by Tao Lin
At dinner, Li said describing his pain would increase his mom’s worry and that pain was hard to discuss in Mandarin. She said he could use English. He said English wouldn’t be accurate either.
“In America, they rate pain from one to ten,” said Li’s mom.
Li said his pain was always changing.
Li’s mom suggested, for the third or fourth time in three weeks, getting X-rayed.
“I want to see a chiropractor first,” said Li. “When my back is truly bù xíng le, I’ll get an X-ray.”
* * *
—
“It doesn’t hurt there anymore,” said Li at his third massage as 21 worked on his right thigh.
“That means you’ve been listening to me.”
“But my left side hurts now,” said Li.
21 didn’t say anything.
“It hurts the most in the morning,” said Li.
“Are you having trouble breathing?” said 21.
Li lifted his head, said his nose was stuffed up.
21 said that was normal, due to facing down.
“Now is very painful,” said Li as 21 massaged his left thigh. 21 said it was good he felt “very cramped”—it meant the massage was working. Li was surprised 21 had edited “painful” to “cramped.” “Ow, ow,” he said, fearing he might scream. Then it was over.
21 massaged Li’s forehead.
Li hobbled around the massage table.
“Do you still feel pain?” said 21.
“I do, but it’s better.” It was what he’d decided to say after every session.
* * *
—
That night, after dinner, Li crept in and out of the kitchen, eating almonds, ghee, and sweetened rice. Li’s dad, who’d gotten home from China while Li and his mom were eating dinner, then had immediately left to buy batteries, was using his laptop computer, parts of which were held together with tape. Li’s mom was telling him to eat dinner so that they could go for a walk.
“You don’t need to bother him,” said Li, siding with his dad, which seemed to instantly sadden his mom. Sometimes he felt his capriciousness, shifting alliances near-daily, was a beneficial, balancing influence, allowing each parent to empathize with the other through him, but mostly he viewed it as frustrating and everyone-destabilizing.
On a rare post-dinner walk, Li felt deep inside the caves of himself. The world sounded distant and abstract. He realized he was ignoring his parents’ communications, not even grunting or mumbling, “Don’t know”—his stock parent-response for most of his life.
He started flapping—an exercise he’d discovered where he swung his arms—in a slow, minimal way. He’d been compulsively flapping to help his current and future moods. A glob of optimism dropped into him, and he felt open and calm.
“I should move through pain if I want to recover,” he said.
“Isn’t that the opposite of what 21 advises?” said Li’s mom.
“No,” said Li automatically, with an unpleasant sensation of mental dysfunction, and felt irritated again. “Stop pressuring me to do things differently.”
“Then I won’t say anything,” said Li’s mom. “We’ll all keep our mouths shut.”
“No,” said Li, and started flapping again.
“Who is 21?” said Li’s dad.
“The person who massages me,” said Li, wrapping his arms around his shoulders with each careful, huglike flap. People in the distance were also flapping. Many Taiwanese adults and elders flapped. Li hadn’t seen it in New York.
“Getting massaged too hard is dangerous,” said Li’s dad.
“No it isn’t,” said Li, annoyed.
Li’s dad blamed Li’s mom for upsetting Li, then walked away, talking to Dudu.
“I’m going home to write things,” said Li.
“You two go home,” said his mom. “I’m going to walk.”
* * *
—
“Fucked,” thought Li in English and Mandarin, lowering himself to bed over fifteen minutes, retreating five or six times to safer positions after encountering impasses of spasm-causing pain.
He lay breathing heavily and sweating. Pain had gradually worsened since the Bunun visit three weeks earlier. Massage wasn’t helping. Nothing seemed to help.
When his mom got home, she gave him an electric heat pad, which he accepted through his slightly ajar door with a noncommittal grunt.
Machines
On a pre-dinner walk three days later, Li’s dad photographed a plane. A cloud. Some birds. He liked to photograph things when outside and not carrying Dudu or engaged in business. He stopped walking, typed on his phone for a minute, and resumed walking.
Li said his dad was the oldest member of “facedown troupe”—a Taiwanese term for people who looked at their phones in public. Li’s dad said he’d seen older members. Li said no one else stood in place midwalk, emailing as their companions waited.
“I’m bathing tonight,” said Li’s dad, who bathed around twice a month. Self-consciously patting Li’s mom’s shoulder, he told her to “run the water” later, after dinner.
Li’s mom seemed very upset.
“He didn’t sound like he was being mean,” said Li. “We all help each other. You told Dad to clear out the ice in the refrigerator.”
“I’ll do it,” said Li’s mom—she’d fill the tub by turning a knob. “I just don’t like how ‘run the water’ sounds.” She said it was what servants were told and that Auntie had told her not to do it.
“So it’s Auntie,” said Li’s dad. “Ayo.”
“You two are older than me. You should be responsible and not bicker.”
“You’re right,” said Li’s mom.
“You two bicker more than me. No wonder I’m like this.”
“We didn’t bicker that much when you were small,” said Li’s mom. “Did we?”
“You did,” said Li.
“How did you hear us?” said Li’s mom, almost to herself.
“I heard bickering all the time,” said Li. He’d heard his sobbing mom tell his dad in a warbling voice, “She doesn’t love you—only I love you,” about a woman he seemed to have met in China. She’d driven away at night, not telling anyone where she was going. Li’s dad had slept on a sofa for weeks or months. Poodle shit and piss had accumulated in the house.
“He can hear us talk, of course he can hear us bicker,” said Li’s dad, who one night, sending a fax, had turned to an adolescent Li, who was eating ice cream and watching TV, and said, “Mom wants me to die. Should I kill myself? Do you want that?” Li had made an annoyed noise and turned back to the TV. It was the closest he’d seen his dad to crying.
“It takes two to bicker,” said Li’s mom.
“Dad didn’t say you were to blame,” said Li. “He said ‘us.’ ”
At their building’s gate, the security guard had a package from FedEx with a form problem.
“I’ll take care of it,” said Li’s mom, taking the form.
Dudu jogged toward the building in a slight gallop.
In the elevator, Li’s dad talked rapidly about the form.
“Stop talking,” said Li’s mom. “I can’t think.”
In his room drawing, Li heard his dad in his mom’s office, asking if she’d copied the form, telling her to do it, pontificating on FedEx and the need for copied forms, muttering, “Never listens.”
Li’s mom hissed some words conveying it was disgraceful and absurd for Li’s dad to feign knowledge on FedEx. She did all the shipping, payments, and bookkeeping for his companies.
“Heh,” said Li’s dad, and entered Li’s room. “Li. Where are my scissors?”
“You’re washing dishes tonight,” said Li, speaking Yahwehistly to kin again, though he’d been trying to resonate more with nature and other par
tnership teachers, like his Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors, Daoism, ethnobotanist Kathleen Harrison, and Jesus, who seemed to have promoted the opposite of Yahweh’s values.
“Why?” said Li’s dad.
“You don’t need to be upset,” said Li’s mom from her office.
“Because you’re not being nice to Mom,” said Li.
Li’s dad said Li’s mom had thrown pillows before.
“When?” said Li.
“She threw a pillow into the TV room and made me sleep there.”
“If you were nicer, she wouldn’t throw pillows,” said Li.
“Did you copy the form?” said Li’s dad.
Li’s mom didn’t respond.
“Mom always keeps copies of forms,” said Li.
“She’s forgotten three times,” said Li’s dad.
“Remember when you’ve told me to be nicer to Mom?” said Li. “Now I’m telling you to do that.”
Li’s dad said scolding worked.
Li said encouragement worked.
“Have you had employees?” said Li’s dad.
“Yes,” Li lied. “Encouragement works.”
Li’s dad said employees never changed unless yelled at. Li said his mom wasn’t an employee, and that he was going to fire his dad, then, for being a “not-good” dad.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” said Li’s dad. “So how am I a not-good dad?”
Thinking with barely perceptible humor that there was not “nothing wrong” with him, Li said everyone was to blame. He said his mom worked morning to night, maintaining the home, caring for Dudu, cooking, cleaning, helping his dad with his businesses, while his dad slept thrice a day.
“I work at night,” said Li’s dad. “When no one is bothering me.” He worked after his post-dinner nap, sometimes until five a.m., usually with the TV on.
“Maybe the hours worked are similar,” said Li, still thinking his mom worked more. “But you bother us with noise from the TV.”
“She’ll keep doing it wrong if I don’t scold her,” said Li’s dad.
“Mom isn’t perfect,” said Li. “No one is.”
“That’s why people need to be scolded.”
“Does Mom criticize your machines?” said Li.
“She calls them ugly all the time,” said Li’s dad.
“And you haven’t made them look better,” said Li, who’d once defended the machines, saying ugliness underscored functionality, which his mom had been happy to hear, saying, “Your own son understands you.”
“I have,” said Li’s dad. “Look at them.” On the table where they ate dinner were three machines resembling airplane armrests. He’d finished building the infrared diode lasers, used to treat glaucoma in pets and humans, days earlier.
“You need to be nicer to Mom,” said Li.
“She doesn’t understand. It’s not the look that matters for these.”
Li’s mom came out of her office holding a form and her phone in one hand. Li told her she was also to blame, which he instantly regretted, seeing her incensed, beleaguered face.
“Everyone is to blame,” said Li.
His parents began yelling at each other.
Li swept his arm hard across the table, pushing off the machines. Seeking more business ephemera to destroy, he entered his mom’s office, took a form from a scanner, crumpled it, and carried it into his room.
He stood still behind his door, heart thwacking.
“Give that back,” said Li’s mom.
“You don’t need it,” said Li.
“I need it to resolve the situation.”
“You don’t need to resolve it,” said Li.
“I need the form,” said Li’s mom.
“It’s not important,” said Li, walking aimlessly into his dad’s office. His dad was kneeling on the floor, between the table and the TV, gathering his machines.
“These are twenty thousand dollars each and they’ve been paid for,” said Li’s dad. “If they’re broken, I’m going to make you pay for them. Child thinks money is easy to make. We need these machines, because otherwise we’d have no money.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Li. Since 2003, when his dad was imprisoned, his mom seemed to have earned all their money through stocks and real estate. The three of them sometimes joked that Li’s dad should write a book titled How to Lose Money; the joke was possible because he’d been the original source of the money.
Li wandered into his room, then back to his dad.
“Fortunately, they’re durable,” said Li’s dad, arranging his machines. “I built them good. I can tell the doctor: I know these are strong because my son threw them against a wall and they didn’t break.”
Grinning convolutedly, Li returned to his room, where he spacily worked on a mandalic portrait of Dudu, marveling at his dad’s ability to view things positively.
He empathized with his mom, hearing her on the phone with FedEx in her office across the hall. She went downstairs to give a FedEx employee a form.
Li sat by his dad on the sofa. “You and Mom are getting older and might start forgetting more. You can’t treat Mom like this if she starts forgetting.”
“Mom’s brain is still good,” said Li’s dad, seated on the edge of the sofa, facing his small, dirty laptop, which was on a stack of ophthalmology textbooks.
“You can’t be like this if Mom forgets things due to age.”
“No, I can’t,” said Li’s dad.
“How will you know if she’s forgetting due to age?”
“When we’re old, we won’t bicker. We won’t remember anything.”
“She isn’t forgetting on purpose, to hurt you, right?”
“I won’t say anything then,” said Li’s dad in an annoyed voice.
“You should encourage, not criticize,” said Li.
Li’s mom returned. “I haven’t thrown a pillow once in the seven years we’ve lived in this apartment, and he’s still talking about it,” she said, and entered the kitchen to prepare dinner.
“Be nicer to Mom,” said Li. “Okay?”
“Okay,” said Li’s dad.
“When Dad is being mean, you can try to ignore him,” said Li to his mom.
“A lot of the time, it’s me,” she said. “My temper is not good.”
“Okay,” said Li. “You’ve both agreed to be nicer.”
* * *
—
At dinner, Li’s mom commented on TV and food in a strainedly happy voice to a monosyllabic Li. When he disputed one parent, the other seemed to become both disconcerted and enlivened, with his mom getting more disconcerted than his dad.
Li’s dad typed on his phone with a fierce expression. Li’s mom seemed to be refraining from pressuring him to eat. News was reporting on an elder woman who’d gotten heavily fined for stealing cabbage from a farm.
Li calculated he’d used cannabis three hours earlier; he became unstabler, he’d noticed, thirty to ninety minutes post-LSD and two to three hours post-cannabis. He asked his mom if her jaw still hurt. She said it had gotten better.
Li’s dad began to viciously berate someone—Li’s mom? The tirade sounded strangely vociferous and despairing. Li realized his dad was talking to his phone, on which he was text-messaging with one of his three employees.
Li’s dad called the employee, who was in China, and berated him slightly less irately than before. Li and his mom heard Li’s dad berate employees near-daily. They often told him to focus on writing papers instead of doing highly stressful business.
* * *
—
After dinner, Li lay supine in his room in pain. He used another cannabis capsule and felt despair at his dwindling supply. He’d been meaning to order more LSD. He was almost out of money.
He slept for an hour,
then apologized to his dad, who interrupted him, saying there was no need to apologize: Li had helped him find weaknesses in his machines. One had come apart.
“What is it?” said Li’s mom warily.
Li’s dad explained.
Li’s mom smiled at Li.
In his room, Li typed an account of the night. He entered the kitchen and saw his dad torqued toward him from the sofa, saying, “You can’t throw things. You can’t and Mom can’t. Mom has thrown dishes before. You two can’t do that.”
“You’re right,” said Li.
“Didn’t you throw my computer once?”
“I hit it on the floor,” said Li about the MacBook he and his mom had gotten for his dad, but which his mom used. “When I found out you were using statins again and that Mom was using Nexium.”
“Can’t do that,” said Li’s dad.
“I know,” said Li, admiring his dad’s characteristic method of initially showing humor and forgiveness, then later seriously discussing his disapproval. “I don’t want to.”
“No one says throwing things is good,” said Li’s mom from her office.
“Throwing pillows is okay, not expensive things,” said Li’s dad.
* * *
—
In bed, where he increasingly spent his time, Li remembered he had steel staples in his lung. He’d read that biofilms survived on iron, that steel was mostly iron, and that pathogenic biofilms caused “cognitive impairment, processing abnormalities, and memory problems.” It seemed strange that a lung could be stapled. Wouldn’t the staples just slide out?
He focused around ten feet past his closed lids, expecting to see something. After a few minutes, the slipperily wisping contours of a small dog appeared in unsteady motion, as if trotting on a treadmill seen from above in shifting angles. He sustained the vision with a mental-physical effort that felt like he was merging his two eyes into one. The dog disappeared after six seconds. Li stared more but saw nothing.
He’d dabbled in this visionary practice for three years. It relaxed his eyes and helped him sleep. He’d seen landscapes and city skylines before—startlingly realistic grayscale panoramas, scrolling across his imagination screen, the nearer parts passing faster than the farther parts, as if he were in a train or helicopter, looking outside through absurdly dark sunglasses. He usually went from seeing to sleeping or dreaming, making it harder to remember the visions.