Yellow : stories

"Elegant and engrossing...[an] unusually complete portrait of contemporary Asian America."—Los Angeles Times..."A gem....Lee has captured this truth beautifully, wisely, and with winning economy."—__Cleveland Plain Dealer__As the __Los Angeles Times__ noted in its profile of the author, "few writers have mined the [genre of ethnic literature] as shrewdly or transcended its limits quite so stunningly as Don Lee." Harking "back to the timeless concerns of Chekhov: fate, chance, the mystery of the human heart" (Stuart Dybek), these interconnected stories "are utterly contemporary,...but grounded in the depth of beautiful prose and intriguing storylines" (__Asian Week__). They paint a novelistic portrait of the fictional town of Rosarita Bay, California, and a diverse cast of complex and moving characters. "Nothing short of wonderful...surprising and wild with life" (Robert Boswell), Yellow "proves that wondering about whether you're a real American is as... YELLOWSTORIESBy DON LEEW. W. Norton & Company, Inc.Copyright © 2001 Don Lee.All rights reserved.ISBN: 0-393-02562-4Chapter One THE PRICE OF EGGS IN CHINAIt was noon when Dean Kaneshiro arrived at OrientalHair Poet No. 2's house, and as she opened the door, shesaid, blinking, "Hello. Come in. I'm sorry. I'm not quiteawake." He carried his measuring rig through the living room, notingthe red birch floor, the authentic Stickley, the Nakashimatable, the Maloof credenza—good craftsmanship, carefullyselected, this poet, Marcella Ahn, was a woman who knewwood. "When you called," she said in her study, "I'd almost forgotten.It's been over two years! I hope I wasn't too difficultto track down." Immediately Dean was annoyed. When she had orderedthe chair, he had been clear about his backlog, and today wasthe exact date he'd given her for the fitting. And she had beendifficult to track down, despite his request, two years ago,that she notify him of any changes of address. Her telephonenumber in San Francisco had been disconnected, and he hadhad to find her book in the library, then call her publisher inNew York, then her agent, only to learn that Marcella Ahnhad moved an hour south of San Francisco to the very town,Rosarita Bay, where he himself lived. Never mind that heshould have figured this out, having overheard rumors of yetanother Asian poet in town with spectacular long hair,rumors which had prompted the references to her andCaroline Yip, his girlfriend of eight months, as the OrientalHair Poets. He adjusted his rig. Marcella Ahn was thin and tall, butmost of her height was in her torso, not her legs—typical ofKoreans. She wore tight midnight-blue velvet pants, lace-upblack boots, and a flouncy white Victorian blouse, her tinywaist cinched by a thick leather belt. "Sit, please," he said. She settled into the measuring rig. Hewalked around her twice, then said, "Stand up, please." Aftershe got up, he fine-tuned the back supports and armrests andshortened the legs. "Again, please." She sat down. "Oh, that's much better, infinitely better,"she said. "You can do that just by looking?" Now came the part that Dean always hated. He could usethe rig to custom-fit his chairs for every part of the bodyexcept for one. "Could you turn around, please?" "Sorry?" "Could you turn around? For the saddling of the seat?" Marcella Ahn's eyes lighted, and the whitewash of herfoundation and powder was suddenly broken by the mischievouscurl of her lips, which were painted a deep claret. "Youmean you want to examine ... my buttocks?" He could feel sweat popping on his forehead. "Please." Still smirking, she raised her arms, the ruffled cuffs of herblouse dropping away, followed by the jangling release oftwo dozen silver bracelets on each wrist. There were silverrings on nearly every digit, too, and with her exquisitely lacqueredfingers, she slowly gathered her hair—straight andlambent and hanging to midthigh—and raked it over oneshoulder so it lay over her breast. Then she pivoted on hertoe, turned around, and daintily lifted the tail of her blouseto expose her butt. He squatted behind her and stared at it for a full ten seconds.It was a good butt, a firm, StairMastered butt, a shapely,surprisingly protuberant butt. She peeked over her shoulder. "Need me to bend over a little?"she asked. He bounced up and moved across the room and pretendedto jot down some notes, then looked around. More classicmodern furniture, very expensive. And the place was neat,obsessive-compulsive neat. He pointed to her desk. "You'llbe using the chair here?" "Yes." "To do your writing?" "Uh-huh." "I'll watch you, then. For twenty minutes, please." "What? Right now?" "It'll help me to see you work, how you sit, maybeslouch." "It's not that simple," she said. "No?" "Of course not. Poets can't write on demand. You knownothing about poetry, do you?" "No, I don't," Dean said. All he ever read, in fact, weremystery novels. He went through three or four of them aweek—anything with a crime, an investigation. He was nowso familiar with forensic techniques, he could predict almostany plot twist, but his head still swam in delight at the firsthint of a frame-up or double-cross. He glanced out the window. Marcella Ahn lived offSkyview Ridge Road, which crested the rolling foothills, andshe had one of the few panoramic views of Rosarita Bay—theharbor to the north, the marsh to the south, the town in themiddle, and, everywhere beyond, the vast Pacific. Marcella Ahn had her hands on her hips. "And I don'tslouch," she said. Eventually he did convince her to sit in her present deskchair, an ugly vinyl contraption with pneumatic levers andbulky ergonomic pads. She opened a bound notebook anduncapped a fountain pen, and hovered over the blank pagefor what seemed like a long time. Then she abruptly seteverything aside and booted up her laptop computer. "Whatdo you do with clients who aren't within driving distance?" "I ask for a videotape, and I talk to their tailor. Try towork, please. Then I'll be out of your way." "I feel so silly." "Just pretend I'm not here," he said. Marcella Ahn continued to stare at the computer screen.She shifted, crossed her legs, and tucked them underneathher. Finally, she set her fingers on the keys and tapped outthree words—all she could manage, apparently. She exhaledheavily. "When will the chair be ready?" "I'll start on it next month, on April twentieth, then threeweeks, so May eleventh," he told her, though he requiredonly half that time. He liked to plan for contingencies, and heknew his customers wanted to believe—especially with theprices they were paying—that it took him longer to make thechairs. "Can I visit your studio?" she asked. "No, you cannot." "Ah, you see, you can dish it—" "It would be very inconvenient." "For twenty minutes." "Please don't," he said. "Seriously. I can't swing by for a couple of minutes?" "No." Marcella Ahn let out a dismissive puff. "Artists," she said.Oriental Hair Poet No. 1 was a slob. Caroline Yip lived inan apartment above the R. B. Feed & Hardware store, onesmall room with a Pullman kitchen, a cramped bathroom,and no closets. Her only furnishings were a futon, a boombox, and a coffee table, and the floor was littered withclothes, CDs, shoes, books, newspapers, bills, and magazines.There was a thick layer of grease on the stovetop, dust andhair and curdled food on every other surface, and the bathroomwas clogged with sixty-two bottles of shampoo andconditioner, some half-filled, most of them empty. Dean had stayed in the apartment only once—the first timethey had slept together. He had lain naked on her futon, andCaroline had inspected his erection, baldly surveying it fromdifferent angles. "Your penis looks like a fire hydrant," shehad said. "Everything about you is short, squat, and thick."It was true. Dean was an avid weightlifter, not an ounce of faton him, but his musculature was broad and tumescent,absent of definition. His forearms were pickle jars, almost asbig as his thighs, and his crewcutted head sat on his shoulderswithout the relief of a neck. "What am I doing with you?"Caroline said. "This is what it's come down to, this is howfar I've sunk. I'm about to fuck a Nipponese fire hydrantwith the verbal capacity of tap water." There were other peculiarities. She didn't sleep well,although she had done almost everything possible short ofpsychotherapy—which she didn't believe in—to alleviate herinsomnia and insistent stress: acupuncture, herbs, yoga,homeopathy, tai chi. She ran five miles a day, and she meditatedfor twenty minutes each morning and evening, beginningher sessions by trying to relax her face, stretching andcontorting it, mouth yowling open, eyes bulging—it was ahorrific sight. Even when she did sleep, it was fitful. Because she groundher teeth, she wore a plastic mouthpiece to bed, and she bitdown so hard on it during the night, she left black spotswhere her fillings were positioned. She had nightmares, arecurring nightmare, of headless baby chickens chasing afterher, hundreds of decapitated little chicks tittering in rabidpursuit. The nightmares, however, didn't stop her from eatingchicken, or anything else, for that matter. She was a waif,five-two, barely a hundred pounds. Her hair—luxuriant,butt-length, and naturally kinky, a rarity among Asians—seemedto weigh more than she did. Yet she had a ravenousappetite. She was constantly asking for seconds, picking offDean's plate. "Where does it all go?" he asked over dinnerone night, a month into their courtship. "What?" "The food." "I have a very fast metabolism. You're not going to finishthat?" He scraped the rest of his portion into her bowl, and hewatched her eat. He had surprised himself by how fond he'dbecome of her. He was a disciplined man, one with solitaryand fastidious habits, yet Caroline's idiosyncrasies wereendearing to him. Maybe this was the true measure of love,he thought—when you willingly tolerate behavior that, inanyone else, would be annoying, even abhorrent to you.Without thinking, he blurted out, "I love you." "Yikes," Caroline said. She put her chopsticks down andwiped her mouth. "You are the sweetest man I know, Dean.But I worry about you. You're so innocent. Didn't anyone letyou out of the house when you were young? Don't you knowyou're not supposed to say things like that so soon?" "Do you love me?" She sighed. "I don't right now," she said. Then she laid herhands on top of his head and shook it. "But I think I will.Okay, you big boob?" It took her two more months to say that she might, maybe,be a little bit in love with him, too. "Despite everything, Iguess I'm still a romantic," she said. "I will never learn." They were both reclusive by nature, and most of the timewere content to sequester themselves in Dean's house, whichwas tucked in a canyon in the coastal mountains. Theywatched videos, read, cooked Japanese dishes: tonkatsu,oyako donburi, tempura, unagi. It was a quiet life, free ofcatastrophe, and it had lulled Dean into thinking that therewould be no harm in telling her about his encounter withOriental Hair Poet No. 2. "That cunt!" Caroline said. "That conniving Korean cunt!She's moved here on purpose!" It was all she could talk about for three days. Caroline Yipand Marcella Ahn, it turned out, had a history. They hadboth lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in their twenties,and for several years they had been the best of friends—inseparable,really. But then their first books came out at thesame time, Marcella's from a major New York publisher,Caroline's from a small, albeit respected press. Both had verysimilar jacket photos, the two women looking solemn andprecious, hair flowing in full regalia. An unfortunate coincidence.Critics couldn't resist reviewing them together, mockingthe pair, even then, as "The Oriental Hair Poets," "TheBraids of the East," and "The New Asian Poe-tresses." But Marcella came away from these barbs relativelyunscathed. Her book, Speak to Desire, was taken seriously,compared to Marianne Moore and Emily Dickinson. Herpoetry was highly erudite, usually beginning with mundaneobservations about birds or plant life, then slipping into long,abstract meditations on entropy and inertia, the Bible, evolution,and death, punctuated by the briefest mention of personaldeprivations—anorexia, depression, abandonment. Orso the critics said. Dean still had the book from the library,but he couldn't make heads or tails of it. In contrast, Caroline's book, Chicks of Chinese Descent,had been skewered. She wrote in a slangy, contemporaryvoice, full of topical, pop culture allusions. She wrote aboutmasturbation and Marilyn Monroe, about tampons and moogoo gai pan, about alien babies and chickens possessed by thedevil. She was roundly dispatched as a mediocre talent. Worse, Caroline said, was what happened afterward.Marcella began to thwart her at every turn. Teaching jobs,coveted magazine publications, awards, residencies, fellowships—everythingCaroline applied for, Marcella got. It didn'thurt that Marcella was a shameless schmoozer, flirtingand networking with anyone who might be of use. Yet, thefact was, Marcella was rich. Her father was a shippingtycoon, and she had a trust fund in the millions. She didn'tneed any of these pitifully small sinecures which would havemeant a livelihood to Caroline, and it became obvious thatthe only reason Marcella was pursuing them at all was totaunt her. "She's a vulture, a vampire," Caroline told Dean. "Youknow she won't go out in the light of day? She stays up untilfour, five in the morning and doesn't wake up until pastnoon." And then there was the matter of Evan Paviromo, theEnglish-Italian editor of a literary journal whom Carolinehad dated for seven years, waiting patiently for them to getmarried and have children. He broke it off one day withoutexplanation. She dogged him. Why? Why was he ending it?She refused to let him go without some sort of answer. Finallyhe complied. "It's something Marcella said," he admitted. At first Caroline feared they were having an affair, but thetruth was more vicious. "Marcella told me she admired me,"Evan said, "that I was far more generous than she could everbe. She said she just wouldn't be able to stay with someonewhose work she didn't really respect. I thought about that,and I decided I'm not that generous. It's something thatwould eat away at me, that's bothered me all along. It's somethingI can't abide." Caroline fled to California, eventually landing in RosaritaBay. She completely disengaged herself from the poetryworld. She was still writing every day, excruciating as it wasfor her, but she had not attempted to publish anything in sixyears. She was thirty-seven now, and a waitress—the breakfastshift at a diner, the dinner shift at a barbecue joint. Herfeet had grown a full size from standing so much, and shewas broke. But she had started to feel like her old self again,healthier, more relaxed, sleeping better. Dean had a lot to dowith it, she said. She was happy—or as happy as it was possiblefor a poet to be. Until now. Until Marcella Ahn suddenlyarrived. "She's come to torment me," Caroline said. "Why elsewould she move to Rosarita Bay?" "It's not such a bad place to live." "Oh, please." Dean supposed she was right. On the surface, Rosarita Baylooked like a nice seaside town, a rural sanctuary betweenSan Francisco and Santa Cruz. It billed itself as the pumpkincapital of the world, and it had a Main Street lined with gasstreet lamps and old-time, clapboarded, saltbox shops andrestaurants. Secluded and quiet, it felt like genuine smalltownAmerica, and most of the eight thousand residents preferredit that way, voting down every development plan thatcame down the pike. Yet the things that gave Rosarita Bay its charm were alsokilling it. There were only two roads into town, Highway 1on the coast and Highway 71 through the San VicenteMountains, both of them just two lanes and prone to landslides.The fishing and farming industries were drying up,there were no new jobs, and, for those who worked in SanFrancisco or "over the hill" in San Vicente, it was a murderous,traffic-choked commute. The weather was also terrible,rain-soaked and wave-battered in the winter, wind-beaten inthe spring, and fog-shrouded all summer long, leaving basicallytwo good months—September and October. In theory quaint and pretty, Rosarita Bay was actually ano-man's-land, a sleepy, slightly seedy backwater with thegray air of anonymity. People stuck to themselves, as if shiedby failure and missed opportunities. You could get lost here,forgotten. It was, when all was said and done, a place ofexile. It was not a place for a wealthy, jet-setting artiste andbon vivant like Marcella Ahn. But to come here because ofCaroline? No. Dean could not believe it. "How could she have even known you were here?" heasked Caroline. "You said you're not in touch with any ofthose people anymore." "She probably hired a detective." "Come on." "You don't understand. I suppose you think if anyone'slooking for revenge, it'd be me, that I can't be a threat to herbecause I'm such a loser." "I wish you'd stop putting yourself down all the time.You're not a loser." "Yes, I am. You're just too polite to say so. You're so fuckingJapanese." Early on, she had given him her book to read, and he hadtold her he liked it. But when pressed, he'd had to admit thathe didn't really understand the poems. He was not an educatedman, he had said. "You pass yourself off as this simple chairmaker," Carolinesaid. "You were practically monosyllabic when we beganseeing each other. But I know you're not the gallunk youmake yourself out to be." "I think you're talented. I think you're very talented."How could he explain it to her? Something had happened ashe'd read her book. The poems, confusing as they were, hadmade his skin prickle, his throat thicken, random images andwords—kiwi, quiver, belly, maw—wiggling into his head andtaking residence. "Are you attracted to her?" Caroline asked. "What?" "You're not going to make the chair for her, are you?" "I have to." "You don't have a contract." "No, but—" "You still think it's all a coincidence." "She ordered the chair sixteen months before I met you." "You see how devious she is?" Dean couldn't help himself. He laughed. "She has some sick bond to me," Caroline said. "In all thistime, she hasn't published another book, either. She needsme. She needs my misery. You think I'm being hysterical, butyou wait."It began with candy and flowers, left anonymously behindthe hardware store, on the stairs that led up to Caroline'sapartment. Dean had not sent them. "It's her," Caroline said. The gifts continued, every week or so, then every few days.Chocolates, carnations, stuffed animals, scarves, hairbrushes,barrettes, lingerie. Caroline, increasingly anxious, moved inwith Dean, and quickly came down with a horrendous cold. Hourly he would check on her, administering juice, echinacea,or antihistamines, then would go back to the refuge ofhis workshop. It was where he was most comfortable—alonewith his tools and wood, making chairs that would last hundredsof years. He made only armchairs now, one chair, overand over, the Kaneshiro Chair. Each one was fashioned out ofa single board of keyaki, Japanese zelkova, and was completelyhandmade. From the logging to the tung oil finish, thewood never touched a power tool. All of Dean's saws andchisels and planes were hand-forged in Japan, and heshunned vises and clamps of any kind, sometimes holdingpieces between his feet to work on them. On first sight, the chair's design wasn't that special—blockyright angles, thick Mission-style slats—but its beautylay in the craftsmanship. Dean used no nails or screws, nodowels or even glue. Everything was put together by joints,forty-four delicate, intricate joints, modeled after a traditionalmethod of Japanese joinery dating to the seventeenth century,called sashimono. Once coupled, the joints were tenaciously,permanently locked. They would never budge, theywould never so much as squeak. What's more, every surface was finished with a hand plane.Dean would not deign to have sandpaper in his shop. He hadapprenticed for four years with a master carpenter in the cityof Matsumoto, in Nagano prefecture, spending the first sixmonths just learning how to sharpen his tools. When hereturned to California, he could pull a block plane over aboard and produce a continuous twelve-foot-long shaving,without a single skip or dig, that was less than a tenth of amillimeter thick—so thin you could read a newspaperthrough it. Dean aimed for perfection with each chair. With the firstkerf of his dozuki saw, with the initial chip of a chisel, he wascommitted to the truth of the cut. Tradition dictated that anyerrors could not be repaired, but had to remain untouched toremind the woodworker of his humble nature. More andmore, Dean liked to challenge himself. He no longer used alevel, square, or marking gauge, relying on his eye, and soonhe planned to dispense with rulers altogether, maybe evenwith pencils and chalk. He wanted to get to the point wherehe could make a Kaneshiro Chair blindfolded. But he had a problem. Japanese zelkova, the one- to two-thousand-year-oldvariety he needed, was rare and veryexpensive—amounting to over $150 a pound. There wereonly three traditional woodcutters left in Japan, and Dean'ssawyer, Hayashi Kota, was sixty-nine. Hayashi-san's intuitionwas irreplaceable. So much of the work was in readingthe trees and determining where to begin sawing to reveal thebest figuring and grain—like cutting diamonds. Afraid thesawyer might die soon, Dean had begun stockpiling woodfive years ago. In his lumber shed, which was climate-controlledto keep the wood at a steady thirty-seven percenthumidity, was about two hundred thousand dollars' worth ofzelkova. Hayashi-san cut the logs through and through andair-dried them in Japan for a year, and after two weeks of kilnheat, the boards were shipped to Dean, who stacked them onend in boule order. When he went into the shed to select anew board, he was always overcome by the beauty of thewood, the smell of it. He'd run his hand over the boards—hardlya check or crack on them—and would want to weep. Given the expense of the wood and the precision his chairsrequired, anyone seeing Dean in his shop would have beenshocked by the rapidity with which he worked. He never hesitated.He attacked the wood, chips flying, shavings whirlinginto the air, sawdust piling at his feet. He could sustain thisferocity for hours, never letting his concentration flag. Nowonder, then, that it took him a few moments to hear theknocking on the door late that afternoon. It took him evenlonger to comprehend why anyone would be disturbing himin his workshop, his sanctum sanctorum. Caroline swung open the door and stepped inside, lookingnone too happy. "You have a visitor," she said. Marcella Ahn sidled past her. "Hello!"(Continues...)Excerpted from YELLOW by DON LEE. Copyright © 2001 by Don Lee. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

"Elegant and engrossing...[an] unusually complete portrait of contemporary Asian America."—Los Angeles Times..."A gem....Lee has captured this truth beautifully, wisely, and with winning economy."—Cleveland Plain Dealer

As the Los Angeles Times noted in its profile of the author, "few writers have mined the [genre of ethnic literature] as shrewdly or transcended its limits quite so stunningly as Don Lee."
Harking "back to the timeless concerns of Chekhov: fate, chance, the mystery of the human heart" (Stuart Dybek), these interconnected stories "are utterly contemporary,...but grounded in the depth of beautiful prose and intriguing storylines" (Asian Week). They paint a novelistic portrait of the fictional town of Rosarita Bay, California, and a diverse cast of complex and moving characters. "Nothing short of wonderful...surprising and wild with life" (Robert Boswell), Yellow "proves that wondering about whether you're a real American is as American as a big bowl of kimchi" (New York Times Book Review).

"Elegant and engrossing...[an] unusually complete portrait of contemporary Asian America."Los Angeles Times..."A gem....Lee has captured this truth beautifully, wisely, and with winning economy." Cleveland Plain Dealer As the Los Angeles Times noted in its profile of the author, "few writers have mined the [genre of ethnic literature] as shrewdly or transcended its limits quite so stunningly as Don Lee." Harking "back to the timeless concerns of Chekhov: fate, chance, the mystery of the human heart" (Stuart Dybek), these interconnected stories "are utterly contemporary,...but grounded in the depth of beautiful prose and intriguing storylines" ( Asian Week ). They paint a novelistic portrait of the fictional town of Rosarita Bay, California, and a diverse cast of complex and moving characters. "Nothing short of wonderful...surprising and wild with life" (Robert Boswell), Yellow "proves that wondering about whether you're a real American is as American as a big bowl of kimchi" ( New York Times Book Review ).