Picture Us In The Light(103)
The words in front of me waver and then fade, and my lungs expand again. I’ll hold on to those words. I wish I had more to give them back in return.
I can give them this, at least: I tell them it’s really her. And I try my best to turn it into something they might want to hear. I tell them she’s happy. I tell my dad she’s a scientist like he is, I tell my mom she’s kind and polite like my mom is. I tell them that she looks like me.
My mom is crying, but trying to pretend she isn’t. The look on her face—if I were to draw it the part I’d go after, I think, is the loneliness, like you could fill the whole city with people for her and it wouldn’t be close to enough.
“Also,” I say quickly, “there’s something else. I’m withdrawing from RISD and I’m going to stay here.”
“What? No,” my mom says. “Of course you’re going. You have to go. We are so happy you were accepted. You’ll go.”
“I can’t. I’m not. I emailed them to ask how to withdraw.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” my dad says. “You’ve worked your whole life—”
“I’m not being ridiculous. I’m not going. I’d spend the whole time there worrying, anyway. It wouldn’t be worth it even if I did. But also, just—I can’t. Maybe I can take classes at community college here, and I’ll get a job and help out. Maybe I could get a job at the mall with you, Ba. Or something. I’ll figure something out.”
My parents exchange a long look, and some understanding passes between them, something I can’t interpret. “We’ll speak about it later,” my dad says.
“But—”
He quiets me. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Yes,” my mom says quickly, even though I know her appetite’s been shot lately. “Me too. What do you feel like eating, Daniel? We’re starving. Let’s go get something to eat.”
I am actually—in spite of everything—starving, too, so my parents have me get an Uber and we pay eight dollars for the guy to take us to a Jack in the Box and we go through the drive-through, and my mom insists I get a soda, which we never get, and we order a bagful of greasy food. Back in the apartment my mom spreads one of the thin bathroom towels on the floor and we have a picnic, and instead of talking about any of the things I think we all want to avoid, my parents start talking about when I was little. Do you remember, my mom says, a soft smile on her face, and then they’re off and running. They tell stories about me as a toddler, me as a preschooler, me in grade school. And listening to them you’d think all the years were happy.
This won’t last forever, I know that—the rest of the world is waiting, and there’s only so long you can hold it at bay. All the same, though, I’m grateful. I understand this is a gift. I’ll take it as long as it lasts.
I picture drawing us this way, my parents looking kind of awkward sitting cross-legged on the floor, the towel stained where some of the ketchup spilled. I hope someday, wherever life takes us, we’ll look back on this as the worst time in our lives. That from the safety of a better future the way things feel right now will fade and we’ll be left with just hazy vignettes: the time I drove to Alturas, the time we ate Jack in the Box together on the apartment floor.
The people who matter to you most—you aren’t always going to occupy that same space in their lives, I guess. Maybe that’s what I always loved most about art, that it was a way of multiplying myself so I could feel like I was always a part of more than I really was. I should hold on to the fact that Joy kept something I drew. Maybe that still means something, however small. And maybe life is when you gather all the things you can hold on to and carry with you, and cross your fingers it’ll be enough.
I’ve never told anyone this. It’s not a secret, it’s just not something that was ever big enough to bring up or explain why it keeps playing through my head. But this is what I remember: I was walking home with Sandra in eighth grade near the beginning of the year back when we were friends still and she’d been kind of weird the whole way, quieter than usual, and distracted. We’d passed Columbus and the crowds of kids trudging down Bubb had thinned out a little when she looked around and said, apropos of nothing, “You know who I’m kind of into? I’m kind of into Ahmed.”
“I knew it!” I’d crowed. I stopped in my tracks and she bumped into me, nearly knocking me over. I was grinning triumphantly. “I so knew it.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Um, I entirely did.” It’s hard to remember there was ever a time when they weren’t publicly and permanently linked, that it would’ve taken any kind of observation to see what there was between them, but I had known: she kept bringing him up gratuitously, finding ways to work him into conversation. I knew what that felt like. “You’re really bad at keeping secrets. I knew it.” I elbowed her. “Ask him out.”
“Um, no thank you.”
“Why not?”
“I just kind of have a thing for him. I’m not going to ask him out.”
“Why? You’re scared?”
And this was the moment—it was over in four seconds. It was fall and we were crunching through leaves and I was hungry, ready to be home, and Sandra said, “Other people don’t exist just to be your happy ending, you know?”