Someone Else’s Life(13)

7


Laptop ANNIE file


I still remember how giddy I used to get when I first started dating him and knew I was going to see him that night. I’d never felt that electricity with anyone before. At last, I thought to myself. I’ve found my person. He was sweet and kind to me, we had intellectual conversations, but we could also be silly.

The first time we had sex was because I asked him to show me his toes. I have this fear of men with hairy toes. He wouldn’t show them to me at first. He looked at me like I had grown two heads. I feared the worst. We laughed so much that day, me trying to wrestle his shoe off and then his sock and him putting up a fight but not really? It was an excuse for him to wrap his arms around me and feel our bodies touching, getting closer. After a while, we didn’t even know what we were play-fighting about. We ended up doing it right there on his living room floor. After, he finally showed me his toes, and thank goodness they weren’t hairy. I still remember sitting there, just smiling at each other in the goofy way that only first-time sex can bring. You know what I mean.

When did we lose all that? We had such big dreams. We were going to raise our family in our dream home on the lake. He had grown up going to Lake George every summer with his family and always loved the water. Any water: ocean, river, lake, it didn’t matter. Which is why when we saw the house on the lake and it was in our price range, he couldn’t believe it and wanted to offer right away. We’d just found out we were pregnant, and that was the house he wanted our child to grow up in. I saw how excited he was, how much his eyes lit up at the thought of living in the lake house, and it made me excited too. And it became my dream house.

Our kids were going to grow up in a real community, where kids run in and out of each other’s homes, and mothers could relax at the beach knowing the bigger kids were watching out for the little ones. We would have barbecues on our back deck overlooking the lake and eat outside. Our kids would run around the fenced-in backyard and we were going to get a dog. It was the perfect house for our perfect family.

But then our dream fell apart. We had turned into strangers long before what happened to our son, not understanding each other, and not even speaking the same language. How did that happen? We should have come together when that tragedy struck our son. It should have bonded us, made us a united front. But instead, it pushed us even further apart. And that was when you became my solace. Only you could push that loneliness away, as I dreamed of the life I was supposed to live.





8


“You said you have a sister?” Serena asked.

Annie nodded as she sat on the other stool at the breakfast bar. “I have an older sister, Jeannie, and a younger sister, Sam. Sam lives in the main house with my father and her daughter, Cam. We’re all close, even though Jeannie is back in New York.” Except they didn’t talk about deep things, like everything Annie had been going through these past few years. Feelings weren’t discussed in detail in their family. They were glossed over, like they usually were in Taiwanese households.

“I wish I’d had brothers or sisters. I’m an only child.” Serena shifted on her stool.

Annie gave her a wry look. “Well, sometimes when I was growing up, I wished I was an only child. Jeannie was the perfect Asian daughter. She got straight As, went to law school, married a Taiwanese man that our parents approved of, and has a boy and a girl. She makes me and Sam want to barf sometimes.”

Serena’s mouth quirked. “I bet.”

“Seriously, though. On my father’s side, all the Taiwanese aunties are so proud of Jeannie. They brag about her, using her as the shining example among our numerous cousins of a daughter who makes her parents proud.” Annie wrinkled her nose. “Not like Sam and me.”

“What’s wrong with you and Sam?”

“Sam’s the free spirit of our family. She drifted through school, doing well enough to get by but not really applying herself. She’s had more career changes than most people have shoes.”

“That doesn’t sound like a bad thing.” Serena’s wineglass sat in front of her, as if she were so absorbed by Annie’s stories of her family that she forgot to drink.

“Yeah, well, when she was thirty-one, Sam had a one-night stand with a guy named Mark. She didn’t even know his last name. She never saw him again, but he left her with something, and let me tell you, that is not done in our family.” Annie put her own wineglass down, wondering why she was telling a virtual stranger this. But there was something about Serena that made it easy to talk to her.

“What? Her daughter?” Serena arched an eyebrow.

“Yup. My mom was horrified. She was more progressive than my dad, but even she thought you needed to do things in the right order: marriage, then babies. We all thought my dad would flip out, since he’s so traditionally Taiwanese, but Sam has always been his girl.”

Annie thought again how it wasn’t fair the things Sam got away with, with their father. She could do no wrong, including coming home with a child out of wedlock, which Annie knew was a huge source of embarrassment to her father. But he’d stood by his youngest, shutting down his sisters, especially Big Auntie, whenever they brought up Sam’s shame.

“And you?” Serena asked.

Annie waved the question off. “Let’s just say I was a disappointment to my Taiwanese family too, in other ways.”