A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones Page B

something that would make an addition to it. Her mother had spent years acquiring animal canisters, figurines of Depression glass, geometric trivets, and antique photographs of men in military uniform, to name only a few of her obsessions. Anita had been buying these, scheming over them, placing them and rearranging them for years.
    It was always a great moment when she presented a new find to Anita. She could feel the glow between herself and her mother, the light of pleasure that could not be faked. Lia sensed at those moments that she was fulfilling her mother’s truest desire, for Anita lived through the lines of her collections and wanted Lia to live there too.
    Lia smiled to herself, watching the clerk in the Beijing shop wrap up the faux-enamel box. She loved her mother, even though the constant half-giddy improvisation that was Anita’s parenting had included some terrible mistakes.
    As a small child Lia had only one annual link with her father, a Christmas card. These cards were among her first treasures. She had whole myth systems around them. He existed; these were his relics. One day she’d find him.
    And then when she was nine she learned that all the cards had been written and mailed by her mother. Every year her mother had sat down and invented a message to her daughter, faked another person’s handwriting, and gone out and mailed it to her. Anita so needed everything to be right—at least, on the surface, to
look
right—that this for her was a nurturing act. Years later Lia understood. But then, on that day, she felt only rage.
    She locked herself in her room. To her waves of tears and her kicking of the wall, Anita kept coming back with her sweet, half-reasonable protests. She’d lost track of him, she’d
wanted
to lose track of him, it had been best, she hadn’t wanted Lia to be hurt. Anything to keep her from being hurt. Yet Lia felt at that moment as if she were being more than hurt, worse than hurt, maimed actually, killed by love. “But it’s because I love you!” Anita kept calling to her through the door.
    Lia threw all the cards, one for each year of her life, into her metal wastebasket. Fakes. They were fakes. She lit a match to them. She knew she would pay for this later, but for once in her life she did not care. They went up in a quick whuff of flames. Only then would she open her door and stand defiantly in front of the little fire, the backs of her legs smarting and tingling from the jumping heat.
    Now she was a mature woman and she saw that her mother had done the best she could. Of course she could not remake the world for her daughter. Why would she even try? And yet Lia herself tried, she knew she did; she tried all the time. Her system was just a little different. Better too. She fit the package into her purse and stepped out of the shop into the roaring street.
    At the same time in the south, in Jingdezhen, the ah chan answered his phone.
“Wei.”
    â€œOld Bai.” It was Zhou.
    â€œEi,”
Bai answered companionably. In all the loose-knit society of ah chans, there were many who called themselves Bai’s friends, but Zhou was one he really trusted. It was Zhou’s help he had asked with this job.
    â€œThe others are worried,” Zhou said.
    â€œAbout Hu and Sun?” Bai had a bad feeling himself about the two of them trying to move that pair of huge famille-rose vases.
    â€œThey’ve not arrived.”
    â€œOh,” Bai said. Not good. Very not good. This was their third day out. Hu and Sun should be in Hong Kong by now.
    â€œThey’re not there. I’ve talked to Pak and Ling.”
    Gentle knots formed in Bai’s midsection. “Call Old Lu,” he advised. “As soon as there’s word in Hong Kong, he’ll know.”
    â€œAll right,” Zhou said. “Keep your handphone.”
    â€œIt’s on,” Bai assured him. He was walking down the street, taking his wife out