There’s an awkward pause. Dr. Benton stuffs his hands in his pockets, looks at his shoes. His profile is all shadow except a stripe of white light down his nose from the skylight. I think of Sister Evangeline in the shed, standing so straight and determined under the dusty lightbulb. Dr. Benton doesn’t look determined. He seems to have lost track of the reason we’re here.
“Was the bodhisattva put back together in this room?” I ask.
He clears his throat, looks up. “Ultimately, yes. The reuniting of it was a miracle almost sixteen years in the making.” Dr. Benton turns, rests his hands on the back of a metal stool, very formal and businesslike. “So what did you bring today, Lillian?”
I step over, undo the latch on my bag, and take out the towel hoping Dr. Benton knows my things aren’t for sale. He bites his lip and watches me unroll the wrist rest. “It’s got a radish carved on one side,” I say, turning it over. I can tell he recognizes it. “Like the one in the Scholar’s Studio.”
“May I?” He runs his fingers over the carving. “It’s well used. Imagine the ink masterworks this helped produce.”
“But what has it got to do with my mother?” I say. “Why did she have it?”
“I remember we purchased this from a vendor in Peking. Chun Loo was a brilliant archaeologist. He had a sixth sense about finding gems, sometimes thirty centuries old, buried in junk shops. He was my mentor. Lien Loo was like her father—smart, impulsive, intuitive, unafraid of challenges, a fine artist in her own right. Unusual qualities for a young Chinese woman, but she was well educated and had traveled with her father.”
I have no place to put these revelations—unless, of course, he’s making them up. Impulsive? Unafraid? “So she and her father traveled with you and the others for a long time?”
“Yes. . . . We worked together, explored, trusting our wits, bewitched by it all. With her father’s encouragement, before I returned to America, I arranged for Lien Loo to study here.” Dr. Benton shuts his eyes a long moment, shakes his head.
A million questions hang between us.
“She did come,” I say. “But she didn’t go to school; she had me instead.”
He nods, looks away. “Yes. I understand that now. But since we had lost contact, I didn’t know until you told me. Her father had either become ill or was killed. We don’t know. Communication within China became impossible.”
Dr. Benton walks to a folded pad spread on another table. “Did you bring the broken jade piece you showed me the other day?” I take it from my bag as he uncovers the bi, the disk of immortality with two dragons slinking on the rim that was displayed in the case downstairs. I rub my thumb over the rough edge of my lizard tail. He points, then folds his hands, waiting. I know what to do. I slide my little piece into one dragon’s broken tail. Not a tiny chip is missing. A perfect match.
Dr. Benton closes his eyes. I imagine he’s connecting a thousand dots in his mind: which emperor owned it and was buried with it on his chest, where they found it or bought it, its age, its cost, how it was made, the seller’s face, the bargaining, everything.
I step back. I don’t know what to do—leave my piece there or pull it apart?
“An artwork, out in the wild, without documentation of its provenance, is a gamble. But we were convinced by the workmanship that this piece was priceless, one of a kind.”
“What’s ‘provenance’?”
“Provenance is an object’s life story, its history. In the art world it means who made it, where and when, why it was made, who bought it, owned it, used it, hid it, sold it, repaired it. Every detail of an object’s past constitutes its provenance. It separates the real from the fake.”
We leave the dragon whole. I reach for my bag. “I brought something else.” I retrieve the box with the slipper. I hear Dr. Benton’s breathing and the faint sound of his hands moving in his pockets. I take the lid off, separate the cotton fluff, and lift the bundle. I roll the shoe onto the pile of powder-blue silk. “I think it’s for the right foot,” I say stupidly, as if any creature could ever wear it. The bent toe casts a sharp upright shadow. Dr. Benton picks it up, cups it in both hands. “The cloud slipper,” he says simply.
“Gone Mom gave it to me. . . .”
He turns. “Gone Mom?”
“My first mother. You called her Lien. I call her Gone Mom, because that is what she is.”
He tilts his head, nods slightly, and says, “What do you call your first father?”
I shake my head, stare at the table. “The phantom, Phan Tom, because it sounds Chinese. Actually, I never call him anything. I don’t think about him. All I know is that he stayed in China, if he is anywhere at all.”
“How do you know that?”
“My parents told me. That’s all they know about him. Anyway, he didn’t want us, I guess. Maybe that’s why she left there.” Dr. Benton rubs his mouth. He reminds me of Elliot—his long legs, his brooding way of turning in on himself.
I look up at Dr. Benton and ask, “You traveled together. D . . . did you ever meet him?” Dr. Benton doesn’t answer, just stares silently ahead. “Well, I will never know that man,” I say.
The slipper sits on the wide table. “Why is it this odd shape?” I ask. “What’s a cloud slipper?” He doesn’t answer, walks to a stack of file drawers, and opens one. He slides folders forward and reaches behind. He brings a cloth box tied with twine to the table and slowly unwraps it. Wind rattles the frames of the skylights. Birds swoop over the roof.
In a moment a matching slipper appears on his palm. He gives me a strange, almost apologetic look. “Here’s the mate.”
My stomach drops. My eyes shift between slippers. The pair.
His eyes are deep blue, welling with tears. “The phantom is not in China, Lillian. He is in Kansas City. I am that man.”
Chapter 27
Chisel strike. Panic. No air. No place to look.
Silence.
I move to the window and stare at the massive museum roof. It’s slate, with pigeons, like at home. The sound of Dr. Benton clearing his throat creeps up my spine. I cross my arms and shiver, turned inside out. It is impossible to be alive in the same room as him. Hot tears roll down my cheeks. My brain spins and sputters. He’s not Chinese. He’s not in China. He is an American man.
My parents lied to me.
His voice is low, matter-of-fact. “I did not abandon you, Lillian. I did not know about you. I did not know that Lien came to America. She never contacted me. She must have been expecting you when she arrived. That’s why she never enrolled in school.” He pauses a moment. “I’ve had some days to think about this and you haven’t. Lien and I had traveled together a long while. We fell in love. Based on your birthday and so forth, I have figured and refigured it and I am absolutely sure that I am your father.”
“You cannot tell a soul,” I say. “Ever! Gone Mom didn’t tell you she was in America because it would have been terrible for you to have a baby without . . . It is terrible for you . . . and for me. She knew I’d ruin your life, your reputation.”
We must keep the true and evil Lillian a secret.
“I loved Lien. That much is true, no matter what you think or how it turned out.” We are quiet with the sun washing over us and the slippers and the broken art.
He points to a room connected to this one. “I am going to sit in that office and leave you alone for now. If you want to talk, just knock.” He turns to me. “If you wish to leave, I will understand that, too. I promise I will not contact you. I do not know your last name and I will not seek to know it.”
The phantom stands. I glance at his jaw, the cleft in his chin. “We will be leaving soon, then back here at the end of the month.” And the next moment he disappears into the office and shuts the door.
It’s quiet except for the pigeons and the wind. I look from the doorknob to the pharaoh to the lion to the girl with her silent tambourine—all off their pedestals, out of their frames, in pieces, exposed.
I study t
he slipper mates nestled in a powder-blue cloud, tiny birds that will fly off if I move too suddenly. I think of the deep look Mrs. Chow gave me the first time we met, the way she scrutinized my face. She must have seen it then—the mix in me.
Dr. Benton is many wrong things, but he is not a liar. The facts add up. I know what he says is true. I shudder, stare at nothing, teeth clenched, unable to cry.
No sound from the office. No light under the door. Is there a window in there? Is he straining to hear my next move? Is he asleep? What are we doing? The world has stopped. It’s waiting for me. My whole self is waiting for me.
I pack up the wrist rest and dragon tail piece and stand, careful not to scrape the stool. I take my coat, slowly turn the lock, nudge the door, and walk out. If I stay silent, this is less real.
I descend the stairs.
I found him, Gone Mom. I finished your journey.
I exit the museum horribly unhooked from the world.
Chapter 28
On Saturday night I sit at the vanity studying the girl before a mirror—the cleft in my chin, my jaw and triangle nose, and the auburn in my hair. Him. I get my notebook, straighten my backbone, pencil ready, but instead of a drawing, a poem appears.
The Lie
by Lily Firestone
When I was four I swallowed a lie.
It sunk inside me, grew a shell, stayed hidden.
But the lie became restless.
It broke into bits and surfaced so I could not ignore it anymore.
The lie dissolved into truth and
showed up in the mirror.
It’s not perfect, but it’s finished. My first Chinese-scholar poem. The whole truth is better than half believing a lie.
I sit back, take a breath, wrap myself in my arms, eyes shut, waiting, aching for all the pieces of me—the lone rice-face high school girl and the pagan baby, and the little Jap monkey girl I didn’t love and protect enough. I hug the orphan riding her witch’s broom, and the innocent believer in dragon pearls, and the unborn baby rocked in the boat from China.
I find the tracing of Gone Mom’s cloud slipper in my notebook and add the left shoe—Michael Benton. It’s tricky to fit it with the right, but eventually, they look less like suffocated lima beans and more like a pair. Mates. My first parents were bewitched with each other. They had a love affair all across China, a burning secret—impossible, incredible, irresistible. I bite my lip against what I think next: I want that someday. Not the baby part, but the real romance. I want more than thinking in circles and hearing ugly things and feeling shame, and swallowing slurs and hiding in my locker.
And I want more than undimensional, Elliot. I do.
The idea glimmers bright in my mind that once upon a time Gone Mom was anything but undimensional. She had a flame too. She was strong willed and inspired and in love. She was determined to move all the way here to be with him until I ruined it.
* * *
Dad’s cigarette smoke floats upstairs. He and Ralph are listening to Dragnet. When it’s over the newspaper will slide off Dad’s lap and he’ll start snoring in the chair.
I remember Mother describing how scared I was of him when I first came here. “You thought he was a dragon in his bright red bathrobe, shooting smoke from his nose.” I was supposed to act like he was my daddy, but what was that? How was I to tame a dragon with a huge, blustery laugh? The only men I knew were priests in black robes or barbers and doctors in white arriving for our haircuts and checkups. Their hair never stuck out. They didn’t have morning whiskers and bare ankles. They didn’t play poker and smoke and swear at the radio.
Mother, in her way, was cuddly back then, hopeful, trying to tame us into a family.
I taught her how Nancy braided my hair and which side my cowlick was on. Mother taught me how to fold sheets and towels her way. Every day she folded me closer to her, and it was bliss. We took care of each other. I was the curiously cute center of her whole world and she was the center of mine.
But during all this folding and braiding, the myth of my preadoption life was manufactured. My Firestone future required re-creating my past, especially the tale of the phantom. He’s a Chinese man still in China. Gone forever. I knew he was a million miles away. And all the while, clues to the contrary sat as a perch for pigeons in our attic.
Is Michael Benton still sitting in that office, hoping I’ll knock, or praying I won’t? Are the slippers still on the table? I want mine back just as much as I want them to be together forever.
I picture Michael Benton sliding them until they touch. I imagine him matching them sole to sole, touching them to his cheeks. I imagine Michael Benton rewrapping them. Did he put them in two boxes or one?
I rub my face, press my fingers on my eyes. Do I remember it, or am I dreaming it? A gold band on his ring finger. Was he or was he not wearing a ring—a thin band with etching?
A wedding ring . . .
I shut my notebook. I break my pencil and hurl it into the wastebasket.
* * *
I knock at Evangeline’s apartment door, nervous, knowing I will shock her. But I have questions about Gone Mom and the phantom that standing alone at an ironing board won’t answer. And since she’s not a sister now, maybe she can talk. Plus I need to explain my trying to adopt Joy for her, and the crazy way it turned out.
She opens the door of her tiny apartment. A wind seems to blow her back. She motions for me to come in. I look at the mess. Do I have the right room? Do I have the right Evangeline?
She moves patterns to make a perch for me on the edge of the bed and sweeps her hand. “My new enterprise! Dressmaking and alterations.”
There are stacks of books, a lamp with a rosy pink scarf draped over the shade, a radio, a dresser, a sink, and a hot plate. She runs her hand through her curls, sits across from me on her sewing chair. “So, you found me!”
I tell about my attempt to adopt Joy for her and how Sister Immaculata was terrible at taking care of her and how Joy has adopted my mother now.
Evangeline clasps her hands and says softly, “Immaculata took very good care of me. . . . She raised me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult . . . I’m so stupid, she just seems so . . .”
“Everything changes. She knew me much better than I knew her. I remember Mrs. Firestone, quite well. Joy will take good care of her. What a marvelous idea you had.”
We turn to her dressmaker’s dummy fitted in a rainbow of fabric swatches. “Color is such a joy!” Evangeline says.
I am struck speechless. I definitely have the wrong Evangeline.
“Everyone has favorites. And, of course, everybody knows that little girls like bright pink. At the Mercy Home I encouraged would-be mothers who wanted to adopt little girls to wear pink when they visited.” She stops, as if she’d like to swallow this revelation. Her secret pink adoption weapon fills the moment.
Very sneaky. Sister Evangeline was a plotter.
“Did it work?” I ask.
“Sometimes.” Evangeline looks off.
“Did you tell people who wanted to adopt boys to wear cowboy hats and spurs?” She smiles. “Did you advise my mother to wear bright pink the day she came to find a little girl?”
“Yes. It was an unusual encounter.” Evangeline knits her fingers, looks down. She must sense the problems my mother and I are having now.
“So how is it since you left the sisters?” I ask, although it’s none of my business.
“I had lived there for forty years.”
My mind tumbles. “But . . . ?”
“I’m an ancient orphan, Lily. Never chosen. I was placed as an infant, went to Catholic school, became a ‘little maid’ in the eighth grade, and at eighteen entered the convent.” She speaks in a singsong way, as if sweeping up her past. “And now . . . here I am!” She flashes a smile that instantly dissolves. “I had never lived alone until now. It’s difficult.”
“What’s a little maid?”
“At fourteen we we
re farmed out to families who paid our expenses in exchange for housekeeping and child care.” She straightens her spine and says bluntly, “I preferred the orphanage. I did not create my fate. I adapted. We all do.”
A revelation stirs in me. Without Evangeline’s intuition and plotting, I might have become a nun or . . . who knows? I might be a little maid right now! Evangeline and the Firestones created my fate—as simple and impossible as that.
“Do you remember your first mother?” I ask.
“No. But I have a brother—a half brother . . . or I had one. We were separated. I intend to find him.” She looks right at me. “I will learn the whole truth about him even if he is dead. Even knowing that will still make him more alive in me. I am going to bring him into my life, love him, reclaim him. That’s one reason I left. God and I are having regular conversations now. Arguments, actually.”
I look around Evangeline’s tiny studio apartment. It’s like the Conservation Department—everything undone, exposed, before coming together.
“I learned the whole truth about myself,” I say. “Both slippers.”
Evangeline inhales and holds it. She turns the full power of her gaze on me. “Oh, Lily . . . the other slipper ?”
“Yes.”
The impact of this revelation holds the moment.
“Dr. Michael Benton has the other one. The mate.”
Evangeline sits, composed and nunlike, while I fall apart. “He’s more unreal now that he’s real,” I say between sobs. She steps toward me. I lower my head and cry and cry until a tiny miracle happens. Evangeline, the human pillar, sits down beside me, slides her arms around me, and hugs me.
“D . . . did my birth mother mention him or the art museum when she left me with you?”
“Only that her father was ill and she needed to return to China. She said she could not, would not take you. Life in China for girls was unbearable, and for a mixed-race girl even worse. You know, Lily, there are rules in many states, including Missouri, laws that prevent people of different races from getting married. They say it’s an attempt to keep the races pure.”
Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) Page 15
