Everything I Never Told You

Ng narrates that the difference between Marilyn and James is that Marilyn had “more than anything […] wanted to stand out” while James “wanted to blend in” (25). Both wishes prove to be impossible.

Marilyn was raised in Virginia by a mother who strove to pass as a widow so no one would know that her husband had walked out on her. Marilyn, who determines not to be like her mother, goes to Radcliffe, the women’s branch of Harvard. She majors in physics with the hope of becoming a doctor. In September 1957 she meets James in a class on the Cowboy in American culture. James encounters scorn from the other students for being an Asian who teaches American culture. Marilyn, however, is attracted to him for his difference and kisses him when the class ends. The two begin dating, and when she drops the class, they become lovers.

For his part, James comes to love Marilyn because “she had blended in so perfectly” in the sea of pale faces in his lecture (38). James descended from a father who dodged the prohibition of Chinese immigration to the United States by pretending to be the son of a neighbor who had already emigrated. While the Lees started out in California, they later move to Iowa, where James’s father does maintenance work and his mother works in the kitchens of a boarding school. James passes the exam that grants children of employees a place at the school. While James is excluded by his peers due to being Chinese American, he excels academically and stops speaking Chinese with his parents, to ensure he has the perfect American accent. By the time he meets Marilyn, after seven years at Harvard, he is still friendless, despite his attempts to be American. His parents have since died.

By the next spring, James is finishing his PhD and hoping to be taken on by Harvard’s history department, while Marilyn has plans to attend medical school. However, James is overlooked for the position in favor of a White classmate because James “wasn’t the right fit for the department” (50). When Marilyn finds out that she is pregnant, she abandons her dream of medical school and decides to marry James, who has found a position at a modest college in Middlewood, Ohio. Marilyn and James’s mixed-race union is controversial by late 1950s standards and would have been illegal in some states. At the wedding, Marilyn’s mother makes it clear she opposes the union. The wedding day is the last time mother and daughter see each other.

At Lydia’s funeral, Marilyn mourns the death of her favorite daughter, while James has insisted on a closed casket because Lydia’s “eaten away” face is a gruesome sight (58). Although the funeral is well attended by neighbors and school peers, Nath feels that most attendees are strangers, given his parents’ lack of friends. Nath spots Jack and feels furious because he knows that Jack has been carelessly devirginating the girls at school and that Lydia was with him on the Monday she disappeared. James chastises Nath for initiating a fight at his sister’s funeral, saying, “you don’t go around making trouble. You let the police do the work” (63).

Later, Nath hears the police speaking to Jack. Jack tells them that he and Lydia were only friends and that they sat in his car and smoked the night of her disappearance. He tells them that Lydia seemed upset about commonplace things, such as her brother going to college, her falling grades, and her parents.

James reads the autopsy report in his office and is haunted by the details of the water damage to Lydia’s body. His assistant Louisa admonishes that he should not be in the office and insists on cooking him lunch. He accompanies her home, and they have sex.

Marilyn, meanwhile, determines to learn “what went wrong” and goes on her own detective quest, ignoring her youngest daughter Hannah’s pleas for intimacy (76). She searches Lydia’s room, and when she finds the diaries she bought her daughter 10 years earlier, she notes that all the pages are empty.

The narrative shifts back in time to explore the Lee family’s history. At age 29, Marilyn is mother to two children and deeply unhappy in her limited role as a housewife. James will not hear of her working, as he would like to achieve the status of chief breadwinner.

When Marilyn learns that her mother has died of a stroke, she goes to Virginia to sort out her mother’s possessions. She keeps only her mother’s Betty Crocker cookbook, with its instructions on how to make meals that will please a husband and family. Marilyn deeply fears having a life as small as her mother’s.

While she is gone, James, who is inept at housework, feeds his children convenience food and takes Nath swimming. He hopes that Nath will be a strong swimmer and that his subsequent athleticism will grant him all the popularity that James lacked at school. However, when James encourages a shy Nath to play with the other children, he notices that they exclude Nath and even call him a “Chink” (92). James is deeply uncomfortable witnessing his son being bullied as he was, but he does not actively comfort Nath. He remembers the swimming pool incident as the “first disappointment in his son, this first and most painful puncture in his fatherly dreams” (92). James cannot help wishing that Nath were more like Jack Wolff, a tall, bold, White boy being raised a single mother.

When Marilyn returns home, she is devastated by how small her life has turned out. She drives to the hospital and notices that there is only one female doctor, Janet Wolff. Janet Wolff is of a similar age and slender build to Marilyn, who cannot help thinking that she would have turned out like that if she had no husband and did not take such scrupulous care of her children.

Marilyn decides to leave home and uses her mother’s savings to finish an undergraduate degree in Toledo, Ohio. She enrolls in all the classes that she needs to graduate with a premedical degree. In preparation for her departure, she cooks her family abundant frozen meals and makes love to James. She considers leaving a note but does not. She only takes souvenirs from her husband’s and children’s things, unaware that her unborn daughter Hannah will share the tendency to steal others’ possessions.

When James and the children discover that Marilyn has gone, James calls the police. Lydia thinks of the diaries that her mother gifted her and notes that while “at last something important had occurred […] she did not know how to explain what had happened” (101).