The Astonishing Color of After(84)

It felt like an omen.

I would think back on that later and realize it should’ve flagged my attention that I was already looking for something to blame.

Omen or not, it was a weird break. Axel went to visit family in San Juan for the first time in years, and Caro was snowboarding again. Dad was actually supposed to be home for a decently long stretch, and Christmas Day started off promising.

Dad pulled up a chair as Mom was wrapping dumplings.

“I’ll help.” He took a stack of the doughy skins and began scooping filling into the centers, folding in their edges.

Mom’s face looked brighter than it had in weeks. She even hummed a little—a few lilting lines of melody that I recognized from one of her favorite sonatas.

I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Dad help with the cooking. I loved watching them together, my mother’s adept hands pinching off three dumplings for every one he clumsily finished.

On the kitchen counter, I opened my sketch pad to a fresh page. The charcoal was between my fingers and sweeping across the blankness, capturing knuckles dusty with flour, a tray of raw dumplings.

I listened to the rhythm of them plopping onto the tray, the light scritch-scratch of my stick, the way we all inhaled and exhaled in tandem.

And then, of course, the moment ended. Dad turned to see what I was doing. “Leigh, why don’t you put that away. Come spend quality time with your parents.”

I tried to push down the fight that was already rising up. “Uh, I am spending time with you. I’m right here, as you can see.”

“It’s not good to always be so internally focused,” said Dad. “Come help with the dumplings.”

I shook my head at him. “I’m drawing you and Mom. Generally I draw things that are outside of myself. How is that internally focused?”

“Art is an independent pursuit,” Dad said, the tone of his voice changing, too. “And this is a family occasion. We need you to stop drawing and participate.”

“Participate? Seriously? Like this is a goddamn classroom?”

“Watch your language when you’re—”

“Stop,” Mom said quietly, and the syllable shut us down like a finger on a remote. “No fighting. It’s Christmas.” Her flour-dusted hand flew to her chest for a moment, landing too low before she remembered the necklace was shorter now, that her jade pendant sat higher up.

I flipped my sketch pad shut and went upstairs, where I hunched in the corner and tried to draw new things to show Nagori.

When I came back down later to eat and open presents, Dad pretended like the exchange had never happened.

Christmas carols were playing. The tree was blinking its multicolored lights. I went first, handing each of my parents a flat, rectangular package. It’d actually been a long time since I’d made drawings for Christmas.

“Oh, Leigh,” said my mother. “This is beautiful.”

I’d put hers in a simple black frame so she could hang it up. Dad’s was just flat, sprayed with fixative and stored between pieces of archival tissue.

“Wow,” he said. “Great.”

It was hard to get a read on what he actually thought.

“I didn’t frame yours, since you travel so much—I thought, well. Maybe you’d want to bring it with you or something.” It sounded silly now that I was saying it out loud. I could tell he didn’t love it. It probably was just making him worry even more about my future.

“You make us look so real,” Mom said. “There’s no photograph like this.”

I shook my head. “It just came from a memory.”

“I actually remember that day,” Dad said, surprising me.

“I do, too,” said Mom.

I’d drawn—and then duplicated—the three of us on a playground in Village Park, where we used to go every night in the summers to take walks and throw a Frisbee around. There’d been this one evening when we found the playground totally empty and we took over the seesaw. Mom and Dad sat opposite each other on the seats, and I stood on top of the plank in the center, trying to stay balanced while they went up and down.

No colors. And not even charcoal. I’d done this one in the clean lines of a pencil. Mom throwing her head back, laughing. Dad with his goofy grin. Me, wobbling in the middle, on the edge of a smile.

“Thank you,” said Mom. “I will hang over the piano.”

She went next. Dad got a merino wool sweater custom-made by a knitter who was internet famous. I got an amazing set of high-end gouache paints that I’d been eyeing for forever.

“You use colors now, okay?” she said. “No color in your pictures for so long. But now you have good paint.”

I hugged her and promised I would try them out.

And then it was Dad’s turn. He surprised Mom with a little black velvet box. My mother didn’t wear much jewelry, except for that jade cicada, which still looked totally off. For a moment, I worried that Dad had gotten her something to replace it, but then she popped open the box, and fat blue pieces of topaz winked at us—a whole string of them in a silver bracelet.

“Wow,” said Mom. She seemed speechless; when had he last given her something so shiny?

“Your turn, Leigh,” Dad said quickly, maybe because he was feeling weird about the splurge of a present, too.