She loved Kath.
It was crystal clear to her now, and it was exhilarating and illuminating and it turned everything upside down, because there was no way to resolve her love for Kath with the demands her mother was making. If she lied, she would betray Kath, and she refused to do that. But even if she could live with lying, would it make any difference in her father’s situation? If he hadn’t gotten his papers back, it was probably because he refused to lie about Calvin, not because Wallace Lai had seen her leaving the Telegraph Club. And if her father wouldn’t lie, why should she?
Lily took a deep breath. “I didn’t make a mistake. You can ask me as many times as you want, but I’m not going to lie.” The more she spoke, the bolder she felt.
Her mother abruptly stood up, shoving her chair back with a screech. Lily recoiled.
“You ran away!” her mother cried. “You left this house and didn’t tell anyone where you were going. Anything could have happened to you!”
Lily’s father reached out to put a steadying hand on her mother’s arm. She seemed about to say something utterly furious—her face was turning a blotchy red—but then, as if it took all her effort to restrain herself, she threw off her husband’s hand and stalked out of the kitchen. Lily heard her mother’s footsteps receding quickly down the hallway, and then a door slammed shut.
Shocked, Lily turned to her father. He seemed as stunned as she was, and finally their eyes met. He winced, and bent forward to stub out his cigarette. There was a long moment of uncomfortable silence. Lily glanced at Aunt Judy, who was watching her brother worriedly, but remained quiet.
Finally, Lily’s father scrubbed a hand over his face and said, “There’s no other choice, then. You’ll go with your aunt to Pasadena to finish the school year.”
Lily stared at her father uncomprehendingly. “What?”
“Your aunt and uncle have offered to take you away from here while—while things settle down,” her father said. “They’re making a big sacrifice to help you. They’ve even offered to take you down to Pasadena right away—tomorrow. There’s no reason to wait. Today you should pack your things, and tomorrow you’ll take the train to Pasadena. Judy thinks you’ll be able to enroll in the high school there. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Aunt Judy said. “I know this must come as a surprise.”
Lily stared at her father, and then at her aunt. Her head throbbed painfully; it was the only real thing in the room. Everything her father and aunt said seemed utterly unbelievable.
“We think this will be best for you,” Aunt Judy said. “It’ll get you away from—from the complications here.”
It would take her away from Kath. She understood that immediately; it was like a gut punch.
“This is for your own good,” her father said. “You’ll be safe in Pasadena.”
They were afraid, Lily realized, that there would be more trouble if she stayed—trouble for herself, trouble for her father. And they wanted to make sure she wasn’t here in Chinatown, inviting gossip. They wanted to hide her away until people forgot what had happened.
“I don’t want to go,” she said, shaking her head.
Her father looked at her bleakly. “You’ll have to learn that sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do.”
Lily gazed at her father in disbelief, and then in growing anger.
“I live very close to the high school in Pasadena,” Aunt Judy said. “You’ll be able to walk there. Once we get home we can go right away and make sure you can enroll. If you can’t, your father said it might be possible for you to finish your senior year by correspondence. And, you know, maybe we can find you a part-time job or something at the lab. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Lily could barely register her aunt’s words. They were splitting her up from Kath.
“We want you to be happy,” her father said. “You’ll be free from distractions in Pasadena.”
Even though she didn’t know where Kath was or if she was all right, she had believed that eventually she would find out, and they would be together again. The idea that she might never see Kath again took her breath away. She felt faint; she felt as if she might dissolve into thin air.
“I’m going to call Galileo to see if you need to collect any paperwork for your transfer,” her father said.
She felt Kath’s hand letting go of hers again and again; her fingers sliding through hers over and over. Everything she and Kath had done could be erased so easily. It could be erased by her family pretending it had never happened. It could be erased by her parents uprooting her from her home and sending her away so that Kath would not know where she was. It could be erased because they were her parents and she was their daughter, and they loved her, and she could not disobey them even if it broke her heart.
“You should pack your things,” her father said. “Be ready to leave tomorrow morning.”
48
Lily’s father brought out an old brown suitcase and gave it to her to use. A luggage tag with an address in Chinese hung from the handle. Lily could read her father’s name and the characters for Shanghai, China.
She opened the suitcase on her bed. Her grandmother’s powdery scent clung to the blankets; already the room was no longer hers. She packed her clothes quickly, without looking at them. She shoved in the new dress she’d worn to the Telegraph Club two nights ago, not bothering to fold it. She tossed in her black pumps and a hairbrush. Her father came into the doorway, looking anxious. She ignored him and kept packing. She didn’t want to speak to him; she didn’t want to speak to any of them.
“I knew a doctor once, a woman, who was a lesbian,” he said.
The sound of the word was startling, and she froze for a second, but she refused to acknowledge him.
“She was a very successful doctor,” he continued. “She was Chinese too, like you.”