Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

  But this daughter opens her eyes. I loosen the dog’s leash. Child and animal are face-to-face. She pets him as cautiously as her father did, then smiles. “He’s soft,” she whispers. The dog licks her face and she giggles. The father picks up his daughter and thanks me, and as they walk away, I can hear the little girl excitedly recounting to her father—“Baba, the doggy licked me, Baba, did you see?”

  This is when Rob walks up and says hi.

  I barely recognize him. Only the hair—dark brown, just past his shoulders, with a hint of wave at the ends, reminding me of my own hair before I’d cut it all off—and the certainty from the night before that he had an attractive face. He looks at me, then at the dog, then back.

  “You brought a dog,” he says.

  “A very friendly dog,” I say, but he is already scratching the dog’s ears as though they know each other, a gesture I find both endearing and invasive.

  Rob says we should go to the park across the street. I don’t like the idea, but it is the middle of the day and light out. I have just witnessed two people overcome a fear together, so I go.

  We sit at a bench and I let the dog off leash to wade in the creek. We watch him for a minute, quiet and adjusting. Any resolve or determination I had the night before has vanished. I stick my hands in my coat pockets and rub the bills again. I want Rob to direct this interaction. But he, too, looks uncomfortable. He crosses and recrosses his legs, then asks me a series of questions: how long have I been in town, why have I moved here, where did I move from, what do I do, what do I think of the place? He seems to become calmer the longer I talk, the longer I answer his questions. He interjects occasionally, saying that he’s a local, he went to college in California, too, at Pomona. He misses the West Coast. He hopes to move back there one day, but for now, it’s easier to be home. As he relaxes, he stretches his arms out along the length of the bench. I resist flinching away from the one resting behind me. I call the dog back and make him lie beside us, to bear witness.

  Rob tells me he lives down the street with some friends, all townies. He works up on campus—a “chill” job, where he helps run a few undergraduate leadership and scholarship programs. His mom is a fairly popular professor in the plant science department, and knows a lot of people, which is how Rob got the job. He says all he had to do was tap into the “Ithaca Filipino Network.” I ask how big of a network that really is. He laughs and says it’s small.

  “Do you just deal on the side, then?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “This is a one-time thing. We always have enough in the house, you know? I just thought it was funny, the way you asked. And I didn’t feel like I could back out after you texted. But then, before I got here, I started worrying you were an undercover cop or something. I’m pretty paranoid in general, though. This all worked out. Right? You’re not a cop, right?”

  “No,” I say. “I was worried you were, or you were going to call them.”

  We share a laugh, about the absurdity of our shared fears, and what I think, too, is the absurdity of two Asians working for the Ithaca Police Department. I realize he is the first person I’ve met in Ithaca whom I’ve had an easy time talking to, and I surprise myself by saying the thought aloud.

  Rob smiles. “Don’t worry, Ithaca will grow on you.” He pulls a sandwich bag out of his pocket. “I just assumed you wanted an eighth?”

  I nod and hand him the money. The dog whines. We talk some more, to dissipate the awkwardness of the transaction. Before we part ways, he gives me one of the bills back.

  “Friend’s discount,” he says.

  We sit next to the bedroom window with J’s pipe and blow the smoke out of the screen. Each time, he lights it for me, because I can’t seem to do it without burning my finger with the flame. We get into bed and I turn off the light on my side table. He protests a little, but I keep quiet and leave the light off. We lie next to each other, touching one another’s arms and stomachs and necks and chests, until our eyes adjust to the dark and I can see the outlines of his face. Every movement of ours feels like fate, like destiny. We are perfectly timed because time relaxes for us. Afterward, I go sit on the toilet and feel my whole body pulse in the dark. I think about how content I am, but also how stupid I’ve been, how stupid I will be once this high wears off. What’s wrong with me, I whisper. I want to hold on to this feeling that everything is good, or at least okay, but already it is slipping away. When I return to the bedroom I find J lying with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. What are you thinking? I ask. Nothing, he says. I’m just happy.

  For Halloween I dress up as a mad scientist among scientists. I wear an old lab coat that J brought me from his workplace. On the chest pocket is written in Sharpie YING YING. I cover the name with a sticker of the history museum’s logo. Somebody asks me if the sticker is part of my costume, to which I reply, No, it’s just where I work, it is just covering somebody else’s name. I don’t want anybody to think that Ying Ying is my Chinese name—however similar it is to my Chinese name. If “Matt” or “Casey” or “Erica” had been written on the coat, I probably would’ve left it and joked that it was my scientist alter ego. Later in the night, when I am drunk, I find a Sharpie, rip the sticker off, and scribble over the name until it is all blacked out.

  A graduate student in a mouse costume is talking to me about the difficulties of committing to one lab. Though I don’t understand the science, I’ve learned the social workings of the department, the rumors surrounding professors and their work styles, the hierarchies and competitions, which students are rotating where, who is excelling and who is flailing. J has gained more confidence as the months have passed. The professors love him, they fight over him, and he has his pick for which lab he’ll join. (A happy shift for J, who lacked so much confidence coming in.) This woman whom I am speaking to is having a more difficult time. She came straight from undergrad, and wasn’t accustomed to the lack of instruction, the lack of worksheets and assignments. She tells me she misses her textbooks, the things that told her, Do this, then that, memorize this, then you’ll ace the test. One prominent professor already made clear to her that she would not be welcome in his lab. The rejection was so painful and shattering, she left early and cried the rest of the day. And this is where the discussion of our parents begins. The woman, too, is Chinese American. Both of her parents are medical doctors. When they ask how the Ph.D. is going, she feels compelled to lie. She has to find another power lab to join, to make them happy, to make them proud. I wonder if she is confiding in me because she expects some shared experience, or sees me as an older-sister figure—she seems incredibly young—or if I am simply the one there at the right moment to hear her out. I say that sounds tough, that perhaps she should consider a lab that interests her more, rather than one with perceived status, because then she might be more committed to the work. She nods and says it’s something to consider. Then come the questions: Were your parents strict? Were they disappointed you didn’t go into medicine or science or engineering or law? How did you tell them what you wanted to do? How were you able to deal with them? No, I told her. They weren’t disappointed. They definitely didn’t let me do whatever I wanted, but they didn’t expect I would go into science or engineering or medicine. Maybe law and business were suggested more than I wanted to hear, but in the end they let me pursue what I wanted. Did you have to play an instrument? Only until I was thirteen, only until I didn’t want to anymore. Was it hard for them to say “I love you”? To hug you? To show you affection? Not at all. She looks as though she’s thinking very hard. Wait, are your parents American? she asks. Yes, I say. She lights up. Oh, okay! That’s why you were so lucky, because they grew up here, too.

  I know then, despite our similarities, we are vastly different. No, I say, very slowly. They are immigrants, who came here in their twenties. They are naturalized Americans. Oh, she says. What do they do for work? I tell her my dad is retired and my mom is an accountant. She nods. I guess they just weren’t really Chinese p
arents, then, she says. I almost say to her, You mean, they weren’t your Chinese parents? They weren’t stereotypical Chinese parents? But instead I cough and say, calmly, lightly, jokingly, Well, they are Chinese and they are my parents, so they are Chinese parents. She laughs. You know what I mean, she says, with what I think is a touch of condescension. This is not a battle I want to fight. I feel something akin to pity, but alongside it, anger. I think of her doctor parents funding her life, of her use of the term “lucky,” of our different understandings of what that means. Why does she need to reaffirm these markers of her experience, a valid and real experience I know to be true, as the only qualifiers—and why to me, who certainly knows exactly what she means? Maybe it feels safer. Maybe it is a scientist’s mind at work. Maybe it is better to be exceptional in this way than to be something else, something less familiar. And now we turn away from each other, likely both bitter with the other.

  What would somebody like her want to hear? Perhaps a very simple scenario: junior year, for every minute I was late home, I had to study an hour for the SAT. Or maybe a story with more of a physical effect: the one time, a blooming bruise on the skin covering my ribs, how it fascinated me with its red and purple whorls. Or would more confusion and violence satisfy? How they cursed each other out in Shanghainese and threw whatever they could get their hands on. How my sister and I had to pull them apart. Me pulling my mom and my sister pulling my dad, and yet somehow us all toppling onto one another on the couch. I don’t remember what my brother did or where he was, only that later, the police arrived, and the three of us stayed in a bedroom refusing to be questioned, how we did not come out until it was quiet. Are these the sad stories that you want?

  The tea bag: Act, don’t react.

  An hour deliberating over an email to Tim, to ask if he has any work for me. We haven’t spoken in months. He writes back ten minutes later:

  Do you want to do a roundup review of mechanical pencils? No rush, it’s evergreen.

  Yes, sure, okay. Anything to make me feel like I’m doing something with myself.

  Also in the email:

  Remember what I said? That the adjustment period for moving across the country to follow your partner is about six months. He has to forgive you for everything you do in that time period. That’s what I did for my wife . . .

  I must have made my situation sound bleaker than I’d intended. That said, less than two months left to do and feel anything and whatever in that ellipsis.

  When we first graduated, J worked at a bike shop, the same one that employed him as a high schooler and whose owner also ran a Bible shop next door.

  “What was the point of going to college if I’m back here doing exactly the same thing?” he said. He cried and smoked a lot of weed in those days. I now understand better how he felt then.

  In January 1937, Pardee Lowe wrote of his successful marriage to a white woman in Asia magazine:

  MIXED MARRIAGE

  A Chinese Husband and American Wife Are Put to Test

  Commencement time for me meant no hilarious celebration, despite the fact that I held under one arm a diploma from an internationally famous graduate school of business and in the other a wife who had just rejoined me after a year abroad studying music. The absence of parental approval and the withdrawal of our monthly allowances signified all too conclusively the objections of our respective families to our sudden marriage of the year before. And the problem of unemployment loomed before us; the depression was then at its worst, and jobs, it seemed, were not to be had. . . .

  Not only my own future was at stake but my wife’s. Strange had been our romance, partaking of all the qualities of fiction. Even the gods in their Olympian detachment must have smiled at the singularity of our union, the product of fortuitous circumstances and inalterable fate.

  This is more like us, I think.

  The weather is turning, dropping fast. More of my hair is falling out than usual; I find it everywhere in the house, and sometimes hanging from the dog’s butthole as he shits. My mom says it has to do with the seasons.

  “People lose a lot of hair in the fall and winter,” she says. “Then it will grow back in the spring.”

  “I’m not a tree,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says, “you are like the trees. Needs sun and water and vitamins.”

  Two ginkgoes shed all their leaves yesterday and today they’re totally naked, the ground beneath them a thick pool of yellow. The white dog wades in.

  At the crowded coffee shop, where I am pitching random ideas to editors in hopes of getting more work. A white woman who looks to be in her midthirties asks if I mind sharing a table. I nod. I mean, no, I say. I don’t mind.

  Days have passed during which I haven’t spoken in person to anybody but people behind or in front of registers, or J, but even then, barely. But she is an extrovert, clearly, which brings it out in me. Though I stutter at first from nervousness and excitement, we talk for a while, pleasantly. When I mention what I’m doing, she lets out a yelp of recognition, as though we are two friends bumping into each other at a party of strangers. She’s a professor in the journalism department at the liberal arts college in town. She used to work as a producer at a morning TV news station in a nearby city, but realized that it didn’t suit her personality. Waking up incredibly early in the mornings, having to chase some small story down, it was tiring and often felt meaningless. I say I felt the same about my work. She says she’s found meaning in teaching, even though she’s training some students to be the next generation of morning news producers. Not that it would be any good for them. Almost nobody watches TV news anymore. There’s no stability or money in it. That’s the past. The present, the future, it’s all online. I say sure, but there’s no stability or money in that, either. She asks if I have any interest in teaching.

  “We could really use a person like you,” she says. “Somebody who can bring a different dimension to our students that we don’t have with our current staffing. We don’t have tenure-track positions right now, but we’re looking for lecturers. It’s easy, you just tell them what you know, make some activities and exercises, that’s about it.”

  Yes, she does make it sound easy. I hadn’t considered teaching before, but now I picture myself standing in front of undergraduates, clicking through PowerPoint slides, waving my arms to emphasize takeaways, asking important questions. The students look back with attentive, curious faces, hungry for knowledge. Yes, that could be meaningful.

  Then the woman leans in toward me and asks, “How do you like Ithaca?”

  I want to be positive, so I say that overall, it has been pretty nice.

  She leans farther in, and looks like she’s about to tell me a secret. “How do you feel about the lack of Asians in town, though? The last time I visited California, I noticed there were so many Asians everywhere. I was like, wow! It almost felt like traveling to a different country.”

  A significant shaking and bumping take place inside my brain and body. I can’t say I’m having thoughts, exactly, only reactions and feelings. Disgust. The sense of having been tricked. Distrust. A strong desire to escape.

  She laughs and says she didn’t mean anything by it. She loved California—amazing people and amazing weather.

  “Honestly, Ithaca is also wonderful,” she continues. “You’re actually quite lucky to have ended up here. It’s incredibly diverse in comparison to the rest of upstate New York. The two colleges attract a lot of international students. And Tompkins County is very liberal. Places just outside of Ithaca—have you heard of Freeville? Or Spencer? Or Owego? I could never live in those places. It would be so weird and uncomfortable not seeing people of different ethnicities and backgrounds walking around. That isn’t my kind of place. They’re also much more conservative and closed-minded,” she says, still leaning toward me. Her breath is sour, like something is rotting inside her. I look away. She keeps talking. “I just meant it’s not California, so you must be adjusting. But really, you lucked out.
Ithaca is really a paradise on earth.”

  “Yeah, it’s fine.” I pack up my computer and down what’s left of the coffee. What’s fine exactly? Ithaca? The adjustment? Her remarks? “I have to go pick something up now, sorry.”

  “I hope you’re not offended. Please know that wasn’t my intention!”

  “Oh, no,” I say, and stand up. “The table’s yours now.”

  “It was so nice to meet you,” she says. She hands me a business card. Associate professor. “Definitely apply to the lecturer position. Email me when you do and I’ll put in a good word!”

  I walk back to the house, the whole way thinking of things I could and should have said.

  Maybe it meant nothing. Or it meant something. She was being sympathetic in order to bond. Or she was making a statement, nothing more or less. Is this what was meant by a “different dimension”? Oddly, yes. Upsettingly, yes, she’s right. This town has been an adjustment.