White Ivy(38)

Gideon said last week at Dresdan’s that not everyone could be honest about what they wanted. Was he hinting that she wasn’t honest? That she was “guarded,” that he couldn’t see himself marrying her?

With one arm, Ivy pulled out a cigarette from the pack in her nightstand and lit it on the flame of a candle. She blew tepid smoke rings onto the ceiling and watched them dissipate, thinking dully that her dreams were just like these smoke rings: they rose one by one, died without ever taking form.

The doorbell rang. She got up very slowly and looked out the window. A bright nickel-colored van was parked on the curb. It was Nan’s new car. Ivy suspected her mother felt guilty about such a large purchase because Nan had talked about nothing else during their last few phone calls. A van was safe, spacious, and because it was paid for up front in cash, Nan said they’d gotten a good deal. “Always bring your cash when you buy a car,” Nan had advised her. As if Ivy had thousands of dollars lying around to spend on new cars, when she could barely afford repairs on her shitty Camry. I should stop sending them money each month, she thought resentfully.

“A-ya, you look so skinny!” Nan greeted Ivy, bursting through the doorway carrying several bags of heavy groceries. “I need to refrigerate these right away—” She swept past Ivy toward the kitchen.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Austin asked. His face was dripping with sweat; when Ivy hugged him, she smelled a musky, sour odor, like clothes left in a suitcase for too long.

“There are gangsters over there,” said Shen, pointing across the street to where the usual pair of tattooed men stood in front of parked SUVs, chewing tobacco and spitting loogies onto the pavement. “Why do you live here? Why? If you need money—”

Meifeng tapped Ivy’s leg with her cane. “You should put more effort into your looks. Even your father wears better-quality pants than these. The crotch hangs down to your knees!”

Ivy ignored the rabble and glanced at the fifth guest, a stocky Chinese man in a bomber-style coat, standing on her doormat, untying the shoelaces of his duck boots.

“Who’s that?” she hissed at her grandmother.

“Come in, Kevin!” Meifeng called. “Sit. Sit. Don’t mind the mess.” From one corner of her mouth, she muttered to Ivy that Kevin Zhao was Ping’s friend’s son. He went to medical school in New Jersey. His parents lived in China and had asked the Lins to look after him on the weekends. “We told him we were coming to see you in Boston. He’s never been to Boston. He’s only been in the US five years.”

“You guys invited a stranger here?” said Ivy.

“Don’t be a child.” Meifeng sniffed the air. “I thought Shen hadn’t smoked in the car.”

Kevin took off his coat. Underneath he was wearing a black sweatshirt that said COUTURE in blocky white letters. He introduced himself to Ivy as “KZ” in a strong Chinese accent. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Your mother says you’re a great writer. She showed me your room. So many books! You must have been a child prodigy. Are those notebooks all full? May I read one of your stories?”

Ivy said she didn’t write stories.

“Articles?”

“No.”

“My friend is applying to business school,” said Kevin. “If you have time, can you look over his essay?”



* * *




FOR DINNER, IVY took Kevin Zhao and the Lins to Shangri-La, a Chinese restaurant in Belmont. During her family’s prior visit, she’d made the mistake of taking them to a fancy Italian restaurant in the North End. Carbonara is a pasta made with raw eggs, she’d explained to a horrified Nan. Meifeng ate too much beef braciole and moaned over an upset stomach. Austin, the one person she’d thought would appreciate the food, had sat slumped in his chair, refusing to even order an entrée because he didn’t have an appetite. This had launched Shen into a diatribe about Austin’s petulant stubbornness that’d lasted the rest of the trip.

From that visit, Ivy had seen firsthand just how wrong things had gotten with Austin. He’d been an energetic and eager—sometimes too eager—boy, and the sullenness that had seized him in high school had been attributed to teenage hormones and a bad attitude. But instead of improving in college, he’d become positively unresponsive. He gained an enormous amount of weight, stayed up all night playing computer games, switched from one major to the next, often having to retake classes because of poor attendance, until he finally dropped out last summer (“he’s resting for a year,” Nan excused). Nan took him to their family doctor, a Chinese woman from Suzhou, who diagnosed him with vitamin deficiency and wrote a flurry of prescriptions for nutritional supplements. “I had the same health issues at his age,” Nan told the family. “Anemia. I slept all the time. I couldn’t even finish my gaokao exams because I fainted. Not enough to eat. My son’s inherited my weak constitution.” No one pointed out to her that Austin was not anemic and had plenty to eat. It was easier to believe that good grades, enthusiasm, intelligence, and motivation could all be solved with vitamin D pills.

“At least I don’t have to worry about you anymore,” Nan would sigh to Ivy after these long rants. Irked by this hypocrisy, Ivy said, “Weren’t you the one who threatened to commit suicide if I came to Boston?” To Ivy’s surprise, Nan said Ivy had been right, her daughter was strong and wise, wiser than Nan herself, who was only a stupid, uneducated country woman. This flagrant display of humility had only made Ivy more cautious. Her mother’s approval might be even harder to bear than her disappointment.