The Astonishing Color of After(44)

I try to ignore the headache, fight it away via sheer force of will. My fingers gather the T-shirt strands together and begin to weave my net. It starts sort of like a braid, the material moving over and under like waves on a sea. I’m worried I won’t have enough fabric to make the net as big as I need it to be, but that just means I’ll have to be strategic about how I use it.

My phone chimes. There are new emails waiting for me.

One from my father, because I never responded to his first message.



FROM: [email protected] TO: [email protected] SUBJECT: RE: Check in



Leigh, I’ve already spoken on the phone with your grandmother and given her this information, but my Hong Kong number is below, so feel free to give me a call. Or email. Let me know how you’re doing.



I roll my eyes and archive the note. There’s a more pressing matter—and that’s the new message from Axel.



FROM: [email protected] TO: [email protected] SUBJECT: (no subject)



Dory didn’t know I was recording her. I came over to hang out with you but you weren’t home for some reason. The door was unlocked, so I let myself in and Dory was on the piano. It was different from what she normally played. I peeked around the corner and it seemed like she was riffing off one specific melody. I recorded a good chunk of it and paired it with some synths and strings. Sometimes when I listen



The email ends there.

I click on the link at the bottom. Another MP3 track. It takes forever to load, but when it finally plays, a chill snakes its way down my spine.

It’s Teresa Teng—the very song Waipo put on as we ate breakfast.

Behind my eyelids, I can see my mother’s careful hands roving over the keys, feeling out the tune and its roots and its peaks, her eyes closed, the expression on her face suffused with the sepia hues of nostalgia, with viridian music.

I can see her.

I can see everything.





48





WINTER, FRESHMAN YEAR


It was the last morning of winter break. I made myself coffee using Dad’s French press and sat alone in the kitchen for a good hour, trying hard to forget the dream with the two girls from the photograph.

Their words echoed in my brain: Dory doesn’t have a daughter.

Being wiped away by those blackboard erasers had both itched and burned. The sensation was still in my legs. I couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to be known and remembered.

I needed a distraction. My fingers absentmindedly peeled open the Emily Dickinson book.


Pain has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect

When it began, or if there were

A day when it was not.



“What’s that?” said my mother as she walked in.

I jumped in my seat. Coffee spilled over the lip of my mug.

“A book I found,” I started saying, half hoping she wouldn’t realize which book it was, half hoping she’d give something away in her reaction.

But that wasn’t what she was talking about. She pointed at the pieces of jade around my wrist.

“Oh. I found it in the basement. Is it yours?”

She gazed at it for a beat too long, eyes dark and narrowed. Then her face smoothed into neutral. “Yes. It is very old.”

“From when you were still… living in Taiwan?” I asked tentatively.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Do you want it back?”

“No. You wearing it look good.” She pulled out the waffle iron and turned to me, her eyebrows a question.

“Yes, please,” I said. “Can I have extra cream? You know, last day of winter break and all that?”

“Me too!” said Axel, letting himself in through the back.

“Me three,” said my mother.

We got extra berry preserves and extra cream, and Axel made my mother laugh by telling her the story of how, the day after Christmas, he and his sister tricked his little cousin into thinking one of Santa’s elves had moved into the basement.

“I don’t know where Angie got those weird shoes with the bells on them, but she put those out, and left strands of ‘elf beard’ on the couch. Angie was like, ‘Look, Jorge, if you wait here long enough, I bet he’ll come back!” And Jorge was like, ‘How do you know the elf is a he?’ And then he waited in the basement for two hours. He even brought the elf a plate of pasteles! He’s way more patient than I ever was.”

“That’s so mean,” I said.

Axel shrugged and grinned. “Kid’s got no siblings. Someone’s gotta mess with him.”

Later, when Axel had left, Mom sat down at the piano. Her improv was some of my favorite stuff—every performance was one of a kind. She had a handful of melodies in her arsenal that she’d made up or something, and she would play them again and again in different ways, sometimes with a little smile tugging at the edges of her mouth, sometimes with her eyes closed, looking wistful.

Things were almost normal. Except Dad had been gone too many days. Except Mom’s eyes had turned glassy like she was trying to go somewhere far away in her head.

Caro was back from snowboarding, so I dragged Axel with me to her house. It was the first time the three of us were hanging out together outside of art class.