Night Angels(101)

Lola, in some ways, was just like him, a true fighter. Start anew. You can still create your legacy beyond progeny.

She might be gone, but she had always known what I needed.

I enrolled in the state’s nursing program and started my training as a nurse; meanwhile, I began to write.



In 1948, on my thirty-fifth birthday, the year Lola would have been thirty, I published my first poem, “Vienna,” in a literary journal, and for the first time, I was called a poet.

Months later, a card was delivered to me by a young nurse at the front desk at Massachusetts General Hospital, where I worked. It had a red peony printed on the front, and inside was the neat handwriting of an educated man. He proposed to meet at the Foot Bridge in the Public Garden on the coming Saturday.

He had not forgotten me.





CHAPTER 70


GRACE


When Saturday came, I took off my nurse’s uniform and hat and changed into a pair of long straight pants, a red blouse, and a sweater. I walked all the way from the hospital to the park—it wasn’t that far. When I came to the Public Garden, I was reminded again how much it resembled the parks in Vienna: the fountains, the neatly spruced bushes, the towering beeches and horse chestnut trees, even the statue—although this was General Washington, of course, not Emperor Franz or Beethoven.

I arrived half an hour before our meeting and stood by the Foot Bridge. The early fall air was nippy; groups of people meandered through a grove of crab apple trees; some families were riding the pedal-operated swan boats on the lagoon. On my right, two horses were plowing in a vast victory garden, harnessed by two men wearing black suits and bowler hats. Fall. The season of harvest.

Here he came, holding a bouquet of flowers, walking from the other end of the bridge. It had been seven years since we parted, and he had changed, but I would always be able to recognize him. He was handsome and energetic, with a broad forehead, perceptive eyes, and faint eyebrows, the spitting image of Fengshan.

“It’s so good to see you, Grace.” Monto opened his arms to hug me.

His voice had changed, too, a man’s voice, deep and intense, but something, thank goodness, remained the same. “You came to Boston. I’m so surprised. When did you come to the States? I thought you were in China with your father.”

For seven years, I had been sending him birthday gifts, comic books, and math workbooks—math was his favorite subject—but he had only replied once. I couldn’t complain. He was only a child; he didn’t have the persistence to write to me regularly.

“A few months ago. I read your poem. It was very touching. I’m honored to meet the poet.”

“Vienna” had received some lukewarm comments from mainstay critics but rapturous acclaim by many readers, to my surprise. It had been reprinted by several publications overseas, and I was invited to do readings here and there in Boston. In my plain shirt and pants, I read to a small audience. Always a small audience, but that was fine. A poet, after all, was meant to be read, not to be seen.

“I’m pleased you like it. Why are you in Boston?”

“I was admitted to Harvard College.” He gave me the flowers: hibiscus, roses, and asters.

“Harvard. Of course. And you’ll be a doctor?”

“You remember.”

“Do you still read people’s signatures and predict their futures?”

He laughed—he had his father’s laugh. “It was a silly game. I played it out of boredom. What else could I do, a kid, alone in the consulate? No one believed me; no one except you.”

“You were knowledgeable. Why should I not believe you? How’s your father?” I went to sit on a bench.

Two years after I sent him the letter notifying him of my mother’s passing, Fengshan had replied to me. He explained that the mail delivery had been interrupted because of the ongoing war with Japan, and it took him two years to receive the letter I sent. He informed me that he had remarried. His new wife was Chinese, and he was a happy man. Since then, we had kept up our sporadic correspondence. Overall, his letters had been cordial and diplomatic, with little personal information or emotion, addressing me as Miss Lee.

The latest letter I received from him brimmed with his anxiety over the escalating tension between the Nationalists and the Communists in China. A civil war, he had said, seemed inevitable, another blow to the Chinese people who had just survived the Japanese invasion.

“Father has received an assignment to Egypt as an ambassador. He sends you his regards.”

“Congratulations to your father.” So he was once again a diplomat, and an ambassador. I was happy for him. He was, as always, a public servant through and through, a warrior for his country, a fighter for humanity. I was glad the Vienna episode had not tarnished his reputation. The past seven years had been a long dip in his career, a waste of his talent.

“Is he coming to America by any chance?” I asked, hopeful, though I knew well Fengshan, a husband, a father, and a diplomat with a second chance, would likely avoid meeting me, which was just as well. In order for the mirror of the present to shine, the dust of old memories must be wiped off.

“I wouldn’t say no. As the ambassador to Egypt, he’s destined to travel across the globe.”

I smiled. Monto was good to me.

“How about you, Grace?”

I knew what he wanted to know. Seven years since my divorce, I had not dated anyone. It was not for lack of men around me—there were male nurses, too, who had been working as medics in the war. But the family life, which had once been my only thought, was no longer my pursuit. Besides my love for poetry, my career as a nurse was my focus now. I injected penicillin into patients’ arms and cured boys’ tubercular meningitis with a giant syringe containing streptomycin. It gave me great satisfaction to see them healthy and walking again.