Picture Us In The Light(87)
It takes a good ten minutes to help my mom down the stairs. She’s wincing the whole way, and once she draws in a sharp breath and tears spring to her eyes. When we’re on the freeway, my mom tightening her seat belt around herself and taking a long breath, staring over the driver’s shoulder at the speedometer like she can keep the car inside the lane lines, I think about all the dinners she’s made for me, about that stupid sweatshirt they bought me, about the way that knock on the door stilled her in her fear. I deserve whatever bad things ever happen to me.
The first of which, I know, is having to withdraw my RISD enrollment. I keep trying to find a way around it, but there isn’t one. I can’t sail off across the country to a place I’ve always dreamed of, to seize the life I always wanted, while my parents—who I put at risk, who I physically harmed—cower inside a faded locked apartment. I can’t put myself hours away by plane when it could mean, conceivably, that something could happen to them while I’m gone. I imagine it: my mom coming back from the Lis’ one weekend and finding the house empty, my dad vanished.
And I know it’s the right thing and that I’ve signed away any right to complain, I know that, but the whole way up to the city I feel like I’m riding to a funeral. I wish I’d realized somehow at the time when I saw my work up on the wall at Neighborhood it would be the only time. I wish I’d stayed longer, maybe taken photos or something. Maybe I would’ve tried to hold on to it all a little differently.
We go through Brisbane, where when you’re going north on 101 the hills rise out your left and the Bay comes almost right up to the passenger side windows. “It’s very pretty,” my mom says.
I force a smile. “Yeah.”
“Daniel, I never imagined you would already be having gallery showings even before art school. I never expected that until next year.”
“I got lucky, I guess.”
I watch as a flock of seagulls lifts from the surface of the water and fills the sky. It’s beautiful here, I remind myself. The Bay is part of me, my history and my blood, and maybe I was just never meant to leave. And Harry and Regina will come back for breaks, probably, at least at first, and there are worse places to spend your life. You can choose to be grateful, to remind yourself that life is still a gift, and I’ll do that. Dreaming about something all your life doesn’t mean it’s yours.
“But Rhode Island is very beautiful too,” my mom says. “Sometimes I look up pictures. Very picturesque. You will be very inspired there.”
“Right,” I say. I turn back toward my window and watch as the road veers away from the water and back through the city again.
When we get there the gallery’s closed to the public, and they’re in transition: a few of the walls are already blank, a constellation of holes where there used to be an installation of cutout books nailed, crucifixion-style, to the wall. My mom spots my section immediately. I see it happen, that moment she finds mine: her whole face transforms, something in it opening up. She takes a few steps closer, transfixed, and puts her hand over her mouth as she takes in the collection, the gallery lights they have shining on each piece, the placards with my name.
“Oh, Daniel,” she whispers, almost reverently.
I can feel my face turning red. “Looks better here like this than all stacked up on my desk, huh?”
“I wish Baba could see this.”
I should’ve brought him. “I’ll take some pictures with my phone.”
“He would love this.” She points to a picture I drew over the summer of Harry, one of my favorites. “I like that one.”
“Thanks.”
She looks at me and then, fast, back at the picture. “I like your friend Harry very much.”
I nudge at a loose nail on the ground with my shoe. “He’s a good guy.”
“Relationships are very important,” she says, still looking at the picture. “Your life will change next year, and you should be careful to remember who you are and the people who care about you.”
“Mmhm.”
“Sometimes—sometimes you think you have more time for a relationship and then things change. So sometimes it’s important, Daniel, not to wait.”
“What?” There’s a tightening feeling in my chest, a heat trickling from my cheeks down my neck. What is that supposed to mean? I can barely handle watching movies with my parents where people so much as make out—I’ve never been able to imagine myself having that conversation with them. “He’s not—he’s just—”
But she turns hastily toward another picture, the one of Harold Chiu, and starts chattering about it, and then goes—slowly, with effort—up to the wall to look at them up close.
“Which one sold?” she asks, turning back to me.
“It was the one I drew of you. Remember it?”
“That one? Aiya, they should have picked another one. Someone not so old.” She waves her hand dismissively. But she’s pleased, I can tell.
One of the employees, a slim white guy wearing dark clothes and a thin gray tie, comes over to ask me how I want to carry everything out, and my mom hangs back. I’m aware of the clock running, the Uber fare racking up while the driver waits outside.
My mom’s still staring at the pictures when I turn back to her. “The Li children—they grow up so coddled,” she says. “They have everything. But you—” And then she surprises me; she reaches up and wipes her eyes, opening her mouth the way she does putting on mascara, like maybe she’s about to cry. “We never taught you this. You did it on your own. You are strong and independent and you work hard. You have accomplished so much already.” Impulsively, and fiercely, she hugs me—another surprise; I can’t remember the last time she did. “Daniel, you make us very proud.”