Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

  “Well, not really. Fat’s just stored energy and then fat shrinks when you use it.”

  “So, what I’m hearing is that it’s a form of cannibalism? Self-cannibalism? That’s hella creepy.”

  Every morning, we scan East Coast tech news. One of us starts a thread, and we circulate story pitches. Our editors green-light some, tell us to toss others. We prioritize the news, rushing those pieces, then move on to stories with longer lead times or embargoes, and finally, if we can, work on our evergreens, the ones that are more in-depth, or random, or “fun,” and can go up whenever they are done. All of this involves, for the most part, not moving from our desks.

  Which is why I now have a standing desk. Everyone has been talking about how much healthier it is to stand than to sit—less back pain, lower blood pressure, reduced risk of heart disease, reduced risk of cancer, improved mood, etc., etc. I used to stand a lot. It helped that Tim also stood a lot. We stood next to each other for a month, boosting one another up on our accomplishment. One day, Tim sat after lunch. He said his feet hurt. I continued to stand, but then worried it appeared to him that I was making a statement about his sitting by my standing, so then I, too, sat. We avoided eye contact. The following morning, we stood, but again, after lunch, Tim said his feet hurt. “Don’t worry about me, I’m old,” he said. “You keep going.” But again, I sat and he did not seem unhappy or disappointed with my choice, and eventually, we both gave up and went back to sitting most, if not all, of the day.

  There is something unnatural about standing for hours with nowhere to go, without moving any part of one’s body except one’s hands and fingers to type, while the rest of the room sits. It draws too much attention. It is performative.

  The first editor nodded vigorously: Absolutely. You deserve a raise. He was the one who divulged the fact of my being the lowest-paid writer in the room. Then he left for public relations. Good luck! The wheels are in motion! he said upon departure. We got a new editor who said he hadn’t heard, he didn’t know what to do, maybe I should talk to somebody higher up? The managing editor above him wrote, I’m in Hawaii, let’s have a chat when I return, then he returned, was swamped, and would be in touch at an indeterminate date. After one month of waiting, I gathered enough courage to walk across the hall and into his office as he ate lunch at his desk. He looked up from his sandwich and waved toward a chair. “Everything is in flux,” he said. “I want to make this a priority, but things need to settle down. I can’t say exactly why, but this isn’t the optimal moment in time.”

  I left dissatisfied, but curious. I told Jasmine everything. She said she’d overheard talk about something being a big deal, but she didn’t know what. Tell me when you find out, she said.

  I told Tim everything. He shrugged. I gave him a look.

  “I want to tell you, but I was sworn to secrecy,” he said.

  “I won’t say anything, I swear.”

  “Don’t, seriously. This time I really can’t. And it’s any day now, so you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “What’s the difference between now and a few days? Please.”

  He shook his head. “Fine. I’ll tell you this much: All those old rumors about a certain somebody leaving? They’re finally coming true.”

  He was right. Days later, the managing editor’s boss—the publication’s editor in chief of more than a decade—resigned, though word was that corporate had pushed him out, with a replacement lined up to start in the new year. An outsider.

  People are frantic. Everyone waits anxiously for the coming changes. As for me, the weeks continue to pass, as though my request has vanished.

  How does one measure the space a person inhabits? How can one be sure of how much or how little one takes? And what is the best way to maneuver given one’s perceived size and status?

  A young white man holding neon orange and green Nerf guns larger than his torso yells on the Muni platform: “I love my fucking job!” The man walking with him, nearly identical, slaps his back three times and laughs. The second man has small Nerf guns sticking out of his jean pockets. Upstairs, a busker sits on a tarp and plays a guqin, the sound reverberating far down the long white halls. I hear the music before I see him. A sad, slow, lonely sound. He is hunched, gray-haired, wrinkled, frighteningly thin, in a plain navy sweater and navy slacks. His fingers move like arthritic dancers. He reminds me of a grandfather I do not know, or of my father, in a too-close future. Through wet eyes, I take out my wallet and place all the cash I have into his empty instrument case. It is not much, but it is something. Almost nobody carries cash these days. I wonder how he makes enough to survive in this city. He looks up and nods.

  J and I are representative of the Sunset neighborhood’s history: Irish and Chinese. Though the Irish are dwindling.

  “What are you writing?” he asks beside me in bed.

  “That the Irish are dwindling in the Sunset,” I say.

  “What’s that for?”

  “I don’t know. Documenting our lives. I guess because I don’t know what’s going to happen next and it’s comforting.”

  “Hm, cool,” he says. “So, like a diary.”

  “No, not like a diary,” I say, though I can’t explain, yet, why not.

  Then again, J is third-generation Irish. We watch Hell on Wheels, an American Western set in the post–Civil War 1860s. Whenever the Irish characters are discriminated against on the show, I feel more connected to J. I want to say something about it, but when I look at him, it does not appear that he identifies with the beaten Irish man on the computer’s screen.

  When we go to Davis, we say we are going home. But when we return to San Francisco, we also say we are going home. Our sense of home is knit even tighter, because our homes in Davis are in the same neighborhood. And so now, for the holidays, we are leaving our home together to go home to our homes down the street from one another.

  Because I like to and because it is only an hour and a half’s car ride away and because he is nice and will drive me, because I do not have a license and cannot drive myself, we go home together often. At least once a month. On the way there or the way back, we like to stop at the Pacific East Mall in Richmond. We grocery shop at 99 Ranch Market and eat at the noodle place or the Szechuan restaurant. Going there reminds me, too, of a kind of home. The handwritten signs on neon paper in shop windows, children running up and down the fluorescent-lit corridors, the sounds of familiar dialects, the overflow of items in bins and on shelves, the scuffed linoleum floors, the shopping carts with their errant wheels.

  My mom texts, telling me to pick up a bottle of ning chiao. My brother appears to have a cold. Actually get three. Just in case. In the medicine/herb store, I approach the shopkeeper and ask for ning chiao. What? she says. What something something . . . ? I repeat, Ning chiao. She shakes her head and says she doesn’t have it. I text my mom back. Impossible, she replies. They have. I scan the packed display cases and walls until I find the small, familiar green-and-white label, and point to it.

  “Ah, yin qiao!” The shopkeeper laughs as she rings me up.

  J walks over with a bag of peanuts.

  “Together?” the shopkeeper says in English.

  “Yeah, together,” he says, and hands her cash. He is one of the almost nobodies left who do carry physical bills. He is old-fashioned in this way, and in others, like not having Facebook. (And for both, I admire and begrudge him.)

  “You don’t have to buy the medicine,” I say.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Yín qiào,” says the shopkeeper, emphasizing the inflections.

  “Mmm.” I nod. “Yín qiào,” I imitate.

  Good, good, she says. She gives me a thumbs-up and waves us goodbye.

  As we walk back to the car, he asks what that was about. I explain that I was saying the name in Shanghainese, the only way I knew how to say it, and that since I couldn’t communicate in Mandarin and she didn’t understand Shanghainese, there had been some confusion.

  �
�They sound that different from each other?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I could only understand some of what she was saying and couldn’t explain anything.”

  “That must be annoying.”

  “It is. But mostly I feel embarrassed. Like how could I have lost it all so easily? How did that happen?”

  “At least you’re really, really good at English,” he says. “That’s more than me and it’s the only language I’ve ever known.”

  I laugh and squeeze his knee. Silly boy. But his comment does make me feel better.

  There is a tree in the house this year because my mom has a renter, an international university student from China whom we plainly call “the student.” My mom wants to give the student the full experience of an American Christmas. The tree is plastic with lights embedded in its branches. She has hung some old ornaments I haven’t seen in a few years, including a golden bell I once believed Santa had gifted me from his sleigh, and encased photos of each of us—me, my sister, and my brother—on various Santa laps. The staircase is wrapped in multicolored lights and decorated with big red felt bows.

  “What do you think of all this Christmas spirit?” I ask my sister in our shared room, on the same bunk beds we’ve had for as long as we can remember, longer than we’ve been in this house.

  “Mommy went all out for the student,” she says.

  “But isn’t the student going to Disneyland with her friends? It’ll be just us for Christmas, right? I don’t want to spend it with her. It’s awkward. Mommy acts weird.”

  “Yeah. I think she’s leaving tomorrow.”

  “As long as it’s not as crazy as last Christmas, I guess then I’ll be okay.”

  “It won’t be,” says my sister. “It wouldn’t be possible.”

  We are quiet in our respective beds, me on top, her on bottom.

  “Do you think all of the decorations are really for the student?” she asks.

  “Maybe. It’s an excuse, at least.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but I know she understands. Our mom is doing exactly what she wants, now that nobody is telling her otherwise.

  In his parents’ home office, I edit J’s application essays. Cut a run-on into three short sentences. Correct typos and grammatical errors. Rearrange passive sentences into active ones. Move paragraphs around for better flow. But I do not understand the scientific terms, the stuff about “mutations on cerebral angiogenesis” and “context-dependent signaling” and “intracellular accumulation at the expense of secretion,” so he must sit there explaining his research until I minimally understand. It’s only then that I learn he’s not studying eye diseases, but something entirely different—the genes responsible for preventing hemorrhagic strokes. I am baffled at the last two years I’ve thought (and told people) eye stuff, eye stuff. He says that his research is hard for him to explain, and that when he tried I didn’t seem interested.

  I apologize. He says it’s okay.

  He says he wants to learn how to be a better communicator and writer. He wants to know what I’m doing, so he knows what to do the next time. I show him the edits and try to explain why I made them, why the structure and sentences now offer more clarity. But there’s also the issue of taste and style, I say. This, here, isn’t incorrect grammar, but this other option, I think, reads better. There are many different ways to say the same thing. He is easy to edit because he accepts all of my suggestions.

  “Okay. Was the essay really bad, though? You keep muttering.”

  “No, it isn’t that bad,” I say. “And I don’t.”

  But as J watches me continue deleting, typing, copying, pasting, I notice myself. I repeat “Let’s see” under my breath over and over, as though I want to visualize some future, altered version of what’s in front of me. Let’s see. Let’s see. Let’s see.

  With my family, I also play editor and logistics coordinator. My mom asks me to revise her self-reported employee performance evaluation. I’ve done this every year since she got the job, in a university finance office, ten years ago. And her cover letters and résumés before that. The same goes for my brother and sister, plus college applications and now the occasional class paper. We go through their yearly FAFSA forms together, determine which loans to accept and reject. I have long filled out applications and written statements to whatever government or official entity required them. My father never learned how to use a computer, despite having bought the earliest ones for my mom and us to use. So when I was growing up, he would dictate whatever he needed written. My job was to type and smooth out his words.

  My brother says he’s read a scientific study that determined there are only seven types of human faces. We are out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, the four of us: my mom, my sister, my brother, and me.

  I discreetly point at a man with wide-set eyes and thin lips.

  “What kind of face does that person have?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember the specific faces. But isn’t it fascinating? When you think about it, there isn’t much variation. There probably are only, like, seven types.”

  My sister points at a woman with a high forehead and a pointed chin.

  “What face does that person have?”

  “I’m not sure. What I’m saying is people don’t really look all that different. Like, when you look at them, they all have the same parts—eyes, nose, mouth, whatever. We aren’t as unique as we think we all are.”

  I point at a man with a sharp nose and hollow cheeks.

  “What about that person?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “What are you talking about?” says my mom after looking up from her phone.

  “Stop looking at your phone during dinner,” I say. “You’re more addicted than us!”

  “Are there two people in this place with the same kind of face?” says my sister.

  “Which ones are they?”

  “Whose face is what?”

  “Can you point them out?”

  My brother slams his hands down on the table. “You guys are so annoying!”

  My sister and I cackle from the joy of teasing him.

  “Don’t be so mean,” my mom says, though she, too, is laughing. “What is he talking about?”

  “Didi’s just saying we all have the same kind of face.”

  You can’t choose your family . . . but if I could, I’d still choose this one, mine.

  Okay, maybe with some tweaks. Like us all being in the same place, or vicinity.

  Though in many ways it has been easier this last year, with my dad in China. I hate to admit it. I am the most attached to my family, its past and its potential and its ideal forms. I am the oldest. I hold on the most. I worry the most. My brother and sister don’t call him nearly as often. I text them reminders every week or so. Call Daddy if you haven’t. My brother makes up excuses about not knowing how to use the calling card or, more often, does not respond. My sister says once every few weeks is enough. But now I hand them the phone, with him on the other end, so they take it. I hear them going “Mm-hmm,” “Yeah,” “No,” “Okay,” and the longer silences, meaning he’s telling a story or lecturing or making requests. Then they hand the phone back to me and he talks about a stabbing at a Chinese elementary school (what I figure is his third telling). A man entered a playground and stabbed children in the face, hands, and bodies, until a teacher—also stabbed—tackled him to the ground. Luckily, no fatalities. Not like at Sandy Hook a week earlier. If somebody who worked at either of the schools had a gun, he starts, well then.

  But I stop him. “No, nope. I don’t think so!”

  “Don’t be impatient with me, young lady,” he says. “Let me finish.”

  Next, “There are crazy people everywhere. Avoid crowds. Avoid parades, concerts, malls, movie theaters, anywhere where lots of people gather. Do you know what to do when you hear shots? Run to the nearest store or building and find cover. Duck low. Don’t run into the streets. Hide. Do you understand?”

&
nbsp; “Yes, Daddy,” I say.

  “Okay, that’s that. Second on the list. I remembered something I want you to bring me when you visit. An At-A-Glance daily diary. You know the ones I use?”

  “Yup. I will when I come. What about you? Are you eating?”

  “Yes, I got noodles from the cold noodle lady, so that will last me a few days.”

  “That’s not enough. Just try to eat more, okay? And drink less, please.” I wonder momentarily why I am telling a grown man how to eat and drink, but then again, that man is my father.

  “I’m drinking only Chinese medicinal wine, so it’s actually good for me. Oh, and there’s a new beer I found. German stuff. Good shit. It’s only a dollar a can!”

  “Just don’t drink as much of it, please!”

  “Okay, okay. Now, what’s your mother doing? Let me talk to her, too.”

  When I point at the phone and move it toward her, she shakes her head and shoos me away. Now I am the one coming up with an excuse: she’s busy, in the shower, cooking, shopping, out for a walk.

  “Busy, busy, everyone busy going nowhere,” he says. “Relay this message: I want to talk to her. Tell her to call me.”

  “Okay, Daddy, I will,” I say. “Merry Christmas! Love you.”

  “Love you more,” he says.

  It used to be the other way around, years and years ago. When the four of us left for China, my dad stayed behind in San Francisco. It felt as though we didn’t have a physical father, only a phone that carried a familiar voice, telling us what to do, how to behave. Until, like a Chinese American Santa Claus, he would make trips from the States to visit us. He’d bring suitcases of stuff we wanted, stuff he thought we should have: Tommy Hilfiger shoes, Calvin Klein jeans, Gap sweatshirts, Esprit T-shirts, Nintendo Game Boys, and books. Baby-Sitters Club. Chronicles of Narnia. Wayside School. The Boxcar Children. Dr. Seuss. Shel Silverstein. My brother, sister, and I would scoop it all up. Our American belongings reminding us of where we were from.

  Then there were the years in Davis when we stayed here and he made trips back and forth, on a schedule all his own. Though as time passed, he would stay with us for longer and longer durations.