Things to Make and Break

by May-Lan Tan

  “I first time Hong Kong,” she says.

  “Do you think you’ll like living here?”

  “I’m already very like it.”

  “Will you be homesick?”

  She nods. My fork tinks the plate and the air-conditioner makes a chugging sound.

  “You like my country?” Davy asks.

  “It’s my favorite vacation place. I love the big swimming pools, and the ice that looks like Christmas lights.”

  She opens her eyes very wide. “Apa, si?”

  “The ice dessert that’s different colors?”

  “Es campur. Nice for children. My daughter,” she says, “she very like es campur.”

  “You have a daughter? How old is she?”

  She thinks for a moment. “Eight.”

  “I’m nine!”

  “Yah. I’m already ask your mother. What her job?”

  “She’s an art director at a place called Ogilvy and Mather.”

  Davy’s face turns serious. “I like art,” she says quietly.

  “What’s your daughter’s name?”

  “Mega.” She points to the window. “Cloud.”

  “That’s pretty.”

  “I have photo,” she says. “You want?”

  I nod, bouncing my knees together under the table. She jumps up and goes off to get it. I eat the pears off the salad. Davy comes back carrying a carved wooden frame that must have taken up half her suitcase. She stands it on the table. The picture’s stuck at the very back, so you have to peep in like you’re looking into the window of a house.

  A girl and a boy are holding hands and smiling from ear to ear. They have white teeth and white shirts and smart red neckties. The girl’s hair is pulled back with a sparkly headband. She has enormous eyes, and dimples drilled into her cheeks. The boy is taller, with bony knees and glued-down church hair.

  I point. “Who’s that?”

  “Rafik. So naughty boy.” She chuckles and starts clearing the table.

  “Mega’s so pretty,” I say.

  “She very good in sport and play guitar.”

  “I wish you’d brought her with you. I’ve always wanted a sister.”

  Davy tips her head to the side. She takes my dishes to the kitchen and returns with some mango halves on a plate. Instead of bringing me a teaspoon, she’s cut criss-cross designs and turned the skins inside out to make porcupines. She sets them in front of me and disappears into the hall. I pick up a slab and start to slurp off the cubes. The juice runs down my chin. I hear the squeak of the faucet, and the tub filling. She comes back and stands next to me, looking at the photo.

  “So does Mega live with her dad?”

  “Mm-mm.” She twirls the lazy susan until the box of Kleenex is in front of me.

  “Who does she live with?”

  Davy points to a woman’s dress and some frizzy hair at the side of the photo. “Farah,” she says. She goes and sits in my mother’s chair and stares at the tablecloth.

  I pull out a handful of tissues and blot my face. “Is Farah your sister?”

  She looks up. “Rafik’s mommy. She work here Hong Kong seven year. I’m—” she makes a motion like she’s patting two invisible children who are getting taller.

  “Oh, uh-huh.”

  “Now me.” She nods.

  “Your turn? For seven years? You won’t see Mega in all that time?”

  “My contract two year. I go Indonesia, come back, two year again.”

  “But then—why don’t you take turns doing two years each? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

  “Not good to children, always change-change. Better long time.”

  “And when seven years is up, do you have to switch places again?”

  “We stay home, open for business.” She leans back, looking pleased.

  “Is Farah your best friend?”

  She smiles and shrugs. She looks at the front door as if she’s expecting someone to come in.

  “You must miss them. Do you have Skype?”

  “Sky?”

  “You know, talking on the computer?”

  “Ah, Sky-pee. I’m not have this one.”

  “You can use ours. My mom won’t care.”

  “Farah not have computer.”

  “Oh, right.” Now I feel kind of bad for suggesting it. “I’m sorry.”

  “OK,” she says. “Air mail OK.” She gets up and hurries off to check the bathwater. I put down the last mango skin. The sticky juice has reached my elbows. I dab them with the wadded Kleenex.

  “Yah!” Davy calls.

  I go down the hall to the bathroom, where she’s stirring the water with her hand. I take off my clothes and get in. She squirts shower gel onto a body puff and sets it on the side of the tub, scoops up my clothes and goes away. I switch on the shower radio and listen to a show called Non-stop Korean Love Ballad. I practice holding my breath underwater. I finally manage to pick off my scab. The skin underneath is pink satin. As I’m soaping my arm with the puff, Davy comes back carrying my folded pajamas and underpants. Her hair’s wet and combed, and she’s changed into tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt with ice-cream-colored elephants playing in a band.

  “Do you want to watch cartoons with me later?” I ask her.

  “I’m”—she sets the things on top of the dirty clothes basket and waves her arms around—“my suitcase.”

  “Oh, OK.”

  She leaves. I dip the puff in the bathwater and soap my other arm.

  In the middle of the night, I stumble to my mother’s room. There’s no air-conditioner sound. I feel her bedspread and it’s all smooth. I turn on the lamp. She’s not here. I crawl across her bed to the window. The windows of the building opposite are dark. Normally you can look right into the bedrooms and living rooms and see people walking around and TVs flickering. I stand on the bed and lean against the glass, looking down into the street below. Greenish lights are on in the furniture shops, and the perfect living rooms and bedrooms look bright and empty. The world seems big and spooky, and like there’s no one in it. I stand there for a while, waiting for a car to drive by or someone to come strolling along.

  I wake up with the sun in my eyes. I turn away from the window and she’s here, asleep in her pink dress. Her eyeballs are moving beneath the lids and she smells like smoke, and something bready. Normally she’s naked, with headphones on and the cord wrapped around her neck, smelling of cucumber face cream. Her hand is up by her cheek and there’s an ink stamp on the back of it. Her face looks strange and white in the sunshine. On her neck by her ear, the blueness of her pulse is a flashing light.

  101

  Northbound traffic’s backed up all the way to San Rafael from Novato Narrows, where three lanes pinch into two. I’ve heard they’re going to widen it next summer. The engine’s idling rough, but I don’t turn it off. I prop my chin on the steering wheel and squint into the boiling white sun, trying to picture your face.

  I wasn’t wearing my contacts that night in the pool. You were blurred at arm’s length, your edges sharpening as you drew near. When I try to pull the image into focus, it breaks into fragments—the coarse grains of the pores on your cheeks, the feathery crosshatches on your lower lip—and even if I hold my breath and close my eyes, I can’t make it whole again.

  They got married at the end of the summer, before God and five hundred Korean people in a Gothic church on Wilshire Boulevard. The air-conditioning broke down and my sister hadn’t slept; she was swaying as she muttered the words through her veil. For days we’d been trailing her and your brother in V formation. Sibling along, you called it, as we skirted banquet table archipelagos and glided across marbled atria and through jungly mezzanines. Once or twice we overtook them by mistake, and elderly relatives wished us a lifetime together, you and me. They thumped our backs and tried to press sharp-cornered envelopes into our palms.

  In your kitten-gray tux, you were the best man, your silken hair wound into a ballerina knot. I was maid of honor in short satin gloves,
with my crop fluffed, the cerise tea dress forcing good posture. Standing either side of the bride and groom in the sun-splashed chancel, we were taller, darker, and leaner, like shadows. Our eyes locked as the minister declared them man and wife. When they kissed, we turned away.

  The morning after the wedding, I woke up on a cot in my parents’ hotel room. They’d taken off, trailing behind them a handful of empty pill casings and my mother’s scent of leather and piano music. I switched on the TV and went back to sleep. In the afternoon I ate some airplane almonds. They left a burnt, wooden taste in my mouth. There was a knock and I opened the door. You had five o’clock shadow and faded eyes. You lay on the narrow bed with your shoes on, flicking channels while I packed my bag. By then, our siblings were in the Napa Valley, spitting wine into buckets and drifting in hot-air balloons.

  In the wavy heat of the parking lot, our clothes clung to our bodies. I saw hard twists of muscle in your back. We climbed into your brother’s van. They’d forgotten their aviators on the dash. We slipped them on and faced each other, the silver lenses creating a mirror tunnel.

  “We look better,” you said, turning the key.

  “Better how?”

  “Older. Ice-colder.”

  You headed across Downtown, driving the same way as your brother, one hand at six o’clock, making corrections. I found my sister’s lipstick in the change holder, the sunlight-through-eyelids red she’s worn ever since she dropped out of flight school to study architecture. As I tried it on I heard you scrape the gears, and we ground to a halt. The lipstick smushed against my teeth. Car horns blared.

  “Gah,” you said, restarting the engine. “I’ve barely ever driven a stick before.”

  “I can see that.” I tried to scratch and lick the lipstick off my teeth. We were moving, but people were still leaning on their horns.

  “I’ve been bombing around all day, trying to get used to the gears,” you said. “I’m supposed to drive it back up to their house, with the presents.”

  “What’s it doing here? I thought they flew.” I turned and looked in the back. “Will everything fit?”

  “Yeah, easy. Most people gave money.” You swung across traffic into a restaurant parking lot and backed us into a space. “I need someone to follow me in my car, so I’ll have something to drive home in.” You killed the engine.

  “I’m flying back tomorrow.”

  “I can drop you off.”

  “College starts in two days.”

  You pulled up the handbrake. You unclipped your seat-belt and aimed your whole body at me.

  “Fine,” I said. “At least I know it’s an automatic.”

  We went inside and ordered club sandwiches. We took off our sunglasses and smiled at each other.

  When we’d almost finished loading the presents into the van, your mom came running out of the house and said we were supposed to open them first. My sister wanted us to take inventory in case the van got burgled.

  “Really?” you said. “Does the car insurance cover it?”

  “Of course not,” your mom said. “But whatever happens, she has to send out thank-you cards, right?”

  I laughed at this. You sighed and started pulling things out.

  We stacked the presents by the pool. The late afternoon sun formed hot stars on the water’s skin. You unwrapped the gifts, detaching the cards and handing them to me. I covered one arm of the sun-lounger with little loops of Scotch tape.

  “Weird, demented-looking statue,” you said.

  Exquisite sculpture, I jotted on the back of the envelope.

  Most of the stuff didn’t suit them. They’re not the sort of people who would want to make their own candles or ice cream, and I couldn’t picture them in matching sleep masks with unfunny sayings spelled in rhinestones. Stacked on top of the diving board were dozens of linen tablecloths brocaded with fish, flowers, or bats. Their dining table is glass-topped chromium steel. My sister cleans it with Windex four times a day.

  “They’ve doubled up on so much stuff,” I said. “Think they’ll keep it all?”

  “I don’t see them keeping five rice cookers in a closet and working their way through, do you? It’s too depressing.”

  “Right. They’ll probably keep the nicest one of each thing and give the rest away.”

  “They should give it to us,” you said. “Why don’t we elope and move into your sister’s old apartment with all of their unwanted stuff?”

  “We’ll have all their exes come and live with us too.”

  “Yeah,” you said. “Everything we have will be a slightly crappier version of what they have.”

  We laughed. We looked at our silhouettes lying on top of the water.

  “Guys, I’m blocked in,” your mom said. She was standing by the flipped-up garage door in a shiny blue Dodgers jacket. You tossed me your keys. I moved your car into the street and you moved your brother’s van.

  “Ciao,” she said, zipping away in her Saab.

  The sun was setting as we reversed the vehicles into the drive. We climbed out and slammed our doors. Our shadows reached across the tarmac.

  “We should’ve taken the money Aunt Sylvia tried to give us,” you said.

  “I know. It could have been our nest egg.”

  I brought my bag into the house. You and your brother had been competitive swimmers and your mom’s brown seventies living room is packed with trophies and medals. I took out my contacts and put them in saline. Without them, everything looks like a photograph taken with trembling hands. I crouched behind the sofa, tugging on a one-piece with cut-outs at the sides that I kept putting my legs through.

  I slid open the patio door, my eyes still adjusting. You were a dark shape rising in the water. I watched you slash the surface with fast, tidy strokes, turning your head to alternate sides to snatch bites of air. I sliced in, the crisp scent of chlorine stinging my nose and mouth. I dove deep and flipped over. You floated above me, fanning your arms, the presents forming a quivering skyline as I swam up toward you.

  Our heads popped through the surface.

  “Welcome to our gene pool,” you said, smoothing your hair.

  I saw the shape of your skull, the way your bones wear the light. “It’s a good pool,” I said.

  “Yeah. Legume-shaped.”

  Treading water, we gazed up at a large flat cloud of violet smog illuminated by city neon. The water was cool and soft, our breathing a little ragged. We turned and reached for each other, a fluid motion slowed by the water’s resistance. As I pulled you toward me, fitting the pieces of your body to mine, I had the feeling I was putting something back together. You kissed me with the green-apple taste of the pool on your tongue, kicking me as you pedaled to keep us afloat. I gripped your ribcage with my knees. Your skin was velveteen; your body thicker and denser than it appears. When I slid my hand into your shorts, you began to kick harder. You kneed me in the thigh and my teeth sank into your lip. Your blood tasted like the tip of a battery. You pushed me up against the ladder and folded me in half.

  Later, bundled in towels, we polished off a plate of cold ribs. Your mom came home and pranced around the living room. Dodgers won. She started giving us the play-by-play and you sidled to the kitchen to throw away the oily cling wrap. While she reenacted the ninth inning on the coffee table using candy from her purse, I glimpsed you outside, fishing my bathing suit out of the pool with a butterfly net. Later you handed me the soggy twist of fabric. I stuffed it in my bag. You made me a bed on the sofa and kissed me on the ear. You disappeared into the room where you’d grown up.

  When I woke up I tasted pool water. My stomach hurt from the chemicals. The patio door was open, the sun’s hard glitter strewn across the pool, and the presents were gone. I wondered if you’d left without me. One of the black machines beneath the TV had a time display, but the numbers were blinking so they couldn’t be trusted. The moisture from my bathing suit had spread to the contents of my bag. I pulled on clammy, translucent clothes and walked int
o the kitchen, shivering. On the table were some breakfast things and a plate facedown. The tumble dryer hummed, zippers and buttons clicking against the metal drum. I padded back to the living room and you were there, folding the blankets. I pulled my top away from my skin to make it less see-through.

  “Hi,” you said, flicking your eyes up to my face. “Hey. Sleep OK?”

  “What time is it?” I said.

  “We should really—”

  “Yeah.” I zipped my bag and slung it over my shoulder. We looked at each other.

  “I hope it’s not going to be like this,” I said.

  “No,” you said. “It’s not.”

  My flip-flops were by the patio door. I slid them on and shuffled to the car.

  We left the city on Route 101, blending with Highway 1 in Oxnard, splitting just after the Gaviota Tunnel and merging again in Pismo Beach. In San Luis Obispo we broke away with the 1. We made time, tarmac ticking by. I saw the contour of your jawbone reflected in your wing mirror. The sky was blue-jeans blue, clouds all smeared in one direction.

  Gas station coffee tasted like the cup. You tipped yours out and it splashed across my windshield, making a veil on the glass. I drifted in your wake, feeling the tug of your slipstream. I watched your cigarette hand in the wind, smoke threading your fingers. The blacktop sparkled, serpentine.

  The sunlight looked like powder as you shoved me back onto the hood of the car. My shirt was off, and the metal was so hot the paint felt sticky. I unbuttoned your jeans. You took my wrists with one hand and held them above my head, rubbing a fist back and forth across my nipples.

  “I don’t have anything with me,” you said, your hair closing around my face in a black sheet. I pressed my hands against the curve of your back. You moved my underwear to the side and pushed in.

  I followed you up the part of Highway 1 that traces the raw Pacific coastline along a cliff edge. We’d hit it at exactly the wrong time of day, sun in our eyes. My phone beeped. I picked up.

  “Hey you,” my sister said, sounding hyper and relaxed. “Where are you?”