"So the house is now lying in the End of the World?"
"What's that-end of what?"
"The ravine."
She sounded out more Chinese syllables to herself, and laughed. "That's right, we called it that when we were kids. End of the World. That's because we heard our parents saying that the closer the edge came to our house, the faster we 'd reach the end of this world. Meaning, our luck would be gone, that was it. And they were right! Anyway, we had many nicknames for that place. Some people called it 'End of the Land,' just like where your mommy lives in San Francisco, Land's End. And sometimes my uncles joked and called that cliff edge momo meiyou, meaning 'rub sink gone.' But most people in the village just called it the garbage dump. In those days, no one came by once a week to take away your garbage, your recycling, no such thing. Course, people then didn't throw away too much. Bones and rotten food, the pigs and dogs ate that. Old clothes we mended and gave to younger children. Even when the clothes were so bad they couldn't be repaired, we tore them into strips and weaved them into liners for winter jackets. Shoes, the same thing. You fixed the holes, patched up the bottoms. So you see, only the worst things were thrown away, the most useless. And when we were little and bad, our parents made us behave by threatening to throw us in the ravine-as if we too were the most useless things! When we were older and wanted to play down there, then it was a different story. Down there, they said, was everything we were afraid of-"
"Bodies?"
"Bodies, ghosts, demons, animal spirits, Japanese soldiers, whatever scared us."
"Were bodies really thrown in there?"
GaoLing paused before she answered. Ruth was sure she was editing a bad memory. "Things were different then… You see, not everyone could afford a cemetery or funeral. Funerals, those cost ten times more than weddings. But it wasn't just cost. Sometimes you couldn't bury someone for other reasons. So to put a body down there, well, this was bad, but not the same way you think, not as though we didn't care about who died."
"What about Precious Auntie's body?"
"Ai-ya. Your mommy wrote everything! Yes, that was very bad what my mother did. She was crazy when she did that, afraid that Bao Mu put a curse on our whole family. After she threw the body in there, a cloud of black birds came. Their wings were big, like umbrellas. They nearly blocked out the sun, there were so many. They flapped above, waiting for the wild dogs to finish with the body. And one of our servants-"
"Old Cook."
"Yes, Old Cook, he was the one who put the body there. He thought that the birds were Bao Mu's spirit and her army of ghosts and that she was going to pick him up with her claws and snatch him up if he did not bury her properly. So he took a large stick and chased the wild dogs away, and the birds stayed there above him, watching as he piled rocks on top of her body. But even after he did all that, our household was still cursed."
"You believed that?"
GaoLing stopped to think. "I must have. Back then I believed whatever my family believed. I didn't question it. Also, Old Cook died only two years later."
"And now?"
GaoLing was quiet for a long time. "Now I think Bao Mu left a lot of sadness behind. Her death was like that ravine. Whatever we didn't want, whatever scared us, that's where we put the blame."
Dory flew into the kitchen. "Ruth! Ruth! Come quick! Waipo fell in the pool. She almost drowned."
By the time Ruth reached the backyard, Art was carrying her mother up the steps of the shallow end. LuLing was coughing and shivering. Sally ran from the house with a pile of towels. "Wasn't anyone watching her?" Ruth cried, too upset to be more tactful.
LuLing looked at Ruth as though she were the one being chastised. "Ai-ya, so stupid."
"We're okay," Art told LuLing in a calming voice. "Just a little whoopsie-daisy. No harm done."
"She was only ten feet away from us," Billy said. "Just walked in and sank before we knew it. Art dove in, beer and all, as soon as it happened."
Ruth swaddled her mother in towels, rubbing her to stimulate her circulation.
"I saw her down there," LuLing moaned in Chinese between more coughs. "She asked me to help her get out from under the rocks. Then the ground became sky and I fell through a rain cloud, down, down, down." She turned to point to where she saw the phantom.
As Ruth glanced where her mother gestured, she saw Auntie Gal, her face stricken with new understanding.
Ruth left her mother at Auntie Gal's and spent the next day at her house sorting out what should be moved to Mira Mar Manor. On the take list she included most of her mother's bedroom furniture, and the linens and towels LuLing had never used. But what about her scroll paintings, the ink and brushes? Her mother might feel frustrated looking at these emblems of her more agile self. One thing was for certain: Ruth was not moving the vinyl La-Z-Boy. That was destined for the dump. She would buy her mother a new recliner, a much nicer one, with supple burgundy leather. Just thinking about this gave Ruth pleasure. She could already envision her mother's eyes aglow with wonder and gratitude, testing the squishiness of the cushion, murmuring, "Oh, so soft, so good."
In the evening, she drove to Bruno's supper club to meet Art. Years before, they often went there as prelude to a romantic night. The restaurant had booths that allowed them to sit close and fondle each other.
She parked around the corner a block away, and when she looked at her watch, she saw she was fifteen minutes early. She did not want to appear too eager. In front of her was the Modern Times bookstore. She went in. As she often did in bookstores, she headed to the remainder table, the bargains marked down to three ninety-eight with the lime-green stickers that were the literary equivalent of toe tags on corpses. There were the usual art books, biographies, and tell-alls of the Famous for Fifteen Minutes. And then her eyes fell on The Nirvana Wide Web: Connections to a Higher Consciousness. Ted, the Internet Spirituality author, had been right. His was a time-sensitive topic. It was already over. She felt the thrill of guilty glee. On the fiction table were an assortment of novels, most of them contemporary literary fiction by authors not well known by the masses. She picked up a slim book that lay obligingly in her hands, inviting her to cradle it in bed under a soft light. She picked up another, held it, skimmed its pages, her eye and imagination plucking a line here and there. She was drawn to them all, these prisms of other lives and times. And she felt sympathetic, as if they were dogs at the animal shelter, abandoned without reason, hopeful that they would be loved still. She left the store carrying a bag with five books.
Art was sitting in the bar at Bruno's, a retro expanse of fifties glamour. "You're looking happy," he said.
"Am I?" She was instantly embarrassed. Lately, Wendy, Gideon, and others had been telling her what she appeared to be feeling, that she seemed bothered or upset, puzzled or surprised. And each time, Ruth had been unaware of any feelings in particular. Obviously she was showing something on her face. Yet how could she not know what she was feeling?
The maître d' seated them in a booth that had recently been redone in clubby leather. Everything in the restaurant had managed to stay as though nothing had changed for fifty years, except the prices and the in clusion of uni and octopus appetizers. As they looked over the menu, the waiter came with a bottle of champagne.
"I ordered it," Art whispered, "for our anniversary… Don't you remember? Nude yoga? Your gay buddy? We met ten years ago."