Page 92 of The Manor of Dreams

Flowers crowded the countertops along with short notes for a while, and then stopped.

Rennie had always thought that their two families would take care of each other. Two families; double happiness, Ma always said. But a month after Sophie’s funeral, the Deng family left. Without any water, the flowers started to wither in the heat. Weeds sprouted. Ma stayed locked in her room.

For a brief time, it became known around Hollywood that Vivian’s daughter had died in a car wreck: never mind that there had been two girls in the accident. No one knew about Sophie. The news labeled it the tragic combination of an inexperienced driver and the dense fog that had overtaken the road that night. Her mother became the cursed Chinese movie star who had lost her husband and daughter in the same summer. There were hushed whispers about her, sensationalized news stories, speculations and theories galore; and then, the news became sedimented by other events and sank out of public attention.

Weeks later, the roses started to grow again. They sprouted atop the remnants of the past rosebushes. The vines stretching, as if reaching for something beyond the garden’s borders. And then, late one night, when Rennie was alone and unable to sleep, she went outside into the garden. The buds had opened up, just slightly, and a deep crimson trickled from their centers. Spooked, she ran back into the house. By morning, when she checked again, the blood had long since seeped into the dirt, and the roses were stained only around the edges.

During the day, Rennie watched the house mourn. And night after sleepless night, she watched the flowers bleed.

thirty-five

DECEMBER 1990

LUCILLEhad gotten used to the twin bed she had back at Lawrence Academy. That mattress sagged. The slats dug into her back. She’d even gotten used to her roommate’s obnoxious snoring. In the mornings she’d wake up and the pale light would stream in and reveal her roommate’s wall of magazine cutouts.

The first day Lucille moved in, her roommate introduced herself as someone who sang choir and did model UN. Her dream college was Wellesley because her mother had gone there. She invited Lucille to a party. Lucille went out of politeness. She stood in the corner and didn’t speak to anyone. After that, she didn’t get any more invitations. The walls on her side of the room stayed blank.

Lucille hated boarding school. She hated that Ma had shipped them off, so suddenly that she had been enrolled in the middle of the second week of the term. She hated its cold, damp halls and its mildewed smell. Ma had to ship them winter coats. She sat in classrooms and read while people leaned over their chairs to talk to one another. She sat in the library writing essays while they got ready for parties. They’d known each other for years, and she was the new kid who arrived senior year. Some people tried talking to her, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t want anyone to know anything about her. Especially not about her father. Or her mother. Or her sister. So everyone talked about her instead, and she let them. Lucille tucked Ada safely away, deep in her chest. In her mind, her twin was still here with her.

But now she was home for the holidays, and she wished she wereback at Lawrence. It was a strange feeling to sleep in her own bed again. In the house, they couldn’t hide from one another. They sat at the long dinner table, too vast for the three of them, and ate the bland noodles that Ma made. None of them could look one another in the eye.

Ma had faded into herself. Her garish gray roots grew out into her unkempt perm, which flared out around her bare face like she’d received an electric shock. She hadn’t booked a role since the summer. For all they knew, she was done with acting.

Rennie, on the other hand, got cast in the Lawrence production ofRomeo and Julietand wouldn’t shut up about it. Lucille said nothing. Everything she wanted to say, she only wanted to say to her dead twin sister. Every day she passed Ada’s closed bedroom door.

Maybe it was good that their mother had sent her and Rennie to a school on the East Coast, one that cost half a year’s college tuition. In school she could lose herself in her classwork and come home to a nondescript room. Teachers wrote blocks of praise on her essays. That was the one thing she could control. She was going to get into Dad’s alma mater. She was determined to go to Yale. She faded into the crowded hallways during passing periods. Sometimes she would see Rennie, talking and laughing, surrounded by a crowd of her new friends. A vicious pang would tear through Lucille to see her younger sister happy like that. Their eyes would meet, and Lucille would look away.

At school, she dreamed of coming home. She would get on a plane and Ma would drive her home from the airport, and she would open the door and Ada would be there, askingwhere have you been?Lucille dreamed it was still summer and the garden was blooming. She thought about the two of them, sitting on the terrace, driving around. If only she were home—she’d wake up and realize it had all been some terrible nightmare.

But now that she was home, she saw that this house could never be what she dreamed of. Josiah and Edith had moved away. Weeds had overtaken the garden. Rotted twigs and mold collected in the stagnant fountain, which was drying out. She kept thinking about Ada’s last moments. She thought about how shards of the windshield puncturedthrough her eye and cut into her brain as the car burst into flames around her. That’s what the coroner said.

She was here for three more days, and the feeling was starting again. A strict tightness wrapped itself around her chest and closed her throat. Lucille’s muscles locked up, her body freezing against her bed. She pulled in one breath, then another. She just needed to wait for the feeling to pass. This had been happening for months. The minutes stretched out before her, gaping and eternal.

When it was over, she forced herself to sit up and move. In the bathroom, she ran the sink and splashed cold water on her cheeks. She stared at herself in the mirror, against the backdrop of dark green wallpaper.

For a moment the face in the mirror shifted, and there was a dimple that hadn’t been there before. A gash on her head weeping blood.

Ada looked out at her from the mirror and opened her mouth as if to say something.

Lucille stumbled back, crashing into the door behind her. A sharp pain jolted through her back.

She heaved breaths through gritted teeth and tilted up her gaze. The sink came into view first. It was still running. Then she faced her reflection in the mirror. Ada was gone. She was alone.

RENNIEknew that the holidays were for family, but her family was broken. There was a reason Ma had sent her and Lucille off to boarding school. She couldn’t bear to be around them anymore. It seemed like she couldn’t bear to be around anyone.

And Rennie couldn’tsleep.

One of her friends, Nancy, had given her some of her sleeping pills. They calmed her nerves down, she said. Helped her relax. The first time Rennie took one of those pills last month, she sank so deeply into sleep that she didn’t have a single dream. Oh, it washeaven. Nancy had given her a couple more, and Rennie had hidden them in an emptied box of mints. She’d run out right before she came home, and now she had spent five nights turning off the lights and lying awake, trying to will herself into slumber.

I’m going back tomorrow, she repeated to herself, as if doing so would push the clock faster. She felt awful for it.

Lucille was the one who had demanded they go home for winter break. They had crouched around the school’s communal payphone after another short call with Ma. They spoke in Mandarin, in hushed tones. People passed by and stared at them. “Ma needs us. We need each other.”

But then they came home and no one spoke. Ma shut herself in her room all day, or sat in the library staring into space. Rennie tried so desperately to fill the dead air with stories from school, but Ma only offered her half smiles. Lucille stayed silent and sullen and angry. As if this hadn’t beenheridea.

This was how it was at school, too. Rennie waved to her in the halls, and Lucille’s unforgiving gaze barely brushed hers before she’d march on, alone, the other way.

“Your half sister’s kind of a bitch,” her friends would say. “No offense. You’re the normal one.”

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