by Rachel Khong
I won’t call Theo. Because here’s what I figure.
One of us could say: That was a mistake.
One of us could say: I like you.
One of us could say: I was drunk. Let’s please forget it ever happened.
The other person could agree or disagree. The other person could waffle.
We could say these things, but what would be the point?
If it’s presumptuous of me to think, at some future point, things won’t work out, then, yes, I am being presumptuous.
Better presumptuous, I think, than a fucking sucker.
Because I’m through doing things that don’t count. I’m through with things that don’t add up or amount. I’m just through.
What Dad wrote:
Today I made you pancakes the shape of Mickey Mouse and you said NO, it was a butterfly. It had a fat body and small wings.
Today you asked me what does “seduce” mean? S-e-d-u-c-e? What does it mean?
Today you bit off the corners of your sandwich and announced you were taking the edge off.
Today you pronounced “worse” to rhyme with “horse.”
Today I didn’t catch you before you swallowed your chewing gum. I looked away for a second and then it was gone. I’m sorry.
Today was your birthday, and when it was time for you to blow out the candles, you wouldn’t. Time was running out and you were anxious about it.
I don’t know what to wish for, you told me sadly, after the candles had burned down to nothing.
That’s okay, I told you. We put new ones in, and you successfully blew out this new set.
Today you mixed pretend Bloody Marys and used Scrabble tile holders for make-believe celery. It reminded me: I don’t not have a drinking problem.
Today you put sand in the microwave. You said you were making glass.
Today you called your grandmother “small mom.”
Today we walked past a café’s colorful chalkboard and you asked me, “Why is that sun wearing a bra on his face?”
“Those are sunglasses,” I told you.
Today we read aloud together and you pronounced “union” like “onion.” A more perfect onion. You read “apply” like it was about apples. You are so happy to be learning to read.
Today I thought of what I would give to have time just stop here. You’re out of my league. I’m waiting for the day you’re going to leave me.
I’d give:
All the money I’ve got. My entire set of teeth. That special silver dollar your grandfather gave me and said would be worth $300,000 by the time you were in college. Any of it, all of it, just to keep you here.
July 11
Today Dad says—about the last sizes of lumber he needs—could you write it all down, so I won’t forget?
Write it all down, is what he says.
Okay, Dad, I say, and do:
This morning Mom was making a sandwich and you said, Swiss cheese holes are called eyes. Your cheese watches you.
Today I cooked salmon and you said it was esculent.
Today you’re wearing your old glasses, with the old prescription.
Today you tried that old trick you used to do. You would uncap beer with a single sheet of paper. You attempted it today with a bottle of ginger ale but couldn’t manage. Today I wished that you had taught me.
Today you said, “I’m shitting bubbles. What could it mean?”
I’m no expert, so I called to make the appointment with Dr. Lung. We were all set to go, until I remembered that I’d dropped the remainder of the bar of soap into the toilet, by accident.
“You’ll be okay, Dad,” I told you, “and here’s why.”
Today you sliced into an onion that looked like Batman.
Today you said the sunshine was a stick of butter. “You could cut through that with a knife,” you said.
Tonight I peeled peaches and we sat beneath the mostly done pergola, and in the moonlight your face was tired and lined like the underside of a cabbage leaf and I wondered what I looked like to you.
Today you wandered to the park, and I found you sitting on the sloping part of the hill, in the clover blossoms, eating from a big bag of chicharrónes and drinking a Coke and watching kids on the diamond throw a ball around. The vendor had wheeled his cart right up beside you, keeping an eye out, like a stealthy babysitter. He gave me a small nod when I approached, handed me a Coke to match yours.
“How long has he been here?” I asked—meaning you, how long had you been here—but the vendor only shrugged, as if to say, not to worry, it had been no trouble at all.
When I sat down beside you, we clinked our Cokes together; you handed me a chicharrón. We watched the kids. You mentioned that there were some things on your mind, but lately you were having trouble getting to them—accessing them. You had the feeling that all the thoughts were in a box covered in tape, and the trouble was there was too much tape, and the trouble was you didn’t have the proper tools to access them—no scissors and no knife—and it was a lot of trouble—every day it was new trouble—trying to find the end of the tape.
You told me that in your twenties you had not believed in God, and for a little while you believed in sit-ups and eating right and meditation, and for a time after that you believed in me and Linus and my mother, and here you were, now, unable to open a box that had been taped shut, a box belonging to you.
Here you were. Here we both were.
You were saying all this, and even as you were saying it, I was trying to figure out how I’d respond when you asked, “Remind me. What kind of ball is that?”
I waited for you to say you were joking, and when you didn’t, I said, “That’s a baseball, Dad.”
“Baseball,” you repeated.
“Baseball gloves,” I said. “Baseball bat, baseball diamond.”
“Gloves, bat, diamond,” you repeated, like this was a game, like this was rock, paper, scissors.
August
Today you washed your shoelaces.
Today you spoon-fed the neighbor’s cat tuna from a can.
You’ve been eating the bananas too early, the ones that are spotless and still tinged green. I’ve taken to hiding a few from each bunch in the seat of the piano bench, but as of just now you’ve located this secret banana stash.
“Annie!” you marveled to Mom. “There’s fruit inside this seat!”
Today I cooked clams, which I’d never done before. I read you’re supposed to put them in water and throw in a handful of cornmeal, to encourage them to spit out their dirt, was what I read. The clams spat and spat, coughing, like they were afflicted with tiny clam colds.
Today you disappeared again, and scared the shit out of us.
This morning, when I called into your study, ready to hand you a mug of coffee, you didn’t answer. I knocked, and when I opened the door you weren’t there. Linus and I walked once around the block, then twice. I called Mom and told her not to panic, but she did. She found a substitute for herself, the substitute. We drove around and around and around the neighborhood, yelling HOWARD and DAD and not seeing you anywhere. We did this for three hours, so scared.
We would get home and call the police, we thought. But when we got home, there you were. We didn’t know whether to be angry or to be relieved. Your nails had been painted silver. Your nails caught the light and they sparkled.
Today Mom brought home a heavy melon. You could smell how sweet it was from the outside, which was cracked. We each ate a quarter of a melon.
It was my first in years, because Joel couldn’t stand cantaloupe.
Cantaloupe—it’s delicious. I’d forgotten.
Today you told me that the Santa Ana winds are sometimes called the “devil winds.” When they blow, the police department reports increases in domestic abuse and homicides. On TV, we see fires tearing over hills, fueled by dried-out vegetation.
At home, a confused wren throws its body, over and over, against the kitchen window. He sits on the sill, casts a puzz
led glance, and tries again and again.
You blamed the wind. Linus and I drew straws to see which of us would deal with the body. It was like a toy, it was so small.
This morning Bonnie called to tell me about a fight she got into with Vince, and she said, “I blame the moon and the margaritas.” The moon was full and planetary forces were in opposition, bringing confrontation to relationships, she said.
When the earthquake came it was 5.2 on the Richter scale. But you seemed not to even notice, like we were on a flight and simply experiencing regular turbulence. The epicenter was Brea. There were aftershocks for a week, and then nothing.
Whether the moon or the margaritas, Vince broke up with Bonnie last week, for inarticulate reasons, and she was quietly mourning. This was what, she said, she had wanted all along—but still.
On a Sunday, I surprised her at her apartment. Bonnie was in her glasses and pajamas. She had lopped her own hair into the tiniest pixie cut and looked striking. She yawned opening the door.
“Let’s go,” I said.
She got in the car and I drove. Outside it was hot, one hundred degrees at least, maybe more. We refilled our bottles with water from gas station bathrooms. In one of the bathrooms, a woman was hand-feeding her rabbit, through the grating on a cat carrier. At one of the gas stations, Bonnie filled her water bottle with blue slushie.
We stopped in Hadley for date shakes and, in Palm Springs, we checked into a motel that was supposedly a former mission. We watched the Home Shopping Network and thought about spending all our money on tennis bracelets because it was true, they looked very pretty in the studio lighting.
When I was little I thought that tennis bracelets were called tennis bracelets because the average wrist was the circumference of a tennis ball. Even while believing it, I had the feeling that it wasn’t true. The saleswoman on the television now explained that in 1987, the tennis player Chris Evert was wearing a diamond bracelet, and in the middle of the match the bracelet broke, and they stopped the game so all of the diamonds could be recovered.
When the sun came up in the morning we saw our sunburned arms more clearly: my left and Bonnie’s right. When I pressed her arm it turned white. I pressed “HI” and watched it fade. She pressed a sad face.
“What’s a hairdresser’s favorite herb?” I said.
“I don’t know. What?”
“Cilantro.”
“What?”
“It’s in how you say it. Salon-tro.”
“Ha ha,” she said finally, and smiled for me.
We had written swear words on the dirty car and on the drive back the sun shone in a lovely way through the clear-lettered swears.
Today you and I sanded the patio. We each had hand sanders going, to cover ground faster. We’re wearing goggles and earplugs and when Mom shouted at us about dinner we didn’t hear it or see her. We sanded it down and then we wiped off the sawdust with tack cloth and our hands were still sticky when we ate dinner. They stuck to our forks. We shook our hands and they stuck.
Today was so hot that Bonnie, Linus, and I found the old kiddie pool, rinsed it out with the hose, and sat together in just our swim bottoms in the cold, shallow water until it warmed, at which point we’d top ourselves off with more cold water from the hose. Dad was out with Theo, and Bonnie had brought contraband vodka, so we mixed Kool-Aid with the vodka in a big thermos. Our mission was to drink it all, destroy the evidence.
After that we climbed the ladder to the top of Dad’s half-painted patio cover, and lay on our backs to dry, on the partially pink slats. Bonnie curled up next to Linus, who was propped drowsily on an elbow, clutching, in his free hand, the bulb of his Kool-Aid–filled wineglass.
It had reached the point in the day when Linus started talking about teleportation. It was what he always wound up talking about after a certain number of drinks. I always wound up talking about whales. An amazing thing I can’t really get over is that their shit isn’t solid, but liquid. Also it’s nutritious.
“Another weird thing is that pigs don’t get milked,” I said. “We don’t have pig milk.”
“Because piglets drink it all?” Bonnie said.
“Because piglets drink it all.”
“There’s something beautiful about that,” Linus said, “beautiful and perfect.”
We toasted to piglets and didn’t notice Theo approach.
“What’s happening up there?” he yelled, startling Linus, who nearly fell off.
“Who are you?” Bonnie called, at first. Then, deciding she didn’t care, she said, “Drink the Kool-Aid!”
Of course I said nothing, like an idiot. My fear was a bratwurst: sobering.
“How was the Home Depot?” asked Linus. You had wanted to spend a gift card.
“He bought one of those pots that boils water.”
“Isn’t that what all pots do?”
“The kind that plugs in, you know. To the wall.”
“Hey, the blonde the other day,” Bonnie said, all of a sudden. “Who’s she? They looked like chums, she and your dad.”
When had she seen Joan, I wondered?
“Don’t you mean,” I said, “that she looked like chum, the chopped fish and fish oils dumped overboard to attract fish?”
“I give it six years, swear to God,” Linus said. “Teleportation. I’m willing to bet on this.”
“I better go,” Theo said.
“Don’t leave,” Bonnie said.
“I better go,” he said again, and he went.
Today Theo came to pick you up to watch the game and grab a bite and while you were fetching your things we stood at the door making very, very small talk.
You were taking your sweet time. There was an aftershock just then. It helped—it was something to talk about.
Today we planted pumpkins and squash in the garden. We ate too many figs from the tree and it made us giddy and our hearts beat fast, like we’d drunk too much coffee. All summer we’ve been trying to get a handle on the cheatgrass in the yard. Some things you try to fight and others you have to let defeat you, I guess is the thing. I gave up on birdseed. I filled the feeder with plums and let the scrub jays have at it.
I’ve been having the same dream every night this week—a dream serialized. It picks up, every night, where it left off the night before. It must have something to do with the heat.
In the dream, we are all together—you, Mom, Linus, me—living in a big house. We have pets. We have fifty-eight dogs, all types and breeds. You feed them and you care for them and you are yourself again; you can remember everything.
The first night, the first dream, a Labrador runs away, and you are so upset. In the dream we go looking for her; we post signs around the neighborhood. But she’s nowhere to be found; she’s gone for good. And we notice that you have forgotten the past year’s events. After that it’s a dachshund, and then a poodle. And the more dogs that run away, the more you forget.
Finally, we realize what’s been happening. You’ve been using the dogs as mnemonic devices to recall whole years. You were connecting eyes and ears to specific feelings or events of a given twelve months; a baseball game to a shade of pupil, a fishing trip to a puppy’s nail. After ten dogs run away you can’t remember anything from the past ten years. And then it’s fifteen. And then you forget Linus. And then you forget me.
Mom can know without counting when there are thirty dogs left. She can recognize you at age thirty, when you first met: flirting, earnest, trying so hard to impress her.
Last night I dreamt that there were six dogs left. In the dream, you sat on the floor running your hands over a retriever the color of pale hay.
Today you said, Did you know that we share fifty percent of our DNA with bananas?
Men share fifty-one, Mom said, deadpan, not looking up.
We looked at each other. A dick joke!
Today you, Linus, and I finished painting the patio cover pink to match the house.
“That wasn’t so bad, right?” I asked yo
u.
“Well, no,” you said, surveying your work. “But it isn’t so good.”
And Linus, covered in pink, started to laugh. Then you, then me—all of us, pink and laughing, like lunatics.
September
Today I cooked you spaghetti and the sauce tasted plain and sour. Sugar and fat are bad for you. I didn’t want to include anything bad.
But today you said, Think of all the mice the scientists are studying: all those mice with Alzheimer’s. What do they forget? They forget many things, but they never forget how much they like peanut butter.
Okay, I said. Okay, okay, okay, and added more butter and a little sugar to the sauce, which made it much better.
Today we drove to the beach. We sat in the sand and ate pretzels and drank lemonade from a stand. A dog and his owner were standing nearby. The owner was holding a tube of new-looking tennis balls. He pitched one toward the surf, and said, very enthusiastically, “Thousand, go get it, boy!” and when the dog stayed put he looked truly crestfallen. “Aw, Thousand,” he said, “you fucking suck-ass bitch.”
On the way home, we stopped at the coin-operated car wash. We had a plan. I put the quarters in—two dollars for five minutes—and you scrubbed with the scrub brush while I held the hose and sprayed it down. When we vacuumed the seats we found a hundred-dollar bill, and on the way home we debated how to spend it.
Today Theo came to pick you up—the two of you were getting coffees—and mumbled hello, like a teenage boy there to pick up his date. Hello, I tried to say coolly and responsibly, like a parent.
Today you asked about my job at the hospital. I’d always thought you were uninterested—disappointed, even, at what I’d chosen. An ultrasound measures the speed of sound as it passes through different substances in the body, I told you.
I told you about what I did for a living: how I scanned people’s bodies, and took pictures of their soft tissues. How I liked breaking the news to couples who were having twins, seeing the shock and then excitement—or the horror.
There was a day, in that month before I left, I watched Grooms give an echocardiogram, and she showed me this new equipment that could isolate a heart. Any organ, you could isolate. With this program you could see whatever organ float as though in space.