On screen, half a dozen nurses all slim, young, and pretty, lined up in a row. They wore starched white dresses and little white caps. Their hair was pinned into buns. Their legs were in tan nylons. Each woman would twirl when a man passed by jotting notes. Their dainty feet were all in white round-toed heels. The man in the scene was middle aged and ordinary. He wore a pressed shirt that strained across his midsection. When he reached the end of the line, the girls gathered around the chart, put their hands to their mouths, and erupted into a tide of giggles. Kim fidgeted in her seat. She had always preferred Italian films. Her children were evidence. When counseled to give her children Western names to make their assimilation easier, Kim had renamed Sophia after Sophia Loren and Marcel for Marcello Mastroianni.

Despite her efforts to forge ahead with life, an act as benign as going to the movies made her miss her husband even more. Back in Sàigòn, Kim and Duc used to go to the movies every Friday night. They would get durian shakes and boiled peanuts and as soon as the lights went out, she’d rest her head on his shoulder, inhale his cinnamon smell, and give herself over to the fantasy of the film.

Her favorite American movie was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She remembered Elizabeth Taylor stunningly hissing for affection. Her favorite scene was when Elizabeth Taylor’s character said, “I’m not living with you! We occupy the same cage that’s all.” In that moment, Kim was so transfixed that she forgot all about the M&M’s in her hand. She smashed every single one of the candied shells. Her husband teased her endlessly. She thought that was bad enough but then it got even worse.

Something about Liz Taylor’s performance was so thrilling that after seeing the movie, Kim wanted to cut her waist-length hair. She clipped a photo of the violet-eyed actress out of Ciné Monde. Over Duc’s favorite meal of clay pot catfish and seafood sweet and sour soup, she slid the picture beside his bowl. He eyed it flatly and continued slurping.

Finally, he said, “Uh-huh, the girl from that Tin House movie.”

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, silly. But how about her hair? I want to get mine cut like that.” Kim rolled up her folds of blue-black hair and held it at the nape of her neck.

“I love you the way I married you,” he said. He took her hands and flattened his palms against hers, causing her hair to unroll down her back.

“But Duc . . .” she pulled her hair up again and smiled.

“No,” he said and excused himself from the table, fish unfinished.

Kim cleared the table, washed the dishes, broke a bowl.

The following week, she was shopping on Sàigòn’s fashionable Boulevard Bonard, when she found herself in front of the beauty salon. She stood at the window watching the scissors swim and glide through a lady’s hair. A man waved her in and said, “Don’t just stand there.” Once in the salon seat, the hairdresser gathered her hair as she had done for Duc and nudged her chin toward the mirror. He said, “Quelle jolie,” and whispered in her ear, “This cut will accentuate your already elongated neck. You’ll be a swan among mortals.”