Intellectually, some of the kids in college were far beyond me—as far as the stars were from the frog at the bottom of a well, as Ma would say. My freshman-year roommate, Valerie, had debated the importance of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill with her Yale professor parents. I had never heard of either. That was partly why I chose the solid fields of mathematics and the sciences. I did not have to overcome a mountain of books or a vast cultural past that I had neither read nor heard of. With some talent and a lot of hard work, I felt I had a chance. Although Valerie and I never fought, we did not become friends either, and after freshman year, she chose to room with a group of other girls who smoked and wore heavy black eyeliner.
Guys only liked me for the outside. I understood that I ticked the young, pretty, and bright boxes, but so did many other girls. I did not want to be replaceable and, truth was, I was too much of a nerd inside to differentiate when a man had an abstract or personal interest in me. In the dining hall, I once had a long, interesting conversation with a guy about our mutual class on the Cultural Revolution in China, and then was caught unprepared when he asked me out. I lied and said I already had a boyfriend. He never spoke to me again. Clearly, I had not been that fascinating after all.
But then I met warm, affectionate Jim. I had thought he was like me, a poor kid who made his way on his own. How thirsty I was for his attention and touch. Other boys had liked me but I never felt as if we spoke the same language. We were always, as Grandma would say, a chicken talking to a duck. But with Jim, everything was different.
Then he brought me home for Christmas and I was stunned by the mansion his parents called home. Much later, I recognized that our relationship had been defined by duplicity and silence from the start.
“You never told me,” I had said, feeling awed and betrayed. My boyfriend was a member of the groups that disdained me.
“I’ve always felt guilty and stupid about it,” he said, “being so privileged.”
His parents, both products of centuries of breeding and expectations, were wannabe hippies yet still spoke only French in front of Jim whenever they discussed “vulgar” subjects like money. They were unfailingly polite and refined, too intelligent to be overtly racist, too well-bred to show any sort of derision for the poor relation that I was. But there was never to be any shouting, no inappropriate feelings. The worst crime was to be unrefined or to serve the wrong person first at a dinner party. They had bred into Jim’s bones all the rules I had studied so theoretically in my etiquette books. I understood they were disappointed that Jim had not gone to Harvard like his father, but found Princeton acceptable. I wondered how an exuberant little boy had felt growing up in such a controlled environment.
We had sex for the first time in their indoor swimming pool while his parents were at a dinner party. We reclined in the shallow, warm water, surrounded by hothouse ferns and blooming plants like a jungle. The glass walls overlooked the windswept lake where the waves crashed against their boathouse. Jim’s hands pulled down my bikini bottom, then his hands fisted in my hair, his lips tender against the hollow between my breasts. I gasped, my legs wrapped around his waist, his groan soft as he buried himself inside me.
Their wedding gift was the one time Jim’s parents had relaxed their discipline of austerity with their only son. They had thrown us a lavish wedding and crowned it with the gift of the apartment in Brooklyn Heights.
Those days, we were both so busy. I came home exhausted and bleary-eyed. We hardly made love anymore. But we still loved each other, or so I thought. Despite the men who came on to me at the management consultancy firm, I had always looked forward to going home to Jim and our life together.
It was almost like playing with dolls, pretending to own a life I had dreamed of. I did not have a child-wish like the other women I knew, but soon, I thought, we would have kids and we would never have to send them away to be raised by someone else. I would be a fresh Sylvie, a beloved Sylvie. I brought Amy into our lives as much as I could. She never wanted to stay overnight when Jim was home for fear we were having sex or some such. I wanted to give her an oasis of peace, for her to lay down that burden of guilt she always carried. It was not fair that she had that stutter when she was little, or that she was so often in my shadow.
I was ruthless enough to climb to the top no matter what. In my work, I was sometimes responsible for the firing of hundreds of people. If it was better for my client, I did it without a pang. The older man who had come to plead with me once, “Please, I’m almost eligible for retirement”—I had asked security to escort him out.
When Amy was younger, she went through a phase of asking me questions: If you could have a mountain of doughnuts or a mountain of gold, which would you choose? The gold. If you had to bathe in blood or poop, which would you choose? Gross, Amy, I’m not answering that. If you had the answers to a test, would you share them with your best friend? No. Amy stared at me. Not even your very best friend? No. But I’d share them with you.
One weekend, after I was married, Jim was away for a conference and I invited her over. Amy was an excellent cook, her dumplings tender and soft, her soy sauce chicken fragrant, her red bean ice drinks creamy and sweet, but since Ma had never used our oven, Amy had never learned to bake. I decided we would make brownies from a mix.
“No, it can’t be that hard to make them from scratch,” Amy protested, ever the cooking princess. “What could go wrong?”
I gave her a hard stare. “I’m involved.”
She sighed. “You’re right. We’d better not risk it.”
An hour later, we both had our elbows propped on my cook-island, a box of brownie mix and all-new baking tins and equipment spread around us that I had bought for this venture.
Amy expertly stirred in the water and eggs. “I shouldn’t do this. I’m going to get fat.”
I eyed her lustrous hair, the tanned glow of her skin, her bright eyes. “Ridiculous. You’re beautiful. You have to step into yourself, grow into the woman you are meant to be.”
She blew a lock of hair out of her face. Her forearm had a big smudge of flour on it. “I don’t know. It’s been pretty long and I still don’t feel like a woman.”
“Come on, let’s finish this and I’ll do your makeup and hair.” I always felt clumsy and useless in the kitchen, probably because I never paid attention when I was there. At least I could do her face.
But of course, Amy resisted my attempts to play fairy godmother to her Cinderella. “Stop it, Sylvie. I’m not a doll. And I don’t want any fashion advice either, my clothes are fine. But can I ask you something?”
I beamed. I loved giving advice.
She poured the brownie mix into a square tin. “Why did you choose Jim? I mean, there were always boys calling the house. It drove Pa crazy.”
I stuck a finger in the mix for a taste. Amy slapped my hand away. With my pinkie still in my mouth, I thought back. “Oh, they just wanted help with their schoolwork. And none of them had any idea who I really was. The thing I noticed about Jim on our first date was that he was such a good listener. He wasn’t looking around. He was only paying attention to me. He asked questions.”
“Like what?” Amy pulled on the oven mitts and slid the brownie tray into the oven, which she had somehow remembered to preheat.