Better how? With a borrowed lady friend pushing a borrowed grandson in a stroller? ‘Who is he?’

‘Nobody important. I haven’t talked to him for twenty-seven years.’

He couldn’t even lie well. ‘And you still think he’d fall for your trick?’

‘I know him.’

Auntie Mei wondered if knowing someone – a friend, an enemy – was like never letting that person out of one’s sight. Being known, then, must not be far from being imprisoned by someone else’s thought. In that sense, her grandmother and her mother had been fortunate: no one could claim to have known them, not even Auntie Mei. When she was younger, she had seen no point in understanding them, as she had been told they were beyond apprehension. After their deaths, they had become abstract. Not knowing them, Auntie Mei, too, had the good fortune of not wanting to know anyone who came after: her husband; her co-workers at various Chinese restaurants during her yearlong migration from New York to San Francisco; the babies and the mothers she took care of, who had become only recorded names in her notebook. ‘I’d say let it go,’ Auntie Mei told Paul. ‘What kind of grudge is worthy of twenty-seven years?’

Paul sighed. ‘If I tell you the story, you’ll understand.’

‘Please,’ Auntie Mei said. ‘Don’t tell me any story.’

From the second-floor landing, Chanel watched Paul put the groceries in the refrigerator and Auntie Mei warm up a bottle of formula. Only after he’d left did Chanel call down to ask how their date had gone. Auntie Mei held Baby in the rocking chair; the joy of watching him eat was enough of a compensation for his mother’s being a nuisance.

Chanel came downstairs and sat on the sofa. ‘I saw you pull up. You stayed in the car for a long time,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know an old man could be so romantic.’

Auntie Mei thought of taking Baby into her bedroom, but this was not her house, and she knew that Chanel, in a mood to talk, would follow her. When Auntie Mei remained quiet, Chanel said that her husband had called earlier, and she had told him that his son had gone out to witness a couple carry on a sunset affair.

You should walk out right this minute, Auntie Mei said to herself, but her body settled into the rhythm of the rocking chair, back and forth, back and forth.

‘Are you angry, Auntie?’

‘What did your husband say?’

‘He was upset, of course, and I told him that’s what he gets for not coming home.’

What’s stopping you from leaving, Auntie Mei asked herself. You want to believe you’re staying for Baby, don’t you?

‘You should be happy for me that he’s upset,’ Chanel said. ‘Or at least happy for Baby, no?’

I’m happy that, like everyone else, you’ll all become the past soon.