Brown haired ghost

Chatter and laughter: the fall of evening and the ascent of night. Mirth mingles well with bright lights: all those shiny faces and gleaming teeth and the pulse of conversation supporting crescendos, between sips or swigs.

The baby bounced with her amah after grandfather had doted: he rolled her feet like soft dough gently in the long fingers of his two hands and blew kisses onto the pink nubs, quite unseemly for a man of his station. He smiled. Jean beamed in reply, if her sisters-in-law froze their faces.

Candles dotted the sideboards and the mantle blazed; the chandelier blossomed like white fuchsia. Ice clinked. Heels clicked on teak. The windows reflected rivers of red, a blue chiffon torrent, an ache of frost frocks against arch black suits.

Whispers sound the same in every tongue.

Drinks were trimmed and replenished as if by magic, the night was magic, the din was only voices and yet the murmur kept the march of war at bay.

Joe kept council in the sitting room with old school chums and the lieutenants. His narrow face and sharp chin jutted like a single large tooth from beneath his straight, black, parted-in-the-center hair. Jean could see when Joe reached into his vest pocket for the silver cigarette case. He always held it in his left hand, clicked the clasp open with right, and slid out the white stick in a quick, fluid motion. She loved his hands. He’d snap shut the lid, tap the cigarette once twice, hold, once more, then place it between his dark-ruby lips, while in a single motion replace the case in his pocket and pull out a packet of matches. Flare; inhale and brightening ember; flick out the flame – what to do with the spent match? Jean watched Joe’s head swivel and glance land on the tray of a nearby server; he motioned him over and exchanged a snifter for the extinguished match. He saw her looking, held her gaze for a long second, then returned to his companions. Jean wasn’t quite sure if he smiled at her, or as he turned away.

She stood out. The white ghost, dark brunette hair, the American girl. Joe’s bride. They all spoke with British accents when she stood with them; her English was flat Philly, with drawn-out “o’s” and “ewe’s” and no intonation. Half a pace away, she might only have turned her head, and the conversation might veer suddenly back to Cantonese, quick as a shadow. She wouldn’t understand. Not the slight; not the content. Trilled laughter; Jean’s smile seemed coincidental.

C.T. attracted his own coterie: ministers and their wives, colonels and generals in regalia. None expected him to don traditional garb, a silk robe, ponytail; he did not. His suit was more charcoal than coal, however. His roundish glass frames shined subdued gold beneath his close-cropped pate. He still wore his wedding band, though widowed nearly a decade. His eldest son looked, long face expressionless, across the room at the man who stood conveniently at the center of the glow cast by the chandelier.

He told a joke, evidently: the gathering laughed. Jean, standing nearby, laughed, not overly loudly, but clearly. C.T. stopped and turned to her; suddenly a bubble of silence expanded outwards like an island in the stream of voices that still ran through the room.

Jean became conscious that her father-in-law had inclined his head towards her, eyebrows raised, expectant. “Why do you laugh, daughter?” If his son’s sisters frowned at the familiarity, the possessiveness – the acceptance – no watchers made comment.

“Why, your joke was funny, father.” Jean beamed.

He was still, and a look of amusement crept from his chin, across his expressive mouth, up his cheekbones. It rippled upwards into his eyes and brows and forehead, and he tilted back his head and laughed. “You understand!” It was more a confirmation than a question. “I am delighted!”

It was barely four months since Jean, her baby girl, and her prodigal husband had landed on the eastern shore at Shanghai. Four months of standing in the kitchen with the cooks; trailing them to the market; sitting while they bantered and laughed at the goings-on in the house of the Ambassador’s son, his father the emissary so recently returned from China’s participation in Hitler’s Olympiad. This brown haired ghost who sometimes shared the bed of her husband (when he came home) had sharp ears.

The island sank beneath the waves of sound and laughter; the moment passed. C.T.’s smile remained, however, throughout the night. Color mixed with the hours and alcohol and affixed itself into memory. The brown haired ghost had painted herself into her father-in-law's heart.

Joe kept silent in the sitting room, smoking. He shook off conversation, watching Jean, as she sometimes watched him: as though behind one-way glass. She didn’t turn to look at him the entire time.