Leave Society

by Tao Lin

  They descended the mountain and rested at the waterfall with the phytoncide-anion sign, eating cookies that Li and his mom had made from almonds, ghee, honey, ginger, turmeric, black pepper, and sea salt.

  * * *

  —

  On the train home, Li’s dad asked if the movie of Li’s third novel, which was about the first half of his three-year drug phase, would have fighting sequences.

  “I don’t know,” said Li. “I only read half the screenplay.”

  “It’s good we’re going to be in a movie,” said Li’s dad.

  “You’ll be in more movies in the future,” said Li.

  “Can you write more about Du?” said Li’s dad.

  “Yes,” said Li.

  “Can you write more about me?” said Li’s dad.

  “I’m already writing a lot about you.”

  “Can you write about me writing papers?” said Li’s dad.

  “The more I see you writing papers, the more I’ll write about it.”

  At Daan Park Station, a man got on the train wearing a jacket that said “Antisoclal”—a typo, it seemed, for “Antisocial.” Li and his parents laughed.

  Li asked his parents how they’d first heard of the stock market. They said a man named Johnny told them about it in 1991. They’d given their money to a stockbroker, who’d lost most of it. Later, when Li’s dad was in prison, Li’s mom had excelled at stocks.

  “Without Mom, we’d have no money,” said Li’s dad.

  “It’s true,” said Li’s mom.

  Li’s parents discussed China for a while. Li’s dad was trying to get government approval to sell his lasers in China.

  At Taipei Main Station, Li’s dad said he needed to buy batteries and got off the train. Dudu, in her enclosed container, squeaked in an almost inaudibly high-pitched tone for the remaining two stops, looking out her mesh window for Li’s dad.

  “Don’t worry,” said Li’s mom. “Dad went to buy batteries.”

  * * *

  —

  Two days later, on a train to Elephant Mountain, Li’s dad wrote notes on a thrice-folded piece of paper. Noticing Li photograph him, he proposed sending Li an equation a day to post online. Li declined and encouraged his dad to do it himself.

  On the mountain, Li’s mom said, “We should let Dad bring his phone next time, so he can listen to music.” They’d forbidden him to bring his phone that day.

  Li said he related to his dad’s phone addiction.

  “I’ve never had that problem,” said Li’s mom.

  “Because you don’t do business,” said Li’s dad.

  “I do half your business,” said Li’s mom.

  After hiking, they walked through a dense cityscape toward the train station, passing bakeries, cafés, a KFC, a Hi-Life, a FamilyMart, and other stores.

  “Is Chiang Kai-shek good or not good?” said Li’s dad to Li.

  Li didn’t respond. His dad asked twice more.

  “I don’t care,” said Li. “Don’t talk about that.”

  “Mom thinks he’s good,” said Li’s dad, and began to tell Li in a strangely serious voice, as if he were telling a scary story, that his mom had been brainwashed.

  Li’s mom’s face flushed with irritation.

  “Try not to be too affected by him,” said Li.

  “She’s too affected,” said Li’s dad. “She’s threatened divorce over politics.” But then instead of getting increasingly riled, as in the past, he laughed self-consciously, as if stoned, and said, “I’ve been trying to say political things less around her.”

  “Then keep trying,” said Li. Ostensibly changing topics, he said he’d realized his personality was influenced by his health; he’d been taciturn, monotone, and withdrawn for most of his life because that was what his body could muster.

  Li’s mom said that once, when she was in middle school, she’d hidden when Fat Uncle brought home one of his friends because she’d been too shy to meet anyone new.

  Li’s dad said something Li didn’t hear.

  “Don’t talk,” said Li’s mom.

  “What’s the matter?” said Li, frustrated his parents kept falling into bickering.

  Li’s mom looked gravely distraught.

  “What happened when you hid?” said Li.

  “Nothing. I was just embarrassed.”

  “What happened just now? Why did you get upset?”

  “Dad was going to comment,” said Li’s mom, “comment” in English.

  “He might say something good,” said Li, escalating down into a train station. “You assume he’ll say something bad. I want to hear what Dad says too. It’s a conversation.”

  “Why did Fat Uncle hide?” said Li’s dad.

  “He didn’t,” said Li. “Mom hid.”

  Li’s dad said Li’s mom had been so afraid in college that she had to be taken around by people. She never went anywhere alone.

  Li felt closer to his mom. For most of his life he’d viewed her as confident and well-adjusted—a strong mom raising a weak, tortured child. He was realizing she’d changed over decades.

  * * *

  —

  It was Li’s dad’s job, after hiking and walks, to wash Dudu’s feet and put newspaper and a soup-pot mat on the dinner table. Usually, Li’s mom reminded him repeatedly to do his tasks, sometimes more than ten times, but that night he did everything before being told, even moving the one-seat sofa that Li used at dinner nearer the table—a task from the previous year, when Li had had debilitating pain—then went into the kitchen to help some more.

  Li’s mom was sautéing pork.

  “It’s good you didn’t grind the pork,” said Li’s dad.

  “If someone cooked for me, I wouldn’t complain,” said Li’s mom.

  “Dad is just stating his preference for non-ground meat,” said Li.

  Li’s mom said Li was good at [a word Li didn’t understand].

  “What is that?” said Li.

  “Mediating,” said his mom in English.

  Li said he felt unhappy when his parents bickered.

  Li’s mom said their bickering never led to anything.

  Li said bickering itself was something.

  * * *

  —

  At dinner, Taiwan’s president appeared on TV. Li liked her—she was one-fourth Paiwan, Taiwan’s second-largest aboriginal group, and had issued Taiwan’s first apology to its indigenous people, saying their rights had been brutally violated by every regime who’d gone to Taiwan in the past four centuries—but he changed the channel to deter parental tension.

  “Did you like this one?” said Li’s mom about a pigskin dish in a surprisingly, almost confrontationally friendly voice, looking at Li’s dad, who quietly said he did, seeming discomfited by the rare tone, then non sequitured, “Don’t grind the pork,” which visibly annoyed Li’s mom, but Li smiled at her—her bangs, cut that day, made her seem childlike—and she smiled back.

  Li’s dad began squeezing her thigh, and she uncharacteristically did not move his hand away. “Look at Binky—Tabby—Dudu,” she said, smiling at her original mistake, grace-noting “Dudu” with a poodle recap—they’d gotten Binky in 1988, Tabby in 1993, Dudu in 2008. “After dinner, when she doesn’t need us, she looks away.”

  Dudu was on the sofa in a Sphinx position, facing no one.

  * * *

  —

  Later that night, when Li returned from taking trash/recycling to the basement, his mom, supine on a sofa with her eyes closed, said he’d been in Taiwan for almost three weeks. “Only nine more weeks until you go back,” she said. “Time goes too fast.”

  An hour later, she emailed Li, “Sorry we have not been a good role model as a couple and let you feel sad. I have always been upset by Dad’s wrong accusations, but I alwa
ys get over it and still love and take care of him, no matter what.”

  “You misunderstand me,” replied Li. “I don’t care if you take care of Dad or not. I actually think it could be good if you two lived separately. Bickering and fighting all the time is what I don’t like. It makes it unenjoyable and stressful to be here.”

  “All couples fight and argue from time to time. It is normal. It is impossible for two people to live together and have the same way of doing things. The most important thing is to compromise and forgive. That is the way of life.”

  “I will visit less then. I can’t be around this all the time. I’m trying to help but it feels like constant tension. You and Dad need to keep trying or I won’t visit.”

  “I will try my best. We like you to visit as often as you can.”

  “Okay, good. I am trying also.”

  * * *

  —

  The next day, Li woke to his mom’s exasperated voice. He emailed her, “Feels terrible to wake to bickering. You already nagged Dad yesterday about his employee. I am serious about going back. When my editor sends me edits, I’m going to work on my book and I may want to go back to NYC.”

  He lay staring out the window, past an elevated train track, at the placid sky, seeing no microfireflies. The clouds seemed feeling-shaped, amorphously morphing.

  He went to his computer. His mom had replied, “I was not angry, just suggested to Dad instead of complaining what the employee wrote, why not just write it himself. Maybe I used the improper tone.”

  “You did,” replied Li. “And when dad responded (saying the same things as yesterday) you told him to stop talking. It was rude.”

  “I did not realize that I used the wrong tone, thanks for pointing that out to me again. It has been this way for such a long time, it is hard to change, but I will try.”

  “Be nice to Mom,” Li emailed his dad. “If you and Mom keep doing this, I will come back less each year. You were good last night, washing Dudu’s feet and putting newspaper on the table. Thank you.”

  * * *

  —

  The next day, on the way to a movie, Li had his first nosebleed in months. His parents noticed. He blamed it on being upset due to their bickering. His mom said upsetness didn’t cause nosebleeds. Li said it could.

  Stoned during the movie, he imagined the characters frantically researching the mystery in between the on-screen scenes. Every part of the mystery—every atom, cell, dream, and dimension—seemed to lead to more of itself. The more one learned about the everywhere-portal of it, the more of it there was. Maybe it had no end.

  A cantankerous character in the movie suddenly reminded Li of how much his parents had seemed to hate each other when he got to Taiwan three weeks earlier. He realized they’d definitely gotten friendlier to each other since then. His mediation efforts were working. He felt heartened and encouraged.

  After the movie, Li and his mom mimed the arm motion his dad, who was in the bathroom, used to do, in which it seemed like his arm was paralyzed and he had to shake it to regain control.

  Li’s mom’s laughter sounded purer than Li had ever heard from her, almost performative with inflection. “Actually, Dad isn’t a not-good dad,” she said. “He just doesn’t know how to talk sometimes.”

  On the way home, Li admitted his nosebleed had probably been due to excessive fish liver oil. He told his parents he’d been recording them for his novel.

  “Then we need to be careful of what we say,” said Li’s mom, smiling. She’d read all of Li’s published writing, online and in print.

  Catatonia

  Two days later, on the train home after seeing Split, a movie about a man with twenty-four personalities, Li said society put children and elders with problems into hospitals, where they became bù xíng le. “You two are lucky,” he said. “You don’t have to fear me putting you in a hospital. Even if you were insane, I wouldn’t.”

  “You care about us,” said Li’s mom, and Li said people who brought their relatives to hospitals also cared, which made it complex and tragic and hard to discuss.

  At home, Li’s parents seemed on the verge of sustained, active bickering. “Five more minutes,” said Li’s dad. Five minutes later, he still wasn’t ready. He began to mutter that all Li’s mom did was nag him. Li’s mom retreated to her office and dejectedly said they’d go someplace nearer to walk instead of Daan Park since it was getting late.

  Li asked his dad when he’d be ready, told his mom (“Five minutes”), mounted the inversion table, began a voice memo, and said that as he got more limber and less inflamed he could crack more of his bones, including, while inverted, ones in his sacrum.

  Li’s dad stood, finally ready to go, and asked if Dudu could use the table. Li’s mom said she was too short. In the elevator, Dudu did Downward-Facing Dog and other stretches, and Li said she didn’t need the table.

  Outside, Li realized his parents had been bickering about a FedEx issue for two days. He decided to distract them with questions. He asked his mom what she’d thought in July, seven months earlier, when she weighed less than ever.

  “I thought I had cancer. Cancer causes sudden weight drop.”

  “Were you very scared?” said Li.

  “Very worried. Not scared. If I had cancer, it would be very inconvenient, needing to do this, do that.”

  “Did you tell Dad?”

  “No. Telling him would be of no use.”

  Dudu chased Li’s dad as he jogged ahead, saying, “Run, run, run, run!” Each morning, she guarded him from inside or outside the bathroom as he sat on the toilet with two phones—emailing, messaging, checking stock prices, watching videos.

  “He doesn’t know what’s going on with me,” said Li’s mom.

  “He knows,” said Li accusatorily. “One day when you weren’t home, Dad told me to check the internet for what it meant that you lost two kilograms.”

  “I only tell Auntie,” said Li’s mom. “And Thin Uncle and Mike.”

  “In the past, have you told Dad before?”

  “I’ve said, ‘Ayo! I only weigh such-and-such.’ ”

  “When your weight only went down a little, he knew. He looked very worried, and it had only been two kilograms. It was before you lost even more weight.”

  “It could be there’s worry, but he won’t say it,” Li’s mom relented.

  Li’s dad was ahead in the crowded plaza, carrying Dudu, who’d gotten scared and stopped walking.

  Dudu seemed to favor Li’s dad mainly because he didn’t rub fish oil on her gums or clean her. Whenever Li’s mom approached her to retrieve her for cleaning, Dudu huddled in place, growling with increasing ferocity until becoming abruptly docile once held.

  “Did you tell Auntie why you lost weight?” said Li.

  “I told her it could be, if not cancer, a thyroid problem.”

  A plane flying to an airport two miles away lumbered past, fuming and low, muting the Sunday crowd, maybe half of whom were there for the farmers market.

  “When I was switching medications…,” said Li’s mom about Thyro-Gold.

  “What about that?” said Li.

  “It could be that, switching.”

  “It was,” said Li, surprised by her uncertainty. He explained thyroid’s connection to weight, then said, “The director of Split directed The Sixth Sense. Have you seen it?”

  “I have,” said Li’s mom. “The child, who sees…I must have seen it with you.”

  “Child who sees what?” said Li’s dad.

  “Ghosts,” said Li in English.

  “Most of the movies I’ve seen, I’ve seen with Li,” said Li’s mom. They’d seen many movies together when Li was a tween and teenager. Mike had been at college. Their dad had usually been away on business.

  “Ayo—you haven’t seen any movies, Du,” said Li
’s dad, setting Dudu on the sidewalk. “Li saw so many movies as a child and he forgot them all. Children watching movies isn’t much use.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” said Li quietly.

  As Li’s mom told a story involving Li and jumping, Li’s dad interrupted her, saying, “Hey, are they digging something here? Look. Are they building something here?”

  Li’s parents seemed to be vying for Li’s attention. Li’s mom continued reminiscing: The two of them had often gone to restaurants—Steak and Ale, Olive Garden, Yae Sushi. “Once we sat, you’d say, ‘Do you believe there is a God?’ ”

  “What would you say?” said Li, surprised.

  “I would just say there was,” said Li’s mom.

  “I don’t remember asking that,” said Li.

  “You often asked it. At that time, you believed there was.”

  “What was one reason I gave for there being a God?”

  “Reasons, I can’t say,” said Li’s mom. “Don’t remember.”

  Dudu pooped, and Li’s dad wrapped the poop in a paper towel, then wiped Dudu’s butt.

  Li thought that how his parents treated Dudu, with attentive patience, enduring curiosity, and unconditional love, was probably how they’d treated him when he was small and maybe how they still treated him.

  Minutes later, they saw Dudu forty feet behind them, standing motionless, looking at them with her blank gaze.

  “Du, come,” shouted Li’s mom, and clapped thrice.

  “She hasn’t walked here before,” offered Li.

  “Has,” said Li’s mom.

  Dudu sat. Li’s dad took a business call. Li and his mom discussed the ten or so wild dogs who lived in the parks by their building. “If we see wild dogs, we should pick up Du,” said Li’s mom. “Du would be dead in an instant. A wild dog bit Thin Uncle’s Mianmian. Mianmian was hospitalized many days.”

  “Come, child,” shouted Li’s dad after his call.

  “A moment ago, she walked a little,” said Li.