That night I was too keyed up to sleep, still staring at the ceiling when Ma leaned into my bedroom. She had on a brown tweed suit with a yellow and red scarf wrapped around her throat and her favorite earrings, Nai-nai’s black pearls.

“Sure you don’t want to come to New York with me?” she asked. “You can go to museum. Or I give you my Bloomingdale’s charge card.”

“No.”

“I’ll be back before six. If you need money it’s on top of the radio in the kitchen.”

I waited for the front door to slam, the gust of the taxi making the turn down the hill. Then I lay for a while more, listening to the silence of the house, punctuated by random bird and squirrel noise from the backyard. From a crack under the window shade, I could see that the day was overcast, and for this I was thankful.

I took a shower, out of habit I guess, and afterward went into Marty’s room. Over the bedpost was flung a crimson feather boa. Somewhere there was a Polaroid of my sister in costume: gold-painted eyelids, black unitard, spike heels, and that boa draped across her breasts. I got into the bed and reached up and pulled it down, wrapping the ends of it around my face, inhaling that scent of my sister, a smell that I could distinguish from a thousand other people’s in the dark.

Then I went downstairs, only glancing into the half-open door of my parents’ bedroom, the double bed immaculately made with its blue-and-white-striped spread, the low bureau cluttered with straw trays of cosmetics and jewelry and a couple of the Chinese movie star magazines my mother still read. My parents’ wedding picture in its silver frame was propped in the comer.

In the kitchen, Ma’s tea mug filled with swollen green leaves sat on the table, still warm to the touch. There was one more thing I needed to do. I slipped my feet into the old sneakers my mother kept by the back door for gardening—they were so small my heels hung over the backs—and then went out and climbed onto the curb of the driveway. Standing there I could see my breath, but the cold seemed to just lie on my skin, like snow on the ground, without penetrating it.

I’d come out to say good-bye to my favorite tree, the black walnut. It stood stark and plain at the bottom of the hill, the dark brown trunk rising straight for fifteen feet until the limbs began reaching upward.

I’d wanted that image to be the last thing branded into my brain in this world, but now, seven weeks later, I was standing at the top of the hill again, watching the shadow play of pale green flower and unfolding leaf in an angle of sun. In the tortured narcissism of my attempted suicide and its aftermath it had not occurred to me that this tree would bud and bloom, that in fact things would simply continue.

16

Right before takeoff I had this sudden urge to stand up in the aisle and announce that I was fresh out of the loony bin, what did everyone think about that?

But how perfectly easy it was, after all, to appear normal: just stay in your seat and keep your mouth shut. I thought that if Mel had been in my place he’d have been practicing his charm on the flight attendant, trying to cadge a drink out of her.

We’d said our good-byes out by the lake, after breakfast on the day my mother came to pick me up. He gave me his poetry anthology and told me he’d marked certain poems for me.

“But you’re always reading that book.”

“Consider it a loan. That way I’ll be sure of seeing vou again.”

The sun was tipping the wavelets gold, too dazzling to focus on. The ducks, who didn’t seem to care that this was a mental hospital, had glided hopefully to shore as they did anytime anyone passed. I dug into the pocket of my jacket and found the remains of a packet of oyster crackers, which I tossed out onto the water.

“Ciao, Club Willowridge,” Mel said. I laughed.

“We never got to play tennis.”

“You’ll play in Florida.” He studied me, as if searching for something in particular. “You get better down there, you hear? At least get a tan.”

“Visit me,” I said impulsively.

He scrubbed at the wet grass with the tip of his sneaker. “I don’t have the dough.”

“We’ll talk about it.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t have the number with me, but they’re listed. Richard Ding. I’m sure they’re the only Ding in St. Petersburg.”

“Okay.” Mel smiled and reached behind me to slide the elastic out of my ponytail so that my hair fell down around my face. Then he leaned forward and gave me the lightest of kisses on the mouth.

The book of poems was in Daddy’s black leather bag, along with warm-weather clothes I’d scrounged from my sister’s bureau: gym shorts and a couple of giant T-shirts, all of which I was sure were originally Schuyler’s. The pickings had been pretty slim. This was the story in our family: when Marty and I weren’t looking, our mother would give our clothes away. There was always someone in need: a distant relative or a friend who had just arrived in America. Or someone who, although not exactly in need, was more deserving than my sister or me. My camel hair jacket went this route. Ma donated it to Aunty Winnie, Xiao Lu’s mother. It was true that I’d left it hanging in the front hall closet, deciding it wasn’t cool enough for sophomore year, when everyone was wearing distressed denim. But it had after all been mine.

“You never wear,” Ma said. “She thinks it’s chic.”

Marty would fly into a rage. I remember her hollering down the stairs, demanding to know what my mother had done with her purple sweater, black jeans, gold scarf.

A few months after Daddy died, Carey and I came up to New Haven and found Ma in the midst of sorting clothes to give away. She was very organized about it, having lugged several moving boxes from the attic and labeled them: THROW OUT, GOODWILL, NEARLY NEW SALE, FLORIDA.

“What’s ‘Florida’?” I asked.

“I send to Uncle Richard, maybe he can use.” Uncle Richard was considerably shorter than my father but easily weighed twice as much. I looked in the box and saw that it was full of ties—brightly colored, bold patterns. Daddy had grown conservative in dress, but always favored loud ties.

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.