Pioneer Girl (14 page)

“How did Judson get all of this money, and how do you know him?”

“He's an entrepreneur. I'm doing some work for him. I met him when he was out in Chicago. Seriously, what is with you and your inquisitions?”

“What the hell else am I supposed to do? All of a sudden you're living in San Francisco with some strange dude.”

“It's not a gay situation, if that's what you're thinking.”

“Well, I don't know that much about your life,” I said. “No one really does.”

Sam finished his beer and stood up. “Want one?”

“No.” I followed him to the kitchen, pausing at the polished concrete counter. The backsplash was made of a mirrored glass tile that shimmered when Sam opened the gigantic refrigerator. It was filled with booze, Vitaminwaters, and take-out boxes.

“This neighborhood is Pacific Heights, right? Isn't it fancy?”

“Lower Pacific. I'd live in the Mission if I could, but Judson's parents own this place. They moved to Massachusetts so I stay here for free, basically. It's part of my work.”

“So what kind of business is this?” I asked.

“Judson calls himself a societal entrepreneur.”

“What, is he a gigolo?”

Sam smiled at that. He opened another beer and tossed the cap on the counter.

“Contraband?” I said. “Immigrant smuggling?”

“Why do you always think the worst?”

For a moment we just looked at each other, and for reasons I didn't think I'd ever understand, he relented. “All right,” he said. “Let me show you.”

He walked me upstairs to an office space. A row of desks lining the walls; laptops and printers.

“This is it,” he said.

“What do you do?”

“Mostly number-crunching. You know, accounting. Some phone calls.” At my annoyed look Sam finally said, “Judson supplies medical marijuana.” I must have looked incredulous, because he went on, “It's legal in California. It goes by a doctor's prescription. Certain clinics offer it, and obviously they need suppliers.”

“And that makes him a societal entrepreneur?”

“Why not?”

“Do his parents know about this?”

Sam burst out laughing. “God, you sound like a school principal.
Do his parents know?
”

“Hey, look, this doesn't exactly seem like a drug-running kind of neighborhood. I can't imagine the neighbors are pleased.”

“Why would they know? Maybe you don't realize it, Lee, but this is a start-up operation. Full legalization is coming soon, and when it does, we'll be ready. We're on the verge of a boom here. IPOs and everything. You wait and see.”

I held back from saying that he was just as money-obsessed as our mother.

I peeked into the room next door, which was nearly empty save for a mattress on the floor and a particleboard bookshelf in one corner. Sam's duffel lay open, clothes still inside it. “Is this your room? You didn't say how long you're planning on staying here.”

“I haven't gotten around to getting furniture yet.”

“So it's just you and Judson, this marijuana operation? Are you, like, employee number two at Google?”

“Look, you asked me all these questions and, as predicted, you don't really want to know any of the answers.”

“I just don't want you to end up in prison.”

“Oh, for fuck's sake.”

“Where is this Judson anyway? I hate his name.”

“You think he grows the stuff in the backyard? He's got a whole farm about an hour and a half from here.”

“This is all great for you, Sam, but what about Mom and Ong Hai? What are you going to tell them?”

He made this exasperated sound, like I was too tiresome to be believed. “If you want to rule your life with obligations to other people, that's you.”

“I'm trying to remember when you've ever considered anyone else.”

“I think you're lying, Lee. I don't think there's any money at all. Or if there is, you don't know about it. You never even asked her, right?”

What could I say? He was my brother, in spite of everything—we knew each other well.

“You can tell her I'm fine here. I'm fine on my own.”

He was making me the messenger, just as he'd said. And I knew, as well as I knew anything, as well as I knew that I would go see Gregory Stellenson later that day, that it was true, what Sam said. He would be fine without us.

So I took my leave, as the old-fashioned characters in novels I loved would have said. There was no great drama in it. I didn't know when I would see Sam again, or talk to him, and I didn't ask. He was already far away. The way we'd talked to each other as siblings, growing up in the same apartments, eating the same sugary cereals, hoping we wouldn't smell of buffet grease as we rode the bus to school, could not hold.

We walked down the main staircase. Because it was perhaps my last chance, I said, “At least tell me why you had to take the jewelry.” Sam looked away. “You know she has almost nothing from Vietnam.”

“I told you I needed money. You should be glad I left that ugly pin for you.”

“Because you thought it wasn't worth anything.”

Standing there in the foyer of his borrowed house, time zones away from our family, I realized I'd wanted to believe that Sam still had the jewelry, that he hadn't sold it all.

“It's not like she ever wore any of it. All that gold and jade looks the same anyway. She owed me.”

“That's bullshit, and you know it. If anything, you owe
her
.”

“Now you're on her side? Look at how she guilted Hieu. She's been using him all this time, lying, keeping secrets.”

“Even if that's true, think about how much of that money went directly to you. You have no right to be so entitled. Why shouldn't she get some help, anyway? Why shouldn't she have someone looking out for her?”

“Wow.” Sam folded his arms. “So much for loyalty to Dad.”

“This isn't about Dad.” But I struggled to keep sudden tears at bay.

Sam leaned against the staircase, resting his arm where the staircase railing ended, curling into itself in a shape that I remembered was called a volute.

“Maybe I shouldn't have taken all that stuff, but it's not like I'm a real thief. I was just trying to get out of there. Look around. This is where I should have been a long time ago. Anyone in their right mind would rather be here.”

It was an argument I'd heard all my life, an argument I'd had with myself. Why would anyone in the Midwest, especially a nonwhite person, want to stay there? How could life not be better out West, in California? I had stayed close to home because in-state tuition was what I could afford and because I'd felt the tug of obligation to family. But I had tried to get into Stanford for grad school. My postdoc applications spanned the country. I had sent in my materials without ever mentioning to my mother or grandfather that I hoped one day to move far away. And as for the other part, well, I was a thief too. Sam had no idea how much.

I put my hand on the front door handle. It was heavy, solid, a match for the varnished wood of the door that held a single pane of etched glass. Once, we had lived in an apartment in northern Illinois where the front door knob kept falling off. The landlord didn't fix it for months, so my mother carried the knob around in her purse, for whenever we needed to get in or out. I wondered if Sam remembered that. At the moment he seemed younger than ever, as though we had switched places and I had become the older sibling. The switch had happened years back, really, for I was used to looking out for him, checking on him. I was looking for excuses.

“You're living in a beautiful house,” I said, because it was so, and there was Sam, looking like he no more belonged there than I did. But perhaps he would. Soon he would. He would learn the language of this new place and his room would begin to fit with the rest. He would find friends, people like him who had no desire to go home for holidays. They would deep-fry Thanksgiving turkeys and exchange white elephant gifts at Christmas. They would eat at exquisite restaurants and dives and form very specific opinions about dumpling wrappers. They would have cheesy-movie marathons and themed parties and brew their own beer. And then Sam too would become one of the Asian Americans who made up more than a quarter of this city, whose thinness and quick walk and cool clothes would inspire a visitor like me to marvel at how many driven, successful, capable Asians lived here, and how happy and easy their lives must be.

I left Sam the way he had left the coffee shop that morning, not looking back. I wondered when I would hear from him next, or if he would ever take the initiative. He was more than capable of holding out. If I felt anger then, it had more to do with the stolen jewelry and the lost years of my own than with Sam himself.

Down at the sidewalk, I couldn't help thinking of Newland Archer—that old companion of mine, suddenly reappearing—turning away from the life he wanted but didn't dare to choose.
In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs
. Somehow, Sam and I had both found ourselves at the western coast. Did we even know what real thing we were trying to find?

On Fillmore I started north toward Vallejo Street, toward the house where Rose had lived in Russian Hill almost a hundred years before. She too had created her own community in this city. Her own free life, far from the confines of Mansfield. It was no mistake that she had found a house on top of a hill, with a view of the Golden Gate waterway, not yet bridged, opening out to the Pacific. She had loved even the chill of the fog, even the despondency that came from being surrounded by other people's wealth while she herself had to keep struggling and striving. Maybe Sam would keep striving too. It was impossible to tell what story he would make for himself.

And impossible to know what story I would bring to my mother and Ong Hai. They would be folding chilled noodles and shrimp into summer rolls, stocking bottles of water and juice, setting up cups for coffee and tea. They would be coming home, making yet more food or microwaving leftovers, eating while the familiar television shows laughed and clapped around them. I had always hated the image of TV lights flickering in someone's living room as I walked by. Probably because they always reminded me of my family and how I pictured them: sitting in near-invisibility, taking in whatever news or information that was presented.

I really did want to see Rose's house. I got as far as locating the exact route on my phone. But the absurdity of Sam's plans—that mattress on the floor, his dreams of weed—had left me with the lost feeling I had long associated with moving, packing, deciding which belongings had turned out, after all, to be discardable. The house on Vallejo was just another temporary home for Rose. As much as she'd prized the view and the height, she'd left soon enough for Sausalito, for Europe, even for Rocky Ridge Farm. I didn't want, right then, to see another temporary home. I wanted an answer.

So I returned to the San Francisco Library, even though I knew I wasn't supposed to until the next day, with Amy. In a way, I almost hoped Gregory wouldn't be there. In another way, I desperately hoped he would.

He was in plain sight, sitting behind the reception desk this time. As I approached, he said, “Hey, you're back.”

“I'm back.”

“Where's your friend?”

“She had to work.”

“What about you?”

“This is my work. Sort of.”

He nodded. No doubt he'd seen thousands of people dragging themselves through research and notes day after day. “You wanted to take a look at the
Bulletin
archives, right?”

“Not exactly. Or maybe. It's related to that. It's kind of strange.”

“A lot of strange things are housed here.”

“Well, stumbled across some pieces of information while I was researching Rose Wilder Lane. You know, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder?”

“This is the literary mystery your friend mentioned.”

“Right. Amy mentioned that.”

Once again, with Gregory right in front of me, I hesitated. I could have backtracked as I had the day before and nobody else would have to know. I could have waited until Friday, as promised to Amy, whose help I was betraying by standing there.

But when Gregory glanced at his computer, already starting to focus on some other idea, some other piece of news, I decided to keep going. Here, now, just me and him.

“It has to do with a child,” I said. Gregory looked back at me. “I think there was a child, is what I mean. That Rose Wilder might have given up for adoption. This was in 1918, here in San Francisco. As far as I can tell, no one in her family knew about it. But the thing is, that child was her only descendant, and therefore Laura Ingalls Wilder's only descendant, because Rose was her only surviving child.”

When I paused, Gregory said, “Interesting. And then what?”

“So I tried to see if I could figure out what happened to that child. And I found the answer, or at least what might be the answer. It led—well, I guess it led to you.”

I was almost afraid to see Gregory's reaction. He sat back, as if trying to put distance between us. “What do you mean, me?”

“I mean you, Gregory Stellenson. Or that is, your grandfather Albert, who was, or might have been, Rose's child.”

After a few moments, Gregory said, “This is kind of creepy.”

“I'm sorry,” I said quickly. “I really debated saying anything at all. But I just wanted to find out if it was true. I wanted to know the rest, whatever it is.”

“Wait, who are you again?”

“I'm Lee. I'm a researcher. An academic, I guess.”

From my tote bag I pulled out the pilfered copy of
Free Land
and the letter that Mrs. Stellenson had sent to San Francisco General Hospital. I explained how it had been tucked into the pages of Rose's novel, stored away in an unused room at Rocky Ridge.