Last Night at the Telegraph Club(90)

Once, Lily had admired the way Shirley sailed through the world with such confidence, as if she wore an impenetrable armor that protected her against all slights, real or imagined. Lily had envied Shirley that armor, but now she saw that it was an illusion, and those who possessed the right knowledge could pierce it at will. Lily knew Shirley better than anyone; she could wound her thoughtlessly, and she had.

I love him, Shirley had declared. Love was the justification for all her secrets, but it also made her vulnerable. And Lily understood. She suddenly felt horrible.

“Shirley, wait,” Lily said. She reached for Shirley’s arm as she passed, pulling her back.

The expression on Shirley’s face stopped her cold. It was plain repugnance. Shirley’s eyes dropped to Lily’s hand, and she pulled away.

Horrified and humiliated, Lily said, “You can’t think—”

Shirley didn’t look at her. “I think you should stay away from me from now on.”

Lily almost laughed. “Oh my God. You think—I’ve never—” She fell silent, her face burning.

Shirley marched to the kitchen door and yanked it open, going to collect her things from the bench on the landing. Lily didn’t move; she couldn’t believe what Shirley had implied. The silence between them seemed to pulse. Lily heard every thump and slide as Shirley put on her shoes, every rustle as she slung her garment bag over her arm. And then suddenly Shirley came back into the kitchen doorway. She was pulling something out of her purse, holding it out to Lily.

Her scarf. It dangled from Shirley’s hand like a brown woolen snake, the fringed end discolored as if it had been dragged through a gutter.

“This is yours, isn’t it?” Shirley said.

At the end of the scarf a cloth tag had been sewn onto the wool, and a name was embroidered on it in white thread: L HU. Lily had done it herself. She remembered missing her scarf after she fled the club, but it had seemed so inconsequential at the time. She felt faint.

“Wallace found it on the street,” Shirley said. “He brought it over to Calvin this morning. I told them there had to be a mistake, maybe someone stole it, but—” Shirley shook her head. “I thought I should bring it back to you, so at least they don’t have it.”

When Lily said nothing, Shirley tossed the scarf onto the nearest kitchen chair and left.

As she descended the stairs, Lily distinctly heard the crunch of the key in the lock; she heard the creak of the hinges as the front door opened; and then she heard her mother’s voice.

“Shirley! What brings you here?”

In the pause before Shirley answered, Lily was fatalistically certain that Shirley was going to tell her mother the whole story right then and there, but Shirley merely said, “I came by to talk to Lily about Miss Chinatown. She’s not coming tonight.”

“But I thought—what happened?”

“It’s just better this way. I’d better go.”

Lily imagined her mother giving Shirley a puzzled look. She imagined Shirley avoiding that look and quickly making her last few steps down the stairs, and a moment later, the door closed behind her. Hurriedly, Lily grabbed her scarf from the chair and went to hang it on the coatrack on the landing. She heard her mother’s footsteps slowly ascending, and then she came into view, carrying two white bakery boxes. She placed the boxes on the bench as she removed her coat and shoes.

Lily was standing nervously outside the kitchen. A paralyzing anxiety had overtaken her, making her head throb.

“What’s going on?” her mother asked calmly. “Did you and Shirley have another fight?”

Lily remembered that Aunt Judy and Uncle Francis were arriving that night, and Uncle Sam was bringing his entire family tomorrow morning. The thought of them all converging on the flat now—they would be here the entire week, for the New Year festivities—made the throbbing in her head even worse, so that she had to reach out and clutch the kitchen doorframe to keep her balance.

“Are you all right?” her mother said.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, taking a shallow breath in a futile attempt to tamp down her rising panic. Wallace Lai’s a gossip. There was an unmistakable threat in what Shirley had told her, and she realized that she had two options: she could wait for the gossip to spread through all of Chinatown until her parents found out, or she could tell them herself right now. She didn’t know how long it would take for the rumors to spread, but given that it was New Year week, they would probably spread quickly—and it was likely that her whole family would be here when they heard them. The idea of facing her uncles—oh God, her grandmother was coming, too—

She could barely breathe anymore. She felt nauseated, and her mother asked, “Are you sick? Maybe you do have what Frankie had.”

“No,” she said, but she didn’t resist when her mother came over to her and led her by the arm back into the kitchen—right past the spot where Shirley had looked at her as if she were a pervert.

“Sit down,” her mother said, and Lily obeyed. Her mother placed a cool hand on Lily’s flushed forehead, and went to get her a glass of water. It was the same glass she had tried to drink earlier, and the sight of it paradoxically calmed her because it seemed so ridiculous. Everything was moving in circles. She couldn’t get out of the kitchen; it was only the person she spoke to who changed. Here was her mother sitting down across from her, reaching for her hands and chafing them as if she were frozen. She felt the rub of her mother’s wedding ring against her skin, and her mother’s face swam into focus, her brown eyes full of the sharp worry of love, and Lily thought, You will never look at me like this again.