Amy Tan - The Bonesetter's Daughter

LuLing also asked for updates on the stock market. "Dow Jones go up or down?" she asked one day.

Ruth drew an upward arrow.

"Sell Intel, buy Intel?"

Ruth knew her mother watched the stock market mostly just for fun. She had not found any letters, junk mail or otherwise, from brokerage firms. Buy on sale, she decided to write.

LuLing nodded. "Oh, wait till down. Precious Auntie very smart."

One night, as Ruth held the chopstick in her hand, ready to divine more answers, she heard LuLing say: "Why you and Artie argue?"

"We're not arguing."

"Then why you not live together? This because me? My fault?"

"Of course not." Ruth said this a bit too loudly.

"I think maybe so." She gave Ruth her all-knowing look. "Long time 'go, you first meet him, I tell you, Why you live together first? You do this, he never marry you. You remember? Oh, now you thinking, Ah, Mother right. Live together, now I just leftover, easy throw away. Don't be embarrass. You be honest."

Her mother had said those things, Ruth recalled with chagrin. She busied her hands, brushing off stray grains of sand from the edges of the tray. She was both surprised by the things her mother remembered and touched by her concern. What LuLing had said about Art was not exactly right, yet she had pierced the heart of it, the fact that Ruth felt like a leftover, last in line to get a helping of whatever was being served.

Something was terribly wrong between Art and her. She had sensed that more strongly during their trial separation-wasn't that what this was? She saw more clearly the habits of emotion, her trying to accommodate herself to him even when he didn't need her to. At one time she had thought that adjustment was what every couple, married or not, did, willingly or out of grudging necessity. But had Art also accommodated to her? If so, she didn't know how. And now that they had been apart, she felt unweighted, untethered. This was what she had predicted she might feel when she lost her mother. Now she wanted to hang on to her mother as if she were her life preserver.

"What bothers me is that I don't feel lonelier without Art," she told Wendy over the phone. "I feel more myself."

"Do you miss the girls?"

"Not that much, at least not their noise and energy. Do you think my feelings are deadened or something?"

"I think you're worn out."

Twice a week, Ruth and her mother went to Vallejo Street for dinner. On those days, Ruth had to finish her work early and shop for groceries. Since she did not want to leave her mother alone, she took her along to the store. While they shopped, LuLing commented on the cost of every item, questioning whether Ruth should wait until it was cheaper. Once Ruth arrived home-and yes, she reminded herself, the flat on Vallejo Street was still her home-she seated LuLing in front of the television, then sorted through mail addressed to her and Art as a couple. She saw how little of that there was, while most of the repair bills were in her name. At the end of the night, she was frazzled, saddened, and relieved to go back to her mother's house, to her little bed.

One night, while she was in the kitchen cutting vegetables, Art sidled up to her and patted her bottom. "Why don't you get GaoLing to babysit your mom? Then you can stay over for a conjugal visit."

She flushed. She wanted to lean against him, wrap her arms around him, and yet the act of doing so was as scary as leaping off a cliff.

He kissed her neck. "Or you can take a break right now and we can sneak into the bathroom for a quickie."

She laughed nervously. "They'll all know what we're doing."

"No they won't." Art was breathing in her ear.

"My mother knows everything, she sees everything."

With that, Art stopped, and Ruth was disappointed.

During the second month of their living apart, Ruth told Art, "If you really want to have dinner together, maybe you should come over to my mother's for a change, instead of my schlepping over here all the time for dinner. It's exhausting to do that all the time."

So Art and the girls started to go twice a week to LuLing's house. "Ruth," Dory whined one night as she watched her making a salad, "when are you coming home? Dad is like really boring and Fia is all the time like, 'Dad, there's nothing to do, there's nothing good to eat.'"

Ruth was pleased that they missed her. "I don't know, honey. Waipo needs me."

"We need you too."

Ruth felt her heart squeeze. "I know, but Waipo's sick. I have to stay with her."

"Then can I come and stay here with you?"

Ruth laughed. "I'd like that, but you'll have to ask your dad."

Two weekends later, Fia and Dory came with an inflatable mattress. They stayed in Ruth's room. "Girls only," Dory insisted, so Art had to go home. In the evening, Ruth and the girls watched television and drew mehndi tattoos on each other's hands. The next weekend, Art asked if it was boys' night yet.

"I think that can be arranged," Ruth said coyly.

Art brought his toothbrush, a change of clothes, and a portable boom-box with a Michael Feinstein CD, Gershwin music. At night, he squeezed into the twin bed with Ruth. But she did not feel amorous with LuLing in the next room. That was the explanation she gave Art.

"Let's just cuddle, then," he suggested. Ruth was glad he did not press her for further explanations. She nestled against his chest. Deep into the night, she listened to his sonorous breathing and the foghorns. For the first time in a long while, she felt safe.

Mr. Tang called Ruth at the end of two months. "Are you sure there aren't any more pages?"

"Afraid not. I've been cleaning out my mother's house, drawer by drawer, room by room. I even discovered she put a thousand dollars under a floorboard. If there was anything else, I'm sure I would have found it."

"Then I've finished." Mr. Tang sounded sad. "There were a few pages with some writing on them, the same sentences over and over, saying she was worried that she was already forgetting too many things. The script on those was pretty shaky. I think they were more recent. It may upset you. I'm just telling you now, so you know."

Ruth thanked him.

"May I come over now to deliver my work to you?" he asked formally. "Would that be all right?"

"Is it too much trouble?"

"It would be an honor. To be honest, I would dearly like to meet your mother. After all this time of reading her words, day and night, I feel I know her like an old friend and miss her already."

Ruth warned him: "She won't be the same woman who wrote those pages."

"Perhaps… but somehow I think she will be."

"Would you like to come for dinner tonight?"

Ruth joked with her mother that an admirer was coming to see her and she should put on her pretty clothes.

"No! No one coming."

Ruth nodded and smiled.

"Who?"

Ruth answered vaguely. "An old friend of an old friend of yours in China."

LuLing pondered hard. "Ah, yes. I remember now."

Ruth helped her bathe and dress. She tied a scarf around her neck, combed her hair, added a touch of lipstick. "You're beautiful," Ruth said, and it was true.

LuLing looked at herself in the mirror. "Buddha-full. Too bad Gao Ling not pretty like me." Ruth laughed. Her mother had never expressed vanity about her looks, but with the dementia, the modesty censors must not have been working. Dementia was like a truth serum.

At seven exactly, Mr. Tang arrived with LuLing's pages and his translation. He was a slender man with white hair, deep smile lines, a very kind face. He brought LuLing a bag of oranges.

"No need to be so polite," she said automatically as she inspected the fruit for soft spots. She scolded Ruth in Chinese: "Take his coat. Ask him to sit down. Give him something to drink."

"No need to trouble yourself," Mr. Tang said.