“I’m going to call Galileo to see if you need to collect any paperwork for your transfer,” her father said.
She felt Kath’s hand letting go of hers again and again; her fingers sliding through hers over and over. Everything she and Kath had done could be erased so easily. It could be erased by her family pretending it had never happened. It could be erased by her parents uprooting her from her home and sending her away so that Kath would not know where she was. It could be erased because they were her parents and she was their daughter, and they loved her, and she could not disobey them even if it broke her heart.
“You should pack your things,” her father said. “Be ready to leave tomorrow morning.”
48
Lily’s father brought out an old brown suitcase and gave it to her to use. A luggage tag with an address in Chinese hung from the handle. Lily could read her father’s name and the characters for Shanghai, China.
She opened the suitcase on her bed. Her grandmother’s powdery scent clung to the blankets; already the room was no longer hers. She packed her clothes quickly, without looking at them. She shoved in the new dress she’d worn to the Telegraph Club two nights ago, not bothering to fold it. She tossed in her black pumps and a hairbrush. Her father came into the doorway, looking anxious. She ignored him and kept packing. She didn’t want to speak to him; she didn’t want to speak to any of them.
“I knew a doctor once, a woman, who was a lesbian,” he said.
The sound of the word was startling, and she froze for a second, but she refused to acknowledge him.
“She was a very successful doctor,” he continued. “She was Chinese too, like you.”
This slowed her down for a moment, but only a moment.
“I admired her skill as a physician. But everyone knew about her personal life, and she never married. There were rumors, of course, but she lived alone. I think she still lives alone. This is what your mother and I are worried about. We want you to marry and have children. You should have a full life, not a stunted one in which you wind up alone, with no one to care for you. Remember this.”
He was imagining a tragic future for her as if she were one of the strangers in the Eastern Pearl that she and Shirley liked to invent stories for. It only made her more angry.
When she didn’t respond, he exhaled in resignation and left.
She continued to roughly throw her clothes into the suitcase. She thought about Lana and Tommy in their cozy if cheaply furnished North Beach apartment. They were not stunted. She thought about Claire and Paula, and the indulgent tone in Claire’s voice as she described Paula as solid. They had full lives. She thought about Kath, and a hollow seemed to open up inside her. It had gravity; it pulled at her in a way that made her sway on her feet. She had to sit down on the edge of her bed, and suddenly she remembered the Collier’s magazine that Kath had given her, but it wasn’t on top of the stack of books that made her nightstand.
She began to unstack them, hunting for the magazine, but although she found the one her aunt had given her, Kath’s issue wasn’t there. She moved all the books aside in case it had fallen against the wall, but there was nothing. She looked around the room, wondering in rising panic if someone had stolen it from her, or if her mother had come into her room and thrown it away. It was only a magazine, but she had to bring it with her. Kath had given it to her.
Her book bag. She spun on her heel and rushed out of her room, running down the hall to find her book bag where she had left it on the floor beside the bench. She knelt down and unbuckled it and there it was, tucked in the back behind The Exploration of Space. She let out her breath in relief.
Footsteps approached from the kitchen. Aunt Judy stood a few feet away. “Are you all right?”
Her anger surged up again. If her aunt hadn’t played detective and found Lily in North Beach—if she hadn’t offered to take her back to Pasadena—
She rose to her feet, leaving the magazine in her bag; she didn’t want her aunt to see it. “I’m fine,” she said, because her aunt looked so forlorn.
Back in her room, she looked at the cover illustration of spaceships traveling toward the red planet before carefully tucking it between her clothes in the suitcase. She glanced over her shoulder, then opened The Exploration of Space. The photograph of Tommy was still there. She remembered Kath picking it up off the floor of the girls’ bathroom and holding it out to her. For a moment, they’d both held this piece of paper, like a talisman that had called them into existence, together. How long ago that was, and yet it felt like yesterday.