Woman Who Could Not Forget

by Richard Rhodes

  Dear Mom and Dad:

  Brett and I went to the FBI museum today! . . .

  By the way, Susan Rabiner at HarperCollins talked to me today and she wants me to write up a proposal on Chien Xue-xin (more than one of its spellings) . . . She was really excited about the project, esp. after I told her about the info Dad told me. More later . . . Love, Iris

  Then, on March 24, she mailed us another postcard that said:

  Dear Mom and Dad:

  . . . Brett and I went to Washington on Friday, so I could do some research on Tsien Hsue-shen. NASA had a file on him that was more than an inch thick! I spent an hour xeroxing all the articles on him, then went to the National Archives. There was no information on him there because Tsien is still alive. I will have to file a Freedom of Information Act form to get the FBI files on him, and that can take 2 to 5 years!!! Anyway, Susan Rabiner had called me early Friday morning and told me Barbara Culliton (my advisor) is really excited about this and that Nature may print an excerpt or article about the book if it works out. More later. . . . Love, Iris

  She was working hard and using her spring break to collect information on Tsien. Several weeks later, she gave Susan Rabiner a written report. Susan was really impressed.

  I had been continuously working in my lab, in spite of my abdominal discomfort, until May. I was so sick in May that I could not work further. I finally took some sick leave. At the time, I had lost almost fifteen pounds. In the latter part of May, the doctor finally confirmed that it was pseudomembranous colitis again and prescribed vancomycin, and I was back on the healing track.

  For Iris’s wedding, Luann visited us several times and brought a book to tell us how to prepare a good wedding. We had discussed the reception in detail. With Iris and Brett on the East and West Coast, respectively, the planning was on the shoulders of both sets of parents.

  On Mother’s Day, Iris mailed me a card and wrote:

  I wish I could spend Mother’s Day with you. . .especially now that you’re resting at home most of the time. You must be exhausted from planning the wedding reception and I feel pretty guilty about staying on the East Coast for a few extra weeks instead of coming back to Urbana as soon as possible. But at the same time, I’m glad to be spending so much time with Grandma! She told me an interesting story tonight (a Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet) of a woman scholar who dresses as a man and falls in love with a poor student, ending with the woman crawling into his grave, from which two butterflies sail into the sky—perhaps you know the name of this fairy tale? I hope to find you relaxed and well when I see you again. I love you very much. . . . Iris.

  Because of my illness, I missed Michael’s college graduation ceremony on May 12. Only Shau-Jin attended. Michael graduated from the Electric Engineering Department of the U of I and received an assistantship from the Department of Electric Engineering of UCSB. He was going to study in Santa Barbara, the same place Brett was. I was happy that Iris, Brett, and Michael would be in the same place starting in May.

  On May 24, finally, Iris came home from Baltimore, having completed her one-year writing seminar program and having obtained a master’s degree in writing. She did not stay home long. Two weeks later, on June 9, she went to Santa Barbara to be with Brett. She was eager to go to California to collect information on Tsien in preparation for her book proposal, as Dr. Tsien had graduated from Caltech and spent a number of years in Los Angeles, and Iris wanted to interview his friends and colleagues while she was out west. Another reason, of course, was that she wanted to be reunited with Brett. She and Brett missed each other terribly during their separation.

  Iris came home on August 7, just ten days before the wedding. By then, arrangements for the ceremony and the reception had already been made.

  On the morning of Saturday, August 17, 1991, the weather forecast was cloudy with possible rain. The wedding ceremony was at 5:00 P.M. In the early afternoon, a summer storm brought a brief shower. I went with Iris to the church a couple of hours prior to the storm. Iris and all the bridesmaids were busy changing clothes and setting their hair in the back lounge of the church. Iris did not want to put too much makeup on her face and insisted that she look natural. I was the one who was nervous, whereas Iris was quite relaxed.

  When the time was near, I was ushered to the front seat of the church, whereas Shau-Jin was waiting near the entrance door with Iris since he would be giving her away. When the guests settled, we heard Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” which was sung from the balcony above by a music-major student of the U of I whom Iris had invited. The song was beautiful and touched everyone’s heart. Just at this time, the sun suddenly broke through the clouds and its rays penetrated through the rainbow-colored stained glass of the church. United Methodist Church was huge, with a three-story-high cathedral ceiling and gigantic windows. The whole church was quiet but bright, and the melody was resonating in the spacious open air. The atmosphere was solemn and holy. I could barely breathe as I listened to the beautiful music and soaked up the moment.

  The bridesmaids, Amy Orfield, Kathy Szoke, and Carolyn Wu, and the maid of honor, Janice Karlovich, paraded down one after the other toward the altar. All were Iris’s best friends; they wore elegant bright fuchsia-colored dresses. When the wedding procession music was played on the old church organ, we saw Shau-Jin accompanying Iris walking slowly down the red-carpeted aisle to the altar. Iris smiled along the way and finally joined Brett, who was standing in front of the minister. Minister Palmer officiated the ceremony and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “All I Ask of You” was sung midway through the ceremony. When the ceremony ended, everyone told us it was the most beautiful wedding they had ever seen!

  I was quite happy—and a bit relieved—that the wedding was over. It had taken me almost a year of preparation, and it went flawlessly. Iris and Brett left for Santa Barbara immediately after the wedding. They had decided to take their honeymoon after resting for a while first.

  It was a fairytale to many of our friends as well as to Iris and Brett’s friends: a beautiful princess married to a handsome prince.

  Struggles of a Young Writer

  After the wedding, Iris lived with Brett in Goleta, a small town next to Santa Barbara where the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) is located. Brett was working on his PhD in electrical engineering.

  Over the Labor Day weekend of 1991, Iris and Brett went to Las Vegas for their honeymoon and stayed at Caesar’s Palace. Later she mailed us a big photo portrait of them taken during the Vegas show Splash at the Riviera Hotel. In the photo, both look so young and beautiful; this is one of the best photos of them. Her smile is quite cheerful and her eyes glitter with intelligence and drive. The portrait was on the wall of our family room in Urbana for many years. It was also displayed in every house Iris and Brett ever lived in together.

  On October 6, Iris wrote us a three-and-a-half-page single-spaced typed letter that touched on several topics. She said that she had talked to Susan Rabiner, and Susan thought her book should have “enormous reviews,” but “how well it sells depends on a number of factors: the details I am able to gather, the quality of the narration, the subject matter, the timing of the book and the promotion.” Iris also mentioned that “There should be three markets for this book: the scientific community, the Chinese-American community, and the political community—particularly those interested in the McCarthy era of the 1950’s.” She was very focused and wanted her first book to be successful even before she got the contract. She was learning every possible bit of information on the book-publishing business while she also gathered information on Tsien.

  In the letter, she also told us:

  If you are looking for any good books to read, then you should check out American Steel by Richard Preston. It’s an excellent example of literary journalism, and I highly recommend it. . . . I’m also reading Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris in my spare time. Just the other day I read that a woman won t
he Nobel Prize in literature—Nadine Gordimer of South Africa. I plan to read some of her novels when I get the chance. The caliber of writing in Nobel Prize literature is several cuts higher than even the best of most contemporary American writing, yet so few people put the works of Nobel Prize authors on their reading list. Had it not been for the Nobel Prize committee, I probably would not have discovered the Icelandic epic novels of Halldór Laxness, or the Yiddish short stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer or the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, from Poland.

  I really admired her passion for reading and learning, even when she had so much work to do.

  In the same letter, she also wrote:

  I really miss both of you very much, I’ve been thinking about my family quite a bit these days, especially after my visit to Grandma and Grandpa’s home (in L.A.). . . . It depresses me to see how young, muscular and handsome Brett is now and then to imagine him sixty years later, stooped, coughing and old. One fourth of my life is over already and for Brett, it’s almost one third. People sometimes don’t understand why I’m so impatient, but how can I NOT be when time passes so quickly? It doesn’t seem to bother most people, however.

  Then she was talking about a new book idea:

  Every day, I think of a new idea for a book. For instance, the history of commuting in the United States. How did it begin? From the highway grew the suburb, the “bedroom community,” the community college, the commuter college, the shopping mall, the chain store, the mobile home and smog. To find the heart of our national soul, as many writers seek, we must start with the web of arteries that we call our highways. What has commuting done to the American community? Has it contributed to the decay of our inner cities? Has it brought people closer, or has it forced people to live and work farther away from each other, placing not just physical but emotional distance between the American people? What kind of psychological toll does a daily one or two-hour commute impose upon us? What does the rampant machine gun shootings on the highways of Los Angeles or the cross-fire of the streets of East St. Louis tell us about our society?

  Apparently, she was not only writing her book proposal, she was also reading other books, thinking about ideas for a new book, and reflecting on her life.

  On October 10, 1991, she finished her book proposal and mailed it to Susan Rabiner. On that day she wrote to us:

  Dear Mom and Dad:

  I just sent off the final version of my proposal to HarperCollins, and before long I will enter negotiations and a contractual agreement! Before I sign anything, however, I plan to read a couple of books on the subject in the library. Can you believe the proposal was 102 pages long, with an additional 6 pages of sources? The best investment I have made so far is my laser printer.

  Brett and I have both been very busy, but when he comes home at night we take long walks together. This weekend will be a wonderful break for both of us. Sometimes Brett doesn’t come home from lab until 9 or 10 pm, and sometimes I’m typing away at the computer until 2, 3 or 4 am, occasionally waking him up, but he doesn’t get mad at all. Anyway, I miss both of you very much. Love, Iris

  However, the break she had after she sent off her book proposal was filled with loneliness. She called us and complained that she was extremely lonely in Santa Barbara. One major factor, of course, was waiting for the answer to her proposal from HarperCollins. Iris told us that Susan Rabiner liked her proposal very much. Susan said she did not expect Iris to do so well on the book proposal; “It’s marvelous,” Susan said. And Susan assured her that she would be stunned if proposal did not get approved. Susan asked her to be patient, though, as the process would take time. In the meantime, Iris was worried that even if the proposal got approved, she still had to find other resources to support herself in addition to the book advance. She was actively looking for and applying for grants to support her research. She said she went to the UCSB library to find the names of grant agencies and had started applying. Then she said she was still lonely even after she had met a number of people in town. She even found two people from Urbana and had lunch with them. She missed the big cities like Chicago or New York and hated smaller towns such as Santa Barbara, populated mostly with “the newly wed and the nearly dead.” She said she felt trapped. She would love to live in Los Angeles, but Brett hated the traffic and the smog. She missed Chicago, Michigan Avenue, Water Tower Place. . . . I comforted her and told her to be patient. At the end of the phone conversation, she told me that this was just one of her down days, and she admitted that she should feel lucky for what she had.

  On the phone, she also mentioned that she hated cooking and cleaning the apartment. Not the cooking and the cleaning itself, but the everyday routine. She said that she felt a sense of accomplishment when she finished the cleaning, but the fact that it always got dirty again, and the routine of constant cleaning, seemed hopeless. She vowed that she would delegate the cleaning to someone else when she had enough money.

  At this time, Iris was desperate for money to support herself, but we did not really realize this until we visited her during the Christmas-New Year’s holiday at the end of 1991.

  In November 1991, she had been happy again when she was about to go with Brett to a conference in San Francisco, where Brett was presenting a paper. On November 3, she wrote us a postcard from San Francisco in such small scribbles that I had to use a magnifying glass to read it:

  Dear Mom and Dad:

  Brett and I are staying at Peter Kim’s apartment in San Francisco and I LOVE IT!!! Never have I been in such a romantic city on the West Coast—(Forget Santa Barbara and Los Angeles! If I ever get the chance I want to live here!). . . . Today we rode down the hills on a cable car and ate crab sandwiches and squid and shrimp along Fisherman’s Wharf. The crowded booth of sea food, cheap jewelry and T shirts reminded me of the street markets of Taiwan. Brett and I enjoyed “Bread Bowls” of clam chowder: hollowed out rolls of bread filled with creamy white soup, with flaps of crust for lids! We crawled through the quarters of a World War II submarine and peered through telescopes at Alcatraz (the penitentiary that housed such felons as Al Capone) and Angel Island, where many immigrants from China had been detained. Then we walked up and down the streets, every corner a surprise: a gallery of original Disney animation sketches, a shop of romance and massage, a wax museum, a street magic show. In some ways, this city is Chicago, Baltimore and New York rolled into one—and warmer and cleaner as well.

  Tomorrow we go to Monterey . . . I’ll write you then! Love, Iris

  Shau-Jin went to Taiwan for a conference at the beginning of November for two weeks. Both Iris and Michael were in Santa Barbara, so I was alone at home if I was not working in the lab. Iris called and wrote often to check up on me. After San Francisco, she and Brett went to Monterey for an electrical engineering conference. Iris wrote me a postcard on November 8, 1991 and said that “During the 3-day Asilomar Conference, I did nothing but read, buy books, walk along the beach and eat bowls of clam chowder. By the end of our ‘second honeymoon’ I was itching to get back to work. I can hardly wait to see you again at Christmas!”

  I told Iris we had decided to visit them after Christmas and then go to Hawaii for a much-needed vacation. I had just recovered from my illness, and Iris’s wedding was over; Shau-Jin and I thought we needed some time for ourselves. Michael came home for Christmas, which was lovely, as we had not seen him since Iris’s wedding. So, after Christmas, on December 30, we flew to Santa Barbara and drove to Goleta to visit Iris. Iris and Brett lived in a small apartment at 312 Ellwood Beach Drive. They lived like typical graduate students. Iris took us to see the UCSB campus and the beaches. The beaches and the architecture of the buildings were beautiful, and the student culture in Santa Barbara was very liberal. The five of us then drove down to Los Angeles to visit Shau-Jin’s parents, where we stayed with Shau-Jin’s brother Frank in L.A.

  On the last day before we flew to Hawaii, in the early morning of January 3, 1992, Brett told us that Iris was spending money without pro
per planning and she had spent most of their savings. Brett suggested that Iris should find a regular job. Because we were in a hurry to catch the plane to Hawaii, we did not have the chance to find out exactly what had happened.

  Iris never thought much about money. She usually spent it on books and all the things related to writing or publishing. She wanted to buy computers, laser printers, and file cabinets, for example. She never wasted money on clothes or cosmetics, so I could not say she was wasting it, although she did buy a large number of books.

  We later learned that Brett wanted Iris to look for a nine-to-five regular job, such as a teacher in a high school or a college. She did apply to the UCSB Department of English and several small colleges near Santa Barbara. She complained that in Santa Barbara, not like Baltimore or Chicago, there was a very limited job market.

  In December 1991, Iris found a book agent, Laura Blake of Curtis Brown, Ltd., one of the most prestigious literary agencies in the country. Laura represented Iris after HarperCollins approved the book proposal. As far as I remember, Iris got a $30,000 advance from HarperCollins—not enough to cover her living expenses, considering the book was going to take two to three years to write, let alone the money needed for her research. That was why Iris was under tremendous pressure to seek an additional source of income. She applied for a number of grants from foundations, big or small, such as the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment of Humanities, the MacArthur Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the United States Institute of Peace. She also contacted her former professors at the U of I to ask them to write recommendation letters, particularly to Professor Bob Reid, who wrote numerous letters on her behalf.

  During the first half of 1992, Iris was not only continuing the research on the biography, but also applying for all those grants or fellowships, on top of looking for teaching jobs. During the waiting period, she tried all the ways she could think of to find a freelancing job at business magazines or newspapers. One time, she called us and said she’d met a person working in the local Kaplan, Inc. who said that if she wanted, she could teach the Kaplan classes to students for test prep and college admission; there were openings. Another time, she said she could work as a telemarketer for a product company. But when she heard nothing from the grant agencies or received rejection letters one after another, she was desperate. When we heard she was delivering pizzas, my heart sank! We couldn’t believe she would do this; we immediately expressed our concern. Fortunately, it didn’t last long. Shau-Jin and I, as well as Brett, immediately asked her to stop. We were not against the job itself, but we worried about her safety, since we had all heard horrible things about how people who delivered pizza got kidnapped or killed, especially if they were women. Even under these circumstances, however, Iris still remained optimistic and very focused on collecting materials for the biography.