Crush

Angela Qian

To get to the house, you must exit the highway around twenty minutes after the mountains appear. They are splendid at all hours of the day. The first time Marie and I drove up the highway, toward Rosemead, I knew I couldn’t hate LA anymore, the sun casting purple shapes over the wide hiking trails and the buildings below. She lives alone in a house in Glendale. Her husband works in the Middle East designing amusement parks and her son works at a firm in Miami. I moved into her house in midsummer and she would take me grocery shopping, and to Rosemead to eat her son’s favorite ramen. To get to the house, you must drive up the canyon, that hot, dry summer canyon full of reasonable cars and the library tucked into a sharp turn. The streets near Marie’s house are named after Ivy League universities. 

I’m preparing to leave. Vacuuming the floors. The plants are looking healthy. I thought killed the fig tree in its ceramic pot out front, but Marie said not to worry, and to skip watering it for a week. The leaves grew back. They unfurled faster than I could blink. Faster than I could even photograph. I went to work one morning and when I came back it was as if nothing at all had changed.

Marie and Hanna Lum are good friends. Hanna Lum is my boss. She makes documentaries out of her house, which is also in the canyon, but even further up. It’s very empty up there. She walks with her neighbors at seven every morning, and they cover a lot of ground. I drive to her house every day in Marie’s car and help her edit her LinkedIn posts: I’m super thrilled to announce that “Crowd Crush,” Miró Atalaya’s and my short screenplay, was accepted as an Official Selection for the 18th Annual HOLLYSHORTS FILM FESTIVAL and advanced to the Quarterfinals in their Screenplay Contest. 

I list her old film canisters on eBay and help her ship them out. In a lot of ways, Hanna and Marie have become mothers to me. They certainly have been helpful. I don’t know any other adults in LA. I feel awkward talking to my sister’s friends. I think it’s too soon, those beautiful photographers. They never cared about me. I text Marie every so often to update her on the house. She’s given me instructions on locking up for her arrival, and I plan to take the car up to the Americana to get cleaned this afternoon. 

My sister loved Korean things. She even went to Korea several times while I was in college. K-Pop, K-Dramas, all of that. She shot K-Pop videos with her friends and they gained some virality when we were in high school. It was the time when just anyone could post a video on the Internet and it would become viral. I love to watch them now. I watch them when I’m alone, and sometimes I’ll connect to the speaker so I hear her voice through the house. 

I’m tired. I’ll miss Marie and Hanna. They were really, really good to me. Marie even called me her second son. She left for her trip after we had lived together for two weeks and she would take me to the movies, and to get groceries. She was really kind to me.

I’m not really a Hollywood guy, even though I’m here now. Not that Hanna is Hollywood, really. Her documentaries are socially impactful and distributed on PBS. But she lives in Los Angeles, and I think my parents are telling people I’m in Hollywood now. But I’m not really a Hollywood guy. I wrote my award-winning play when I was fifteen. It won several prestigious awards. My sister wrote her award-winning play when she was fourteen, and I was twelve. It was set in Seoul, of course. It tackled sensitive topics such as fatphobia in the K-Pop industry. No one was writing plays about Asians back then. I never think about that play anymore. It was so early in her career, so separate from her later work, which was all photography. It was funny— everybody thought she would go on to become someone in the theater world, then. I remember all that. But once she showed those photographs to Dad’s friends, it was quickly forgotten. Yes, she was always so insistent on those photographs. She knew herself that those photos, not anything she wrote, would be what took her somewhere, away. 

I was surprised Hanna Lum wanted to hire me. I don’t go to such a good college. I didn’t have the scores. But, I think she knows about my sister. I’m not sure what gives me that impression, though. I guess it’s because it would be too much of a coincidence, that being her screenplay. I really had to think about whether I should take the job. We haven’t talked about my sister. I think she’s been dying to. We’ve talked about almost everything else. She asks me about my family, Eleanor, my classes. My classes which I’m failing. I didn’t mean for it to happen. Eleanor is taking a summer class, but I couldn’t imagine being made to write essays in the summer. It was so easy back then. Words came out of me like the big heat off the canyon. You would think writing screenplays is similar to writing plays, but I’ve found them to be quite different. You have to be really, really special to write an award-winning play. Hanna Lum is tenacious. Every time she poses a question, it comes with such force it almost feels like a challenge. But I like Hanna Lum and her questions. She’s created her own success in that big house up in the mountains.

I want the place to be really spotless for when Marie comes home. I think she’ll be happy I took such good care of her house. I should get packing, too. My room upstairs used to belong to her son and it’s covered in trophies. Plants, floors, sheets. I strip the bed. Vinyls back in their sleeves. Fridge, cleared of my food. It was only kindness that brought me here. I’m undeserving. I’m leaving nothing behind. 

When I arrived in Los Angeles in May, all I knew was that I was subletting from a friend who lived in Los Feliz, and that I was in love with a girl I just met called Eleanor. It was almost impossible to find a spot to park. There was no AC and the apartment was tiny, nothing more than a room with a bed, a small kitchen and bathroom adjoining. 

The dish rack was full. I busied myself with that for a while, exploring the cabinets and poking under the sink. Cutting board. Paring knife. Two wooden spatulas. It wasn’t a bad place. Still, I was among someone else’s belongings. I was sick with heat. I missed, all the time— the restrained laugh, the curl of her hair, that haunting, exaggerated presence. One day I looked up and found that almost a month had passed. 

My phone rang. I picked up and it was Eleanor. We were seeing each other almost every day at this time.

She looked good. She always looked good. Shaggy red hair, long legs. She had that carefree Californian thing down. I like to think of her sunning next to the pool— her stepmom was a producer who lived in Highland Park with two small children— in her white string bikini, beads of water drying on tawny, freckled skin, just the way she was when we first met. 

Eleanor took me to flea markets. Beaches. Once to hot yoga. I was nervous to go, because I was not a yogi. I was an East Coaster. I thought about how my sister would laugh. I thought about how I was in Los Angeles for the foreseeable future, all summer, that this was it, the good life, that it had arrived. I had known Eleanor for five days. I watched the panes of light in the studio slide across the wall. What rough beast, its hour come round at last. I thought about my sister, who loved it here. Sweat poured off of my back. The man in front of me was twisting himself into fantastical shapes. The ropes of his muscles bulged. His face in the mirror was utterly serene. Impassive. He unfurled. Eleanor stared in envy and awe. 

The pressure from the shower was surprisingly strong. The sun was going down, inaugurating one of those cool, endless, breathless summer nights. Eleanor is on her way. She’s close now. We’re going out tonight. It’s good. She’s here. Knocking at the door.

The bar was the kind of place Eleanor went to run into everyone. I, of course, had no one to run into. I followed gamely behind.

“How are you? How’s the Glendale thing going?” 

“Still the archive project,” I said. To some girl. Skinny with big eyes. “I’m onto the beach scenes now. The family in Laguna.” Hanna, at a loss for what to do with me, had given me a folder full of archival photographs of her own family. I was to first scan and digitize them, and then write a short article about the family to be submitted to a local Chinese American history museum and distributed at her upcoming family reunion. I preferred to call this an “archive project.”

She was seventh-generation Chinese American. Her family had come from Guangdong to Monterey. They had started a small business in the mid-40s, and, from what I could gather, had soon ascended to a prominent position in the community. I was startled to see a photograph of Hanna’s late great-aunt, pretty in a one-piece, walking towards the camera with a towel slung over one arm. She was nearly identical to the woman sitting next to me and working placidly on her laptop. It went without saying that I was impressed by this and its distinctive Californian flavor, as my family had been in the States for only a generation.

Hanna had a formidable memory for places and names. The house on Montserrat Street where all the kids had grown up, her father’s old elementary school, the Episcopalian church that held her great-great-grandfather’s funeral. Pointing out small details, in her lively and confessional manner, drawing me into her history as I typed my notes. It was getting louder in the bar.

It took me a second to realize that Eleanor was looking at me strangely. It was stunning to be fixed with both of their gazes at once. My lips twitched; I felt caught. “What?”

“Nothing. I was just going to get myself a drink,” said Eleanor. She turned to speak to the bartender.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pathetic, and I might have said something else but I saw someone over her shoulder, there and gone. Eleanor turned around and handed me a drink. I chanced another look in her direction and this time Eleanor followed my gaze.

I knew I had seen her. It was Isobel, my sister’s friend. All of them went to UCLA. They were an up-and-coming crowd, and beginning to gain some recognition, young people interested in innovation, good people to know. I never saw them this far east. I got up. I mumbled something about the bathroom. I shouldered my way through the crowd, looking for that flash of black hair, wave of black. She was gone. But for a moment we had seen each other, and I thought she may have recognized me.

Outside, several people were smoking. They looked at me as I barreled out of the bar and looked up and down the street. I glanced at them, breathless, and they returned to their conversations. There was no one else around. I let the door fall closed behind me. 

It was suddenly very quiet. It smelled like pavement. Dryness. Far away, I heard the sound of tires on pavement, a burst of laughter, music from a moving car. I shook my head. It was no use. Was no use. It never was.

I turned to go back inside, and there she was, in front of me. Smoking a cigarette and looking at me through black-lined eyes, two big bruises peering out at me, with all the creepy intelligence of a precocious child. 

I gaped. “Isobel. I was trying to find you.” She didn’t respond. We regarded each other for a moment, and then I kept talking. 

“I saw your photography at the student show. It’s really something. It reminds me of Sally Mann, you know, family intimacies—I mean— those kids, the ones in your photos. Are they your family? I really feel like they are your family. They look like they could even be twins.

“One of them, the one where the kids are fencing? It even reminded me of an old photograph of my dad and uncle. I mean, how– hey, have you seen my sister around?” I was babbling, and I knew as I was talking her eyes were widening in confusion and she was leaving. “No, come on,” I said. “Please.” 

The pity on her face was almost impossible to bear. “Thank you,” she said. Her voice was quiet, girlish and accented. Isobel was an international student, I suddenly remembered. Her family was from Mexico City. “Those photographs are very important to me. They represent over three years of my life. I love the work of Sally Mann. Thank you, Percy. Please give your father my best.” 

Helplessly, I said, knowing the answer, “I’m sorry to ask, but have you seen her?” 

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I have to go now. It was good seeing you, but I have to go. I really wish you the best.” 

She put out her cigarette and left down the street. I took a half-step toward where she was standing and was met with a blast of heat and music from the opening door. I reeled, bewildered. Eleanor and her friend spilled out. We all looked at each other for a moment. 

“I’m sorry,” I croaked. “I thought I saw someone I recognized.” 

“It’s okay— we ran into people, too!” They were both very lively, and talking loudly, and once again, the smokers stirred and glanced around at us and then returned to their conversations. I wondered if they had noticed me talking to Isobel. With an uncomfortable thrill, I wondered if they had noticed her at all. 

The photos at Hanna’s that day: two children playing in the backyard sandbox. A large house bursting with siblings. “Did you go out this weekend?” Hanna asked. She was researching Crowd Crush. Her writing partner, Miró, was arriving in a few hours to get our feedback. She wore a linen dress that fell just above her knees. She was tapping her foot, typing something on her laptop.

“Yeah, Eleanor and I went to a bar.” 

“Oh, how was that?” She loved Eleanor. I had brought her to work one day, since they had expressed so much interest in one another. They had gotten on so well that by the end of the afternoon, all of us were swimming together in Hanna’s pool, the three of us and her husband Greg, listening to Erykah Badu and drinking spritzes. I was extremely impressed by Eleanor that day, the way she knew just how to flatter them. Something about her was utterly convincing. How she could rearrange the world around her, on the force of her charm. Something about her made me believe, for the first time in years— in special people— in special realities. 

After that day, and I didn’t think I was imagining it, Hanna began to treat me differently, as if she had only then realized I was a part of that rarified club. The very next week she seemed to make up her mind, and gave me the family photographs. 

“Really good. We ran into some friends. Actually–” I hesitated– “I ran into one of my sister’s old friends.” 

Something in Hanna’s manner changed. She looked at me, interested. “All the way from the west side?” 

“Yeah. I thought the same thing. I didn’t really get to talk to her, though,” I said. “I’m not that close with my sister.” 

I knew she wanted to ask me why, but she was holding herself back. Suddenly, I wished she would just ask, already, and get it over with. Suddenly I felt almost sick. Don’t be so polite, I wanted to say. Don’t be so polite. You know me by now. 

I turned to my work. Siblings playing in the sandbox, two teenage boys sparring with foils. They were both very handsome and wore white T-shirts, and looked just like my dad and his brother. In fact, I could almost believe that they were my own memories, memories of my father, and a house full of siblings. Hanna’s dog barked from somewhere inside the house. I could hear Greg on a call in the other room. 

Half an hour later, Miró arrived. I felt as though I was coming out of a long sleep– heavy and fumbling, a giant in a toy house. He and Hanna were at film school together in the nineties. 

“Years ago, we were in Oregon scouting filming locations,” he had told me. “Turns out, we were at the same hotel, and decided to book one room with two beds. I said, ‘I won’t tell Jen if you won’t tell Greg!’” 

I had looked at Hanna, unsure how to respond. I was relieved to find they were laughing.

“So,” he said now. “What did you think of the new scene?” 

For a moment, I thought he was talking about the archive project. Then, I realized he must be talking about Crowd Crush. Yes, he had come to talk about the script. I had skimmed it earlier. I was ashamed. I was deeply disinterested in anything he wrote. “Oh— yes— I can proofread it, if you want.” 

“That would be great,” said Hanna quickly.

“You know,” he said, “Since in a real crowd crush it would be very difficult to escape how our main character escapes.” He demonstrated a sort of hunched-over position– he duked from side to side– “But that’s sort of the whole point, you know.” His face gleamed, immensely pleased. “She’s this independent, badass girl who can fight her way out of things. And she needs to get out somehow. That’s the end of the first act.”

He looked around expectantly into the silence. I refused to look at Hanna. “I mean,” I heard myself say, after a while, “I don’t think you really can fight your way out of something like that.” There was another long pause. Stupid. Fumbling. My voice thick with irony.

I knew I should probably try to sound kinder. Miró sat back in his chair, opened his mouth, but I kept going. 

“If she pushes people, it's because she can’t help it, if she’s… exceptional, or if she’s not. All she can do is try to stay on her feet, and try to keep herself alive. You don’t really fight something like that.”

It was Hanna who spoke, then, softly, as if I had just said something very weighty and personal rather than something anyone really could have found online, which made me feel almost sick again, “Percy, how about we get you some water?”

“I’ll get it myself,” I said. I walked out of the room. I shut the door behind me. The wood floorboards were cool under the soles of my feet. Greg was still in a meeting in his office. I could hear the low, comforting tones of his voice running in the background. 

In the kitchen, Hanna’s terrier stretched his squat little body on the tiles. He was nearly blind. When he sensed me, his ears pricked up and he trotted to me with little clicking footsteps, coming to lean against my leg with the utmost, unexamined trust. I knew that I shouldn’t have talked to Miró like that. How he moved from left to right, like a boxer, with an ecstatic gleam in his eye. I was disgusted with myself. Talking about the event like it was some plot device for Miró’s stupid script.

Later that day, after Miró had left— we had exchanged an awkward, overly-vigorous handshake— Hanna and I were alone again in the office. Hanna liked a kind of barley tea you could get at Asian stores, and she always had a pitcher chilling in the refrigerator. We each had a glass on the desks in front of us. Sweating onto the wood. I trained my eyes on the photos accompanying today’s notes. Her father was graduating from high school. Packed bleachers on the field. Close-ups of small, plastic American flags staked into the ground. A line of blue-clad graduates, whose caps fell off of their heads.

I didn’t tell her everything. I just wanted to offer some explanation. I had acted unacceptably. I had insulted her friend. I might have sounded very strange. Hanna reacted extremely well. She was so caring, so capable. I couldn’t help but be impressed. How long had it taken her to become like this? How much longer would it take me? She went to the kitchen and brought me another glass of barley tea. I clutched at the glass. It was delicious, cold and earthy and bitter at the end, unsweet and strong and complex. 

It felt good finally talking to Hanna. As I said, I didn’t tell her everything. I just briefly mentioned my sister, who she was, and I briefly described the conditions of our relationship. I hoped it was enough to defuse any tension, to clear up any misunderstandings surrounding Miró and the script. Then, Hanna started talking about her own siblings, how they had all taken extremely different paths, and it seemed like it was all going to be okay. I was really grateful to her for this. I began to relax. I could sit and listen to her voice for a long time, and not ever have to explain myself.

Eleanor fit so well into my life that I guess I never realized, in those days, how easy it would be for everything to change. We both knew that I was leaving at the end of the summer, and she would be staying. But I’m talking about something else, something between us, that is strange and hard to explain even now. I guess it’s something to do with how we related to one another, and it all started with Eleanor’s camera. 

Eleanor was getting back into photography around when I saw Isabel at the bar. She had started carrying a small digital camera with her wherever she went. It had a strong autoflash, and the photos she produced were haunting without much effort. The subjects of her photographs appeared to be floating in space. Even now I find it difficult to describe the feeling some of her photos would produce.

Most of her subjects were actually ordinary, her little siblings, corners of the house. Only one of them was extraordinary, and only because it was so strange: a picture of a bear in the Hollywood hills. Everything looked smeared from the distance and barely identifiable. What I found remarkable about it was that the photograph offered the fewest possible details to construct itself, and yet, miraculously, it was constructable. I could point to the vague smudge that was the bear and understand it was a bear.

I saw photographs of myself from her camera and became alarmed. I looked too young, or else too strange. There was always an unfamiliar look on my face. Flat. Deadened. Feathered at the edges. 

And it made her serious, this camera, especially when it was pointed at me. Eleanor had picked me up from work and we had driven down the canyon to a small, grassy park with picnic tables.

“Stay like that,” she said. She took several photographs of the trees, of me. I had the feeling that she was working up to something, that only by acting like she was directing her attention elsewhere for a while could she feel free to speak. Like how in dreams we can generate unbroken, courageous dialogues, which babble forth without much effort, and which are impossible to form while awake. 

I looked up into the mountains. Her camera clicked away. 

“Have you seen Isobel again?” She asked. 

Even though I was anticipating her saying something, I was startled. I had forgotten I had mentioned anything about Isobel— but then, Eleanor had an amazing memory, especially about things that had to do with my sister. I had to be careful which details I shared about her, because I could sense Eleanor memorizing them, and deploying them too-self-consciously later on. “Since we were at that bar? No. I mean, that was just a strange coincidence.” 

“I just thought of her because— well, didn’t you say you had some connections to photographers at UCLA? My mom’s heard of Isobel Veloz.” 

“She’s going to be big,” I said. 

“Yeah. It’s crazy that your sister knew her.” 

We sat at one of the tables. I leaned forward and picked up her hand. I hesitated. She seemed in a strange mood today, like she wanted me to say something, catch a hint, but I didn’t know what. “She knew a lot of photographers because she used to be one,” I said finally, and she looked up at me.

“I didn’t know that,” she said. “You don’t really talk about her.” 

I shook my head. 

“Isn’t it strange?” She pressed. “We see each other almost every day, and you’ve never talked about her. I didn’t even know what your sister did until— what, one month in? Two?” 

“I just don’t like to talk about her,” I said. 

We were quiet for a while. I could tell Eleanor was frustrated, and I was sad that I was making her frustrated. It was like there were these big gaps between what I was doing and what I wanted to do, and a bigger one still that yawned, suddenly perceptible, between me and Eleanor. I wanted to know how to stop this feeling, and make her happy. 

“I’m sorry.” I said. She turned her face away. I gripped her hand, even tighter. It was totally limp. “Please, let’s just talk about something else.” 

“There isn’t anything to talk about,” she said. “You know everything about me. I have given everything to you. Yes. You can change, but I’ll never change. You can go, but I’ll never go.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said, miserably. 

She smiled. I looked into her face and felt a huge emotion stirring. I never wanted to make her smile like that again, never wanted anyone to make her feel this way. 

I fumbled for my phone. “Here,” I managed to get out.

I set it on the table. She looked down. 

I watched her as she registered the photograph. I saw her face go from curiosity to surprise to discomfort. “Who took this?” she asked. I knew that by showing her the photograph, something would change. Lily’s photographs tended to produce a strong emotional effect in its viewers. I have seen someone look at Dog Scratch 2 at an opening and begin to cry. They were haunting and experimental. They explore the overarching themes of existence with incredible empathy: family, desire, mortality, and memory.

I saw why critics would say that, but I disagreed. Lily’s photographs were defamiliarizing, yes, and often featured human subjects, but they were also totally indifferent— to family, desire, and all that. It was why I found them so painful to look at, and also because many of them were self-portraits.

I shook my head. Eleanor moved close to me, and rested her head on my shoulder. In my arms she felt warm, and alive. We held each other tightly. I felt her shake in my arms. She was mine. She was mine. There was nothing more to say. 

In my weaker moments, I had no use for Los Angeles. Diversion could be found in Los Angeles. All kinds of diversion: Erykah Badu and spritzes by the pool. For all the wonder, I sometimes had the feeling that it all served to obscure my vision, to throw a veil over that primordial muck from which all my desires welled, and replace it with an imitation, a watery dazzlement, where in the sunset of nostalgia everything was pardoned, even death and the dead. I was not myself in Los Angeles. I was a mirage of myself I met in a desert. I saw it and fell down and begged to be made whole, to let the mirage go forth in my stead, and let me die in that desert.

I visited Scotland with my sister when I was in high school. Her play was being performed at a small festival held at the University of Glasgow. There was to be a staged reading, done by a small group of Scottish actors, one of whom was considered famous among some circles. We had spent the day wandering the area around the flat, which belonged to a friend of one of the undergraduates organizing the festival, and was empty as she was on a Swiss vacation. Here and there through the cloudy, bright old streets. They had all been built centuries ago, updated into apartments and businesses but retaining much of the original character. High ceilings and plaster moldings and narrowness and stone. 

We were closer then, and I knew something about how her mind circled, how when there was something big coming up she would talk about anything else. But as we set off to find dinner around the university, she asked if she could read over a scene of her play, one that I knew she was particularly proud of. She didn’t like to talk about her own work, much less read it aloud to anyone, so I knew that she must have been in a very special mood. Perhaps she was as affected as I was by the oldness of everything. The solidness that made it feel easier to exist in relation to it all. That made it feel like we were walking on solid ground rather than the amorphous, dreamlike world that was her reality and the source of her creativity. 

She took my arm. She had begun suffering dizzy spells a few years earlier and I’d been told they made her somehow more affectionate, more vulnerable, unlike the sister I had grown up with. My sudden largeness in relation to her was disconcerting. How in the span of a few years she could take my arm and feel so small, that all-powerful arbiter of my moods. 

We turned into a darkened cut-through. It was slightly wooded and paved. I felt the awesome old pile of the main university building somewhere nearby, its presence tugging at me. She read from her phone screen and I had a sudden, piercing feeling, almost like fainting, a feeling of amazement that I had survived all the way up until this point without experiencing this intense joy, a feeling which I now believe was death. 

Her reading voice was unlike her usual speaking voice, quiet and restrained, rising and falling to a metered rhythm, and everything was subsumed in the rising and falling, everything in the world suddenly falling into sync. The rise and the fall, the breath and the release, the landscape and the feeling of Lily’s arm pressing into mine, and my rising and falling thoughts, and our simultaneous steps, and every streetlight and every faraway squeal. I felt so full I could have spilled right over my edges, spilled all over the river to join all that gallant overflowing movement of history. The traces of which lay intangible, all around. Everyone trying to make something out of their ridiculous lives.

In my dream that night, I talked to my sister on the phone. 

“Isobel is dead,” said my sister. “You couldn’t have seen her.”

“No, she’s not, because I saw her,” I said. “You are.” She was quiet for a while. 

“I’m not.”

“You left me,” I said. The shadows of passing cars looked like horses. “You did.” 

“Isabel died on October 31 in Itaewon, Korea,” said my sister. She enunciated each word clearly. She seemed to be having trouble getting them out. “She was visiting her boyfriend on study abroad. They wanted to go to the bars on Halloween. They both dressed as characters from Sailor Moon. He was the cat.”

“No. That was you. Lily, it was all you.” 

The dream trembled a little. Things dissolving. Around the edges. “What is wrong with you?” She snapped.

Finally, the tone I knew. I was used to her anger. It turned on me often when we were growing up. It was not a harmonious relationship. She hated me, she had hated me since we were children. At first I may have even known why. When she got angry, she didn’t have many words to say. “What is wrong with you?” 

I wanted to cry but I swallowed it. This was it. I felt like every nerve ending was screaming at once, all the waves in the world crashing down on my head. Everything inside was being squeezed, squeezed, my cells bursting, in spurts, my head pounding, my mouth dry. “It’s you,” was all I managed to say. 

Lily was crying. She was almost screaming. Her voice melted into thick panes of light, sliding against each other, leaving imprints in my vision like the rubbing of an eye. Lily was light, was the light of our family. She was the center and the fold. What did it say, then, that she never really loved me? I missed her. I missed her. All wrapped in her own meteoric world, she wrote and wrote. Her structures were so perfect it was unbelievable a human mind had conceived them, said a critic. Everybody needed to be humbled before something. Or was it my professor who said that— about general relativity? About Beethoven’s Ninth? Everything was collapsing now. Everything was crashing and smoothing into each other. The apartment was white and empty and gaped like an open mouth. 

Hanna was taking me on a detour through central LA. “I try to come whenever I’m in the area,” she said, as a way of explanation. “Which isn’t too often.” I had the feeling that even she didn’t know why she was doing what she was doing, that she was overcoming a rational impulse to bring me to where we were going, to lead me deeper into her own history. I understood the feeling. I felt it every time I opened my mouth around her. 

The summer was ending and I was about to move out of Marie’s and it felt like something big and important was coming to an end. Every day I raced to tell Hanna more, adding details to details, and retelling her things she already knew. I would share things about myself I wouldn’t share with my own family, or even with Eleanor. In turn, she would listen attentively. She always had a lot of interesting things to say in response, for which I was extremely grateful. 

Towards the end of the summer, I became less and less tolerant of silence. I was constantly on the phone. I couldn’t sleep. I’m sure Hanna could tell that something was wrong. Eleanor certainly did, and I could tell that I was worrying her, but towards the end I felt like there were more and more things I just couldn’t say to her, things that she just wouldn’t understand. 

Soon I understood that we were driving through a cemetery. It was built on a hill, and the plots were generous. “They built this place before the cemeteries all started moving out of LA,” said Hanna. “It’s old. We have several generations here. My father was a complicated man. He was extremely politically active, and very liberal, but, Percy, the fights we would have! He taught me how to speak up for myself, you know. He taught me how to have an opinion.”

I was quiet. We crept through the cemetery. 

“He remarried when I was in college. His wife— my stepmom— was this really stylish woman. My daughters just loved her. She had this amazing closet, full of stuff you just can’t find anymore. My father was on the fringes of the art world for basically his entire life. It was something he was always very proud of, being Chinese-American, you know.” 

She parked the car. I opened the door and a wave of heat traveled through my body, making me feel immediately woozy. We had stopped in front of a plot that contained only two headstones but many plaques set into the ground. Hanna stopped in front of one of the headstones and sighed. 

“My family plot,” she said. “You know these people. All of my family in those photographs. Many of them are buried here.” 

Fencers in white T-shirts. Girls in one-pieces on the beach, and her father’s graduation. We stood side by side and were quiet for a while. The dead in cemeteries have never really moved me. I have no family grave to visit. I couldn’t guess what was on Hanna’s mind. I couldn’t guess what moved her to bring me here. I suppose it would look to any observer that we really were family, mother and son, come to pay our respects. The thought made me oddly sad. Hanna had daughters who lived in New York, and they sometimes even came back to visit. 

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