Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Joan Liang’s life in America began in Palo Alto, where she lived in the attic of a two-story home on Azalea Street. Joan did chores for the widow who owned the house in exchange for reduced rent; she never could have afforded such a nice neighborhood otherwise. She lived in that attic until she was married, and she was married for only six weeks before she stabbed her husband. Joan was twenty-five and had lived in the United States for two years. The year was 1977.

Joan had not thought she would stab her husband. It had been an accident (sort of). Afterward she was disappointed that marriage had not turned out as she’d imagined. She had thought it would be wonderful. It had been, actually. Until it wasn’t.

Though later, Joan would wonder why she’d ever thought marriage would be so special. As a child in Taiwan, most of the married women Joan encountered were melancholy, if not outright miserable; throughout her childhood, Joan’s own mother had on occasion risen from the kitchen table without warning to cry with showy force into her hands.

“You’ve ruined everything!” Mei would shriek if any of the children came near, and so they soon learned to keep away, which only worsened Mei’s despondency. At least every other Saturday, Joan’s father, Wen-Bao, spent the night across town in Shilin, where he kept a two-bedroom apartment for his mistress. Joan’s mother was haunted by the two bedrooms; it drove her nuts, Mei said, to think of so much empty space.

“Can you imagine,” Mei would remark, legs crossed as she sat before her vanity, “how much lust a man must carry inside, to furnish such a large place for one woman? When all six of us are crowded in the same square footage? Do you understand the scope of his betrayal?” At this point Joan’s brothers usually wandered off; they were bored by this conversation, which repeated itself every few months. Only Joan would remain at her mother’s feet, where she watched Mei sit with perfect posture before her mirror and pluck white strands from her hairline.

After moving to California, Joan established the routine of calling her parents every Sunday evening Taipei time, during which Wen-Bao, if he’d visited his mistress that weekend, would have already returned home. On these calls, Joan’s parents performed the same interrogation: how her studies at Stanford were proceeding, if there was any chance to graduate early from her master’s program so that she might begin to earn money. Money was key. Joan had three brothers, each of whom by various rights (older, male) should have been sent abroad before her. Two had been disqualified by their academics, whereas the top candidate, Alfred, had been surprised by “issues” (his girlfriend was pregnant), and so at the last minute Joan was sent instead.

Through her father’s job at the electric utility, Joan’s parents had saved three thousand dollars for Alfred to begin his life in America. Out of this three thousand they spent five hundred on a plane ticket for Joan and repocketed the remainder. For this Joan was grateful, as she was a girl and thus not entitled to anything. At dinner her father took the first cut of meat; he also ate all the yellows from eggs. After her father, the meat went to Joan’s brothers, and then to her mother, and then to Joan, by which time there was usually nothing. So just because Alfred was supposed to have gone to America didn’t mean Joan would. Mei and Wen-Bao, however, had been nervous—having already fled the Communists once, they preferred to settle a child abroad, an international insurance policy drawing Western wages.

On their calls, Joan’s parents never inquired about her romantic life. If she were to, say, divulge that she’d kissed a man, or even dined alone with one, such news would have been met with recriminations followed by punishing silence. A husband, naturally, must be found at a certain point. A husband was part of the scaffolding upon which all the family’s dreams—money, safety, education—would be constructed. But Joan’s parents did not want to know anything of the process; the eventual union with the man you slept with each night should be accomplished without sex or romance, at least if you were a good, responsible girl. And for her entire life thus far, Joan had been a very good girl.

The man Joan married was named Milton Liu. He was, of course, Chinese—aside from her landlord, Joan socialized only with Chinese people. Milton, who was studying architecture, was tall and well built, with elegant long fingers. He played piano, which Joan liked; she possessed no musical ability, but one of her first splurges in America had been a record player and a few LPs of Bach and Chopin. Milton had an easy way of speaking and excellent cheekbones and a gentle, sleepy expression, which was what had attracted Joan in the first place: besides being handsome, he also looked nice. Because her parents were mean, Joan was drawn to this sort of appearance.

When she had an open afternoon between classes and her job as a hostess at Lotus Garden, Joan liked to sit and daydream on one of the benches within Stanford’s campus. That such splendor was free for the general public to enjoy seemed to her a uniquely American miracle. After she met Milton, she asked him about the school’s architecture. He told her the style was Mission Revival.

“It’s incredible that one man could create such a majestic place, all in the name of learning,” Joan had remarked. It was their first real date. Their previous encounters had all been group outings: weekend hikes or evening potlucks, since no one had enough money to host a real dinner party.

Milton informed Joan that Leland Stanford had used Chinese labor to build his railroad fortune, millions of which he spent constructing the school. “Many Chinese died,” he added. “The men were blown up tunneling through caves.” They were at Harbor Place in Chinatown, where the specialty was shrimp noodle soup. Around them sat slouched men wearing padded jackets, sipping tea, and slurping broth; outside, knots of similarly attired men were huddled on the sidewalk, smoking and arguing in Cantonese.

“Did he go to jail?” Joan asked.

“What? Of course not.”

Joan ate some more noodles as she considered this. She usually vowed not to drink the soup due to its sodium but couldn’t help it—and Harbor Place had such good soup, the bits of roasted duck and chopped scallion and fried onion all melding into a layered broth. It was always served near scalding; on the off chance that a white person came upon the restaurant, the waiters would shout, “Careful! Very hot!” as they set down the bowls. She swirled the noodles into an oval on her spoon. In the middle of the spoon, she placed a shrimp dumpling, soggy enough now that its skin was beginning to disintegrate.

Joan tipped the spoon into her mouth and closed her eyes. The bite went down smoothly, the heat and texture and salt playing together in pleasant symphony. Due to the expense, she didn’t often eat at restaurants. Joan liked to believe she could make the same food at home for less money, but the reality was the meals she made herself, well—for some reason there wasn’t any soul. She assembled another spoonful, and by the time the bowl was empty, she’d decided she wouldn’t think of Leland Stanford any longer. Weren’t vicious men a given in this world? Ultimately it was pointless to try to keep track of them all. Stanford may not have built his splendid university with its towering eucalyptus groves for people like Joan, but the fact was that she was indeed here, and he was long dead, and thus she needn’t think of him any longer.

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