Picture Us In The Light(27)
“Finish these,” my mom says, pushing the plate of skewers at me. Then she squints at the lamb, her mouth full. She swallows. “Cut it into pieces. They cut it too big. You’ll choke.”
I smile. “I’ve gotten pretty good at eating, actually. I put it in my portfolio. It’s part of why RISD let me in.”
She sighs. “Give it to me.” She reaches for it and hacks at the pieces with her chopsticks. She always worries about choking; she used to cut my grapes into quarters when I was a kid.
When we’re done, and waiting for the bill to come, I say, “Can I ask something?”
My dad says, “Yes.” But he gives me a look that means watch yourself.
“How long do you think it will take to find something new?”
“Aiya, Daniel,” my mom says, a little sharply. “Leave him alone.”
“I just—”
“It doesn’t help to ask so many questions.” Then she adds, “We are on green cards, remember. It’s more complicated on green cards. Finish the dou pi. I am full.”
I feel a surge of guilt for interrogating him, for breaching the fragile peace we’d brokered over dinner. Probably he just wanted to eat here and pretend things were normal, not listen to his son demand when he’d stop being such a failure.
This is the part I keep coming back to—what did he think the experiment would give him? Was it just that he wanted the fame of it, that he dreamed of himself profiled in all those journals he read, giving TED talks? I can’t see it. Or was it something even littler, that he thought publishing the experiment would please his boss and impress his coworkers? I hope not. There’s something heartbreaking about the smallness of that.
“I think it matters when people follow their dreams,” I say impulsively. They both look at me quizzically, and I feel my face going hot. “Like, if there’s something you really care about—I’ve always looked up to people who went after what they wanted.”
“Like you,” my mom says. “And your art school.”
“No, but I mean—you too, Ba. Do you remember the time you brought us in to show us your experiment? I always—”
I feel it before I understand, the coldness and the noise happening all at once, and it takes me a few seconds to register. Then my mom jumps up with her napkin and I realize my dad knocked over the pitcher of ice water the waitress left on our table. I’m soaked. The table is dripping, our leftovers drenched, a pool of water on the floor.
“Sorry, sorry,” my dad says. Except—I look at him closely—did he do that on purpose?
Both of them leave me alone at the table in search of napkins. At the wait station they stop, ignoring the rather prominent stack of napkins there, and my dad says something to my mom. She glances back toward me and replies. Then they stand there, whatever words passed between them caught on both their faces, before they snap back into action.
And then when they’re back—I know this play—they’re a flurry of motion, mopping everything up, my mom fussing over me, and it’s not the kind of activity you can have a conversation around. We leave behind a waterlogged mound of napkins on the table, a slippery wet sheen still coating the tile floor.
The Wednesday of midterm season Harry’s SAT tutor gets the stomach flu and has to reschedule, so Harry has a free afternoon and we go to the library to study. I love the Cupertino library; it has this nearly floor-to-ceiling aquarium tank, and it’s kind of mesmerizing watching all the fish. The library’s always crowded, but we find a table and some chairs near the fish tank. When I pull out my Calc textbook Harry makes a face at me.
“Oh, come on, what’s that for?” he says. “You got your acceptance letter. Aren’t you basically a second-semester senior already? Aren’t you supposed to burn all your books or something?”
“Yeah, whatever. Like you’re going to let your GPA slip even a millimeter next semester either.”
“I’m going to slack the eff off next semester.”
“You definitely aren’t.”
“I might,” he says. “You never know.” When he smiles it looks like it takes a little more effort than it should.
I can’t focus on the equations, though. Instead I keep trying to sketch a toddler girl who’s rocking back and forth on her heels in front of the fish tank, squinting suspiciously each time a fish swims near her. I’m better with faces than bodies—I’m not strong enough on anatomy—but even on her face I can’t get the light values right, the way the sun reflects off the glass and shines on her alert, wary eyes.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the 30 Under 30 show. Sometimes—it always seems easier—I wish I could just not care about things, that I could just let it go and not spend the rest of my life wondering if I would’ve had a chance at getting in. At home I’ve been watching a ton of workout videos as makeshift anatomy lessons in case one of them might spark some kind of idea I can use as a submission. But every idea seems solid and hopeful until I try to lasso it, and then it evaporates as soon as I try to wrestle it onto the page.
Harry’s got SAT worksheets he’s ostensibly going through, but he seems distracted, too. He tilts his chair back on two legs, watches a couple little kids pound on the fish tank’s glass. The girl looks at them disapprovingly. Then he brings his chair back to the floor, pushes his binder aside, and says, “I told my parents you got into RISD.”