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1955 Viet Thanh Nguyenat work. She wore her sister%u2019s gift, and over the lace donned a blouse and Capri pants. It would be best, she thought, to do what needed to be done outdoors, and so she placed a stool by the living room gate and a tin bucket on the pavement of the alley. When she opened the envelope of photographs, the first picture featured her father and Vivien shivering in the Ice Lantern at the amusement park, their last stop that day. In the foyer, an attendant had handed them polyester parkas, hooded, knee length, and in neon hues of yellow, pink, orange, and green. Even wearing the parkas, stepping from the foyer into the Ice Lantern itself was a shock, for it was in essence an enormous freezer, a frigid, echoing hall that offered a walking tour of the world%u2019s tourist landmarks, rendered as ice sculptures no taller than a man%u2019s height. Dazzling neon lights in the same spectrum of colors as the parkas illuminated the sculptures, the scurrying crowds, and a pair of long chutes, also carved from ice, down which shrieking children slid.%u201cThis is weird,%u201d Vivien had said, hunching her shoulders from the cold as she stood before a miniature London Bridge. It was in front of this bridge, not far from the frozen pyramids of Egypt and the rimy Sphinx, that Vivien and her father posed for the photograph. While Phuong aimed Vivien%u2019s camera, father and daughter had wrapped their arms around each other%u2019s waists. Phuong had taken the picture mechanically, not paying much attention to the small digital image after it had flashed up on the camera%u2019s screen. But now, holding the photograph as she sat on the stool, she could focus on its details. With their hoods over their heads, the only visible parts of her father%u2019s and sister%u2019s bodies were their pale, triangular faces, two white petals floating on lily pads of neon green. In the Ice Lantern%u2019s glow, her sister%u2019s face looked more like her father%u2019s than 125Phuong%u2019s did, the symmetry rendering clear what Phuong could now say. Their father loved Vivien more than her.The photograph ignited easily when Phuong lit it with a match. after she dropped the photo into the bucket, she watched it curl up and shrivel, remembering how Vivien had approached her after she took the picture and tried to make amends. %u201cI never thought I%u2019d say this,%u201d Vivien had said, smiling as she clasped Phuong%u2019s hand, %u201cbut I%u2019m cold.%u201d Even a month later, Phuong could feel the chilliness of the Ice Lantern, and how she had shivered and turned away toward Egypt%u2019s crystalline sand. She fed the fire with more photos, and their heat warmed her, two dozen others disappearing until only one was left, of Vivien and Phuong at the airport on the morning of Vivien%u2019s departure, Vivien with her arm around Phuong%u2019s shoulder.Unlike Vivien, Phuong was not smiling. Their father had forced her to wear an ao dai for Vivien%u2019s departure, and she looked serious and grim in its silk confines. Hers was the expression that older people of an earlier generation usually adopted as they stood before the camera, picture taking a rare and ceremonious occasion reserved for weddings and funerals. The photograph flared when she touched it with fire, Vivien%u2019s features melting first, their faces vanishing in flame. After the last embers from this photograph and the others died, Phuong rose and scattered their ashes. She was about to turn and enter the house when a gust of wind surged down the alley, catching the ashes and blowing them away. A flurry rose above the neighboring roofs, and she couldn%u2019t help but pause to admire for a moment the clear and depthless sky into which the ashes vanished, an inverted blue bowl of the finest crystal, covering the whole of Saigon as far as her eyes could see. 2011Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.