The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(78)

To Louis, the need for self-care was a sign of weakness, at best, and vocational failure at worst. He especially hated it when Dorothy included their daughter in this tradition, a holiday that he refused to observe. But all Annabel knew was that it was a special day away from school with her mother, without a designated nap time, and she could follow her own interests, which Dorothy encouraged. She offered to take Annabel to the Seattle Aquarium, or the Pacific Science Center, or even to the Seattle Art Museum, but to Annabel, those places felt like school in disguise. Instead, she wanted to don their raincoats and wander around Seattle’s International District, where they could eat dim sum for lunch and go to Pink Gorilla, a Japanese toy store. They’d finish the day with a ferry ride over to Bainbridge Island and back, and if they were still hungry they’d order Ivar’s clam chowder from the galley, followed by hot chocolate and apple pie.

Dorothy relished the thought of spending a day alone with her daughter, stealing away to do something spontaneous and joyful, if only to counteract whatever vaguely racist, critical, and self-loathing thoughts Louis’s mother might have planted in Annabel’s head. “You sure you don’t want to go spend a few weeks in Spokane with Grandma Louise?” Dorothy checked during lunch.

Annabel had pruned her face and shaken her head, much to Dorothy’s relief.

“How about you go to England instead,” Dorothy half teased. “When you’re older you could go to Summerhill, the boarding school where my great-grandmother went. It’s artsy and creative, and full of children just like you. They come from all over the world and are allowed to study whatever they want.”

Dorothy remembered a black-and-white photo of her great-grandmother, Zou yi, with a Summerhill teacher, a young English woman who had one of those intense looks you sometimes see in old photographs. Her cleft chin was up, her eyes staring down intently, a slight smile on her face, the kind of expression that men see as intimidating but women see as confidence. Dorothy always wanted to go to Summerhill. She didn’t care about her education, she just wanted to come away with that kind of spirit, equal parts boldness, élan, and self-possession.

Especially after Greta was gone.

Annabel said, “Okay,” much to Dorothy’s surprise.

“You know England is another country, far away?”

Annabel looked out the window as though she were searching for where this mysterious land might be. Then she looked at Dorothy and shrugged.

As the ferry cleared Eagle Harbor and was under way back to Seattle, Dorothy gazed through the heavy glass doors and saw a boy outside, leaning against the rail, seemingly oblivious to the weather. He reminded Dorothy of herself at that age. How she could be utterly mesmerized by the sea. She’d loved going upstairs to the sundeck where passengers stretched out on yoga mats, went for leisurely strolls, or even walked their dogs, who strained against their leashes to bark at seagulls. When it was sunny the warm breeze had a fragrance of salt water and evergreen. But she especially loved going outside when it was stormy. There was something romantic and intrepid about standing on the prow in the rain, alone, especially when there were high winds and the ferry would gently sway, listing to the right and left as it navigated the churning, whitecapped waters of Puget Sound. Greta had always bundled Dorothy up and gone out there with her. As a girl, Dorothy felt like a Victorian maiden; as a grown woman, those moments felt like a slice of Emily Dickinson: No man moved me, till the tide went past my simple shoe, and past my apron, and my belt, and past my bodice, too. Though even maidens have their limits, as Dorothy once turned green from seasickness and another time had wind-burned her eyes so badly they were bloodshot for days.

Dorothy chewed her lip as she wondered how long the ferries would be operating. There was a larger storm out there, Typhoon Tenjin, three hundred miles over the watery horizon. Dorothy’s phone had been tracking the barometer, which was holding steady, but the tide had risen six feet with waves coming in every nine seconds, meaning that if the cyclone didn’t slow down or change course, the Northwest could be hit within days.

Annabel pouted. “Are you sure I can’t go outside?”

“What did I say?” Dorothy tried her best to reason with a five-year-old.

“You used to go out there,” Annabel argued the way preschoolers do, subtly planting seeds of logic in guilt-rich soil, hoping that they might eventually bear fruit.

“Well, I used to do a lot of things that I wouldn’t recommend,” Dorothy said. “I’d come in freezing and catch a cold. You don’t want to get sick, do you? I feel sorry for that boy out there, he’s probably going to catch pneumonia if he doesn’t come in soon.”

Annabel turned in her seat. “What boy?”

Dorothy looked up and the prow was empty.

“Never mind,” Dorothy said. “His kind, loving, and incredibly wise mother must have come to her senses and made him come inside to warm up.” She scanned the passengers in the bow, the business commuters, the retirees, the rebellious youth who had tattooed their faces with geometric patterns in bright colors to throw off the surveillance cameras that were everywhere. Dorothy didn’t see the boy.

The ferry rocked and Dorothy felt a wave of vertigo. She gripped the bench and held her breath, addled, reeling as though she were a child stepping off a merry-go-round. Dizzy, gravity pulling at odd angles, stumbling to the grass, looking up at the sky as the earth slowly spun beneath her. Amid that loss of equilibrium were currents of sadness and melancholy. She felt disconnected, like whenever she woke from one of her treatments and struggled to reconcile her confounding landscape of emotions, her new memories, with the sterile, clinical environment of Dr. Shedhorn’s facility.