Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

“I would be happy for them.”

“And if he’s not happy?”

“If the person is unhappy, I’ll make an effort to change that,” Moran said.

Ruyu looked at Moran as one would look at a baby bird maimed by a feral cat, sympathy and disgust seeming to blend into something less distinguishable. Without another word, Ruyu began to walk.

To be brought to an understanding of her own foolishness like that was like walking into a wall she had never known to be there. The pain was so acute that for a moment Moran felt the urge to gasp.

Josef asked only for a cup of black coffee, and even that he did not touch while watching Moran eat her eggs and toast. She knew that her overthinking had fallen short again. The evening before, when she had called Josef from the airport, he had suggested a simple dinner, and she had flatly refused because she had not come to be hosted or taken care of in any way. She asked him what his next day would be like, and he said he had a visit to the hospital in the morning. She would pick him up and drive him to his appointment, she said, deciding for both of them as she had decided all the birthday lunches.

The hospital cafeteria would be too depressing at this hour, Josef had said, and she had agreed to go to a small café nearby for breakfast. But now — too late as always — it occurred to her that he could not eat anything: today he would have another chemo infusion; with all her consideration, how could she have forgotten that for a town this size, one would never need to leave for an appointment two hours ahead of time?

Josef, though, watched her eat as though nothing was out of place. His suit hung loosely; his cheeks, once round and flushed and called affectionately by her his “Buddha” cheeks, were sallow now, creased skin on sharp bones. He moved much more slowly than before, though with dignity. She wondered if his bones and joints troubled him, and whether it was a result of the illness or the chemotherapy — though did it matter? His back was straight when he sat next to her in the car, and he did not let himself slouch after the waitress had brought them their orders. He was one of those people who would meet death with an impeccable manner, shaking hands, thanking death for taking the trouble to come and fetch him, and, having put his affairs in order ahead of time, bidding farewell to his family and friends before journeying onward. “It’s ridiculous to sit here and wait,” she said, disturbed by the thought that his final departure was no longer hypothetical. “Next time we’ll leave for the hospital just in time.”

“This is the only time I go while you’re here,” Josef said. “So don’t worry about next time. By the way, Rachel said to thank you for your help today.”

That, Moran thought, was his cue for her to ask about Rachel, her children, and her siblings and their children. In the past, Moran and Josef had been talkative at his birthday lunches, each picking up a new subject before quietness set in: he would speak of the local orchestra concerts he’d attended, various construction projects in the city, his children and grandchildren; she would speak of new products at work, the colors she’d painted her bedroom, the pots of herbs she was cultivating on her windowsill. What she had failed to do in their marriage she seemed to have managed since, at least once a year: to assign interest to small matters. It takes courage to find solace in trivialities, willfulness not to let trivialities usurp one’s life. Trivialities, though, could wait now, or could be done away with forever. “There,” she said, “will be next time. I’m moving back.”

“Back, Moran, to where?”

Did she detect suspicion or even panic, however fleeting, in his eyes? The house she had known to be theirs — and before that, his and Alena’s — had been remodeled and sold two years earlier. Josef’s move to the condo, she had known at the time, would be only the beginning of a series of moves, each confining his world more. Indeed, back to where? But a more apt question would be, back to when? Over the years she had failed to offer Josef evidence of settlement: a new marriage, a love interest, an affair, anything to end their birthday ritual. It was kind of her to come, he said every year, his happiness and gratitude genuine because she was the one to rearrange her life once a year for him. But Moran wondered if he was only acting for her sake — his life would have been the same otherwise, children and grandchildren providing a solid reality for his memories of Alena, polished into perfection by time. Had Josef not preserved a place for her to alight, Moran would be a hapless bird lost in migration from one year to the next. Indeed, back to when: the moment she had asked for a divorce, or earlier, when she had convinced herself that a man with a loving heart would offer her a place in life, or even earlier, when they had first found affectionate companionship in each other?

“Don’t worry. I won’t install myself in your living room like an uninvited guest. I won’t be in your way when your children come to see you. Oh, no, don’t you worry, Josef,” Moran said, feeling her stomach tighten. She had meant to find the best time to tell him her plan, but five minutes into the breakfast, she was already losing her strategy. She could not bring herself to say that there must be times when he needed a driver, a hand to hold on to when he walked on the icy sidewalk, someone to listen to him reminisce while sleep eluded him, a lover of his good heart.

Josef was quiet, then said that it was comforting to know that, with a bit of food in her, Moran was her old self again.

He meant that impatience and irritation came easily to her when she was with him, part of herself that no one else was allowed to see. To the world, she was not unlike Josef: poised in an old-fashioned way. She liked to imagine that she carried with her something good from him, though at times she suspected she was one of those people who would latch on to what was not in their nature and set about making it their own: once upon a time, it had been Shaoai’s romantic vehemence about injustice and Boyang’s lack of concern for all things troublesome. (How had those two traits mixed in her? she wondered, but it seemed too long ago for her to understand.) There had been Ruyu’s imperviousness, a most alien quality, yet for years Moran had striven for it, as though by aligning herself with Ruyu, she could claim at least a small part of Ruyu’s impunity. But how does one tell where one’s true self stops and makes way for all the borrowed selves? To this day, Moran still sometimes woke from dreams in which she had laughed jovially. Often Boyang was in those dreams, and sometimes Ruyu, too, and the backdrop, however vague, was unmistakably one of her favorite corners of Beijing; in the first moment of wakefulness, the unconstrained happiness, like the lingering aftertaste of the locust blossoms they ate as children, was intensely real, until she remembered that she was no longer a person who had things to laugh about, or people to laugh with. Extreme disappointment seems a lesson one can never master: no matter how many times it had happened, the realization would still hit her like a fierce bout of physical illness, and for a moment she would be dazed, asking herself how it could be that her life had not turned out to be a place for that happiness.

“Did I offend you?” Josef said.

Always quick to admit wrongdoing, always ready to apologize — it was the same for both of them. How could two people like that make a marriage, which required a certain degree of irrationality, work? “I mean it, Josef,” Moran said. “I’m moving back to town.”

“Why?”

“That”—she stared at Josef—“is a stupid question.”