Eleven Twenty-Three (8 page)

“Read any good books lately?” I ask her,
inspecting my mother’s overfilled candy jar looking useless on the
coffee table.

“You look good, but tired,” she says,
apparently not having read any good books. “Are you getting enough
sleep over there? Are the beds comfortable?”

“I’m fine. It was a long flight, is all. The
beds are okay, I suppose. Tara might disagree with me. She says the
bed in our apartment feels like plywood with a sheet draped over
it.”

“Is everything okay with you and that girl?”
she asks, and I swallow away a momentary pang of irritation. Even
after three years, Tara will apparently always remain
that
girl
. I suppose it doesn’t matter.

“You mean
Tara
? Yeah, we're fine.”

“I’m sorry you had to come home early,” she
says, sipping her wine. “I know that must have been hard to sort
out with the university.”

“It’s okay. I just wish I was returning home
under better circumstances.” I watch as the orange tabby cat,
Percy, saunters by my mother’s legs, leaving a trail of hair on her
nightgown. “By the way, Mom, uh, how are you coping with this?”

“About your father?” she asks, as if there’d
be anything else for her to cope with other than the fact that
she’s forgotten what the sun looks like. She smiles at Percy, who
is on his haunches staring up at her. “Well, I’m—I suppose I’m
fine. I mean, how does one react to the death of a cold
mean-spirited asshole?”

“I’m not sure, Mom. Ask every other widow in
history.”

“That’s bleaker than I’m used to from you,
Layne. What happened?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I sigh. “It’s just an
argument Tara and I had earlier. She’s pushing for the marriage
thing again, and now she’s throwing down the
marry-me-or-I-won’t-go-back-to-China gauntlet. It reminds me of all
those ultimatums she gave when I asked her to move out of the
apartment back in February. It’s really selfish and annoying, and
furthermore, I’m going back to Suzhou whether Tara comes or
not.”

“It certainly
is
unfair of her,
Layne,” my mother says vehemently, as I suspected she might. “Don’t
let someone pressure you into marriage like that. You do what you
think is best. If you have to then leave her, but don’t give in to
a demand like the one that girl is giving you.”

I can always count on my mother to take my
side in every fight that girl and I have. Her unwavering support of
my growing detachment from human existence has been one latent
function of Dad’s departure when I was nineteen.

“I’m sure things will be fine between us,” I
say. “I’m not especially worried about it. I’ve got other things on
my mind right now.”

“Do you want to talk about your father?” my
mother asks so quietly that I almost have to ask her to repeat
herself. “We could, if you need to.”

“We don’t need to talk about it. And if I
did, I’ve got to be honest, Mom: I don’t think it’d be you I went
to.”

“Look, Layne, no matter what happened between
your father and I, he’s—he’s still your father. I understand that.
Even if he
was
married to someone
your
age when he
died—”

“And it’s comments like that one, right
there
, why I couldn’t go to you,” I point out, standing up
and heading toward the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine.
“It’s just too close to you, Mom, and truthfully, it hardly matters
to me. I’m much more concerned over how
you
would take him
dying than I myself would. Dad’s family, his sisters and brother
and the grandparents—none of them have called us. No one is
expecting anything of
either
of us, Mom. We could probably
not even show up tomorrow morning and no one would think anything
of it. I believe that even his own flesh and blood would have to
admit that he was kind of a, um, bad person.”

My mom guzzles down her wine and says, “Trust
me, son. They would definitely think
something
of it if we
didn’t go. I think it best we show up, keep our mouths shut, and
respond with nothing but the most positive descriptions of our
lives if anyone asks. But forget about your father for a minute.
After all, he forgot about you and me for
years
—”

“Nice one,” I say, drinking a full glass of
Mom’s cheap Pinot and then pouring myself another.

“Something has been going on lately back here
in town. You probably don’t know about it since you’ve been
away—and I
did
want to talk to you about that later.”

“Fantastic,” I mutter, sipping from another
glass and hovering over the kitchen sink.

I look around. All of the dishes are put
away. Everything is tidy and resting in its correct place. The
roast is drying out peacefully in the oven. My mother’s kitchen—my
mother’s entire life—is a clean, well-tended museum exhibit, a
perfectly dead replica of a human home where everything stays neat
because no one is alive here to disturb it. A part of me wants to
burn this place down, just to see the change.

“I’m only saying that you don’t have to
completely forsake America, son. You have a degree in History, in
case you haven’t forgotten. I’m sure you could find some worthwhile
career closer to home, if you’d just stop being pissed off at what
happened with the girl last spring—”

“Before I left, I was a waiter at Applebee’s,
Mom. I had
parents
come in and eat at my table. Once I had
an old student and his jerk-off friends sit in my section, and then
the little bastards actually had the guile to ask me for Long
Islands, and when I asked if they were kidding, you know what they
said?”

“Something mean?”

“Yes, Mom. Something mean. They asked what it
mattered to me, since I probably got Olivia drunk right before I
violated her. That’s what they said.”

“What do you want, Layne? Teenagers are
heartless little wretches. You know that.”

“The point I am making,” I say carefully, “is
that things weren’t exactly peachy here when I left. China—a
country on the opposite side of the planet—just seemed like a
really good idea at the time. You know?”

“I’m simply
suggesting
that maybe when
your contract is up, maybe you should move back to Florida and work
on getting your life together again. That’s all, son. I just want
my baby boy closer to home.”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about the school
thing anymore, if that’s okay,” I declare, clenching the wine glass
and begging to God for one of the cigarettes that I know I left in
the car. My mother doesn’t know I smoke. “What else did you want to
talk about?”

She rests her glass on the floor, and
Shelley, the Persian that sheds too much, pokes his nose down and
smells the basin. Mom begins to slowly, methodically pet him,
running her hand through his thick black fur just above his eyes,
down his back, and through the staticky raised hairs on his tail.
She hums softly to herself. As I watch her, I have to blink away
tears.

“Mom?”

She stares at the closed blinds covering the
window, as if she can see anything out there. For the first time I
realize just how dark it is in her living room.

“Mom.”

Even in the dank lamplight, I can see the
first tear run down her cheek and hang precariously from her jaw.
It suddenly becomes very important to me that that single drop of
sadness not let go, not ever fall to the floor.

“Maybe you shouldn’t go to Dad’s funeral
tomorrow,” I say off-handedly.

The tear falls to the floor.

“No, no,” she says, shaking her head, tossed
back into reality. “I’m going. And you need to, as well.”

“What did you want to bring up a minute
ago?”

“I wanted to talk about what’s happening
across town,” she says matter-of-factly.

“You mean here in Lilly’s End?” I ask.

“Yes, here in Lilly’s End. Did you notice
anything strange today as you were driving in?”

“It was…rainy. It looked a little beaten up
around town ever since Hurricane Brooke came through. But other
than that, no—”

“Everyone has been very sick lately,” she
says, standing up and breezing past me to check on the pot
roast.

I head back into the living room and sit down
on the couch, thinking about what she said. I look over at my mom
as she tries to manage dinner. When she opens the oven door,
unappealing smoke pours out and she has to quickly remove the food
and set it on the counter next to the pot of mashed potatoes and a
big plastic bowl full of steamed vegetables, now cold. She makes
noises with spoons and a carving knife and curses under her breath.
Then she shrugs to herself and comes back into the den with me.

“Let’s just give the roast a minute to cool,”
she says. “By the way, it may be just a tad overcooked. I hope
that’s okay.”

“It’s fine,” I tell her. “What do you mean,
everyone is sick lately?”

“Something in the air, maybe. A virus. Some
bug. I don’t know. Across the End for weeks now, people have been
throwing up and their eyes have been red and dry and everyone’s
been coughing a lot. It’s like some kind of smog or something is
making everyone sick. It even made the Orlando news, it’s been so
bad, and I’ve seen medical people in town, too. Asking questions.
Testing the air. Things like that.”

“That’s…terrible,” I say. “I think I may have
seen some of those medical people on the way over here, actually.
Did you get sick too?”

“A little bit. But I don’t go out that much
really, so maybe I was able to avoid it. But anyway, I just want
you and that girl and Hajime to be careful, that’s all. With the
nightmares, too.”

“I’m sorry?” I say, but am sure I heard her
correctly. Tara’s dream, of Mr. Scott writing out the plotline that
will lead to our own deaths, reverberates in my mind, and I
swallow. “Nightmares, Mom?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, baby. Let’s eat. Tell
me all about your China trip.”

Over dinner—which is admittedly terrible but
in a good way that makes me feel nostalgic and even slightly glad
to be back home in Lilly’s End, despite the sickness floating in
the air and the nightmares that run rampant and the rain that
hasn’t stopped for more than an hour since I got here and the fact
that my mother is acting even more off than usual and will probably
cause a major scene at my father’s funeral tomorrow morning—I tell
her about my trip thus far. I tell her about the well-behaved
students and the uppity tenured professors who make several
thousand Yuan less than me a pay period. I describe the carvings
that line the underside of bridges as you take boat rides down the
ancient canals of Suzhou, and the Triads who show off their
elaborate full-body tattoos of dragons and beautiful sultry women
as they smoke Bai-sha cigarettes. I smile as I describe the KTVs
and the private booths where Tara and I get drunk with our new
expatriate friends and sing dancey renditions of the theme from
Friends
. She nods at all of my short anecdotes where I
describe the times I almost unwittingly paid for the services of
prostitutes, who our friend Nalan Minghui calls “long fingernail
girls.” When I go into detail about Suzhou and Shanghai at
night—about the lights and busy streets and strange
stomach-churning smells and constant stares from the elderly and
total cold shoulder from the college-age kids who are too cool to
look at the bumbling American and his voluptuous red-headed
girlfriend, my mother sips her wine.

She keeps telling me how exciting all of this
is, and how she understands. She insists she can visualize the
places and moments I’m describing, the same way she did when she
was a kid and read Pearl S. Buck for the first time. But she
doesn’t understand, and I know it. And she knows I know it. I don’t
think she understands anything anymore outside of this
apartment.

“Well, it sounds fantastic,” she finally
says. “I can definitely see why you’re in no hurry to move back.
Forget what I said earlier about getting a job here, baby. I think
where you’re at sounds like a great adventure.”

“No, Mom,” I say. “What you suggested, about
moving back and starting over again here—it
is
a good idea.
Lilly’s End is a nice place to live. It’s just—I’m not—well, my
contract was for a year. Let’s just wait and see what happens when
I’m done. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, and leans forward over the
tiny table at the corner of the dining room and gives me a gentle
kiss on my forehead. “Will you meet me here tomorrow morning? I
didn’t want to ride alone. Can we go together?”

“Of course we can. I already assumed we
were.”

“Thank you.”

My mother then begins clearing our plates and
carrying them to the sink. I watch her as she cleans up. Percy
stands on the kitchen counter and watches her as well.

“By the way,” she says, “don’t party too hard
tonight.”

“What makes you think I was?” I ask,
grinning.

“I haven’t forgotten about Hajime, son. You
two have always been trouble. Besides, something tells me that
tomorrow will be very interesting, aside from just the funeral.
Very…profound. We’ll both have to be strong tomorrow.”

“I imagine we will,” I agree, fingering the
keys in my pocket.

“And with that bug going around…it’s funny. I
only felt really ill a few times, but when I did, it was always
late at night or just before noon. I hope you and Tara don’t catch
it now that you’re home.”

PARENTHESIS

I never wanted to be a teacher. I didn’t know
what
I wanted to be when I majored in American History in
college, to be honest. Maybe I didn’t want to be anything. There
were a lot of those types, I think, the ones who focused their
entire college career on a subject they would speak of with James
Barrie-esque fancy, idiotically drunk on the miscalculations of
their own innate talent. It wasn’t as if they really did have a
shot at becoming a costume designer for Broadway musicals, or the
guy who argues politics with Hannity and Colmes. None of these
people was ever going to be on the first manned expedition to Mars,
nor were they going to work as a script supervisor on the show
Heroes.
They weren’t going to be anything, other than maybe
the guy who brings you a two-for-one draught of beer at Friday’s
who happens to have a degree in political science, or costume
design, or American Studies, or History. They were all future
nothings. So was I.