In the GOODWILL box were piled dress shirts. Even though they’d been washed, I thought I could still detect his smell on them. A dry, slightly stale odor.
“Why don’t you take?” Ma asked. “They fit you perfectly.” She was right; I was broad enough through the shoulders. But I shook my head.
Ma picked up a tan V-necked sweater and held it up for us to inspect. “Definitely too small for Uncle Richard. Carey, you like this? Such nice cashmere, feel.”
I said quickly: “It’s not his color.”
My mother frowned at it, then refolded it and put it aside. “Maybe I wear for around the house.”
All the trousers were cut baggy. Ma laughed suddenly. “Look at this.” She laid out two pairs on the bed side by side. We could see that one was much larger than the other.
“Your daddy got very fat right after we married. Everyone says it’s my good cooking.”
“I can believe that,” Carey said, and I rolled my eyes at him. My mother was a terrible cook.
“It was your daddy who liked to cook,” Ma said to me. “Every night, he made a feast, six courses at least. He used up every knife and pot and pan we had.” She sat back on her heels with a dreamy look. “When I was pregnant with you, Sally, I have to tell him to stop, I was too tired to do the dishes.”
“So did you cook?” I asked.
“No one cook. We go into Monterey for spaghetti with clam sauce.” I could see my parents sitting in front of their enormous plates of pasta, looking daunted. “This American food,” Ma would have sighed. Daddy would have pointed out that spaghetti was invented by the Chinese.
“I thought you were so sick you couldn’t eat,” I said.
“Who said that?” My mother folded each pair of trousers over her arm, pulling the legs out so that the creases lay perfectly. She handles clothes meticulously. So did Nai-nai. But there was a difference in attitude. To my grandmother, clothes held a kind of magic—they could change your destiny one way or the other. To my mother, they were servile, like farm animals in China. Treat them well and they’ll perform their function.
Marty and I, American girls, were frivolous. My sister’s clothes lay heaped on chairs and strewn on the floor, forgotten until she needed something in particular. I bought things for the color, and liked to see them hanging arrayed in my closet—whites, blacks, warms, cools—almost more than I enjoyed wearing them.
“You want me to help you sort?” I asked my mother.
“No, easier if one person does.”
Her answer made me feel guilty. She knew I hadn’t loved my father enough to go through his clothes when he was dead.
As the plane taxied down the runway, I noticed that almost everyone was reading, or pretending to read. Not me. I sat straight up, waiting for that moment, exactly the space of a slow intake of breath, when we lifted off and began to climb steeply into the sky.
Those couple of days I’d spent at the house on Woodside Avenue, my mother and I had treated each other neutrally. We cooked meals, ate, cleaned up, watched the news, and it was as if I were just home for the weekend, had never tried to off myself, or been in the hospital. That last family therapy session might have never taken place.
The last thing Ma said, when she dropped me off at Connecticut Limousine, was that I’d probably have to take a taxi from the airport because Uncle Richard didn’t have a license anymore, his eyesight had gotten so bad, and Aunty Mabel hated to drive.
But there my aunt was, waiting behind the rope, in a pink-and-white-flowered shirtdress and big sunglasses. Thinner in some places, fatter in others. She waved so wildly when she saw me that everyone looked to see who it was. I felt like a movie star.
“Wo lai na, wo lai na,” she insisted, holding out her arms for the bag.
“No, I’m okay. It’s really light.”
She regarded me critically. “Too thin. Come, I’m right outside.”
I barely had time to register the heat before we got to the car, an old maroon Tercel. My aunt switched on the radio to Muzak.
“Eleanor Rigby.”
“I thought you didn’t like to drive,” I said.
“In Florida you have to drive.” My aunt’s voice had a lilt, a trace of southern. Her lips and fingernails were painted coral. I could tell right away I wasn’t going to blend in here. Florida was surreal, I couldn’t take seriously anyplace that had palm trees. And it was stunningly flat, the bay itself a vast plain, stretching out light blue and gleaming on both sides of us as we skimmed across toward St. Petersburg, which shimmered ahead of us through a fog of heat.
“You know, Sal-lee, my friend from the library has a pool, she says you can use. Or you can go to the beach. We have ninety-five degrees every day this week.”
“I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
“No problem, we buy at the mall.”
“What’s this about a library, Aunty Mabel?”
“I have part-time volunteer job at public library. Shelve books, catalog, things like that. Once in a while there’s a kids’ art exhibit, I help organize.”
Despite myself, I began to relax. It was soothing to be driven like this, into a strange pale metropolis that whatever surprises it might hold, could never be as jangling as New York. When we got into the city proper, on the left, through the buildings, I could still catch glimpses of the bay. And even here, downtown, was that Florida light, with its peculiar empty quality, as if it were reflecting only ocean, like at the beginning of time.
Aunty Mabel said: “You know, your Uncle Richard isn’t so good.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Since he retired. I think he lose his spirit. Maybe you can cheer him up.”
“Me?”
“All the time he’s in front of the TV. Maybe you can do some project together.”
“Okay.”
“He always want daughter, you know. Never son, like most men. He’s so looking forward to your visit.”
Ma had once told me that my aunt and uncle couldn’t have children because when Aunty Mabel was young, she had been cursed by a beggar on the streets of Shanghai.
The street they lived on was all ranch houses, each with its own tiny backyard. Uncle Richard opened the door for us, wheezing. “Welcome, Niece.” He was fatter than ever, thinning gray wisps combed back from his forehead, eyelids so heavy with wrinkles it made him look sleepy. “Typical Cantonese,” Ma always said about him. “You know, that round face.”
“You bring your pretty sister with you?”
“Not this time.”
I followed my aunt down the narrow hallway. The guest room was practically unrecognizable from when Marty and I had visited as children. Then it had been all white-gauze curtains, flimsy spreads, like in a beach house. Now it was filled with heavy, bright embroidery: the spreads peach-colored satin with intricate scarlet rose borders, matching curtains with valances, a footstool plump like a pincushion. On one bed was a large pillow in the shape of a ladybug and on the other a toy cat, white and fluffy, like the ones on my bureau scarf, like Lili, who had gotten run over. Aunty Mabel had a lot of time on her hands.
After I’d unpacked—even the satin hangers had little daisies embroidered on them—I went back into the living room. The TV on a rolling cart was blasting a basketball game. On the sofa beside my uncle, Niu-niu, whom I’d only seen in a snapshot as a kitten, was sprawled out arthritically. There were flecks of white in her black coat. Uncle Richard stroked the cat absent-mindedly as he watched the game. When the action got exciting he’d heave her up by her shoulders and point her at the screen.
“See that breakaway? Good for three points. I knew it!”
“Who’s playing?”
“Wildcats versus Hoosiers. I have one hundred smackers on this game. You don’t tell your aunt.”
I settled myself into a rocking chair with gingham frills over the arms. “Who are you betting on?”