The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(8)

Dorothy nodded again, sniffling, wiping her eyes and nose. She thanked him but barely heard herself. The rain now sounded like static on an old radio as heavy drops pounded the pavement, drowning out her voice, her occasional sob. She continued up the busy sidewalk past trash cans overflowing with the broken and tattered remnants of cheap, touristy, gift shop umbrellas. She wondered how Annabel was handling all of this.

When Dorothy thought about her daughter—scared of the lightning, the booming thunder, the howling wind—she stopped feeling abandoned, or angry, and instead felt like the worst mother in the world.



* * *



When she made it to the elevator of the Smith Tower, Dorothy was so wet—so completely drenched—the mirrored doors began steaming up as soon as they closed. She wiped the glass with her hand and saw her swollen eyes, red cheeks framed by watercolor streaks of mascara, strands of long black hair clinging to her face.

“Chinese women look ugly when they cry,” Louis had teased, more than once, even though Dorothy didn’t find it funny and her father had been mixed-race. “And what have you got to cry about, anyway? You were a little trust fund girl.”

He never failed to mention the reason she had the money in the first place. She would dump it all into the sea to have her mother back, if only for a day.

Dorothy began to shiver. She was so sodden, she hoped he wouldn’t notice or that the weather would distract him and he wouldn’t care that she was having a moment. She didn’t want to reenact old battles. Not tonight. She didn’t want to reload the shooting gallery of her relationship, with him always taking aim, always keeping score, especially with the storm bearing down on them. She just wanted to hold Annabel and ride out the worst of it, like she’d done so often over the last few years, even on sunny days.

“Welcome home, Ms. Moy,” the elevator said as it began the thirty-eight-floor journey to the executive apartment she shared with Louis. Dorothy stared into the mirror and practiced smiling. Louis sometimes spoke of her blue moods, her despondence, her pensiveness, as a convenient excuse for her not working enough, or a regrettable side effect of being a poet. He was too dismissive of her work to see that she was the most creative, the most productive, during these times.

“It’s good to be home,” Dorothy said to the elevator, whose simple reactive programming wouldn’t care or even notice if she was lying. Or be bothered by her silence as she reflected on how strained her home life had become.

At first, dating Washington’s poet laureate was an asset for Louis Green Analytics. Dorothy’s esoteric ethos softened the sharp corners of his successful data-mining firm. But shortly after she’d lost her teaching job, she was asked to step down from her two-year term representing the state. Within a year, the qualitative value of their relationship began suffering because of the quantitative way Louis regarded her. In the beginning the tension was simple chiding, joking, teasing, like at the firm’s annual holiday party, where Louis proclaimed, “Being a poet is a condition, not a profession,” and everyone had a good laugh at her expense. But the jokes became arrows that pierced her in soft, vulnerable places, like her value as a woman or her ability to function as a mother. His words became hammers and everything she did looked like a nail.

“Are you certain you should be here, Ms. Moy?” the elevator asked.

For a moment Dorothy thought the lift had somehow read her mind.

“The National Weather Service predicts that Tropical Storm Mizuchi will make landfall near Ocean Shores at six forty-seven a.m., Pacific Standard Time, with a forty percent chance of continuing all the way up to British Columbia before slowing,” the elevator said. “There are several evacuation routes I could recommend.”

“Thank you,” Dorothy replied. “I’ll be okay.”

She drew a deep breath and sighed, realizing her words were a wish and, like most wishes, if you say them out loud, you diminish their chances of ever coming true.

“Then have a pleasant night.” The elevator chimed softly and the doors opened to her one-of-a-kind home, an airy loft tucked into the neoclassical pyramid atop what was once the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Dorothy stepped off the elevator and heard music, a remake of a remake of an old song called “Splendid Isolation.”

A woman sang passionately, “Don’t want to wake up with no one beside me, don’t want to take up with nobody new, don’t want nobody coming by without calling, don’t want nothing to do with you…”

Dorothy saw Louis standing with his back to her, taking photos of the ornate Chihuly chandelier that dominated the center of their tapered ceiling. The chandelier was the size of a commercial freezer and looked like a giant sea anemone, with tendrils of red and orange glass. It looked gorgeous at sunrise but absolutely monstrous after dark.

Dorothy hated it.

“You’re late,” Louis said, without turning. “I was almost starting to worry.” He didn’t bother looking up from his phone as a drone the size of a hummingbird flitted about the chandelier. “You’ll be happy to know that I’ve found a potential buyer for this thing. Now would you mind stepping to the left, babe? You’re in the picture. I need to get these photos taken so I can get them sent off before we lose power.”

Dorothy set her grocery bags down and stripped off her coat and scarf, then stepped out of her boots and peeled off her socks. She doffed the damp sweater that clung to her body, and her pants were soaked below the knees where her raincoat ended and bare denim began. Her cuffs dripped on the parquet flooring.