White Ivy(19)
The driver didn’t let them off. First of all, there was nowhere to pull over. Second of all, he wasn’t stupid enough to have driven halfway around town and not get paid for it. He was silent for the rest of the drive. When Sunrin handed him the money after they reached their destination, he avoided her eye as he thanked her with an air of embarrassment. After they got out of the car, he leaned his head out the window and called out “Take care,” as if he were a distant relative sending them off.
This left a deep impression upon Ivy. She felt that if it were anyone else, they would have either been ripped off by the driver or started a screaming match that would have lasted into the afternoon. But Sunrin had said only a few phrases, and somehow, by the end of the trip, she had humbled the taxi driver, had tamed him with her presence as one tames a sly donkey. Ivy wondered why her father had never before mentioned Sunrin and Uncle Wang, who had both sung Shen’s praises. She concluded that perhaps, unlike Nan, her father had too much decorum to brag about wealthy relations. Her respect for him increased ever so slightly.
* * *
AND THE SHOPPING! Oh, the wonderful shopping. When Ivy stepped foot inside the cavernous, ten-story-high Malls at Oriental Plaza, she had the dizzying feeling that she was in a glamorous madhouse, filled with skinny housewives, dapper shop clerks, businessmen in suits as straight as rulers, old ladies in pastel-colored pumps, their salon-coiffed hair as high and fluffy as cotton candy. All the boutiques were softly lit, extravagantly perfumed, and staffed with doe-eyed beauties in black skirts, nude stockings, and stiletto heels. The first time Sunrin took Ivy shopping, the polite voice of a shop assistant asked, Can I help you find something, miss, and Ivy was seized with an embarrassment that compelled her to stammer out an apology as if to excuse her presence in such a place, while she hurried away into a corner where they would hopefully just let her be.
“Can we try this one, this one… this one’s rather pretty… Your clothes are a bit plain, Ivy, and I think some color would liven you up… I want you to look brighter, more energetic…” Sunrin glanced around. “Where are you?”
Ivy took the white dress, of a heavy cotton material, to the changing stall. After strapping on the heels, she looked at her reflection, hardly daring to believe she was the girl in the mirror. A sprinkling of fine baby hairs framed a soft oval face, cut by dark brows arched vividly against iridescent skin, a result of all the plumping moisturizers she’d been using the past week. The drape of the dress was severe in its lines, she would never have picked out something like this on her own, and yet the very austerity of the dress made her appear more feminine and youthful by contrast.
She peeked at the price tag. Her chin quivered with despair. She said in a gay voice, “Do you think it makes me look too—old-fashioned?” The four thousand RMB Nan had given her for the summer would barely cover the cost of the shoes.
Not at all, Sunrin and the shopgirl chirped. You look like a bird—an egret!—you look like a dancer; that white is a shade only very beautiful-skinned girls can wear.
“We’ll take everything,” said Sunrin, pulling out her Amex from a designer Mickey Mouse wallet.
Ivy feebly tried to protest, but Sunrin laughed her wonderful, deep-throated laugh and waved them away.
At first, Ivy tried to abide by her grandmother’s teachings (there are no such things as free carrots) by telling herself she was in Sunrin’s debt, she couldn’t take advantage of her aunt’s generosity without wearing out her welcome or causing Sunrin to think Ivy was an ungracious, low-class girl. But as the days slipped by in two-hour tasting menus, private guided tours, mall after mall after mall, Sunrin’s Mickey Mouse wallet flashing its cute black ears in and out of her purse, Ivy’s vague sense of caution receded as mist in the presence of Sunrin’s blinding sun. She still adopted an air of bashful embarrassment at the sight of the gold Amex swiping for her various purchases, but she’d stopped pretending to pull out her own meager four thousand RMB, still untouched, and she’d toned down her effusive thank-yous, not wishing Sunrin to think her insincere or, worse, pitiful in her overwhelming gratitude for something Sunrin considered inconsequential.
“You’re family,” Sunrin said one day after Ivy once again stammered out her thanks. “How often do you come to China? And besides, what’s the purpose of making money if not to spend it?”
Ivy could not deny this logic. For every RMB Sunrin spent on her, she spent an equal amount of money on clothes for her two children, for her husband, for herself. The only person Sunrin never bought any gifts for was the ayi. At first, Ivy felt sorry for the hired help, always coaxing or chasing a screaming child, a three-headed shadow trailing after them in beige slacks and white sneakers. But one evening in Hong Kong, Ivy saw Sunrin hand the ayi an envelope of cash as her “bonus” for the trip, and Ivy understood: not all forms of money were equal. She thought: I’ll always carry my wealth on my body, not in my wallet.
One day she saw a pair of beautiful blue suede sneakers and thought how handsome they would look on Austin. Intercepting Ivy’s glance, Sunrin asked for help in picking out souvenirs for the Lins. She said she’d been meaning to choose gifts for them but Ivy would know better what they liked. Ivy picked out cashmere sweaters, summer pajamas, and leather gloves with fur trims for Nan and Meifeng; battery-powered toys, sweets, the blue suede sneakers for Austin; and for Shen, who Sunrin had said was like a brother to her, a mini karaoke system after Ivy said no, her father had no hobbies, and Sunrin said, “Oh, but how he loved to sing as a boy.” Ivy took just as much pleasure—if not more pleasure—in selecting these things for her family as she did for herself. Her stammering embarrassment when dealing with suave shop clerks evaporated. Sunrin had bestowed her authority, as if Ivy were a treasurer whose job it was to allocate the queen’s funds. She ordered salespeople around with a loftiness she mistook for ownership, and she only colored a little when, on her last evening with Sunrin, she had to ask her aunt for a spare suitcase to hold all of her new purchases. Awash in the rich peripheral glow of her aunt’s money, Ivy felt she and Sunrin were alike, with the same tastes, opinions, and expectations, and that Sunrin’s generosity was her own, there was hardly any difference between them at all.