Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [225]
“She leapt to her feet and ran through the crowded, broken streets to the house where they lived. It was no longer there. Neighbors were frantically shifting beams and chunks of masonry, digging with their bare hands in the rubble while a small half-naked boy sat on the sidewalk, solemnly watching them. Mayling ran to him and took his hand. He held on to her tightly, looking up at her with trusting black eyes. Someone cried out that they had found them, the old couple and the young one, still in their beds. The chimney had fallen in on them and they had died instantly. The child’s small bed in another room was untouched.
“Mayling walked through the rubble and looked at the face of her dead son. It was the first time she had seen him since she gave him away when he was just two months old, and her heart mourned, for he was young and handsome and had much to live for. She told the neighbors she would look after the child. They quickly found him some clothes, and with one last long glance she left her son again for the last time.
“So you see, Beloved Ones,” Lai Tsin wrote, “Mayling’s story is Lai Tsin’s, and Lai Tsin’s story is Mayling’s. When Lai Tsin met Francie Harrison on Nob Hill he told her the boy was an orphan he had rescued from the earthquake. It was only part of the truth. That boy was also his real grandson, Philip Chen. And the grandson of Harmon Harrison. It was always my sorrow that I could not admit he was of my own blood, but it was already too late. Too much time had passed and I had my new identity, but in my heart, Philip Chen was always the beloved son I never knew.
“I am telling you the truth now, Lysandra, because as a woman you are vulnerable not just to others, but to yourself. I was forced by circumstance to deny my womanhood in order to survive. And all my success, all my wealth, and my power as a taipan were never enough to compensate me for its loss.
“You will read this only when there is need and I counsel you now, dear granddaughter, to remember that first you are a woman. Do not deny your happiness in your search for yourself. Be strong and adventurous. Seek your own life wherever it might take you. To be a woman is your fortune. Use it wisely and with compassion and love.”
Bitter tears rained down Lysandra’s face as she replaced the Mandarin’s letter in the envelope. Her heart burned with pity for Mayling and her terrible secret and her suffering, and she wished with all her heart she might turn back the clock and give a new start to the poor terrified Chinese child who had, through circumstance, become “the Mandarin.”
She thought for a long time about the sadness of Mayling’s life and the sacrifices she had made in order to survive. And her message was as clear to her as it had been to Francie, all those years before.
“Be strong, be your own woman.”
Lysandra took the manila envelope and drove back to Po Shan Road. She went to her room and looked at herself in the mirror. She saw a thirty-two-year-old woman, still beautiful and desirable, but already with lines of strain around her eyes and mouth. She saw the years stretching emptily in front of her, with more success and more money and her biological clock ticking desperately away and she knew Matt was right—the Lai Tsin Corporation could go on without her. But she could not go on without him—not any longer.
She sent a prayer of thanks to the wise Mandarin for pointing the way to happiness. She took a small bag from her closet and packed it quickly with the few essentials needed for life in a thatched hut on a beach, then added a large bottle of her favorite gardenia perfume. Then she took the letter and walked to the fireplace, and lit a match; and as she watched Mayling’s secret disappear in a quick flutter of flame and blue smoke, she felt closer to the Mandarin than she ever had before.
She called Philip Chen and told him what she had decided and asked for his help. “You know you always have that,” he said quietly. He knew Matt and liked him