Kinder Than Solitude. Yiyun Li

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ better. But how does one treat a man better—by becoming more dependent on him, by asking more from him? All the same, what was the point of thinking of that now? A few years ago, Eric had made the local news for his involvement in a fundraising scandal during his campaign for assemblyman—so much for his wanting more.

      Celia, who must have been listening also, took leave of the discussion and told Ruyu to show the T-shirts to the boys, her pitch a bit high because, Ruyu knew, of her nervousness about lying to her family. It was in these moments that Ruyu felt a tenderness toward Celia, who, despite her constant need for attention and her petty competition with her friends and neighbors, was, in the end, a woman with a good and weak heart.

      A while later, with the boys in bed, Edwin came into the kitchen. In the living room, the women were still arguing about the best way to bring up a child to be competitive in a global market. A heated discussion today, he commented, and touched the stem of a wine glass before changing his mind. He poured water for himself.

      Certainly Celia had chosen the right book, Ruyu said, and moved to the sink before Edwin sat down at the table. “I’ll start to put things away,” she said. “Celia has had a long day.”

      Edwin asked if he could help, though Ruyu could tell it was a halfhearted offer. Probably all he wanted was for the women debating the future of American education to vacate his house. There was not much she needed him to do, Ruyu said. Edwin kept the conversation going, talking about trivialities—the Warriors’ win that night, a new movie Celia was talking about going to see that weekend, the Moorlands’ Thanksgiving plans, a bizarre report in the paper about a man impersonating a doctor and prescribing his only patient, an older woman, a regimen of eating watermelons in a hot tub. Ruyu wondered if Edwin was talking to her out of a sense of charity; she wished she could tell him that it was okay for him to treat her, at this or any other moment, like a piece of furniture or appliance in his well-kept house.

      Edwin worked for a company that specialized in electronic books and toys for early childhood learning. Though Ruyu did not know what exactly he did—it had something to do with creating certain characters appealing to the minds of toddlers—she wondered if Edwin, a tall and quiet man born and raised in the Minnesota countryside, would have been better off as a sympathetic family physician or a brilliant yet awkward mathematician. To spend one’s workdays thinking about talking caterpillars and singing bears seemed diminishing for a man like Edwin, but perhaps it was a good choice, the same way Celia was a good choice of wife for him.

      “Things are well with you?” Edwin asked when he ran out of topics.

      “How can they not be?” Ruyu replied. There was not much in her life that was worth inquiring about, the general topics of children and jobs and family vacations not an option in her case.

      Edwin brooded over his water glass. “You must find their discussion strange,” he said, pointing his chin at the living room.

      “Strange? Not at all,” Ruyu said. “The world needs enthusiastic women. Too bad I am not one of them.”

      “But do you want to be one?”

      “You either are one, or you are not,” Ruyu said. “It has nothing to do with wanting.”

      “Do they bore you?”

      She would not, if asked, have considered Edwin or Celia or any of her friends a bore, but that was because she had never really taken a moment to think about what Edwin, or Celia, or anyone else for that matter, was. Edwin’s face, never overly expressive, seemed particularly vague at the moment. Ruyu rarely allowed her interaction with him to progress beyond pleasantries, as there was something about Edwin that she could not see through right away. He did not speak enough to make himself a fool, yet what he did say made one wonder why he didn’t say more. Had he been no one’s husband she would have taken a closer look, but any impingement on Celia’s claim would be a pointless complication.

      After a long pause, which Celia would have readily filled with many topics, and which Edwin seemed patient enough to wait through, Ruyu said, “Only a bore would find other people boring.”

      “Do you find them interesting, then?”

      “Many of them hire me,” Ruyu said. “Celia is a friend.”

      “Of course,” Edwin said. “I forgot that.”

      What was it he had forgotten—that the women in the living room provided more than half of Ruyu’s livelihood, or that his own wife was the angel who’d made such a miracle happen? Ruyu placed the plates in the dishwasher. She wished that Edwin would stop feeling obligated to keep her company while she played the role of half hostess in his house. In the cottage, she cooked on a hot plate and ate standing by the kitchen counter, and the dish drain, left by a previous renter, was empty and dry most of the time. In Celia’s house Ruyu enjoyed lining up the plates and cups and glasses, which, unlike people, did not seek to crack and break their own lives. When she continued in silence, Edwin asked if he had offended her.

      “No,” she sighed.

      “But do you think we take you for granted?”

      “Who? You and Celia?”

      “Everyone here,” Edwin said.

      “People are taken for granted all the time,” Ruyu said. Every one of the women in the living room would have a long list of complaints about being taken for granted. “I’m not a unique case who needs special attention.”

      “But we complain.”

      Ruyu turned and looked at Edwin. “Go ahead and complain,” she said. “But don’t expect me to do it.”

      Edwin blushed. Do not expose your soul uninvited, she would have said if Edwin were no one’s husband, but instead she apologized for her abruptness. “Don’t mind what I said,” she said. “Celia said I wasn’t my right self today.”

      “Is anything the matter?”

      “Someone I used to know died,” Ruyu said, feeling malicious because she would not have told this to Celia even if she were ten times as persistent.

      Edwin said he was sorry to hear the news. Ruyu knew he would like to ask more questions; Celia would have been chasing every detail, but Edwin seemed uncertain, as though intimidated by his own curiosity. “It’s all right,” Ruyu said. “People die.”

      “Is there anything we can do?”

      “No one can do anything. She’s dead already,” Ruyu said.

      “I mean, can we do something for you?”

      Superficial kindness was offered every day, innocuous if pointless, so why, Ruyu thought, couldn’t she give Edwin credit for being a good-mannered person with an automatic response to the news of a death that did not concern him? She had only known the deceased for a short time, she said, trying to mask her impatience with a yawn.

      “Still—” Edwin hesitated, looking at the water.

      “Still what?”

      “You look sad.”

      Ruyu felt an unfamiliar anger. What right did Edwin have to look in her for the grief he wanted to be there? “I don’t have the right to feel that way. See, I am a real bore. Even when someone dies, I can’t claim the tragedy,” Ruyu said. СКАЧАТЬ