On my way to Cheri’s coffee shop, I hesitate. It might not be safe to go there; if the photographer is waiting, I’ll get caught before I begin. I need to think about these celebrity things now and how they’ll affect Fangli, so I duck into another place before I hop on the bus. Today I’ll work in Mom’s room and keep her company. She might enjoy watching one of Fangli’s movies with me.
It’s a good morning. We get her favorite dim sum delivered and feast on har gao and congee and rice and noodles for lunch. I haven’t gone out for dim sum since Mom went into the home. It was something we did together, and to go alone would close a book of memories I’m not prepared to shelve. I offer some to the nurse at the station but she puts her hand out to refuse. “I don’t even know what they put in that sort of food,” she says.
While I never progressed past North American crowd favorites and refuse to eat phoenix claws (because they’re chicken feet), thousand-year eggs (because they’re gray), or fish eyes (because they’re fish eyes), these are delicious shrimp dumplings, for crying out loud. Sorry they aren’t chicken nuggets.
I polish off the dumplings and settle down to work. Getting into character might help and I decide I’m not Gracie Reed, jobless failure, but an ethnographer studying the lives of the rich and famous, trying to parse out and isolate every attitude and gesture. With my collection of note-taking implements in easy grasp, I go to the first URL on Mei’s list.
It takes about two hours of dedicated viewing—Fangli has done a lot of media, what the hell have I been doing with my life—before I come across a video montage of Fangli and Sam together. Or Samli, as their fans call them.
This I watch six times. Maybe seven. They move as one unit, and Sam’s smile when he turns to Fangli is more real than the one he presents to the cameras. When they hit the red carpet at the 1:56 mark, she stumbles and he catches her, pulling her tight and looking down into her raised face like a love scene from one of their movies before raising his hand to brush her hair off her face.
If I didn’t know firsthand what he’s like in real life, I would be sighing. Maybe I do a bit because deep down I have a fantasy of him looking at me like that, as if I’m the only person who matters in the middle of all that chaos. I stifle this immediately. I don’t like Sam and how he unnerves me. Plus, maybe the gossip is right and they are a couple. Best to assume they are.
Enough of reality, or this manufactured Hollywood version of it. I put in the period drama Mei triple-starred, The Pearl Lotus. The plot is straightforward enough: Fangli plays an empress trying to save the emperor from a nefarious plot hatched by an old and jowly evil general. Sam plays the noble and sharp-jawed rival general, returned from some war with his love for the empress burning bright.
Mom dozes beside me and I watch, enthralled, as the film unfolds. As stunning as the sets and costumes are—Fangli wears a gown of embroidered gold so lovely it’s a character in its own right—I can’t look away from Fangli and Sam. At the pivotal moment, Fangli has to choose between love and duty. If she sends him on a mission, it will save the emperor but ensure certain death for Sam. They both know whatever decision she makes, Sam will do it without hesitation—not out of loyalty to the emperor or China but for her.
They’re alone in a garden by a pond that has a pearly-painted gold lotus. Fangli, the empress, doesn’t hesitate to order the mission. There’s no change in her confident, arrogant demeanor, but her eyes show a devastated woman. Then comes the scene I pause and replay several times. Sam bows but instead of looking down, his eyes never leave her. Fangli stands straight and her face is calm, but the silk sleeves covering her arms tremble as if a wind passes over. Between them, without a word, the two lay out the agony of unrequited love and the pain of duty. The music is a single erhu playing a slow refrain.
The nursing home’s vinyl chair creaks under me as I sit back, my sneakers squeaking on the worn linoleum, dingy with years of worn-in grime. I have uncomfortable emotions that I don’t want to pull out from the log I’ve stuffed them under. That a period drama has evoked them almost offends me because I should get upset at the news, not a make-believe story of two fictional people. Fangli and Sam—mostly Sam if I’m going to be honest—make me vulnerable. I have a yearning for…what?
I don’t know. More. That’s all I can tell. I don’t like that Sam can make me feel this deeply without even knowing his power.
After this scene, Mom wakes up from her doze and blinks as if trying to remember who I am. I smile. “Gracie, Mom. I’m Gracie.”
She doesn’t reply but turns from me to what I’m watching. Thinking to make it easier, I shift the screen so she can see it.
Her hand stretches out faster than I thought she was able, and she says something in Chinese. “It’s The Pearl Lotus,” I say helpfully, checking the screen to see what’s happening. “That’s Wei Fangli playing the empress. You know her. She’s an actor.”
She shakes her head desperately and I curse myself. There are rare days when the thought of home spirals Mom into a deep depression instead of making her comfortable. Past experience tells me there’s nothing I can do so I turn off the laptop and hold her hand as she rocks back and forth.
Eight
There are days when everything comes together as though part of a well-practiced symphony. Hair wisps stay down. Socks stay up instead of bunching in the toes of shoes. The keys are where you left them, the phone fully charged, and the pantry well stocked with coffee or, at the very least, instant packs.
Today is not that day.
I practice the deep breathing my favorite lifestyle blog insists will change my life—not that I need any help in that department, thanks kindly, I’ve managed to pull that off in spades this week—and stare at my phone, which I forgot to charge. I will it to reach the magical fifty percent charge point that’s the lowest I’m comfortable with leaving the house. Forty percent. Forty-one.
I pick up the book I’m reading and hesitate. I’ve never not finished a book, and although this one is trying my patience, I’m almost done. I should see it through. It might get better. I toss it in my bag. Then I take it out. New Gracie isn’t going to waste her time on a book she doesn’t like. I don’t owe the book anything.
I put it back in.
Forty-four percent.
I weigh the consequences of an undercharged phone against being late for my meeting with Fangli. Suddenly angry, I grab the phone. Today things are going to change. I’m not going to be limited by a list or a percentage on a phone screen. It’s a matter of having a growth mindset, and frankly, I should be embarrassed about a phone keeping me from my destiny.
I take the damn book out again and thump it down on my night table.
Fighting a slight twinge of anxiety, I decide to buy a portable charger and pocket the phone, grab my bag, and run out the door. My neighborhood is the residential equivalent of the golden mean, gentrified enough that I can choose between two hipster coffee shops filled with people tapping seriously on decal-covered laptops but not so slick that the rent is unaffordable for people with small kids or precarious jobs.
Today I don’t stop for coffee. Today I go to live a life of exquisite luxury and deceit.
This time, I walk into the Xanadu like I belong. That’s right, man wearing an excellent suit and so much plastic surgery your cheekbones puff into your eyes. This is my world now. Out of my way, little woman with head-to-toe Gucci. (I know it is, because every garment is labeled.) Take a hike, incredible-looking man at the elevator staring at me.
Oh, that’s Sam. I debate pretending I don’t see him because it might be less awkward than making conversation, but he waves me over with an almost imperceptible gesture. With the new Fangli-esque gait I practiced in front of the mirror, I stride over, dragging my suitcase behind me, and try not to let him notice my shaking knees.
“Did you hurt your leg?” he asks as he stabs at the number panel.
“I am walking like a movie star.”