Last Night at the Telegraph Club(101)

Aunt Judy came farther into the living room and walked around the perimeter, taking in the furniture, the books (Strange Season, Lily noticed with relief, was facedown), the framed headshot of Tommy Andrews. She sat down on the sofa, and Lily saw her look askance at the nude woman table lighter. But Aunt Judy only said, “Why not?”

Lily sat down stiffly across from her. “Mama told me—we had a fight. She doesn’t want me there.”

“Your mother told me you had a fight, but she didn’t say she doesn’t want you at home.”

Lily wondered if her mother had failed to explain the whole truth.

“Who is this friend you’re staying with?” Aunt Judy asked.

There it was already: another opportunity to choose whether to lie. A friend from school. She graduated last year. She lives with her brother; he’s not home. She glanced toward the rear of the apartment, wondering when Lana would hear them and emerge from her nap. No. She couldn’t bring Lana into this lie without her permission.

“Lana Jackson,” Lily said finally. “She lives here with—with Tommy Andrews. That’s Tommy in that picture. She sings at the Telegraph Club, which the police raided on Friday night. It’s a bar for ho-homosexuals. Wallace Lai saw me outside after the raid. I was there.”

Her aunt regarded her expressionlessly, though her eyebrow twitched when Lily stumbled over the word homosexual. Why did it have to sound so obscene, Lily thought, the x crushed wetly in the back of her mouth.

“I see,” Aunt Judy said. She seemed at a loss for words. She lowered her eyes to her hands, which she folded together tightly.

In the silence, Lily heard the ticking of a clock somewhere in the apartment. She saw the pack of Lucky Strikes and thought, wildly, that perhaps if she smoked one, her aunt would be so shocked she would forget what Lily had just said.

The door to the bedroom came unstuck with its familiar peeling sound, and Lily shot to her feet. A few moments later Lana appeared in the doorway to the living room, tying her silky flowered robe around herself, barefoot and looking like a woman who had just tumbled out of bed. “Hello,” she said, looking from Lily to her aunt. “I thought I heard some voices out here.”

Aunt Judy rose and went across the room, hand extended. “I’m Judy Fong, Lily’s aunt.”

Lana shook her hand, blinking. “Oh. I’m Lana Jackson.”

“Thank you for letting Lily stay with you.”

Aunt Judy was shorter than Lana, but she held herself as if she were taller. Seeing them together made Lily realize that Lana was closer to her own age than to Aunt Judy’s. Lily had thought Lana was so sophisticated, but now in comparison to Aunt Judy, she seemed young and even a little na?ve.

“I’ve been happy to have her,” Lana said, but it sounded wrong—too prim. She shifted uncomfortably and looked at Lily. “It sounds like you’re leaving?”

“I don’t—”

“Yes,” Aunt Judy interrupted. “I’ve come to take her home.”

Lily balked. “But I told you—”

“We’ll go home and discuss it with your father.”

Lily paled. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Lana watched the exchange, her eyebrows rising. “Perhaps I’d better leave you to talk it over,” she said, and began to back away into the dining room.

“No, we’re leaving,” Aunt Judy said. “We don’t want to overstay our welcome. Thank you again, Miss Jackson. Lily, are you ready? Do you have a coat?”

There was an edge to her tone, as if she were hurrying Lily out of an unsavory situation, and Lily suddenly realized how Lana must look to her aunt: dressed in that clinging robe, her cleavage showing in a way that it shouldn’t at this time of day, her blond hair mussed from bed and her lipstick half worn off, as if she had been kissing someone. Lily felt a rush of protectiveness toward Lana, who had taken her in despite barely knowing her, and she felt an uncharitable prickling of judgment against her aunt.

“You’re not listening to me,” Lily said, frustrated.

Aunt Judy’s expression softened. “We were very worried, Lily. It’s the New Year. Your mother has been working all day to prepare the dinner for everyone. Come home. Please.”



* * *



—

Lily and Aunt Judy walked back to Chinatown. It was still chilly, and Lily still only had her thin cardigan to wear. When they stopped at an intersection a few blocks from Lana’s apartment, Aunt Judy took off her coat and handed it to Lily, and Lily put it on, feeling like a child.

The streets of Chinatown were littered with firecracker wrappers. The shops were mostly closed to the public today, but a few tourists wandered through anyway, gawking at the calligraphy scrolls they couldn’t read and peering in shop windows at mounds of dried herbs or gaudy souvenirs. Many Chinese were out on the sidewalks in their finest clothes, visiting family and friends or heading to New Year banquets at their clan or district associations.

During the war, Lily’s mother had taken them to her family association on New Year, but after Lily’s father returned, they stopped going. He wanted to eat Shanghainese food, and the associations were for the Cantonese from Kwangtung. “They don’t cook the right food,” he had complained. So Lily’s mother had taught herself how to prepare his favorite dishes for the New Year dinner, and when Aunt Judy arrived in 1947, she started helping, too.