Picture Us In The Light(4)
“She will be so happy, Daniel,” he says now. “Can you imagine?” He pats his pocket for his phone. “Should we video her when you tell her?”
“Um—no?”
“She might never be so happy again. Maybe we’ll want it to look at later to remember.”
“That’s so fatalistic, Ba.” I get up and follow him out to the living room. “You want me to cook something for dinner instead? I think there’s pork chops in the freezer.” The one thing I can make: turn on pan, drop meat, cook.
He brushes it away. “No, no, tonight we’ll celebrate. When she gets home.”
My mom takes care of twin six-year-olds and a four-year-old for a family named the Lis up in the hills vaguely by where Harry lives. We wait for her on the couch. Usually my dad watches mostly news, scanning the screen like he can ward off disaster by watching it happen to other people, but today Planet Earth is on instead.
I grab a blanket from the armchair and wrap myself in it like a burrito. It’s been cold these days, and freezing, always freezing in the house, because my parents refuse to turn the heat on. I wear three layers to bed. Last year, when I drew a portrait of my mom, I made one of her eyes the thermostat, turned down all the way to fifty-five. I pull my blanket tighter and let myself imagine living in a (warm, heated) RISD dorm next year. Of all the people who applied, so many people who’ve probably been practicing their craft all their lives—they chose me.
My dad keeps glancing at the clock, and I can feel him getting restless as it traipses toward six-fifteen. It’s a minor emergency to both my parents whenever the other is late getting home, and I know my dad will take his phone from his pocket and tap his fingers against it, ready to call to check on her, right at six-sixteen.
“They were doing roadwork on Rainbow,” I say.
“Hm?”
I motion toward his phone. “If she’s late. That’s probably why.”
“Oh. Yes.” But he doesn’t look any more relaxed. Then, at six-fourteen, we hear the garage door open, and my dad jumps up, his face lighting up again. “Where’s your letter?”
“It’s on the table.”
“Where’s my phone?”
He’s still patting the couch cushions looking for it when my mom comes in. He rises from the couch, smiling nervously, and then he whips out the phone—it was in his pocket after all—to record. “Anna—Daniel has news for you.”
“News? You have news?” My mom drops her purse and her bags of groceries from Marina. I watch the way their handles go flat, like a dog’s ears when it’s listening. “You got in?” She clutches my sleeve. “Did you get in? Did you—”
I flirt with the idea of pretending I didn’t, of trying to make her think it was bad news, but in the end I can’t hold back my grin. Her hands fly to her mouth, covering her smile, and her eyes fill with tears.
“He did it!” my dad yells from behind his phone like we’re a hundred yards away, his voice bouncing back at us off the walls and hardwood floor. This video (which he’ll watch on loop; I know him) is going to be all over the place, jiggling and blurred. He makes me show off the letter and hug my mom while he’s filming. My mom cries.
We go to Santa Clara for Korean barbecue, and I drive, because for whatever reason they always have me drive when we’re together. It’s not far, fifteen minutes, but you always kind of feel it when you’re leaving Cupertino, a bubble piercing. Cupertino’s mostly residential neighborhoods and then strip malls with things like the kind of American-y diner that probably used to be big here back when it was all orchards and white people, or the Asian restaurants/bakeries/tutoring centers/passport services/et cetera. It’s also its own world—land of overachieving kids of tech titans, of badminton clubs and test-prep empires and restaurants jockeying for Yelp reviews and volunteer corps run by freshmen who both care about the world but also care about establishing a long-term commitment to a cause they can point to on their college apps. When we first moved here from Austin, I remember being weirded out by how Asian it was. And how everyone has money, too, but mostly in a more closet way than they do in Texas—here you can drop two million on a normal-looking three-bedroom house, so it’s not something you necessarily notice right away the way you notice it when someone has a giant mansion on Lake Austin. (Harry’s house is an exception—he has two sisters and both his grandfathers live with them, and all of them have their own bedroom and I think there are at least two other bedrooms no one’s using.) I don’t think anyone I know needs financial aid for college. I don’t think anyone I know even needs loans.
It’s packed inside the restaurant, but a table opens up just as we’re coming in and my parents smile and smile like it’s some kind of miracle. Already I’m sad for when the joy of this wears off, becomes everyday. It hasn’t been like this with them in I don’t even know how long.
The waitress comes and sets the laminated menus in front of us. My dad squares his shoulders and says, to my mom, “Now?” Over their menus, my parents exchange a long look. I say, “What?”
They both ignore me. Then my mom gives a nearly imperceptible nod, and my dad says, “Daniel, we have something for you.”
He pulls out a plastic Ranch 99 bag with something inside it. I saw him bring it in, but it didn’t register at the time. He hands it to me across the table. “Open it.”