“I don’t know.” Harry watches through the window, and for a second it feels like we always do, the two of us united against all the forces of the world. “No, she’s just outside.”
“Should I go after her?”
“I don’t know. No, probably not. I think you should just give her some space.”
“I can’t just sit here, though. She’s right there, and she’s my sister. I’m sure it’s her.”
“I know, but—it isn’t always better to be there, even if you’re trying to help. Sometimes you just have to back off.”
I feel my skin flush all the way down to my navel, a sick feeling worming into my stomach. How much am I supposed to read into that? “Yeah, but—” Whatever. I get up. I don’t believe that. Because this is what I always hoped for my life when I thought my sister had died: that somehow by being the one who was still here I’d figure things out. That it does mean something to be there, that the world is intrinsically different by you being in it, and that whatever ways it spins around you, you can take something from that and make it better, somehow, than it was.
And maybe now that sounds like wanting to just get credit for showing up. But it’s not nothing, right? Some people never show up. Or they start to and then they’re gone, or they want something bigger or flashier and less steady than the work of putting yourself there even when it’s not comfortable. I don’t want that to be true about me.
I find Joy outside crouched on the ground, breathing into cupped hands. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Do you need me to call someone?”
She closes her eyes. She looks so much like my mom when she does that, and without warning it makes me wish with all my heart my mom were here right now. She’d know what to say.
It’s just me, though, and I have no idea. I crouch next to Joy. “Can I bring you some water? I can order you some tea.”
“I don’t need anything. It’s just—you can’t just show up out of the blue like this,” she says. “Without any warning, without even asking—my God.” She drops her hands and takes more long breaths.
Oh. There’s a hollow spot in my chest where my heart should go. “I’m really sorry—I didn’t mean—”
“I just need to breathe a little while.” She does. There are a few people on the other side of the sidewalk outside what looks like a hardware store, and they’re watching us. One calls, “You okay over there?” and Joy waves him off. This street we’re on is basically the whole town and it makes it feel lonely here, kind of, way off on the edge of the world. Not a single car has driven by since we’ve been out here.
She takes two more long breaths and then she stands, unsteadily. I offer my hand to pull her up, but she ignores it, and I tuck it behind my back.
“I didn’t mean to freak out on you. But I was just having a normal day at work, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere you show up to drag up all these extremely personal things about my past—”
“I’m really sorry. I really didn’t mean for it to be like that for you. I thought—I guess I was just so excited to see you, and I thought you’d—”
She sighs. “They like me here,” she says, and it takes me a few seconds to understand that she means the restaurant. “They always bring my orders out right away. Our food is probably ready. Let’s just go back inside.”
When we go back in our food has come, and Joy sits down, almost mechanically, and resolutely picks up her fork. I can tell somehow that it’s important to her to pull herself together and sit through this meal, like maybe she’ll look back on this as a moment she had to be strong, a shitty time she had to get through and she gathered herself together and pulled it off.
I feel loose, like all my joints and cartilage are in danger of splitting and just coming apart, rendering me into dust. I can’t taste my curry. None of this is what I imagined. It didn’t occur to me that it would be her and she wouldn’t want to see me, that the sight of me would traumatize her.
All of us pick at our food, and Joy asks a little more about college. Everything I say she treats as mildly interesting trivia, roughly the same way Regina reacts when Harry sends her YouTube clips he thought were funny. Mostly, though, she talks to Harry, because apparently she considered doing a postdoc at Princeton and loved the area. And also I think because it’s probably easier—Harry doesn’t matter to her. Harry she’ll never have to think about again.
I think about my parents waiting back at home, and I imagine telling them about this: I went to see her and gave her a panic attack and then we came back. When the check comes, I reach for it, but Joy takes it before I can. “I can—”
“No, no,” she says breezily. “I’m a regular here.” Which isn’t exactly a reason, but—my Asianness fails me—I also don’t have the energy to fight for it. Joy pays. In her car on the way back she turns on the radio just loud enough that you’d have to raise your voice to talk over it, so we don’t.
When the paved road ends and we’re back on the dirt and gravel the car jostles us around, and I lean my head against the backrest and close my eyes and try to unravel all the moments leading to this one, imagine what I could’ve done differently, what I could still do. Maybe if I tell her more about what it’s been like for my parents, or if I tell her the whole story. Or maybe—
“Do you guys need anything for your drive back?” Joy says as we pull back in sight of the portables. “There’s not much open right now in town, but we have some water bottles and Red Bulls and trail mix.”
I say yes just to prolong things. How is it that I came all the way here and I’ll leave with nothing? We follow her into the portable, where Byron (at least I think it’s Byron; they’re both white guys in their twenties with short hair) nods at us from where he’s sitting in front of one of the computers wearing heavy-duty headphones. Joy pulls down a box from one of the plastic shelves and starts to rummage through it.
While we’re standing there, a strange looks goes over Harry’s face. I follow his gaze to the wall, and there next to a whiteboard is the portrait of my mom, the one I drew. It’s an impossible feeling to see it here in this context. It stuns me in place. I must stare at it a good minute, the rest of the room fading out in the periphery.
“I was home visiting my parents and I thought I’d stop by your art showing. I read about it online,” Joy says quietly.
I jump; I didn’t even notice she’d come closer to me. “How did you even hear about it?”
“I was—” She glances back toward not-Byron. “I was looking you up. You really should be more careful about online privacy.”
“You were looking me up?”
“I was curious. I’m a scientist. I was curious about any biological ties.”
I was certain already, but hearing her say it is staggering nonetheless, too much and too big to absorb right away. I will replay that for the rest of my life.
“They would love to talk to you,” I say. “I’m pretty sure they’d give anything at all just to hear your voice, even just for a few seconds. Anything you want to know or anything you want to say to them—I could call them right now if you want.”
Byron/not-Byron are watching us with their arms crossed, and in the portable’s small space I feel how little room there is right now for me. We’ve worn out our welcome, I know that.
She starts to say something, then stops herself. I can see her struggling. But I understand that struggle for what it is—she’s not choosing between two different parts of herself, I don’t think. She made her choice. The struggle now is just that she’s a nice person and will feel bad if she hurts me, not because of who I am, but just because of who she is.
“I’m not open to talking to them,” she says. “I’m sorry to hear they aren’t doing well, and for your sake I hope things clear up soon.”
She’s gathered some water bottles and granola bars, a few cans of Red Bull, and she puts them in a bag now and hands it to me. I can sense her lightening, having nearly disposed of us
. A part of my heart curls like a pencil shaving and peels off.
“Drive safely back,” she says. “I’m glad to know you’ve been doing well. Really. You have a lot of talent. Good luck with everything. It was nice to meet you both.”
The drive from San José to Modoc County feels striking and starkly beautiful on the way there, when you’re full of hope and promise and the future, when you feel like you’re the hero in your story. On the way back, though, when you’ve lost what you set out for, when you’re beginning to understand how you screwed everything up and now you’re left with nothing, it feels long and painful and impossible to begin.
I thought I’d have something to offer my parents.
I guess I still do, even though it’s none of what I wanted. I’ll tell them I’ll stay here with them, figure out some kind of job here. Maybe they’ll try to talk me out of it, but deep down I’m sure they know I can’t go to Providence. They could be detained and I’d have no way of knowing. I wouldn’t be able to visit or talk to them. And even if not, even if nothing happens, I can’t leave them here alone in their awful apartment to panic whenever footsteps go by. I can’t do that to them. They’ve lost too much already.
So that’s my offer. And I have this, too, small as it is: all the anger and resentment I felt toward them are gone. When Joy closed the door behind us those things drained completely away.
We’ve left the city limits when, with a suddenness that arcs through me like a knife, it all clicks into place. His experiment, losing the house, all of it: my dad risked everything because that experiment was all he had left of her, because the emptiness he must have felt (must feel still) would eclipse anything I’m currently feeling, and all he had to fill that ocean-sized hole was the hope of some tangible, atomic connection to her that no part of their history and none of his choices could sever.
And that was why my mom hated the experiment so much. Because it exhumed everything she’d tried so hard to bury.
The sun is starting to dip down as we drive back. You never really notice how much you miss the daylight until it’s slipping away. Driving with someone feels different at night—the dark locks you into the car and shrinks the world around you so all it is is you, and you feel how little you have left outside the car.
We make it to McArthur, eighty or ninety minutes, without talking. I’m too drained to worry about what that might mean. In the soft early night the rocks and scrub brush rise against us, hemming us to the road. Harry, who’s been still and subdued, finally clears his throat.
“Well,” he says, “at least you know, right?”
“I mean, whatever.” So I know. But comparing how I feel right now to how I did just hours ago—I should’ve just let myself stay in limbo forever. It hurt a lot less.
“Maybe someday she’ll change her—”
“She’s not going to.” If she felt nothing when I was there with her, if all the years I mourned her meant nothing to her, it’s never going to be any different. I feel tears pricking at my eyes, and I reach up and swipe at them roughly. “You don’t have to try to make it seem better. It sucks. End of story.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know. I’m just—I really wanted it to go differently.”
“I know you did.”
He shifts in his seat and looks around like he’s afraid someone might overhear us. I know him well enough to guess what that means. I wish he’d just say nothing, though—I don’t need a panicky, awkward speech where he tries to let me down gently.
“Listen,” he says. He stares straight ahead at the road as it climbs an incline. “You’re really important to me. I don’t want you to think—damn it.” He works his jaw and thuds his fist gently against the dashboard. “We’re always going to be friends, right? We’ll always—”
“You can stop.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see him flinch. “I don’t mean it like that. I swear.”
“What do you mean it like, then?”
“I mean it like—I can’t imagine what it’ll be like next year without you. And I wish—”
He stops. I say, “You wish what?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Wishes don’t count.” He lets his foot off the gas abruptly. When I glance at the speedometer it shows nearly ninety. He lets the needle drift back down to seventy. “You don’t hate me, right? We’re good?”
I turn my head away. “You know how I feel about you.”
The road flattens, returning us to the hold of the earth again. There’ve been more cars the past ten or twenty miles, brake lights gleaming red like dragon eyes. I have never been so tired in my life.
“Can I ask you something?” he says.
Who cares anymore. “Yep.”
“How long have you—how long?”
I think about lying, but there’s no point. “Always.”
He bites at his lip. “Really?”
I shrug. What else is there to say? Maybe someday I’ll look back on this night, too, as something I wish I could have back. Maybe someday I’ll dissect it a million times and trick myself into thinking if I just said something differently it could’ve changed everything. But the truth is that Harry knows me. There’s nothing I haven’t told him or shown him, and there’s nothing else I have left to offer him. That was the rest of it.
I’m exhausted. I lean my head against the cool glass of the window and watch the night pass by.
My parents throw the door open before I even take out my key. They must have been spying from the peephole. I come in and then they both hover over me, not touching. I can feel their waiting pulsing in the room. My mom says, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I—”
“We were so worried. We didn’t know if you’d—”
Her voice breaks, and she puts her hands over her mouth. My dad drapes his arm around her shoulder. It’s nearly three in the morning, and from the way they’re both watching me I know that the whole time I was gone they were waiting for news, that likely neither of them slept or ate.
And I understand something else then, too, for the first time, something cocooned inside this mini welcome-home brigade of theirs: why both my parents treated me the way they did after the crash. I should’ve recognized sooner how intimately they understand guilt and how it’s shaped them and shaped me, too, both the choices they’ve had to make and the stories they tell themselves. I’ve lived my whole life inside their guilt.
“I didn’t mean to make you worry. I was all right. I just needed to see her. And I thought if I went to talk to her there—I thought it would change things.”
My mom takes my face in her hands. “Daniel—”
“Wait. I also wanted to say how sorry I am about the crash. Um—” I can’t look at either of them. “I know everything’s so much worse because of that and because of me and I would do anything to take it back. And I know it’s too late to change anything, but I think you made the wrong choice when you chose me over her. Over my sister, I mean.”
“Daniel, you can’t think of it that way,” my dad says. He looks pained. “We never have.”
Haven’t they ever, in the dark moments they wouldn’t tell someone else about? But if they have, I know, they’ll take that to their graves. I say, “But—”
“No,” my dad says firmly. “No. We are so lucky to have you. We’ve always felt that way.”
The words in front of me waver and then fade, and my lungs expand again. I’ll hold on to those words. I wish I had more to give them back in return.
I can give them this, at least: I tell them it’s really her. And I try my best to turn it into something they might want to hear. I tell them she’s happy. I tell my dad she’s a scientist like he is, I tell my mom she’s kind and polite like my mom is. I tell them that she looks like me.
My mom is crying, but trying to pretend she isn’t. The look on her face—if I were to draw it the part I’d go after, I think, is the loneliness, like you
could fill the whole city with people for her and it wouldn’t be close to enough.
“Also,” I say quickly, “there’s something else. I’m withdrawing from RISD and I’m going to stay here.”
“What? No,” my mom says. “Of course you’re going. You have to go. We are so happy you were accepted. You’ll go.”
“I can’t. I’m not. I emailed them to ask how to withdraw.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” my dad says. “You’ve worked your whole life—”
“I’m not being ridiculous. I’m not going. I’d spend the whole time there worrying, anyway. It wouldn’t be worth it even if I did. But also, just—I can’t. Maybe I can take classes at community college here, and I’ll get a job and help out. Maybe I could get a job at the mall with you, Ba. Or something. I’ll figure something out.”
My parents exchange a long look, and some understanding passes between them, something I can’t interpret. “We’ll speak about it later,” my dad says.
“But—”
He quiets me. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you hungry?”
“Yes,” my mom says quickly, even though I know her appetite’s been shot lately. “Me too. What do you feel like eating, Daniel? We’re starving. Let’s go get something to eat.”
I am actually—in spite of everything—starving, too, so my parents have me get an Uber and we pay eight dollars for the guy to take us to a Jack in the Box and we go through the drive-through, and my mom insists I get a soda, which we never get, and we order a bagful of greasy food. Back in the apartment my mom spreads one of the thin bathroom towels on the floor and we have a picnic, and instead of talking about any of the things I think we all want to avoid, my parents start talking about when I was little. Do you remember, my mom says, a soft smile on her face, and then they’re off and running. They tell stories about me as a toddler, me as a preschooler, me in grade school. And listening to them you’d think all the years were happy.
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