As if she heard me, Celeste stretched, hopped to the floor, and padded toward the bathroom door; she lay across the lintel, her chin pressed against the white tile. My mother grinned. “It’s never too late to become a killer.”
“You know you could live in it. The house I mean. He wanted you to have it. You could meet Eliot.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.” She stood, dragging her hands through her hair. “Tea?”
21.
Berlin, October 2016
Yukiko insisted on seeing me off. The sun stroked her face through the dirty cab window. She wore no make-up but at the corners of her lips were bright dashes of paint. Brush-sucker, a last fact about my mother.
Gleaming fleets of new cars flanked us on either side. No wonder so many galleries were opening branches here. I’d walked through them, taking in a sock-puppet Hitler, a chicken nailed to a KFC cross, and some neon body bags. Despite the artistic grumbling—and I’ve never known an ungrumbly artist—there was a hope I didn’t find in New York. After the recession, New Yorkers, once proud of their battle scars of city living, were missing limbs. When people complained about their rent, or the smell of trash, or the lack of schools, there was no pride in their voices. A city of the walking wounded. But I couldn’t afford to open a gallery in Berlin. Maybe some day, but not now; now I needed to send my daughter to a Waldorf day care.
The label of my mother’s baggy shirt was flipped upward, brushing against her neck. I reached over, tucking it down. Her skin was warm, and after I moved my hand away, she touched her neck where my hand had been.
I paid the driver for my mother’s return journey. We stood at the cold drop-off point, cars weaving around us as they tried to find a place to park. Her loose hair flapped, and her two scarves intertwined in the wind. I put out my arms and hugged her. I could feel her shoulder blades through her sweater. When I let go, we were both dry-eyed. I blew a kiss to Celeste, asleep in the car. My mother reached into her bag and returned the papers for the house.
“It’s your home,” she said, looking down at her feet. “I, I am sorry.”
“Tell Celeste I’ll visit. I’ll try to come back. Soon.” My arms felt light without the cage. My right hand had nothing to grip but space. But I remembered I have to hold: a wife, a daughter.
She dived in for another hug, head lowered as if she was about to headbutt me. I patted her, clumsily on the back. Her squeeze was tight, but after she let go, my heavy wool coat lay as flat as if she’d never been there. She took my hand in hers. Toddlers and cars screamed all around us.
“Secrets are worse when they don’t come out. Talk to Miranda.”
I thought of my marriage as a gift from the God who I had trouble believing in. But I was under no illusions about the rest of the population. Dating was a vast game of musical chairs. Everyone sprinted in circles until, in your late twenties, someone turned off the music. Everyone grabbed the nearest chair. In a person’s late forties, the music starts again, with half the players and the crappy chairs. I didn’t want to play again.
Celeste’s sacrifice might mollify her. But how would that go? Darling, I fucked one of our artists but don’t worry, I got rid of the cat.
My mom stood by the open cab door. I wanted to tell her something, some key thing about myself. But I had nothing to say.
“Are you happy?” I asked. “Did you get what you wanted?”
“As much as anyone does.” She pulled her coat close against the wind. “I did what I could with what I had.”
In that surging intersection, there wasn’t time for more. The white cab with its mud-spattered sides drove away, leaving me standing with my carry-on suitcase, lighter than when I arrived. No cat food, no cat, and no mother.
Leaving inspires crushing contemplation. You’re going to travel in a metal cage to someplace where the sun sets at a different moment. You won’t see the same moon as those you’re leaving, because you’ll be staring into the sun. But airports are designed for departure. They distract you: they keep you trapped in lines, they shout at you from megaphones, they require you to constantly check screens. When I finally got to my gate, I stood in a daze, looking out the vast windows, trying to get airport WiFi. Were Mimi and the baby okay? I didn’t trust sickness to just go away. They hadn’t named what was wrong. How did they know it wasn’t still lurking inside her?
Got WiFi. No messages from Mimi, but I sent her a “<3” and a “Miss You.” New Facebook message. For a minute, I didn’t remember who the perky freckled girl was. Then I registered silver glasses and statement jewelry. The Whitney, yes.
Yeah. Long time, no talk. We should get coffee sometime. :) Been meaning to stop by the gallery. Congrats on the Guernica write-up.
Getting on plane. But how about Tuesday?
I’d have to get Annika to bring in some of her new lights.
An elderly English gentleman waved a bag of salt and vinegar chips at his wife. “Seek and ye shall find.” They said it together, and although I didn’t know my Bible well enough to list book or line, I could recognize the holy joy of ritual. The wife smiled, moved her handbag so he could sit beside her and passed him part of the newspaper she’d been reading.
My mother was so alone. No one would bring her potato chips or hold the door at the top of the apartment stairs. Though, what did I know? Perhaps she had a lover in Munich, with whom she spent torrid weekends. I could profile her for a police line-up: short, Asian, squints. But not for an obituary; I have no anecdotes, there’s nothing I can describe as “typical Mom.” I never will.
I made a choice in the chill regurgitated airport air not to take my mother’s advice. On our wedding night, Mimi asked if I’d love her when she had white hair and crow’s feet and frown lines and a saggy ass and wattles. I said, I’d love her and fuck her when she had liver spots, here and here, here, ooh and here too. I’d kissed my way up her body, until I was too busy to keep naming the places.
I will lie to Mimi for ever. I will lie until the lie accretes the solidity of years. Until it grows love handles and five chins. I will lie until Mimi and I become as solid as the lie itself. It will be the sort of lie you’d trust to watch your daughter. And for that daughter—I will not go missing. I will not be a weekend father or an every-other-Wednesday father. I will rewrite the legends for her.
When the cart came around, I ordered coffee with sugar. There was so much I wanted to be awake for.
Epilogue
I had dark days, blue moons, and a golden hour or two. I ached to decode each pigment. It took me years to understand that if you parse a message, you have to compose a reply.
The sunrise blew across the room. Yuki stood holding a mug of blue-black coffee and looked down at the sketch of her son. Erasure marks shadowed his eyes. The corners of his mouth were turned down. Jay had frowned at her apartment. He didn’t understand that it was hers, not rented, borrowed, or inherited: truly hers.
“Should I send this to him? He left me his address.”
The cat pressed the flat of its head into her ankle.
“You’re right,” she said. “He already has a face.” The face had stared at her. The eyebrows were crooked. He wanted an excuse or explanation, of course he did. But she hadn’t had one. Didn’t have one. All she had were the overlapping years, their colors bleeding together. The gold years mixing into the black, all swirling away down the great sink of time.
She’d planned to come back, but nothing in her had changed. A year passed. Each show, she wondered if anyone saw what she saw. Two more years. It seemed wrong to come back, before she was better. Ten years gusted past. By the time she found peace in the chatting of pigeons and the babble of German, which after these years felt like her natural tongue, her son was grown. Through the window came the sun pouring light onto her work table. She didn’t have a lot but she had this shining companion and now a second friend.
She cracked open a tin of Schlemmer-Töpfchen Grau cat food. The wrinkled animal ate hungrily as a child. It was
good to care for something. This she could do for Jay. She was ready to tend this naked cat—peculiar, decrepit, and unlikely as herself.
Thank You
Thank you for reading this book. Life is full of flash and clatter—your time is a gift.
It is frightening to attempt artistic work, and harder to do it alone—maybe impossible. I was lucky enough not to have to try. From the friend who first told me I could be a writer, to the friend who helped me get over my fear of dialogue by telling me to write a play, to the friend who hunted down stray commas in my final draft. I have been so lucky. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you to the people in the book world who took a chance on me—everyone at Alexander Aitken, particularly Lucy Luck my amazing agent and Nicola Chang, Nishta Hurry, Sally Riley, and Anna Watkins. Everyone at Hodder and Sceptre, thank you for taking a chance on me. In particular, Francine Toon, Nikki Barrow, Caitriona Horne, Joanna Kaliszewska, Natalie Chen, and Jacqui Lewis have taken such care of me and this book. Stateside, Norton’s Jill Bialosky and Amy Cherry have welcomed me so kindly.
Thank you for residence in your ivory towers—the University of East Anglia, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia University. Columbia’s Writers House was the first place I ever dared call myself a writer, so thank you too to my family there.
Thank you to my teachers—Richard Martin and Matthew Judd believed in my grumpy-teenage self. Benjamin Anastas, Amy Benson, Sonya Chung, Stacey D’Erasmo, Sam Lipsyte, Alan Zeigler gently showed me what it might mean to be a writer. Thank you Dorla McIntosh for letting me into those classes. Thank you Lynda Barry, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Ron Kuka, Judith Claire Mitchell, Lorrie Moore and Timothy Yu for helping me begin this book. Thank you Henry Sutton for helping me finish it. I had a lot to learn, and am still learning.
Thank you to my MFA class—Liv Stratman, Steven Wright, Kevin Debs, Ladee Hubbard, Steven Flores.
Thank you to the Asian American Writers Workshop—Ken Chen, Jyothi Natarajan, Nadia Ahmad, Brittany Gudas, everyone behind the scenes, and the constellations of interns. I adore my fellow fellows Wo Chan and Muna Gurung. My brilliant mentor Alexander Chee told me to wear red when I sent out this book—it worked! Thank you Gina Apostol; your kindness was so unexpected. All of you helped me be a writer in the world and kept me feeling hopeful.
Thank you to the Millay Colony and The Landmark Trust for donating writing nooks. Thank you to the New York State Summer Writers Institute and Word Factory for being oases of language and companionship.
Thank you to the publications that took in my work: The Tin House Open Bar, The Harvard Review, Public Books, The Indiana Review, Selected Shorts, Apogee, TriQuarterly, and of course and always, No Tokens.
Thank you everyone else who read the book in its growing up. Thank you for telling me when things worked and when they really didn’t—Lizzie Briggs, Jacob Berns, Joe Cassarà, Stephen Chan, Kyla Cheung, Tony Fu, Paul Hardwick, Chloe Krug Benjamin, Jonathan Lee, T Kira Madden, Ilana Masaad, Hannah Oberman-Breindel, Eric Pato, Jacob Rice, Irene Skolnick, Shira Schindel, Ian Scheffler, Leah Schnelbach, Ted Thompson, Danielle Wexler, and Lindsay Wong.
Thank you to those who fed me. Thank you to those who held me on hard days. Thank you to those who wrote elbow to elbow. If you think you should be on this page, you probably should. You may not have worked on the book with me, but my heart is sustained by you.
My family. Thank you Grandma. Thank you Daddy. Thank you Mommy. Thank you James. Thank you, Gloria and Peta who hold us together. I love you all.
Copyright © 2016 by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
First American Edition 2017
First published in Great Britain by Sceptre,
an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, an Hachette UK company
All rights reserved
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Prologue, Berlin
Yuki
1968, Quinacridone Gold
Jay
1. New York, June 2016
2. Connecticut, September 2016
Yuki
1969, Celadon
1969, Goethite Ochre
1969, Raw Umber
Jay
3. Connecticut, March 2016 New York, March 2015 Connecticut, March 1998
4. Connecticut, September 2016
5. Connecticut, September 2016
6. Connecticut, September 2016 / New York, March 2016
Yuki
1970, Carmine
1970, Indigo Extra
Jay
7. Interstate 95, September 2016
8. New York, October 2016
9. John F. Kennedy, October 2016
Yuki
1970, Dragon’s Blood
1973, Payne’s Gray
Jay
10. Berlin, October 2016
11. Berlin, October 2016
12. Berlin, October 2016
Yuki
1975, Caput Mortum
1978, Ivory Black
Jay
13. Berlin, October 2016 / New York, June 2007
14. Berlin, October 2016 Connecticut, August 1996
15. New York, September 2016
Yuki
1979, Gesso
1980, Zinc White
1981
Jay
16. Berlin, October 2016
17. Berlin, October 2016
18. Berlin, October 2016 / New York 2007
19. Berlin, October 2016
Yuki
1982, Vermillion
1983, Turpentine
Jay
20. Berlin, October 2016
21. Berlin, October 2016
Epilogue
Thank You
Copyright
Harmless Like You Page 27
