The Song of the Jade Lily, page 2
The house—Puyuan—was a redbrick Edwardian nestled behind a picket fence weighed down with pale pink climbing roses. Wisteria scrambled up the veranda posts and dangled from the iron lace trim, its blue flowers spent. Oma’s sitting room, with the bay window overlooking her precious garden, had lost none of its grandeur with age, though paint peeled from the deep gray-blue walls and wide baseboards, and the large cream plaster ceiling rose could do with patching. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the far wall were spilling over with books on herbs, Chinese medicine, history, and photography. Crammed between books at every angle were political memoirs, British thrillers—le Carré, Forsyth—and five decades of French Vogue.
Alexandra gulped back tears as she replayed her hurried departure from London. She’d left her Sloane Street apartment for Heathrow and was on a flight to Melbourne within hours of Oma calling to say the tumors had come back and spread into Opa’s organs, bones, and bloodstream. Her grandmother’s voice had lost its customary calm. Instead Alexandra could hear the deep, low tones of sadness and resignation.
When she’d finally emerged from customs in Melbourne twenty-four hours later, Oma and her friend Nina were standing with their shoulders pressed together in the arrivals hall, one dark and wiry, the other broad and soft. Alexandra allowed herself to be swallowed by their hugs, closing her eyes and breathing in traces of gardenia from her oma’s neat bun and the smell of fried garlic and smoked paprika that always accompanied Nina’s kisses.
“Danke for coming so quickly. I know with the move . . .” Oma’s voice had a new quiver.
“Oh!” Alexandra leaned down to press her cheek against her grandmother’s as she stumbled over her suitcase. “Opa—is he still . . . ?”
Her grandmother lifted a tissue and dabbed her eyes as she nodded. “He’s waiting.”
Nina laid a gentle hand on Alexandra’s shoulder. “Your opa’s still conscious. Just. He’s been asking for you. Come. I’ll take your bags.” Nina wrenched the cart from Alexandra’s grip with surprising force for a nonagenarian, insisting on pushing her bags.
Alexandra threaded her arm through her grandmother’s and asked quietly, “And you, Oma? How’re you? It must be hard.”
“I’m fine, Liebling. All the better for seeing you,” said Oma.
* * *
Alexandra shifted in the old chair as her Samsung vibrated in her back pocket and she pulled it out. Another text from Hugo: Call me back. I’m sorry A.
She deleted the message, resisting the urge to put a permanent block on her ex’s number. She wasn’t prepared to forgive him, but there was a tiny part of her that didn’t want to say goodbye. She was an expert in analyzing risk, predicting outcomes, but she had failed to see how exposed her own heart was.
Never again.
She slid the phone back into her pocket without so much as a glance at spot prices on Bloomberg. The market could wait.
She stood and threaded her fingers through Opa’s and squeezed gently, as if she could send some of her own energy surging through their joined hands. Oma would say she was channeling her qi. Alexandra grinned; perhaps the apple didn’t fall so far from the tree after all.
“Li . . . Sophia?” Opa rasped as Alexandra crouched beside him. He reached up and tried to touch her jade pendant. She shivered and cleared her throat.
She glanced over at the photo of her parents on the marble mantelpiece above the fireplace. Once she’d been a smiling, clapping toddler with glossy hair, dressed in crimson overalls and a stripy turtleneck as she sat on her mother’s knee. Her father, Joseph, tall, broad, and fair, stood to the side with a hand resting on Sophia’s shoulder. Her mother was wearing a blue denim sundress with a strap falling from a tanned shoulder, the jade pendant nestled at the top of her cleavage, and she was laughing with Joseph, gazing into his blue eyes. Alexandra’s stomach clenched as she stared at the photo, trying to remember this fierce love. It was her sole memory of her parents.
Opa barely mentioned Sophia to Alexandra by name. Oma merely shook her head and smiled when she spoke of “her gift.” Their clever child adopted from China. Cherished. Like Alexandra.
Opa strained forward, peering to get a closer look at her face.
“Li?” he repeated.
“Opa, it’s Alexandra,” she said, stroking his cool hand with her thumb, noticing how spindly it had become. His muscles had wasted away, and with them his strength and his memory. Alexandra had never heard either of her grandparents mention a Li.
“Oh.” His head dropped to the pillow with a weak smile. Then, confusion. “Your job in Shanghai?” he asked faintly.
She paused. Was he lucid? “Shanghai can wait,” replied Alexandra as she adjusted the drip line so she could perch on the edge of the bed. She could hardly tell him she’d delayed her transfer to Shanghai to spend as much time with him before—
She blinked away tears.
“Shanghai waits for no one, my dear child.” He patted her hand and pushed out a deep belly chuckle, followed by a coughing fit. Between coughs he said, “You should—” More coughing. “Li. You won’t find her . . . You look so like her, you know.”
Like who? Alexandra wondered. Did he mean her mother? Her heart sank. Her grandmother had warned her Opa was not making any sense. He’d forgotten her parents were long dead, killed in a car accident just weeks after the photo on the mantelpiece was taken. Alexandra was pulled from the wreckage by a paramedic, the back of her head sliced open like a peach. She traced the smooth scar at the nape of her neck, hidden by long hair. Some days it burned and puckered when she touched it, but most days she felt nothing. It was a grafted void.
As her eyes clouded with tears, she looked up at the blurry crystal chandelier and watched the rainbow of light swim across the ceiling and wall. This gray-blue room was home. Her grandparents were her anchor. And now she was losing her opa. She squeezed his hand again and rubbed his other arm, trying to warm his skin and ease his pain.
Opa spluttered and wheezed. “The spitting image. Your grandmother . . .”
“Shhh,” said Alexandra as she looked to the nurse for help.
“Your grandmother—Romy.” Cough. “She was the strongest of us all. The three of us—”
More coughs. Opa’s shoulders shook so hard Alexandra thought he might burst a lung.
The nurse jumped up and came over to rub Opa’s back as he continued hacking. Alexandra stepped aside to give Sally room. “Can we give him something?” she asked helplessly. “Water, medicine?”
The nurse ignored her, focusing on her patient. “There, there, Mr. Cohen—Wilhelm. Nice deep breaths . . .”
“I’ll fetch Oma,” said Alexandra, glancing out the window to where her grandmother was gardening.
“No need, love. It will pass in a sec. Besides, she’ll only get her smoke going, or stick some more needles in his ankles. None of it helps much. Not at this stage.”
Alexandra’s head thudded as she realized what the smell lingering in the room was: moxa. Alexandra pictured Oma waving dried sticks of Chinese mugwort over Opa’s head, under his nose, then lighting the ends for an instant before blowing the smoke softly and pressing it straight onto pressure points on his ankles, wrists, and neck. She giggled just a little—no wonder Sally was bewildered.
Sally raised an eyebrow at her and bustled over to the other side of the bed to tap the drip. “Hydration and morphine. Your grandfather’s on the good gear—aren’t you, Wilhelm?” The nurse articulated her words slowly and clearly as if Opa were in nursery school.
“Opa . . . will he?” Alexandra hesitated. “This coughing—do the drugs actually stop the pain?”
“They certainly do. We’re doing everything we can to make sure he’s comfortable.”
“Is there any possibility . . . I mean, this cancer . . .” She looked at Opa, who had lapsed into unconsciousness once more.
Sally shook her head. “I’m sorry, love. But he knows you’re here. Apple of his eye, you are. Talks about you nonstop.”
The nurse rolled Opa gently onto his side without waking him. She looked back over at Alexandra: “So you just arrived from London? You must be jet-lagged. I hear it’s shocking this way, coming home.” The nurse was friendly and businesslike—rubbing Wilhelm’s back as she spoke to Alexandra.
Alexandra nodded. Her legs ached and her body felt like she’d been run over by a truck. Last night she’d stepped off the kangaroo-hop flight clammy with a cold and a barking cough despite using the nasal saline spray with a hint of eucalyptus she’d picked up from the pharmacy in departures. The smell made her homesick. But it turned out a whole ocean up her nose couldn’t stem this cold. No sooner had the taxi pulled into the driveway than Oma rushed Alexandra straight into a deep warm bath sprinkled with cinnamon. The steamy bathroom smelled like Christmas. Alexandra smiled to herself as she absentmindedly rubbed her jade pendant. Opa might be dying, but Oma still fussed over Alexandra. Some things never changed.
“Your grandmother tells me you’re some kind of financial bigwig over there in London.” Sally eyed Alexandra’s navy Stella McCartney yoga pants and gold-trimmed hoodie. “Sounds very flash.” She grinned.
Alexandra shrugged. “Not really. I trade commodities. Precious metals. Copper, gold, zinc, nickel, aluminum . . . but mostly I just trade paper,” she joked.
“I see,” said Sally, looking momentarily confused before breaking into a shy smile. “I guess you’ll never have to worry about topping up your retirement pension.”
Alexandra was too embarrassed to respond—her job seemed pointless today. As she watched Sally soothe her opa, rearranging the white sheets around his legs and up under his arms so he wasn’t irritated by the scratchy hems, it seemed to her that Sally was the gold in this room.
“There you go, Wilhelm. Just have a little rest for a minute or two and then you can have a catch-up with your granddaughter. Gorgeous creature, she is.” The nurse winked and picked up a thriller sitting on a chair in the far corner.
Alexandra sat back down in her comfy chair and pulled a woolen throw over her legs, wishing she could roll back the years. She didn’t want Opa to go. Not yet. Not ever. But she hated seeing him like this.
She picked up the soup Oma had made her before ducking out into the garden. It was still warm. She held the cup in her hands for a heartbeat before taking a sip and savoring the familiar rush down her throat, heating her stomach. It was the taste of her childhood colds: dried black bean paste with crushed garlic, ginger, and chives.
Alexandra shifted her gaze back to the window and watched as Oma wandered around her vegetable garden chomping on a green bean. Along the back fence was a thick bay hedge. In the middle of a blanket of thyme stood a row of trees. A gnarly Meyer lemon, limes, and a tiny gingko. These were underplanted with waves of lilies, budding peony stems, and purple clouds of flowering garlic and chives floating among blue monkshood.
Alexandra had missed the chaotic color and whimsical combinations of Puyuan’s garden. When was the last time she’d had her fingers in soil? She stretched out her manicured hands. They were so smooth—as if they belonged to someone else. As a child, Alexandra had loved to work alongside Oma and Opa in the garden and the kitchen, climbing the old oak tree, shelling peas, staking tomatoes and cramming her mouth with the tiny ones before they popped and sprayed down the front of her T-shirt.
She took another sip of soup and felt the ginger warm her throat.
Oma’s silver hair bobbed among the long rows of tomatoes. The staked rows were about the same height as her grandmother. Oma plucked the leftover red-and-green tiger tomatoes from the vines, not stopping until she’d filled the wicker basket slung over her forearm. Then she picked handfuls of the purple and deep green basil huddled under the tomatoes. Alexandra’s stomach rumbled as she realized Oma was out picking lunch.
Alexandra closed her eyes and listened to the rhythm of the oxygen machine, beeping monitor, and grandfather clock. Then she prayed.
Chapter 3
When she’d finished in the garden, Romy walked into the kitchen, dropped her basket onto the wooden bench. She popped two tiny red tomatoes into her mouth; they were still warm from the autumn sun, and the sweet juice and seeds exploded, filling her cheeks.
She had mountains of coriander, so she put the leaves and stems into the blender with a glug of olive oil, a handful of almonds, three cloves of garlic, and the juice of half a lemon to make pesto for today’s lunch. Alexandra certainly looked like she could do with a good feed, and the coriander would be a bit of a wake-up call for her system—helping to fight any bugs still lurking from the flight. Any leftover paste could go in the freezer.
Romy found she was eating less and less these days, so she pulled the curly green leaves of bok choy out of the basket and gave them a rinse, leaving them in the colander to dry. Just before it was time to eat, she’d steam the leaves and make a dressing of basil oil, chili, Sichuan pepper, and a dash of maple syrup. She’d have a small bowl of greens, instead of the pumpkin and water chestnut risotto left over from the night before.
Nina had joined them for dinner after they’d arrived home from the airport, helping herself to a second serving of the risotto. Some things never changed.
“Is this pumpkin from your garden, Oma?” Alexandra had asked, clearly trying to be bright and cheery as she divided her meal into neat piles on her plate.
“Yes. It’ll strengthen your spleen and rebuild your qi. The thyme is good for your lungs.”
Nina rolled her eyes at Alexandra in solidarity.
“Well,” Nina exclaimed in her cutting Austrian accent, “you’re fortunate you missed the sautéed lamb kidneys your grandmother forced on me last week. Dished up with orchid stems and shiitake mushrooms.” She winked.
“It’s good for your lower back and knee pains,” Romy protested. “Good for longevity. Look at you—strong as an ox.” She marveled at her friend’s golden skin, full blond bob, and one of her endless parade of sequined kaftans.
“Ach,” said Nina, “perhaps it gave me more energy. It certainly gave me more”—she paused as she hunted for the right word—“vigor? Ardor? Old Mr. Thompson from my book club certainly appreciated it. I gave him my best Anaïs Nina.”
Nina shimmied her broad shoulders and chuckled as Romy narrowed her eyes and shook her head, exasperated.
Alexandra choked on a piece of pumpkin.
“They’re going to throw you out of your apartment in the retirement village if you keep up that sort of carrying on,” Romy said sternly. “What about the warning letter last week?”
“Psscht. We’re old. Not dead.”
The women fell silent. For some minutes, the only sound was the clatter of forks against blue china bowls.
Then Nina reached out and took a hand of each of the other women. She lifted them both to her mouth and kissed first Romy’s, then Alexandra’s. “Sorry. It was thoughtless of me to make such a joke. I’m here. Lean on me, okay?”
She sighed and looked at Romy, her serious brown eyes pleading. “It’s my turn.”
* * *
Romy ran her hands over the fresh mint leaves and raised them to her face to take the scent deep into her lungs. She’d brew up some to help with her granddaughter’s sore throat.
She was worried about Alexandra. The minute she set eyes on her in the arrivals hall—the dark rings under her eyes, gaunt cheeks, hunched shoulders—Romy thought of her own mother standing at Brenner station, icy winds stinging her cheeks. Fleeing Austria to begin a new life in Shanghai.
Bereft.
What was Alexandra fleeing? There was the breakup, of course. She’d always felt Hugo and Alexandra were two lonely souls who had lashed themselves together like a hastily constructed life raft. Romy always wondered if Alexandra chose Hugo not so much for his mathematical wizardry and companionship, but because she was simply tired of being alone.
Nina, bless her, had noticed too, raising her eyebrows behind the girl’s back as they’d loaded her bags into the taxi the night before.
There was pressure, of course, being the only child. Romy’s time in Shanghai weighed heavily on her. The need to be enough for both parents. It was a burden Romy had always tried to hide.
But here she was—their only grandchild—home in time to watch her cherished grandfather die. Wilhelm and Alexandra had always been quite the twosome over the years, playing tennis, poring over spreadsheets, swapping stock market tips.
Romy had made a point of loosening the ties of their circle of three and was accepting when Alexandra chose to pursue study, career, and then love overseas. Yet it was hard to watch her move so far away.
But time had a way of pulling back the past. The family—the life Romy and Wilhelm had created in this vast, baking, lucky country—was about to end.
Romy wiped the tears from her eyes, raised her arms, and stretched her back, taking in the smell of herbs filling the kitchen.
What was going on with Alexandra? Her usually glossy hair was limp, dull, and there was a tinny optimism, a false bravado, to her smile. Her brown eyes flickered to one side when she spoke, and there was a constant twitch to her legs. She had a cold, yes, but this was something else. A dangerous energy was flooding her robust body.
A lifetime of burying her own uncertainties had taught Romy to recognize the signs.
Chapter 4
BRENNER PASS, AUSTRIA, NOVEMBER 14, 1938
Romy tugged the collar of her blue coat so it sat high at the nape of her neck. She was too frightened to take it off. Not until they were out of Austria. Beside her, Mutti and Papa shifted in their second-class seats as their narrow carriage rolled on its tracks through the tight turns of the Brenner Pass. When they had reached the Brenner Bahnhof, Papa had instructed Romy to pull her hat low, hold his hand, and not make a peep as they quickly changed trains for Italy. She must follow the rules.
