The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [55]
Where are your parents?
My father is dead. My mother does not see me.
What do you mean?
When I became a nun she would not accept me.
She comes back to the table, drying her hands on a dish towel.
But if you were married, he says, maybe she would reconsider. Anyway, we wouldn’t have to go to Poland. Not if you didn’t want to. We could go anywhere.
She smiles down at her hands, folding the towel and draping it over the back of a chair. As if laughing at her own compulsive neatness, or remembering a private joke. Sometime I would like to go to Chicago, she says.
Why there?
My mother’s uncle lived there, she says. Always we talked about Chicago, when I was a child. She had many letters he wrote to her, before the war. Everything he described—the cars, the streetlights, all the different foods. So many strange English words. Michigan Avenue. Ferris wheel. I used to dream about what it would be like. And still I’ve never been there.
I think you would be disappointed.
Of course. She shrugs. Anytime, if you have a dream, you will be disappointed. Life is always that way. Still, if I have the chance, I would go.
So you don’t believe in hope, he says, trying to keep his voice neutral, to avoid the note of desperation. It isn’t any use making plans, then, is it?
She draws a long breath and lets it out, slowly, evenly. Hope always means desire, and desire brings suffering, she says. Like a wheel turning. One revolution.
Usually when we say that word we mean change, he says. A reversal. You know what I mean? Overthrowing something. He reaches across the table and covers her hand. When things are not the same as before.
Yes, she says. That is the difference.
He hears himself saying, in a clear, declarative voice, I will never understand you. You’ll never explain yourself, and yet I don’t care. Is there a better definition of love than that?
Before dawn she slips from his arms and lights a stick of incense on the windowsill. The burning tip and its reflection: like tiny red eyes staring at him in the darkness. Palms together, she bows, knees folding, and touches her forehead to the floor. He raises himself on his elbows. She sits up on her heels and begins to sing in a low voice, as if it is a lullaby.
Shin myo jang gu dae da ra ni Na mo ra da na da ra ya ya Na mak ar ya ba ro gi je sae ba ra ya
What is that, he whispers, when she has finished. What does it mean?
A dharani, she says, staring straight ahead. A seal. A confirmation.
Confirming what?
Passing over, she says. Beginning and ending.
All day she keeps a distance between them: cleaning the bathroom while he eats breakfast at the table; sitting at the table as he bathes, drinking tea, gluing the handle to a coffee cup he dropped the night before. He leaves the door open and watches her. Between each movement her hands pause, as if there is a time delay; as if she has to remind herself of the task.
You’re unhappy, he says late that afternoon. They have just finished the day’s stretching, and are sitting at the table drinking tea. I can tell. You’re thinking about the nunnery, aren’t you?
I am sorry.
You don’t have to be sorry, he says. Tell me what to do. Let me help you.
She stands and walks into the kitchen, looking out the window. The setting sun turns her face the color of straw. She puts her palms behind her waist and leans over backward. For the first time she seems tired.
I have an idea. His pulse throbs in his neck. Let’s go out somewhere. I want to see the town.
See the—
You can borrow a dress from Mrs. Mei again, he says. Please.
No, she says. Not just for me. You will be exhausted.
I love you, he says, laughing. Do you know what that means?
Then they are standing by the curb on Hollywood Road: a woman in a slightly baggy cocktail dress and pink baseball cap, holding the arm of a tall man whose body seems tilted against her, who waves a cane at passing taxis as if to threaten them.