by Malinda Lo
* * *
—
The wind whipped at Lily’s hair as she and Kath walked home. They had made a habit of walking up the Chestnut Street steps together; fewer students took this route, so they could talk without being overheard.
“Did anybody notice you were gone?” Kath asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Did your sister notice?”
“No. Peggy was asleep when I got home. You had fun, didn’t you?”
There was a tentative quality to her question that surprised Lily. “Of course.”
“I wasn’t sure. You were pretty quiet the whole night.”
“I didn’t really know what to say,” Lily admitted. She still didn’t. She had wanted to talk about it with Kath all day—to comb through what had happened and what had not happened the way she and Shirley would have dissected a YWCA dance. But now, as she and Kath walked together through the cloudy, windy afternoon, she felt the same strange shyness that had gripped her after they left the club on Friday night.
“The first time I went,” Kath said, “I was a little . . . overwhelmed, I guess. Jean told me it was the same with her. It’s like you’ve been told about chocolate your entire life but you’ve never tried any, and then all of a sudden someone gives you an entire box, and you end up eating all of it, and you feel sick.” Kath shot her a quick glance. “You just have to get used to it—to having chocolate more often.”
They had arrived at the bottom of the steps, and Kath fell silent as they both started climbing. That morning when Lily got dressed she had come across the blouse she had worn to the Telegraph Club, folded in her bottom dresser drawer. When she started to move it out of the way she caught the faint odor of cigarette smoke, and then something else. She pulled it out and pressed her nose to the cloth, where she smelled the bar itself—a stale, boozy scent. (Standing against the wall of the club, plucking the fabric of her blouse away from the sweat on her back, the air thick with the exhalations of all those women.) She should wash the blouse before her mother discovered it, but she couldn’t bring herself to put it in the laundry basket. She wanted to preserve it like a piece of evidence.
It wasn’t like chocolate, Lily thought. It was like finding water after a drought. She couldn’t drink enough, and her thirst made her ashamed, and the shame made her angry.
At the top of the stairs, she paused and turned to Kath. “I want to go again,” she said.
She watched a smile rise from Kath’s mouth to her eyes. The corners turned up. Her lashes, Lily noticed, were light brown.
An understanding seemed to bloom between the two of them. It felt like a coin dropping into one of the automated dioramas at Playland’s Musée Mécanique, and a mechanized scene was now about to play: miniature women on circular paths would begin to move toward and around each other, as if in a dance.
“Then we’ll go again,” Kath said.
Lily smiled back at her, feeling a surge of happiness, and together they continued up the crest of Russian Hill.
They had only gone half a block when Kath reached into her book bag. “I almost forgot.” She pulled out a magazine. “I saved this for you. My brother had it, and he didn’t want it anymore, but I thought you might like to read it.”
Kath was holding out an issue of Collier’s magazine. The front cover was a painting of several strange-looking spaceships flying in formation toward a red planet. The headline asked, can we get to mars? is there life on mars?
Lily felt a sudden tightening in her chest. She took the magazine from Kath’s outstretched hand. “Thank you. I can’t wait to read it.”
23
At fifteen minutes past ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, the fire alarms went off. Lily’s heartbeat thundered up into her throat at the sound, until Miss Weiland waved her hands and shouted, “All right, all right, you knew this was coming. Everyone go in order to your places—in order! Do not run!”
It was the air-raid drill. Lily had completely forgotten about it. Last summer there had been a citywide one, involving mock evacuations and what seemed like hours of ambulance and fire truck sirens crisscrossing the hills. In the newspaper the day after, Lily had read that 169,000 imaginary San Franciscans perished in the wake of a fictional atomic bomb that had struck at Powell Street.
Now everyone got up, abandoning their notebooks and pencils, and headed for the hallway. High school students were too large to duck and cover under their desks, so they’d been told to go as far from exterior windows as possible, and to lie facedown on the floor, covering their heads and necks with their hands. Teachers had to do the drill too, and it was always disconcerting to see them dropping down like the students.
Lily followed her classmates into the hall and found a space on the floor, lying down and folding her arms over her head. If she smashed her elbows over her ears, it dulled the shrieking of the alarm a little, but it was an uncomfortable position, with her forehead and nose pressed against the polished concrete, and it was hard to breathe.
The first time she’d been forced to endure an air-raid drill had been in first grade; she still remembered because it had frightened her so badly. Their teacher had told them they had to practice hiding in case the Japanese attacked, and she remembered trembling beneath her desk at Commodore Stockton while several of her classmates cried for their mothers. She’d had nightmares afterward, but she didn’t remember the details, only her mother waking her up in the middle of the night and saying, You’re dreaming, you’re dreaming. The drills continued year after year, although the enemy who might attack them changed. Japan was vanquished but Korea and China might invade, and now it was the Soviets who could drop atomic bombs. She had secretly welcomed their potential Soviet invaders, because at least she’d never be mistaken for a Russian.
Now she turned her head, even though she knew it was against regulations, and rested her head on her folded arm. Shirley was lying beside her, facedown. It was a surprise, because Shirley hadn’t been anywhere near her in the classroom, but it also seemed entirely normal and familiar. Lily remembered lying on the floor with Shirley during other drills in other hallways, and somehow it was right that they would do this one together, too.
Under the blaring of the alarm, Lily moved her foot and nudged Shirley’s leg. Shirley turned her head too, and they looked at each other. There was something funny about it: their faces mashed against the floor, their hands flimsy protection against potential radiation. Shirley’s face twitched into a small, ironic smile, and she mouthed, We’re doomed. Lily swallowed a giggle, and the alarms went on and on so loudly that Lily thought she would go deaf, and what was the point of this, anyway? The specter of nuclear annihilation was still frightening if she truly thought about it, but over the years she had learned not to think about it and to dismiss the drills as useless. If the Soviets did drop atomic bombs on San Francisco, Lily suspected they would all die, regardless of whether they knew how to hide in a hallway.
She made a face at Shirley, as if they were children, and Shirley had to stop herself from laughing too. Eventually Shirley turned her face to the floor again, and so did Lily, because they sensed the teachers coming by with their clipboards to check that everyone was doing as they were told. And finally—suddenly—the alarms cut off. The silence that followed seemed to ring for a good long while, eventually leaving a dull buzzing noise in Lily’s ears. They weren’t supposed to move yet, not until the teacher designated as their Civil Defense leader came to tell them the drill was over, but people were beginning to shift, turning onto their sides, lifting their heads to see what the delay was.
At last a voice came over the intercom, announcing, “All clear! All clear! Stand up and remain in place for roll call. Stand up and remain in place for roll call.”
Lily scrambled to her feet. Her arms were stiff from where she had held them over her head. Shirley was brushing off her skirt, muttering about how needlessly loud the sirens had
been. Lily saw Kath farther down the hall, stretching her arms above her head. And there was Miss Weiland, hurrying toward them with her clipboard. “Mr. Anthony De Vicenzi,” she called.
“Here!”
“Mr. De Armand Evans.”
“Here.”
“Miss Lilian Hu.”
“Here,” Lily answered.
“Miss Shirley Lum.”
“Right here!” Shirley said.
“Miss Kathleen Miller.”
“Here.”
Lily glanced over at Kath and wondered how they had become separated, because they’d been sitting right next to each other in class before the alarms went off. What if there had been a real bomb, and she had lost track of Kath in the rush to evacuate? The thought was disquieting; she felt an urgent need to go to her.
“Lily, will you come by the Pearl tonight?” Shirley said.
Startled, Lily said, “Tonight?”
“Yes, I’m working. Come over?”
Everyone was trooping back into Miss Weiland’s classroom. Lily was still caught in the unexpected panic that had buzzed through her at the idea of being separated from Kath. But Shirley was looking at her expectantly, as if they were still best friends, and in her confusion Lily said automatically, “All right.”
“Good. I’ll see you later.” Shirley waved as she went off to her seat on the other side of Miss Weiland’s classroom.
“What was that?” Kath asked, falling into step beside her.
Lily was relieved to see her and flustered by her relief. It had only been an air-raid drill—everyone was fine. She replied, “Shirley invited me over. I guess she wants to talk.”
She and Kath went back to their seats together, where they had left their notebooks open, sentences half-finished.
* * *
—
It was a slow night at the Eastern Pearl when Lily arrived. Shirley made room for Lily to pull up a stool beside her at the cash register, and she offered her tea and wa mooi. It all seemed so normal that Lily felt as if she had entered an alternate dimension—one where she and Shirley had never had a falling-out.
It felt nice, Lily reluctantly realized. She had missed the comforting, familiar scent of fried noodles and the sound of Shirley’s mother barking orders in the restaurant kitchen. Maybe she had missed Shirley too.
“Look at that woman over there in the corner booth,” Shirley said in a low voice as Lily settled onto her stool. “I think she’s got to be a nun on the run.”
Lily glanced at the woman in question. She was dressed all in black with a tiny netted hat on her head, and she was seated alone in front of her plate of chow mein. “Not a nun,” Lily objected. “She’s a widow.”
“She’s too young to be a widow. She probably fell in love with her priest and had to flee her nunnery to avoid scandal.”
“If she only had feelings for the priest, she didn’t need to flee,” Lily pointed out. “She could just keep them to herself. If she fled, she must have had an affair with him.”
Shirley looked delighted. “Yes! He’s probably quite handsome, this priest. He’s the Clark Gable of priests. No, he’s too old for our nun—what about Rock Hudson? The Rock Hudson of priests. Don’t you think he’s handsome?”
“Of course,” Lily said. “But isn’t he a little too handsome to be a priest?”
Shirley’s eyebrows arched. “There’s no such thing. Why? Who do you think is the right amount of handsome to be a priest?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think she’s a nun.”
“Come on, play along. Who would be your handsome-but-not-too-handsome priest?”
Lily had the sudden sensation she was being tested. “Maybe . . . I don’t know, Jimmy Stewart?”
“Too old,” Shirley said decisively. “Do you really think he’s handsome?”
“I suppose.”
Shirley gave her a skeptical look. “Clearly you don’t. Who, then?”
There was an edge to Shirley’s tone that made Lily a bit defensive. “What does it matter? I think she’s a widow. Her husband—he was probably ugly. Maybe she killed him and is running away to avoid the law.”
“All right,” Shirley relented. “Why did she kill him? Too ugly?”
Lily ignored Shirley’s smirk. “He was horrible to her.”
“This is becoming tragic.”
“Sorry,” Lily said. “I’m out of practice.”
Shirley popped a wa mooi into her mouth, going quiet while she chewed it, and Lily wondered if she was going to bring up the reason Lily was out of practice with their game. But after Shirley spit out the pit, she said, “We’ve been friends for so long, Lily. Let’s not forget that during our senior year.”
Lily couldn’t decide if this was an apology or an underhanded way for Shirley to blame Lily for what had happened between them. She took a sip of tea to avoid responding immediately.
“Truce?” Shirley said.
It wasn’t an apology, then. But if Shirley was offering a truce, she was also admitting it wasn’t all Lily’s fault.
“Truce,” Lily agreed, and she was rewarded with one of Shirley’s most charming smiles.
“Good.” Shirley reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Now, let’s make this more interesting. I’ll allow that she’s a widow, but she has to have killed her husband for a more interesting reason. Maybe he was a Soviet spy!”
The woman in the corner booth lifted a forkful of wide rice noodles to her mouth with a gloomy expression. A woman alone in a restaurant was unusual. She must have gone through something traumatic, something that had separated her from everyone she loved. What if she had fallen in love with someone she shouldn’t? Another woman, perhaps, like the girls in that movie, Olivia. Paula or Claire had said one of those teachers had committed suicide at the end of that movie. The woman in the restaurant needn’t have killed anyone at all to be part of a tragic love story.
“Lily, what do you think? Are you listening?”
Lily blinked and took a sip of tea. “Yes, he must have been a spy,” she said. But the game felt wrong now. She was relieved when the woman in black paid her bill and left.
24
Thanksgiving brought lowered skies and cold, drenching rain. Lily normally enjoyed Thanksgiving—it was the one day of the year that her mother cooked American food, which always seemed like a novelty—but this year she felt trapped by the gloomy weather. As she helped her mother peel chestnuts and chop onions and laap ch’eung* for the glutinous rice stuffing, her thoughts returned over and over again to the Telegraph Club.
She and Kath had decided to go again on Friday night. Jean was coming home for the holiday weekend, and Kath wanted Lily to meet her. Lily couldn’t remember much about Jean from school, and she was curious about what she was like. Kath often spoke of her in such admiring tones, as if Jean had been a heroic explorer of new worlds, but Lily remembered Shirley’s disgust at Jean and what she’d done in the band room. Lily knew it was ungenerous of her, but she couldn’t help thinking that Jean must have been stupid, to let herself be discovered like that. She should have known better.
“Are you finished yet?”
Lily nearly dropped the knife as her mother’s voice cut through her thoughts.
“Pay attention,” her mother admonished her. “I need to start frying that laap ch’eung. Hurry up with that last one.”
Lily bit back a sigh and returned her focus to the narrow red links of dried sausage. When she was finished, she took the whole cutting board to her mother, who had already begun frying onions in the cast-iron pan. Her mother slid in the laap ch’eung in and gave it a stir.
“Bring me the mushrooms,” her mother said, gesturing to the bowl on the kitchen table.
The telephone rang on the landing. She heard running footsteps as one of her brothers sprinted down the hall to grab it, and then
Frankie yelled, “Papa! It’s Aunt Judy!”
Aunt Judy didn’t come up to San Francisco for Thanksgiving, since it was only a couple of days and Uncle Francis’s family was much closer to them in Los Angeles, but she always called long distance. She would talk to her brother—Lily’s father—first, and then the phone would be passed around to all of the children. As Lily waited for her turn, she washed off the cutting board and knife. The rain was still dripping down the kitchen window, and she hoped that it would stop before Friday night. She wondered if she should wear the same skirt and blouse to the Telegraph Club. Would anyone notice if she did? She wished she had a new dress to wear—something as fashionable as the dress that Lana Jackson had worn. Would she be able to pull off a dress like that? She was dimly reflected in the kitchen window, and she scrutinized her figure critically. She didn’t think she had the necessary curves.
“You’re daydreaming again,” her mother said.
“Sorry,” Lily said. She dried off her hands and brought over the glutinous rice, which had to be mixed into the pan of laap ch’eung and mushrooms, and then seasoned with salt and soy sauce. It would be stuffed into the turkey, which was waiting on the kitchen table behind them. Lily’s mother had rubbed salt all over the skin earlier, and now as they approached with the stuffing, Lily thought the bird looked particularly naked, the breast glistening and bare. Her mother dipped her hand into the pan of glutinous rice and inserted fistfuls of it into the turkey cavity, holding the bird in place with her other hand. There was something disturbing about it, and Lily was relieved when her father appeared in the kitchen doorway and said, “Your aunt wants to talk to you.”
