Excerpts

Excerpt from Chapter 7, The Last Dance

All of a sudden, she recognized that move and she understood his quest. Her heart tightened. That something her husband was searching for was as original as the beginning of creation, and as ancient as Adam and Eve. Instinctively, he was in search of life’s perpetuation, and he was lost. He had lost the ability so fundamental to a man, so deeply coded in his being, so indispensable to the survival of the human race, an ability he had once mastered so deftly.

For her, the mating ritual had become like a pair of old shoes, not entirely cast away but only occasionally remembered, and she was often too tired, too stressed, too occupied with being the spousal caregiver, or too uncertain about his physical condition to pursue it. It was a cruel and painful revelation that the dreadful Alzheimer’s disease had robbed him of the capability to be a man, and taken from both of them something so deeply intimate, so precious, so essential in defining their relationship, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.    

…..

The rain was pouring down in torrents now, banging loudly on the windows. Rain and clouds, clouds and rain, one could no longer tell which was which.[1] Their bodies fused into one; there was no his or hers. Their souls united, not his and hers, but one. There was no separation between living and dying—there is no separation between living and dying. We are all living, and we are all dying.       

People are not able to choose their own birth and, for the most part, not able to choose their own death, she thought, but I will choose how to love and how to live, regardless of what’s happening in my life. That is exactly what I will do!

She searched for his soul, for a sign of recognition and the assurance of his love. She felt a flicker of it, or did she? But it was hard to catch, it was hard to be certain, and it slipped away into obscurity just as quickly as it sparkled in the darkness, before she could catch it, before she could be certain.

…

Clyde started to dissolve. She collapsed on top of him, spent. In some distant corner of her mind, the beautiful Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø was singing tenderly:

Going home, going home, I’m just going home
Quiet-like, some still day, I’m just going home[2]

 In her heart, she mourned. She knew this was their last dance. The fire was dwindling, the stars descending. Like two planets in the universe, their paths met, and their journeys joined. Now that same mysterious and mighty force that had brought them together and blessed them with so much happiness was taking him away from her. Clyde, her darling husband, her precious love, was orbiting away from her, irreversibly and irrevocably, farther and farther, like a fading star. Soon he would be out of her reach, out of anyone’s reach.

Farewell, my love.

[1] In Chinese classical literature, the phrase “clouds and rain” is a metaphor for sex.

[2] “Goin’ Home” first appeared in Antonin Dvorak’s “Largo” from the New World Symphony in 1922. William Arms Fisher wrote the original lyrics, which are adapted in later versions—including the one sung by Sissel Kyrkjebø.

From Chapter 17, Better Angles

The temperature outside had fallen below freezing, but no home in Shanghai was heated in those days. We were all in our sleeping garments. I sensed that behind his thick glasses, the eyes of my father’s former protégé had become those of a predator fixing on its prey, greedily penetrating the thin layer of fabric to linger on my undernourished and undeveloped body. I was trembling, not due to the cold, which I hardly noticed, or out of fear—that had passed after the initial shock—but because of my growing rage and desperation. These people had already taken my beloved parents away and treated them harshly; now they had ruthlessly invaded my home and ripped away my safe haven, threatening my siblings and me. I clenched my teeth in bitter hatred, and my mind went frantic and deranged, struggling to control the violent urge inside me to destroy those who were trying to destroy me with their assaults on everything I had lived for.

Kill! Kill them! KILL THEM ALL! The knives are in the kitchen, whatever may happen! I can’t take it anymore. Let me perish with them! I must stop this ordeal!

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the Fool declares, “This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.” Mao’s Cultural Revolution had turned the whole of China manic.

From Chapter 5, The Bird a Nest

On the evening of the Turtle Creek Chorale show in December 2006, Charlie was busy getting Clyde ready, taking him to the latrine, putting him in a tuxedo, and exchanging his slip-on house loafers for a pair of patent leather shoes that he had polished earlier that day.

Ronnie, meanwhile, was grooming himself and immediately got distressed.

“Chuck, my face looks terrible.” He came out of the powder room, visibly upset. “Look at me! I can’t go anywhere.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You look just fine, Ronnie.” Charlie must have dealt with the problem a hundred times. He continued to work on Clyde and did not pay much attention to Ronnie.

“Here.” Facing the light, he pointed to a lighter spot on his face close to his left temple that was hardly noticeable. “My color is off. What am I going to do? There is no way I can go to the chorale looking like this.”

“What happened?” I asked. Charlie smiled, saying nothing, and continued to work Clyde’s right foot into his shoe.

I was illiterate on the subject of cosmetics and had no idea that Ronnie’s tanned skin was the result of painstakingly applied makeup. It was so out of the norm for me that I commented, “Ronnie, I think you are quite eccentric, queer, or is it peculiar?” Not sure of my word choice, I tried them all.

Ronnie forgot what was troubling him. He laughed so loud that he had to hold his belly, and so did Charlie.

“Chuck, did you hear what JoAnn just said? Am I a queer?” Ronnie said to Charlie, who was no longer squatting on his heels fiddling with Clyde’s shoes, but sitting on the floor, bending over and laughing uncontrollably.

“Yes, I am.” When Ronnie was able to catch his breath, he answered his own question, and then pointed to Charlie. “And so is he.”

That was how I learned that queer as a noun refers to a gay man, in addition to what I had been taught in my English education in China, as an adjective meaning “strange.”