The Leavers(91)

Daniel pushed his empty sandwich plate around in a semicircle. Peter was upstairs in the study; he should go spend more time with Peter. It was Father’s Day.

Kay’s eyes flipped from Daniel’s face to the wall to the kitchen window. “We were so afraid of doing something wrong. We thought it would be better if you changed your name so you would feel like you belonged with us, with our family. That you had a family.”

Daniel never knew if Kay wanted him to apologize or reassure her. Either way, he always felt implicated, like there was some expectation he wasn’t meeting.

“Mom.” He didn’t want to see her cry, especially if it was on his behalf. “It’s okay.”

Kay got up, and he heard her opening the drawer of the dining room cabinet. She returned, placing a fat manila envelope on the table.

“What’s this?”

“It’s all the records we have concerning your adoption. The correspondence with the foster care agency, the forms we filled out. I’ve been meaning for you to have them.”

Daniel opened the envelope and flipped through the stack of paper, saw the forms and e-mails he’d read that afternoon ten years ago. “Thanks.” There would be nothing in here he hadn’t seen before.

“Your father didn’t agree with me about doing this. He said it would only stir up bad memories, but I insisted.”

Daniel bent the envelope’s metal clasp back and forth. “I do know some things, actually. I should tell you. I found my mother recently—I mean, my birth mother. She’s in China.”

He told Kay about how his mother had gone to work and never came home, how Leon had left for China six months after. How Vivian had gotten him fostered. That his mother might have been deported.

Kay looked like she’d been punched.

“I spoke to her,” he finally said. “Twice.”

“What did she say? What was it like?” Kay’s smile was trembling at the sides, so strained it looked like it hurt.

“It was good, though a little weird, and my Chinese is rusty but we managed to understand each other. She lives in Fuzhou, and she’s married and working as an English teacher.”

“Are you going to talk to her again?”

“Maybe.”

Kay picked up the envelope and tapped the bottom of it against the table, straightening out the papers inside. “By the way,” she said. “I received a curious phone call the other day. From Charles, Angel’s boyfriend.”

“Oh?”

“He said you borrowed money from Angel and haven’t paid her back. I asked him why he was calling me about and he said I should ask you. So, I’m asking.”

Daniel tried to detect whether he heard an accusation in Kay’s statement, whether she was still assuming the worst from him, if he was the Daniel that fucked up or the Daniel who needed to be cared for. “She must have been talking about this one time we met up in the city. I didn’t have any cash on me and I had to borrow some to pay for dinner.”

“It sounded like more than that. What Charles said, it sounded serious. And wasn’t she talking at Jim’s birthday party about a thief?”

“It’s not serious. He’s making it up.”

“But why would her boyfriend call me and make something like that up? Please, explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain. For all I know, he might be jealous. Of me and Angel being such good friends. Some guys get like that.”

Daniel saw, in Kay’s expression, the same mix of hurt and suspicion as when she learned about his expulsion from Potsdam. He got up, taking the envelope. “But you reminded me that I forgot to pay Angel back. I’m going to go do that now, on my computer.”

HE PASSED BOTH HIS classes for the first part of the summer term, a C+ in Comparative Politics and a B in Microeconomics. The second part proceeded in the same joyless vein, Macroeconomics in the mornings, an American History course in the afternoons. In late July, a lone text message appeared from Roland, asking Daniel how he was doing. Daniel wrote back, congratulating Roland on the Jupiter gig and wishing him the best, echoing Angel’s wish to him in her e-mail—which had been insincere, as she’d sicced Charles on him.

That night, he borrowed Peter’s Volvo and drove around by himself. He had missed driving while in the city, the steering wheel hard beneath his palm, free hand floating out the open window with air thick between his fingers, the easy slide down the curving two-lane roads. He remembered driving through the night with Roland their senior year, all the way to Boston, drinking gas station coffee and singing along to mix CDs. They’d been driving to a friend’s house when they decided to get on the highway and keep going east, couldn’t bear another Saturday night in Ridgeborough, and when they got to Boston they had breakfast at a diner, waffles and pancakes and Western omelets, a bright winter morning with flurries of snow. Daniel had watched the joggers in their thermal outfits crossing the bridge over the Charles River, college students in sweaters and scarves toting large cups of coffee. He had dreamt about leaving home and being on his own, about the life that awaited him once he left Ridgeborough. When he could be free, in the way Michael thought he already was.

Now, looping around town with no destination, his phone plugged into the car’s speakers, skipping from song to song and album to album and growing bored with each track after a few seconds—he was sick of all his music, five thousand songs and not a damn thing to listen to—the music went silent.