Last Night at the Telegraph Club

by Malinda Lo

  “Let’s do something,” Lily said impulsively. The sky was bright blue above and the scent of the ocean nearby made her restless. She had to distract herself from that conversation with Shirley.

  “What do you want to do?” Kath asked, sounding amused. “Don’t you have to go pick up Frankie today?”

  Lily had nearly forgotten her own plans. She groaned and looked at her watch. “Yes, but not for a little while—not if we hurry. Let’s get ice cream.”

  “Where?”

  They discussed the possibilities as they walked up Francisco and down the steps at Leavenworth, and finally decided on Ciros in Washington Square Park, where Kath promised her fancy Italian flavors. When they arrived at the park, it was full of young mothers pushing babies in strollers, old men in fedoras dozing on benches, and children chasing each other with their ice cream cones dripping onto the grass.

  Inside Ciros, the stainless-steel-and-glass ice cream counter took up half the small space, and two Italian men in white aprons and caps were doing a brisk business with those young mothers and children. Behind the glass were gallons of chocolate and vanilla, strawberry and mint, and long rectangular tubs of gelato in flavors that Lily hadn’t tried before: bacio and hazelnut, stracciatella and fior di latte. Along the right was a rainbow of pastel sorbetti in lemon yellow and mandarin orange and pale lime green.

  After consultation with Kath, Lily settled on a cup of lemon and strawberry sorbetti, and Kath ordered a hazelnut gelato cone, which they took back out to the park. They found an empty patch of grass beneath a tree, and Lily ate her sorbetti with a tiny wooden spoon while Kath licked her gelato with a slurping sound that made them both giggle.

  “I’ve never had sorbetti before,” Lily said, carefully pronouncing the unfamiliar word. “There’s an ice cream shop in Chinatown, Fong Fong’s. They have ginger ice cream. That’s my favorite.”

  “Ginger! How does that taste?”

  “It’s delicious. Little bits of candied ginger are mixed into the ice cream. You should come to Fong Fong’s with me sometime and try it.”

  When Kath finished her cone, she leaned back on her elbows, stretching her legs into the sun. Her shins were bare between the hem of her skirt and her short white socks. “Sure, I’ll come.”

  There was a distant droning sound, and Lily saw Kath look up at the sky. A wistful expression came over her face, and Lily followed Kath’s gaze upward until she spotted an airplane flying overhead.

  “Have you only been up in an airplane once?” Lily asked.

  “Yes. But I’ve gone out to the airfield in Oakland with my cousin a few times. She was a WASP during the war, and afterward for a while she worked as an airplane mechanic.”

  “Really?” Lily remembered the Flying article about the two women who owned their own airfield. “Does she still do that?”

  Kath made a face. “Nah, she got married and moved to Mountain View. Now she has children and no time to fly. Sounds like a raw deal to me.”

  Lily laughed. “I take it you wouldn’t have gotten married and moved to Mountain View?”

  “Are you kidding? When I get my pilot’s license, I’m never giving it up. I’ve only gone up that one time and it was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Why?” Lily asked curiously.

  Kath sat up and looked Lily in the eye. “Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to have nothing keeping you attached to the ground? When we were taking off, the plane was rolling along the runway on its wheels, right? You could feel every bump and every jolt. And it went faster and faster and then all of a sudden—nothing.” Kath snapped her fingers, the excitement of the memory suffusing her face in a rosy glow. “The wheels lift off the ground, and you don’t feel it anymore. There are no more bumps. Everything is miraculously smooth. You feel like—well, like a bird! Nothing’s holding you down. You’re floating. You’re flying. And the ground just falls away below you, and you look out the window and everything becomes more and more distant, and none of it matters anymore. You’re up in the air. You leave everything else on the ground. It’s just you and the wind.”

  Lily was transfixed by the expression on Kath’s face: the sheer joy of her memory, the longing to fly again. “That sounds . . . incredible,” Lily said, her voice hushed.

  Kath seemed to come back to herself all of a sudden, and she ducked her face shyly, plucking at the blades of grass on the ground. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on like that. My brother’s always telling me I talk too much about airplanes.”

  “No,” Lily said quickly. “No, you don’t. I loved hearing about it. You can talk to me about it anytime.”

  Kath smiled and shrugged self-consciously. “Well, you might be sorry you said that.”

  “I won’t be.”

  They looked at each other, Kath with her shy half smile and Lily with her earnestness, and there was such an unexpected feeling of openness between them—a flying kind of feeling, as if they had lifted off from the ground right then and there. But then Kath flushed and looked away, and Lily was flooded with self-consciousness. She shifted her gaze toward the edge of the park, where pedestrians were making their way around the grass. There were children running ahead of their mothers; there were a few couples. She was sharply aware of her heart beating in her chest, the air catching in her lungs when she breathed.

  A group of four young women—probably in their early twenties—came walking down the sidewalk toward them, two of them in slacks, one pair arm in arm. Three of them were Caucasian, and one was possibly Mexican. One of the women in slacks had a debonair style to her in the way she walked, with her hands in her pockets and her eyes hidden behind sunglasses. The woman beside her—the darker one, with a head of glossy black curls—was looking at her with a pleased expression, but Lily couldn’t tell if the woman was pleased with herself or admiring her companion. And then she slipped her hand around her friend’s arm, their hips softly bumping together, and the woman in sunglasses turned her head and gave her a flirty little grin that struck Lily as shockingly bold. They were in public!

  Lily glanced surreptitiously at Kath to see if she had noticed. Kath seemed to be watching the girls too, and there was something particularly studied about the bland expression on her face. Lily wondered if this was the moment they would finally talk about the Telegraph Club, but Kath seemed content to stay quiet. Was there something significant, then, in her silence? Lily felt as if the newspaper clipping and Kath’s acknowledgment that she had gone to the club made an invisible chain linking her and Kath together, and every once in a while she heard the chain clink like silver against glass: a faint, resonant ring. Did Kath hear it? How could she not? And yet Lily couldn’t bring herself to speak of it. What would she even say?

  The moment was slipping away again. She watched the four young women disappear around the corner, and when they were gone, she felt a peculiar sense of loss. She said, “I should be getting home.”

  “Me too,” Kath said.

  Lily got up from the ground and offered a hand to Kath. Kath hesitated for a moment, but then let Lily pull her to her feet. Kath’s hand was cooler than Lily expected, and for one second, two, neither of them let go. Lily felt a sudden rush of heat in her face, and Kath dropped her hand. They both spoke at the same time.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Lily turned away, walking briskly toward Columbus, not letting herself look back even though she wanted to.

  9

  At the intersection of Broadway and Columbus, Lily saw the Thrifty Drug Store sign across the street. She wondered if that novel was still there. The last time she’d gone, she had read through almost to the end before she had to leave, and she was dying to know what happened. She glanced at her watch. The light turned green, and she was halfway across the street before she knew she’d given into her impulse, and then she began to hurry so that
she’d have as much time as possible to read. She was almost there—twenty feet, fifteen—when she saw one of her mother’s friends from the Chinese Hospital, Mrs. Mok, hurrying toward the drug store. She had an anxious scowl on her face, and she pulled open the door to Thrifty and plunged inside as if she too were racing against the clock. She hadn’t seen Lily.

  Lily sighed in disappointment and turned back toward Grant Avenue. She glanced at her watch. She was still a little early to pick up Frankie, so she decided to head home first. Perhaps one afternoon she should bring Kath to Thrifty and show the book to her. The thought was startling, and she began to imagine the two of them in that alcove in the back of Thrifty, spinning through the book racks. She pictured herself finding the book and plucking it out of the rack, handing it to Kath. She wondered what Kath might say upon seeing the cover with those two women. An excited thrill went through her.

  Lost in thought, Lily barely noticed when she reached Clay Street. She climbed the last uphill block automatically, and then she inserted her key into the front door. Inside it was cool and dim, and voices floated down the wooden staircase. It sounded like her parents were home early, which was unusual. She climbed the stairs, and as she approached the top floor she heard someone come out of the kitchen—her father. He stood waiting for her on the landing, and he was still wearing his doctor’s coat, as if he’d come straight from the hospital and forgotten to take it off.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  He studied her almost clinically, and she paused a few steps from the top, wondering for a terrifying moment if somehow he knew she had been thinking about that book.

  “Put down your things and come into the kitchen,” he said. “Your mother and I need to talk to you.”

  The tone of his voice was grave. She left her book bag on the bench and hurriedly slipped off her shoes, following him into the kitchen. Her mother was sitting at the table, holding a water glass. She was still wearing her nurse’s uniform; she hadn’t even taken off her shoes. Her father leaned against the counter and crossed his arms.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  She pulled out a chair and took a seat. Her mind raced. “Is it Eddie? Or Frankie?” she asked.

  “No, they’re fine,” her mother said.

  “Two FBI agents pulled me out of work today,” her father said. “They wanted to interview me about a young man I treated last week. They think he’s a member of a Communist organization in Chinatown.”

  His words were so unexpected that at first she simply stared at him, dumbfounded. Finally she said, “But why would they ask you?”

  “The FBI and the immigration service are very worried about Communists.” Her mother spoke almost primly, sitting ramrod straight in her chair. She made no move to drink her water, only kept her fingers squeezed around the glass as if it were a safety railing. “When they find someone they think is a Communist, they interview that person’s acquaintances as part of the investigation.”

  Her father put his hand on her mother’s shoulder briefly, pressing down. Her mother’s fingers twitched around the glass. “The agents asked me if I knew anything about this man—my patient—but I said no,” her father said. “I only knew him as a patient. And then they said that he was part of an organization that was known to harbor Communist sympathies, the Chinese American Democratic Youth League. The members call it the Man Ts’ing.”

  A small shock went through her. “They’re a Communist group?”

  “That’s what the agents said,” her father answered.

  Lily wondered which of the boys at the picnic was her father’s patient.

  “They’re leftists,” her mother said, spitting out the word as if it were dirty. “They’re young, and they don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “The FBI agents said that you were seen with the Man Ts’ing,” her father said. “You and Shirley. You were seen at their headquarters and again at Golden Gate Park.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Someone saw me? It was only a picnic! I went to the picnic because—because Will Chan invited me.” The idea of Will being a Communist was ridiculous, and she almost laughed, but the expressions on her parents’ faces smothered her laughter. “Does this mean Will is in trouble? He’s not a Communist. Will Chan?”

  Her father seemed to stiffen slightly.

  “I think that this group, the Man Ts’ing, has someone on the inside telling the FBI these things,” her mother said.

  The statement sounded like something out of a movie, and Lily gaped at her mother. “Really?”

  Her mother frowned. “Lily, you need to pay more attention. You spend too much time in some kind of dream world. Fantasizing about rocket ships! You’re exactly the kind of girl they would try to recruit. You don’t notice they’re putting ideas into your head.”

  “What ideas?” Lily asked indignantly. “I only went to a picnic. One picnic! They played volleyball, that’s all.”

  “That’s how they do it,” her mother shot back. “They make you think they’re harmless and then they brainwash you.”

  “Grace,” Lily’s father said warningly.

  Her mother’s mouth pressed together into a thin line, but she subsided. Lily crossed her arms angrily. Fantasizing about rocket ships. Her heart pounded as if she had been running.

  Her father took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then sat down at the kitchen table. “We can’t be sure what their motivations are, but it’s best to steer clear of the group.” He put his glasses back on and gave Lily a look that was surprisingly frank, as if she were an adult rather than his daughter. “I don’t believe you had any bad intentions. You’ve never shown any interest in politics, but the things you do can reflect badly on others. We’re living in a complicated time. People are afraid of things they don’t understand, and we need to show that we’re Americans first. Do you understand?”

  The seriousness of his tone scared her. “Yes, Papa,” she said, although she didn’t entirely understand.

  A couple of years ago, during the Korean War, she remembered Chinatown kids marching in the Chinese New Year parade holding signs that declared down with communism. Eddie had been one of them; she had cheered him on by waving a miniature American flag from the sidelines. She remembered her father and Aunt Judy watching the parade with such odd expressions on their faces, as if they were both proud of Eddie and a bit frightened by the spectacle. Now she was confused, as if she’d been reading a book that had several pages removed, but hadn’t realized the pages were gone until this moment.

  Her father still looked concerned, so she said, “I didn’t even want to go to the picnic, Papa. I didn’t mean to . . .” She trailed off. She wasn’t sure what she had done.

  He nodded and said, “And you won’t go again.”

  “What about Shirley? And Will?”

  “We’ll talk to their parents.” Her father stood, pushing his chair back. “And now I have to go back to work. You should go do your homework. Your mother will be home the rest of the day, so you don’t need to pick up Frankie from Chinese school.”

  Lily had more questions, but her parents were standing, sorting out dinner plans, moving on. She felt as if she had been ejected from a movie theater in the middle of the film. Disconcerted, she left the kitchen, picked up her book bag, and took it back to her room. She opened her math book and sat down on her bed to look over the problem sets that had been assigned, but the numbers and letters swam in front of her eyes. A couple of minutes later she heard her father leaving, his footsteps receding down the stairs. She thought about Shirley and her interest in Calvin, and wondered whether that would end now.

  “Lily.”

  Her mother was standing in the doorway. She came into the room and sat down on the foot of the bed, and the mattress sank toward her so that Lily’s pencil rolled across the coverlet and lodged itself against her mother’s hip.

 
“What?” Lily said a bit defensively.

  “Your father didn’t want me to tell you, but I think you’re old enough to know the truth. The FBI took his citizenship papers.”

  Lily sat up, and her math book slid off her lap onto the bed. “Why would they do that?”

  Her mother’s face was pale, her lipstick too red in contrast to the whiteness of her skin. “They wanted him to sign a statement admitting that Calvin—his patient is a Communist, but your father wouldn’t do it.”

  Calvin. Her mother had clearly not intended to say his name. She seemed a bit nervous now and fiddled with the name tag still pinned to her uniform. mrs. grace hu, r.n.

  “Your father would never comment on a patient without their permission, and he refused to lie to the agents. So they took his papers as punishment.”

  “But why would the FBI punish Papa for—for not lying?”

  “They aren’t looking for the truth. They’re looking for scapegoats. Your father should know this. He should have just told them what they wanted. Now he’s protecting a boy he barely even knows—all because he refuses to tell them what they want. And that has put your father in danger, which means it’s put you and me and your brothers in danger.”

  “How is he in danger? He’s an American citizen. He was a captain in the army!”

  “They’re using these investigations as an excuse to deport Chinese,” Lily’s mother explained. “They took his papers, so now he has no record of his citizenship. And he has family in China—you have family in China. You’ve never met them, but that doesn’t mean anything to the FBI. And you were at the picnic, even if you had no idea who the Man Ts’ing are. It doesn’t look good.”

  “But . . . they’ll give him back his papers once they realize he hasn’t done anything wrong, won’t they? They can’t deport him, can they?” Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. Every so often Lily overheard talk in Chinatown about how so-and-so had been interrogated by the immigration service, or was about to be sent back to China because they had come here under false documents. And she remembered Aunt Judy talking about how the FBI had detained the Chinese-born founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab under suspicion of Communist ties, even though he had supported the United States during the war.