Goodbye, Vitamin

by Rachel Khong

  There is a pause.

  “Well, that’s not very nice, either,” Bonnie says.

  After putting the kids to bed, we dismantle a pomegranate from the tree in the yard, careful not to crush the seeds into the carpet. Bonnie shows me, on her phone, photos of what she’s been working on lately: full-length cutouts of herself, stretched to different heights, and Photoshopped to different widths, like paper dolls. There are big and small and fat and skinny Bonnies. She’s tiny in comparison to the tallest cutout—it’s maybe nine feet tall, towering over her.

  “Help me with my statement,” she says.

  “Bonnie Nazaryan is interested in possibility”—I clear my throat, use my art-critic voice—“in the infinity of lives unlived.”

  “Bonnie Nazaryan,” she says, “is terrified of amounting to nothing, terrified of having lived on Earth without leaving a trace—trying to announce to anyone who will listen—her best friend mostly—I exist! Pathetic. Here I am!”

  We browse Ralph and Lou’s mother’s movie collection. Her ex-husband, Lou Sr., is in the entertainment industry, and very famous.

  I see Eight O’Clock Coffee and hold it up.

  “What’s that?”

  “My dad’s in this,” I say.

  I’ve never seen it—it’s impossible to find a copy. I’ve only ever read the script. What I don’t remember is that the story begins with suicide, the same way I always forget that all Jimmy Stewart wants, for a good part of It’s a Wonderful Life, is to kill himself.

  The premise, in my father’s movie, is kind of nutty. It takes place in this woman’s afterlife, which looks a lot like an old California ghost town: dirt roads, horse-drawn carriages, saloons with swinging doors. The population, all the dead people, are literally hollow. They have no bones or internal organs. On windy days they have to wear heavy coats or else risk being blown away.

  In the movie, the main character—an actress who later played a murder victim on an episode of Law & Order—is meeting an old flame of hers. My father is sitting behind them, at the bar, eating an olive from a toothpick. His hair is wavy and he’s maybe my age. He looks just like Linus.

  “Wow,” Bonnie says. “He was smoking hot.”

  On the way home I stop in Alhambra, at the Chinese grocery store, to look for jellyfish, which they have. I buy six packets of frozen jellyfish and six packets of dried.

  I linger to watch an employee gently pressing avocados, adhering “RIPE” stickers to the ripe ones.

  April 17

  Tonight I prepare a jellyfish feast.

  • Jellyfish salad, Thai-style

  • Jellyfish soup

  • Jellyfish fritters

  • Jellyfish pickles

  Jellyfish spaghetti, with jellyfish noodles and jellyfish sauce. The eaters are not exactly enthusiastic, but they are, at least, polite.

  April 18

  Theo is at the door. Through the peephole I can see he is holding a container of yogurt.

  “Your dad home?” he asks me.

  “He isn’t,” I say. He’s at the gym with John.

  Theo opens the yogurt lid. Inside there is what looks like ruffles of a party dress, bright and green and metallic, all bunched up at the bottom of the container.

  “It’s Actinodiscus,” he says. “It’s a good beginner coral.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “Thank my brother,” Theo says. “He grows corals.”

  “Grows corals?”

  “He grows and sells corals. This one is really special. It’s priced per polyp.”

  We put the coral into the tank, where it looks very glamorous.

  He takes a book off the shelf and starts flipping through it.

  “Hey,” I say, “do you want to come to LA?” I’m supposed to see Reggie perform some art.

  He says it sounds like fun. He gets in my car and we go. He switches the stations on every commercial but pauses on KOST 103.5. He calls in to try to win tickets to an exclusive acoustic Alanis Morissette show.

  “It’s ringing!” he says.

  They’re looking for the fifth caller, but he is the second, and we feel a very specific, bittersweet disappointment.

  This is Reggie’s performance: he’s painted gold, like a Buddha. He peels the wrappers off little banana candies, licks each candy, sticks it to himself. This takes an hour.

  Once he’s covered in candies and there are no candies remaining in the bag, he begins to dance like a god, and sings sweetly.

  Reggie can’t really say hi, and we can’t really stay for his whole performance, but he looks appreciative. I think.

  Outside the gallery, in the gutter, there’s a ball of black hair.

  “I think it’s called a coleta,” Theo says. “I just read about this somewhere. It’s a clip-on bun. Matadors wear them.”

  I’m always seeing hair everywhere, I tell Theo, who is unimpressed—doesn’t think this is special.

  “You could start paying attention to socks, for example,” Theo says. “Socks are everywhere. Especially baby socks. Seriously, look.” And he points to something baby blue on the sidewalk—a little blue sock for a baby.

  April 20

  Today is Dad’s birthday, so class is at home. Mom’s skipped book club; she’s here, too.

  I’ve baked a cake. I’ve bought Dad another goldfish—a fancier one. At the pet store, I picked one with pretty but modest, unshowy fins. In the tank he (or she?) gulps and gulps and gulps.

  Theo comes over with a different coral and a birthday card for my dad, and a book for me. He’s loaning me a book with the same size spine as the one he borrowed, to patch up the hole in the shelf.

  All the male students are flirting with my mom, asking for embarrassing stories about Dad. Joan, I notice, only smiles politely and avoids her. Joan’s in some kind of animated conversation with the class’s two other women, who don’t appear to see that Joan’s heart’s not really in it.

  I can only fit thirty candles on the cake—a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and some walnuts on it, for good measure. Thirty lit candles turn out to be rip-roaring enough.

  “Happy thirtieth to me,” Dad says, and blows out the candles, which are terrifyingly ablaze. He eats a slice and then cuts another.

  “I have no memory of eating that last slice of cake,” he says, “except that it was delicious.”

  April 22

  Joel calls while I am at the dollar store considering packages of athletic socks, and I let it ring. But who am I kidding? I can only pretend to be interested in the socks for so long. I choose black ones and chuck them into the shopping cart. I check to see if Joel has left a message, and he has.

  “Ruth,” it says. “I just met a pygmy goat. His name was Noah. Anyway”—Joel pauses—“I don’t know why I called. I guess I thought you’d like that. I forgot that their pupils are kind of square.”

  At home, trying the socks on, I see that they have ON THE GO! printed, in pink, on the toes.

  And though I try really, really hard not to, later, alone, I re-listen to Joel’s message about the goat.

  Their pupils are kind of square!

  I guess I thought you’d like that.

  April 25

  “Could this be true?” I’ve called Grooms, and I’m asking. “Every day, we lose one hundred thousand brain cells.” I’ve read this in the Los Angeles Times.

  “Yes,” she says. “True.”

  April 27

  In 1860 and 1861, before the telegram, the Pony Express was the fastest means of communication between the East Coast and West. There used to be celebrity mailmen! Of course the actual Pony Express went over the Sierra Nevadas, and not to Southern California. But wouldn’t it be educational to have class on horseback? we suggest to Dad. He agrees happily.

  On horseback, Dad attempts to shout educational details about the Pony Express. It’s difficult to hear him over the clickety-clack.

  There’s a couple, also on horseback, in front of
us, sauntering. The horse in front of us is speckled. Some shit falls out of its butt and we avoid it. The man turns his head. My heart falls straight down. It’s Levin.

  “Howard,” Levin says, then looks at me, then Theo, then Joan, and the rest of the students. “What’s this?” he says.

  “We’re learning about the Pony Express,” Dad explains, sheepishly. “A little unconventionally,” he says, with a laugh.

  “What do you mean?” Levin says, evenly.

  “It’s so nice to run into you!” I interject, panicking.

  “My California history class,” my father says.

  “What California history class?” Levin says. My dad looks at Levin, then back at me. And suddenly he understands.

  “How do we stop these things?” Dad asks, gruffly. His horse jerks forward.

  His horse stands and sways. Dad looks all around him, for the exit.

  Theo dismounts. “Move your hands up his neck and lean forward,” he says. “Swing your right leg around, and slide down.” All of us watch as Theo reaches up to help.

  “Now slide down,” he says. “I’ll spot you.”

  Theo puts both hands on Dad’s waist. Dad slides off clumsily. He almost falls backward, but Theo catches him.

  “Howard,” Theo says, holding our horses’ reins. “We can explain.”

  “Let’s go, Ruth,” he says, avoiding everyone’s penitent gaze, in the tone he used to use when I was in high school, having done something that displeased him.

  He says nothing during the car ride home, and nothing afterward once we’re at home. He only makes a pot of coffee, and takes the entire pot into his office.

  April 28

  We hadn’t planned for this.

  Everyone calls; everyone writes.

  We meant well!

  We love you!

  And on and on.

  Dad has shut himself in his office. He won’t answer Theo’s phone calls.

  I slide him tortillas. He writes LEAVE ME ALONE on one in ballpoint pen and pushes it back out the door.

  May 1

  Still nothing from Dad. Theo comes by, and we camp together outside the door.

  “I’m sorry, Howard,” Theo shouts at the door. “We shouldn’t have lied.”

  We stay camped outside the office for hours. We play a few games of chess.

  Finally a note emerges from underneath the door: ABOUT TO PEE IN JAR. PLEASE GO AWAY.

  We consider staying. We leave.

  May 2

  I haven’t seen a single bird enjoying the food mix, but somehow, the seed supply in the feeder is diminishing. All this time, I’ve been wondering how it was possible, but now I’m watching: a squirrel, indulging. And still Dad won’t speak to me.

  May 3

  Today, we notice a tall stack of frames Dad’s put outside his office door. His teaching awards.

  Mom collects them, puts them away. “We’ll put them back up when he feels better,” she says.

  May 4

  Dad’s emerged from the office but is still not a fan of me. He speaks only with my mother, and in a dramatic whisper, so I can’t hear.

  To me, he doesn’t say more than a few words—the occasional question. “Where’s the coffee?” That sort of thing.

  May 7

  The fish are getting fatter. The fish, in fact, are obese.

  Today I see why: I watch Dad feed the fish, sit down, and, minutes later, rise to feed them again.

  May 11

  I remember reading that there was a time Auguste was eating cauliflower and pork, and Alzheimer asked her what she was eating, and she said, “Spinach.”

  That’s something like what happened today, which was that today I made pork chops and potatoes, and Dad said, “I don’t want this,” and I said, “This is exactly what you asked for,” because it was exactly what he had asked for, I’d even gone out to the store to get the pork and the potatoes specifically because he’d asked for them, and then I had looked up a recipe for pork chops and the best way to do them. I’d put them in a brine and cooked them with apples and balsamic vinegar.

  “I don’t want tomatoes,” he said.

  “There aren’t any tomatoes in there,” I said. I said it very calmly.

  What happened next was that he shouted at me. He shouted that he wasn’t a child and he knew what tomatoes were and those were tomatoes, and that he was my father, and what was my problem, that I couldn’t show him some respect. My first instinct was to put the steak knife away because I had never seen him like this, and because I was frightened. I put it in my back pocket. He saw what I had done with the knife, seemed insulted that I thought he might be dangerous, and took his plate and threw it against the wall. It shattered, on cue.

  I gathered the rest of the steak knives from the silverware drawer, hurried out of the house, and threw the knives away, still shaking. I took everything out to the curb. When I got back inside, Dad had retreated upstairs.

  I swept up the plate pieces. The sweeping was calming and after I felt calm enough I made a plate for myself. I ate the potatoes with a soup spoon and a pork chop with one hand, as if it were a slice of pizza, in front of the television. Oprah was on but I kept the volume off, reading the closed captioning from time to time but mostly not. The show was about the secrets to long life and I just wasn’t in the mood. Everyone had his or her own secrets. For a 105-year-old secretary and housekeeper, it was not having sex. There was a man who swore by cold showers. I picked loose strands from the couch. I wondered: If I sat there all day, picking, would the couch unravel into nothing?

  Suddenly Linus, like a mind reader, calls.

  “I’m coming home,” Linus says, over the telephone. The spring semester is over; he’s working on his dissertation.

  “I bought a ticket,” he says.

  I want to ask why he’s buying tickets, if something had happened between him and Rita and she didn’t finagle him a free one, but I don’t.

  May 13

  At the airport, a woman holds her breasts with her hand as she races from the ticket counter to her departure gate. Someone tries to sell me flowers. I think about buying some mums for Linus, but then I spot my tall brother, a head or two above everyone else, green duffel slung over a shoulder.

  And because a sandwich is the only thing anybody ever wants after a plane ride, even a short trip like Linus’s, we don’t drive straight home. We stop in downtown LA to get sandwiches at our favorite deli. We sit in a booth across from each other, with Linus’s duffel at our feet because he’s paranoid about leaving luggage in the car.

  A man sitting a booth to our right might be John Travolta. He is with another man who is short, bald, and fat, but in a compact, somewhat attractive way. They are both eating salads.

  Linus and I stare at the laminated menu even though we already know what we’re going to order. I want a Reuben with everything and the bread buttered on both sides. I want coleslaw. First we want to share a dish of pickled herring. Our order is so obvious to us, we almost forget to tell our waitress.

  “How is he?” Linus says.

  “Well,” I say. “He’s not so thrilled with me.”

  Earlier in the day he had forgotten the word for pencil. He called a mechanical pencil a needle. Then we passed some evergreens and he called the needles pens.

  The fat man is saying to John Travolta that his wife has been intractable, ever since their dog lingered by her breast.

  “She heard that schnauzers can smell cancer,” the fat man says.

  “I wouldn’t put it past them,” remarks John Travolta. He signals to the waitress and asks for a slice of cheesecake.

  “You, too?” he asks the fat man.

  “I’m going to weigh three hundred pounds,” the fat man chuckles, “but okay.”

  I tell Linus about yesterday. Our father took too many fish oil capsules by mistake. First he threw up, then he had a nosebleed, and we used the entirety of a roll of paper towels to get all the vomit and blood. He was embarrassed. He
made me promise not to tell my mother. I promised I wouldn’t, and after dinner, when she asked if anything exciting had happened, I didn’t let on that anything had.

  Now he is at the door, awaiting our arrival.

  “Hi, Dad,” Linus says, sounding wary.

  “Son,” Dad says. He takes Linus’s bag with one hand and embraces him with his free arm, first trying to reach over Linus’s shoulder, ultimately wrapping the arm around Linus’s waist, on account of the height difference. We go inside and drink coffee Dad has brewed, like regular people with nothing the matter. At first, anyway.

  When Dad asks how Rita is, Linus says he thinks she’s good.

  “I mean, I think,” he adds.

  “Things ‘weren’t really working’ for her,” Linus says, without intonation.

  “I’m sorry,” our father says, really looking it. He touches Linus on the shoulder, and Linus flinches a little.

  “It’s fine, Dad.” Linus downs his coffee and picks up the duffel. “It’s whatever.”

  Later, when Mom gets home, I notice the two of them on the couch, talking quietly. The TV is on but they’re not watching. Mom is saying something, a hand on his arm. Linus’s head is hanging, listening. Because Dad is bellowing something at me from upstairs, I almost miss it.

  May 15

  We’ve done it before, obviously, but now we’re unsure how to inhabit this house together—Dad, Linus, and me. In the living room, Dad asks Linus about his studies and receives terse responses. In the kitchen, Linus occasionally says, “I can help you with that,” when he notices Dad reaching for something in a cabinet or bending over to get something.

  “It’s a late birthday present.” Linus hands Dad a small wrapped package.

  It’s a crossword puzzle book.

  “Keep me sharp?” Dad laughs.

  Linus bristles. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it,” he says, hurt. “I don’t care.”

  “Hang on,” I say, running upstairs to get my pencil with the orange eraser. I hand it to Dad. “For the crosswords,” I say.

  May 18

  Joan is on the phone, and she’s saying, “Would it be okay if I spoke to your father?” To me!