The Leavers(84)
“You left your son?”
“It’s not like that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was deported, okay? That’s why I left America.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me before.”
“I can explain.” He didn’t respond. “Are you mad at me?”
He wasn’t mad. He didn’t yell, or leave the room, or ask me to leave. Instead, he let me rest against him. He leaned into me. He took my hand and held it close.
But hadn’t I always known he would do this? He had never been the yelling type.
In the moment before I told him about you, I had imagined I was ready to be left, to hear the slamming door, feel my anticipated punishment. That was the reason I’d kept you a secret for so long; why I had given up looking. But Yong was staying, and I would stay, too. In the end, what surprised me the most was my relief.
Twelve
Roland’s roommate Adrian had been home for days. Dumped by his girlfriend, he was no longer moving in with her at the end of May, and now Daniel had to wait for Adrian to finish taking a shower before he could get to the bathroom, which was two hundred percent hairier, the guy being both bearded and longhaired, a shag carpet of a man. Adrian was as silent as Roland was talkative, lumbering out of his room each day with a towel wrapped around his waist and greeting Daniel on the couch with a single “Hey.”
On the morning of May 13, two days before the big show, Roland couldn’t stop talking about who had RSVP’d and who hadn’t, changing the set list for the twentieth time. Later tonight, they would run through the songs again.
As Adrian entered minute fifteen of a marathon shower, Daniel brushed his teeth in the kitchen sink. “Thirty percent chance of rain today,” Roland said, pacing the living room. “Think it’ll make a difference in the turnout? People don’t want to go out in the rain, though what’s wrong with them, are they allergic to life? But there’s also the humidity factor, since it’s a new space to us, and that could affect the sound.”
Daniel rinsed his mouth and spat. If he didn’t leave the apartment in the next five minutes, he was going to be very late for work. He heard his phone ringing and dashed across the room to find it, knowing it wouldn’t be his mother, yet hoping it would be. A week had passed since they had last spoken, and yesterday, tired of waiting for her to get in touch with him, he had called and left a message telling her to not bother calling him again. And she hadn’t. He’d beat her to it.
It was Kay. He let it go to voice mail, and as he searched for a matching pair of socks he listened to her message, reminding him about the meeting with the Carlough dean, the day after tomorrow.
“Bad news?” Roland said.
Daniel found the missing sock. “I might have to go upstate the day after tomorrow. For a meeting.”
“You’re fucking with me, right? We have a show on Friday.”
Daniel poked through a lump of T-shirts and towels and found his right shoe, but not his left. “A meeting with the dean of Carlough College.”
“You don’t want to go to Carlough College.”
He pulled on the right shoe and laced it, hobbled around with his left foot in a sock. “Maybe I do.”
“Who’s going to play the show with me, then?”
“Get Javi to do it. I don’t know. The guitar parts are easy.”
“Easy?” Roland mimed tearing his hair out. “Make up your mind for once! You’ve been here for what, five months, and you haven’t gotten a better job so you still can’t afford to rent your own room.”
“I thought Adrian was moving out. I was going to take his room.” Daniel turned to face Roland. “Do you want me to leave?”
“That’s not the point. The point is that you’re never going to get anywhere if you keep on doing what your parents want. You don’t even know what you want. You don’t think you deserve better.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me and don’t tell me what to do.” Daniel found his left shoe under the couch. In the bathroom, the shower shut off, Adrian crooning Christmas carols.
Roland looked disgusted. “You know what? Don’t bother coming to rehearsal tonight.”
“Come on. I’ve got to go to work.” Daniel opened the door, still holding the shoe. He’d put it on in the hallway. Right now, he needed to get out of the apartment.
EIGHT HOURS OF BURRITO-MAKING produced little relief. “I’m going to your show Friday,” Evan said, as they sliced bell peppers. “We used to have raves in Gowanus back in the day, these warehouse ragers. Now it’s all gentrified and ruined.” His co-workers Purvi and Kevin were going, too. All afternoon, Daniel’s phone buzzed with messages. Of course he’d play the show. Of course he wasn’t going to Carlough.
When he left Tres Locos, it was after seven. He went back to the apartment to get his Strat, rode the train out to Bushwick, ran up the block to the building and took the rickety service elevator to the seventh floor. Outside the metal door, he heard a Psychic Hearts song playing, thought Javi might be at the rehearsal, too, but when he pushed the door open he saw Nate, strumming a guitar as Roland sang and pressed buttons on a sequencer. Nate’s floppy hair bounced as he bobbed to the beat. He was hitting the right chords, but the song sounded even flatter than it already was.