The Astonishing Color of After(85)

Mine came in a box. It had a nice heft to it. I tore at the reindeer wrapping and picked the top off, and in the middle of a bunch of tissue paper was a book. It had a white cover and neon block-letter words.

FIGURE OUT

WHAT YOU’RE

DESTINED FOR

I felt the corners of my mouth already lifting into a laugh in the same second that I realized Dad wasn’t joking. This was actually his gift to me.

“Um, thanks,” I said, fighting really hard not to make the word a question.

“Look inside,” said Dad. He seemed almost giddy.

I turned through the first few pages until I found what he wanted me to see. On the title page, the words DESTINED FOR had been circled a million times and were sandwiched between handwritten text. On the left it said, For Leigh, who is, and to the right of the title was scrawled, GREAT THINGS!!!!

The author’s name—Wilson Edmund Sharpe IV—was crossed out by a thick black marker. The flourish of a signature had been added below that, barely readable but for the sharp edges of the Roman numeral, IV.

“I met him at a conference,” said Dad. “He was promoting this book, and when I heard him speak, I knew I had to get you a signed copy. The guy lit up the whole room. You know, I showed him a picture of us, and he said you look like you have your mother’s genes and must be very driven. He’s right, of course—”

“Excuse me? I look like I have my mother’s genes? So he was stereotyping,” I said flatly.

Dad cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

I pulled out my fingers for air quotes. “I ‘must be driven’ because I’m half Asian? Do you know how often I get that? Or how often people ask if I have a ‘tiger mom’?”

My father paused for a long moment. “Well. At the time I didn’t think he meant it that way. Really, though, I bet this will be life-changing for you. Give it a read, see if it helps you figure out what you want to do.”

“What I want to do,” I repeated slowly.

“You know,” said Dad, “help you find a direction.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

He looked all around the room, as if there were answers to be gleaned from the air. He clasped his hands together. “You don’t like it.”

I shrugged slowly. “I don’t think I need it? But I… appreciate the gift?”

Was I being horrible? I couldn’t tell. But the fact that he refused to believe in me was wearing me down. I was so very tired of these conversations.

“What exactly do you see yourself doing? In, say, five years. Twenty years. The rest of your life.”

“Making art.” It felt good to say it out loud. “I’ve been thinking that… maybe I’d want to go to art school.”

“Leigh, you need to be serious.”

I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. “I am serious.”

“And how are you supposed to make a living with that?”

I looked at Mom, who was watching our back-and-forth with a lost expression on her face. “I don’t know. I could always teach?”

“You need a stable career. Something that will provide you baseline happiness.”

“Art makes me happy,” I said sharply.

Dad opened his mouth again, but thank god Mom interrupted him.

“Don’t talk about this now,” she said. “We should be enjoy Christmas.”

We moved on to playing Uno, with Dad and me speaking to each other as little as possible. I found myself wishing he were flying out to another conference soon. I longed for the way the house expanded each time he stepped out the front door, filling with new space and air for me to breathe.





Early the next morning while my parents still slept, I sat in the kitchen drinking mug after mug of peppermint hot chocolate, watching the cat stare out the window. The quiet was getting to me. It felt like it was taking Axel nine hours to respond to every text. I tried not to be offended; he had a big family, and apparently they had a ton of holiday traditions.

I thought about how different things had been last Christmas. How Dad had been gone, but somehow that had been better. How Axel spent winter break helping me sort through those boxes.

And with that thought, my feet carried me downstairs. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I was restless and I was remembering the bracelet, the Emily Dickinson book. I’d taken those up to my bedroom, along with that black-and-white photograph of the two little girls. The other stuff was still where I’d found it.

In the basement, the boxes were exactly how we’d left them, open and askew. There were even letters on the floor from when Axel and I had separated them into piles. A part of me wondered at my carelessness in leaving these out. Anyone who’d come down would’ve seen immediately that I’d been digging, snooping.

Maybe that’s what I’d been hoping for. Maybe I’d thought that if my mom or dad saw what I’d been looking at, they’d confront me, open up a dialogue. Finally talk to me about my grandparents.

But nobody had been down here. Not in an entire year.

That night I let myself out onto the porch and stood on the steps, face angled up toward the cloudless sky. The moon was a fat, glowing coin. It had a face. Kind, and almost smiling. I wondered if my grandparents in Taiwan were gazing up at the same plate of light, trying to make eye contact with that pale and beaming man.