by Rachel Khong
April 2
I ask Dad how he and Mom met. Of course I’ve heard it before; I just want to hear it again. She’d appeared the first day of class, and he’d been drawn to her immediately. They’d gone to a student art opening together. They’d stolen a bottle of wine from the gallery—concealed in a purse—and escaped to the park to drink it.
This is when it occurs to me that it isn’t the story of my mother he’s telling—that actually, it’s the story of how he met someone else. He’s telling me about Joan.
“And didn’t you go to a Mexican restaurant after that?” I try to prompt.
“It was Ethiopian.” He frowns.
“Didn’t you eat tortilla chips?” I’m persisting.
“That can’t be right,” he says, with this expression, as though he’s hurt that I don’t trust his details.
My mother had also been his student, but that was different. They were both graduate students. After the semester was over, he asked her to have a drink. They went to a happy hour at a Mexican restaurant, where the deal was cheap drinks and all-you-can-eat tortilla chips. They shared a pitcher of sangria, and when a song with maracas came on my mother said she loved salsa. My father panicked a little, unsure if now was the appropriate time to admit he couldn’t dance. When he raised a chip to his mouth, my mother produced a homemade jar of it, triumphantly, from her purse. My father ate, relieved.
My parents had their wedding in Palm Springs, and my uncle John, ordained for the day, married them.
“May you love each other till the cows come home,” John said. “May all your quarrels be water off a duck’s back.”
He called me the other day—John did—in a panic.
“I locked my keys in the car,” he said. “I’m losing it, Ruth.”
“Did you call triple A?”
“It’s unlocked now.”
“You’re fine.”
“I’m a goner.”
I was about to ask him what he knew about the divorce, when I changed my mind, unsure of how I’d put it—unready, also, to find out. Instead I asked him about my mom’s parents, who died when she was six months pregnant with me. She had been their only child. Sometimes the loss still seemed so powerful I hesitated to ask her anything, and she rarely volunteered.
“Polite Arizonans,” he said, “who cut a mean rug. They danced all night at the wedding. They were wacky. It’s probably where you get it from.”
We’re not really related though, I don’t say.
“She was too young,” John said.
There was a pause so long I thought we’d been disconnected.
“Hello?” I said.
“Your mom, though,” John said. “She doesn’t take any shit. It was all about you, after that.”
April 3
Dad leaves the door to the study open, which I take to mean I am welcome to enter. Inside there’s an aquarium: a big tank with water in it, and a water pump going, and little blue rocks at the bottom, plastic seaweeds waving gently.
“No fish, Dad?” I say.
“I knew it was missing something,” he says.
We go to the pet store. We watch the fish for a while. There are depressed-looking sea snails, sucking algae slowly. It occurs to me that they might be taking their time, enjoying the algae. Maybe they aren’t depressed after all. Maybe it’s the opposite, and the one who’s depressed is me.
There is a crowded tank of transparent guppies. There is a lonely angelfish. We watch an employee shake fish flakes into the water, and I like the sound the tube of food makes. But Dad doesn’t seem interested, particularly, in any of the fish or snails.
We stop by the reptile tanks and watch an iguana chewing a collard green. The turtles are being fed their crickets and there is a cricket that escapes. “Escape” maybe isn’t the word. It jumps neatly into the iguana tank.
“Shit,” the employee says, as the iguana eats the wayward cricket. “He’s an herbivore. He’s supposed to be an herbivore!”
This guy, the pet store employee whose job it is to feed the turtles their crickets, has to be about my age. He’s been telling us that iguanas shouldn’t eat iceberg lettuce because iceberg lettuce has no nutritional value, and an issue is that iguanas can get addicted to it, refusing to eat anything else.
My father hasn’t picked any fish or turtles or snails. He seems displeased with the store’s selection. I don’t want to waste the trip, so I pick up a bag of birdseed, a specialty mix with sunflower and thistle seeds, and millet. In the section with the seeds, an employee named Bill wants to sell me a “wildlife block,” a fifteen-pound cube of seeds.
“Attractive to birds, yes,” Bill says. “But also a variety of critters!”
“I’m not sure,” I say. It seems excessive.
At the very last minute Dad picks out six miniature scuba divers: diverse divers, plastic men of every hair and skin type. At home, into the tank they go.
April 4
We’ve been seeing more of John, who has been stopping by once or twice a week now. He’s been dating a woman he met on the Internet. Her name is Lisa, and she lives in Rancho Cucamonga. She works at the animal shelter. When he visits, I give him a shot of cabbage juice.
Today, while Dad is at the gym with his brother, I let myself into his office again. I open his desk drawers and rifle through them, expecting to find I don’t know what: some proof or clue or sign.
I know it’s pointless. I know it’s stupid and impossible. I know significance, more often than not, is invisible, imbued on things like saltshakers Joel and I stole from the overpriced French restaurant, or the toy from the vending machine, or some sad thing we found on the street and saved.
In the drawers there are packets of instant oatmeal. There are business cards and restaurant matchbooks and a little glass panda bear and a stress ball shaped like a brain. For all I know the oatmeal might be a gift from Joan or the physics professor, and the panda and brain had been gifts from Joan or the physics professor, and the matchbooks are from restaurants of some significance to them. But because there is no way of knowing, and because the scuba divers in the fish tank are watching me judgmentally, I stop looking.
April 5
There’s a page on his desk I read guiltily:
Today, when I told you to behave, you roared angrily: I’M BEING HAVE.
Today, after I took my socks off, you touched my ankles—the impressions that had been left.
Today you put my hand on the impression left by your sock. My hand could circle your whole miniature ankle.
Today, after you lost a tooth, you cried that you looked like a pumpkin.
Today I had to stop by the post office, and you looked around and said, aghast, “This is errands?”
Today, while I was changing your brother’s diaper, and putting baby powder on him, you burst into tears and begged me not to put too much salt on him.
Today you were so readily impressed by me.
April 6
Class today is at Señor Amigo’s. We’re eating chips and fajitas. I situate myself between Dad and Joan.
“We’re here,” he says, “to learn about the Chinese in California.”
He then proceeds to repeat last week’s lesson, unbeknownst to himself.
We look around at one another, eyebrows raised.
My heart drops. He was doing well. We don’t mention it.
Layla, our teenage waitress, stops by our section to say hello.
“This is my class,” Dad says proudly, gesturing at us.
“This is my daughter,” Dad introduces me.
“Ruth, right?” she says, smiling pleasantly, then brings us a few more bowls of guacamole.
April 7
I’ve been packing lunches for Mom and writing jokes on the napkins, like this is going to cheer us both up.
“Why do dinosaurs make bad omelets?” I write on one side of the napkin.
On the other side: “Because their eggs stink!”
I draw a winking face on her
orange.
Mom’s latest thing is making 3-D paper collages. Home from work, in the time she used to spend cooking dinner, she cuts out pictures with an X-Acto knife and glues them together, carefully tweezing layer upon layer.
April 8
I’m standing in front of a Burger King, waiting for Bonnie, when it starts to rain. Bonnie waves from across the wide street and begins to make her way over, jellyfish-like under her clear umbrella. There’s one other person outside the restaurant with me. Her eyeshadow is metallic and reminds me of an Andes mint. Her boots are the soft kind and not meant to be getting wet. She’s holding seventy-five percent of a Whopper in one hand and a cell phone in the other, and into it she’s arguing about whether or not to keep dating her boyfriend, who sounds like a real deadbeat.
Her burger’s getting wet and I whisper to Bonnie that I’m worried about it. Also the shoes. We collect her underneath the umbrella with us. She’s still talking into the phone but raises the Whopper in appreciation. We huddle beneath that small, clear umbrella, watching the people inside the Burger King and the drops collecting through Bonnie’s clear umbrella. She’s telling her friend on the other end of the line that last night he’d told her, “STAY, BITCH.”
Afterward we ask her if she’s going to stay, and she shrugs. “I guess so,” she says.
Later, while we’re eating burritos at the cantina, Bonnie says, about my parents, “You’re not allowed to think about this.”
“I have to,” I say.
“You don’t know anything about it,” she says, “on top of which, it’s none of your business.”
We each dip a chip in silence.
“In other news,” Bonnie says, “things are lighting up in my career sector.”
“Is this a horoscope thing?” I say.
“And I checked yours,” she says. “The stars say: it’s not a good time to tackle deep issues; it’s a time for pleasant interactions.”
April 9
I’m at the store looking for groovy macaroni—macaroni with grooves in it. My mom used to always make this casserole with green bell peppers and ground beef and macaroni. She called it groovy macaroni. Whenever I try to make it, it isn’t right. It’s always too something.
“Ruth?” says a voice behind me.
My high school friend Deb is standing in the aisle with me, in front of the boxed juices. The last time we saw each other was ten years ago, this time of year. She was the first person I ever met who cared so deeply about her weight she wouldn’t eat anything. I met her long before it had occurred to me that somebody might choose to eat nothing. I would later in life meet plenty of people who were the same. She was just memorable to me because she was my first.
Deb wouldn’t use ChapStick because she was scared it would make her fat. She wouldn’t lick envelopes because of the calories. She wouldn’t chew gum. She boasted to me that at communion, her trick was to crumble the body of Christ and drop the crumbs onto the floor until the wafer was completely gone, or almost. The little plastic cup of wine was enough to make her tipsy.
Now we’re at the store together. She is wearing a sundress and a straw hat and she’s gained a lot of weight. She has a little girl with her, and a baby in the other arm. The girl looks about six and is also chubby.
Was pretending I didn’t recognize her the correct thing to do? I turn that over in my mind for a second.
She says hello first.
“You look great,” I say. And she does. The thinness had always been awkward on her. She shrugs.
“How’s William?” I try. William was her high school boyfriend, her baby daddy. What I remember about William was that he had tattoos and wore thin pants better than everybody else; he understood how they looked on him better than other high schoolers did. He seemed mature. Later I learned he’d been held back twice, and maybe that was why he knew better about the pants.
“We split last year.” She shrugs again.
“Bella, this is Ruth,” Deb says. “Say hi to Ruth.”
“Rude,” Bella says.
“Ruth,” Deb says. “Say Ruth.”
“Rude,” Bella says again. I deserve it. She’s doing a little dance.
“That means she needs to pee,” Deb says. “Could you hold her?”
She hands the baby to me without waiting for my answer and the baby scrunches her face like she’s going to break into a loud wail very soon and I jiggle her to keep the wail at bay and rhythmically read her the labels on bottles: Ocean Spray Cran-Apple, Sunsweet Plum Smart, Welch’s 100% Grape Juice, Welch’s 100% Grape Juice with Calcium.
There’s a blooming warmth in the diaper region. You’re taking a massive shit right now, aren’t you, I whisper to this baby, still jiggling her, until her mother—after what seems like an hour—rematerializes to take her back.
I’m feeling a scratch in my throat so I buy a tube of Airborne and a bottle of water. In the supermarket parking lot I unscrew the water and Airborne. But the tablet is too big to fit into the mouth of the bottle. So I hold it in my mouth—this is painful—and let it fizzle until it’s small enough to fit through.
April 10
This morning I get a Facebook request from Deb. “Nice to run into an old friend ☺.”
And now she’s forwarding me e-mails at an impressive clip.
One says: “If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back taillights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy. The driver won’t see you, but everybody else will. This has saved lives.”
“How to lose 2000 Calories!!!!” and then a video of a chicken dancing.
Also “THE MOST DANGEROUS CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WORLD.” I click on this.
“Why, you ask??? Well, from the moment you decide to make it until you sit down to eat is about 5 minutes! So, now chocolate cake is no more than five minutes away at any time!” And then there’s a list of ingredients you’re supposed to mix in a microwave-proof mug, and nuke.
April 11
In an ancient National Geographic I find in the bathroom magazine stack, I read that jellyfish synthesize a special protein that helps with dementia. When elderly people are given jellyfish to eat twice a week, they are less likely to develop dementia or other age-related diseases. Another fact: most jellyfish have one opening that serves as both mouth and anus. (Except the box jellyfish: 64 anuses!)
Now I’m calling all the stores. None carry jellyfish.
April 12
I peel myself a hard-boiled egg, but in the unsatisfying way: the shell comes off in small shards but also with large chunks of white attached. I drink coffee. I don’t feel like washing the coffeepot. I walk to the living room, where my father is spread out on the length of the couch. Dad moves his feet, one after another, so I can take a seat next to him.
Now and then I’m tempted to shake him.
What were you thinking? I want to scream sometimes, on behalf of my mother. Or, What is wrong with you?
One of Dad’s socks falls off in the process of moving his feet for me. He shrugs and, using his foot, pulls the other one off, too.
I make us THE MOST DANGEROUS CHOCOLATE CAKE IN THE WORLD. Two dangerous chocolate cakes, each containing three tablespoons of chocolate chips. They look like beautiful soufflés fresh out of the microwave. I e-mail Deb a picture.
April 13
There are four more classes for this semester, and then it will be time for final papers. Theo and I are out of ideas for relevant venues. We’re out of ideas for irrelevant ones, too. How about class at Disneyland—we’ll talk about the role of the entertainment industry in California?—Theo suggests, and Dad complies, happily.
At Disneyland, we meet Mickey and Minnie Mouse. We eat Popsicles. We stand in a lot of lines, and Dad uses them as opportunities to lecture. We get our photo taken on Splash Mountain, looking like the strangest family. On the spinning teacups, Dad is totally gleeful.
“This was a good idea,” I whisper to Theo, during the fireworks over the Magic Castle
.
“It was Joan’s,” Theo says quietly back.
Later, at home, a urinal cake falls out of Dad’s pocket.
“Why do you have this, Dad?”
“I don’t know,” he says, troubled.
April 14
Going out to get the mail today, I run into the mailman at the mailbox. But it turns out not to be so bad! It’s overcast outside, though the actual rain hasn’t started, and the mailman is wearing blue shorts and a poncho. He has a white bandage wound around his calf. There is the one normal calf, and the other one, which looks like a snake that had swallowed a soft-ball.
“That dogs hate mailmen,” he tells me, “is true.”
“Is it bad?” I ask.
“It was a German shepherd.” He shrugs. “It could’ve been worse.”
“What’s worse than a German shepherd?”
He hands the mail to me. There’s a bright Band-Aid on his thumb.
“Was that a dog, too?”
“That was an orange,” he says. “That was when I hurt my thumb opening an orange.”
April 15
Today there are four goldfish in bags on our countertop. They look unhappy.
“A troubling,” Dad tells me. “That’s what you call a group of goldfish.”
April 16
Bonnie is babysitting in Thousand Oaks and I’m here to help. The children belong to Bonnie’s boss at the art gallery, and the babysitting is expected of her; she isn’t paid overtime. They are seven and five, and their names are Ralph and Lou Jr.
Their mother is on a date, at the ice-skating rink with a banker. While they are skating, the four of us sit at the elegant dining-room table, eating reheated chicken tetrazzini.
“Chickens are the cousins of the dinosaurs,” Ralph informs us.
“Not any dinosaur,” Lou Jr. corrects, “the Tyrannosaurus Rex!”
“If dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I’d sic one on Lou,” Ralph says.
“That’s not very nice,” Bonnie says.
“Not this Lou,” Ralph says. “I just mean my dad.”