Picture Us In The Light

by Kelly Loy Gilbert

  This won’t last forever, I know that—the rest of the world is waiting, and there’s only so long you can hold it at bay. All the same, though, I’m grateful. I understand this is a gift. I’ll take it as long as it lasts.

  I picture drawing us this way, my parents looking kind of awkward sitting cross-legged on the floor, the towel stained where some of the ketchup spilled. I hope someday, wherever life takes us, we’ll look back on this as the worst time in our lives. That from the safety of a better future the way things feel right now will fade and we’ll be left with just hazy vignettes: the time I drove to Alturas, the time we ate Jack in the Box together on the apartment floor.

  The people who matter to you most—you aren’t always going to occupy that same space in their lives, I guess. Maybe that’s what I always loved most about art, that it was a way of multiplying myself so I could feel like I was always a part of more than I really was. I should hold on to the fact that Joy kept something I drew. Maybe that still means something, however small. And maybe life is when you gather all the things you can hold on to and carry with you, and cross your fingers it’ll be enough.

  I’ve never told anyone this. It’s not a secret, it’s just not something that was ever big enough to bring up or explain why it keeps playing through my head. But this is what I remember:

  I was walking home with Sandra in eighth grade near the beginning of the year back when we were friends still and she’d been kind of weird the whole way, quieter than usual, and distracted. We’d passed Columbus and the crowds of kids trudging down Bubb had thinned out a little when she looked around and said, apropos of nothing, “You know who I’m kind of into? I’m kind of into Ahmed.”

  “I knew it!” I’d crowed. I stopped in my tracks and she bumped into me, nearly knocking me over. I was grinning triumphantly. “I so knew it.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Um, I entirely did.” It’s hard to remember there was ever a time when they weren’t publicly and permanently linked, that it would’ve taken any kind of observation to see what there was between them, but I had known: she kept bringing him up gratuitously, finding ways to work him into conversation. I knew what that felt like. “You’re really bad at keeping secrets. I knew it.” I elbowed her. “Ask him out.”

  “Um, no thank you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just kind of have a thing for him. I’m not going to ask him out.”

  “Why? You’re scared?”

  And this was the moment—it was over in four seconds. It was fall and we were crunching through leaves and I was hungry, ready to be home, and Sandra said, “Other people don’t exist just to be your happy ending, you know?”

  I think about that now. She was right, of course, but still, sometimes people give you that. And it’s a gift every time, something rare and important, not something you’re ever guaranteed and not any pattern that might help you understand the world.

  My mom comes into my room that night a few minutes after I’ve gotten into bed. She sits on my mattress across from me and says, “I want to ask you something.”

  I’m already half-asleep. “Mmph.”

  She waits until I’m mostly awake again. “Do you mean it about RISD, Daniel?”

  I do mean it. I don’t have a choice, not really. Anyway, I saw what it looked like for my dad to go after his dreams. Most people don’t get to, he was right. “Yeah.”

  “What will make you change your mind?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re certain?”

  I try to blink away the heaviness in my eyes. I am certain, and more than that, I know they understand that—they understand what it means for your life to orbit around a single choice, how everything that comes after will always originate from a single point. And they know the grief and regret that come with it, too. “Yeah.”

  She leans forward and rests her cheek against mine, then smooths my hair and kisses my cheek.

  “You are such a good son, Daniel,” she says. “We are very proud of you.”

  That night I sleep what feels like a century. Around noon, when my phone rings, I wake up abruptly with what feels like a hangover. The sunlight splits through the dark curtains, illuminating all the dust motes suspended in the air.

  I roll over and feel around for my phone charging on my nightstand. It’s Regina. I try to clear the sleep from my voice. “Hello?”

  “Hey,” she says quietly. It sounds like she’s been crying.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no, but—yeah. Harry told me about your sister. I’m really sorry.”

  What is there to say? It feels like a death. “Thanks.”

  My phone buzzes with a message, and then another one. It’s probably Harry. “I wish it had gone differently,” Regina says.

  “Yeah, well.” I lay my head back against the pillow and close my eyes. “Hey, Reg, I should’ve called you after Mr. Denton had us in his office.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, I should’ve—”

  “I actually went and talked to the psychologist.”

  “You did?” I open my eyes again and shift until I’m sitting up. “How was it? You don’t sound good.”

  “No, it was okay. It was good, actually. She was better than I expected. It’s just been…kind of a long morning.” I hear her get up and close her door. “Did you know Harry was the last person she talked to?”

  She means Sandra, I know. “He never told me that.”

  “He never told anyone else.”

  “What did they talk about? When was it?”

  She tells me: it was two hours before. Afterward, a few days after, when he was in a panic he couldn’t come down from, Harry showed her the messages. He’d been at a tennis match and Sandra had written You’ll always be good to Regina, right?

  He was sweaty and thirsty and hurried, ready for his next set, checking his phone while he was getting water, which his coach always yelled at him about when he noticed. Sandra was a possessive, bossy friend—she’d always been—and they’d banter sometimes over whether he was a worthy boyfriend or not. She’d dole out numbers like an Olympian judge sometimes (8 for being a good date to a dance, 6 for being a less-than-stimulating lunch companion), and he always laughed, but I know it kind of bothered him, too; if he could’ve figured out a way to say so without sounding oversensitive, he would’ve done it.

  The text struck him as kind of unusual, but there was another set to play—he was down—and so he didn’t answer at first. Then he changed his mind and said, I always am already.

  Sandra wrote back, Good. Keep that promise, and Harry put down his phone and went to play the rest of his match. He won.

  My phone keeps buzzing. “When you told me about your parents,” Regina says, “something—I don’t know. Some part of me snapped out of something. I guess I just feel so guilty every time I’m happy, or every time I’m with anyone I care about. Like how can I just go on with all my friendships like everything didn’t end for me last year?”

  “Oh, Reg—”

  “Anyway, I wanted to tell you I turned in my deposit for Northwestern.”

  “Wait, what, seriously? You did? Regina, that’s great.”

  “My parents finally gave in. I think it was the tribute, actually—I think it really freaked my mom out.” She pauses. “Honestly, though, I don’t know if I can imagine going and like—I don’t know, cramming for finals or studying abroad or passive-aggressively dumping my roommate’s laundry on her bed or whatever you’re supposed to do in college. Just doing all those things like that’s all there is in my world.”

  “I know what you mean. I think it’ll get there, though.” At the very least those things will happen; you go through the motions and then it turns out you did them, even if you weren’t entirely there for it as you did.

  “Someday, maybe. We’ll see. Also, I started going to my church again.”

  “Oh yeah? How’s that been?”

 
“It’s—complicated.”

  “Complicated good or complicated bad?”

  “Complicated like—I couldn’t bring myself to sing anything during worship and I was still furious at everyone who ever tried to tell me last year God works all things for good, but then during the message I just felt like God was reminding me that the whole history of the world is that it’s fallen. He promises redemption someday, just not yet. And in the meantime whole decades’ worth of the Bible is just grieving all these broken things.”

  “Well, that’s—”

  “Also, I broke up with Harry.”

  The world tilts sideways, wobbling on its axis. “Wait, what?”

  “I did it just now.”

  I don’t know what to say. “Why?”

  “I should’ve done it a long time ago.”

  “You don’t have feelings for him?”

  “Of course I do. I love Harry, and I’ll always love him, but not like that. But also—I don’t think I was ever who he wanted.”

  The way she says it—I think she knew more than I realized, all this time. My phone buzzes again. “I don’t know what to say. You’re okay with it?”

  “It’s weird, definitely. And I’m sad. But I wasn’t ever really in it. You know? At least not the way you’re supposed to be. It feels so selfish and wrong to just try to have some kind of happy ending when—when not everyone gets one. With Harry at least I didn’t have to feel guilty for doing that because it was never going to be happily ever after with him. We aren’t right for each other. It felt less wrong that way.” She hesitates. “I know you’re not supposed to think like that—like, shutting down your own life because you feel guilty. But I guess you feel what you feel.”

  “And how do you feel now?”

  “I wouldn’t say better, but—righter, I guess. Maybe better will come.”

  There are so many messages when Regina and I hang up that I have to scroll back up to read them:

  Yo, where you at

  You up yet?

  Pick up your phone

  Pick it up

  What are you doing are you sleeping still?

  Pick up your damn phone

  Danny

  Dannnnyyyyyyyyyyyy

  Danny stg if you don’t pick up right this second

  Okay don’t pick up your phone, but

  You know what you told me yesterday and I said I wish it could be different? It’s different now

  Can I come over?

  PICK UP YOUR PHONE

  I write back, come over.

  I feel tingly all over. When I get up and put clothes on, my fingers feel thick and numb, and I fumble with the buttons on my shirt. It’s quiet; my parents must still be asleep. My heart is percussive. I can’t stop smiling.

  When I open my door the living room is empty, and I don’t hear anything from the bathroom. I peek out on the balcony and say, “Ma?” No answer. “Ba?” Still silence.

  I tell myself they’ve just gone down to the laundry room or something, or maybe they went out to bring back some food, and I rummage through the mostly empty fridge and the cupboards. It’s only after I give up and plop down on the couch/bed that I find the letter next to their phones lying on the TV stand. It’s an envelope with my name on it, in my mom’s writing, and inside the envelope there’s three hundred dollars in cash.

  Our beloved Daniel,

  We have always believe in you.

  We never want to burden you with our problem and mistake and we always dream of a much bigger life for you than this.

  We know you will go on to do great thing as an artist. We will be always watching for your name.

  Keep your same phone number always so we always know how to find you. Someday, when the time is right, you will hear from us again.

  We love you more than you can ever dream.

  You have known for years where she lives—the woman who gave birth to you. The woman who first cuddled you, who gave you your first name, taught you your first tongue. Who got on a plane and crossed an ocean without you like you were luggage that didn’t fit. Whom you have tried and tried to discard, who haunts you every day of your life.

  All your life you cupped this dream in your hands like a bird: that he would come. Your baby brother, your replacement. You’ve rehearsed all the things you’d say to him, how to reduce him to nothing in only a few sentences, how to summon all those years of your own anger and make your pain lash around so vicious and wild it would break his skin and lodge itself underneath. And then he could carry those wounds back to them and infect them, too. Pain multiplies exponentially. What you cannot fix you can continue to destroy.

  And then there he was.

  He was nothing like you expected. But you—you were everything you should’ve expected. All those years of your plotting crumbled and you felt your old familiar self rising up, rushing in to try to ease his way and make him feel better. All those same familiar urges that make you smile when men say Smile!, that made you go to the movies with your advisor one day because he said he was lonely even though you didn’t want to, that made you worm yourself into bright Chinese dresses with your sister to take Christmas pictures your mom arranged each year growing up, that bring you home for every holiday. Who are you in the face of someone else’s pain? demand the urges. Who are you to withhold yourself? And you didn’t tell him, although you considered it, how six years ago (you work your way backward; he would’ve been about to start middle school) you went to see his father.

  When you were younger your parents took you and your sister to join a group for girls adopted from China and their families. You’d go each week to one of the family’s houses and watch documentaries about China, and the moms would all try to cook Chinese food and pass out red envelopes for Chinese New Year or they’d bring in books to try to teach you words in Mandarin. Each week, you’d look around at all the other girls and think how any one of them could have just as easily wound up your sister instead. Your life was shaped by the whims of overseas agencies, by paperwork and timing. Your sister loved those meetings, but you hated them; you begged your mom to let you stay at home. Culture was important. She never let you. After returning you’d get migraines, flashes of black-rimmed light that screamed across your vision and left you weak and ill.

  When you don’t live out the life you were born into, the idea that you might someday, somehow, understand is intoxicating. In undergrad you met other adoptees. It was easier, somehow, outside your family’s eager, watchful eye. Your friend Tish, from Orinda and before that from Seoul, was in reunion with her first family. She claimed it was messy, and never easy, but before something’s a reality it can be anything you wish. It can be not only easy but fulfilling and perfect, too; you can banish fear if you imagine only the most wonderful things.

  When you were a junior in college you had found where your brother’s father worked and a boy from your Animal Behavior class, who lived in San José, offered to drive you over Fourth of July weekend. You will never forget the particular sound of your footsteps in the linoleum hallway, the lights flickering overhead. He was in the laboratory, sitting at a computer by an otherwise unremarkable window that’s forever seared into your memory, and when he saw you the earth stopped around him; you felt it happen, a disruption in the gravitational pull. You felt his whole life change.

  He came out into the hallway. You were shy and hopeful and terrified all at once, happy in a way you couldn’t quite control, and then he wouldn’t talk with you. You have a new family now, he told you, and the whole world hardened against you, and you within it, petrified inside the stark truth of all the ugliness of a cold uncaring universe. You must go back to them. It’s not safe for you to be here. Go.

  You have nurtured your hatred ever since. You are small and pretty, with a lovely smile. You hide your hatred well.

  For weeks and weeks you lie awake at night remembering your brother’s visit, dissecting it and sliding it under a microscope in your mind. You think of it the nights you
r boyfriend comes to visit, the day your family drives up to surprise you, the day your sister calls from college in tears, homesick, and you settle back into those easy rhythms and unspoken sentences of siblinghood, the least fraught language you know and what now feels like your mother tongue.

  You will admit this to yourself: when he was here, even against all your people-pleasing learned behaviors, you brought up your sister the way you did to hurt him. Or not to hurt him, maybe—although that’s what it did; you saw it in his face—but to wall yourself off from him, to place markers around yourself and let all the space between you echo back at him. It was the way you did it, tossing her out there like you didn’t know the implications. You knew them. Your sister is the one to whom you admit this, in fact, when you finally call her and tell her how he came. Ruth has always been different from you (she knows nothing of her first family, and yearns for answers): if it had been her, she would have hugged him and never let him go.

  You have been watching his life unspool from a distance. Despite your warning, he makes no effort at privacy. He posted when he left for college, when he arrived. He posts pictures and videos of his dorm there, the art he’s making, the things he does on weekends, the visits from the boy he brought to meet you who goes to Brown now (you’d thought he said Princeton, but maybe you were wrong), the two of them twined together lying on the grass looking so happy to be with each other it makes your teeth hurt. (Sometimes, though, in the pictures other people post of him, those ones he didn’t curate personally, you think he looks deeply sad.) He posts a happy-anniversary message to his parents; he posts the details of his first studio exhibition with his classmates; he posts when he’s going to be off campus. In fact he posts so much that it occurs to you more than once to wonder if he’s doing it for the benefit of an audience—is it you? He has shifted his life onto screens, a narrative you can tune in to, so that every day, if you like (you do), you can check in on him and see that he’s safe, that he’s busy, that he’s surrounded by people who like him and even some who love him. You think he must be doing it on purpose.