For Ebenezer, who had a point.
Elroy broke the silence as their car approached O'Hare. "Getting a diagnosis is one thing … it's another to … she'll be OK."
Wrong. Li's mom would not be OK. They'd found a tumor in her stomach the year before, the aberrant cells had proliferated, and now she had a blockage in her digestive tract. Hence the Yuletide flight to Los Angeles.
"Justin has things under control," Elroy said.
Right. Her kid brother could not exactly control cancer, like he could people, but he contained it somehow, bent it to his purposes.
"He means well," he said, reading her mind. "He just has …"
"Standards," she said.
"High standards," Elroy said. Which he could doubtless appreciate, being both a CPA and a competent driver. He followed directions to departing flights and pulled up by the sign for Li's airline. They sprang her suitcase from the trunk. She consented to a curbside kiss.
"It will be a blue Christmas without you," he murmured.
"That sounds like something from a song," Li said. Meaning he'd been tacky. Again. The pine sapling she'd allowed in the living room would be her one concession to the season.
He gave her a sheepish smile by way of apology, and switched to dark humor. "You will remember your commandments, won't you?"
The so-called "10 Commandments for Depressed Living" started as a way of turning Li's plunging moods into their private joke. Elroy still acted like they were funny, but to Li they had become as stern and implacable as the originals. Most were improvisations, reinvented as life unraveled; only the first three were set in stone. I. Nobody cares why you're so depressed; II. Nobody cares about you period, not even your so-called friends; III. There's nothing better than this hiding in some multiverse, why not tell those kids the truth?
"They're more like assertions than injunctions," Li said. "Strictly speaking, one's even an interrogatory."
Elroy held out a phone charge cord, his smile fading. "Need one of these?"
Dejร vu. They'd met a decade before at The Coexistence, a college-town haunt popular with varied demographics. Li had entered with her roommate as Elroy, the sound guy, looked up from attaching a cable to a mixer. At the time she thought his country boy look endearing.
That charm has since worn thin. "Yes," Li said, snatching the cord. Elroy brushed her fingers, but Li was in no mood for nonsense, about her mom or anything else.
"According to Web Oncologist she has six months max, probably less," she said.
"What does Justin say?"
Li shrugged. Elroy gave her the earnest look he used when searching for someway to be reassuring.
"We'll worry about that other stuff when you get back," he said soothingly, referring to her career problem. An easier fix than death. "It's one thing to, to …."
"We'll worry about it never," she said, "it's not as if they're firing me." She strode purposefully toward the entrance, tugging the suitcase behind her. A glass door slid open to allow her passage; she turned around.
Elroy stood staring at her, shivering in the biting cold. She waved goodbye. He blew her a kiss. She turned back and sped through the door.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
Li's go-to air travel survival strategy was to rate the aspects she detested. The security check was particularly loathsome this time: after an excruciating wait, and the struggle out of her shoes, the body threat monitor flashed "ANOMALY!" when she stood in the scan cylinder — so she had to hold the hands-joined-over-head pose while a TSA agent patted her sides while sniffing disapprovingly at her armpits. Then her contempt for airport cuisine was confirmed when MediGrill served her a Caesar salad, and somehow managed to ruin the croutons. Most of all, she hated the cramped airplane seating, the long, enforced proximity with other people. At least this time she'd selected a window seat.
A white guy wearing a cyborg-style wedge earpiece sat next to her. She overheard him whisper "We'll see." Then he opened his briefcase and inspected a document, clearly trying to give the impression he had significant matters that needed his attention. He must want to lure her into conversation, or worse. Li attacked.
"Four. A person doesn't need to confide in their spouse just because they got fired," she said, expecting confused discomfort. But her seatmate seemed curious about her commandment.
Li plunged ahead. "Keep leaving and coming home at the same time, recycle stories about co-workers, how could they tell? Just try to look important, same as always."
"What about the money?" her seatmate said.
"The money?"
"You know, their standard of living." The seatbelt sign flashed, and the man buckled up, looking at her reflectively. The plane was rolling away from the terminal
She did not want a conversation. "We'll be very close up there," she said, "so there's something you should know about me. When my husband realizes I've gone dark, he doesn't ask if my job still exists. He doesn't ask about money, bills get paid eventually. He asks about me, and hides the dangerous pills and sharp knives.
That did the trick. "Nice of him," her seatmate said politely, and dove back into his document. He didn't look up when the plane taxied the runway.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
At sunset the flight progress display showed they were over the Rockies, but no mountains were visible beneath the darkening cloud canopy. Her seatmate had spoken twice, to order cocktails. Li stared out the window and brooded about her career.
Her parents had taught their children that intelligence and amiability were the virtues Zhangs prized most, and in high school, Li and Justin each found a path to their approval. Li got straight A's in her science classes, while Justin did OK in his studies, up to the point where excessive effort could jeopardize his status as a popular boy.
Justin stayed close to the nest and became a realtor at a time when money was pouring into Los Angeles from an opened China. He accepted the wealth of the world as only his due.
But in adult life Li floundered. Her Ph.D. dissertation was on the holographic principle, how all the information in the 3-dimensional interior of a black hole is encoded on its 2-dimensional boundary. She wanted the solution to be orbiting photons, bands of pure luminescence, which, in some sublime way, shared an identity with the voracious darkness that held them in place. Eight years; miles paced; plausible conjectures; no breakthroughs. Li took this as proof positive of her true mediocrity. When her advisor asked for the 9th round of changes, she seized the opportunity to give up.
She took part-time jobs teaching physics 101 in community colleges. And then, in another step down, doing Philosophy of Physics at the state university. If you can't make new discoveries, you can grade essays about the multiverse, the sci-fi trope du jour.
Her seatmate had put away his briefcase and was leafing through a magazine.
"Five. Problem is, you're a very stupid person," Li said. So softly no response was required.
The man shifted in his seat and hunkered down into his mag.
So stupid, she responded silently to herself, that the dean had brought in a younger, smarter prof to teach a second section of physics philosophy. The students had voted with their feet, and this semester she had so few enrollments the dean canceled her class. Goodbye lousy career. She'd told Elroy there had been cutbacks, and she'd need to teach something else in the Spring. And he believed her. What a jerk! Perfect husband for her.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
The plane landed. Before it reached the terminal, her seatmate unbuckled himself and squeezed into the center aisle. A steward confronted him, and they had an urgent conversation. When the plane stopped and the aisle began to fill, the steward took an empty seat and gave Li a look.
Li found herself behind a frail, old, bent Black woman, leaning heavily on a cane, in the line that inched painfully toward the exit. The woman wore a Santa cap, and was pushing along a shopping bag filled with wrapped presents. People crouched at their seats, looking for opportunities to join the line, smiled at her indulgently.
"Six. First you rot, then you die," Li said, using her ignorable voice.
But the woman surprised her by turning around. "The whole planet is dying, not just you," Li admonished her. "Did you hear about the 120-degree heat wave in India last summer? Birds dropped from the sky, spontaneous fires started in the great New Delhi garbage dump. People 'live' by picking through refuse in that dump, no air conditioning, no cold drinks. Do you know that concept, 'hell'?"
"Yes," the woman wheezed, and turned back around.
When Li reached the steward, he got up and squeezed into the line behind her. "Happy holidays," he said, in a way that was a politeness, a prescription, and an admonition.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
From down the concourse, Li recognized Justin by his trademark textured quiff haircut, tresses sculpted into a wave that crested above his forehead. Coming closer, she saw that he had donned an elegant mohair cardigan for the occasion. He looked up with an empathic expression when she drew near, wearing her own trademark faded denim, and opened his arms and said "Li Li!"
"Luggage," she responded, pointing in the direction she was walking.
Justin scrambled after her. "About mom …" he said breathlessly.
"Save it," Li said, "I hate these places."
Justin switched on his gracious, forbearing smile.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
"Cody's too busy to bother with family?" Li asked, when they were seated in his Tesla.
"He wants to give us space," Justin said.
"Have you introduced him to mom?" she asked.
"Not exactly."
"She's so broad-minded, except when it matters," Li said savagely.
"Speaking of mom, ready for the latest?"
How unfair. Her brother, so inauthentic, was the one positioned to provide the update. Justin, the stubbornly popular, artificially flavored junk snack. "Go ahead," Li said irritably.
"Well, she loves to eat."
"I know that."
"She doesn't want another operation."
"I know that too."
"The blockage does get better if she takes a strong laxative," he said, composure cracking. Li understood Justin's life as based on the principle that everything should be bright, flawless. Laxatives took the conversation into dangerous territory.
"Seven. Food and drink in, excrement out. That's it. That's us," Li proclaimed.
"Sorry?" Justin said cautiously. When they were kids he shrank away from her when she said brainy science things beyond his ken. She hadn't lost her knack for making him uncomfortable."
"Everything's shit," Li explained. "Cancer shows us to ourselves."
"You're sick Li Li, you need help."
"Mom's sick, I'm realistic."
Justin gave her a long glare. "Please be gentle, my standard of care …"
"I'm totally substandard," Li said. "Like mom is now. Once in college days, she showed up at my front door brandishing a toilet brush, then marched straight into the bathroom to extirpate my traces. Now, I take it she soils herself."
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
Suzanne Zhang's bungalow was tucked into the back acre of Justin's estate. She came out to the front porch to greet her children. Li hadn't seen her in months, and was girded for tired, bedraggled. But Suzanne was energetic and looked stylish. She said hello to Li by darting a hand out to straighten her collar.
"You ignore presentation Li Li" Suzanne said. "Presentation is everything to me."
"You're presenting well," Li said, refraining from adding that appearances can be deceptive.
"First, engage brain," Suzanne said."When you dress, always. How much longer you muddle through life?"
"Not much longer," Li said, "taking my cue from you." Suzanne smiled, and Li tried to burrow further into her good side. "Hey, where didja get the great haircut?"
Suzanne flicked a curl. "It was … ask brother, he took me. Daughter job, but you're never here."
Justin said "My pleasure." Suzanne smiled. Li did not point out that she was, in fact, there now.
A gentleman appeared in the doorway, nattily dressed in suit and tie. Li felt jealous; if Suzanne had a love interest, she had something gone missing from Li's marriage. But Suzanne introduced him as an old high school friend from Singapore. The friend bowed subtly in that way gone out of fashion, and took his leave saying, "Again tomorrow."
"What's tomorrow?" Li asked, when the friend was out of earshot down the walkway.
"CCC goodbye party."
Suzanne had volunteered at the Chinese Cultural Center for years, teaching calligraphy, and serving meals to the elderly. "Why are you quitting?" Li asked anxiously.
"See husband again," Suzanne said. Not good. Covid had taken her dad Ernie the year before, and the family wasn't allowed by his bedside as he struggled for his last breaths.
A young woman wearing hospital linens appeared in the doorway, put a gentle hand on Suzanne's elbow, and lead her inside. Justin motioned for Li to stay put. Must be personal care time.
The siblings fell silent, surrendering to the softness of the mild winter evening. Crickets chirped, a half moon rose over a line of tall palms, fronds stirring in a soft breeze. It was obscene that Zhangs lived like this, when others lived on smoldering garbage dumps. But at least there were places like this left on the planet!
Justin appreciated the landscape too. "Lost 300K letting mom have this place below market. We'll need to take that into account when, you know."
"Eight. Everything's for sale," Li said bitterly.
That did it for Justin. "Eight," he repeated, shaking his head. "Go ahead, be as weird-ass as you want, you're the big prof."
"Rank hath its privileges," she said.
Justin shot her an anguished look. "There's something mom needs you to get for her tomorrow," he said softly.
"What?"
"California doesn't make it easy. You can't just take the prescription to any drugstore."
"What easy?" Li said. Although she could guess.
"She knows she's going to die soon anyway." Justin ran the back of a hand over his eyes. "It's not cheap." He held out his credit card to the big prof.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
Li slid her driver's license through the SecurePharm card reader. A light flashed, something clicked softly, then a door opened soundlessly on an appropriately cheerless room.
Two people in white coats were working inside a glass enclosure, handling vials and droppers. Like chem lab when she was an undergrad. An unattended cash register faced her from a small opening in the glass. The floor was bare concrete, and there was one steel folding chair for customers. A pharmacist looked up, washed her hands, and came to the register, startling Li with a warm, kind smile.
Li had been in the world thirty-something years, and could hardly avoid encountering different types of people. But there she was, flustered by a stranger who actually seemed to give a damn about her. "Dead in my tracks," she said, trying to gain the upper hand by narrating the action. The pharmacist looked confused. Li pressed her advantage.
"Nine. Death, hold that thought, that's where things are trending," Li said, pleased with how her voice reverberated in the bare concrete space.
"So true dearie," the pharmacist said with an emphatic nod and a knowing smile. "Death is what you're here for. Lists do help, cope with one realization at a time." An eyelid coated with makeup drooped into a confiding wink, as if they were coping buddies going back a long way.
"I'm here for Suzanne Zhang's medication," Li said stiffly.
"OK," the pharmacist said with a shrug. "DDMA, $600. Want to show me some plastic?"
Li opened her purse, and then couldn't pull out Justin's card. Dead in her tracks again.
"I know, I know, can't be that simple," the pharmacist said sympathetically. "She's your mom, right? And pretty soon, that will be she WAS your mom."
Li leaned forward and said, "Please. Shut. Up." Her voice still resonated, and the other white coat looked up from his vials in alarm.
The pharmacist waved away her colleague's concern. Li managed to fish out the card and explain that it was her brother's. The pharmacist rang her up, providing an instruction sheet on how to help someone die. "Wait," she said urgently, applying highlighter to a second sheet.
It was a list of counseling resources. The highlighting was on the suicide prevention hotline. "Trying to put yourself out of business?" Li said, heading for the door.
"End of life medication is completely different," the pharmacist called out, "with your family's gathered around to say goodbye. It's not what you …"
Another light flash, another click, and Li was gone.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
Suzanne's farewell lunch was winding down by the time Li arrived at the CCC. A dozen people sat on two aluminum benches attached to a rectangular table, with room for a couple of others to join in wheelchairs. Suzanne was seated at one end in what looked like a burnished cherrywood throne. Justin was at the end of a bench on her right, next to the friend Li had met the night before. The people on the other bench squeezed together to make room, and Li sat down across from Justin. Suzanne leaned toward her and whispered, "You are always late."
"Mostly late," Li said. "There are counterexamples."
"No science talk now," Suzanne said, and raised her eyebrows. Li nodded. Suzanne said "Where?"
"In the glove compartment." Li's mind wandered.
"Did you spill any? You are always spilling things."
"It's possible," Li said.
"It's possible you spilled it?!"
Li returned to the conversation. "It's possible someone could spill it," she said, "so they have those safety caps." She'd been thinking that her mom might be the one to take the poison.
A senior was eating by herself at the edge of the room, by a bulletin board decorated with Santas and candy canes. Suzanne beckoned, and the woman shuffled over. "You shouldn't eat alone," Suzanne said, "we want to get to know you." Li's benchmates squeezed together again, and the woman sat next to her. Suzanne found out the woman's name was Chunhua, and complimented her on her appearance.
"Hope you had a Merry Christmas," Li said.
Chunhua looked startled. "Christmas is tomorrow," she said. Li gave up on social games.
"How long you come here, Spring Flower? Suzanne asked.
"Today first time."
"Not last," Suzanne said, with a happy conviction leaving no room for doubt.
Suzanne's Singapore friend looked at her pointedly and said, "And you will never return?"
"I want to travel," Suzanne said.
"To where?"
"Far places."
Justin pushed away from the table. "Mom, um," he said. Everyone looked at him. Everyone waited. "Why not show us your pictures?" He pulled back a coverlet from a red photo album and slid it in front of Suzanne.
People gathered round. Suzanne opened the big book of her life to the short section labeled ๅฟซ่ฟ, "kuai jin." The primary dictionary meaning is the phrasal verb to enter quickly, but in the realm of digital recorders it's the translation of "Fast Forward." The latter sense expressed Suzanne's version of her family's saga: in nine images, ๅฟซ่ฟ told a story of four generations.
A faded ink drawing of Suzanne's grandmother, the last woman in the lineage whose feet were bound. A torn photo of Suzanne's mom Bernice, a happy girl on her first day of third grade; Bernice supplemented her allowance with tips earned by rolling her mom's opium into tight, convenient balls. A close-up of Bernice, worried but defiant, on her arrival in Hong Kong from Shanghai post-revolution; she quit high school to work in a bank to support her younger siblings. Two years later, a beaming Bernice and Adam, lovely bride and handsome groom, ready for the big adventure.
And a photo of young Suzanne in a tennis match; according to Zhang legend, it took a tearful discussion with Adam for Bernice to secure the same opportunities for their daughter as for their sons. A group photo of Suzanne's graduating class at her teachers training college. A newspaper clipping about Ernie, Suzanne's classmate and then husband, when he was appointed as one of the first Asian-American principals in LA Unified. Lastly, there was Li, graduating from an elite university, and Justin, standing by the swimming pool of his first house that had one.
A swimming pool — just perfect, in drought-stricken California! And there was no room for Li's missing doctorate in this tale of triumph. Not that Li would ever talk to her mom about failure.
Suzanne closed the album. The party broke up. Mr. Qin waited until all the other guests left, and then gave Suzanne a hug goodbye. He was another Zhang family legend. Shunned at the CCC after word got out that his father had been a notorious Japanese collaborator, he ate alone in the cafeteria, and some even refused to answer when he spoke. Suzanne had assigned calligraphy projects on the theme of children not being responsible for the sins of their parents, and ate with Mr. Qin until the shunning stopped.
The three Zhangs were alone at the table. Justin looked even more miserable. "Time to leave," Suzanne said. Li helped her up, and Justin followed them to Li's rental car.
Li opened the passenger side door, and Suzanne held out her hand. Li took the little bag from the glove compartment and gave it to her. Suzanne gave it to Justin, and said "I know you won't spill." Justin took her elbow and they walked away.
Li told herself it was ridiculous to be upset because her mom's opinion of her would never change. Then she said it to herself again, and again, and after the third time she was calm enough to start the car.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
Li sat on the couch with her mother and brother, looking at a picture of her eighth birthday party. She didn't remember turning eight, but the evidence of the photo was incontrovertible. There she was, running and laughing, arm outstretched toward a fleeing Justin, like she was about to make him It in a joyous game of tag. The deep truth was that her parents had given her a happy childhood. And she had repaid them with the wreckage of her adult life.
The final commandment was the big ask, and she channeled it silently. X., This lousy world would be better without you in it. Do the right thing.
A plan crystallized. She'd give Suzanne one goblet with placebo potion, while she drank the hard stuff from another. Then when her mom looked puzzled to still be alive, Li would lie down beside her, and congratulate her for having lived long enough to be rid of her unworthy daughter. Who had been such a disappointment. All's well that ends well.
Li pushed the album away and walked over to the divan, where her mom intended to die. She grabbed the little bag with the death med and headed toward the kitchen.
Justin followed her. "Li, this is not about…," he said, stopping mid-sentence. He looked furious, but continued softly. "It's not about, like, going to the drugstore and taking the cap off the bottle. The hospice doctor needs to mix it." He reached for the bag, forcefully enough that Li realized there'd be a tug of war if things came to that. She released her grip.
The doorbell rang. "Showing the place already?" Li said. "Mustn't forget the bottom line."
Justin answered the door. A fortyish guy stood there, affecting a minimalist look: round wire frame glasses, light blonde hair in a military-style buzz cut. He had a kindly smile, like that stupid pharmacist, and Justin handed him the death med. This must be the doctor. Li darted into the laundry room and locked the door.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
She'd had death in her hands and it had slipped away. Or had it? She opened the broom closet. She was a petite woman, and by removing a mop and bucket, and clearing off a shelf, she made space for herself to sit. How fitting to have flown 2,000 miles to be exactly here. Means to her end were all around: drano, bleach. Why be pedantic and insist on marked off-ramps? She hadn't been creative enough to finish her thesis, but in this cramped, dark, place, she could finally think outside the box.
She decided to weaponize her exit. OK, she was a rotten person, but the rest of the world had problems too, and she wanted to mention some on her way out. She remembered she had the Suicide Prevention number, and fished the paper out of her pocket. Her mouth curled in disdain; what a load of treacle. She dialed.
The phone rang and rang. Then someone said, "Hello, what made you decide to reach out today?"
He sounded young enough to be in high school, and determined to be "concerned." Li loathed him on principle. "The spirit of revenge," she said.
"You want revenge," the boy repeated evenly. "Are you experiencing conflict with your spouse or domestic partner?"
"I don't have either of those," Li snapped, and then realized that wasn't quite true. But before she could explain she did have a husband, he just wasn't of much consequence in the world, Elroy called.
"Wait a minute," she said, opening Elroy's call. "What is it now?" she asked.
"Justin told me I should talk to you. He didn't say …" Elroy trailed off, as was his wont.
"Who is this?" said the boy. Li had accidentally created a conference call.
"I'm Li's husband, who are you?"
"I'm a volunteer…"
Li cut him short. "Don't worry about it hon. Everything is going to be OK, just like you said. Mom was thinking of doing something stupid but we're talking her out of it."
"A volunteer for who?" Elroy asked.
Li disconnected. Was Elroy still talking to the boy? She asked herself if she cared, and decided that was a good question. She pocketed her phone, then considered answering when it vibrated. What more could she say to Elroy? The vibrations subsided. That they had a history but no future? The darkness was pleasant, soothing. Maybe she was part cat.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
Someone knocked on the laundry room door. Li climbed out of the broom closet. If it's not one thing it's another. She leaned toward the door and said sharply "Who is it?"
"It's me," Justin whispered.
"What do you want?"
Justin hesitated. Was it possible that for once he had not been focusing on that question?
"The thing about money is it gets the conversation started," he said. "Everybody wants some. If they know you have a lot, they might even break the trance and behold another person. Self-obsession isn't necessarily terminal. Worst case, money games are something people can do while ignoring each other. Like, at a Superbowl party."
Li cracked open the door. She could hear her mom and the doctor chatting quietly on the couch. "What does that have to do with anything?" she said.
"Seven, eight, what do your crazy numbers have to do with anything?" Justin retorted.
"What does anything have to do with anything?" Li said. Could she really talk to him about absurdity?
Justin snorted in appreciation. Then he said, "Look, I would never …"
"I know."
" … show mom's place before …"
"I KNOW," Li said, stamping a foot.
"She's such a good, kind person," Justin said. His tears flowed. "I really love her. Do you?"
Li always tried to dodge that question. But she let her dry eyes answer it now.
"We are who we are," Justin said with a shrug.
"She loves you too," Li offered.
"Right," he said, "mom loves me so much she'd rather die than spend more time with me."
"Justin, that's ridiculous."
"Ridiculous runs in the family," he said. Li met her brother's gaze, and they shared a dry laugh at themselves, at each other. What fools these Zhang kids be.
Someone cleared his throat. The doctor held a plastic cup filled with an opaque liquid, and was regarding them warily. Li wondered if they appalled him; merriment, at such a time, emanating from an ethnicity famed for its filial piety.
"Your mother has convinced me that she is of sound mind," the doctor said, "and that nobody is pressuring her to do this." He paused briefly as if tugging at a fleeting doubt. "And I can certify that she has a terminal illness that will soon run its course."
Justin looked at Li ruefully. Li nodded. She exited the laundry room and they walked over to the divan, where her mom was lying.
Li stood on one side, Justin and the doctor on the other. "My husband wants me home for the holidays," Suzanne said.
"That's one way to look at it," the doctor said affably.
Suzanne said nothing, and at first Li thought Justin took a step sidewise and back. "Say hello to him for us," the doctor said, stifling a wince. Li realized that Justin had kicked him. She winked at her brother, who smiled wryly.
Suzanne looked into her son's red eyes and said, "Your father doesn't want me to be uncomfortable, that's why. I know someone loves you the same way."
She looked into Li's hard eyes and said, "Smart scientist, brave sailor on vast sea."
She would brook no backtalk, and snatched the potion from the doctor and drank it in one gulp. Then she took a hand of each of her children, squeezing hard, breathing steadily. She pulled their hands onto her stomach, freed her fingers, and pressed their palms together from the outside until they laced fingers. Then she dropped her arms to her sides, and her breaths came slower and slower.
……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ………
Elroy woke up on the living room rug when the sun was setting. Li was sleeping on the couch, striped by long shadows cast by the fading sunlight streaming in through the blinds. She'd dozed on the ride from the airport, and the couch was the first place she found to lie down when they got home. Not good. But maybe it was because her red-eye had a layover between LA and Chicago? And the way she'd set her suitcase down, nearly knocking his pine sapling off the end table? She might have been reminding him of her true feelings about Christmas claptrap.
More likely it was the same old same old, but he could imagine worse. And often had. During her worst times, he dreaded discovering her lifeless body when he entered a room. Now he was happy to lie near her, luxuriating in the sound of her breathing.
And suicide wasn't the only threat that gnawed at him. Marrying a beautiful, brilliant woman was more than he'd been raised to expect out of life. By a country mile. But life has this way of forcing you back in your lane. If she got better he might lose her anyway, she'd be foolish not to reconsider her options. And she wasn't stupid. And he … was a big, ambling, white-bread kinda guy.
To Elroy white bread meant generic. But some of his accounting colleagues would disagree, after he confided, in water cooler banter, that beyond a certain point he did not give a damn about money. What he did care about were the two great gifts Li had brought into his life.
The other was intelligent conversation. Li would talk to him in a sciency way about things he'd wondered about since he was a boy, like what happened before the Big Bang. And some things he'd never thought of before, like could there be universes without space, where everything was the neighbor of everything else? He never told her, but he thought the one about the photons orbiting the black holes could be a portrait of a marriage.
Li opened her eyes and sat up. Elroy climbed into an EZ chair facing her. So. "Sorry for your loss," he said.
"She was an amazing person," Li said.
He was hopeful.
"And a royal pain in the butt," she continued.
His spirits sank.
"She didn't invent that formula herself," she concluded.
A reasonable slant on the human condition, and Elroy was emboldened to broach a delicate topic.
"You got a weird phone call from someone at the college," he said.
"Go on," Li said quietly.
"He said to tell you he thought the whole thing was really unfair. He didn't say what thing."
It wouldn't have been at all odd for those to be their last words on delicate topics. But Li said. "I got canned. De facto not de jure."
Elroy was perplexed. "Not in so many words," Li explained. "But that's what happened."
She rummaged through her pockets, and pulled out a tiny dollhouse attached to a loop of ribbon. "Friend gave me this," she said.
"A friend?" he said, suspicion aroused.
"Well, not really. Just someone I met on the flight out."
His suspicion flared. Li smiled at him in a reassuring way. "Actually wasn't very nice to him on the plane," she said. "But did sorta tell him about the layoff.
"But you didn't tell me."
"Well, kinda did …. Anyway, there was this like, exponential wait at security check at the airport when I flew back. He gave up his place in line to come back and talk to me."
"He remembered what I'd told him, because turns out he just got laid off too. He was going to LA to dicker with his firm about his severance package. They didn't give him enough to keep his house. He owes too much, and his wife had to quit her job after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He called to tell her the unhelpful news, and she said 'that's funny,' and started laughing. And he couldn't decide, was she becoming symptomatic? Or did her understanding of life far surpass his?"
"Symptomatic," Elroy said.
Li shrugged. "Medical science might not have the answer to that one. Anyway, he thought about something I'd said about keeping up appearances, and decided to buy presents for his kids. He wanted them to focus on their gifts when he got back, and not read failure on his face. Then when he saw this little house he decided he needed a present too. Then he saw me and decided I needed it more."
"Something about … reducing mortgage payments?" he guessed.
Li held it up, showing a little door that swung in and out, a little window that opened and shut. "Remember that old chestnut, 'when a door closes, a window opens'? Life goes on. Until it doesn't."
Her eyes glistened. Elroy patted empty pockets for kleenex, but no need. Li calmly looped the ornament ribbon around an evergreen twig, making sense of the pine sapling. "First in a series," she said. Then, "I'm famished, must've been skipping meals."
This was the cue Elroy'd been hoping for. "Be right back," he said, walking briskly to the kitchen. He was an uninspired cook, but for Li's return he had baked a cake. And decorated it carefully, hoping to impress her with science stuff.
The cake showed an atom, nucleus in the center, electrons buzzing around. A young bride and groom stood on the innermost electron ring. The kind of kitsch available at many bakeries, although finding a couple that was bi-racial like them took effort. On the next ring, an older version of that couple stood holding hands, weathered but gallant, facing outwards. Available nowhere, he'd fashioned them out of wire and icing. The inscription read "QUANTUM LEAPS". He ardently wished it were true.
Li's eyes shone when he brought it to her. She patted the couch. "Let me feed you," she said.
Was she intent on re-enacting the weird-ass hillbilly grind-cake-in-each-other's-face thingy his mom and dad insisted on for their wedding? Elroy had been mortified, but Li actually enjoyed it. And his parents began accepting her, a blatant outsider, because she accepted their ritual. Months later, she reminded him of the ceremony when he was demoralized by their first quarrel. "It meant real couples fight," she'd said, "get over it."
But Li handled this cake with care. She brushed her fingers against the side, preserving his masterpiece, then raised them to his lips. A hunger surged through him. He licked icing from her fingertips, then kissed his way down to her wrist, where the only sweetness was her skin.
"Now me," she said, withdrawing her hand. She hooked a leg over one of his, wiggled her toes, and leaned back.
Elroy was wary. OK, the decoration was semi-original. But the cake itself was a store-bought mix, with a chemical aftertaste. Li would think it beneath her, and then that might remind her of what she'd come to think of him. And then there goes the mood, which seemed so promising.
He scooped a morsel of cake with his ring finger, and Li guided him into her mouth. She was a graceful eater, and when the occasion called for it she could be a torrid one. Li closed her eyes and caressed his fingertip with her tongue. She was certainly acting appreciative, but that wasn't enough for him. Part of their pleasure in times like these was to say forbidden things out loud, and now he needed to hear her praise his creation.
"Do you like it?" he said huskily.
Li opened her eyes, kissed his finger goodbye, and squeezed his hand. "It gets an eleven on the scale of ten," she said, and then she started to cry.
……… ❖
© ยต, 2024
