The Year She Left Us (24 page)

That flint of pride was digging at her again. However much she wanted to, if she chased after Ari it might feel like humiliation. Les had accused her of giving up. Well, fine, if that's what Les wanted to call it. For once in her life, she was hanging on to
no
.

She tramped the road for two hours. Except for her aunt and uncle's house, she didn't see a familiar landmark.

A
unt Rose said that a great-grandson was due in April. They were in her sewing room with the winter light slanting in, Charlie cross-legged on the window seat and Aunt Rose in her wingback chair. Uncle Bennett was in his lab on campus—
They don't want him anymore
, Aunt Rose had said,
but he doesn't know anything else.

“Do you think my mother is unhappy that she never had a son?” Charlie asked.

“She had Mu-you,” Aunt Rose said shortly. “He could have been a son to her, after Father and Mother died.”

“It's sad,” Charlie said. Aunt Rose didn't answer. “Ma always talks about how daughters are better, but I think it's a smoke screen. She must have wanted a son.”

“Your mother is not conventional Chinese. She always thought girls were stronger.”

“She knows men well. They used to flock to her restaurant.”

“She had a lot of beaux. There were always boys who wanted to take her out. She was popular with everyone, and she was the best student. At our school in Shanghai, she was the teacher's pet.”

“She always got the lead in the school play,” Charlie said. “She made Les learn all her speeches from when she played Portia. Maybe that's why Les became a lawyer.”

“She didn't play Portia,” Aunt Rose said. “She played the boy. The one who wants to marry Portia.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Of course,” Aunt Rose said.

“But Ma always told us that she had the heroine's part.”

“She's the heroine of her own life. That's all.”

“I guess she's always been independent.” It disturbed her to hear such harshness from Aunt Rose.

“There's no such thing as being truly independent.” Aunt Rose's voice grew louder. Charlie imagined it trapped against the dormer window or muffled by the quilt hanging on the wall. Something in Rose was fighting to get out. “She always pretends like all she's doing is standing up for herself, but what she does hurts other people. This car accident, for instance. She could have killed somebody.”

“What car accident?”

“Her fender bender. With her neighbor in the car.”

“Nobody told me about that!”

“Lesley knows. She fixed it all up for your mother. They probably thought you had enough to worry about.”

“That makes me so mad,” Charlie said. “Of course I want to know!”

Aunt Rose looked away. “Sisters can be difficult. They have special ways of hurting each other.” She suddenly began to cry.

“What's happened?” Charlie stood up, alarmed, but Aunt Rose pushed her away.

“Your mother did a terrible thing. Yifu told me.”

Charlie backed herself onto the window seat again. She didn't know what else to do.

“She lied to me about Mu-you,” Aunt Rose said. “She said he was dead when he wasn't.”

“I can't believe that. Are you saying Mu-you's not dead?”

“Dead now, but not dead then.”

“I don't understand,” Charlie said.

Aunt Rose left the room; Charlie heard her blow her nose. When she returned, her eyes shone clear and bright, as though cold anger had brought youth back to her face. Her voice rode in judgment from start to finish.

“When your mother was a nurse in training, she assisted in the delivery of a deformed baby. The doctor instructed the nurses to let it die. It died in the delivery room. They didn't try to save it.”

“That's dreadful,” Charlie said. Aunt Rose dismissed it.

“It happened that way sometimes. Doctors made decisions. Nurses did what they were told. Your mother was very disturbed by it.” She had bad dreams about the baby for months afterward, Rose went on. By then Rose was in college; she would take the train from Smith to visit Gran in Philadelphia, and her sister's nightmares used to wake Rose in the middle of the night. “It was scary for me, seeing my older sister afraid. She was the strong one. She took care of me after Mother and Father died.”

“In the war,” Charlie said.

“After the war,” Aunt Rose said sharply. “You kids never get these things right.” Gran had come to America first. Rose followed. Their parents were making plans to leave, then their mother was killed. It was 1948. “Father died a few months later. I had already left China by then. I was at a boarding school; your mother was at Bryn Mawr. Father was in Hong Kong when he got hit by a car.”

Charlie nodded. At least she remembered that part. Grandpa Wu had died in Hong Kong. She'd always been sorry that she hadn't met the handsome doctor hero of her mother's favorite stories.

Aunt Rose paused. “I saw Yifu recently.”

“Auntie Yifu?” Charlie said. “Was she visiting from Pasadena?”

“Her husband was giving a talk at Penn, and she came to see me. We were reminiscing about our early days in America, and I mentioned those nightmares that your mother used to have. Yifu got a very strange expression on her face. She told me that she had come for a specific reason. She wanted me to know something. She said she had kept a secret for your mother for many years, but she didn't want to keep it any longer. She had asked your mother to tell me herself, but since she didn't, Yifu had come.”

Charlie held still, as if she'd heard a noise in the woods. She didn't want to know her mother's secret. Ari had hurt her, digging into the past. But Aunt Rose continued.

“When Father died, your mother came to see me at my boarding school in Massachusetts. She told me that Father had been hit by a car and died on his way to the hospital. It was terrible news. We had lost Mother a few months before. We were so far from home and alone. I didn't know how I could go on without my parents. And then she told me that Mu-you also had died. He had gotten sick and died at Cousin Pei's house. She had just gotten word.

“For two days, we held each other and cried. At the end of the weekend, your mother got ready to leave. I didn't want her to go. She told me I had to stay and finish my schooling. She and I were the only surviving family, and we had to be strong for each other. And then she left.”

“I can't imagine how that was,” Charlie said, “losing your parents and Mu-you in the same year.”

“It wasn't true,” Aunt Rose said. “She lied to me. She told Yifu at the time what had really happened. Mu-you wasn't dead. He was still living with Cousin Pei, near Hangzhou. He died ten years later, of illness, but not when she said. He survived our parents.” She put her hands to her face and leaned forward deeply. “I might have helped him,” she sobbed. “I might have seen my brother again.”

“Auntie Rose,” Charlie said, but she didn't go to her.

Yifu told Rose that she had to forgive her sister. Their father had ordered that Mu-you stay behind. He said that Mu-you was too weak to come to America with the rest of the family. He had too many problems. How could they start over if they brought their damaged son with them? Mu-you wasn't little anymore. He was fourteen and strong, but he couldn't talk and couldn't feed himself at the table. He needed constant, devoted attention. Maybe they could send for him later, but he was better off with Cousin Pei. He had given her plenty of money.

“Mother refused to listen to Father,” Aunt Rose said. “She was determined that Mu-you should come with them. The government was collapsing, and they had to leave the country soon. If they didn't take Mu-you with them, they might not be able to reach him later.” Her parents had fought about it for weeks. In defiance, her mother left Shanghai and traveled to Hangzhou to bring Mu-you home. The roads were still unsafe, especially for a woman. She was killed by gunfire; they never found out whose.

“But why lie?” Charlie said. Her own face was wet with tears. “Why tell you that Mu-you was dead?”

“Your mother was twenty years old,” Aunt Rose said. “I was fifteen. We were orphans. She could have gone back to try to bring Mu-you out, but she didn't. Father had told her to go to America and make her own life. She cried and cried, Yifu said, and then she stopped crying and made Yifu swear to keep her secret. She didn't want me to know that Mu-you was still in China. I might beg her to bring him to America with us, or go back myself and try to save him. She didn't want that for either of us, and neither did Father. She did her duty, Yifu said. For years, she sent money, though she had no way to know if Cousin Pei received it. Many years later, she learned that Mu-you was dead.”

“Did my father know?” Charlie asked.

Aunt Rose shook her head.

“What a weight she must have carried,” Charlie said, “keeping such a secret.”

“That baby she helped to deliver. Yifu said it brought up all the bad feelings about leaving Mu-you behind. That's why she had the nightmares.” Aunt Rose stood and went to draw the curtains.

“Yifu says I have to forgive her,” she said. “But all I think about is Mother.”

B
efore Uncle Bennett drove Charlie to the airport, Aunt Rose gave her a handkerchief embroidered with tiny daisies.

“Shall I tell my mother that I know about Mu-you?” Charlie asked.

Aunt Rose looked old again in the dawning light.

“That's up to you. Yifu couldn't carry the burden any longer. But you are young. Secrets stay fresh forever.”

T
raveling home, Charlie thought of her mother at twenty, and Aunt Rose, and what her mother had done. The revelation didn't shock her. She had seen far worse violations and betrayals in the thousands of cases she had handled over the years. What was most troubling to Charlie was the break between the sisters. She wasn't sure that Aunt Rose could forgive Gran. How painful it would be if they never spoke again. Then the whole family would be destroyed.

I wouldn't know myself if that happened
, Charlie thought.
If I lost my family, I wouldn't know where I came from.

She resolved to go see Les as soon as she got home.

A
t Les's house, everything was nicer. The sofa was wide and deep, and warm yellow lamplight filled the room. Jazz played from speakers in the ceiling, a woman singing silkily in a foreign tongue. A good Pinot Gris was probably cooling in the refrigerator. And she had peonies by the armful.

Les herself was Sunday casual in corduroy and cashmere. Charlie made a weak joke about showing up like a bag lady and took off her worn boots and stood them up on the hearth. They could have been a decorator's whimsical touch—the antique accent that pulled the room together.

“Ma is mad at me, as usual,” Les said. She plopped herself into an armchair sized perfectly for a woman. “Her friend Naomi can't live alone anymore, and Ma blames me for telling Naomi's son to move her. He didn't need my permission. He practically had the moving truck backed up to her bedside.”

“Is she okay? Is she moving out soon?”

“This week,” Les said. “She had another stroke, and her kids decided it was time.”

“I'm sorry,” Charlie said. She
was
sorry, though she disliked the old bitch.
China gets clean babies
. She couldn't forgive Mrs. Greene for that.

“So Ma is mad at me. But something else is going on. She's upset, and it's not like her to brood. I think she's been obsessing over Ari. Every time I talk to her, she wants to know when Ari is coming home.”

“It's not Ari,” Charlie said.

“It is,” Les said. “I wish you'd get her back here. She belongs in school. You need to set boundaries.”

“It's not Ari!” Charlie said. In a heated rush, she repeated what Aunt Rose had told her. “Isn't it horrible?” she demanded. “Isn't it horrible what Ma did?”

“You shouldn't go around telling that story,” Les said. “It's a private family matter.”

“We're family!”

“I mean between Ma and Aunt Rose. It's nothing to do with us.”

“But she left her brother behind and then lied about it to her sister!”

“What choice did she have? I can understand why she did it. He was being taken care of by relatives. I would've done the same thing.”

“Please don't say that. I don't want to believe it.”

“You would've, too.”

“Oh, Les,” Charlie said. “I don't know you anymore.”

“On the contrary,” said her sister. “You know me all too well. Anyway, there's something else I want to talk to you about.”

“I can tell already that I don't want to hear it.”

“Ari's living with a family in Juneau. Steve and Peg Ericsson. Aaron's old friends.”

“I know that,” Charlie said. “Ari already told me.”

“What else did she tell you?”

“How do you know about the Ericssons?” Charlie asked. She had held back that fact from her sister, just as she had not told Les at first that Ari had gone looking for Aaron. Not everything had to be shared between them.

“I made some inquiries—”

“You had no right—”

“And you really do need to go up there.”

Charlie abruptly stood to leave. For all her trying, nothing was getting better.

“Aaron had a son,” Les said, an ugly note of triumph in her voice.

“You're a liar.”

“He had a son. His name is Noah. He's two years older than Ari. He goes to school in Juneau, and they've met.”

They locked eyes. Charlie knew she was standing—she could feel the plush rug under her stockinged feet and was aware of the mantelpiece at her shoulder—but, impossibly, Les was looking down at her as though from a high seat. The light in the room whirled bright at the corners, but Charlie's view went dim. She heard the woman singing out of the ceiling, her voice caressing syllables that rolled over in Charlie's head. Nothing made sense, and then suddenly everything did. Aaron had a son, two years older than Ari. How fitting, after all, that a child had torn them apart.