The Leavers(103)

When she took her palm away it left a hot patch on his skin. He said, “I’m here, Mama” and she made a long sighing sound.

THEY WALKED THROUGH AN old hutong neighborhood, wandered through the Forbidden City, each building more marvelous and intimidating than the next. As the day progressed his mother showed no signs of impatience, didn’t act like she was in a hurry to get back to the hotel. But when he said even the most innocuous things about the Bronx—remember Tommie? Mrs. Johnson? The bodega, the 4 train?—or mentioned Leon or Vivian or Michael, she would change the subject, steer them back to the present, talk about Beijing, architecture, teaching.

They had roast duck for dinner in a fancy restaurant with thick white tablecloths, and he ate as much as he could, which seemed to please her. By the time they got to the Park Hotel, it was nine at night. His mother’s room was on the fifth floor, a double room like the one he’d had in Fuzhou, but cleaner and less shabby. He took a shower as she wrote e-mails on her laptop, and after toweling off and brushing his teeth, he studied the reflection of his face in the bathroom mirror. Before he left, he would take a picture of the two of them together, for proof.

She sat on her bed in her pajamas, removing makeup with a cotton ball. “We each have our own big bed. So different than how we slept in New York. I always say I could never go back to living like that, but we never saw ourselves as being deprived, did we?”

“We weren’t deprived.” He unzipped his backpack and took out the old photo of them at the South Street Seaport. “I wanted to show you this.”

His mother held the photo by the corners. “How’d you find this?”

“Kay. My adoptive mother.”

“How did she get it?”

“Vivian, I think.”

His mother kept staring at the photo. “You were so small. And look how young I was.”

He had to ask her. She wouldn’t kick him out of the hotel this late at night. He coughed up the first sentences that came to him. “You were going to never talk to me again? You were good with that?”

She passed the photo back to him. “I didn’t know if you wanted to speak to me, after everything I did.”

“Of course I did. I called you first, remember? And I called you, again. Twice.”

“You told me to never call you again on your last message.”

His face grew hot. “I didn’t mean it. I was angry.”

She waved a hand at him, cutting him off. “You were right when you said I couldn’t pretend I didn’t mess up.”

She went to the bathroom, then returned to her bed. It was late. She had an eight o’clock meeting tomorrow morning with teachers at the conference, and after that, she would leave him. At any moment she could switch off the light and he would never find out what happened.

He got under the covers yet remained sitting. His mother checked to make sure the blinds were down, the curtains shut. She removed an eye mask, lined in pink fabric, from her bag.

“I can’t have any lights on when I sleep, so if you want to stay up, I’ll wait for you to sleep first.”

Then he would keep her up for as long as he needed. “I don’t remember you being like that in New York. We always slept with the blinds open.”

She uncapped a bottle of pills. “I have nightmares,” she said. “One time, Yong got up to use the bathroom and forgot to turn the light off in the hallway, and I woke up screaming. Then he screamed, too, because he heard me scream, and we were both scared. It was funny.”

It didn’t sound funny. “You have these nightmares a lot?”

“As long as I take my medication, I’m okay.” She shook out a pill and reached for a glass of water. “They help me sleep.”

“Wait,” he said. “Can you not take it yet? Just wait, please?”

She hesitated, then put the pill back in the bottle. “I have to make sure it’s dark.” She switched the light off next to her bed, so the room was lit solely by the lamp next to his. “In Ardsleyville, it was light all the time, dogs waking you up in the middle of the night. You can’t sleep like that.”

“Ardsleyville. That was—”

“The name of the camp, the detention camp.”

A chill ran up his back. He studied a framed picture on the wall, a print of the same lake they’d visited today. “Tell me about it.”

She laughed, nervous. “I can’t.”

“I won’t be mad. I promise.”

“I can’t, Deming. It’s too much, I don’t want you to know.”

“I want to know the truth. How did you get there? What happened to you when you went to work that day? Please, I deserve to know.”

She put her head in her arms. “There was a van. They raided the nail salon.” He leaned forward, holding his breath. “There were no phones there, no way to contact anyone. When I got out, they sent me to Fuzhou. I wasn’t myself anymore.” She stopped. “If I tell you, you wouldn’t get it.”

“Please try.” He touched the wooden headboard behind him. He was in Beijing, China. New York and Ridgeborough and Daniel Wilkinson had fallen away and the world consisted only of him and his mother, their voices in the hotel room.

She told him she remembered being in a crowded room, looking at the numbers on a telephone.