Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li Read Free Book Online Page B

brilliant yet awkward mathematician. To spend one’s workdays thinking about talking caterpillars and singing bears seemed diminishing for a man like Edwin, but perhaps it was a good choice, the same way Celia was a good choice of wife for him.
    “Things are well with you?” Edwin asked when he ran out of topics.
    “How can they not be?” Ruyu replied. There was not much in her life that was worth inquiring about, the general topics of children and jobs and family vacations not an option in her case.
    Edwin brooded over his water glass. “You must find their discussion strange,” he said, pointing his chin at the living room.
    “Strange? Not at all,” Ruyu said. “The world needs enthusiastic women. Too bad I am not one of them.”
    “But do you want to be one?”
    “You either are one, or you are not,” Ruyu said. “It has nothing to do with wanting.”
    “Do they bore you?”
    She would not, if asked, have considered Edwin or Celia or anyof her friends a bore, but that was because she had never really taken a moment to think about what Edwin, or Celia, or anyone else for that matter, was. Edwin’s face, never overly expressive, seemed particularly vague at the moment. Ruyu rarely allowed her interaction with him to progress beyond pleasantries, as there was something about Edwin that she could not see through right away. He did not speak enough to make himself a fool, yet what he did say made one wonder why he didn’t say more. Had he been no one’s husband she would have taken a closer look, but any impingement on Celia’s claim would be a pointless complication.
    After a long pause, which Celia would have readily filled with many topics, and which Edwin seemed patient enough to wait through, Ruyu said, “Only a bore would find other people boring.”
    “Do you find them interesting, then?”
    “Many of them hire me,” Ruyu said. “Celia is a friend.”
    “Of course,” Edwin said. “I forgot that.”
    What was it he had forgotten—that the women in the living room provided more than half of Ruyu’s livelihood, or that his own wife was the angel who’d made such a miracle happen? Ruyu placed the plates in the dishwasher. She wished that Edwin would stop feeling obligated to keep her company while she played the role of half hostess in his house. In the cottage, she cooked on a hot plate and ate standing by the kitchen counter, and the dish drain, left by a previous renter, was empty and dry most of the time. In Celia’s house Ruyu enjoyed lining up the plates and cups and glasses, which, unlike people, did not seek to crack and break their own lives. When she continued in silence, Edwin asked if he had offended her.
    “No,” she sighed.
    “But do you think we take you for granted?”
    “Who? You and Celia?”
    “Everyone here,” Edwin said.
    “People are taken for granted all the time,” Ruyu said. Every oneof the women in the living room would have a long list of complaints about being taken for granted. “I’m not a unique case who needs special attention.”
    “But we complain.”
    Ruyu turned and looked at Edwin. “Go ahead and complain,” she said. “But don’t expect me to do it.”
    Edwin blushed. Do not expose your soul uninvited, she would have said if Edwin were no one’s husband, but instead she apologized for her abruptness. “Don’t mind what I said,” she said. “Celia said I wasn’t my right self today.”
    “Is anything the matter?”
    “Someone I used to know died,” Ruyu said, feeling malicious because she would not have told this to Celia even if she were ten times as persistent.
    Edwin said he was sorry to hear the news. Ruyu knew he would like to ask more questions; Celia would have been chasing every detail, but Edwin seemed uncertain, as though intimidated by his own curiosity. “It’s all right,” Ruyu said. “People die.”
    “Is there anything we can do?”
    “No one can do anything. She’s dead already,” Ruyu said.
    “I mean, can we