Bich Minh Nguyen - Short Girls: A Novel
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A mesmerizing novel about estranged sisters and the cultural and family history that binds themVan and Linny Luong are as baffling to each other as their parents Vietnamese legacy is to them both. Van, the quintessential overachiever, has applied the same studied diligence to her law career and marriage-a beau id?al that vaporized when Mr. Right walked out. Linny-pretty, fashionable, untethered-is grasping for purpose when her affair with a married man takes a humiliating turn. Each is the last person her sister would call, but when Mr. Luong summons them home for his American citizenship party, Van and Linny find themselves communing about their past-their late mother, their fathers obsession with his Luong Arm invention, even the irony of their romantic straits. As these unlikely confidantes chart the uncertainty that defines them, they forge a tentative new relationship and the wherewithal to overcome disappointment. Hailed by the Chicago Tribune as a writer to watch, a tremendous talent, Nguyen recasts her gifts marvelously in this first novel, infusing it with humor, compassion, and insight into siblings, aging parents, and the desires and ambitions that drive us.
Bich Minh Nguyen: author's other books
Who wrote Short Girls: A Novel? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Bich Minh Nguyen
Van Bich Pham (sociologue)
Pearce
Cara Mentzel
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acknowledgments
I would like to thank: Molly Stern, Nicole Aragi, Liz Van Hoose, Laura Tisdel, Juliet Annan, Barbara Campo, Dave Cole, Gabrielle Gantz, Jacqueline Fischetti, Caitlin Pratt, Alan Walker, Richard Kessler, Jim Hanks, Vicky Farah, Pavneet Singh, Theju Prasad, Incigul Sayman, Liz Han, Joseph Nguyen, Purdue University, all of my family, and especially, and always, Porter Shreve.
a cognizant original v5 release october 10 2010
Van
After Miles left, Van began checking the security alarm every time she entered the house. She had nightmares of the alarm failing, losing the password of her and Miless wedding date. Pressing those numbers made her remember his hand on her back, guiding her through dance steps. They had practiced in a ballroom class, then in his apartment, Eric Clapton singing Wonderful Tonight over and over. She didnt tell Miles that the lyrics bothered her: Why must the woman only look wonderful tonight?
The rooms hushed around her, the open floor plan stretching forth on the hardwood. Though theyd moved in almost three years earlier, she still felt vaguely like a house sitter. She was careful to keep the hand towels neat, her shoes lined up in the mudroom. She circled the first floor, making sure the blinds were drawn, and turned on all the outdoor lights. She lingered in front of the television, for going upstairs seemed almost unsafe, a yielding of territory. Someone could trap her there. She thought of places to hide, to buy herself time between the breach of the alarm and the arrival of police: behind the armoire in the bedroom corner; in the cedar chest in her closet. She could just fit into it, her small body folding into the tight darkness, the lid clamping down like a set of perfect teeth.
Van spent most of her time in the TV room, where she lay on the sofa between the windows so that someone standing in the backyard would not be able to see her. Only in bright daylight did she want to peek outside. It was always the same Ann Arbor subdivision, the houses as new and graceful as hers, with brushed-brick facades and wrought-iron sconces. Cars nested in garages. Streets rounded into cul-de-sacs. Para-noi-a, Miles sometimes sang softly when he caught Van squinting through a slit in the blinds.
Those first two weeks of Miless absence, Van had waited for someone to confront her. She was certain her coworkers would read in her face what had happened. She prepared answers. A business trip. A big case, confidential. But the days went by and no one at her law office asked her if she was okay. Her friends e-mailed their usual brief messages about work, pictures of their kids. Her sister Linny did not appear on her doorstep to crow about how much shed always disliked Miles. Van nearly convinced herself that he had been away on a business trip. It was almost easy to go along, letting her world split from that one day in February into separate versions of reality.
How little anyone knew of Vans real life.
Even so, she kept checking the caller ID. She didnt stop expecting to see Miless cell number, and hated how her heart jumped whenever the phone rang. But it hardly ever did. A week before he left, Miles had added their number to the national Do Not Call list. Van wondered if it was a planned courtesy, that she might exist untroubled by telemarketers while sitting down to her solo dinner.
She had not been the kind of teenager who could talk for hours on the phone with a friend; that realm had belonged to her sister. When she and Linny called each other they ended up using their father as an excuse: Who was going to visit him next? Had he said anything about Thanksgiving? How was he doing all alone in that house? He was the spool around which the thread of their conversations wound.
Vans father didnt like phones, not even to acknowledge birthdays. In college, she could go almost an entire quarter without hearing from him. His calls, when they came, seemed random. He would want to know where a friend of his could find good sushi in Ann Arbor. Or hed ask, Do you remember where I put the pliers? Were there any D batteries in the house? As if she were still there, or should be.
But now he was reminding her to come home.
After twenty-eight years of stubbornness her father was finally taking his oath of citizenship, letting go at last of his refugee status and the green Permanent Resident Alien Card. He had taken the test, handed over his fingerprints, had his background checkedthe last of all his friends to do so. To celebrate, he was throwing a party in the old style, the way all of the Vietnamese families in their town used to gather in the late seventies and eighties, finding relief in their free-flowing beer and language. It would be a reunion, a remembrance of their collective flight from Vietnam and settlement in America1975 all over again. Van, who was born in a refugee camp three months after her parents arrived in the States, knew only her mothers description of the dusty barracks and tents at Pendleton, and the startling cold of their first winter in Michigan. She didnt understand why her father would want to return to 1975. Its the last hurray, he insisted when he first told her his idea for the party. We come a long way, baby.
After Van had left for college her parents decided to live on separate floors of the house theyd had for twenty years, a sixties ranch in Wrightville, a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Theyd fallen into the arrangement after yet another petty argumentwhich potted dendrobium at the home and garden center looked the healthiestblew up into a two-day fight. The Luongs had always done this, scratching at each others words as much out of habit as anything. But this time when Thuy Luong told her husband to go sleep in the basement like a dog, he stayed there instead of slinking back upstairs. When Van went home for winter break she found that he had actually moved to the basement. He had shoved aside the old fold-out sofa theyd had since their first apartment in the States and set up a futon right in front of the big-screen TV, a clunky first-generation model that would soon be replaced by newer and newer models, to which hed add an elaborate sound system, with speakers hidden inside wooden figurines of Vietnamese fishermen.
The basement had always been his domain. Van was going on nine when they moved into that house, and she had helped him partition off a section of the floor to create a studio for his company, Luong Inventions by Dinh Luong, for which he often ditched his everyday money jobs in tiling and construction. He kept his sketches tacked up on the faux-wood paneling, along with photographs of himself trying out his prototypes. His most successful inventionor least unsuccessfulwas the Luong Arm, a tong-like gadget devised to help short people reach items on a high shelf. He had sold more than a hundred Luong Arms to various friends in the Vietnamese community. But the product had never been quite rightthe mechanical grip could grab a light basket, but lost control with plates and glasses. When Van graduated from college, her father gave her a prototype as a gift, saying, Short girls have to take care of themselves.
In law school, when Miles first came over to her apartment he had spied the Arm immediately. It lay on top of her kitchen cabinets, where Van had stored and forgotten it because she couldnt see that high up.
Amused, Miles examined the Y-shaped instrument and held it like a divining rod. Will this lead me to gold and riches? He steered it toward her.
It didnt for my dad, Van replied.
She showed Miles how it worked: put the wrist through the velcroed brace, hang on to the wand, and use the thumb to work the lever that opened and closed the tongs. Miles wanted to try it, aiming for a thin-necked vase in Vans kitchen cupboard. Dont, she said. Its the only one I have.
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