Face (2 page)

The Emperor State Building

Maibelle Chung

75 Sunridge Street

Playa del Rey, California

Sept. 26

Dear Maibelle—Miss Chung?

I’m not sure how to address you after all this time, especially since you may never read these words. Your mother gave me
this address but said she hadn’t heard from you in some years and wasn’t sure if it was correct. I can only hope to reach
you.

Some of your photographs appeared in a small art magazine two years ago, and I was most impressed by them. Now I am planning
to write a book that would be greatly enhanced by photos. I thought of you not just because you are clearly talented but because
the book will document the lives of Chinatown residents, both newcomers and some old-timers whom you might remember. Grocer
Hu, whose shop was across the street from us. Friends of Uncle Li. I
haven’t selected all the subjects yet, as I plan to conduct the interviews over the next year or so, but my hope is that the
human stories might form a bridge from Chinatown back to China. To this end I think it is important to include the faces as
well as the words of those interviewed. I am not a photographer. That’s why I am writing you.

I realize this comes out of the blue. But Uncle Li always said you would want to come back. I think you must return to New
York sometime, as your family remains here. This might be a project for your next visit.

I look forward to hearing from you, Maibelle. We can discuss in greater detail then.

Sincerely,

T. Tommy Wah

I was two years and several addresses away from Sunridge Street when Tommy’s letter arrived, not at my apartment, but in my
box at work. My former landlord must have redirected the envelope, though he had never done this with any others before.

Maybe I should have recognized the note’s circuitous route as a sign, but I was too unnerved by its contents: flattering,
unexpected, and nothing I could even consider accepting. I hadn’t touched a camera in over four years, and Tommy, Li—they
were names from another lifetime. Chinatown was ancient history. I couldn’t think where I’d even begin if I were to answer
with any grace.

So I didn’t. I tossed the letter in the trash and tried not to give it any further thought. For a while that was the end of
that.

A few weeks later a near miss caused me to reconsider. I was working a charter to Pensacola. Stretch DC-8, the plane shaped
like a mile-long cigar. We bounced at least six feet on impact, with all the noise of a crash. The lights flashed out. The
straps of my jump seat flew off. I fell forward, slamming my head on the metal partition in front of me, and began to cry.
I was shaking so hard my flying partners had to drag me into the rear closet area to get me away from the passengers, who
were
plenty hysterical themselves. We, as professionals, were supposed to smile and pretend this was normal. It turned out we’d
missed the end of the runway, a rock jetty into the ocean, by just three and a half inches. When the copilot delivered this
news, he said we were lucky sons of bitches. He called it a sign. The next week I heard he was taking early retirement.

Then I happened to pick up a
New York Times
and read that a renowned documentary photographer, a single, childless woman named Marge Gramercy, had died in lower Manhattan.
That night was the first in a month I slept through without one of my nightmares.

Tommy Wah’s letter. The landing in Pensacola. Marge Gramercy. Too many signs, I decided. Or warnings.

I returned to Manhattan four months ago—and four months almost to the day after Tommy’s letter—on Chinese New Year. According
to my calculations, it was the Year of the Rooster, but no firecrackers rattled the streets, no lion dancers came forth to
welcome me. I did not go back to Chinatown, where such celebrations were surely taking place. Where Tommy, according to his
return address, still lives. I did not go to the Upper West Side, where my parents now reside. I came to Greenwich Village,
a territory in between, which no one in the history of my family has ever considered home.

I had an obituary in one pocket and a check for five hundred dollars from the sale of my 1973 Pinto in the other. Having grown
unaccustomed to Manhattan in winter, I wore cotton, not wool, no hat, no gloves. My nose was streaming, my eyes watering.
My long hair tumbled with the wind. I’d come three thousand miles to ring the bell of a weather-beaten brownstone I’d selected
sight unseen.

At the front door Harriet Ratner, 140 West Eleventh Street’s building manager and ground-floor tenant, looked me up and down.
I stood straight and gave her my best professional smile, but Harriet had the demeanor of a career Girl Scout leader whose
troops always earn the
most merit badges. She warned, “We’re all women here. Your boyfriend moves in, you’re out.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

She held her position and continued to size me up: a redheaded stewardess out of California, single, late twenties, with no
visible scars or handicaps. From the perspective of a large middle-aged woman with a double chin and orthopedic shoes I was
a perfect stereotype.

“I grew up in New York.”

She dug a fist into her hip and shifted her weight against the door frame.

“Yeah? Where?”

“Stuyvesant,” I lied. “My parents owned a dry goods store. I joined the airlines after they died… I’ve been gone a long time.”

“Stuyvesant, huh?” An invisible fault line began to shift. “Grew up in the Bronx, myself.”

As I followed her inside I slid the clipping out of my pocket and tried to imagine the sweet-faced old lady in the photograph
moving through this gloomy puce hallway. The single decoration was a Dutch Masters cigar box print hanging across from the
door. The staircase was clean but well scuffed and creaky. The radiator moaned as we started up, and low-wattage bulbs on
each landing left the corners in shadow.

Marge Gramercy had lived here for nearly thirty years, the rental agency told me, which was why they could charge only six
hundred a month for her apartment. Rent stabilization. My father would be proud of me, coming up with this bargain gem long-distance,
but that was only part of the story. According to her obituary, my predecessor had traveled the globe shooting mountains and
native children for
National Geographie.
She’d started at the age of twenty-eight, had won awards for her work. Yet this modest brownstone was her home base. Living
in her tracks, I thought, might make her achievement seem real to me. Attainable. It might bring both my life and my work
back into focus.

I trailed Harriet up two flights and into a large square room with a plaster fireplace and twelve-foot ceiling. Two tall windows
made the
place seem lighter, airier than it really was. They looked out across a schoolyard and a couple of tight city gardens to the
shops of Greenwich Avenue. A wall sliced off one edge of the main room to form a sleeping alcove barely wide enough for a
double mattress. The kitchen was literally a closet that had been outfitted with a two-burner stove, vintage 1930, and a deep
porcelain sink. A pull-up table was hinged to the door. The refrigerator stood in the entryway, opposite the coat closet.

It seemed a decidedly inconvenient setup for a woman of Marge Gramercy’s accomplishment, not to mention her longevity here.
Was the arrangement controlled by economy or indifference? Or was it simply that her real life lay elsewhere?

“Me and my mother live downstairs. These bare wood floors, we’ll hear every sneeze unless you put down carpets.”

I assured Harriet I was very quiet. With unemployment staring me in the face, I wasn’t looking for any investments that weren’t
absolutely required. For the same reason, I told her not to worry about the houndstooth couch Ms. Gramercy’s heirs had failed
to carry away. Harriet visibly shuddered, and told me Marge’s niece had found her
lying
on that sofa.

“Don’t that bother you?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never owned anything that belonged to a dead person.” Which technically was true: everything I ever had
from dead people was given to me before they died. Besides, I’d lost my faith in ghosts, so there didn’t seem much to fear
except the chance that the couch would bring bad luck. And since Ms. Gramercy had made it to eighty-six, working to the end,
I figured I had some leeway in that department. It was her luck, for better or worse, that I hoped to inherit.

“She did her darkroom stuff in here, if you can imagine.” Harriet swung open the door to the bathroom, a windowless cube only
slightly larger than the kitchen: more maximized spatial efficiency. The sink was originally freestanding, but a sheet of
plywood had been cut to fit around it as a counter extending over the tub. Crammed into the corner between the bath and toilet
was a sky-blue shower with plastic walls.

“I’ll take it—” I turned back to Harriet. “I’m a photographer, too.”

“Oh, I see.” She peered at me as if this new detail made a difference. “Hobby, huh?”

A faint odor, minty camphor or liniment, hung over the bathroom. I fingered the locket at my throat. I looked old and tired
in the mirror in here, but the overhead light caught the gold heart just right and made it shine like new. Another sign?

Harriet shook her head. “Y’ don’t want to end up like her.”

“Like how?”

“Poor Marge, broke her hip when she was seventy-eight. Slipped on the fire escape one day when she was out watchin’ them kids.”
She jerked her head toward the closed window and the children who, despite the cold, were playing in the schoolyard. “After
that, her traveling days was over. It’s no fun getting old, but I guess you know, your parents and all—”

“What did she do then?”

Harriet folded her arms, tight across her chest. “Oh, Marge had chutzpah. Got some catalog company to hire her. They sent
their little gadgets by UPS and she took the pictures right here.”

I turned on the water. It ran rusty, but gradually cleared, dissolving my portraits of Himalayan peaks into eight-by-ten product
shots.

“Gadgets.”

“Yeah, like those slice ‘n’ dice gizmos you see on TV She hardly had to leave the building. Real lucky stroke for old Marge.”

“Real lucky.”

I surveyed the main room again. Not hard to imagine how she’d done it. Some backdrop paper against the far wall, strobe, reflectors,
a few stands for the little inventions. Gadgets like my father’s, no doubt. All simple tripod work. And no traveling. No flying.

“Where was this company she worked for?”

“Florida, I think. Return address in Pensacola, that sound right?”

I stubbed my toe on the couch. “Pensacola?”

But she nodded. “You know Pensacola?”

I stepped on the toe to stop its throbbing and steadied myself by fixing on Harriet’s opaque brown eyes. “I’ll take the apartment.”

Harriet squinted and pursed her lips, and I sensed her searching for my imbalance. Incredibly, she must not have found it
because we shook on the deal. Her grip was firm, efficient. When she released my hand, it stayed in midair as if waiting for
further instructions.

“Harriet?” I asked as she moved out into the hallway. “Was there a memorial service for Marge?”

“Not that I know. Most her relatives live in Detroit.” An eerie wail lifted up the stairwell. “Never mind that,” Harriet said
quickly. “That’s Mother. Prob’ly needs her channel changed. You move in anytime.”

Anytime was the following day. I brought a bunch of lilies and daisies and spoke on Marge’s behalf a made-up blessing that
was a combination thank-you, memorial, and housewarming. I considered it a necessary gesture, like leaving the lights on at
night, and for the first
few
days I actually felt safe and welcome in my new home.