Nights When Nothing Happened

by Simon Han

  Jack muttered a thanks. As he sat down to cautiously inspect the scooter, Annabel planted one of her Bratz dolls on her father’s shoulder. Patty could almost hear the oversize plastic high heels clicking. Annabel leaned the doll’s head toward Liang’s ear, the body-length straw-blond hair tickling his neck. The doll was whispering to him.

  “Daddy, an intruder came to our house today.”

  Of course Annabel would be the one to tell him. Well, let her go on—Patty was too tired to delay any longer. It was Jack who rushed over and snatched up the doll, as if the doll were the culprit. Did Jack know what Marcy Thomas could do? If he hadn’t looked so serious, Liang might have thought Annabel was playing another game.

  At first, Liang looked more curious than angry. He glanced at Patty for confirmation. “Ah, it was Helen, yes? She forgot her scarf?”

  “Liang.” It was Patty’s turn now. She wished there was a language they could speak that her children could not understand. “Can we go to the bedroom?”

  “She was looking for you,” Annabel said.

  “Annabel—”

  “You’re in trouble, Daddy.”

  “Stop it,” Patty said.

  It took another minute for the details to be coaxed out. Finally, Patty showed him the business card. There had been a time when Liang had business cards, when he’d handed them out to strangers. She wanted to tell him that the CPS visit was all a mistake, a misunderstanding. She watched him instead.

  Liang was a handsome man; she had always thought so. He had a belly she liked, and wide, strong hips. The wrinkles on his face appeared only when he smiled. He looked as if he’d always had a good night’s sleep, even when he hadn’t—and even now, after a full day of shopping. This gave his anger a theatrical air. If she distanced herself enough from the sight, she could convince herself that he was an actor from a glitzy Broadway musical, playing an irate man from the Shaanxi countryside.

  Then his voice came back to her, louder. “What did you tell her?” He said it with accusation, and this angered her in turn. “Patty. Answer me.”

  “Is there something I should tell her?”

  She knew she’d misspoken, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t the children Liang seemed worried about. He had barked her English name with the coldness of a dissatisfied customer. “What did he tell her?” he said, meaning Jack, not even deigning to call him by name.

  His finger stabbed the air in Jack’s direction, again and again, but he did not touch the boy. Patty felt queasy. Jack’s face blanched. Though they were all only a few feet from one another, she could see Liang the way Jack was seeing him. The finger. The blurry body. She wrapped Liang with her arms from behind. There had been a time when she’d greeted him that way. Now she let go, turning him to face her, steering him away from Jack.

  “Let’s go for a drive,” she said. She did not like the idea of leaving her children alone in the house, considering someone from CPS could return at any moment. What would be worse—for Marcy to see them alone, or for Marcy to see Liang like this? Chéng Liàng, she pleaded, Chéng Liàng. She had been in the house all day and could use some fresh air. Jack could watch his sister for ten or so minutes, couldn’t he?

  Liang relented. He followed Patty to the garage, though not without grumbling something to himself that she was glad she could not hear. Behind them, Jack sat with his sister among the piles of gifts, no words passing between them.

  “Man of the house,” she said to Jack in English, with a tired wink. “I know you’ll be good.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The temperature outside was the same as it had been inside. The air felt recycled, as if she were stepping out of a store and into a mall, from one contained space to a larger contained space. Inside this outside, the sun had come down. Patty had barely enough time to zip up her boots before Liang claimed the driver’s side of his Volvo. Once they were both seated, he peeled out of the driveway.

  There was no rush, she told him. There was nowhere they needed to be. The magnanimous Santa Claus version of her husband had disappeared within minutes, replaced with a man on a mission. She did not know his mission, but he roiled against an invisible force to accomplish it. He turned out of their community without braking. He nearly ran over a traffic cone. Patty thought she saw a police car; when she mentioned it to Liang he said that she hadn’t. Only when she put a hand on his arm did he ease up on the accelerator.

  As he veered onto Legacy, Patty tried to explain the situation. She treaded lightly, going over the most basic details. At every turn, she emphasized what she’d read online: that in a city like theirs, in a neighborhood like theirs, children from a family like theirs simply did not get taken away. Liang would have to call this Marcy to schedule an interview, she said. He had to only because he hadn’t been at home when she came. It wasn’t as if Liang was a suspect. She stopped herself. What was she doing, talking about suspects?

  Liang responded with as few words as Marcy Thomas had. It no longer comforted Patty to know that he did not feel the need to explain himself. She felt that he needed to explain himself. A voice warbled from the radio she hadn’t realized was on: WARNING: Studies predict texting while driving will become the leading cause of vehicular accidents and deaths . . .

  Liang braked too hard, accelerated too fast. It wasn’t clear if he was listening to her or the radio. So if you want twenty-twenty vision and you want it now, pull over to the side of the road before texting S-E-E to reserve your free consultation with Dr. Kensok . . .

  At last, they came to a stop. There was a rare pedestrian crossing outside the Shops at Legacy. Revelers were filing out of the bars and clustering outside, most of them around the age Patty and Liang had been when they’d come to America. Some had surely grown up here, come home for the holidays to visit their parents. They were dressed as if they were going to work, though arms slid into crooks, hands slid down backs.

  “You must be tired,” she said.

  Liang pressed his lips together. “These days, it is more tiring to sleep.”

  His voice sounded calmer, finally eased up. She pictured him walking around the Galleria earlier in the day, accumulating so many gifts he’d had to pack them into one of those two-seated fire-truck-themed strollers. Maybe he’d paused to gaze at the giant Christmas tree and the ice skaters that swarmed around it—ten thousand ornaments and half a million LED lights, all two thousand branches meticulously sculpted so not a single one stuck out.

  Now he drove on, leaving the gold-laced lights of the Shops blinking behind them. The empty roads that cut through the JCPenney and Frito-Lay office parks gave the night a hollowed-out feeling, as if they were driving through an abandoned parking garage. Patty found herself talking not about the CPS visit, or the mall, but about the night six years ago when the man in the silver Corolla had followed her home.

  That night, when she’d finally stepped inside the house, her family was waiting at the kitchen table. Liang had prepared an elaborate spread to celebrate her return to work. From the door, she could smell her favorite sea bass, the ginger and soy sauce. She could identify every dish—the shrimp and snow peas, the steamed eggs, the pickled cucumber—and the hands that had made them. Annabel was there, too, perched in her rocker by Jack’s dangling feet. Jack met his mother’s eyes instead of directing them to a book or a Game Boy. She smiled back her fear and sat down with them. Before she could pick up her chopsticks, Liang reached for her hand, holding it in his own, as if in prayer. That was when Patty decided not to tell him.

  “I didn’t want to ruin my memory of that night,” she said.

  Liang’s hand slid down from the wheel. “So this man,” he said to the road, “in the silver Corolla. He saw you turn into our house. The eighth house from Main Street.”

  “Yes, but he could have been anyone.”

  “Yes, Qīng-Qīng. Anyone.”

 
His eyes were still aimed a hundred miles down the road. What was he thinking? Perhaps he thought her selfish to put her family in danger like that. What if the man had come back? What if he had been waiting six years, and came back now?

  Liang continued looking straight. She said, “Let’s go back.”

  He did not move his head. “Where?”

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  Liang made a U-turn, and headed east on Legacy. He was driving steadily now, in the direction of home. Hedgcoxe. Preston. Coit. Liang named the streets they passed, the same streets they’d always passed. Patty felt as if she were in one of their early home videos. It had been years since she’d watched one of them. “Who do you think these streets are named after?” Liang said. “Are they real people? Did they walk these streets before?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just know the names.”

  He pointed at a fire hydrant. “Why is it red in Annabel’s picture books, but blue and silver here?” He aimed his chin at a grassy median. “What was there before that ugly grass? What should we call those weeds?”

  “A weed is a weed,” she said. They were almost back.

  “No,” Liang said. “It’s not.”

  Patty gently squeezed his arm. “You missed the turn.”

  Liang continued driving. His eyes were fixed forward. Not Huntington Villa. Not home.

  She said, “Where are we going?”

  Maybe he was looking at the moon. Lift my head and see the moon, lower my head and miss my home: a line from a Lǐ Bái poem, the one with which he’d surprised her on a night early in their marriage. Some sleepless nights, he’d speak to the moon outside their bedroom. He’d speak of the quiet grace of his mother, how she’d died in an accident when he was young; of his father, who’d left him to live in the mountains with other men; of his Qīng-Qīng, who would one day be a mother, though at that point they had not once made love.

  “Here we are, Qīng-Qīng.”

  She surveyed the Taco Bell, the Starbucks, the Chase Bank. There was another tutoring academy, another orthodontist’s office. “What are you talking about? Where?” She looked at the clock, and it dawned on her how she’d made her children skip lunch, how hungry they might be. “The children.”

  He bowed his head. “My children are in good schools, my wife has a good job. My house is nice, my neighborhood nice. All nice, you say. CPS is understaffed, overwhelmed. We will get through this, you say. I am not so sure.”

  “Liang. Please.”

  They were about to reach Montmartre, the neighborhood where Helen and Jerry and their college dropout daughter, Charlene, lived, where a week ago she’d had to shuttle Liang over in the morning to pick up the car he’d been too drunk to drive the night before. It was here that he eased up on the pedal.

  One day after Thanksgiving, the famed lights of Montmartre were already in bloom. Liang drove past the reds and greens and blues, the elegant houses with all silver. Light pulsed down from Bradford pears like raindrops. Nativity scenes came in all shapes, sizes, species. From one lawn, a chorus of bundled-up carolers rotated in a perpetual circle, singing Christmas classics channeled from an AM station.

  I used to have legs, the radio said, from a different station, before I did drugs.

  The lights grew brighter as they approached the Huangs’ street. But Liang passed that turn as well. “Please,” Patty said. If he registered the uneasiness on her face, he no longer seemed to care. He glanced left and right, while she scanned the inside of the car, lingering on the red switch by the handle. The door was locked. Of course it was. If she reached over and unlocked it, would Liang notice?

  There was not much time to let her mind wander. Finally, Liang brought the Volvo to a halt. He’d parked in front of a house unlike any they’d yet seen. Massive floodlights from the edge of the lawn cast its two stories in high definition. Against the backdrop of light, thousands of snowflakes—or rather, the intricate shadows of snowflakes, danced and twirled. On the lawn, human-size screens displayed loops of familiar silhouettes, from a herd of flying reindeer to a boy and girl kissing under mistletoe.

  Liang did not have any interest in the light show. “Forgive me,” he said, his voice cracking. “For a second, I’d thought you were the one who had called CPS.”

  Patty sat still. No, she had not reported her own husband. She had still not asked him about last night, either. How strange. She had not given much thought to who had reported them.

  Then it came to her. “Elsie’s parents. They live here, too.”

  Later, she would wonder what had set Liang off in the end. Was it seeing where they lived? Was it how much bigger and nicer the house was than their own? Or was it the way she’d looked at him, while they were parked outside? Her eyes betraying a thought that had settled in a corner of her mind, a thought that she had spent the past day trying to correct. What if. What if. What if Liang had done something terrible.

  He turned away. “Jerry was telling me about this house. He was even thinking of inviting Elsie’s dad to the next poker night. Can you believe it?”

  “You don’t have to go,” Patty said.

  “To poker night? Oh, I am done with that shit.”

  She followed his gaze to the house. The projections on the lawn had changed: a long arc of a shooting star spanned multiple screens.

  “Jack,” she said. “Annabel.”

  “As long as these people are here, our children are not safe,” Liang said. “You were right, Qīng-Qīng. I should have done something. These parents, they are poisoning us. They are laughing behind our backs. They think they can point at a flower and call it a rock, and we will nod our heads.”

  “Let’s go home. Let’s discuss there.” She took care to make her voice soft, steady.

  “I am tired.” Was he crying now? He was able to do it without a quiver in his body. He muttered something she couldn’t decipher. After a minute, he quieted, hung his head like a child in trouble. “I’m sorry.”

  “We’ll take Annabel out of school. It’s all right.”

  “I’m sorry I did nothing.” Liang said it this time in English, with the coldness of fact. His legs bobbed up and down, causing his voice to waver.

  Again, Patty glanced at the red switch on her door. It wasn’t as if she were going to run away, yet she couldn’t help but look. She took her eyes off Liang for a second, and that was all the time he needed. The door opened and shut so fast he could have slipped through a crack of air. He crossed in front of the car toward the house. A Christmas tree blinked through one of the bay windows.

  “Please,” she called out to Liang from inside the car, but of course he could not hear. She held on to a fleeting hope that before he reached the door he would turn around, seek some sense, a talking back from the ledge.

  Her husband went on, up the cobbled pathway. She knew then that she would not reach him. She would drive away instead of chasing after him. She could not be a part of whatever was going to happen. For her children’s sake, she could not be a part of it. But even as her body shifted over to the driver’s seat, as her hand moved toward the key still in the ignition, she kept watching. Against the white glare of the house’s front door, Liang transformed into another shadow, bigger than the others, bigger than himself.

  7

  If Annabel was not moving herself, someone else was moving her. Huáng Āyí’s daughter, Charlene, picked her up from her second new school in six months. A receptionist in a high-rise office led her to a small, windowless room while Māma talked to a suited man in a bigger room. One doctor sat her on top of a cushioned table and tapped her knee with a magic hand that sent her leg flying. Another doctor sat with her on a couch that made her want to sleep, and asked her about her highs and lows. Sometimes, to hurry her along, Māma draped her over one of her clothes-hanger shoulders. Now, on the other side of the car window, street signs whippe
d past them. Less than a full week into the New Year, she had perfected the trick of staying still and watching the world blur.

  Since the day after Thanksgiving, Daddy had also never stopped moving. He’d been in such a rush that night that he had forgotten to pack a suitcase. First he drove his car to Los Angeles, Māma said, to fill in for a distinguished guest at a photography symposium. This made him, of course, a distinguished guest in his own right. He was so distinguished that he was then invited to China to receive an award, and though this meant he had to spend Christmas there, Māma said that he was thinking about her and Jack, buying them so many toys that by the time he came back Annabel would have enough gifts to last five Christmases.

  And yet Annabel did not want anything from China. She said as much to Māma, who then scolded her for not appreciating where she came from. She hadn’t come from China, Annabel said, though Māma had already moved on. During winter break, she was too busy sending Annabel to playdates or bringing Annabel and Jack to her office or transforming their house for Daddy’s triumphant return. Garlands snaked around the upstairs bannister, and a plastic tree sprang from a mound of empty, already-opened boxes in the piano room. Four Christmas stockings, swelling with old Halloween candy, hung above the fireplace they never used. Māma even went outside in the cold, slinging lights around the bushes, over and under branches, saying bad words when they pricked her skin.

  Meanwhile, Daddy still did not come back. On Christmas Eve, Māma handed Annabel the phone, claiming the voice on the other end of the line belonged to him. Bǎobèi, the voice said. Sorry we can’t see the lights this year. When Annabel asked the voice how it was possible to make phone calls from China, the voice talked instead of how wonderful it had been to visit the grandparents and great-uncles and aunts and cousins and second cousins whom Daddy had lost contact with after his mother went away. There were children there he’d never known, who before walking to school would plod down wheat fields and drop seeds in the holes that the adults in front of them had dug. The voice talked of the small pleasure of yams roasted over hot stones and dusted with wood ash. Those chilly evenings in the courtyard listening to Dàjiù’s radio, the moon bright and full over the Qinling Mountains.