice feet for a pervert."

When they were alone, Art lifted his flute. "Here's to ten years, most of it amazing, with a few questionable parts, and the hope that we'll get back to where we should be." He pressed his hand on her thigh and said, "We should try it some time."

"What?"

"Nude yoga."

A rush of warmth flooded her. The months of living with her mother had left her feeling like a virgin.

"Hey, baby, want to come back to my place afterward?"

She was thrilled at the prospect.

The waiter stood before them again, ready to take orders. "The lady and I would like to begin with oysters," Art said. "This is our first date, so we '11 need the ones that have the best aphrodisiac effects. Which do you recommend?"

"That would be the Kumamotos," the waiter said without a change of expression.

That night, they did not make love right away. They lay in bed, Art cuddling her, the bedroom window open so they could listen to the foghorns. "In all these years we've been together," he said, "I don't think I know an important part of you. You keep secrets inside you. You hide. It's as though I've never seen you naked, and I've had to imagine what you look like behind the drapes."

"I'm not consciously hiding anything." After Ruth said that, she wondered whether it was true. Then again, who revealed everything-the irritations, the fears? How tiresome that would be. What did he mean by secrets?

"I want us to be more intimate. I want to know what you want. Not just with us, but from life. What makes you happiest? Are you doing what you want to do?"

She laughed nervously. "That's what I edit for others, that intimate-soul stuff. I can describe how to find happiness in ten chapters, but I still don't know what it is."

"Why do you keep pushing me away?"

Ruth bristled. She didn't like it when Art acted as if he knew her better than she knew herself. She felt him shaking her arm.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I don't want to make you tense. I'm just trying to get to know you. When I told the waiter this was our first date, I meant it, in a way. I want to pretend I've just met you, love at first sight, and I want to know who you are. I love you, Ruth, but I don't know you. And I want to know who this person is, this woman I love. That's all."

Ruth sank against his chest. "I don't know, I don't know," she said softly. "Sometimes I feel like I'm a pair of eyes and ears, and I'm just trying to stay safe and make sense of what's happening. I know what to avoid, what to worry about. I'm like those kids who live with gunfire going off around them. I don't want pain. I don't want to die. I don't want to see other people around me die. But I don't have anything left inside me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want."

THREE

In the first gallery of the Asian Art Museum, Ruth saw Mr. Tang kiss her mother's cheek. LuLing laughed like a shy schoolgirl, and then, hand in hand, they strolled into the next gallery.

Art nudged Ruth and crooked his arm. "Come on, I'm not about to be outdone by those guys." They caught up with LuLing and her companion, who were seated on a bench in front of a display of bronze bells hung in two rows on a gargantuan frame, about twelve feet high and twenty-five feet long.

"It's like a xylophone for the gods," Ruth whispered, taking a seat beside Mr. Tang.

"Each bell makes two distinct tones." Mr. Tang's voice was gentle yet authoritative. "The hammer hits the bell on the bottom and the right side. And when there are many musicians and the bells are struck together, the music is very complex, it creates tonal layers. I had the pleasure of hearing them played recently by Chinese musicians at a special event." He smiled in recalling this. "In my mind, I was transported back three thousand years. I heard what a person of that time heard, experiencing the same awe. I could imagine this person listening, a woman, I think, a very beautiful woman." He squeezed LuLing's hand. "And I thought to myself, in another three thousand years, perhaps another woman will hear these tones and think of me as a handsome man. Though we don't know each other, we're connected by the music. Don't you agree?" He looked at LuLing.

"Buddha-ful," she answered.

"Your mother and I think alike," he said to Ruth. She grinned back. She realized that Mr. Tang translated for LuLing, as she once had. But he knew not to be concerned with words and their precise meanings. He simply translated what was in LuLing's heart: her better intentions, her hopes.

For the past month, LuLing had been living at Mira Mar Manor, and Mr. Tang went several times a week to visit. On Saturday afternoons, he took her on outings-to matinees, to free public rehearsals of the symphony, for strolls through the arboretum. Today it was an exhibit on Chinese archaeology, and he had invited Ruth and Art to join them. "I have something interesting to show you," he had said mysteriously over the phone, "very much worth your while."

It was already worth Ruth's while to see her mother so happy. Happy. Ruth pondered the word. Until recently, she had not known what that might encompass in LuLing's case. True, her mother was still full of complaints. The food at the Mira Mar was, as predicted, "too salty," the restaurant-style service was "so slow, food already cold when come." And she hated the leather recliner Ruth had bought her. Ruth had to replace it with the old vinyl La-Z-Boy. But LuLing had let go of most worries and irritations: the tenant downstairs, the fears that someone was stealing her money, the sense that a curse loomed over her life and disaster awaited her if she was not constantly on guard. Or had she simply forgotten? Perhaps her being in love was the tonic. Or the change of scenery had removed reminders of a more sorrowful past. And yet she still recounted the past, if anything more often, only now it was constantly being revised for the better. For one, it included Mr. Tang. LuLing acted as if they had known each other many lifetimes and not just a month or so. "This same thing, he and I see long time 'go," LuLing said aloud as they all admired the bells, "only now we older."

Mr. Tang helped LuLing stand up, and they moved with Ruth and Art to another display in the middle of the room. "This next one is a cherished object of China scholars," he said. "Most visitors want to see the ritual wine vessels, the jade burial suits. But to a true scholar, this is the prize." Ruth peered into the display case. To her, the prize resembled a large wok with writing on it.

"It's a masterly work of bronze," Mr. Tang continued, "but there's also the inscription itself. It's an epic poem written by the great scholars about the great rulers who were their contemporaries. One of the emperors they praised was Zhou, yes, the same Zhou of Zhoukoudian-where your mother once lived and Peking Man was found."

"The Mouth of the Mountain?" Ruth said.

"The same. Though Zhou didn't live there. A lot of places carry his name, just like every town in the United States has a Washington Street… Now come this way. The reason I brought you here is in the next room."

Soon they were standing in front of another display case. "Don't look at the description in English, not yet," Mr. Tang said. "What do you think this is?" Ruth saw an ivory-colored spadelike object, cracked with lines and blackened with holes. Was it a board for an ancient game of go? A cooking implement? Next to it was a smaller object, light brown and oval, with a lip around it and writing instead of holes. At once she knew, but before she could speak, her mother gave the answer in Chinese: "Oracle bone."

Ruth was amazed at what her mother could recall. She knew not to expect LuLing to remember appointments or facts about a recent event, who was where, when it happened. But her mother often surprised her with the clarity of her emotions when she spoke of her youth, elements of which matched in spirit what she had written in her memoir. To Ruth this was evidence that the pathways to her mother's past were still open, though rutted in a few spots and marked by rambling detours. At times she also blended the past with memories from other periods of her own past. But that part of her history was nonetheless a reservoir which she could draw from and share. It didn't matter that she blurred some of the finer points. The past, even revised, was meaningful.

In recent weeks, LuLing had related several times how she received the apple-green-jade ring that Ruth had retrieved from the La-Z-Boy. "We went to a dance hall, you and I," she said in Chinese. "We came down the stairs and you introduced me to Edwin. His eyes fell on mine and did not turn away for a long time. I saw you smile and then you disappeared. That was naughty of you. I knew what you were thinking! When he asked me to marry, he gave me the ring." Ruth guessed that GaoLing had been the person who did the introductions.

Ruth now heard LuLing speaking in Mandarin to Art: "My mother found one of these. It was carved with words of beauty. She gave it to me when she was sure I would not forget what was important. I never wanted to lose it." Art nodded as if he understood what she had said, and then LuLing translated into English for Mr. Tang: "I telling him, this bone my mother give me one."

"Very meaningful," he said, "especially since your mother was the daughter of a bone doctor."

"Famous," LuLing said.

Mr. Tang nodded as if he too remembered. "Everyone from the villages all around came to him. And your father went for a broken foot. His horse stepped on him. That's how he met your mother. Because of that horse."

LuLing went blank-eyed. Ruth was afraid her mother was going to cry. But instead, LuLing brightened and said, "Liu Xing. He call her that. My mother say he write love poem about this."

Art looked at Ruth, waiting for her to acknowledge whether this was true. He had read some of the translation of LuLing's memoir, but could not connect the Chinese name to its referent. "It means 'shooting star,'" Ruth whispered. "I'll explain later." To LuLing she said, "And what was your mother's family name?" Ruth knew it was a risk to bring this up, but her mother's mind had entered the territory of names. Perhaps others were there, like markers, waiting to be retrieved.

Her mother hesitated only a moment before answering: "Family name Gu." She was looking sternly at Ruth. "I tell you so many time, you don't remember? Her father Dr. Gu. She Gu doctor daughter."

Ruth wanted to shout for joy, but the next instant she realized her mother had said the Chinese word for 'bone.' Dr. Gu, Dr. Bone, bone doctor. Art's eyebrows were raised, in expectation that the long-lost family identity had been found. "I'll explain later," Ruth said again, but this time her voice was listless. "Oh."

Mr. Tang traced characters in the air. "Gu, like this? Or this?" Her mother put on a worried face. "I don't remember." "I don't either," Mr. Tang said quickly. "Oh well, doesn't matter." Art changed the subject. "What's the writing on the oracle bone?" "They're the questions the emperors asked the gods," Mr. Tang replied. "What's the weather going to be like tomorrow, who's going to win the war, when should the crops be planted. Kind of like the six-o'clock news, only they wanted the report ahead of time." "And were the answers right?"

"Who knows? They're the cracks you see next to the black spots. The diviners of the bones used a heated nail to crack the bone. It actually made a sound-pwak! They interpreted the cracks as the answers from heaven. I'm sure the more successful diviners were skilled at saying what the emperors wanted to hear."

"What a great linguistic puzzle," Art said.

Ruth thought of the sand tray she and her mother used over the years. She too had tried to guess what might put her mother at ease, the words that would placate but not be readily detected as fraudulent. At times she had made up the answers to suit herself. But on other occasions, she really had tried to write what her mother needed to hear. Words of comfort, saying that her husband missed her, that Precious Auntie was not angry.

"Speaking of puzzle," Ruth said, "the other day you mentioned that no one ever found the bones of Peking Man."

LuLing perked up. "Not just man, woman too."

"You're right, Mom-Peking Woman. I wonder what happened to her? Were the bones crushed on the train tracks on the way to Tianjin? Or did they sink with the boat?"

"If the bones are still around," Mr. Tang replied, "no one's saying. Oh, every few years you read a story in the paper. Someone dies, the wife of an American soldier, a former Japanese officer, an archaeologist in Taiwan or Hong Kong. And as the story goes, bones were found in a wooden trunk, just like the trunks used to pack the bones back in 1941. Then the rumors leak out that these are the bones of Peking Man. Arrangements are made, ransoms are paid, or what have you. But the bones turn out to be oxtails. Or they are casts of the original. Or they disappear before they can be examined. In one story, the person who had stolen the bones was taking them to an island to sell to a dealer, and the plane went down in the ocean."

Ruth thought about the curse of ghosts who were angry that their bones were separated from the rest of their mortal bodies. "What do you believe?"

"I don't know. So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life." Mr. Tang winked at LuLing.

"Wonderful," she echoed.

He looked at his watch. "How about a wonderful lunch?"

"Wonderful," they said.

As Ruth and Art lay in bed that night, she pondered aloud over Mr. Tang's romantic interest in her mother. "I can understand that he's intrigued with her since he's done this work on her memoir. But he's a man who's into culture, music, poetry. She can't keep up, and she's only going to get worse. She might not even know who he is after a while."

"He's been in love with her since she was a little girl," Art said. "She's not just a source of temporary companionship. He loves everything about her, and that includes who she was, who she is, who she will be. He knows more about her than most couples who are married." He drew Ruth closer to him. "Actually, I'm hoping we might have that. A commitment through time, past, present, future… marriage."

Ruth held her breath. She had pushed the idea out of her head for so long she still felt it was taboo, dangerous.

"I've tried to legally bind you in the past with ownership in the house, which you've yet to take."

That's what he had meant by a percentage interest in the house? She was baffled by the mechanisms of her own defenses.

"It's just an idea," Art said awkwardly. "No pressure. I just wanted to know what you might think."

She pressed closer and kissed his shoulder. "Wonderful," she answered.

The name, I know your mother's family name." GaoLing was calling Ruth with exciting news.

"Oh my God, what is it?"

"First you have to know what trouble I had trying to find out. After you asked me, I wrote Jiu Jiu in Beijing. He didn't know, but wrote back that he would ask a woman married to a cousin whose family still lives in the village where your grandmother was born. It took a while to sort out, because most people who would know are dead. But finally they tracked down an old woman whose grandfather was a traveling photographer. And she still had all his old glass plates. They were in a root cellar and luckily not too many were damaged. Her grandfather kept excellent records, dates, who paid what, the names of the people he photographed. Thousands of plates and photos. Anyway, the old lady remembered her grandfather showing her the photo of a girl who was quite beautiful. She had on a pretty cap, high-neck collar."

"The photo Mom has of Precious Auntie?"

"Must be the same. The old lady said it was sad, because soon after the photo was taken, the girl was scarred for life, the father was dead, the whole family destroyed. People in the village said the girl was jinxed from the beginning-"

Ruth couldn't stand it any longer. "What was the name?"

"Gu."

"Gu?" Ruth felt let down. It was the same mistake. " Gu is the word for 'bone,'" Ruth said. "She must have thought 'bone doctor' meant 'Dr. Bone.'"

"No, no," GaoLing said. "Gu as in 'gorge.' It's a different gu. It sounds the same as the bone gu, but it's written a different way. The third-tone gu can mean many things: 'old,' 'gorge,' 'bone,' also 'thigh,' 'blind,' 'grain,' 'merchant,' lots of things. And the way 'bone' is written can also stand for 'character.' That's why we use that expression 'It's in your bones.' It means, 'That's your character.'"

Ruth had once thought that Chinese was limited in its sounds and thus confusing. It seemed to her now that its multiple meanings made it very rich. The blind bone doctor from the gorge repaired the thigh of the old grain merchant.

"You're sure it's Gu?"

"That's what was written on the photographic plate."

"Did it include her first name?"

"Liu Xin."

"Shooting Star?"

"That's liu xing, sounds almost the same, xing is 'star,' xin is 'truth.' Liu Xin means Remain True. But because the words sound similar, some people who didn't like her called her Liu Xing. The shooting star can have a bad meaning."

"Why?"

"It's confusing why. People think the broom star is very bad to see. That's the other kind, with the long, slow tail, the comes-around kind."

"Comet?"

"Yes, comet. Comet means a rare calamity will happen. But some people mix up the broom star with the shooting star, so even though the shooting star is not bad luck, people think it is. The idea is not so good either-burns up quick, one day here, one day gone, just like what happened to Precious Auntie."

Her mother had written about this, Ruth recalled, a story Precious Auntie told LuLing when she was small-how she looked up at the night sky, saw a shooting star, which then fell into her open mouth.

Ruth began to cry. Her grandmother had a name. Gu Liu Xin. She had existed. She still existed. Precious Auntie belonged to a family. LuLing belonged to that same family, and Ruth belonged to them both. The family name had been there all along, like a bone stuck in the crevices of a gorge. LuLing had divined it while looking at an oracle in the museum. And the given name had flashed before her as well for the briefest of moments, a shooting star that entered the earth's atmosphere, etching itself indelibly in Ruth's mind.