"Not yet. You were two weeks late. He call me the day you were due. I lie to my boss. I tell him my mother is dying. It's bad luck, I know, but I can't think of anything else. All the way, on the plane, I worry that I'm too late, she's going to have baby without me. And then your mother came to meet me at the airport. Can you believe? So big, like this, all by herself she drives the car."

There were pictures in the album. Ma like a beach ball, dark lipstick, her hair perfect.

"I sleep in the nursery, where they were going to put you, yellow and pink and blue, all the little diapers folded on the bureau. And so many stuffed animals, I guess they already know you liked stuffed animals."

I buckled my bag shut and sat down on my bed, across from my aunt.

"Your ma-ma and I go to the movies every day. Fifty cents, can you imagine. We both like James Dean, Natalie Wood. You like Natalie Wood too, I remember. Sometimes we see the same movie three times. Always, people stare at your mother. Not many pregnant Oriental women in Monterey. She has only one outfit that fit her, a blue jumper. You remember May in Monterey, how beautiful. We are walking on the beach when the pains come. Your ma-ma is so stubborn, she sits down and doesn't move. I'm so scared, I leave her on the rocks and run to the house and call your father at school. He comes and takes us to the hospital. The doctor says she's slow, it's going to take a long time, he wants to give her this medicine and that medicine." My aunt's eyes were shiny. I could see that she would have gladly undergone that kind of pain, and much worse. "Your ma-ma says no, she doesn't want any drugs, but then she cries and cries and I say Mei you must be brave and she says you don't know what it's like, this yang guidoctor is going to let me die. This scares me so much, you know your ma-ma is always the cool one, always knows what to do. She wants Chinese remedy, so I go to grocery store and buy brown sugar and stir it in hot water. At the end, when it's the worst, she curses your father, calls him disgusting peasant, even worse names. In Chinese, lucky, so the doctor doesn't understand.

"You were a long baby, twenty-three inches. Your ma-ma has a private room, third floor, overlook the ocean. She has you in the bassinet by the bed. *Look, Jie, such a pretty room they gave me!' She can see the cliffs from her windows, all the flowers. She can hear the seals. And I think, What a lucky mother. What a lucky baby."

"I'm sorry, Aunty Mabel."

"Sorry? Why be sorry? True, she's not like my baby sister anymore. Doesn't need me now. Your Nai-nai comes up from San Diego on the bus. A lot of hair, she says. It's a good sign. But I am so stupid, I almost lost my job. I got back to the house and remember I must call New York, my boss. So I do. My boss asks me, How is your mother? and I say everything is all right, my mother is going to live, we are all very happy."

Uncle Richard came to the airport to see me off, sitting by himself in the backseat like the wooden laughing Buddha my parents had brought back from Taiwan, making comments on the roads, how all the repair work they'd been doing hadn't helped the traffic any. We were barely in time, and as we rushed toward the boarding gate, my uncle pressed something folded into my palm. "For good luck, eh? No, no, don't open now." I tucked it into the pocket of my jeans, having already caught a glimpse of Ben Franklin.

"G'bye, Slim," my uncle said, laughing at his own joke. "I think I start calling your aunt that too."

All of a sudden I couldn't think of anything to say, and there was no more time. "Xie xie," I said. "Zai jen." Not adieu, but au revoir, see you again. All languages make that distinction.

"You hear," Uncle Richard said to my aunt. "She has northern accent, just like her ba-ba."

Part Four

23.

At La Guardia I decided to treat myself to a cab, although I had hardly any luggage, just the black bag. I contemplated what I was returning to: clustering traffic, glowering skyline, the nervy discontented hum of the city and its denizens. How had my Aunty Mabel felt, landing here alone for the first time, the phone number of a friend of Nai-nai's tucked into the flap of her purse, on her way to Penn Station to take the train to Long Island for her job interview? I could feel my own adrenaline as we pulled onto the FDR Drive.

My street was deserted and creepy, I'd forgotten the cracked sidewalks, the stairwell of my building shabbier than I'd remembered, with its worn marble steps and peeling black-and-white honeycomb wallpaper. I could smell acrylic fumes from the loft of the other artist, a sculptor, who lived on the first floor. When I'd undone all three of my locks, including the police one, and swung open the heavy steel door, I saw a space that was plain, even homely, smaller than I'd remembered, but in some ineffable way soothing to my soul. I'd painted the walls of my studio stark white and hung them with only Japanese prints and a blotchy green and violet painting I'd been working on before I left. Somewhere in the still, stale air, beyond the first whiff, I could smell that blend of turpentine and linseed oil that used to intoxicate me.

I walked over to the north bank of windows, lifted away the dusty sheet, and looped it around the nail I'd fixed to the wall for that purpose. Across the street two men were in a huddle in front of the candy store. A young Hispanic woman strolled by in heels and purple spandex, walking an old English sheepdog, and they both turned to look. I shoved one of the windows up as far as it would go and New York blew in. Exhaust, warm pavement, and weeds from Tompkins Square Park.

There were three phone messages. The first one was from my old bossa""Sally, please call me as soon as possible, I have an offer I think you'd be interested in." The second was from my sister. "Sa, are you there? Call me, I'm at home." The tinny girl voice on the last message I didn't recognize right away. "Hey there. Thought I'd give you a try. I'm out in the real world, sort of, at the place I was last winter. Things are going okay, though I wouldn't wish my last stay at State on my worst enemy. Although I'm the first to admit that I might be my own worst enemy. Okay, guess you're not there. I'll try you again sometime." She didn't leave a number. I wonder if Mel had beat me up north, as he'd boasted he would, whether he had dropped by to see her on his way home. On the tape Lillith sounded almost normal, as she had on her best days in the hospital.

I took one of the jam jars out of my bag and went downstairs and knocked on the door of the sculptor, whom I'd asked to collect my mail while I was gone. "You been to the Caribbean or something?" he asked, referring to my tan. I told him Florida. "Well, your timing was good," he said. "At the end of March they turned the heat off for two weeks and of course we had that record cold spell. And the water pressure's been completely fucked up, although at least it's hot now." I could tell he wanted to get back to work and I didn't exactly feel like having a long conversation so I asked him for my mail. He handed me a shopping bag of what looked like mostly junk. I gave him the jam as a thank-you and went back upstairs.

The water pressure, as the sculptor had warned me, was not what it used to be, and while I waited for the rust to run out of the kitchen tap I put on a tape of Chopin scherzos. Fran used to say that the scherzos reminded her of cats chasing each other over a bare floor. She wasn't too fond of the recording I had, according to her the pianist was a little too showy, but I had always loved it. I put on water for tea and lay down on my floor mattress and listened until the kettle shrilled.

I'd left when it was bitter cold, and now I needed to figure out where I'd stored my fans. As I drank my tea without honey I noticed a sheet of memo paper taped to the refrigerator. I had to squint to make out my tiny sick scrawl: join gym eat better find out specs for group show call Reik center and get therapist?

I had accomplished none of these things. I ripped the paper off the fridge, turned it over, and made a new list in bold handwriting: call people call work groceries drugstore My mail contained threatening notices from Con Ed and the phone company, but nothing from my landlorda"I'd kept up with my rent at least. There was an enormous square envelope of heavy stationery that looked like a valentinea"I could see that the card inside was red. It was, of all things, a wedding invitation. Silver curlicues on crimson: Mr. and Mrs. Winston Woo request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Grace Loo-yi to Mr. Jian Lu.

Good God, Xiao Lu was getting married. Wimpy Xiao Lu who had once eaten an inchworm and two ants under the threat of being hung upside down by his ankles from the top bar of our swing set. Who was this girl who was willing to spend the rest of her life with him? A sweet one, for sure. Sweet as pie. One who wouldn't laugh when he screwed up his face before bursting into tears, that is, if he still burst into tears.

I felt a pang of jealousy.

Marty wasn't home. "She go back to New York for a couple of days," Ma told me, but when I called the old number, there was no answer. "When you coming to New Haven?" my mother asked, and I told her I'd be there for my appointment with Valeric the day after tomorrow. "Good," Ma said. "You come over afterward. I make special birthday dinner for you and your sister."

On the phone I told my boss a little about what had happened, using the term nervous breakdown, although I didn't mention Willowridge. She asked me how I felt now.

"Better," I said.

"Well, since you left things have been exploding around here."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't talk. Let's meet for lunch."

At O'Neal's, two blocks from the office and exactly the kind of cavernous noisy New York restaurant I hated, she told me that the agency was in the process of being acquired yet again. She had decided to leave and start her own company. "I found a space in SoHo. Two thousand square feet, northeastern light, all the fixtures in. I already have a couple of accounts lined up." She told me what they were and I knew I was meant to be impressed, so I said I was. The truth was I felt distanced from all that shop talk. Why was she persisting in treating me as if I were still Sally Wang-Acheson, senior art director? That person she thinks she's talking to must have been good, I thought. She must have been something.

Finally my boss leaned over, laying her hand over mine, looking at me shrewdly. "Okay, I can see you're not into this. The reason I called was I thought maybe you'd be interested in coming aboard as full-time staff. But only if you're completely okay."

"I'm a little distracted," I said. "I'm sorry. How about part-time? Is that out of the question?"

"I'll be straight with you, Sally," my boss said. "You're the most talented designer I've ever worked with. You're my first choice."

"Thanks."

"Part-time is a possibility. When do you think you can start?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe in a couple of weeks."

"Okay," she said. "You call me when you're ready."

This was a second chance, but I couldn't bear to think about it. It was too soon for me to be in the outside world. I couldn't wait to return to the safety of my apartment.

In Valerie's office there was a framed poster from an exhibition at the Met, an Indian tapestry of elephants crossing a river. It was all I'd been able to focus on, those last afternoons when I was trying desperately to keep a grip on my mind. The elephants were flat and brilliant, with intricate blue and gold trappings. I remember thinking that they resembled tropical fish and that if I were half as good an artist as that ancient court weaver I wouldn't be in this fix.

"Welcome back," Valeric said in her husky voice. There had been a time when I hadn't liked the way she looked, when her lankiness seemed gawky, when I believed her to be cold and harsh. Now I thought of her as a warrior, someone who'd fight to the death to protect another soul. A fresh legal pad was balanced on her knee. "How've you been sleeping?"

"Not so well."

"Oh? How is that?"

In Florida I'd slept long and drugged, at my aunt and uncle's, in the condo with Mel. Now that I was back in my life I'd awaken in the night with a start, heart pounding, tensed as if ready to spring out of bed. Three A.M. on the dot, it got so I didn't even have to look. I'd get out of bed and turn on the lights and it was a shock to see all the details of my apartment, not at all like I'd been imagining them in my uneasy doze. Sometimes a siren would be shrieking or a drunk yelling in the street below, adding to the surreal effect. The only thing that helped was food. Take-out leftovers or I'd make popcorn and bring it into bed with me, greasing up the sheets with butter. Then I'd smoke, even if I had managed not to all daya"sometimes it was the only way to get through the night.

Mornings were another kind of torture. Walking around my apartment I got light-headeda"or maybe it was more like light-bodied. I simply felt way too much: the blood pulsing through the veins in my wristsa"Lillith said that it would be easy for me, had showed me the precise vertical cut to use if I really wanted outa"the air tickling the hairs in my nostrils, the smooth warm dusty floorboards against the soles of my feet. It was like I had no skin.

I told Valeric about the conversation with my boss. She nodded. "Sounds promising."

"But I'm too fucked up, I can't go back."

"How about part-time? Didn't you just tell me she'd agreed you'd both think about that?"

"Maybe. If I can concentrate."

"What's that on your arm?"

"I had a relapse."

"You could have picked up the phone."

"I know. I didn't think."

"What happened in Florida?"

"I had a fling with Mel."

Nothing surprised her. She nodded again and began writing.

The day before, I'd called Waterbury information and was lucky enough to get it right on the second La Monte. "Mel's busy," a woman, his mother, I thought, told me. In the background I could hear laughter. "It's prom night," the woman explained.

"Who is it, Mom?" I heard Mel ask. The woman put her hand over the mouthpiece and there was a garbled dialogue.

"He'll call you," the woman said when she got back on.

"Tell him it's Sally."

"Oh, yes, he's mentioned you. Good-bye now," she said before I could give her the number.

"I thought about him in bed, you know," I told Valeric. "I thought about my father, while Mel was making love to me."

"And how did that make you feel?"

"Sick."

"So that's why you cut yourself. You never told mea"did this ever happen with Carey?"

"I think I was just numb with Carey. And he didn't know about Monkey King. He didn't even know where the scars came from. I told him I'd had an accident on a picket fence."

"Why do you think it was different with Mel?"

"I guess being sick made me weaker."

"Is that what you would call it? Being weaker?"

I looked at my arm, the right one, without the scars, at the curve of the forearm bone, the pronounced knob on the outside of the wrist like my mother's. My hands, of course, were my father's. I imagined the way his long fingers had held the chalk as he stroked characters on the blackboard for his first-year class. Though my mother was known for being strict, Daddy was willing to be led off on a tangent. What are the characters for planet? for comet? his students would ask. He'd put down the chalk and tell them the legend of the herdsman and the weaving maid, two stars doomed to be separated by the Milky Way because they had loved each other too much and forgotten the rest of the world. My father would have turned it into a moral tale. The weaving maid had deserted her father for another man and he had punished her by forever denying her what she desired most.

After my session with Valeric I caught the bus to Woodside Avenue. When I walked in, using my key, I could smell pot roast in the oven. Ma was at the counter chopping carrots. "Lally's coming to dinner," she announced.

"Fine," I said.

My sister was lying on the living room floor watching TV. "Hi," she said, not looking up.

"I tried to call you," I said. The sling was off, but she had an Ace bandage on her right forearm. It reminded me of the time I'd gone down to see her in Charlottesville.

"It doesn't matter. The emergency's over."

"What emergency?"

"I thought I needed a place to stay. Dennis was going to kick me out."

Dennis was the producer, the one she'd gone to France with. I said: "No wonder, if you spent all that time up in Vermont with some other guy."

"Bill's just a friend," Marty said. "But you know men. Anyway, it's all right now."

"If it's all right, then why are you here?"

"I'm still healing, stupid," she said.

I went back into the kitchen, where Ma was making the salad. "Sal-lee, please get the dressing from the fridge."

"I'll make it from scratch," I said. She watched suspiciously as I peeled a clove of garlic and chopped it, mixed oil and vinegar. When her back was turned I added mustard, ginger, sherry, soy sauce, and the scrapings of an old jar of honey I found in the cupboard. Then I ground some black pepper in.

"Don't forget salt," Ma said.

"Okay," I said, ignoring her.

"I talk to Aunty Winnie today, she's so excited."

"Well, Xiao Lu's her only child, it must be a big deal."

"I tell her, lucky he's a boy, she doesn't have to pay."

"Mmmhmm."

"I ever tell you about my cousin in Shanghai, she got a divorce?"

"Yes, Ma."

"In China this is unheard of. Her mother and father disown her. When they see her in the street, they look right through her. Like ghost."

"What is the point of this story, Ma?"

"No point. Just conversation."

Lally rapped on the side door and I went over to let her in. "Hey, sweetie!" she brayed, giving me a hug. "Boy, you look like you've been somewhere. Bonnie, did ya see how dark she is? Looks like a Malaysian, almost. Here, this is for you. To celebrate your birthday, but more importantly, your total and final recovery!" Never one to mince words, was Lally. I snuck a glance at Ma, saw that her mouth was set in a mean line. The gift was a pewter heart on a chain bracelet. "I got one for your sister too." Lally, like my uncle, had always wished for daughters.

"Thanks, Lally. It's beautiful."

"Go set the table, Sally," Ma said. "We eat in the dining room tonight."