“Yeah. In the one I watched yesterday he was talking about analemmas—the path of the sun across the sky throughout the year. I forgot that’s what Ana was named for.”

“Oh, right. He would’ve loved Analemma. How is she?”

“She’s good. Joan’s neighbor Tony took her out for a hike with his dog this morning. Do you know Tony?”

“He’s the one who did their built-ins, right?”

“Right.” I wondered if Dad had any suspicions about Tony’s feelings for Joan, but it seemed too weird to ask.

“I talked to your mother recently.”

I tensed up. “You did?”

“She said she’s coming to San Francisco to see you.”

“She’ll be on a layover to Hong Kong. She’s not really coming to visit me.”

He exhaled. “Give her a chance.”

He was always asking me to give her a chance. I wondered how many chances he gave her before they divorced.

When I was about twelve, I found a folder of newspaper clippings about my mom in the bookcase in my dad’s office. In one article, she was on the front page of the Boston Globe’s arts section in an off-the-shoulder black dress, her shiny black hair hanging down in a long straight sheet. Her lips were dark red, her eyes dramatically lined, and the headline read “Alexis Tang Gives ‘Carmen’ an Asian Twist.” She had played Carmen when I was seven years old. I hadn’t been allowed to see her performance, but I remembered it had been a big deal.

Inset in the article was a smaller photo from the production itself, with my mother in costume onstage. She wore a red bustier and a ruffled red skirt, and she held up the hem with one hand while she sang, bare legs on display.

I stared at those two photos for a long time: In the larger one she was all elegance; in the second she was all sex appeal. It was disconcerting to see her in the bustier, her cleavage and skin exposed, but she was arresting in both images. I wondered if I could ever look like her. My hair wasn’t as black as hers, and it wasn’t as straight. My features were softer, as if someone had taken a photo of her face and blurred the lines.

I read the article several times. She told the Boston Globe it was long past time for color-blind casting in operas; there was nothing stopping her from playing Carmen if she could sing in French as well as any other soprano. “Why should being Chinese exclude me from taking this role?” she said to the Globe reporter. “The language of music, like the language of love, is universal.”