The Border of Paradise: A Novel (35 page)

Gillian tersely cooks trout as I read, and when she calls me to dinner there it is, laid out: the trout on a platter with soy sauce, two bowls of wet-looking rice (off-putting, but perfect for xi fan), and a bowl of withered mustard greens, cooked in the same garlic-and-soy-sauce combination as the trout was. We eat everything like starving children, proving to ourselves that we are all right alone and even fully capable of being human beings and almost adults, even if the fish looks slightly underdone. Gillian eats the eyeball. I have the tender cheek. We suck on delicate bones and pick the skeleton clean. I finish the too-salty, bitter greens. Then I wash the dishes while she sits at the kitchen table and sings to me, and I marvel at her shifting moods as she softly croons “O Rupakach,” but something is still not feeling right. I sing along, badly.

Later we are sick. Sick as dogs, sicker than we’ve ever been before, and we take turns vomiting into the toilet as the other expels into a gray bucket. We have runny bowels and then alternate the use of the toilet for that, until we are vomiting and I feel my bowels clench and expand simultaneously in multiple spasms, but Gillian is on the toilet with her face in her hands; I run out the back door and, undignified, am rudely, horrifyingly sick outdoors by a tree in the dark. This illness goes on and on with no time by which to measure it. With my pants half-down and my body convulsing I want to die; and it is nighttime, so the insects are investigating my vulnerable body and disgusting rump, though my spasming intestines take precedent over the vague and growing itch. After the sickness abates I practically crawl into the house, weak and trembling, down the hall, and pass out on the living room floor with my trousers up, unable to summon the consciousness needed to wipe myself clean with something to be buried deep in the yard later. I dream of climbing a tall ladder against the side of the house. Ma is telling me to do something on the roof. I’m too afraid to climb up the ladder and do whatever it is that she wants me to do. When I look down at her I notice that her face is blurry beyond recognition, as though it’s been smeared by an upset thumb.

I awaken, feeling sick for multiple reasons. The sun isn’t up yet; the light against the windows is a bruise. Soon it will be cold. In the bathroom I see that Gillian is curled up against the tub, and the air is fetid with the expulsions of our insides. I want to carry her out of the room and be alone to wash myself. It’s the first time that I’ve wanted any kind of separation from her since the sweetness of our honeymoon week. Instead I go back outside, my movements shrouded by darkness, to use the hose, where my skin prickles in the cold air and the icy water sluices down every insect bite and every sensitive part of my body—a beating—an admonishment.

In the morning it’s mostly shame that drives Gillian’s movements as, after she bathes in the plentiful stream of the tub’s faucet, she takes the altar into the master bedroom, and is it that shame that has her searching for a suitable photograph of Ma the way that she does? This is her own private project. At around two o’clock—I have been sleeping fitfully in a cave, scratching till my fingernails catch blood beneath them—she shakes me. She calls me into the bedroom to genuflect and say prayers. On the vanity she’s arranged space for framed photographs of David and Ma, as well as a grapefruit pyramid on a plate. Here is the joss sticks’ scent, and my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

“A mi tuo fuo,”
she says.
“Guanshiyin pusa.”

The photograph of Ma is an old one, no doubt taken by David. A portrait with the focus only on the face. She is, what, twenty-five, thirty, sad eyes, a smiling mouth.

How many joss sticks are there left? How will we ever have enough without eventually going into Sacramento? This is what I think as I hold my stick between my hands next to Gillian and bow, my bangs floating into air. In my head I see my parents next to each other on the couch, kissing. My mother, with such love toward David. How could I ever understand such infinite affection, such deep love, for someone whom one has not known for a lifetime? Ma has her hand on the side of his head and is cupping his cheek and ear as she kisses him, a gesture that I believe I have mimicked with the girl beside me in a poignant moment. Gillian stands. I have forgotten to mournfully think about my dead parents. Gillian is still repeating
“a mi tuo fuo, a mi tuo fuo.”
Now we are both genuflecting, and my forehead is damp against the floor. My buttocks itch from the insect bites and rub against the seat of
my pants as I genuflect. I’m trying to think about the catastrophe that has befallen us, made clear by the fact of food poisoning. This is our fault. Or this is her fault, and not mine except by the fault of not being strong enough. I was never strong enough and Gillian did not know how to cook the fish and here we are, trying to cleanse ourselves with ritual and be pure.

Gillian is trembling, and I put my hand on her back. Her body shakes under my palm, and I cry, too. Now Gillian says, “I’m sorry,” in Mandarin, and then in English, “I’m sorry.” Her throat bubbling and childish. She crawls to me and her arms are around me. With the joss stick still in one hand, and the smoke wisps around my head. Maybe now it falls to the floor. Again I feel like vomiting, but all over her shoulder now. Things are changing.

The thought is a worm at first, and then grows heavy and fat. It begins with the memory of carrying Gillian as I stumbled up the hill with smoke in the air. I carried her and Ma was calm as she led the way, occasionally looking back to make sure that we were following. And of course we were following; but of course we would follow. How could she think anything different? I carried Gillian and we went so far as one slanted peak, until the rocks became vertical and I would have had to put her down for us to go farther. She would have had to get down out of my arms and by her own free will
choose
to climb up the rocks to the next slanted peak, where we like animals would claw our way to the house, and we would, in the house where we had grown up, I imagined, sit at the kitchen table with David’s picture in the middle, holding hands, waiting for the fire to gulp us whole. I could see this even as I let Gillian go and screamed at her to keep going. And while we wasted time, because Gillian refused to move after I put her on the dirt, two men in fire suits stood at the top of the hill and saw us, and that was the end of our little hurrying toward death.

What I am fastened upon is the epiphany that we would all die together, and the lack of terror I had when it came to facing this truth. I felt profoundly more mature than Gillian in that moment because I was willing to face our inevitable end under the circumstances of losing the house, which is presumably the reason; Ma would not know how to find a new place for us, is how I read it,
or perhaps she was simply panicked and saw no other way out. Though I can’t imagine Ma panicked about anything—and it is likely that she was full of clarity that day, just as I am beginning to be full of clarity now.

As clear as anything, I realize that we actually have to leave this life as we’ve known it. It can’t go on like this, if only for the joss sticks, the Buick, the groceries, the soap to wash our bodies, the fact of bleach, the confusion of the insertion of gasoline into a vehicle, our clothes that will disintegrate, the end of thread, the fact that I can’t face the beginning of a new life. Because she will fall in love with someone, a stock boy, perhaps, and let him inside of her, and she will shun me, as she has already begun to. Ma is dead and she killed her and I had to close her eyes, and Ma would have understood. I know that she would have implored us to do the very same thing, if her ghost could materialize.

Knife to the heart, in the back, in the chest. Slice the throat. If I had a gun I could make it quick, but I have no way of making it so swift. God knows how angry Gillian would be to see me staring! She’s been examined enough. A wash of pity—Gillian is such a child, and she is still unaccustomed to my love. How happy she would be, if I could leave her alone. I think of the knives I keep in the closet, lying like corpses in their trunk. I should end it and let it be ended.

I wipe my eyes with my palms. No. I can’t do the inevitable, or at least, not today. So I will leave her alone for now and go into my room. My gift to her is to let her awaken and to see that I have left and not harassed her.

When I’ve decided I’ve had enough of leaving her alone, I go into the hall, ready to have a civil conversation, and there is music playing from Gillian’s room, the door closed. I find a letter taped onto my room’s door, and the sight of this letter, a piece of paper, some kind of communication, startles me.

William,

Please forgive me for what I’m about to do. I need to get away, and for that I’m sorry. Don’t try to come find me. I’m attaching a map of directions to town and to the mailboxes.

I’m really sorry. I know you won’t believe this, but I love you—just not in the way you, or anyone else, wanted.

Gillian

“Oh,” I say. I rush to Gillian’s room with the letter in my hand. I bang on the door, call her name, say that we must talk about this. But there is too much quiet beneath the sound of Mussorgsky, and I know. I push the door open and in, violating our contract, and here are her things, her animals, sketchbooks strewn. The spinning and tinny turntable. I search the rest of the house. I look in the closets and the bathrooms. Half deliriously I look in the cupboards. Back in her bedroom I break into tears, kick over the turntable, which exclaims and dies; and then I plead to every familial ghost to bring my girl home.

NOIR

GILLIAN (1972)

Highway and right on Cedar Street,

Right on Elm three miles to meet

A mighty oak, and left you’ll see

Samson Drive, 1-9-8-3.

H
ow funny is it that I remember this old, singsong rhyme of my father’s? I am more adept at memorization than William is, but I was also more captivated by the journey to Sacramento than William ever was, just as I have always been more concerned with the way to town, or interested in the brands of cereal that the K & Bee makes available to its customers. Certain things I have chosen to pay attention to, primarily things of the world, including this shred of instruction, and I must make the most of it.
Samson Drive, 1-9-8-3.
A young man comes down the aisle with a rucksack over one shoulder and stops with his hand on the train seat beside mine. He’s my father’s height and nearly as thin as when my father was most ill. This boy’s hair is neatly parted and dark; every strand is in its right place, so smooth that it shines like liquid, and he has dark eyebrows to match the mole at the corner of his upper lip, which becomes more visible when he turns to face me and says, “I’m sorry, but—I’ve been looking for a free seat for
forever
.” He pauses. Finally he gestures to the seat beside me. He would like to have a seat offered; he would like for me to offer him this seat.

“Yes,” I say, even though I know that the seat is not free. I had to pay for mine with money I took from Ma’s room, counting the bills aloud as though I’d done it all my life.

“Thanks.” He lifts his rucksack to the shelf above our heads and sits beside me.

So you leave because you want to sit next to morons like this fellow,
sneers William. Xiao mei,
you leave me here alone. You ignore the commandment “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
On my journey to the train station I thought I saw William everywhere, which is an odd thing to think of a uniquely created young man such as my brother—but still I thought I saw him in the shadows of buildings and amorphous in the darkness of alleys, waiting to punish me.
What,
William asks,
do you mean by all of this? What in God’s name do you think you are doing?

“Hey, I’m Randy,” the young man says, and reaches his hand out to me.

I say, “Sarah.”

He retracts his hand. If Randy’s face were a sculpture, I’d show William its image in a book. I’d say,
This is well made,
although I wouldn’t be able to express objectively what makes it so. Perhaps this is attraction, as I would be curious to know the gut-wrench of attraction for myself. I listen for any unusual tones from my heart and hear only blood ringing and ax striking wood. Randy asks me where I’m headed, and I tell him Sacramento, Sacramento being the only other place I’ve been, Sacramento being home to the Kucharskis. Mrs. Kucharski is dead, but perhaps I can find her husband, although I have never met him, and during our lessons I never even saw a photograph on display. But I am grasping at all possibilities. I must find a way to make a life for myself away from my upbringing, and a heroine’s journey is both the only and the grandest gesture I can think to make. Randy says that he’s going home to Vacaville from St. Christopher’s, where he’s a student. I nod, recognizing the saint. “Just started this year,” he adds. “You’re a student, too?”

I nod again.

“Where,” he asks, “do you go?”

What a strange question. Where do I go? Well, I go into the woods, and I go into the shed sometimes, and I go into my bedroom, and I go into the kitchen, and I go into the living room.

“I go wherever I please” is my answer.

Randy laughs. He has a pleasant laugh that sounds not quite grown. If his laugh were a tree it would be a sapling and years from bearing fruit, and I like it, but I know that he is years older than
me. The way he carries himself is self-assured. He is not quite clean-shaven.

I ask, “How long will we be on this train?”

“To Sacramento? One hour. Maybe a little more or a little less, depending.”

“I’ll have to sit with you for one hour?”

“Unfortunately for you, yes. Although,” he says, “we may have to go more slowly than usual. Weather man says storms. So you could be trapped here with me till Christmas.”

The train cries out. We lurch forward, which causes me to grab at the arms of my chair, and I let out a small, hysterical laugh. Randy laughs, too, although I’m wondering,
Who is this weather man, and are there people born to know the weather before anyone else does?

In the dining car we drink sour coffee from paper cups and eat sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. He asks if the topic of religion makes me nervous. One unpalatable triangle of my egg salad sandwich, complete with wilting parsley, comes in and out of shadow on a plate in front of me as the lights sway and sway and sway.

“Why do you ask?”

“When I said grace before eating my sandwich. It was the look on your face—the averted gaze. Don’t worry, you won’t offend me. At this point it’s more out of habit than anything else. Sometimes I find myself thanking the Lord before I open a bag of sunflower seeds. So, no hard feelings.”

“You’re very observant.”

“I know. My ex told me it was creepy.”

“Ex?”

“Ex-girlfriend. From high school. You’re good at changing the subject. Are you going to eat the rest of that sandwich?”

I shake my head. He takes the remainder and bites from one point, causing the filling to plop out from the other side. He gestures at me:
Keep talking.

“My father was religious,” I say. “He was brilliant. He died when I was a kid.”

Randy makes an apologetic face but says nothing because of his full mouth, which he’s covering with one hand. I keep talking
about my father, though I’m not sure why this stranger needs to know about him—better not to tell the stranger anything, just as I’ve stayed quiet around strangers all my life. Yet there’s something exhilarating about speaking to Randy beyond the violation of a taboo or commandment. Perhaps it’s being able to tell a complete unknown about my father that’s liberating; if I can watch someone else have a reaction, I’ll see what kind of response I ought to have. I can’t say everything, but I can say some things, so I tell him, “He used to disappear for days at a time. I was very small when this happened, but he would come to me in the early morning, in the dark. I shared a room with my brother then. My father would be quiet about it—he would come to me with a rucksack, and he’d say, ‘I’ll be leaving for a few days.’ He called me Flopsy sometimes. ‘Flopsy,’ he’d say, ‘I’m going to go talk to Jesus.’ I don’t know what he carried in that rucksack, but it would last him for however long he was gone, and then he’d come back and just pray for hours, he’d pray all day with the shades drawn, in the dark, and when he was done he’d find me and say that Jesus had found him and made him invisible. He’d only become visible again because he left the woods. When I was older my mother told me that it was his mind that was talking to him, and not God.”

“You believed him, though.”

“I didn’t have any reason not to believe him. He was so brilliant about everything. He taught my brother and me all kinds of things, so of course I felt like he knew everything. It wasn’t until my mother started acting like things were wrong that things
felt
wrong. He was in the hospital a number of times.”

“A mental hospital.”

“Yes. It was in Sacramento, actually. It was a terrifying place.”

“And were you terrified of him?”

“No. Never. I loved him.”

“Sure, sure you loved him. But I’m curious as to why your father chose you to be the one he revealed his—whatever you want to call it. His mystical plans. Why it was you he chose to reveal them to, when you were so small. It seems rather unkind, or, at the very least, irresponsible of him.”

“I don’t know. How am I supposed to know? And how dare you judge a man you’ve never met?” I stop. Randy looks pained, and
I immediately regret my actions for causing that pain. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to talking about my father.”

“We don’t have to talk about him. We were talking about religion. Although religion is probably the worst topic for strangers to start with, second only to dead fathers. There I go again, being awkward.”

There is lightning and thunder and still no rain. The dining car is nearly empty except for three others: a dark-skinned couple two rows back and diagonal to us, their skin the color of mink, with the man’s hair curiously fluffed around his head; the lady has her hair in tight and tiny braids. He laughs,
huh-huh-huh.
A white-haired woman sits by the door alone, picking from a paper boat of french fries. What an unusual sensation, to be housed in a place with unknowns.

“Did your girlfriend die?” I ask.

“What? No. She’s at you-see-allay.”

“I see what?”

“What? It’s a school. A college in Los Angeles. Do you know about Los Angeles? No. Wow. Where did you come from?”

My face is hot. I’ve erred, of course, in a situation designed for mistakes. I say, “Leave me alone.” He tells me to hold on as I rise and walk past the old woman with her french fries, who is looking at us with a passive expression. I yank open the doors to get between the cars. The space is frighteningly open, and loud with the sound of wheels churning over tracks. I stumble backward slightly; it’s raining now, too, and cold.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s fine. Really.”

I close the door. I look over at the old woman, who stares back at me, her face-skin like the back of a dried apricot. It upsets me that I can’t interpret her reaction to our little drama, and consider my deficiency to be a result of everything—everything that came before this moment.

“It’s completely fine.” He guides me back to our seats. “Look, I was surprised, is all. I’ll tell you about my ex. Her name was—
is
Cassie Winters. She was devoted to the theater, which I tried to love. I went to every single one of her performances. She’d have five performances of
Guys and Lolls
in a week and I’d go to all of them. I’d bring her flowers for every performance, and she’d act embarrassed in front of her castmates, but she insisted that I keep
bringing the flowers because it was making her friends jealous. That was the kind of girl she was. But she was a really good actress. I didn’t love the theater, but I could tell that she had star quality.”

I roll the parsley on my plate between my thumb and forefinger to make it a small, slender stick. “What did she look like?”

Randy closes his eyes for a few seconds. When he opens them, he says, “Dark, curly hair. Pale. Her real name was Rachel Winzer. As in she was Jewish, and really
looked
Jewish, which drove her crazy. She said all of the good parts in Hollywood went to the WASPy types, so she went by Cassie Winters. She was very practical that way. She was going to have her hair done and get a nose job after high school.”

“Are you Jewish?”

“No. So we had a lot of problems. I loved her, though. I was crazy about her. It didn’t work out.”

“Why not?”

“It didn’t work out.” He sighs. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You said you would tell me about your ex-girlfriend.”

“I did. I didn’t say that I’d go through every single horrible detail.”

“Did you have sex with her?”

Randy sucks his breath in through his teeth. “Geez.”

“I said something wrong.”

“Yeah, I’ll say you did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re a very pretty girl, but strange,” says Randy. “I don’t mean anything by it. Just be careful what you say to people. Some won’t be as patient as I am. See, you make me want to have a cigarette. I quit, though.” He looks mournfully at his right hand. “Don’t ask people about sex unless you’re asking for trouble.”

“I don’t want trouble. I’ve had enough trouble.”

“Right. Keep your nose clean.”

The charade of being normal is exhausting. There are things I want to ask him: about Jewish people, or about the jobs of noses. I lean my head against the window and close my eyes for an indeterminate amount of time, holding the Bible inside the tote on my lap with the word
Sacramento
on my lips. When I awaken I look over and Randy is writing in a notebook. Despite my sleep-blurred eyes I catch, without meaning to,
her ankle
in blue ink before he looks over at me. He snaps his book shut. “I don’t let anyone read my notebooks. What did you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, right. What did you see?”

“Just ‘her ankle.’”

“Uh-huh.” He tucks the spiral-bound notebook into his rucksack. “You were asleep for forty minutes.”

“Wow.”

“I hope I wasn’t what woke you up. You seemed tired.”

“I guess I was.” The train is still. Our grim sky throws sheets of rain sideways in unceasing turns. “Are we stopped somewhere?”

“Yep. A tree fell across the tracks.”

“Can’t they move it?”

“Sure. But it’ll take a while. This kind of thing always takes forever. Is someone expecting you?”

“No.”

“No one at all? Who are you seeing in Sac if no one’s waiting for you?”