A Map for the Missing(52)

“Okay, okay, I won’t,” Yitian said, putting his hands up in surrender. He laughed and this time his eyes crinkled at their corners.

“Yuanyuan. Don’t yell at Uncle, okay?” She tried to sound appropriately stern, but she was pleased by how casually her son acted, as if his mother had a whole rotation of friends with whom he was often invited to go on outings.

Inside the zoo, a light drizzle began and he had no umbrella, so they both huddled under the one she’d brought. The park was near empty because of the weather, the only other visitors a handful of grandparents with their small children, speaking in dampened tones. They walked slowly. She could feel the rigidity in his body, how carefully he moved so that they wouldn’t accidentally touch. But then, rounding a corner, his side collided into hers.

“Sorry!” he exclaimed.

“It’s all right,” she laughed.

They walked, still not touching, but somehow a barrier had been broken between them. When they bumped into each other next, they were slower to disentangle.

Yuanyuan ran up in front of them, unafraid of the rain, leaping from exhibit to exhibit. She gave up on calling to him to fix the hood of his raincoat.

“Imagine what we would have been like if we’d seen these animals when we were young,” she said, passing an exhibit of macaques, who were huddling, disgruntled, under the overhang to stay dry. He stepped out from under the umbrella and waved his hands around his head, trying to get their attention. He chuckled when the monkey’s eyes narrowed at him, and her heart swelled. His curiosity, his playfulness—she felt she could have been watching him when he was eighteen again.

“It would have been the most amazing thing I’d seen in my entire life,” he said.

She nodded. “When I see how Yuanyuan reacts to things, I’m reminded to be amazed.”

“Everything looks smaller than it used to be,” he said. “Do you remember how big Hefei seemed when we came here for the exam? I remember Yishou saying to me, I feel like I could turn around just once and lose my sense of direction here. And I felt the same. I was so scared of getting lost. Even now, with all this construction, the city doesn’t seem nearly as big. But I don’t think anything has changed. I’ve just seen more, and my eyes have gotten bigger.”

The tone of his voice saddened her and she felt a pang of loss on his behalf, for the boy that had been left behind.

They stopped with Yuanyuan, who was clinging on to the gate in front of an exhibit of red-crowned cranes. “These are the most famous animals here,” she said. They watched the two lithe white birds, which would only be an unremarkable white and black if not for the splashes of red feathers upon their heads. The first time she’d ever seen one, she’d thought the tuft was blood.

The two birds stalked around their compound, necks oscillating as they pecked at the wet ground.

“Why aren’t they scared of the rain?” Yuanyuan asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

A crane dipped its beak into the hump of its back.

“It’s because of their feathers,” Yitian said. “They’re designed so that the rain just sheds off. And they insulate their bodies. These birds are so large that they don’t have to be scared, and the rain doesn’t affect them much.”

Yuanyuan nodded his head vigorously as if he’d understood every word.

“How did you know that?” she asked him.

“I read it somewhere.”

They walked on. His answer was exactly the type she’d expected him to give, from a person who’d accumulated knowledge over the years in areas far and wide. Life with him would likely involve a patchwork of such collected facts, she thought.

Outside the zoo entrance they passed a man selling tanghulu.

“Ma! Can I have one?”

The vendor looked up hopefully from under his umbrella. “Made out of fresh hawthorn!”

“They sell these here now!” Yitian exclaimed. “I’ve only ever seen them in Beijing.”

“The kids like them.” She gestured at Yuanyuan.

“We’ll take three,” Yitian said. He turned to her. “I never got to eat them in Beijing. I walked past them and stared and thought how good they looked with all the syrup dripping off them. But I didn’t have any money to spend. I thought they were probably the most delicious treats in the world.”

They all huddled under the umbrella. Yitian wedged the handle into his armpit and distributed the skewers. When he bit into the first shiny haw, his eyes bulged and widened.

“That was the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted,” he said. She nibbled at the edges of a haw and blanched. The taste was pure sugar.

“Right?” he said to her.

They gave all three of the skewers to Yuanyuan, theirs both half bitten, the clear crust of syrup shattered by their teeth into crystalline shards.

In any other time, she would have been a responsible parent, concerned about giving her son so much sugar before dinner, but she felt suddenly carefree. Delight was something to be indulged. She was happy, seeing Yitian’s joy at the simple candy, which she’d passed so many times on the street without a thought to try.

They watched Yuanyuan jump on a slide carved out of a stone elephant while Yitian held the remaining skewer so her son could play freely. She realized that the weight on her chest had lifted. She wondered at how the day had transformed itself, how this was possible when she was with him. In the morning when she’d called he was hesitant and she was full of fear. And now this. Days with Guifan began with an expectation that was met by the end. She hadn’t minded that until now. Liked it, in fact. But their type of flat life could leave a person trapped.