While they worked on their projects, the table exchanged horror stories of the various heat waves they’d survived. From there the topic turned briefly to the wars past, then to the wars present, but no one wanted to speak on either for very long; the table split into smaller conversations, and soon Yukying found she’d passed forty-five minutes talking mostly to the Polish woman who lived in France. The other still stumbled over her English, but all her words were spoken with steel. She was a woman with hard eyes and a quick tongue, and Yukying liked her very much.
“Remind me of your name again?”
“Marissa Grodescu.” She set aside her needles to light a cigarette.
“Yukying Li.”
“Is Li your name? I have heard that Asian women do not take their husband’s name when they marry.” She offered a cigarette to Yukying, who politely declined.
“Oh, well, yes, that’s usually the case. But my husband was born and raised in Hong Kong; his mother is English, and his whole family is . . .” More bread than rice, Yukying thought wryly. “And he works for the British, so it was easier. And a little bit expected,” she added, uncertain to whom she was being apologetic.
Marissa scoffed. “Is that not always the way? Always expected.” She stared at the bookshelves over Yukying’s shoulder. “And what is expected of them?”
“Them? The English?”
“Men,” Marissa said with enough venom that Yukying thought she might spit on the floor to complete the curse.
“Ah, have you read this book from America, Marissa?” The woman from earlier, Rebecca, inserted herself into the conversation, pulling The Feminine Mystique from her bag and sliding it over. “It’s the book of the century. You should borrow it. Either of you,” she said, smiling at Yukying. Yukying had heard of the book, of course. It’d just been released, but already it was infamous. The feminism it discussed was distinctly Western, and through lenses that didn’t all apply to Yukying’s understanding. In 1950 the People’s Republic of China’s first official act as a new power had been to pass the New Marriage Law, giving women equal rights of ownership and property management when women in America couldn’t even have bank accounts. It also let women initiate divorce—an act still impossible in most of the world over a decade later. Of course, Yukying couldn’t exercise those rights herself, living under British rule, but they shaped the way she thought, and she thought of the Americans as backward, and the book itself as a little behind the times. Still, the Kowloon Kaifong Women’s Association had set up a series of dates in the fall to discuss the book, and she’d been disappointed her copy hadn’t arrived in time to read on this trip.
“May I?” She looked over at Marissa, who gestured at Yukying to take it.
“What good would it do me?” Marissa asked. “I already know the words, and words cannot help. Action is what is required.”
“Hear, hear,” Miss Duncan muttered, then smirked when Yukying had to smother her laugh.
“Then why not divorce him, dear?” Mrs. Lanzette asked. “You live in Paris; it’s de rigueur for the French.”
“That’s right—doesn’t everyone over there?”
Yukying and Marissa exchanged a look; it always seemed so simple from the outside.
Marissa Grodescu smiled grimly. “Not everyone in France is of one mind on the issue. My husband believes a wife is an investment.”
The table murmured their sympathy, but really, what was there to say? Every woman there had heard this story before. Old Mrs. Biddle probably believed a husband was right in this belief. Yukying silently thanked whichever ancestor had sent her Laurence; she really had gotten extraordinarily lucky with him.
Thinking of Laurence reminded her to check the time—she was supposed to meet him for lunch in fifteen minutes. She clucked her tongue and began packing her things, making sure to tuck the book in her bag as she promised to return it to Rebecca before the end of the trip.
“Have tea with us this afternoon,” she invited Marissa, but the other woman shook her head.
“Don’t invite trouble to your table, Mrs. Li.”
Yukying pursed her lips. That wouldn’t do at all.
“Then borrow this.” Yukying dropped a pattern into Marissa’s basket. “You’ll have to return it tomorrow.”
Marissa looked down at it. Her frown made it very clear what she thought of Yukying: a foolish, silly person who didn’t understand what was really going on. Yukying had been on the receiving end of that look her entire life. She just smiled and left Marissa with a single thread of connection to someone who cared.
After lunch, Yukying claimed a deck chair and started in on Rebecca’s book of the century. The shade of the deck and the white noise of the guests in the pool lulled her eyes closed. Time drifted in a gentle haze until Tinseng and Chiboon’s voices coaxed her awake. They both dripped with pool water, puddles accumulating at their feet.
“Oh, jie, did we wake you?” Tinseng hit Chiboon on the arm. “I told you to be quiet.”
“No, I shouldn’t have fallen asleep in the first place.” She scrubbed at her eyes and patted down her hair. Her hat sat crooked on her head. “In public, too—how embarrassing.”
“No, no, half the people out here are asleep,” Tinseng said, pointing to a few. “Her, and him, oh, and definitely him.”
“But how can you tell? She’s wearing sunglasses. And maybe he’s just reading.”
“Oh no, he’s asleep. The grip on his book, for one. The way he’s propped it against something so it won’t slide down, but you can see his hand is loose. He planned to nap.”
“When did you get so observant, Tinseng?” Chiboon asked.
“When I realized I could learn secrets that way,” her brother said with a sharp smile. “Now I always know when a student is trying to cheat.”
“Imagine if your teachers had been able to tell when you’d cheated,” Yukying teased.
“Ahh, unfair,” Tinseng whined, “We were geniuses in our time. My students are just lazy.”
“That’s right, we were wasted on our teachers. They never tapped our potential.” Chiboon looked at his watch and hissed. “I promised Cheuk-Kwan I’d meet him for the movie, he’s going to flay me!”
“Run fast!” Tinseng called merrily as Chiboon pulled on a shirt and dashed off. Yukying laughed and settled back against her chair; Tinseng sprawled out next to her. When he broke the silence, he was uncharacteristically hesitant.
“Jiejie? Can I ask you something, and you won’t ask why?”
“Of course,” she promised without hesitation.
“How do you know if you . . . how did you know you loved Li Yingtung?”
