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1945 Redefining America%u201cIt doesn%u2019t matter,%u201d Phuong said. None of it did, neither the lies nor the fact that Vivien had everything, even Phuong%u2019s name, which she didn%u2019t care to use. %u201cYou don%u2019t have to be a doctor to sponsor me.%u201d%u201cWhere are my tissues?%u201d Vivien wiped her tears away with her hands.%u201cI won%u2019t bother you.%u201d Phuong touched Vivien on the arm, sticky with perspiration. Their cabin was nearing the platform. %u201cI%u2019ll find a job. I%u2019ll take care of myself. I%u2019ll take care of you.%u201dVivien snapped her purse shut, still crying. %u201cI%u2019m sorry, Phuong. When I return, I%u2019m putting my life back together. I%u2019ve got to pay off four credit cards and my student loans and hope my house won%u2019t be taken from me.%u201d%u201cBut%u2014%u201d%u201cI won%u2019t have time to worry about a little sister.%u201d Now it was Vivien who seized Phuong%u2019s hands with her own tear-dampened ones. %u201cCan you understand that? Please?%u201dWhen the attendant opened the door, their father was waiting, disposable camera held to his eye, his wife standing behind him with the boys. The Ferris wheel rotated at its measured pace, slow enough for them to step out, Vivien first. A week later their father would develop the photograph, but it would take Phuong a moment to examine the laminated picture before she remembered what was absent underneath the clear plastic. Vivien was visible in the doorway, eyes moist and makeup smudged, but by an accident of timing and composition Phuong herself could not be seen.%u2022 %u2022 %u2022While it had taken Vivien twenty-seven years to mail her first letter home, it took her only a month to send the second missive. Phuong returned one evening from Nam Kha to find her parents and brothers clustered around the 115table in the living room, sifting through a stack of pictures that Vivien had included. A smiling and cheerful Mr. Ly waved the letter at Phuong, a single sheet that she read sitting on the arm of the couch. The letter recounted Vivien%u2019s wonderful memories, dining on a floating restaurant on the Saigon River, being fitted for a custom-made ao dai, riding on a pony cart around Lake Xuan Huong in Da Lat, the best day her arrival and the worst her departure. I looked out the window of the airplane until I couldn%u2019t see the country anymore, she wrote. Everything%u2019s so green. The moment the clouds covered it, all I wanted was to return. And so the letter went, her sister%u2019s hypocrisy making Phuong so ill that it was all she could do not to tear the letter in half.%u201cTomorrow I want you to have these pictures laminated,%u201d Mr. Ly said, sorting through the photographs Vivien had sent. %u201cWe%u2019ll make an album from them.%u201d%u201cWhat for?%u201d Phuong said, tossing the letter onto the table.%u201cWhat do you mean, what for?%u201d Mr. Ly was incredulous. %u201cSo that we%u2019ll have something to remember her by until she comes back.%u201dPhuong studied her father as he sat on the couch, surrounded by her mother and brothers, clutching the photographs as if they were equal to the hundred dollar bills Vivien had given him. Once again she felt a surge of pity for him, certain not only that her father would break his daughter%u2019s heart but also that the daughters would one day break his. She contemplated telling him this truth, that Vivien was never going to return, and that one day, perhaps not soon, but eventually, Phuong would leave as well, to a world where she could fall in love with someone she didn%u2019t already know. It was merely a matter of momentum, and she now knew how to begin.By nine the next morning she was alone in the house, the boys gone to school, her parents 120Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.