2
The Eastern Pearl was only a ten-minute walk from the Hu family flat, but that night the journey home seemed to take Lily forever. As soon as she left the restaurant, she had to spend several minutes talking to old Mr. Wong, who was locking up his imports store next door. Then, as she rounded the corner onto Grant Avenue, Charlie Yip at the concession stand called out to her, saying he had her favorite wa mooi* on discount. She bought a small bag to share with her brothers, and as she slid the candy into her skirt pocket, she took care not to crush the folded newspaper.
Outside the Shanghai Palace, a clump of Caucasian tourists blocked the sidewalk. They were dressed up for their night out in Chinatown, and Lily could tell they’d had a few cocktails. None of them noticed her as she slipped around them into the street, dodging a cigarette butt flung by a woman in a fur stole. Lily shot an irritated glance at the woman’s back as a car honked at her, causing Lily to jump out of the way. Now pinned between the tourists and a parked Buick, she was forced to wait for the traffic light to turn red before she could finally cross the street, darting impatiently between idling cars.
When she reached the opposite sidewalk, she glanced back up Grant toward Broadway and North Beach, wondering where the Telegraph Club was exactly. She imagined a tall neon sign over an awning-covered door. She remembered the two women she’d seen at the Eastern Pearl, and she pictured them going to the Telegraph Club. She imagined them taking a seat at a small, round table near the stage, where Tommy Andrews would emerge, dressed to the nines, to sing.
She wanted to take out the newspaper ad right then and there to see Tommy’s face again, but she resisted. Clay Street was right ahead; she was only a couple of blocks from home. She walked faster.
* * *
—
Lily unlocked the front door and hurried up the long wooden stairs to the third-floor landing. The flat was quiet and dark to the left, where the kitchen was, but down the hall to the right the living room door spilled light into the hallway. She hung her jacket on the coatrack, took off her shoes, put on her slippers, and padded toward the living room, passing the closed door to her parents’ bedroom.
Her father was seated on the sofa, reading the newspaper and smoking his pipe. Her younger brothers, Eddie and Frankie, were sprawled on the rug reading comic books. When she entered, her father looked up and smiled. The lenses of his round glasses reflected the lamplight.
“Have you had dinner?” he asked. “How was Shirley?”
“She’s fine. I ate with her. Where’s Mama?”
“She went to bed early. If you’re still hungry there are leftovers in the kitchen.”
Eddie looked over his shoulder at her. “Also some cake. There was a bake sale at Cameron House.”
This reminded Lily of the wa mooi, and she pulled them out of her pocket. “Do you want some of these? I got them from Charlie Yip.”
Frankie jumped up to take them from her, while Papa said, “Not too many—it’s almost time for bed.”
Lily could predict how the rest of the night would go. Her father would stay up until he finished reading the paper—perhaps another half hour. Her brothers would argue that they should be able to stay up later, but they would be forced into bed by ten o’clock. She could sit in the living room with them, impatiently reading a novel, but she already knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Instead she went into the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. While she waited she stood at the window over the sink, gazing at the city lights, each a glowing ember marking someone else’s life: bedroom and living room windows, headlights crawling up the steep streets. She wondered where those two women from the restaurant lived and what their homes looked like. She slid her hand into her pocket and touched the folded newspaper.
She made a cup of jasmine tea and took it to her bedroom, which wasn’t really a bedroom but an alcove off the living room behind pocket doors. She left them open for now. Her father had used the space as an office until Frankie had turned four, when Lily had argued her way out of sharing a room with her brothers. Now she had her own tiny hideaway, into which she had crammed her narrow bed, an old bureau with drawers that never closed properly, and several tall stacks of books that created a precarious nightstand for her bedside lamp. The small window in the wall above the foot of her bed was covered with a short curtain made of blue velvet, dotted with tiny sequins. Lily had sewn it herself in home economics class in junior high school. The stitches had begun unraveling almost as soon as she hung it up, but she still liked it. It reminded her of the science fiction novels she liked to read, with their covers depicting outer space.