The Heart Principle

by Helen Hoang

  When hunger drives us out of bed and into the city in search of dinner, we hold hands and press close to each other, maximizing the points of contact between our bodies, like we need that extra reassurance after all that’s happened. I’m craving noodles—those are my favorite thing in the world to eat—so he takes me across town to Chinatown, where they have the best noodles anywhere. We both get steaming bowls of spicy Taiwanese beef noodle soup, and when we’re finished, our bellies are full, our sinuses are clear, our tongues are numb, and we’re high on pain endorphins released in response to the chilis.

  I’m drowsy, so he takes me to my place. We might watch documentaries, I don’t remember. But there’s a lot of cuddling because I can’t stand to be separated from him, and I think he feels the same. We kiss, but not in a sexual way. We kiss to express our affection. I fall asleep against his chest, lulled by the steadiness of his heartbeat.

  It is, by all measures that matter, a perfectly flawless evening.

  So I experience a sense of inevitableness when I wake up the next morning to a phone call from my mom. Before answering, I know it’s bad news.

  She confirms it when she says, “Your father just passed away.”

  Part Three

  After

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Anna

  After hanging up the phone, I feel . . . nothing. At least, it seems that way at first. I’m calm. I don’t cry. I recognize I’m thirsty, and I’m able to get myself a glass of water and drink it without inhaling liquid into my lungs. But there’s an unreal quality to everything around me. The water I drink tastes a little funny, metallic perhaps. The cup feels oddly heavy in my fingers. Was it always this solid? As I look at the glass, I notice the surface of the water is trembling very finely.

  Quan hugs me, and I sag against him as I try to make sense of everything.

  It’s over. My dad isn’t suffering anymore.

  I believe this is what he wanted.

  But he’s really gone now.

  No more secret candies in the car. No more listening to old-school music stuck in the tape deck together. No more attending my concerts. No more anything.

  Loss grips me, but it’s muted, perhaps because I’ve already mourned him so many times by now. How many times in the hospital? How many times since we brought him home? My heart has traveled this path until it’s well-worn, and it’s hard to see new tracks, especially when an immense sense of failure overshadows everything.

  I didn’t make it until the end. If I’d known it was only two more weeks, maybe I wouldn’t have felt such an oppressive sense of futility. Maybe I could have held it together better and been less absentminded and more functional. Maybe I could have found a way to play for him at the party, since it really was my last chance. Maybe my family would still think I’m the person I’d been pretending to be for so long—not perfect in their eyes, but still good enough.

  I’m not sure if I’m welcome, but I go home to help with whatever I can. Quan offers to drop me off and come back later to get me, but I ask him to come in with me.

  We walk hand in hand to the front door of my parents’ house, and after letting myself in, I continue to hold his hand as we walk down the marble hallway. The house is colder than ever today, and the light pouring in through the windows is gray, drab.

  We find Priscilla in my dad’s room, where my dad’s hospital bed is starkly vacant. This room is the master bedroom of the house, and without my dad’s presence to fill it, it now feels ten times as large. Priscilla is organizing our dad’s medications into ziplock bags and boxes, and she gives no indication that she notices our presence. She looks awful. Her eyes are puffy, her skin sallow, and I think she’s lost weight since two weeks ago. She’s skeletal. I can even see wrinkles on her face. This is the first time that she’s looked the full fifteen years older than me, and I hate that.

  So I swallow my pride and my own hurt, and I approach her. “Hi, Je je.”

  “There’s a box of stuff you forgot here in your room,” she says in her harsh way.

  “I’ll get it, thanks.”

  Instead of responding, she continues organizing the medications, content to ignore me.

  “Do you . . . need help with that?” I ask.

  She gives me a stony look and says, “No,” before returning to her work. Only now, her hands are unsteady, and she drops a pill bottle to the ground.

  I pick it up and put it on the table for her. “Can you look at me? So we can talk? Please?”

  She lifts her chin and gives me her attention, but she doesn’t speak. She waits.

  “I’m sorry.” It’s hard for me to logically conceptualize what I did that’s so wrong. I spoke the truth. I stood up for myself. Why is that bad? But if I hurt her, I regret that and I genuinely want to do better in the future. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just—”

  “You accused me of torturing him because I couldn’t let go,” she says, pointing an angry finger at me as her eyes tear up. “You’re supposed to back me up. That’s what sisters do. Instead, you betrayed me and disrespected me. In front of everyone.”

  She doesn’t touch me, but my whole body flinches with every jab of her finger. “I didn’t mean to betray you. I said all of us were torturing him.”

  “It wasn’t my choice. I was just trying to do the right thing.” Priscilla covers her face with her hands as her thin body quakes, and it breaks me. “You were supposed to understand. We were supposed to be in this together.”

  My heart wrenches, and I hug her, saying everything I can think of to make it better. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Eventually, she thaws and hugs me back, and I feel like I have a sister again. I feel like maybe everything’s going to be okay.

  But when we finally pull apart, she wipes her tears away and acts like we’re finished. In her eyes, I did wrong, so I apologized. I love her. I don’t want to cause her pain. But something important is missing.

  I wait, and still, it doesn’t happen. Turbulent feelings swell in my chest, raging to get out, and I can’t swallow them down.

  I promised to draw a line. Around Quan. And around me. Because I matter, too.

  If I don’t stand up for me, no one else will.

  I have to do this.

  “Aren’t you going to apologize to me?” I ask.

  She narrows her eyes at me. “For what?”

  “For hurting me. For treating me the way you did. I told you I was struggling. That being here was making me sick. But I stayed anyway. Who do you think I stayed for? And yet you looked down on me because I didn’t meet your standards. You didn’t care that I was doing the best that I could. You—”

  “If your best job is a shitty job, it’s still shitty,” she yells.

  “Why couldn’t we get help, then?” I ask, openly crying now. “He needed too much care, care that he didn’t even want. This was too much for us.”

  “You mean it was too much for you,” Priscilla says through her teeth, pointing at me again. “It wasn’t too much for me.”

  That hurts, but the truth of it sends an odd calm over me. I sense Quan coming toward me. No doubt he’s agitated by the things Priscilla’s saying and wants to defend me, but I motion for him to stay away. I need to handle this on my own.

  “I’m different from you,” I tell Priscilla.

  “Are you talking about your ‘diagnosis’?” she asks sarcastically, putting finger quotes around the word diagnosis.

  “I don’t know if that has anything to do with this. Maybe it does. But you have to stop expecting me to be the same as you.”

  Priscilla rolls her eyes. “Trust me. I don’t expect that.”

  “Then why are you always judging me and pressuring me to change? Why can’t you accept me the way I am?”

  “That’s not how family works,” she says through her teeth. �
��I get to judge you and pressure you because I want what’s best for you.”

  “What’s best for me right now would be an apology from you.” I need her to love me enough to acknowledge when she’s hurt me and try not to do it again. I need her to attempt to understand me. I need her to accept my differences. Hiding and masking, trying to please other people, trying to please her, has been destroying me, and I can’t live that way anymore.

  Her lips thin and curl. “I can’t apologize when I didn’t. Do. Anything. Wrong. You were the one who did.”

  “You don’t care why?” I ask, feeling like I’m crumbling and sinking into the ground.

  “I don’t want your excuses, Anna,” she says in exasperation.

  I want to correct her and tell her they’re reasons, not excuses, but I don’t. There’s no point in continuing with this. I see that now.

  I have to choose. I can spend my time trying to make her accept me, either through bending to her will or bending her to mine, or I can accept myself and focus on other things. How do I want to spend my life?

  I turn away from her and catch Quan watching my sister with his jaw clenched and his hands fisted at his sides. He’s outraged, but when he switches his attention to me, sadness lines his face. She doesn’t understand. But he does.

  Taking his hand, I head away from the room. Out in the hallway, he looks at me and whispers, “Proud of you.”

  Before I can reply, my mom appears with Priscilla’s violin case in her arms. “Give Je je time,” she says.

  I don’t want to argue with her, but I don’t want to make promises that I won’t keep either, so I say nothing.

  Her gaze lands on Quan, on our joined hands, and I think she’s going to comment on us being together. I think she’s going to voice her displeasure and ask where Julian is. But she doesn’t. Instead, she hands Quan the violin case.

  “Hers broke. She’s too stubborn to take this, but you keep it in case she wants to play, okay?” she asks him.

  “I will.” Quan smiles at her, his beautiful smile that brightens his eyes and transforms his face, and I think my mom sees it then—why I love him. There’s such genuine caring and kindness in him.

  “Are you okay, Ma?” I ask.

  She looks exhausted, but she nods. “We knew this was coming. Except for maybe Priscilla. She’s blaming herself for not doing enough.”

  My mom’s words give me pause. I don’t like the idea of Priscilla blaming herself when she did all that she could, all that anyone could, really. But I guess that’s how it must be when someone’s standards are so impossibly high and their capacity for empathy so limited. They are cruel to others, and cruelest to themself.

  An unexpected realization washes over me: I’m glad I’m not Priscilla.

  “Do you need help with anything?” Quan asks, looking about my mom’s immaculate house for something that might need his attention.

  “No, no,” my mom says, but she gives him a small tired smile. “There’s the funeral, but I need to plan that. It’s better if you two go home. Priscilla is . . .” She can’t seem to find the right words, so she shakes her head. To me, she adds, “It would be appropriate if you played at the ceremony.”

  Hot tears well in my eyes. Not this again. “Ma, I don’t think I—”

  “Just think about it. That’s all,” she says quickly as she herds us toward the front door. “Go home. Rest. Eat. You’re looking skinny. I’ll let you know our plans.”

  As I’m leaving, she pulls me aside and surprises me by hugging me. She doesn’t admonish me. She doesn’t ask anything of me. She doesn’t say anything at all. She just lets me know she cares.

  That is all I’ve ever wanted.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Anna

  I’d like to say that after the funeral, I mourn for a couple of weeks, and then I pick up my old life where I left off. I’d like to say that now that I’ve learned to stand up for myself and stop people pleasing, it’s easy to overcome the creative block associated with my music. I’d also like to say that Priscilla and I are reconciled.

  But if I said those things, I’d be lying.

  Once the funeral is over, an intangible thread breaks in my mind, and I mentally collapse. I’ve learned since then that this is called autistic burnout. I can’t remember the weeks immediately following the funeral at all. It’s like I never lived them. The earliest post-funeral days that I can recall are from months later, and they involve me staring blankly into space or watching the same documentaries over and over while basically fusing my body to my couch. I don’t do anything productive. I can’t reason my way through any semi-complicated tasks, like getting the mail or paying bills or even checking my bank account balance online. I only manage not to get kicked out of my apartment through the miracle of autopay. Emotionally, I’m highly unstable. I switch between intense melancholy, rage (at Priscilla), and then exhaustion from the aforementioned melancholy and rage. I cry . . . a lot.

  Rose and Suzie message me, but I rarely answer. I don’t have the energy. It matters to me that they care about me. I appreciate them. But I have to go through this alone and find my way back to them later.

  Similarly, Jennifer checks up on me, but I don’t have energy to answer her either. Therapy can’t help me when I’m like this.

  FORTY

  Quan

  After a few months, I move in with Anna. I’ve basically been living there anyway, so it doesn’t make sense to keep a place of my own. Because I can and want to, I take over the rent. She covers the utilities. It works out for both of us.

  She’s not well, I can tell, but we’re slowly getting through this. I think I see her recovering bit by bit. When I come home after work, she’s always happy to see me. She asks me about my day and listens as I tell her goofy stuff that no one else cares about, like the seagull I saw during my lunch-hour run who stole a dude’s lunch right out of his hands or the mourning dove who tries to sit on her babies in the nest right outside my office window even though they’re almost as big as she is.

  I check up on Anna every day while I’m gone, sending her text messages filled with hearts or funny memes with octopuses and other creatures. When we’re together, I hold and cuddle her a lot, because I sense she needs to feel loved. We don’t have a lot of sex, though. It’s kind of hard to have sexy thoughts when your girlfriend can barely keep her eyes open past eight p.m. and regularly wakes up in the middle of the night crying. I just take care of that kind of stuff in the shower. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t prefer jerking off in the shower to having sex with the woman I love, but I’m happy to wait until she’s ready.

  FORTY-ONE

  Anna

  It takes me a long time to get to the point where I feel mentally strong enough to practice music. Months and months. But then I obsess over getting a new violin. I won’t touch Priscilla’s old instrument. I’d rather do any number of horrible things to myself.

  Naturally, this is when my mom decides to drop by my apartment. I’m stunned when I hear her voice through the intercom one afternoon. “Anna, it’s me.”

  I’m even more stunned when I buzz her in, and moments later, I open my door and see her standing there in white slacks, a cream-colored silk blouse, and an Hermès scarf artfully wrapped around her neck. She looks casual but stylish, but she’s aged since my dad passed away. The new lines by her eyes make me sad. Priscilla must have returned to New York by now. That means she’s been living in that giant house all by herself. She must be lonely.

  “Hi, Ma. Uh, come in. Sorry it’s so messy.” If I’d known she was coming, I would have straightened things up more. As it is, I only had time to sweep my dirty dishes off the coffee table and stick them in the sink and haphazardly straighten the pillows and blankets on my couch. My bed’s not made. The laundry is overflowing. My bathroom is a disaster. I pray for her not to go into my kitchen.

  She perches herself ginger
ly on my armchair and looks around, spending extra time on the pair of men’s running shoes in the corner next to an open duffel bag stuffed with clean workout clothes. There’s a small pile of business management books on the end table next to her, and she scans the titles with interest. “Your Quan moved in with you?”

  I sit on the couch and look down at my knees. “Yeah.”

  “You’re happy with him?” she asks, and the way she says it, I feel like she honestly wants to know.

  I can’t help the soft smile that curves over my lips. “Yeah.” Without him, I’m not sure I’d be holding it together right now. As it is, I miss him the entire time he’s gone for work. When he messages me during the day, it makes me nauseatingly happy.

  “Your music? How is that?” my mom asks. “How is Je je’s violin working for you?”

  I avert my eyes and shake my head.

  “So stubborn, Anna,” she says in a tired voice. “Here, I want to buy you this one.”

  She takes her phone out of her purse and shows me an email that Priscilla forwarded from an instrument dealer. In the body of the email, there’s a picture of an elegant Guarneri violin. Guarneri was an Italian luthier during the 1700s who rivaled Stradivari, the creator of the famous Stradivarius violins. The most expensive violin in the world is a Guarneri. This is not that Guarneri, of course. According to the dealer, this Guarneri sustained serious damage on multiple occasions and has undergone extensive repairs, so its price reflects that. But it still costs as much as a house.