The Astonishing Color of After(46)

Meaning, a path that was not art.

“Years from now you’ll look back on this and what’ll you have? Just… a bunch of these pictures. You probably won’t even want them anymore. It’s like my old Coffee Grind recordings in the back of the office closet—who the hell wants to listen to a bunch of derivative crap played by mediocre twentysomethings? Nobody. I really should just throw them out.”

I heard him loud and clear: He thought my art was shitty. He thought it was just as shitty as his craptastic jazz band who’d recorded their EP in someone’s garage. And normally this was the moment when I would pull on the gauntlets and steel myself for a fight, but I needed him in a good mood if he was going to answer any of my questions.

So all I said was, “Right.”

I waited until after dinner, which was when we used to always sit together and eat H?agen-Dazs ice cream. Mom didn’t like ice cream, so that was alone time with my father that I could count on. She was already heading upstairs, and I brought out bowls and spoons and a brand-new carton just as Dad was rising from his seat.

“Haven’t done this in forever,” I said.

He gave me a smile, but it looked a little more like sadness in his face. I watched him settle back down into his seat.

I counted through five spoonfuls, meditating upon the gentle clink of the spoon against porcelain and the way the ice cream numbed my tongue.

He opened his mouth, and I knew he was going to say something about art again. I had to stop him. I had to get my questions in before the chance got sucked away by a fight.

“So I’ve been going through the boxes in the basement,” I said quickly. “For a project at school.”

“Huh.” He blinked. “It’s about time someone went through those. They’re ancient. Some of them are maybe older than you.”

“Yeah, I got that feeling. I actually wanted to ask—I found an Emily Dickinson book. Was that yours? Or was it Mom’s?”

Dad frowned. “Neither, I would think. You know my tastes—I don’t have much beyond the Chinese classics. As for your mother… well, it would be strange if it was hers. She hates Emily Dickinson. Or hated, at least. It was one of the first things I learned about her when we started dating.”

“Wait, what? I would never have guessed that.”

“Yeah.” A funny little half smile of nostalgia tugged the corner of his mouth. “I’ll never forget the way she said it. ‘I hate Emily Dickens!’ And I went, ‘You mean Emily Dickinson?’ She said, ‘Yes, exactly. Why would anyone read that? It is so boring.’ And I remember laughing so hard because I had been so nervous—it was only our second date—and it was just hilarious to me that she had this random, intense opinion about Emily Dickinson.”

I put down my spoon. “Did you ask her why?”

“Of course,” he said. “But she didn’t seem to have a real answer. I guess at some point some Emily Dickinson poem or maybe an Emily Dickinson fan just really offended her, and she never got over it.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“I even remember what she was wearing,” he mused. “She had this amazing sweater—I wonder if she still has it. It had pink, orange, and green zigzags. It was pretty hideous, really. But when she wore it—man. She could wear anything, your mother.”

A seed of something dark had begun twisting inside me. Nausea or sadness or anger, or some combination of all of those. I could feel it snowballing, taking up more space.

“Our first Valentine’s Day she actually called me at eight in the morning—that was when she was back in Taiwan and I was still in Chicago—and she said she’d written me a poem and would I like to hear it. I told her of course, and she proceeded to read me this little ditty. It was about lips and flowers and bees.”

My stomach was wringing itself out now. I sat very still, hoping the twisting and the nausea would just fade if I ignored them long enough.

“And I could tell immediately that it was Emily Dickinson, but I said, ‘Darling, that’s amazing! I can’t believe you wrote that for me!’ And then she was cackling with laughter on the other end for a good two minutes. When she finally recovered, she said, ‘You cannot believe it, because I did not write it.’ And so I said, ‘But aren’t you Emily Dickinson?’ and she went laughing her head off again. It was so silly, but her laughter—that was the best sound in the world.”

The question thrummed through my center Winsor violet: Why did it feel like our family was crumbling if we were still full of so much love?

Dad shook his head, still smiling. “Back then, long-distance calls between the US and Taiwan cost three dollars a minute. I spent every dollar I earned on those phone calls.”

This was what Caro’s grandparents would have called romantic. It was. There was no word better applied here. But it weighed me down in my seat. I should have brought up the topic at dinner after all. I wished that my mother could’ve been down here listening, helping to tell this story, smiling and laughing with him.

“Let’s ask Mom to play something for us on the piano.” I stacked our empty bowls.

Dad gave me a sad smile. “She’s already gone upstairs. Some other night, maybe. I’ve got to pack.”

“You fly out in the morning?” I said.