The Leavers

  He pulled it closer to his face, pictured Vivian packing his clothes for him, finding the detention form, calling the school for his transcripts, going through his mother’s things and digging up the photograph. She had put it in the pile for him to have, a single memento of his mother, dumped it all in an envelope and handed it over to Social Services. But had Vivian done these things, or had Leon? Or was it his mother, had she had a hand in it? He examined the possibilities. His mother had been in jail. She’d been deported. She loved him. She didn’t care. You could play it one way and play it another, the same note sounding different depending on how you decided to hear it. You could try to do all the right things and still feel wrong inside.

  He found her number, still in his phone, and called one last time. She didn’t answer.

  The next day, he registered for the fall classes Peter and Kay suggested, and when Kay said, “You paid Angel back, right?” he said he had.

  TO CELEBRATE DANIEL FINISHING the summer with passing grades, Peter and Kay took him out to dinner at the Ridgeborough Inn, where they had gone for his high school graduation, the publication of Kay’s book, and Peter’s promotion to department chair after Valerie McClellan had retired. The Inn was a dimly lit cave with wooden beams and obsequious elderly waiters in heavy maroon-and-gold uniforms, a matching menu listing steaks and chops and French onion soup in ornate cursive font. It was the only restaurant near Ridgeborough where you didn’t look out of place in a jacket and tie.

  Peter ordered a bottle of Malbec. The waiter filled their glasses, and Peter raised his. “To Daniel, for being back on the right path. To the beginning of the rest of your life.”

  Daniel had borrowed a tie of Peter’s and wore the one suit jacket he had, the sleeves now short on him, but the shoulders loose. He kept adjusting the tie, pulling down on the cuffs. Even his pants were tighter than they had been a few months ago, now that he drove instead of walking.

  The right path was veering off the side of a cliff. Peter and Kay were beaming. “We’re proud of you,” Kay said.

  He blew on his soup to cool it, used his spoon to break up the bread on top. A tendril of steam escaped; still too hot to eat. He placed his spoon on the table, its round face shining up at him like a query.

  The waiter hovered over them, offering pepper for their salads. Small candles twinkled on the tables, but the maroon wallpaper and thick curtains made the room cold and dark. Paintings with baroque brass frames hung from the walls, portraits of men in military uniforms, women in long dresses, their expressions pinched and severe. Landscapes of rolling hills and weeping willows, white farmhouses in the distance.

  “That’s the famous Ridgeborough oxbow.” Peter squinted at a painting of a meadow with a river on one side.

  “I don’t see any oxen,” Daniel said.

  “Oxbow. The river is making an oxbow there. See, it bends this way and that. This must be former Wilkinson land, here in the painting. My grandfather mentioned it in the family history he wrote before he passed.” Peter’s voice rose. “Your great-great-grandfather owned that land once. He grew vegetables, he had horses. He was an enterprising man. Jacob Wilkinson.”

  Daniel pressed his spoon into his soup again. There was a quiet sorrow about the weighted silver cutlery, the paintings of bygone people and places. He was the last of the Wilkinsons, the only grandchild. His only cousins were on Kay’s side of the family, and they had his Uncle Gary’s last name. The way Peter spoke about it, being the last of the line was a great responsibility; he had to do something special to live up to Jacob Wilkinson’s legacy. This man he looked nothing like, whom, if he had been alive, would probably never accept Daniel as a true Wilkinson.

  The spoon peered up at him and he looked down at the metal, hoping to see his reflection, but it was too dark to see anything but drops of soup.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE THE first day of fall semester, Daniel edited a track on Peter’s computer. His voice sounded strange, pitching sharp, too forceful for the melody.

  The shelves in the study housed an overflow of books, with somber covers and lengthy titles about democracy and open markets. Copies of Peter and Kay’s own books filled half a shelf. He’d looked at them before, had seen the author biographies and photographs. Peter’s book was dedicated to Daniel and Kay; Kay’s to Daniel and Peter. The wall above the computer showcased their diplomas: bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees for both of them. Framed proof of their other accomplishments, awards, articles, book reviews in academic journals, surrounded him. He took his headphones off. The song wasn’t working.

  He walked past Peter and Kay’s room to make sure they were still asleep, then came back to the study and shut the door. Telling himself it wouldn’t work, that he was only trying because he wanted to make sure it wouldn’t work, he typed BigPoker into the browser. Breath quickening, he typed .com and hit return. He remembered an old account, one he’d barely used and hadn’t told Peter and Kay about. The homepage loaded, and seeing the green background and digital cards felt like running into an old girlfriend. There was fifty dollars in this forgotten account. He would play just one game and log out, then cancel everything.

  He started on a table of chumps, like that guy in his Econ class, and someone named AardvarkTexas went all in with a pair of queens—Daniel called, holding pocket aces—but then he couldn’t quit while ahead. One game turned into two, which turned into a sit-and-go, and another, and his account was up to a hundred dollars, then three hundred, then five. He danced in the chair, listening to the clinks and chimes of chips and cards, woozy from the rush, until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “I knocked,” Peter said.

  “Dad?” His heart pounded, but he couldn’t help it; he turned to the screen to confirm his winning hand. His account ticked up. As Peter watched, Daniel pumped his fist in the air.

  This time, Peter was calm, like he’d been expecting this. “All right. That’s enough now.”

  IT WAS SEVEN IN the morning. Daniel packed his backpack, the same one he had brought with him to the city, but left his guitar in his room. He’d have them send it to him later, wherever he was going.

  Kay sat at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea. There were half-moon shadows under her eyes, which were puffy from crying.

  “You’re not going to ask me to stay?”

  She shook her head. “I got an e-mail from Elaine.”

  He pulled his bag onto his shoulder. “I’ll let myself out.”

  Fifteen

  He remembered nothing about the flight, only darkness, rocking, then waking nineteen hours later to sunlight slamming through the window, walking off the plane and into a humid afternoon, one full day disappeared. The lone runway was surrounded by potholed streets, a long line of dirt and rocks, like the airport had been dropped into a sandbox. Language flew around him at warp speed, harsher and throatier than the same dialects he’d heard in New York.

  Motorcyclists circled like vultures. “Fuzhou!” they barked. “Fuzhou!” He took a step forward, and three motorcyclists braked and shouted. “Get on, quick,” the first man said, and Daniel balanced himself on the seat and was fixing the straps of his backpack when the driver accelerated and he flew forward. “Grab on,” the guy said. He wrapped his arms around the man’s waist, coughing back exhaust as they shot through the streets. He saw other motorcyclists and passengers wearing smog masks.

  “Where you going?” the driver asked.

  “Fuzhou,” Daniel yelled.

  “Where in Fuzhou?”

  “Downtown?”

  “Wuyi Square.”

  “Yeah,” Daniel said.

  They careened down a long road, empty except for the occasional passing truck. Daniel spat out gravel and dust and the wind blew a glob of saliva back onto his jeans. He couldn’t let go of the driver’s waist, so the spit sat on his thigh, taunting him, spreading into the fabric. Green fields and hills were punctuated by clusters of buildings. With their knobby trunks and feathery leaves, th
e trees seemed older, friendlier, than the pines and oaks of upstate New York.

  “Where you from?” the driver asked, as the fields gave way to taller buildings.

  “America.”

  “Ha!”

  “New York.”

  “Chinese?” the driver asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Cantonese?”

  “Fuzhounese.”

  The driver made a sound like pshaw. “No.”

  “Yes. My mother is from Minjiang.”

  “Hrm.”

  The four-lane road was clogged with cars and buses. The driver slowed to a standstill, surrounded by a solid mass of traffic, all of it honking in unison, then lit a cigarette, the smoke drifting directly into Daniel’s face. The light changed to green and the driver threw the cigarette onto the ground and accelerated, Daniel bouncing hard against his back.

  He was dropped off on a busy street near a Pizza Hut and a shopping mall.

  “You know a hotel around here?”

  “Over there,” the driver said, gesturing to the other side of an overpass and a traffic circle. He had a small, pimpled babyface, and Daniel saw that they were around the same age.

  “How much for the ride?”

  “One hundred fifty yuan.”

  Daniel took out two hundred–yuan bills from the money he’d gotten at the airport currency exchange.

  “You speak funny.” The driver handed Daniel his change. “You’ve got a Cantonese accent.”

  It wasn’t until Daniel was paying for a room at the Min Hotel, a six-story building with wall-to-wall orange carpet, that he realized the driver had given him only ten yuan in change.

  His room was on the third floor at the end of a long hallway, a double room with two queen-sized beds, more expensive than the singles. It was the only room they had available, the clerk said, and Daniel had been too tired, too humiliated by his accent, to argue. He crawled into the bed closest to the window, the sheets and pillows smelling like cigarette smoke, though he’d requested a non-smoking room. He would call her when he was more coherent. Maybe then he would sound less Cantonese.

  He woke up three hours later, head aching, the room dark. According to the clock it was early evening, and when he opened the curtains, it was still light out. A line of buses idled in traffic below. A crowd of people were standing outside the Pizza Hut. Overwhelmed, he sat down on the bed. He calculated what time it was in New York, how long it had been since he’d eaten. He turned on his phone and dialed his mother’s number, but it wouldn’t go through. He tried again and got the same result. There was no wireless Internet in the hotel, so he couldn’t get online to see if he had to dial a special code. He tried again using the phone by the bed, but it only produced an automated recording that said he was unable to make this phone call. It was Planet Ridgeborough all over again.

  “You’ll have to dial this code,” the clerk said, when he went down to the front desk.

  “Even for a—nearby call?”

  The clerk’s eyebrows resembled subtraction signs. “Your cell won’t work here,” she said. “If you use the phone in your room and punch in this code, you should be able to complete the call. We can charge any phone calls to your account if you give us a credit card.”

  Daniel tried to decipher the clerk’s rapid words as he grasped for a response. He took out his credit card. He’d already charged the flight; a couple phone calls wouldn’t make a difference.

  He returned to the room and called his mother’s number again, using the phone by the bed. This time, he got her voice mail.

  “Mama, it’s Deming. I’m in Fuzhou and I want to see you. I’m staying at the Min Hotel in Wuyi Square, room 323. Please call me.” He left the phone number for his room and went out in search of dinner.

  FUZHOU SMELLED LIKE A barbecue in autumn. The buildings had windows that reminded him of eyes, tracking his winding journey. Some buildings were wide and curved with long strips of windows like slices of gray masking tape, others tall and skinny with sharp or circular rooftops. Some buildings looked like an open greeting card, set on a table with arms flung out to embrace him. Others were only partially constructed, their tops a skeletal cage of scaffolding, and from a distance they resembled a band of mismatched toys. There was an architectural incongruence, but it made sense. Daniel preferred disorder to order, liked the trees in the spaces between buildings, leaves touching the low roofs of older homes. The city looked like it was trying to build itself up but would never fully succeed. This was an underdog’s city, ambitious and messily hungry, so haphazard it could collapse one night and be reassembled by the following morning.

  The sounds of Fuzhou were deep yellows, blues, and oranges. Fuzhounese and Mandarin banged out around him, the playlist of his unconscious, and even the words and phrases he didn’t recognize were like falling into a warm bath. There was not one scrap of English, not anywhere; not in the street signs and bus stops and billboards, not in the voices he overheard, nor in the music sliding out of taxis. It was trippy, surreal, the swirl of familiar sounds on such unfamiliar streets. He’d never been to Fuzhou before but it was a place he already knew. His brain struggling to stay alert, he repeated to himself in English: I’m in China! I’m in China!

  He turned to avoid a moped careening down the sidewalk and a bicyclist nearly swerved into him. When he stopped, the woman behind him yelled, “Move it!” He ducked into the nearest store to get his bearings. After a little effort he recalled the word for map and bought one of the city, but when he unfolded it the street names were in Chinese characters and he couldn’t read a thing.

  He saw a family heading onto a crooked side street, nearly hidden in the high-rises, and followed them along a stone wall plastered with signs exhorting the importance of washing your hands after you sneeze. Stepping over puddles with an oily sheen in the center, he walked into a courtyard. The noise from Wuyi Square had disappeared, and the buildings reminded him of the houses on 3 Alley, two-story homes with brick walls and hanging laundry. Children played as old women sat on plastic stools and fanned themselves with newspapers, talking about how so-and-so’s daughter was marrying so-and-so’s son. Inside the houses he saw families cooking and eating dinner. A lump formed in his throat.

  He found a noodle stall tucked between two of the houses and ordered a bowl of vermicelli noodles in pork broth with vegetables, glad nobody commented on his Fuzhounese. The food appeared and he scarfed it down, drank cups of watery tea until his headache subsided. On his way back to the hotel he got lost, went the long way around a construction site of eerie half-demolished structures, and by the time he found Wuyi Square, it was dark.

  No new messages for him in the hotel room. Daniel took a long shower, filling the bathroom with steam clouds. He called his mother again, left her another message, then lay down. He woke at seven in the morning with the light streaming through the open curtains. She still hadn’t called him. A heavy stinging grew behind his eyes. He had made it here, but she didn’t want to see him, and he had no one to go home to.

  Two mornings ago, he had left Ridgeborough with nine hundred and sixty bucks in his bank account. During a lull in the middle-of-the-night drama with Kay and Peter, he quietly cashed out of the game, charged a ticket to Fuzhou leaving from the Syracuse airport the following afternoon, and deleted the poker account. On the corner of Oak Street at seven in the morning, he called Cody.

  “Can you do me a huge favor?” he’d said. “I need a ride to the airport.” Cody arrived in his Jeep with a good-bye present, a baggie of Vicodin from his recent wisdom teeth removal, for Daniel to take on the flight. When Daniel checked in at the airport and cleared security six hours early, he sat at the empty gate and realized he was shaking. In the end, he hadn’t been able to do what Peter and Kay wanted. Three more semesters of classes, followed by graduate school. Staying upstate. He hadn’t been able to do what Roland wanted either, play the music Roland wanted him to play. If he could just talk to his mother in person, maybe he could
figure out who he should be.

  Now, in the hotel, he wished he had her address. All he knew was what she’d told him on the phone, that she lived in a neighborhood called West Lake and worked in a school that taught English. He called and left her another message, took the elevator down to the lobby. “Can you look up an address for me?” he asked the clerk. “A Polly Guo. Or Peilan Guo. She lives in West Lake.” She might have changed her last name when she got married, but he didn’t know her husband’s name, only that he owned a textile factory.

  The only phone book the hotel had was five years old. The clerk flipped through the pages. “Guo . . . Guo.” She ran her index finger down the pages. “I don’t see a Polly or Peilan. Here’s a Peng, Pan . . . There are Guos with a P sound for first name, but the addresses are nowhere near West Lake Park.”

  “Do you know of any English schools nearby?”

  “You want to learn English?” the clerk said.

  “Um—sure.”

  “My friend goes to an English school near the highway. I can ask her for you.”

  “Is that in West Lake?”

  The clerk opened a drawer and took out a bus map. “Look, we’re over here.” She pointed to a spot. “West Lake Park is up here.” She traced a line across the city, her finger stopping on a square of green. “You can take this bus, the stop is two blocks away.”

  Daniel asked if there was any way he could check the Internet. He could try looking up English schools, use an online translator to convert the Chinese words into English, call around and see if any of them had a Polly or Peilan working there. The clerk said there was an Internet café not too far away, but it wouldn’t be open for another hour or two. “Do you want breakfast?” She gestured to the far corner of the lobby, where there was a group of tables behind a partition, and said breakfast was included in the price of the room.