Woman Who Could Not Forget Read Free

gone on a whirlwind five-week trip to promote her latest book, The Chinese in America. Before Iris had left for the book tour, she’d seemed perfectly fine. When she returned home in early May, she became apprehensive and preoccupied, believing someone wanted to harm her. After she had the breakdown, three months later, her paranoia had worsened.
    On October 28, after I discovered an application to own a gun and a firearms safety manual in her purse, I found out she had visited a gun shop in east San Jose. When I confronted her, she realized I was watching her closely and became distant. She didn’t return my phone calls or answer my e-mails. I brought flowers and food to her doorstep, but she didn’t even allow me to come into her home or get near her.
    Now she had left a suicide note and disappeared. But I still held out hope. Maybe she had changed her mind about killing herself and would soon come home—as she had in September, when she had checked into a local hotel for the day but returned that evening. I had never really been a religious person, but as my knees shook and my hands trembled, I started to pray.
    Shau-Jin and I returned home and got ready to leave. But we soon realized that it would be impossible to find her without a plan.
    “What are we going to do?” Shau-Jin asked me in desperation.
    “I don’t know,” I said, my voice shaking. “Let me check with the police.”
    I called the San Jose Police Department with the case number Brett had given us and asked whether the police had any news about Iris. One officer told me that the police had already put her name and her car’s license plate number into the missing-persons database.
    “No new information,” he told me, assuring me that police would inform us of any developments right away.
    I was so desperate, I called the Police Department every half hour or so. I always got the same answer.
    “What do you think Iris will do?” I asked Shau-Jin.
    He didn’t answer. He was as scared as I was.

    I decided to share the news with all our close relatives. First I called my son, Michael. He was the only other person who really knew what was going on with his sister. Michael was a software engineer for a Silicon Valley company, and his office was close to our home. Unfortunately, Michael was in New York on business. I reached him on his cell phone and he listened in stunned silence, quickly deciding to fly back home as soon as possible.
    I also called my older brother, Cheng-Cheng, in nearby Palo Alto, my younger brother, Bing, in New Jersey and my younger sister, Ging-Ging, in Maryland. In the meantime, Shau-Jin called his two brothers, Shau-Yen in New Jersey and Frank in Los Angeles, in hopes that they could offer guidance. They were all in shock, because Iris had prohibited us from telling anyone, even close relatives, about her nervous breakdown. None of my siblings even knew Iris had been depressed. They tried to calm me down, saying that Iris would certainly change her mind about taking her life and return home soon. But they offered no concrete ideas of what I should do.
    Each of them soon called me back and asked me details about Iris’s recent struggle with depression. Repeating the details over and over left me exhausted.

    It was ironic that one of the worst days in my life up until that point, September 21, 2004, had given me hope. That was the day that Iris went missing for several hours. At the time, Brett was out of town and we were taking care of her.
    When she didn’t return home by late afternoon as promised, we reported her missing to the police. At the time, she was taking a new antipsychotic drug called Abilify, plus the antidepressant Celexa. She had experienced side effects from the drugs: shoulder and leg pain, drowsiness, and agitation.
    Against my wishes, she had insisted on driving herself to the library that morning. When she returned home at about 8 P.M ., she told us that she had checked into a Crowne Plaza Hotel close to