by Liana Liu
“Lora,” says Jon. “You promised you’d let me handle things.”
“Except you’re not handling things, you’re avoiding them!” I say. Then instantly wish I hadn’t. Jon has been so helpful, so supportive, and even now he is looking at me with sympathy, not annoyance. With understanding.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know. It’s a frustrating situation.”
“What if we went to the police?” I say.
He shakes his head. “When I . . . When they . . .” He clears his throat and tries again. “After I was attacked, the police arrested the two suspects I identified in a lineup. But then the charges were dropped out of nowhere. The company we’d been investigating made it happen through their contacts and influence. Everyone knew it, but there was nothing we could do.”
“That’s awful,” I say. “But this is a different situation.”
“The main problem is the same. We don’t have solid evidence, something they can’t ignore or hush up. Don’t underestimate Keep Corp’s power.”
“Well, what if my mom got a new memory key?” I say.
“She can’t. Her body rejected her key,” he says.
“I did some research and rejection is extremely rare. Maybe they lied about it or misdiagnosed her case. A new key might help her remember what happened.”
“But how would we get it implanted? Not at Keep Corp.”
“Why not? She probably still has friends there,” I say.
“Friends who think she’s dead,” he says.
“Excuse me,” says my mother.
We look at her, startled.
“Would you mind not talking about me as if I weren’t here?” she says, and now there is nothing faraway in her eyes. Her gaze is sharp and so is her voice, and it’s a familiar sharpness. I realize it’s her I’m recognizing; she seems suddenly like her old self.
“Sorry,” Jon and I say, sheepishly, together.
“It’s all right. My memory has its weaknesses, but my brain still functions. I’m still capable of making my own decisions,” she says.
“So would you consider getting a new key?” I ask.
“I’d need more information before deciding, of course, but at this point, my natural memory has developed to the extent where I’m not certain the benefits of a new key would offset the risks involved.”
“Oh. Okay. Then would you leave Middleton? Go abroad?”
“Yes. If necessary.”
“Oh. Okay.” I stare down at my forgotten food.
“It’s not that I want to leave—you understand, don’t you, Lora?”
“Sure.” I pick up my spoon and start eating again. I don’t stop until I’ve eaten it all, the cold soup and the burnt sandwich, the crumbling black crusts.
Jon Harmon yawns. He yawns with his whole body: shoulders curling as his head falls backward. The sound is loud and long. He apologizes, smiling sleepily. “I should go,” he says. “But, Lora, you should stay longer if you’d like. Darren or I can drive you home later. Just give us a call.”
I glance cautiously at my mom. “Do you mind? I have something to show you.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say gratefully. Then I’m embarrassed for sounding so grateful, as if I had expected her to say no.
My mother carefully uncovers the couch, collecting her papers in some particular but inexplicable order, then we sit next to each other in the square-shaped living room to look at the photo album I brought from home. I place the book in her lap. Slowly, she lifts back the cover.
And there she is with my father, arms linked in front of the bedecked tree. There’s little me dressed as an elf. There’s the three of us standing in the snow. I wait for my mother to comment on the garish sweaters or my crooked pigtails, but she says nothing. She scrutinizes every picture, and turns the page.
There’s Aunt Austin cutting into a chocolate cake. There’s me with my mouth smeared with chocolate frosting. There’s the two sisters looking at each other and laughing. And there are my parents, leaning sleepily against each other on the sofa.
Still she says nothing. She scrutinizes every picture, and turns the page.
It takes a long time for my mother to get through the album. When she comes to the end, I shift around in my seat so that I can see her face. I am not sure what to expect: maybe sadness or contentment or nostalgia. Maybe tears. But when I see her face there is nothing at all. Her face is blank. I panic.
“Mom? Don’t you remember any of it?”
She looks at me, notices me looking at her, and her expression immediately transforms into an expression. But still it’s not sadness or contentment or nostalgia or frustration.
It’s apology.
“I think I do,” she says. “A little.”
“What little?”
“My sister, have you talked to her? Have you told her?”
“Not yet. She’s out of town, but I can call her for you,” I say.
“No, why don’t you give me her number and I’ll call.”
“Okay.” I smile. I try.
My mother closes the photo album. “Thank you, Lora. This was a good idea. I’m sure I’ll remember more as I look through it again.”
“We have lots of albums. I’ll bring them tomorrow,” I say.
“No need to bring them all at once. One at a time is enough.”
“Right. Of course.”
“And will your father also come tomorrow?” Her voice is soft.
“I’ll ask him. I’m sure he’ll want to.” My voice is softer.
She nods. “It’s late, Lora. I’ll call Jon to drive you home now.”
“It’s okay. I have my bike, I’ll bike home.”
“But it isn’t safe. Not at this hour.” She lays her hand on my arm.
And suddenly I’m annoyed. I have to restrain myself from yanking free from her touch. I have to restrain myself in order to say, in a reasonably calm tone: “I bike at night all the time. I’ve been doing it for years.”
My mother lets go of my arm. She stands and starts straightening the couch cushions, plucking linty flecks from the fabric upholstery. I watch her, surprised. She never used to fuss like this.
“Then you’d better leave now,” she says, “before it gets any later. Just call me when you get there, so I know you made it safely.” She does not look up from her tidying.
The sky is empty of stars and moon, so the night is dark. Extremely dark.
I regret not asking for a ride home. And I regret arguing with her. I wanted my mother back so she could be my mother—listening to my worries, counseling me on my complaints, wrapping me with scarves in cold weather, insisting I don’t bike home too late at night—so why did I resist when she tried?
How I regret arguing with her. And how I regret not asking for a ride home. Because it’s dark, it’s late, and there is the issue of the silver sedan.
The silver sedan. As I turn onto our block, I look for it and it’s not there. But what is there is equally alarming: there’s a gleaming black SUV parked across from our house. It’s alarming because the car is too startlingly large and too shiningly new in this family neighborhood of dented minivans. It’s alarming because the windows are tinted dark, silhouetting the two figures in the front.
I know it could mean nothing. I’m sure it must mean something.
I speed up the driveway and hurry to the door. My hand shakes as I work the key into the lock; my fingers tremble as I turn the key till the lock clunks open. I glance backward. There is movement within the black car. Quickly, I go inside, close the door, bolt the door, chain the door, exhale, and exhale.
Then I call my mother to tell her I made it home safely.
“Good. Thank you for calling,” she says.
“Mom, I’m sorry about before,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” She sounds genuinely puzzled. I imagine her at the other end of the line with her brow cri
nkled. Her eyes far away.
“Never mind,” I say. Overhead the ceiling creaks and groans, then there is the thud of feet stomping down stairs. I tell my mom I have to go.
My father comes barreling down the hallway as I hang up the phone. He is yelling. Yelling about my memory key and my lies and how Wendy told him everything. It’s no surprise.
What is a surprise is how my own anger rises to meet his.
“You’re such a hypocrite!” I shout. “Are you really going to scream at me for keeping secrets? How can you when you won’t tell me what happened to Mom! I know you know the truth. I know it. So tell me, what did you do to her?”
Somewhere amidst all my fury, I am stunned. I have never spoken to my father in this way.
Perhaps he is also stunned. His mouth is still open, but no more comes out.
“I went to Keep Corp today. A med-tech replaced my key. See?” I flip my hair to show him the bandage at the base of my head. Then I lower my voice. “I shouldn’t have lied to you, but I had my reasons. Now tell me what happened the night before the accident. You owe me that.” I pause to find my breath. “You owe me.”
He closes his mouth and, suddenly, he looks old. His hair is thinning. His skin is deeply creased around his eyes. He’s thinner and shorter than I remember. When I saw my mother for the first time at Grand Gardens, it was a shock how much she had aged. But because I see my father every day, I hadn’t noticed the wear on his face, the narrowing of his body. I notice it now.
“Please, Dad,” I say. “Please talk to me.”
Finally, he answers: “We’d better sit down.”
We go into the den. I tuck myself into the corner of the couch. My father remains standing. It is a moment before he begins his story. But once he begins, he speaks effortlessly, as if giving a speech diligently prepared for a long-awaited occasion. Perhaps because that’s exactly what this is.
“It began a few weeks before the accident,” he says. He tells me he noticed that my mother was acting oddly. She was working even longer hours than usual and seemed constantly distracted. He’d hear her on the phone, and when he asked who it was, she’d change the subject.
“Jeanette had always been a private person, like you, Lora. But in this case I was certain there was something more going on.”
I nod, guessing that this was when my mother had discovered the problem with the new memory keys. I wonder why she didn’t tell my father what she found; he was her husband, after all. She should have gone to him for advice.
Yet I’m not wholly surprised she didn’t. Dad is right about Mom liking her privacy. And I suppose he’s right I can be that same way. It must have been hard for him to be stuck between the closemouthed two of us.
“To this day, I’m utterly ashamed of what I did next.” Dad says that in his frustration, he eavesdropped on one of her telephone calls. He heard her talking to a man, begging him to meet her. The man said it was too risky. She said she needed to see him. Eventually, he agreed.
For a few days, my father did nothing. He did not know what to do. He wished he could forget. But he could not forget. So he confronted her, asked about all those late nights. She said she had been working. He asked about all those furtive phone conversations. She said they were about work. He told her if she couldn’t tell him the truth, he wanted a divorce.
“That night, she never came up to bed. The next morning, the police called about the accident,” he says, gazing at the floor. It feels as if he’s forgotten I’m here.
“If only I hadn’t lost my temper. Why wasn’t I able to control my temper? We could have worked it out. I would have forgiven her. I should have told her these things. If only she had gotten a good night’s sleep, if only she hadn’t been so upset . . .
“The accident. It’s . . . it was entirely my fault.”
“No, Dad, it wasn’t. It really wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry, Lora. I’m so, so sorry.”
My body moves without my consent, jerking across the room. Before I understand what I’m doing, I’ve taken the photograph out of my bag and brought it over to my father. “And what about this?” I say, shoving it toward him.
Startled, he takes the picture from me, the picture of him smiling with the two strangers. He stares at it for a minute. “Well, there I am. But I don’t know these other people.”
“If you don’t know them, why are you sitting together?”
“I think this was at a Keep Corp fund-raiser. I must have met them there, but I don’t remember who they are. You know how it is at these functions. Meaningless small talk. I always hated going to those things. But Jeanette insisted. Why?”
“Where were you last night? I know you weren’t at a faculty meeting.”
“I was at a faculty meeting,” he says slowly. “But afterward I went for a drink with a colleague. A woman. A date. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you.”
“You should have told me.”
“Yes, I should have.”
“Mom wasn’t having an affair,” I say, and as soon as I say it I’m sure it’s true. But I don’t blame my father for his suspicions because they’re not so different from my own fears about sexy journalists in unfamiliar cars.
“How do you know?” Dad looks at me in wonder.
“There’s something else,” I say.
“What? Lora, what is it?”
I tell him.
26.
MY FATHER DRIVES INTO THE PARKING LOT, INTO THE FIRST available space, and shuts off the car engine. Then he just sits there, hands resting on the steering wheel. I want to say something. I want to apologize again. For lying about my memory key. For making assumptions about his guilt. I want to tell him it’ll all be all right.
Instead I ask: “Shall we?”
We shall. We get out of the car and walk up to the department store, through sliding doors, down air-conditioned aisles. When I called Jon to tell him about the black SUV loitering outside our house last night—though it was gone by morning—he said we should take precautions today and gave me very specific instructions. When I repeated these very specific instructions to my father, he seemed bewildered.
But he’s seemed bewildered ever since I told him about her.
“Dad, hold on!” I call him back to the Personal Care aisle.
“What’s that?” he asks.
I show him the bar of lavender soap wrapped up pretty in its floral paper. “I want to get this for Mom. It’s the soap she used to use.”
My father says nothing, but when we go through the checkout counter he hands the cashier a twenty-dollar bill before I can take out my wallet. I protest. He says nothing. I let him pay.
Per Jon’s instructions, we leave the store at the opposite end from where we entered, through an exit that opens to street level. I glance back to see if anyone comes out after us. No one does. We briskly walk the couple of blocks to Darren’s sister’s apartment.
But when we arrive at the building, I stop on the front step.
“Is this it? Should we go inside?” asks Dad.
“Yeah. But. Can I ask you something?”
“Yes, Lora?”
“What about that woman? The one you’re dating?”
For a moment he looks indignant, as if he’s been wrongly accused of some crime. Then he shakes his head. “We’re not dating, it was only a couple dates. It’s nothing,” he says, and he sounds so dismissive that I would feel bad for the woman if I weren’t so entirely relieved.
We go inside. I knock the correct rhythm on the door—one long tap, two short—and Jon Harmon lets us in. He takes my father’s hand and shakes it with enthusiasm. “Ken, it’s been a long time, too long a time.”
“Too long, yes.” Dad smiles nervously.
“Hello?” says a voice from across the room.
And there she is. My mother. Coming slowly toward us. In my silky peach dress. Her silky peach dress. I glance at my father. Her husband. He is staring at his wife with light in his eyes. She stares back at h
im. Her expression is more solemn.
I realize I’m holding my breath, waiting for something to happen, for someone to come forward, for someone to speak. No one comes forward, no one speaks. Nothing happens. I am not sure what I expected from this moment, but I did not expect this. I exhale. “Hi, Mom,” I say.
She looks at me. “Lora,” she says.
Then she looks again at my father. “Ken,” she says.
“Jeanette,” he says. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. And how are you?”
“Good. I’m good.”
“I’m glad,” she says.
“Yes,” he says. “You’re looking well.”
“Thank you. As are you,” she says.
They are both lying. Neither one of them looks well. She is pinched and pale. He is flushed and sweating. Their smiles are painfully polite. I step forward, but a hand hooks my elbow and draws me back.
“Come, Lora, let’s give them a chance to get reacquainted,” whispers Jon.
I shake my head, but when he pulls me away I don’t resist.
In the narrow kitchen, I watch as Jon Harmon moves nimbly from cabinet to refrigerator to sink to stove. His polo shirt today is a soft pink. I wonder how many polo shirts he owns, and in what colors.
“Lora, how are you doing?” Jon brings over a teapot and two mugs, and two wedges of lemon cake on two plates with two forks, and sits next to me at the counter.
“I’m okay.”
“Sure? This is a lot to handle. It’s okay if you’re not okay.”
“I’m okay. It’s just . . . Do you really think that black SUV was at our house to look for my mom?” I ask.
“I think it’s very likely.”
“But she can’t remember anything! Why should they care if she left the retirement home? She’s no threat to them anymore.”
“I don’t know. But someone wanted her gone, and I doubt that’s changed. The sooner we get her out of Middleton, the better.”
“It’s not fair,” I say, and this is the most trite observation, the most tired truth; it’s the obnoxious refrain of some little kid’s temper tantrum; yet I say it and I mean it.
“I know. The thing to remember is that your mother is alive and well. She can make a new life for herself, and you’ll be able to visit her.”