by Rachel Khong
His Boston terrier is chasing a rolling Pringles tube across the carpet. Vince is in the kitchen cooking and telling us, “If you’re a sled dog, and you need to take a shit, you just do it. The other dogs drag you along. While the shit’s falling out of you!” A few moments later he emerges from the kitchen and presents a stir-fry.
“This is good,” we say.
“I’ve had Chinese girlfriends,” Vince says, and beams, proudly.
February 8
In the morning, from Bonnie’s, I make my way to Uncle John’s. He lives like an obdurate bachelor, on the same acre of land in Tehachapi where he’s lived since I was a teenager. There’s a shooting range and a little decorative koi pond with an elegant and healthy population of fish. He likes to feed them good bread—nothing Wonder.
His golf cart isn’t in its regular spot when I arrive so I trek to the range, where he’s been shooting a happy face into a watermelon. When he sees me he doesn’t put the gun down immediately. I approach when he’s through. He’s shot angry eyebrows into it.
He hands the padded vest to me and lets me shoot a few. He launches some strange skeets and when I shoot them they make a funny noise. He reaches into his pack, holds up what looks like a hardened biscuit.
“The biodegradable skeet,” he says. “This is how I’m going to make my millions.”
He cooks lunch: mackerel buried in salt and wrapped in aluminum foil and baked. He roasts lemon wedges. We squeeze juice from the browned lemons over the fish.
I remember when I was eleven or twelve, on a camping trip, Uncle John cooked Linus and me a trout we’d caught, over a fire, and we ate peaches from a can, and nothing—it seemed—had ever tasted and would ever taste so good.
“Foil,” I say now. “Didn’t you get the memo about foil?”
“Your mother is nuts,” he says.
I ask if he remembers the time she tried to make Cheetos from scratch. I was nine or ten and Cheeto obsessed. She drove us two-plus hours to the Frito-Lay factory in Bakersfield, where we toured the plant in hairnets and shoe covers. At the end of the tour, we sampled the freshly manufactured Cheetos, still warm from the industrial process they had undergone. A few weeks after that trip, she arrived at an actually impressive Cheeto—cheese dusted and craggy.
“Your mother is nuts,” he repeats. “But she is the best.”
February 9
This is our plan for this week’s class: an acquaintance of Theo’s who teaches chemistry, another PhD student, is on vacation for the next two weeks. His classroom is open. Our excuse, to Dad, is that last week’s classroom is being refurbished.
“It’s really outdated,” he agrees.
Before we leave for campus, my phone rings. The screen says PHILLIP is calling. I hurry to the bathroom.
“Hi, Phillip,” I say, casually.
“What?”
“That’s your code name,” I whisper.
“Oh hey, uh, Ned,” Theo replies.
“Ned?”
“I saw Levin’s car in the parking lot,” says Theo. “At least I think it’s his. So maybe, to be on the safe side, don’t park in the visitors lot? And maybe don’t walk past the Arts buildings?”
To Dad, I propose dinner at Señor Amigo’s. It’s a block from school and northwest—Levin’s office is southwest—and I can leave the car parked in the restaurant’s lot.
Our waitress is a teenager. She tilts her sombrero up to register my father.
“Professor Young!” she squeals.
“I’m Layla!” she says to me.
She tells us about her semester—boring so far, she misses Dad’s class—then sneaks us guacamole, magnanimously, and whispers, “Shhh.”
After dinner, we walk briskly to the classroom. It’s lightly raining so I hold an umbrella over the two of us, low, and usher us hurriedly.
This is what we learn from Dad: The name “California” came from a sixteenth-century romance novel that was popular in Spain. In the novel, California was a land where Amazonian warriors lived—all women, no men, with beautiful, strong bodies.
When the Spanish explorers arrived in the real California, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, they didn’t think the place looked like much: no particularly valuable natural resources—none, at least, that they were interested in. Only trees and mountains, mist and fog—nothing to write home about. They stuck around anyway.
Five minutes before class ends, Theo takes a bathroom break to survey the situation. He texts me that Levin’s car, for some reason, is still in the parking lot. But he’s also not in his office. Meaning he could be anywhere.
Theo text messages all of us with a new plan. We’re going to have the tallest students walk Dad to the car, thereby blocking view of him. Theo will be on one side; Jake, who’s six two, will walk on the other. I’ll walk ahead, scouting.
“But Ruth is a liability,” someone else texts.
“Do you have sunglasses or something?” Theo texts me.
The Amigo’s parking lot is now full of cars, but I spot him pretty much immediately: Levin is leaning against a silver Camry, sipping from a to-go cup and checking his cell phone. He seems distracted; he isn’t looking our way.
Theo slings an arm around Dad and we pick up our pace. Levin’s glancing at the Señor Amigo’s door, then at his watch, then at his phone. We get Dad into the car successfully.
I’m still wearing my sunglasses. I think Levin notices us pulling out of the parking lot, but I don’t know for sure. My heart is beating crazily.
On the drive home, Dad is chatty. He’s happy, he’s making plans. He wants to finish writing his book this month, he says. Maybe attend some conferences in the spring.
“Sounds great, Dad,” I say, as convincingly as I can.
February 10
In last night’s dream, I was in high school geometry class. There was a class pet: a canary who chirped with the correct answers. He’d been trained in square roots. A classmate, wanting to stump the canary, asked what was the square root of 28,561? The bird chirped confidently to 169.
In the morning, I was impressed: not with the canary, but with my subconscious mind, for knowing the math.
Dad is in his office, already at work, and he’s taken a loaf of bread into the room with him. But instead of fully closed, the door remains ajar, filling me with the smallest measure of hope.
I look in the fridge. Inside there is a jar of guava jelly and a hard, wizened piece of ginger. In the very back of the pantry, there’s a box of linguine, a box of hardened brown sugar, and a bag of almonds, two years past its sell-by date.
I type into the search engine How long to starve to death? and am somewhat heartened by the answer, which is anywhere from three weeks to seventy days. I eat what’s left in the jelly jar.
I head to the high school track where I used to run laps, half-expecting—hoping—to find a wandering canary. It isn’t there, of course. There aren’t any yellow birds, or any birds at all. But there is my ex–gym teacher, on the ground, searching for something. She says she’s looking for a dropped earring.
She looks the same, only grayer. She wears her hair like usual: cropped haircut, miniature pigtails. Her brow is furrowed. She doesn’t seem to recognize me. I get on all fours to join her, but the track is very big, and the earring is very lost. The girls’ track team descends the bleachers in tiny shorts and ponytails.
“It’s green,” she tells them. “It’s jade.”
They drop to the sand. It’s a good twenty minutes before one of the girls finds it and holds it up. It’s no bigger than a popcorn kernel.
I run six laps, a mile and a half. The high school girls run like beautiful ostriches past me. I am panting by lap number two.
“What’s the problem?” my ex–gym teacher says. I am hunched over, catching my breath, wishing I’d eaten something. “What’s the problem?” she says again, and I straighten. I jog away from her, without saying anything.
“Hey!” she calls after me. She reall
y was the worst. “Hey, I’m talking to you!”
But I keep running and don’t bother to look back.
On my way home I stop at the grocery store and buy a head of garlic and a can of tomatoes. Canned goods are forbidden, of course, but I am feeling defiant, and how is Mom going to find out, anyway?
Mom’s thrown out everything but a glass baking dish. She claims she’s shopping for safer cookware. I spread the tomatoes on the baking dish, with salt and oil, brown sugar, slices of garlic, and ancient dried oregano from a sticky plastic shaker.
While the tomatoes are roasting, I rinse the tomato can out and boil the water in the can itself. I cook the pasta in batches in the small can. I toast the almonds from the pantry and blend them with the garlic and the tomatoes and the herbs. Suddenly there is pasta and there is sauce and the semblance of a real meal. I set the table for two. I head upstairs and knock on his door and call “Dad?”
Nothing. I think, Please, Dad, please, please. And still nothing.
I’m turning around, unsurprised but still disappointed, when against all odds the study door opens. Against all odds he follows me down the stairs and takes a seat at the set table. Dad eats the pasta, and at first I am too stunned to join him. I can hardly believe my luck.
He asks me how class is, from my perspective. I tell him I think the students are enjoying it, and I am, too. I’m learning a lot. This news pleases him. He washes our two dishes and two forks, pats me on the shoulder, and returns upstairs.
What on earth just happened! I am ecstatic, until it occurs to me that Mom might find the tomato can in the trash. I dig the can out of the trash, put it in a plastic bag, take it to the park, and drop it into a bin there, like it’s a bag of dog shit. But even during this excursion, I’m jolly.
This is how calibrated my happiness has become to him: I’m happy all night.
February 11
I consider getting the mail. I decide against getting the mail.
I have all these postal service–related fears, like the fear of mailing letters on Saturday, because I’m worried they’ll be lost on the off day. But more relevantly: the fear of running into the mailman while I’m at the mailbox—catching the mailman at the exact time he’s filling the mailbox, and having to wait awkwardly.
The fears are unfounded, I know. My mailman in San Francisco was an upstanding guy. Once he tackled somebody who stole a woman’s sunglasses from off her face. The thief ran four blocks. The mailman leapt on him and was able to return the sunglasses, intact.
I watch some videos on the Internet that demonstrate how to cook without using pots and pans. For example by putting eggs into a fire.
Another video explains that you can use a basket with water in it, and heat up river rocks, and drop them in, the Native American way. I click on more videos: How to make a candle from an orange. How to open a can without a can opener (but you need a parking lot). A prank that is basically loosening the lid on a ketchup bottle so the ketchup spills all over your prankee’s food.
It was daytime when I began looking into this, and now, somehow, it’s not.
Here’s the thing: I cannot eat any more pizza.
What I’ve been learning from the Alzheimer’s forum is that consuming cruciferous vegetables can help with memory loss.
“Cauliflower, cabbage, cress, broccoli, and bok choy,” I read aloud to Mom.
“I know, Ruth,” she says.
“Eating three servings a day—two hundred grams or seven ounces—can have a significant impact in lowering the risk of dementia and cognitive decline. The research on fruits was not conclusive.”
“Cruciferous?”
“That’s what it says. Also, walnuts. Berries, all kinds, and folic acid.”
“That’s interesting,” Mom says, not looking up from her magazine.
“I don’t object to you cooking,” she says, finally. “But I’m taking a little break, myself.”
I order new pots and pans online: a stainless-steel collection.
February 14
I’m at Walgreen’s to pick up my dad’s prescription and laundry detergent when I realize it’s Valentine’s Day. It’s six o’clock. A man holding a briefcase stands in the aisle where the heart-shaped boxes of chocolate are, reading labels. Another man is in the card aisle. Another man twirls all the false roses one by one, indecisively.
Every time I buy detergent I think about the oceans filling with soap and all the fish dying. I know it’s not accurate, but isn’t it true that all the water we have here on Earth is all the water we are ever going to have?
For dinner I make lamb chops seasoned with rosemary. I read that it’s the “herb of remembrance,” so I put it on the lamb and I put it in the mashed potatoes. But it’s too much rosemary, and it’s really not good. What I will remember, I realize, is this failure.
February 16
The chemistry teacher is on week two of his vacation, so we’ll meet in last week’s classroom.
I suggest tennis before class with a foolproof provocation: “I bet I can whoop you,” I say.
“You bet wrong,” Dad says, on cue.
And of course he can—he used to do push-ups with me on his back—but this is not the point. The point is that the car is safe, in a spot where Levin won’t be looking. I’m desperate to win, though.
“Rematch,” I say, for the fourth or fifth time.
He beats me swiftly again and again.
As we’re approaching the car, in the parking lot, I can see a little rectangle of paper. A ticket. I whisk it off, hoping to do it fast enough that Dad won’t notice, but he does.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“Menu,” I say.
February 19
Today you asked where babies came from, and I told you that they came from the mall. Where in the mall? you asked, and I told you the Burlington Coat Factory. I told you they were very expensive. I told you they were more expensive than the most expensive coat. We made a game of trying to find the most expensive coat.
I remember the look my mother gave him. It was a look that said, Are you sure this is a good idea?
“She won’t remember this, Annie,” he said, and I thought: Remember this. You’ll show them.
February 20
Today Dad revives the topic of Joel. He knows that Joel isn’t my fiancé anymore, except when he doesn’t.
The last trip Joel and I took together was to the beach. He was obsessed with the weather. He’d looked up the UV rating. It was unusually high and bound to give us very bad sunburns so long as we kept not discussing what needed discussing: all that had gone stagnant between us.
We’d driven to Half Moon Bay, for a picnic. We were eating sandwiches, in silence. I like to think each of us was acting out of consideration for the other: knowing we lacked the satisfactory answers, choosing to spare each other the trouble by not asking the questions.
Over by the water, there was a single black braid about to be pulled in, of great interest to the gulls. What I can’t figure out is if this thing is specific to me: with some frequency, I’ll find artificial hair in public. Instead of coins, it’s hair that appears—mainly on sidewalks and streets—improbably often. Together with Joel, there on this beach, was this not uncommon dreadlock.
“Dread,” I said, and pointed.
In a week it was over. All our years—that was the end of them.
There was one last thing, I guess: a pelican staggering like a drunk, circling a baby who was laughing in the sand. You know in Japanese, Joel said, the word for beak, kuchibashi, means “mouth chopsticks.”
Those are more like “mouth ladles,” aren’t they? was what I said. Later, while he was asleep in the car and I was driving home, I couldn’t stop crying.
I’m over it, swear to God. But sometimes a thing washes up, out of nowhere—like an ancient candlestick from some wrecked ship.
Like that time I had appendicitis and, after the operation, was lying miserably in bed. Joel pulled out a deck of h
otel cards to pass the time. We played Go Fish. We played Hearts. He held my hand in one of his and with the other started to build a house from the cards. He laid the foundation on my stomach, and I tried my best not to breathe. I tried to hold very still, so I wouldn’t be the one to bring it down.
“When you know you’ve found the one,” my father is saying now, “you know you’ve found the one.” About Joel, whom he’s forgotten broke my stupid heart.
“But listen, Dad,” I have to say.
We met in college. I was standing outside the classroom building, waiting for my next class. I was eating a sandwich, turning slowly like a stand fan, trying to find the wind so it could blow the hair from my face and away from the sandwich. It was peanut butter and jelly and there was the risk of my hair getting caught in the jelly.
“Are you lost?” Joel had asked, justifiably. He invited me to a party that night. I said I’d think about it. In the end, I went only because I flipped this dime: heads meant go and tails meant stay. It had landed heads, so I went, but not before drinking a jelly jar of whiskey in my dorm room. That dime misled me.
The next time I saw Joel after the breakup, it was by accident—a couple of months later. It was Sunday, and we were both at the market on Market. We both had in our hands clear bags of carrots. I was seeing a mechanic named Franklin, who had a weakness for carrot cake and a two-year-old son named Davy. This was week number two of Franklin: we’d last a month.
There was a single tomato in a baggy in Joel’s other hand.
“For a salad,” he said.
And because we had nothing else to say to each other, I said, of all things, “I’ve heard some dogs enjoy the odd carrot.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, and then—to fill the silence—he said, “Someone told me cats can’t eat onions. They die if they do.”
“You’re Ruth,” said a woman. “Pleased to meet you.”
Joel introduced her as Kristin.
I said something that was supposed to be normal but came out weird: “A pleasure,” maybe, or, “Pleasure’s all mine.”