Picture Us In The Light(47)

“Lin still hasn’t called me back,” my mom says. Something about her tone, like using just the tip of your finger to touch a pan to see if it’s hot—it makes me think they haven’t spoken to each other much all day. My hope that they’ve reconciled fritters into nothing. “Anson left his jacket here last night.”

“Did you leave a message?” my dad says.

“No.”

“So maybe she doesn’t know why you’re calling.”

“That’s what I mean. She doesn’t know why I’m calling, so she isn’t calling me back. That’s not like her. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Well, how long ago did you call?”

“This afternoon.”

My dad raises his eyebrows at his plate. “Maybe they’re not home.”

My mom tightens her lips. She reaches for a piece of leftover chicken. “I called her cell phone.”

“Maybe her phone is turned off. Maybe they went to see a movie.”

My mom takes a very deliberate bite of chicken, then another one. I say, “Good chicken, Ma.”

She ignores me. To my dad, she says, “Anson might need the jacket.”

“He’s fine.”

“He might not have—”

“He’s fine,” my dad says sharply. “Don’t waste time worrying about it. It’s not consequential.”

The look she gives him feels like a knife. I remember that jolt I felt looking at the search history this morning.

Our chopsticks clink against our dishes. I chase grains of rice around my bowl. Brown rice, which none of us particularly likes, but my mom made the switch a few years ago after reading some article about diabetes.

She wants to say something else, I can tell. What I can’t tell is whether my dad is oblivious to that, or is acting oblivious because he knows better. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Either way, he’s making everything so much worse.

“Regina got into Northwestern,” I say.

My mom turns to my dad in a way that makes it abundantly clear they both plan to ignore me. “It’s going to freeze tonight. That’s what the forecast says. It will drop below freezing.”

He sets his cup down harder than necessary and grunts.

“In the hills it may even get down to—”

“It’s not going to freeze.”

“The forecast says it’s going to—”

“Don’t worry so much about your garden,” he erupts, his face going red, with a suddenness that I think even surprises him. “Of everything else—it’s not important. You shouldn’t be so attached. It’s only plants.”



This time they don’t save the fighting for when I’m out of the house. When I get out of the shower I can hear them in their bedroom, their voices carrying down the empty hallway like a freezing wind.

“It’s because you made last night so uncomfortable for everyone. You were hiding in the bedroom, and then you—”

“No one was uncomfortable, they—”

“Yes, they were uncomfortable, Joseph, because you hid in the bedroom and then you didn’t speak to or look at anyone and then you pretended everything was fine at work, when they already knew you were fired.”

“I was only being polite. I didn’t want to ruin your dinner.”

“No one likes to see other people’s private business. And if they worry we’re struggling maybe they would feel obligated to try to help. How can I see them now? I can’t talk to them because they’ll think they have to help.”

A pause, which gives me brief hope it’s over. Then my mom says, “Our savings is already—”

“You’re overreacting. You—”

“I knew this would happen!” She’s the first one to yell, and her voice is shaking, I think with tears. “I knew. I told you it was dangerous. I told you it was going to ruin us. You wouldn’t listen.”

So she knows, then, what it was that he did. But that was the thing I haven’t heard her say yet, the thing she keeps biting back. She hasn’t outright blamed him. I stand in the foggy room, hugging myself in my towel. Outside the door there’s another silence, one I feel inside my eardrums, my rib cage. When my dad speaks again he sounds drained.

“That’s not what ruined us,” he says. “You know that.”

“We’ve been so careful all this time. How could you just—”

“It doesn’t matter, Anna. You know it doesn’t matter. We always knew it couldn’t last forever.”



I fall asleep with their words ringing in my ears—that’s not what ruined us, you know that—and I don’t know what time it is when my dad wakes me up. I garble something unintelligible, still half-trapped in sleep, and my dad whispers, “Wake up.” He shakes me gently. “Wake up.”

It’s freezing. If my eyes weren’t so bleary, I bet I could see his breath in the dark.

“What’s wrong?” I say. And then my heart slams against my chest, because it’s the middle of the night and he’s wearing a jacket: he’s leaving. This is him saying goodbye.

“Here.” He holds out my ski jacket. “Get up.”