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Downstairs, Nath flipped through a pile of mail: grocery store flyers, electric bills—nothing he wanted. That fall, when a counselor asked Ness what his career plans were, he lowered his voice, as if he was telling her a dirty secret. "The universe," he said, "outer space." Frau Heinrich clicked her pen twice, and he thought she was going to laugh. Five years had passed since the last manned moon landing, and the United States had defeated the Soviet Union in this regard, so they turned their attention elsewhere. Mrs. Heinrich told him that there were two paths: to become a pilot or to become a scientist. She opened the file bag and pulled out his transcript—B-minus in physical education; A-minus in trigonometry, calculus, biology, and physics. Although Ness wanted to go to MIT, Carnegie Mellon, or Caltech—he even wrote applications—he knew his father would only allow him to go to one place: Harvard. James believed that going to another school was tantamount to failure. Ness told himself that when he entered college, he would take advanced physics, materials science, and aerodynamics. University is a springboard for him to explore places he has never been before, and a transit point for him to fly into space. He leaves everyone and everything behind—and although he doesn't admit it, that "everyone" includes Lydia.
Lydia was now fifteen and had grown taller, and when she tied her hair and put on lipstick at school, she looked like an adult. But at home, she still looked like the same timid five-year-old girl she once was—grabbing her brother's hand and slowly crawling back to the shore. When she sat next to Nath, he could smell the skin care product used by little girls, and its name was also very childish: "Baby Rou". Since that summer, he had felt that something had been binding their ankles, pulling him, making him lose his balance and bearing her weight. Over the past ten years, not only has it not loosened, but it has become even tighter. As the only person other than Lydia who had known their parents all these years, Nath felt sympathized with her pain, silently empathizing with her, occasionally giving her a squeeze on the shoulder or a wry smile. He would say, "Mom always brags about you in front of Dr. Woolf. She didn't even notice that time I got an A-minus in chemistry." Or: "Remember that ninth grade assembly and I didn't go? Dad? Said, 'Well, I guess you can't find a date... '" To comfort her, he tried to convince her that too much love was better than too few hobbies. Now, Nass only had one thought: "When I go to college..." He did not finish the sentence, but in the future he imagined, he could float freely, like an astronaut, without any restraints.
It was almost Christmas, but he still hadn't seen the admission letter from Harvard University. On this day, Nath walked into the living room without turning on the lights, letting the illuminated Christmas tree guide him. Every dark window pane reflected the reflection of the Christmas tree. He may have to prepare materials, apply to a second, third or even fourth school, or even have to stay home forever. The father's voice came from the kitchen: "I think she would like it. I thought of her as soon as I saw it." No need to reason, in their family, "she" always meant Lydia. In the flickering of Christmas lights, the living room disappears and appears. Nath closed his eyes when the lights were on and opened them again when the lights were off, so what he saw was unchanging darkness. After a while, the doorbell rang.
It was Jack—and at that moment, Nath looked at him with no doubt in his eyes, only distrust and disgust that had accumulated over time. Although the temperature had dropped below zero, Jack was only wearing a hooded sweatshirt, with the zipper half-unzipped, revealing the T-shirt underneath. Nath couldn't see what was written on it. The hems of Jack's jeans were damp with snow, and he pulled his hands from the pockets of his sweatshirt and reached forward. At that moment, Nass didn't know whether to step forward and shake his hand. Then he saw an envelope between Jack's fingers.
"This letter was sent to our house." Jack said, "I just saw it when I got home." He poked the red school badge in the corner of the envelope with his thumb, "I guess you are going to Harvard."
The envelope was thick and heavy, and seemed to be filled with good news. "Who knows," Nath said, "it could be a rejection, right?"
Jack didn't laugh. "Of course," he shrugged, "whatever." He went home without saying goodbye, leaving a line of footprints in the snow-covered Li family yard.
Nath closed the door, turned on the light in the living room, weighed the envelope with both hands, and suddenly felt that the heat in the room was unbearable. He tore open the seal, pulled out the letter, and rubbed its edges. Dear Mr. Li: Let us congratulate you again on your early admission to the class of 1981. He only felt that all the joints in his body relaxed with relief.
"What's going on?" Hannah, who had been hiding in the porch to observe what was going on, asked over the door frame.
"A letter," Nath calmed down his excitement, "from Harvard." Even saying the name made his mouth go dry. He wanted to read the rest of the words, but his vision was blurry. congratulate. again. The postman must have lost the first letter, he thought, but it didn't matter. You are admitted. He gave up reading the letter and smiled at Hannah, who came in softly and leaned against the sofa. "I was accepted."
"Harvard?" James asked, coming in from the kitchen.
Nath nodded.
"This letter has been sent to Woolf's house." He held up the letter. But James didn't even look at it. He just stared at Nath, and for the first time, he didn't frown. Nath suddenly realized that he was as tall as his father, and they could now look at each other naturally.
"Not bad." James smiled after saying this, seeming a little embarrassed. He put his hand on Nath's shoulder, and Nath felt the hand was thick and warm through his shirt. "Marilyn, guess what?"
His mother's heels tapped against the floor as she came in from the kitchen. "Nass," she kissed him hard on the cheek, "Nass, is it true?" She took out the letter in his hand, "Oh my god, class of 1981." She said, "Don't you feel guilty when you see this? Are you old, James?" Nath wasn't listening, he thought: It finally happened. I did it, I did it, I'm leaving.
At the top of the stairs, Lydia looked at her father's hand holding Nath's shoulder. She couldn't remember the last time her father smiled like this at Nath. Her mother held the letter up to the lamp as if it were a precious document. Hannah hooked her arms around the arm of the sofa and swung her feet happily. Her brother stood there quietly, his eyes full of awe and gratitude, the numbers "1981" shining in front of him like beautiful and distant stars. Something was crumbling in Lydia's body, and then collapsed - as if they heard the sound of collapse, they raised their heads and looked at Lydia. Just as Nath was about to tell her his good news out loud, she called out, "Mom, I failed my physics exam. I should have told you."
That night, while Nath was brushing his teeth, the bathroom door opened and Lydia leaned against the doorframe, looking pale—almost gray. The moment he saw her, he felt very sad. During dinner, Marilyn kept talking - "How could you fail the exam?" "What will you do when you grow up and find you can't find a job? Think about it." Lydia didn't say anything back. To her silent daughter, Marilyn repeated various dire warnings over and over again - "Do you think it's enough to find a man and get married? Is this your entire life plan?" All Lydia could do was endure it. Crying at the dinner table. Half an hour later, James said, "Marilyn—" but she gave him a stern look and he flinched, silently stirring his own portion of onion gravy. Everyone had forgotten about Harvard, the letter that Nath had received, and Nath as a person.
After dinner, Lydia found Nath in the living room. The letter from Harvard lay on the coffee table, and she touched the school badge, which read "Truth" in Latin.
"Congratulations," she said softly, "I knew you were going to make it." Nath was angry and didn't want to talk to her, keeping his eyes on the TV. On the screen, Donny and Marie were performing the chorus perfectly, and before the song was over, Lydia ran upstairs to her room and slammed the door. Now she came to Nath again, looking ashen and standing barefoot on the bathroom tiles.
He knew what Lydia wanted now: his comfort or his humiliation, something to make her feel better. He could say: "Mom will calm down. It's okay. Remember..." However, he didn't want to think about those unpleasant things now. His father usually doted on Lydia, but always looked at him with disappointment; his mother always praised Lydia, but turned a blind eye to him, as if he was made of air. He just wanted to read carefully the long-awaited admission letter, which was the promise that he would be free. A new world as white and smooth as chalk was waiting for him.
He slapped the edge of the pool suddenly, without looking at Lydia, and used his fingers to push the last bit of foam on the bottom of the pool to the drain.
He was about to leave, "Nath," Lydia whispered. Hearing the trembling in her voice, he knew she was crying. She's starting again.
"Good night." He said and closed the door behind him.
The next morning, Marilyn pinned Lydia's failed exam paper to the kitchen wall with thumbtacks, facing Lydia's seat. For the next three days, between breakfast and dinner, she would slam the physics book in front of her daughter and sit down. All Lydia needed, she thought, was a little encouragement. Momentum and inertia, kinetic energy and potential energy—she still hasn't forgotten these concepts. She read aloud in Lydia's ear: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." She and Lydia studied the test paper over and over again until Lydia could answer every question correctly. Will not give up until the question arises.
What Lydia didn't tell her mother was that by the third time she studied it, she had memorized all the correct answers. She spent the whole day studying hard in her physics book, waiting for her father to come to the rescue: "That's enough, Marilyn, it's the Christmas holiday, for God's sake." But he didn't say anything. From that night on, Lydia refused to talk to Nath because she suspected—correctly—that Nath was angry with her too; he would hang around the kitchen except when eating. Lydia felt that even Hannah could bring her a little silent comfort now. But Hannah, as usual, was hiding out of sight: she was hiding under the small table in the hallway—not visible from the kitchen. She hugged her knees and listened to the sound of Lydia's pencil scratching on the paper. In this way, she expressed her concern for her sister, but of course Lydia would not know. On Christmas morning, Lydia was resentful of everyone in the family, not even the fact that Marilyn finally took the exam paper off the wall.
Sitting around the Christmas tree opening presents didn't improve Lydia's mood. James handed out packages wrapped in ribbons one after another, but Lydia was afraid to see her mother's gifts: Marilyn usually gave her books. In fact—though neither mother nor daughter fully realized it—it was Marilyn who wanted to read the books herself, for she sometimes borrowed them from Lydia after Christmas. For Lydia, no matter her age, these books were too difficult to understand. It didn't feel like a gift, more like a clumsy hint. Last year, her mother gave her "Color Atlas of Human Anatomy", which was very large and could not be inserted vertically into the bookshelf; the year before that, Lydia received "Famous Women in Science", a thick book. Famous women bored her. Their stories are similar: others told them they couldn't do it, but they decided to do it anyway. Lydia wondered, was this because they really wanted to do it, or because others disapproved of it? The images of human anatomy made her nauseous—men and women with their skin and muscles stripped away, leaving only their bare skeletons. She flipped through a few pages and then closed the book, squirming restlessly in her seat, like a dog shaking off rainwater, trying to get rid of the nausea.
Nath watched his sister blink, the circles under her eyes turning red, and a sudden pity emerged from his anger. He had read Harvard's letter eleven times and finally convinced himself that it was real and that they had really admitted him. In nine months he would be gone, and the news drove away all his unhappiness. But what if his parents were more concerned about Lydia's failure than his success? He was leaving anyway, he was going to college—and Lydia had to stay home. To describe his current feeling in four words, it is "bittersweet". At this time, his father handed him a gift wrapped in red tinfoil. Nath smiled tentatively at Lydia, and she pretended not to see it. After three unfree days, she was not ready to forgive him, but Nath's attitude warmed her, like swallowing a big gulp of hot tea on a cold winter day.
Lydia might have quickly forgiven her brother if she hadn't continued looking at the ceiling. Something—a patch of white above their heads—caught her eye and triggered a memory. When they were little, Marilyn took Hannah to a doctor's appointment. Lydia and Nas were the only ones at home. They saw a large spider crawling on the window frame. Nas was stepping on the sofa and using his father's shoes. The spider was killed, leaving a black spot on the ceiling and the mark of half a shoe sole. "Just say it was you," Nath pleaded, but Lydia had a better idea. She got correction fluid from next to James' typewriter and painted the black marks white bit by bit, so that her parents didn't even notice the white spots on the cream ceiling. For months afterward, she and Nath would smile at each other whenever they looked up at the white patch.
Lydia discovered that if she looked carefully, she could still see the lines on the soles of her father's shoes. As for the larger spot, it was once a spider. They used to be in the same group, hanging out together all day long, sharing joys and sorrows even in such trivial and stupid things. She never thought they would be like this. The morning sun shone through the window and onto the wall, forming spots of light of varying brightness. She glanced sideways, trying to distinguish the difference between white and off-white.
"Lydia." She called out, and everyone else was busy opening gifts. Nath was loading a new roll of film into her camera; her mother was wearing a gold chain with a ruby pendant that shone against her nightgown. The father standing in front of her handed over a small package. It looked very sturdy and had sharp edges, like a jewelry box. "This is my gift. I picked it myself." He smiled broadly. James would usually leave the Christmas shopping to Marilyn and have her sign the gift cards: Love, Mom and Dad. But this time, he specially selected a gift for Lydia and couldn't wait to hand it to her.
The gift he chose himself, Lydia thought, must be something special. She immediately forgave her father for not interceding for her that day. Underneath the wrapping paper seemed to be something delicate and precious. She thought it might be a gold necklace, like the ones some girls at school wore that they never took off. Some necklaces have small golden crosses tied to them, which are tokens received at the confirmation ceremony; some have beautiful small ornaments hanging just between their collarbones. The necklace from her father must be like that, a compensation for the book her mother gave her and the past three days, to let her know: "I love you, you have always been so perfect."
She opened the wrapping paper at the bottom of the gift with her fingers, and a gold-and-black book fell onto her lap: "How to Win Friends and Influence People." A bright yellow line bisected the cover of the book in two. Basic interpersonal skills. Six ways to be lovable. There is also a line of dark red words at the top: The experience of reading this book is directly proportional to your life gains. James looked happy when he saw his daughter opening the package.