Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

Yet their foolishness was his, too, and to laugh at his own absurdity he needed the other two: laughing by oneself is more intolerable than mourning alone. They might not have seen the death notice in their emails — after all, it was only the middle of the month. Boyang knew, by intuition, that the email addresses he had from Moran and Ruyu were not the ones they used every day, as his, used only for communicating with them, was not. That Shaoai had died on him when he had least expected her to, and that neither Moran nor Ruyu had acknowledged his email, made the death unreal, as though he were rehearsing alone for something he needed the other two women — no, all three of them — to be part of; Shaoai, too, had to be present at her own funeral.

A silver Porsche overtook Boyang on the highway, and he wondered if the driver was the woman he had seen in the cemetery. His cell phone vibrated, but he did not unhook it from his belt. He had canceled his appointments for the day, and the call most probably was from Coco. As a rule he kept his whereabouts vague to Coco, so she had to call him, and had to be prepared for last-minute changes. To keep her on uncertain footing gave him the pleasure of being in control. Sugar daddy —she and her friends must have used that imported term behind his back, but once when he, half-drunk, had asked Coco if that was what she took him for, she laughed and said he was too young for that. Sugar brother , she said afterward on the phone with a girlfriend, winking at him, and later he’d thanked her for her generosity.

It took him a few passes to find a parking spot at the apartment complex, built long before cars were a part of the lives of its occupants. A man who was cleaning the windshield of a small car — made in China from the look of it — cast an unfriendly look at Boyang as he exited his car. Would the man, Boyang wondered while locking eyes with the stranger sternly, leave a scratch on his BMW, or at least kick its tire or bumper, when he was out of sight? Such conjecture about other people no doubt reflected his own ignobleness, but a man must not let his imagination be outwitted by the world. Boyang took pride in his contempt for other people and himself alike. This world, like many people in it, inevitably treats a man better when he has little kindness to spare for it.

Before he unlocked the apartment door with his copy of the key, Aunt opened it from inside. She must have been crying, her eyelids red and swollen, but she acted busy, almost cheerful, brewing tea that Boyang had said he did not need, pushing a plate of pistachios at him, and asking about the health of his parents.

Boyang wished he had never known this one-bedroom unit, which, already shabby when Aunt and Uncle had moved into it with Shaoai, had not changed much in the past twenty years. The furniture was old, from the ’60s and ’70s, cheap wooden tables and chairs and iron bed frames that had long lost their original shine. The only addition was a used metal walker, bought inexpensively from the hospital where Aunt used to work as a nurse before retiring. Boyang had helped Uncle to saw off its wheels, readjust its height, and then secure it to a wall. Three times a day Shaoai had been helped onto it and practiced standing by herself so that her muscles retained some strength.

The old sheets wrapped around the armrests had worn out over the years, the sky-blue paint badly chipped and exposing the dirty metal beneath. Never, Boyang thought, would he again have to coax Shaoai to practice standing with a piece of candy, yet was this world without her a better place for him? Like a river taking a detour, time that had passed elsewhere had left the apartment and its occupants behind, their lives and deaths fossils of an inconsequential past. Boyang’s own parents had purchased four properties in the last decade, each one bigger than the previous one; their current home was a two-story townhouse they never tired of inviting friends to, for viewings of their marble bathtub and crystal chandelier imported from Italy and their shiny appliances from Germany. Boyang had overseen the remodeling of all four places, and he managed the three they rented out. He himself had three apartments in Beijing; the first, purchased for his marriage, he had bestowed upon his ex-wife as a punishing gesture of largesse when the man she had betrayed Boyang for had not divorced his own wife as he had promised.

A black-and-white photograph of Shaoai, enlarged and set in a black frame, was hung up next to a picture of Uncle, who had died five years earlier from liver cancer. A plate of fresh fruit was placed in front of the pictures, oranges quartered, melons sliced, apples and pears, intact, looking waxy and unreal. These Aunt timidly showed Boyang, as though she had to prove that she had just the right amount of grief — too much would make her a burden; too little would suggest negligence. “Did everything go all right?” she asked when she ran out of the topics she must have prepared before his return.

The image of Aunt’s checking the clock every few minutes and wondering where her daughter’s body was disturbed Boyang. He regretted that he had pressed Aunt not to go to the crematory, but at once he chased that thought away. “Everything went well,” he said. “Smoothly.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do without you,” Aunt said.

Boyang unwrapped the urn from the white silk bag and placed it next to the plate of fruits. He avoided looking closely at Shaoai in the photo, which must have been taken during her college years. Over the past two decades, she had doubled in size, and her face had lost the cleanly defined jawline. To be filled with soft flesh like that, and to vanish in a furnace … Boyang shuddered. The body, in its absence, took up more space than it had when alive. Abruptly he went over to the walker by the wall and assessed the possibility of dismantling it.

“But we’ll keep it, shall we?” Aunt said. “It could come in handy someday for me.”

Unwilling to let Aunt steer the conversation toward the future, Boyang nodded and said he would have to leave soon; he was to meet a business partner.

Of course, Aunt said, she would not keep him.

“I’ve emailed Ruyu and Moran,” he said at the door. It was cowardly to bring up their names, but he was afraid that if he did not unburden himself, he would be spending another night drinking more than was good for his health, singing intentionally off-key at the karaoke bar, and telling lewd jokes too loudly.

Aunt paused as though she had not heard him right, so he said again that the news had been sent to Moran and Ruyu. Aunt nodded and said it was right of him to tell them, though he knew she was lying.

“I thought you might like me to,” Boyang said. It was cruel to take advantage of the old woman who was not in a position to protest, but he wanted to talk with someone about Moran and Ruyu, to hear their names mentioned by another voice.

“Moran is a good girl,” Aunt said, reaching up to pat his shoulder. “I’ve always been sorry that you didn’t marry her.”

Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime. Boyang was amazed at how effortless it was for Aunt to inflict such fatal pain. It was unlike her to say anything about his marriage. Between them they had shared only Shaoai. He had told Aunt about his divorce, but he had not needed to remind her, as he had had to remind his parents, not to discuss it. And to speak of Moran as a better candidate for his marriage while intentionally leaving out the other name — Boyang felt an urge to punish someone, though he only shook his head. “Marriage or no,” he said, “I need to run now.”

“And to think we haven’t heard from Moran for so long,” Aunt persisted.

Boyang ignored the comment, and said he would come back later that week. When he had asked Aunt about the burial of Shaoai’s cremains, she had replied that she was not ready. He suspected, perhaps unfairly, that Aunt was holding on to the urn of ashes because that was the last thing binding him to this apartment. He and Aunt were not related by blood.