How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?

by Doretta Lau

  The thought of fucking him is what stops me. I’m halfway up the aisle when I turn around. The guests start to murmur.

  “You,” I say to a waiter. “I saw you arrive on a motorbike. Take me away from this.”

  “I’m working,” he says.

  “Give me your keys then.”

  “Why should I?”

  The guests are rolling video and loving every second of this. I toss my bouquet to the ugliest girl in the crowd. Maybe her dreams will come true.

  “Candy, get over here,” Mom says. I ignore her.

  I go up to the waiter’s boss. “He’s giving me a ride home,” I say.

  She doesn’t tell me no. No one tells me no, except Mom.

  I take off my shoes and run to the bike. The waiter takes me to my house. He tells me his name is Jae, as if I care.

  We end up in my bedroom.

  “I used to masturbate to your tv show,” he says.

  I laugh. “Didn’t everyone?”

  “But I stopped.”

  “Why? Did your palms get hairy?” I take off my dress.

  “Can you put your dress back on?”

  “Don’t like what you see?” I inch closer to him.

  He steps away from me. “I started thinking that you might be my sister.”

  I pull my dress back on. The zipper gets stuck, but I’m mostly covered.

  “I’m adopted from Korea too,” he says.

  It’s clear we’re not going to fuck. I flop down on my bed.

  Jae sits down next to me, shoving a pillow between us. He turns on the tv. We watch a rerun of my show, The Adoptees and Me. I’m fourteen in the episode. A drugstore clerk catches my character shoplifting condoms and calls the police. My pretend parents are upset. Pretend me simpers and smirks and sobs and gets out of trouble.

  “Your tits are still real this episode.”

  “They were real for the entire run of the show.”

  He smiles, revealing crooked teeth.

  For some reason, I think we’re going to be friends. I let him fall asleep on my bed. I’m sure he won’t rape me. I don’t think that incest is his thing. I stay up, waiting for Mom. She must be really mad at me, because she doesn’t come home. I start worrying. I call my aa sponsor, Nikki, because even after a year of sobriety I find myself baffled as to how to handle this situation. After I monologue for ten minutes about how I know that one drink is too many, and that there isn’t a thing I can do about yesterday, but due to this setback with my mom I feel I’m on the verge of returning to my drinking career, Nikki tells me I need to express myself in my own words. “Stop parroting the language of recovery literature,” she tells me.

  “I’m at my best when I follow a script,” I say, because this is the truth. I learned how to be honest at aa meetings. At a young age I also learned that directors hate it when actors ad-lib.

  I hang up. I can’t have a drink and I don’t know what else to do, so I stand at the window trying to find the Little Dipper and the North Star, but it’s too smoggy to see anything clearly.

  The next morning there’s big news: my mother has gone and married the old man.

  For the first week after the wedding, I call Mom every hour I’m awake, but she never picks up. I doubt she still considers my taxes her problem. Or maybe she’s on her honeymoon and doesn’t have cell reception. I hope. I call my sponsor. We talk about my abandonment issues. I try not to slip into feelings of uselessness and self-pity. No matter what happens, I choose not to drink.

  My accountant tells me to sell the house. I refuse. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Until I was nine, we moved at least once a year. We lived in some really gross places. What if I move and Mom comes back and can’t find me?

  “Maybe our real parents can help you out,” Jae says when I tell him about my problems. Now that he’s found me, his possible sister, he’s determined to find his biological mom and dad.

  “Maybe my pretend parents can help me out,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “You should get a job,” he says. His tone is sitcom tough love.

  It’s been more than a year and a half since I’ve worked. I thought I deserved a break so I fired my agent before I went to rehab. Acting is kind of lonely, really. I started drinking because I was so sick of pretending to be other people. Now that I’m sober I just want to be myself, but I really don’t know who I am without Mom or my career.

  I start looking for work, but it seems I am not qualified to do anything except be a stripper.

  Jae intervenes. “Quit trying to solve your problems by taking off your clothes,” he says. It might be the best advice that anyone has ever given me. I listen. He gets me an interview with his boss, Jill.

  “I used to watch your tv show,” Jill says.

  “You remind me of my tv mom,” I say.

  “Why do you want this job?”

  “I like paying my taxes.”

  “When can you start?”

  “This week. But I can’t work on Monday nights.”

  The first job is a wake for a sixty-four-year-old man. His widow, Tiffany, is twenty-three. She’s got massive boobs and an even bigger fortune. All the bachelors who approach to offer their condolences look like predators stalking prey.

  “His children were older than their stepmother,” Jill says. “What was he thinking?”

  “Can’t fault him for wanting the latest model,” I say.

  “Well, I wonder what she married him for. What?”

  “I hear he was devastatingly funny and had a big dick.”

  A woman in an evening gown waves me over. I hold out a tray of wine to her.

  “You’re Candy Warner,” she says. She’s looking at my boobs, waiting for an answer. One of her eyes is bigger than the other and her veneers are too big for her mouth.

  “I get that a lot,” I say. “People also say I look like Lucy Liu, even though she’s old.”

  She accepts a glass of wine. The look in her eyes tells me she doesn’t believe me. I am not a very good actress. People around the room are whispering and pointing at me. I work hard at getting everyone drunk so that they’ll forget they saw me.

  Later I go outside for a cigarette to escape the humiliation of it all. It’s the one habit I just can’t quit. Maybe it’s because I started smoking when I was eleven, or maybe it’s because it reminds me of Spencer Sparks, the guy who was my pretend older brother. We’d sit in his dressing room, smoke and play cards between scenes. My other pretend brother Jameson Cheung cheated at cards and was a sore loser. Jameson is in Hong Kong now, where he’s so famous he can’t walk down the street without being chased by little girls. He sends a lot of text messages about parties and hot chicks. Spencer is an a-list star. So I guess I’m the black sheep of our pretend family. I don’t have any siblings in real life. Mom only had enough money to adopt one child.

  Once outside, I discover I don’t have a lighter on me.

  “Do you have a light?” I ask Jae.

  “This is like the episode where you sneak out of the middle school dance with the bad kids and the most popular boy in school peer pressures you into taking a drag off his cigarette,” he says, handing me a lighter.

  “It’s just like that. Except I’m so much older and wiser.”

  “And your breasts were real then.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder. I don’t turn around.

  “Come on,” he says.

  I ignore him.

  “Stop treating this like a fucking soap opera,” he says.

  “I’m not. I never worked on a soap opera.”

  Jae laughs. We go inside to clean up. I find a champagne cork.

  “Strange. Jill doesn’t bring champagne for wakes,” Jae says, holding up another cork.

  We find a coup
le making out behind a curtained alcove. The man is not wearing pants. The woman is not wearing a shirt. We send them home.

  Right before we leave, I go to the bathroom. When I open the door, Tiffany is standing in the door frame. I can smell gin on her. For some reason, I thought she’d be a vodka drinker.

  She leans forward and slurs, “So Candy, I heard you like pussy.”

  “You’re mistaken. I’m allergic to cats,” I say.

  Tiffany looks scared. She cries into my shoulder. “I’m all alone now.”

  I feel sorry for her. She doesn’t even have a pretend family.

  Jae gives me a ride home. The thing is, I never learned how to drive. Mom was always around, or the studio would send a car.

  When we reach my house, I say, “I think I’m going to quit.”

  “Quit?” Jae asks.

  “It’s humiliating being recognized.”

  “Being homeless is pretty humiliating too. But it’s your life.”

  He leaves without saying goodbye.

  I don’t actually go through with quitting because the next day my accountant gets real on my ass about how I’ll lose the house for sure if I don’t work, so I decide to stick it out. I can’t lose the house. There is nothing left to do but take responsibility and face my fears.

  After I try calling Mom, I phone Jae to tell him I haven’t quit. He offers to move in and pay rent. “We can search for our real parents together,” he says. When he arrives at my place, two suitcases are all he has. I wonder if this is the new freedom and new happiness that I’m supposed to find in my sobriety.

  Months go by. I call Mom every day. I leave messages for her. This is the longest I’ve ever gone without speaking to her. I know she’s doing okay because she has a reality tv show with the old man where they go around the world visiting all the places they always wanted to see but couldn’t because of their children. Jae tells me I shouldn’t watch the show, but I can’t help it. I watch a lot of tv because I’m afraid to go out to places where I might drink. I know I shouldn’t do this, but sometimes my pride gets in the way and I can’t just accept that I’m weak and it’s okay.

  Spencer calls to offer to get me a part in his next film. For a moment I think it might be nice to be paid a lot of money.

  I tell him I already have work.

  “That’s great,” he says. “What are you working on?”

  “Oh, I guess you might say it’s a comedy. You might say it’s real life.”

  My days are a blur. Wake, wake, wake, wake, christening, wake, wake, wake, wake, sweet sixteen, wake, wake, engagement party, wake, wake. Then it’s a flurry of weddings. I start hoping for a wake to break the monotony of true love and gold-digging. Finally, someone dies.

  “This is like the episode where your great-uncle dies and everyone at his wake is a mortician,” Jae says.

  I hold a tray of red wine out to a man who is talking to a woman with a bad nose job.

  “I’m king of plots,” he says.

  “Oh yeah?” the woman says. “What do you do?”

  “I sell burial space.”

  I sigh. At least he isn’t a wannabe screenwriter.

  At the end of the night, as Jill and I are loading the van, I say, “That was my 250th wake.”

  Jill gives me a strange look. “That was a retirement party.”

  When I get home, I listen to my cellphone voicemails. None of the messages are from Mom.

  There’s a message from my former agent, Camilla.

  “Candy, your twenty-fifth birthday is coming up! Don’t think I’ve forgotten. By the way, Playboy called. Do you still like long walks on the beach and watching the sunset with your boyfriend? You haven’t gone and found religion, have you? Stop sabotaging yourself and call me.”

  I remember Jae’s advice and resist the offer.

  I call Mom. I want to tell her that I’ve turned a corner. I’m no longer afraid of economic instability. I might even believe in a higher power. She doesn’t pick up so I leave another message.

  A few weeks later, Jae and I are about to go to work a wake when he gets mail.

  “We’re not related after all,” he says, handing me an official-

  looking letter.

  “You’ve been as good a pretend brother as my other pretend brothers have been. Maybe even better,” I say.

  We celebrate with orange juice mixed with soda water. At least, I celebrate because I have very unsisterly feelings towards Jae. It’s a relief that my thoughts are no longer possibly incestuous.

  We go to an enormous house for the wake. It looks very familiar, like I’ve seen it on tv. I’m circulating with a tray when I see the old man I was supposed to marry. I search the room, but I don’t see Mom.

  “Where is my mother?” I ask the old man.

  He blinks at me.

  “Is she here?”

  “She’s dead,” he says.

  “Dead?”

  “This is her wake.”

  “She can’t be dead,” I say. “I just left her a voicemail this morning.”

  Jill tells me she’ll pay me for the shift, but I should stop working. Someone hands me a glass of wine. I take a sip and immediately spit it out. I sit on a couch and stare at all the strangers. Who are these people?

  Soon, most of the guests are gone. I remain to help clean up.

  “You don’t need to stay. You should go home,” Jill says. She sounds every bit like my sitcom mom.

  “I’m not ready to leave yet,” I say.

  I’ve had a lot of practice pretending to be sad, but I’ve never experienced real tragedy. I’m off script. I don’t know what to do. I find myself baffled. Is this the work of a higher power? Is this the grand plan for my life? Before I descend to self-pity, Jae takes me home.

  I tell Jae I just want to be alone. He understands, and goes up to his room. I go out into the backyard for my last cigarette of the day. The moon is bright. The air is cool. I can hear my neighbour’s music: “Candy Says,” by the Velvet Underground. Sometimes when I was little, Mom would play that record for me. For a moment, it’s like we’re back in our first apartment, before we started moving around and before I started acting. In the distance, a woman laughs. I take a deep breath and try to think of nothing.

  Jae recently cleared the flowerbed of dead plants. I remove my shirt and skirt and lie down upon the earth. My body sinks into the cold ground. I think about how I didn’t even get to see the casket or the burial. I light another cigarette. Inside the house, the phone is ringing. Is it a journalist? A telemarketer? The only thing I’m sure of is that it won’t be Mom. Pretend or real, I am no one’s daughter now. I stare at the sky for a long time, and succeed at last in locating the North Star.

  The Boy Next Door

  Each morning, after getting dressed, Kent Lee took a photograph of the view outside his bedroom window. He began the practice at age eleven when he received his first camera, a birthday present from his parents. Thirteen years later, he was in possession of over four thousand photographs. He rarely looked at the images, choosing instead to focus on the future. He had a five-year plan. One day, once he became an art director at a glossy magazine he’d be ready for marriage, most likely to his current girlfriend, Jessica, whom he had met at university on the first day of class. Perhaps they would move from Vancouver to Toronto, where his parents lived, and buy a house. He would no longer live in a basement suite that faintly smelled of mildew.

  The morning of Friday, October 1, 1999 was uneventful. The sky was overcast. When he later developed the film containing the day’s snapshot, the photograph was ordinary—it betrayed no sign that anything was amiss. But that afternoon at work, the managing editor asked to speak with him privately. Once they were seated in a meeting room, she informed him that the magazine was restructuring and that he was being laid off. If he wished, he could provide his services o
n a freelance basis.

  Kent feared telling Jessica the news. To begin with, she hadn’t approved of his career path. She was in her final year of law school, and when she wasn’t in class or studying, she waited tables, determined not to accrue debt. He admired her determination; he felt it was one of her best qualities, and it made up for his own deficiencies.

  He kept his unemployment a secret over the weekend. They ran errands, went to the beach, watched a movie and had sex. On Monday morning, he woke up and put on his office clothes as though he were going to work. He paused at his bedroom window, but didn’t take a photograph. Once Jessica left for class, he gathered some cds he hadn’t listened to in months and biked to Zulu Records.

  A clerk he had met at an Evaporators show, Alex, was working.

  “What’s new?” Kent asked.

  “Have you heard the new Magnetic Fields? 69 Love Songs,” Alex said.

  “I lost my job.”

  “That sucks.”

  “I have some cds to sell.” Kent handed Alex a pile of albums.

  “Cash or credit?”

  “Cash.”

  “Are you going to the Gaze show?” Alex passed him twenty

  dollars.

  “Maybe,” Kent said, though he meant no because he didn’t want to spend money on a ticket.

  He left the store and biked to the employment insurance office to apply for benefits. Then he bought a bottle of white wine for Jessica using some of the cd money.

  At home, he prepared dinner while listening to a Shellac record, Terraform. Jessica returned at six o’clock, and the food was ready. He waited until she was finished her second glass of Sauvignon Blanc before confessing that he was no longer employed.

  “Oh,” Jessica said.

  “I qualify for employment insurance,” he said. “I applied today.”