This is a serialization of short story collection, Staring into the Sun. Start here for more info and the full index.
Previous installment: Gold Mountain Diggers, Part 3 / Hearts on Fire, Part 1
January 1965
Linda serves first. Her ball spins out wide to the right. You scramble to return it, but you don’t even make contact. Damn.
“These shoes are killing me,” you call over to her.
“Maybe remember yours next time!”
You made it in good time to Linda’s new place in San Marino, just under an hour. There’s never traffic leaving Beverly Hills, then you chose the freeways, speeding happily in your white Pontiac Bonneville. If your dad had bothered to ask what kind of car you wanted for your nineteenth birthday, you would have specified a convertible. Otherwise, you adore your car: you keep it spotless and it still smells new.
Even when you pulled into Linda’s drive—gently curving, long enough for ten cars—and grabbed your tennis bag from the passenger seat, you didn’t notice that you were missing your shoes.
Linda is one of those people who lives a little ahead of you, setting the pace: she’s a few years older, she moved to Los Angeles first, she just got married to a guy in med school, she’s already working. Back in Oakland, she dated Richie, your fashion designer cousin who has since moved on to men.
“I can’t even feel my toes,” you insist.
“Excuses, excuses!”
“No really. Hold on a sec. Time out.”
“No time outs during a Grand Slam,” Linda teases.
You have an idea. You jog into the house and find a pair of scissors. Back outside, you take off the shoes and hack into the toes until you fashion a sort of tennis-shoe sandal.
Linda looks shocked. “Oh my God. Richie would be proud! Tennis couture, made to measure.”
A few points in your favor later (the shoe-sandals definitely improve your game), you ask, “So what do you have planned for tonight?”
“We have a good one for you.”
You tip your head down and peer up at Linda with the best coquettish look in your repertoire. “That’s what you said last time, and that was a disaster! He was such a stick in the mud.”
Linda looks at you hard for an instant, like it was your fault. Did she speak with him afterwards?
The guy was good-looking, seemed nice in a placid kind of way, not a lot of zing. He took you to an Italian place where the waitress fawned over him. When she forgot to bring you a steak knife, you raised your voice, “Can’t you get it right? It’s your job, you know. And it’s not that hard.”
Dinner over, you tried to rescue the evening. “Let’s drive around a little, maybe go into the hills.”
“Sorry, I have a lab practical tomorrow. I’d better get home and prepare.”
What a loser. “Not such a good night for a date then, is it?” You heard the venom in your voice.
“Apparently not. I’ll take you home.”
And that was that.
Linda reassures you, “No, really, you’re going to like him. Love him. Trust me.”
That evening, you arrive at the address she scribbled for you: someone’s house, lots of cars parked outside.
You ring the bell and Linda answers as if it were her own place. She is a cloud of jasmine perfume and glimmering gold. “Hello, beautiful. Love your dress! Is it new?”
She leads you by the hand into the spacious living room. A couple of dozen people are milling around, all a bit older than you, some Asian and some Caucasian. A few of the men stare at you in admiration. You don’t meet their eyes, pretending not to notice.
“Turn around,” Linda orders. She presses something onto your back between your shoulder blades. When you turn back, she has flitted off to the next person, a man in a navy suit. She consults a piece of paper hidden in her palm, then tapes an index card to his back.
Linda taps a fork against a wine glass and the room falls silent. She, her husband, and another couple—this must be their house—cluster together.
Your friend explains, “By now you can all see that everyone has a card on their back. Each card says something that matches up with someone else’s in the room. You’re not allowed to tell people what their card says, but you can guess at yours. Let’s say you see a lovely lady”—appreciative giggles from the room—“and you see ‘salt’ on her card. Then you can ask, ‘Am I pepper?’ and she can say yes or no, without giving any further clues. Got it? You’re all eggheads here anyway, right?” She winks.
Most of the women stay put and the men start circulating. A man asks you, “Am I ugliness?”
You respond, “Certainly not!” You check his back. “No, sorry. Better luck next time.”
Another man strides toward you. Tall, dark, and handsome, not bad.
“May I?”
You turn around to show him your back, then you face him again.
He asks, “Am I the Beast?” He twists to show you his card: “Beast,” in Linda’s writing.
“Yes indeed, sir,” you grin. “I mean, you beast.”
“I think you’re meant to be in my fairy tale,” he says in a deeper voice. You’re tempted to tease him for his corniness, but you resist.
He sticks out his hand and says, “Marshall.”
“Bonnie.” You offer your hand, palm down, for a kiss.
He touches his lips to the back of your hand, looking straight into your eyes, staring into the sun. A shockwave hits you.
November 1965
When you find out that the entire Oakland Tribune column “The Social Circle” is dedicated to you, you feel like you’ve arrived. However, it irks you that the photo is not of you but of better-known Mom, captioned “Mrs. Corinne Shoong bids to a wedding.” Your mother tracks her column inches as closely as her bust-waist-hips measurements.
The News is Romantic
Invitations are out from Mrs. Corinne Wu Shoong of Beverly Hills to the Dec. 18 wedding of her daughter Bonnie Yvonne to Marshall Postman, a senior medical student at the University of Southern California.
The wedding is to take place in the fashionable Friars Club in Beverly Hills. The bride will wear an original gown designed for her by her cousin, Richard Tam.
Oakland’s stellar young fashion designer will be going south for the wedding, as will Bonnie’s maternal grandparents, the Henri Wus of Piedmont.
Bonnie’s father is Milton Shoong of San Francisco, millionaire president of the National Dollar Stores, who earlier this year married swimming champion Papsie Georgian.
Mr. Shoong will also go south for his daughter’s wedding, as will his son, Milton Shoong Jr., who recently opened a nightclub in San Francisco named Dragon A-Go-Go.
Mrs. Hollis Chang, whose husband is a medical school classmate of the prospective bridegroom, will be matron of honor.
Bonnie’s fiancé is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Sygmond Postman of Los Angeles, who will give the rehearsal dinner the night before at Frascatti Gourmet.
The prospective bridegroom was graduated from UCLA before entering USC Medical School, where he expects to receive his M.D. in June.
Bonnie was graduated from Oakland’s Skyline High School before moving to Beverly Hills a little over two years ago. She is a junior at USC, where she is majoring in psychology and fine arts.
December 1965
Even from up in Oakland, “The Social Circle” really gets you, sharing your creativity with the world. And the photo is of you this time: “Bonnie Shoong, MGM wedding setting.” Plus a headshot of the MGM set designer who Mom knows (“Susan Carlson, evergreen scene,” in a white sleeveless top and pearl necklace).
Winter Weddings
…Speaking of settings for winter weddings, the one in which Bonnie Shoong will be married on Dec. 18 will certainly be appropriate to the season.
Because she said she wanted her marriage ceremony to be like the wedding scene in “Sound of Music,” her family has engaged a set designer from MGM to create an appropriate snowy dream forest for her marriage to USC medical student Marshall Postman.
You love Richie’s gorgeous ink drawing of you in your wedding gown, front and center, with your bridal party gathered around you. He has promised to give you the original for you to frame. The illustration takes up most of the Fashion page in the Oakland Tribune, above the article on his designs and ads for Patek Philippe watches and rhinestone-studded high-heel shoes.
Couture For Every Member Of The Wedding Party
Richard Tam is couturier to every feminine member of the party for the Dec. 18 wedding of his cousin, Bonnie Shoong, to Marshall Postman.
Bonnie wanted two things, a slim line for the front of her gown and a magnificent sweep of train. These are points difficult to reconcile, but Richard has managed. The white Dupioni silk satin gown falls narrowly down the front and sides, but from deep folds at the back of the hips, a great train flares out and back to a point. Over the train and beyond it goes a filmy veil, to be held by a stiff, high little crown of jewels through which the bride’s dark hair will be revealed.
Flowers for the wedding are to be pink and white, so for attendants’ gowns Richard picked up the pink in the lovely pinky-lavender of true mauve, using cloque for a charming tone on tone effect. Matron of Honor Linda Chang is to wear a princess gown of the mauve cloque.
Again playing color against color with a masterful touch, Richard is putting ladies of the senior generations in tones of gold. Corrie Shoong, the bride’s mother and also Richard’s favorite model, is to wear gold silk scattered with white coin dots, a white organdy bow fastening the jacket over her formal gown; swirls of diamonds in earring and a brooch will be her jewelry.
Rich gold lamé with swirls of silver is Grandmother Wu’s elegantly tailored evening suit, the jacket buttoned up to a collarless neckline, the sleeves cuffed in sable; jewels and flowers will be worn on her black silk bag.
You and Marshall park the Bonneville outside Poa-Poa and Goong-Goong’s, stopping by on your way back to Los Angeles after your short honeymoon in Oregon.
Your grandparents have kept entire newspapers for you, unsure if you wanted them intact. You flip past the front-page headline, “Red Terrorists Kidnap 3 Yanks,” about Communist guerrillas capturing U.S. soldiers near Saigon. You don’t feel any affinity for the Vietnamese; you don’t think of them as fellow Asians.
The best piece on your wedding, more “you” than the staid coverage in The San Francisco Examiner and the Oakland Tribune, is “The Social Circle”—even though the photo is again of Mom. She’s smiling wide; like everyone else in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, her eyes, nose, and teeth have been perfected by cosmetic surgeons and orthodontists.
The wedding of Bonnie Shoong and Marshall Postman, held at the Friar’s Club in Beverly Hills Saturday night, was of considerable interest here.
The bride’s father, Milton Shoong, was there with his wife for the ceremony, and his son Milton Shoong Jr. was down from San Francisco.
Mrs. Corinne Wu Shoong, the mother of the bride, had I. Magnin president Russel Carpenter as her partner for the sit-down dinner after the nuptials, although Russel reportedly missed his dinner because he was so busy taking pictures with his Polaroid color camera.
Superior Court Judge and Mrs. Monroe Friedman were down from Oakland, Judge Friedman to officiate at the ceremony, and designer Richard Tam Jr., the bride’s cousin, started the post-dinner Fruging with the bride’s sister. The two subsequently went into the Jewish wedding dance, according to Corinne Shoong, and before the festivities concluded everybody joined in on serenading the mother of the bride with “My Yiddish Mama.”
What the column doesn’t say is that your mom’s date, Russel Carpenter, is in his eighties. An ancient man. You doubt she’s sleeping with him—it’d probably give him a heart attack.
It doesn’t say that your dad’s new wife is one mortifying month younger than you. They had snuck off to Las Vegas to get married. You try not to think about them in bed together, but your dad is so touchy-feely, lovey-dovey with her that it doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
It doesn’t say that Goong-Goong gave you away instead of Dad. Mom wouldn’t dream of granting Dad that honor. It doesn’t say that your parents are like supermagnets that have been twisted the other way round so the force shoots them to opposite sides of the room. Or the universe if space would allow.
It doesn’t say that at the wedding, Dad told you that your gift was the Bonneville, your birthday present from last year. Was that an indirect “fuck you” to Mom for not allowing him to pay for the wedding?
It doesn’t say—and how would anyone know?—that you sobbed inconsolably at the Beverly Hills Hotel on your wedding night. You desperately wanted to go home to Mom, back to your life of parties and the cute guy of the week. You were terrified that your wedding day would mark your summit of fun and glamour, the pinnacle of life itself.
To be continued on 8 November 2025.
Lovely writing. A very direct gaze, ever more complex characterizations, lots of prickly things to contemplate. On a lighter note, I loved imagining "the post-dinner Fruging" at the wedding.