Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

To accept these reasons was to agree that everything could be explained by a few generalized statements: a stepmother is evil, a foreigner is not to be trusted, a dubious woman taken in by a good man will repay his kindness like the viper in Aesop’s fable, roses are red, violets are blue. But Moran found it hard to fit herself, or anyone for that matter, into a space secured by such unwavering convictions.

“You look pensive,” Josef said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Rachel,” Moran said honestly.

“She’s not what you remember from before.”

The last time Moran had seen Rachel, she had been engaged to Matt; the prospect of a happy life had made Rachel more resentful of Moran’s pending divorce from Josef. Certainly she was the only one who knew this was how things would turn out, Rachel had said then; her dad and her brothers had all let themselves be deceived. There had never been any scene between Rachel and Moran, but all the same, Rachel’s words had made Moran wonder if indeed she had used Josef, mistaking him for the starting point of a new story, abandoning him when that script had failed — one’s life could have only one beginning, and that happened at birth. When people talk about starting over, it’s only wishful thinking: what came before, what happened yesterday, did not come or happen in vain.

“How’s Rachel these days?” Moran asked. Earlier on the phone, she could hear in Rachel’s voice the weariness of middle age setting in. “And her family?”

It made Josef happy to talk about his children and grandchildren. Apart from George, his children had all settled down in the Midwest: Michael worked in hospital management in Omaha, and Sharon, after the two boys had started school, had gone back to graduate school and become a middle school teacher; John, who had trained as a child psychologist and had become the headmaster of a private school in Chicago, had three children with Mimi, and together he and Mimi had overcome some rocky patches in their marriage; Rachel and Matt had their own optometry business, where Matt worked as the optometrist while Rachel ran the business. Even George, who had moved away to Portland, Oregon, to be the co-owner of a food truck and who had stayed single, seemed to make Josef proud, if only because he found George’s life a little mysterious.

“So you see, everyone is in good shape. I’m lucky that way,” Josef said.

There was a solidness to Josef’s children that Moran felt attached to from afar, the way a traveler feels drawn to a fireplace seen from outside a window and between half-pulled curtains. Every time Moran walked past a party, she could not help but take a look: people in twos and threes chatting or smiling or sipping from near-empty glasses. Moran did not want to be there, but she held on to the belief that they were happier than she herself was. Of course there were dramas known only to themselves, but she believed that if they were troubled or distressed, they had sound reasons to feel that pain: when Rachel had broken up with her college boyfriend, it had been a volatile period filled with tears and then parties that had made Josef worry, but it was at one of those parties that she had met Matt, and all of a sudden things had been better; the six-month separation between John and Mimi, after Mimi could not continue her career as a vocalist when she had moved with John for his job, had for a while been disheartening, but she had since found enough to do with the church choir and an after-school program that she now felt fulfilled— no doubt Mimi’s word, as Josef had explained to Moran at one of his birthday lunches.

“You certainly should take some credit,” Moran said now. “Are you hungry? Do you want some food? Or a cup of tea?”

Josef looked at her as though he had not heard her questions. “Except — what do we do with you, Moran?”

“What’s there for you to worry about?” she said, and regretted right away that her voice sounded stern.

“You’re slow to move on, you know?” Josef said gently.

Moran wondered if he was speaking of her inability to move on from their divorce — or could it be that he was speaking of his own death? To ask a person if she could survive one’s death indicates a kind of arrogance, or else a love so deep that no one but a dying man would admit it.

“Moving on? That’s an American thing I don’t believe in,” she said. If one starts without a position, it’s meaningless to think about the next point in time and geography. The last Thanksgiving that Moran had been Josef’s wife — in 2001, not long after 9/11—the subject at the table had been moving on . Moving on — to where, or to what? she had thought to herself. She had seen the phrase often in the newspapers around that time and had found it more than baffling, though only Moran seemed to have doubts about what it meant for the country, for its people, to move on.

So much confidence, and where could one find evidence to prove that their optimism was justified? Even Alena’s senseless accident had not cast a single shadow of fatalism in her family’s hearts. When Josef had married Moran, his friends, despite their doubts, must have been comforted by the fact that he had moved on; after their divorce, moving on would have been part of what people had said to Josef — or had not even needed to — to make her stop mattering to him.

On the Sunday after their visit to the university Moran woke up with a start, as though something had happened and she was already late. The night before, she had told her parents that she was exhausted and gone to bed right away, but for a long time she could not sleep. The emotions that had stormed through her and left her mind a devastated land came back to her now, all pointing to that unmistakable fact: Boyang was in love with Ruyu.

But why not? Moran tried to reason with herself. He was right to choose Ruyu, and why should she be surprised? One’s mind, fooled by pride, does not recognize the wisdom that comes from sorrow. Prematurely one rushes for the remedy of dignity, not knowing that dignity, rather than rejection, turns one’s heart into a timid organ, pleading for protection.

In the first light of day the quadrangle stirred to life, the doors opening and releasing people from their houses into the open air: someone brushing teeth and rinsing with loud gurgles next to the spigot, Teacher Pang watering his flowers while humming an operatic tune, Watermelon Wen’s wife snapping at the twins, who had been working keenly to trap a cat visiting from the neighboring quadrangle. A moment later Moran heard Boyang’s grandmother asking if the visit to the university was fun, and Ruyu replied that it was. A different place than this, isn’t it? Boyang’s grandmother said, and Ruyu must have acknowledged the question with a nod, as Moran did not hear her reply.

Boyang was in love, but was Ruyu, too? Her disturbed mood and uninterpretable behavior of the previous night did not belong to someone in love. Could it be that she had no reciprocal feeling toward him? That hope, too precarious to be further explored, nevertheless left a door ajar in Moran’s heart. Boyang was one of those people who could get anything he wanted, but there must be a point when that luck ran out. Heartbroken, perhaps he would notice another heart broken for him.

After breakfast, Watermelon Wen’s wife asked Moran to look after the twins. The woman complained that once again it was her turn for the weekend shift on the trolley route, even though everyone in the quadrangle knew she asked for it whenever she could. She and her husband were a loving couple but both had quick tempers: on the weekends when they were home together they tended to get into fights, about children, grocery shopping, or simply some disagreement over a TV drama.