Pioneer Girl (13 page)

All at once the other people around us headed to the opened doors of the library. Amy and I started to move too, and soon found ourselves standing in the middle of the lobby, a marble bath of light that revealed all the floors of the building, the stairs leading up to stacks of stacks. The ceiling, a glass rotunda, showed the sky's mass of clouds.

That's when I thought I saw him. A guy carrying a chartreuse bike helmet, evidently having arrived through a different door, pausing for a second to check his phone. Amy noticed too—she had studied Gregory's Facebook profile—and said, “It's showtime.”

We got into the same elevator with him, along with an old woman with a brown shopping bag of books and a guy who could have been homeless or could have been an academic. Gregory—I was pretty sure it was him—had a book bag slung over his shoulder, stainless-steel water bottle stuck in a side pocket. His light tan and delicate freckles were a match to his photos, as were the faded collar points of his button-down. They transmitted the kind of outdoorsy, active masculinity I'd always associated with this part of the country. Probably he was a vegetarian. I could find nothing in his face that hinted at Rose or Laura except that his features seemed as unremarkable as theirs in the photographs I'd seen, and yet I decided this had to be the Gregory Stellenson I had come to San Francisco to find. It was a perverse moment that I savored, and would savor for a long time afterward: being that close, knowing something of a person who did not know me. When the elevator reached the sixth floor we all made a move to step out. It was then that Gregory glanced over at me. Just a glance. A register of another body, another person occupying a nearby space. He had no particular expression on his face, nothing to indicate a lifetime of anything but normalcy.

I had almost forgotten Amy until she brushed my shoulder.

Gregory disappeared into the back of the History Center while the old woman and the homeless academic settled themselves in the reading room. Amy and I peeked in.

From our prep work online, I knew that the San Francisco History Center housed everything from old building permits and census files to manuscripts, original newspapers, and photographs, all documenting the rise, devastation by fire, and rebirth of the city. Undoubtedly there were materials in here that pertained to Rose herself, or were written by her, like her articles and features in the
San Francisco Bulletin
. In this way she'd been in the library all this time, with Gregory circling around her. Perhaps he'd even read her work.

“Ready?” Amy said.

“Right now?”

“When else?”

She started walking toward the main desk but I stopped her. “Are we sure about this? We can't just disrupt his whole life while he's at work, can we? Seems kind of, I don't know, rude.”

Amy looked at me like I was crazy.

“This could change his life,” I said, all at once nervous, thinking for the first time about the irreversible nature of that. “It's a big thing to be responsible for.”

“Okay,” Amy said. But she looked like she was having to hold herself back from rushing into the room and blurting everything out. “What do you want to do, then?”

“Maybe we should wait. Make a clearer plan.”

“It's your call,” she said finally, concealing just a bit of a sigh.

For a while we lingered outside the reading room, trying not to stare too hard when Gregory came into view. He seemed to have a separate office space but emerged frequently to talk to the woman at the reception area.

“We look like loiterers,” Amy pointed out.

She was right. We either had to leave the area or sit down and pretend to do research. We tried not to watch as Gregory walked into the reading room and took a volume down from a shelf.

“I need another breakfast,” I said.

Over lattes and scones at a nearby café Amy tried to convince me to get the thing over with. The sooner we talked to him, she said, the sooner everything would sink in. But now that I knew he truly did exist, the anxiety I'd felt on the plane, flying in from Chicago, shifted. Finding Gregory Stellenson had been too easy.

“I think I'm afraid of a letdown,” I admitted. “Or maybe of a dismissal. It's almost more exciting this way, like being next in line for the roller-coaster ride. Because it's possible he might not care at all.”

Amy's voice was resolute again as she said, “Listen. Here's what we should do. We're not going to have a crisis about this. We'll go do something else for a while, then come back. We've got time. We have hours before the end of the workday. By then you'll feel better about all this.” She had the right mind for an academic life—curious, interested in the most minor and pedantic details, and not afraid to follow a tangent even while keeping her eye on the prize. She was better at the task than I was and I was glad for the direction.

We went to the Ferry Building and ate our way through it, peaches to oysters to macarons, and talked through the Laura and Rose timelines. This was why we were such good friends: we could get lost in the joy of the shared obsession, spending hours dissecting our favorite details from the
Little House
books as if the memories were our own. Like living in a dugout—a freaking dugout. Like the imagined feel of Laura's beloved velvet hat that she made herself. The bangs she cut herself, that Ma called a “lunatic fringe.” The vanity cakes Ma made, all puffed and golden and melting on the tongue. How about blackbirds, fried in their own fat? Oyster soup stippled with butter and black pepper. Maple syrup poured over snow and hardening into candy. Remember the barrels of lemonade at the Fourth of July celebration in De Smet, how all the townspeople drank from the same dipper? What about the communal “roll towel” at that hotel train stop on the way to Silver Lake—one skein of fabric that everyone used, looking for a dry spot? There was a shared Christmas tree too, kept at the church and decorated with popcorn balls and peppermint candy for all. We imagined we were both Laura, going from homestead to homestead, scrabbling for the next garden, the next set of meals, and finding joy and luxury in the smallest things: a bit of codfish gravy; a handmade rag doll; a fresh ribbon for our braids.

By the time we returned to the library it was almost three in the afternoon. We'd agreed that we would approach Gregory if he was alone, introduce ourselves, and hope he didn't take us for psychotic stalkers. If he was busy, we would wait until he was heading home.

Back in the reading room, we sat for nearly half an hour until Gregory finally appeared with a cart, a shinier version of Ron's back at the Hoover. He wheeled it over to a corner set of shelves. The old lady and the homeless academic were gone but in their place were a dozen others like them. Most were reading intently; two were dozing off in their chairs.

Amy and I went over to where Gregory seemed to be organizing indexes.

She spoke first. “Can I ask you a question?”

He looked up. “Sure.”

“We have a few questions about historical research,” Amy said, her tone so bright that Gregory seemed a little taken aback.

“What do you want to know?” he asked.

“I'm Amy,” Amy said. “This is Lee. We're investigating a bit of a literary mystery.”

“Gregory,” he said, and I felt the weight of his name in my chest, not daring to look at Amy just then. “What sort of mystery?” On his face, caution seemed to be turning into curiosity.

“It's about Laura Ingalls Wilder,” I said. I rushed the words, wanting to gauge any spontaneous reaction, but there wasn't one. “And her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane,” I continued.

Gregory nodded again, with no particular investment.

I glanced at Amy, who asked, “Do you know who they are?”

“The
Little House on the Prairie
books? The TV show? Sure.”

“The show was totally different from the books,” I said.

“Lee just got her PhD in English lit,” Amy said. “She's spent years researching.”

“Your work is on Laura Ingalls Wilder?”

“Well, nineteenth-century American.”

“You probably deal with academics and researchers all the time,” Amy said, smiling.

I realized then that she was starting to
flirt
with him. It sent a flare of annoyance through me, as if she were violating an ethical code.
We aren't here for that
, I wanted to say.

“I deal with people from the general public too, but it's not clear who's nuttier.” Gregory looked from Amy to me and back at Amy. “You don't seem that nutty.”

Was he flirting back? I wasn't even sure if he was including me in that
you
.

“Rose Wilder lived in San Francisco for a number of years,” I broke in. “She was a reporter at the
San Francisco Bulletin
. Laura Ingalls Wilder visited her here in 1915, during the World's Fair.”

“Oh, do you want to see the
Bulletin
archives?”

“Rose also had a child here,” Amy said. She paused, waiting for me to pick up the rest.

“That is, she might have,” I said. And I couldn't go further than that. Even after Amy's pep talk at the Ferry Building, I couldn't muster the nerve to come out with this history that might have been his or might have been fiction. I remembered how Alex said nothing proved a connection, that I was reading what I wanted into Rose's words, into Mrs. Stellenson's letter. And who was I to do this anyway? Gregory might not care, or he might care more than could be anticipated. What right did I have to challenge his family story like this?

I shook my head at Amy, but Gregory caught me.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Everything's fine,” I said. “But you know what, I think we're going to have to come back another time to see the archives.”

“Are you sure?” Amy asked. “After all, we're here right now.”

“Yeah, I'm sure. Sorry,” I said, turning back to Gregory. “I just have a few more logistics to figure out first.”

“That's fine.” He started to roll the cart forward. “If you end up needing help, I'm usually around.”

“Thanks.”

I led the way toward the elevators, Amy reluctantly following. When I glanced back at Gregory he was looking at us, but turned back to his work.

“What's wrong with you?” Amy said. “Now he probably thinks we're a couple of freaks. Or like we're trying to pick him up or something.”

I pushed the down button. “I don't think we've thought this thing through.”

“What are you talking about? It's all we've done today. That and eat.”

“I can't get over the fact that we're potentially going to change his whole life with this information. Is that even fair? Do we have the right?”

“You need to stop thinking of it like that. Maybe he wants to know. Maybe he'll be thrilled.
I
would be. I'd be over the moon if someone told me I was related to Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'd be, like,
Where're my royalties?
”

“But that's the thing—we could end up setting off a whole chain of events that have nothing to do with us.”

“Look where he works,” she pointed out. “He'll probably be fascinated by this.”

I couldn't disagree with that, but when the elevator arrived I got on it. Amy was quiet.

Outside, we stood in the sunshine for a moment before she spoke. “This is your deal. Whatever you want to do is yours. But if I know you, there's no way you're going to be able to leave San Francisco without finding out more. And Gregory Stellenson is the only person who can in any way confirm all these theories you have.”

We started walking back to her apartment. Tomorrow, I suggested, rather than promised, but Amy said she had to work all day. Would I wait until Friday?

“Of course,” I said. It was a relief. My flight back to O'Hare wasn't until Sunday. Plenty of time.

As we crossed Market Street Amy said, “He's pretty cute, don't you think?”

“So what?”

She just laughed.

T
he next morning I was studying the map of San Francisco Amy had given me when my phone buzzed with a long-awaited text from Sam. After this cross-country chase I'd set myself on, I half expected him to say that he wasn't in California at all.

Instead the text bubble read:
Why are you here?

I started to type back but realized: Was this how it was going to be, brief bursts of words that either of us could walk away from at any time? So I called him.

To my surprise, Sam's voice. “What's going on?”

“Hey. What's going on with you?” I asked if he had time for coffee. After a little hesitation he named a café in Pacific Heights—from the map, it didn't look to be far from Rose's old house on Russian Hill—and we settled on meeting in an hour.

I took my time walking there, figuring that Sam would keep me waiting. Not that I minded in a place like this. I hadn't realized how hungry I'd been for hills and color and depth—the clouds hovering, chains of houses shoulder to shoulder, their various shades of mint and frost and lavender backgrounded by crisscrossing power lines.

The coffee shop Sam had named was minimalist-modern with copper counters and reclaimed wood tables, but sold homey-looking cream pies, doughnuts, and layer cakes. I was finishing my second latte and a slice of blueberry buckle when Sam finally appeared, more than half an hour after our agreed-upon time. He went to the counter first, not even bothering with a wave or nod, then ambled over with a coffee and cruller.

“So what are you doing here?” he said as he sat down, starting in on the cruller. Up close, he didn't look as drawn as he had the last time I'd seen him, but he didn't look happy either. He looked trendy—skinny pants and short-sleeved plaid shirt. He'd always been vaguely hipster-looking without much effort, but maybe being in San Francisco had put him over the edge.

“Research.”

“Really.”

“I've been over at the History Center in the main library.” I spoke too fast, already on the defensive.

“For what?”

Instead of answering, I asked, “Why did you come here and not Southern California?”

“I know people here.”

That was news to me. Neither of us spoke for a moment.

Sam gave me a mock-expectant look that reminded me of our mother—her favorite edition of the withering gaze. “Well? Any other questions?”

“Why did you take Mom's jewelry and leave the gold pin?”

He gave a heavy sigh. “Did you come all the way out here to yell at me about that?”

“They don't even know,” I said. “But come on, Sam. Jesus Christ. The cash register? The jewelry? That's beyond low.”

“I don't have time to listen to this.”

“How is it that you're the victim here? You know all Mom wants is for you to go back home. You know she would overlook just about anything.”

He drank his coffee, trying his best, I thought, to look like he didn't care at all. He took out his phone and checked it. Near us, a couple was sharing a table with their matching laptops. They spoke quietly to each other over their screens and laughed the irritating laugh of two people in complete agreement.

“What are
you
doing out here?” I asked. “Where are you staying?”

“Who's asking these questions? You or Mom?”

“I'm not her assistant.”

“Sure about that?”

“Are you kidding me? You're the favorite.”

“And you're the Goody Two-shoes. Always have been.”

All of a sudden we were glaring at each other. At another time, last year, before the news about Hieu, I would have been afraid that Sam would get up and leave. But now I knew how much he wanted Hieu's money; I knew that he still thought I might be able to find it. “You get to do whatever you want, take whatever you want, and not have a moment's worry about it. You're free.”

“I'm a constant disappointment,” Sam said flatly. “You think I don't know everyone thinks that?”

“You're the favorite. And that's all that matters. You should see Mom—”

“I don't like all the expectation. I can't fulfill some role. It's ridiculous.”

“It's not about fulfilling a role,” I said, though I didn't quite believe that myself.

“Do you remember,” he said, “how I went to the prom with Kirsten Lonski?”

Surprised, I nodded. I remembered Sam's rental tux and how he'd asked me if I knew how to fasten cuff links. I didn't, and it took us twenty minutes to figure it out. Earlier that day he'd brought home a rose corsage, bigger than a fist, and kept it in its plastic case in the refrigerator. He had been so nervous about picking up Kirsten, meeting her parents, and posing for pictures. At the time I'd been impressed that he'd asked her and that she'd said yes. She was, if not a total A-lister, enough on the fringes of it to be included in their parties. She was the kind of girl I had wanted to be, many times, growing up: conventionally pretty, blond, normal.

I didn't recall much else about Sam's senior prom, or whether or not they'd had a good time. I said so to Sam, who replied, “It was a fairly shitty event.”

As it turned out, he said, Kirsten had agreed to go with him because she and her boyfriend Jim had just broken up and he'd asked another girl to the prom. Kirsten wore a strapless, sequined, powder-blue dress that was so tight her mom made her bring along a shawl, but it was all for Jim. Sam spent most of the evening hanging out with his friends and their dates while Kirsten and Jim slow-danced toward reconciliation in the local Marriott's crystal ballroom.

I was almost holding my breath as Sam talked, wondering if he was going to deliver us into one of those rare moments of sibling confidence, the two of us aligned in knowing something that no one else could.

Then he said, “Do you know why I'm telling you all this? Because you don't get it. You never will.”

I sat back. The disappointment was stunning. “What don't I get?”

“Being an Asian guy is totally different from being an Asian girl.”

“Every Asian or Asian American person knows what it means to feel like a freak.”

“It's different for guys. Worse for guys. Especially where we grew up.”

“Because media images tend to desexualize Asian guys and hypersexualize the women. I know.”

“You know because you've read about it or studied it in some class, but you don't
know
. Does any guy want to be Jackie Chan, or Mr. Miyagi, or that guy from
Sixteen Candles
?”

“I get what you're saying.”

“No, you don't. I'm saying I should have come here a long time ago. Look around. There are probably more Asians here than white people.”

“I never knew you felt this way.”

“Don't start thinking this is some psychological crisis. There's a reason I was no good in that scene back home. I needed to be somewhere else. Here.”

His rant was so persuasive, I had to wonder if I'd somehow collaborated, contributed to his shame. But I said, “If you're not going back home, then at least you have to tell them.”

“You're the messenger, Lee. You're going to go straight back to Franklin and tell them everything.”

I was stuck and he knew it. So I said, “You must think the messaging goes the other way too. About Hieu.”

At this Sam looked up. “You talked to Mom about that?”

I nodded, lying.

“And? What about the money?”

“You have to come home,” I said. The words seemed to emerge without my control, that's how natural it felt to tell that lie.

“What kind of number are we talking about here?” he asked.

I said I didn't know.

“That's fucking stupid. It's not like she can force me to stay there forever.”

He tipped his empty coffee cup back and forth. “What else did you ask her? Did she tell you how long they've been together?” He looked at me—I'd never had a poker face and never would—and gave a short laugh. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. You didn't figure that one out, did you?”

In truth, the thought had never occurred to me. Our mother was asexual, someone who had no time for the frivolities of romance. “How do you know this?”

“It was obvious. I could tell by the way they were talking.”

“That's hard to believe,” I said, though as I spoke the words I remembered Hieu's laughter, his presence in those early days, all the gifts he'd brought and we'd accepted as if they were owed to us.

“Then why don't you ask her about it? Ask Ong Hai.”

“You said yourself he wouldn't say anything.”

“Because he knows.”

“When you followed her that time, what exactly did you see?”

“Look, they were talking about money. I heard them. He was saying something about a check. I couldn't understand all of it, but it was definitely about money. And then she said something about years. It was obvious.”

In a strange way it made sense to me. I had often wondered how my mother had been able to go from one restaurant to the next, one apartment to the next, when each venture involved fresh costs and security deposits. I had always assumed that she and Ong Hai were dedicated savers who lived by bargains and deals. But maybe all that time she—we—had been cushioned by Hieu. Chu Hieu. The invisible benefactor uncle. And maybe all that time—how long after my father's death? or was it even before?—my mother had been comforted by him too.

Ong Hai had always said that my father had taken care of Hieu, had helped him out, taught him business sense. Maybe that had added to Hieu's guilt and what Sam called his blood money.

Sam checked his phone again, put it back in his pocket. “I gotta go,” he said.

“We're in the middle of a conversation.”

He pushed back his chair and stood.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

He shrugged.

We were back to the beginning, then. “You don't have to go home forever. But I think it's fair to say a decent good-bye, especially if you want that money.”

“So that's her bargain, then.”

He stood there for a moment longer and I thought I could keep him there, keep him talking, if I just asked more questions, held out the imaginary promise of money. But I didn't, and he wasn't going to give me anything. Having made the move to leave, he was going to see it through.

We didn't even say good-bye.

I brought our empty plates and cups to a tub near the counter and went outside. When I faced the direction Sam had turned I could see him ahead on the sidewalk, his lean figure knowable even in the wake of the other Asians and tourists.

It was easy enough to follow him. He was talking on his phone, not looking back. Did he know me enough to guess that I might be there?

He led me into a neighborhood of homes where all the front yards had that glint of modern money. You could see it in the crisp trim, the wrought-iron fences, the just-so pattern of freshly bricked paths leading to front steps—these were crucial details, the result of countless hours considering words like
heritage
,
preservation
.

It was just the two of us on the street now. Sam turned at a three-story Victorian that was sandwiched into a hill among other Victorians, and painted the color of cantaloupe flesh, bay windows accented by stripes of cream and honeydew. The shrubbery and plants that made up the patch of landscaping in front looked downright molded, almost unreal. I watched Sam go up the steps and inside without a key.

I stood there for a few minutes, memorizing the street, the house number, what the neighborhood looked like.

And then I went up the stone steps too, and, as Sam had done, opened the unlocked door and walked in.

The house had that hushed feel of cleaned surfaces and cleaning services that reminded me of the rich kids in high school. They weren't my group—everyone seemed to find their own level, self-segregating by socioeconomic status—but I had been over to a couple of their houses to work on group assignments and attend graduation parties. These were the homes that had awed me with their dedication to design. It seemed that even their building materials were inherently purer than any that made up the rentals my family occupied. The purity extended down to the baseboards, to the shine of the wood floors, to the concealed spaces beneath every piece of furniture. They exuded the assumption of grace. At the very least, you had to respect all the money and care that built them.

As I stood in the front hall of the cantaloupe Victorian, I wondered what trouble I was getting myself into. Because the house was so quiet, I tiptoed toward the back. The space was open, revealing one of those kitchens where the centerpiece was a giant range, a stainless-steel hood hovering almost menacingly over it. A bar surrounded the cooking area and more living space stretched out beyond it—a cushiony twill sofa and chaise facing a stone fireplace with a huge flat-screen mounted above it like a painting. There was a second stairway to the upstairs and French doors leading to the back patio. I opened them and stepped out. Like some kind of 3-D garden catalog, the patio bore an enormous gas grill, umbrellaed tables, and lounge chairs I would have worried about getting ruined in the rain. I sat down on one of them. From this little hideaway the city felt entirely removed. That was the difference so much money could make. In a suburban rental, hiding out was the same as being forgotten; here, it was a deliberate choice and the rest of the world would just have to wait.

When Sam said my name, I started as if I had fallen asleep, and maybe I had, because he was sitting in the pillowed armchair across from me, holding a bottle of beer.

“You live here?” I said.

“Yeah, it belongs to a friend of mine.”

“Are you staying here or are you living here?”

He shrugged. He looked, indeed, like he was in no hurry to leave. “Judson doesn't care.”