Picture Us In The Light(26)

I wonder if my mom has said any variation on what flashed across my mind when he first told us, which—I’m not particularly proud of it—was How could you? Watching him, his hopeful smile, I think she must not have.

“I’m okay with anything,” I say. “Chicken sounds good, too. We can—”

“No, no, we should go out and have a nice dinner together.” He turns to my mother. “What do you say, Anna?”

She smiles that tight kind of smile that means nothing is all that happy or funny. “We should be saving—”

“No, no, we have time to save. All our lives to save.”

“Rent is due Thursday and the water bill this month—aiya, so high.”

His smile falters, but he doesn’t back down. My dad’s like Harry, in that way: always convinced his own charm will carry him through. “Just one dinner, Anna. You work so hard. You deserve to go out.”

And I recognize that for the lie it was. Dinner’s whatever, he could take or leave it, but he wants her to not be mad at him. Those pangs of terror she felt when he first told us, all the time she’s spent worrying over the checkbook, the past few days he’s been looking for some way to fix this: he wants proof that all those will somehow crumble under the weight of their history together.

I think of his desk in the lab, the pictures of me and my mom and the boxes of tea he swore helped him think better and the plaque he was so proud of from when he spoke at a physics conference. I imagine him clearing it out in front of all his coworkers. I pick my side.

“Actually, going out would be great,” I say, willing brightness into my voice. “I’m starving. Where do you want to go, Ma?”

She reaches down to pick up her purse and the bags of groceries. There are red lines cut into the backs of her forearms where the bag handles weighted down. We wait, the two of us, a smile pasted onto my dad’s face. I can see his shame straining behind it. From watching my parents I think being married or being with someone else in any kind of real way takes a certain amount of bravery, and it’s not something I’m positive I have in me. To pluck your heart from your chest that way and hand it to someone, unprotected, and wait to see how gently they’ll stitch it back in for you, or not—to wake up all those days you’re the crappiest version of yourself and face the person who knows you best, morning after morning, year after year.

My mom sets the bags on the table and reaches inside to put the meat (the discounted kind; I recognize the orange sticker) in the fridge. My dad stands still, waiting, as she empties one bag, then the next.

“All right,” she says finally, refusing to meet his eyes. “Somewhere cheap.”



They’re not quite speaking to each other on the ride to the restaurant. Or they are, but in the kind of showy way that’s meant to prove they’re not not, which is a different thing.

“Where do you want to go?” my dad asked her when we got in the car.

“Wherever you want. You’re the one who wanted dinner.”

“The pho place? Or Japanese?”

“That’s fine.”

“Which one?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Or Hankow?”

“Let’s do that,” I interrupted, before she could say It doesn’t matter again.

The restaurant is on one of the strip malls on De Anza, the older ones, not part of all the newer construction they’ve been putting up lately to give the tech workers their shiny organic fast-casual places. As always, neither one of them will drive us. Sometimes I wonder if my sister is buried somewhere in one of their recurring fears.

My parents like Hankow because it serves Hubei food, which I think—I’m just guessing, because they never talk about it—reminds them of home. My mom thinks her re gan mian is better than theirs, but she loves the dou pi here, sticky rice wrapped in tofu skins and then fried, and the barbecued oysters. The restaurant’s full tonight, and we’re seated near the front. (Hundred percent rule: a freshman girl I’m pretty sure is named Ami is with her family by the back.) Even though it’s not busy it takes forever to get our waters and our menus, and it’s kind of cold. My mom pulls her jacket around herself whenever the door opens. I don’t think she means it pointedly, but I think my dad might be taking it that way.

He opens the menus and says, heartily, “What should we have?”

“Whatever you like. I’m not very hungry.”

I wish my mom would just try. Just say she wants the duck neck or doesn’t want it; what good does it do to advertise your anger like this? It doesn’t just get at my dad—it knifes me, too. Whenever there’s any tension between my parents and I worry I won’t be able to stanch it, I feel that hole blown through our lives more keenly. It would’ve been different if my sister had lived.

“I’m starving,” I say, which is a lie. “Ba, let’s get like fifty skewers.”

He flashes me a look I recognize as grateful, and then we spend a while plotting out the order while my mom stares out the door. It’s stupid, because this is my dad’s fault and I know that, but something inside me hardens against her. It wouldn’t kill her to just try.

It’s better after the food comes, though. We eat the cumin-dusted lamb and pork skewers, the pig’s ear and the dou pi, and my mom can’t stop saying how good the dou pi is tonight. I eat just a few bites so she can have the rest.