Likes

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  * * *

  Life was a subject on which his daughter collected inspirational quotes. Her favorite—“Life always offers you a second chance. It’s called tomorrow”—served as the bio on her Instagram profile. If asked to describe herself, she invariably said either “fantabulous” or “optimistic.” Among the many items on the third draft of her Christmas list was something called a Happiness Planner, a daily journal designed, she explained, to create positive thinking and personal growth. Christmas was well over a month away, though nearly all the houses on the block already had their lights up.

  On a cold morning, the dad sank into the driver’s seat, and in a fog he backed the car down the driveway and into the street before he became aware of a painted wooden sign on top of his dashboard. It was long and thin, with a black background and italicized gold lettering; the paint had been deliberately rubbed away from the sign’s edges to make it look like an heirloom that had once hung in an ancestor’s homestead. Usually this sign hung on the wall above his daughter’s bed, for the most part unnoticed by him, but now, looking at it closely, he saw that its syntax was slightly garbled. It read, Life is always offered a second chance. It’s called tomorrow. Not as bad as what he’d seen in some instruction manuals, but still off, and annoyingly so, considering that the words were the whole point. He flipped over the sign to confirm his suspicions about where it had been manufactured. Proudly made in Michigan, USA, the sticker said. China was off the hook! He didn’t know why he bothered feeling surprised anymore. He tossed the sign into the back seat, facedown. It struck him as darkly symbolic, as so many things did these days. Impersonal life marching on, taking for itself all the tomorrows you had squandered. And don’t get him started on Michigan. How did the unintelligible thing even end up on his dashboard? He’d have to remind Ivy to take it up to her room, or else it would remain in the back of his car for months.

  * * *

  “Do you realize how Snapchat works?” Dorothy asked him, her face lit up in the dark by her laptop. “That it just disappears? The photos they send each other? And that they can write captions on them? Then it all goes poof—like in five seconds it’s gone. So there’s no way of knowing what they’re receiving, or putting out there, what images and messages they’re being exposed to, there’s no way to monitor any of it, because it vanishes…” She clicked on her trackpad. “Hey. Do you know about this?” He rolled toward her and grunted. “Uh-huh.” With his mouth guard in, it wasn’t easy to enunciate. She reached over to the nightstand and then dropped his neoprene eye mask onto his face, saying, “I think I’m going to be up for a little while.” He heaved himself back onto his more comfortable side, the side with the good shoulder, and pulled the mask down over his eyes. Everything disappeared. There was something about being suddenly swaddled in darkness that made each of her clicks seem slightly louder than the one before, as if the source of the sound were coming, very slowly, closer.

  * * *

  The next morning, Dorothy returned from her run bearing a stack of newspapers in her arms, somewhat tentatively, like she was carrying someone else’s baby. She dropped it heavily onto the island. “Since when do we subscribe to The Guardian?” she asked. “And The New York Times?” The dad looked up from his phone in confusion. He did recall making a few late-night donations to the NRDC and the Southern Poverty Law Center, but he’d forgotten all about the newspapers. “You know there’s this thing called a digital subscription,” she remarked as she opened the refrigerator. He moved out of her way. “That’s what I did with The Washington Post,” he said, remembering now. “Because they don’t deliver outside the D.C. area.”

  “In a week this place is going to look like a hoarder’s house,” Dorothy predicted. “Piles of newspaper everywhere.”

  “I just think it’s important to model,” the dad said, looking meaningfully in the direction of the sofa. “Model where we get our information from.”

  He half expected his daughter’s head to pop up like a groundhog’s at the mention of “model.” Kendall Jenner? Gigi Hadid? No, not that kind of model, he heard himself saying wearily over a laugh track.

  Dorothy handed him a glass of juice. “Stop looking so pious,” she said. “I agree with you.”

  * * *

  New post: a hand holding a clear plastic Starbucks cup filled with a liquid the color of Pepto-Bismol. In it floated small chunks of something red.

  * * *

  “Do you think this is full of caffeine?” Dorothy asked, her screen tilted in his direction. Though they’d made a reservation, their table wasn’t ready. They stood wedged into the little area by the door where umbrellas would have gone if it had been raining. “Who knows what they actually put in their drinks.”

  The door opened, the air was cold, and they squeezed closer together to let the new arrivals through.

  “Well, she gets points for consistency, I’ll give her that,” Dorothy murmured as she continued thumbing her phone. “She’s really thinking about her palette.”

  “Her pallet?” That was how he heard it, pallet, like where Joan of Arc would have slept.

  “On her Instagram. It’s pink. Her palette is a mix of light pink and hot pink.”

  He still didn’t understand what she was talking about.

  “With the occasional salmon accent thrown in.”

  He blinked angrily. Dorothy had downloaded the app only a week ago.

  “What about the picture of Michelle Obama?” he asked. “She’s not pink.”

  “Her dress is.” His wife smiled at him.

  At this point the hostess looked up from her station and signaled for them to approach. The noise of the restaurant rose up around them, and for a moment he felt enfolded by the warm lighting and the voices and the smell of food being thoughtfully prepared. But none of it gave him any pleasure.

  As soon as they were seated, he ordered wine for them both and in a little bout of resentment told Dorothy that a pink palette struck him as depressingly clichéd. Ivy was just imitating what she saw other girls doing online. Carefully styled shots of doughnuts and videos of dissolving bath bombs. Groupthink, he said. She kept talking about her personal “style” and her “vibe” and her “aesthetic,” but nothing about it was actually hers. The photo of her hand holding the pink drink from Starbucks? He’d seen practically the same image posted a hundred times before.

  His wife reached out and touched the arm of a passing server. “Can we get a new fork, please?” Accidentally he had knocked his off the table.

  * * *

  “I know you don’t like it when I talk about YouTubers, but can I tell you just this one thing? What makes Ashleigh Janine different from a lot of other YouTubers is that she’s really honest with her fans. She’ll come right out and say who’s sponsoring her. She doesn’t try to hide it or make it seem like it’s just a coincidence that she uses Simple and Clinique. She’ll say, ‘I’m so excited to be working with these brands.’ And also? She’s grateful. She says all the time how blessed she is. Because she knows it’s not usual for a twenty-three-year-old to be buying her first house. And have it be so big.”

  “She’s buying a house?”

  “With a pool.”

  “Wow,” he said. “Her own pool.”

  “She’s already moved in. Tomorrow she’s going to Lowe’s to buy houseplants.”

  “What’s Simple?” He knew what Clinique was.

  “It’s a makeup remover. Like, cleansing facial wipes. They don’t use artificial perfumes or harsh chemicals, so it won’t upset your skin.”

  “She bought a house by using cleansing wipes?”

  “She has a lot of other sponsors, not just Simple. Plus she’s writing a YA novel, so she gets money from that, too.”

  He didn’t know how to continue the conversation. Accelerating, he made it through a yellow light.

  “Dad?” his daughter said, after a minute or two. “When Ashleigh’s book comes out, can I get it?”

  He must have looked ill-
disposed—or maybe he just looked ill—because then she said jovially, “Come on! It’s reading.”

  But could it really be called reading? Did it actually count as a book? Or was it just something AMAZING. Something to be SO EXCITED about. To be SO GRATEFUL for. I hope you guys enjoyed it! I had so much fun doing it and if you want me to do more things like this, make sure to give it a big thumbs-up and comment down below. And don’t forget to subscribe to my vlog channel—which just got, I can’t believe it, two million subscribers!—because there you can see all the behind-the-scenes! So, yeah, thank you for watching and I love you guys so so so much—

  In fact, would it be going too far to call it TREMENDOUS? Something INCREDIBLE. A massive story. And very complex. Made by some really incredible people. Of such incredible talent. It will be a big win, there’s no question about it. And I can tell you why, because, number one, the enthusiasm. The enthusiasm for this, it is really tremendous—

  Right before the impact, he heard his daughter gasp.

  And, in the silence afterward, he felt her chest rising and falling rapidly against his outstretched arm.

  * * *

  New post: a bared collarbone with a seat-belt burn running diagonally across it. The welt shiny with ointment, and pink.

  * * *

  During the intermission of The Nutcracker, he was startled to see the physical therapist standing in line for the ladies’ room. She was holding a potted orchid from Trader Joe’s and wearing a velvet blazer. “You came!” he said, a little too loudly. He glanced around to see if maybe she had brought a date. She asked him, “Is this Ivy’s mom?” and he remembered to introduce Dorothy, who promptly apologized for the length and overall tedium of the production. “But I’m enjoying it,” the therapist protested. She complimented the girl who had danced Arabian Coffee and also the Chinese dragon dancers, who had succeeded, the dad admitted, in bringing a sort of unruly street energy to the show. “Ivy was wonderful,” she said, and together he and Dorothy smiled. “Like you could really tell,” he said.

  She looked at him seriously. “I would know those legs anywhere. Overpronation of the feet, well-developed gastrocnemius. She was third from the back.” The confidence with which she said it moved him. He wished he could say he knew anything that well. He thought of all the time she had spent working with his daughter deep in the forest of equipment: two times a week, for nearly three months. Not only a licensed professional but an expert in her field. And here she was, on her day off—

  It was the therapist who was smiling now. “Don’t look like that, Dave,” she said. “It’s not magic or anything. It’s just my job.” He began smiling, too, to show that he of course understood, but judging from the expression on her face, and on Dorothy’s, it was very possible that his eyes were also leaking a little. The likelihood made him smile even more; that and the fact that—well, what do you know?—she did remember his name, after all.

  * * *

  A week after the performance, he came home late from work, and when he pulled the rental car into the driveway he saw his daughter sitting at the dining room table. She was framed photogenically by the room’s picture window. For a moment, he felt the vise in his chest tightening—Why was she alone on a Friday night? Why hadn’t Dorothy set up a sleepover for her? Why hadn’t anyone invited her to their house?—but as he climbed out of the car he saw that she appeared unperturbed and in fact rather happy, or at least happily occupied. She had her earbuds in and was making Christmas cards, the supplies spread in a glittering swath across the table.

  When she spotted him outside, she immediately yanked out her earbuds, pushed back her chair, and hurled herself against the picture window, landing with a soft thud. Her cheek lay smushed against the glass, her arms were splayed, and while she still needed one leg to stand on, she’d lifted the other and pressed its bent shape to the window. What in the world. He had no idea what she was expressing, or rehearsing—but the gesture was undoubtedly directed at him. Out in the darkness he gave her a thumbs-up, but her eyes were limply shut. Not a muscle moved. It was all very realistic.

  Was he witnessing the magic of dance? Of—what was it called when she was little?—creative movement? Somehow she had managed to convey through her body precisely what he’d been feeling since November: not crushed, not flattened, but flung, as if from an obliterating blast, against a hard, exposing surface. Spread, embarrassed, suspended, without the strength to open his eyes and survey the damage. He put down his computer bag and drew closer to the window. He tapped lightly on the pane but she didn’t flinch. Pressing his palm to hers, he wondered if she could feel his outline through the glass. He tried it with his other palm, and then his cheek. He raised and crooked his knee to match the angle of her leg. In sixth-grade theater class he’d had to do mirror games, but actually this was easier, because now he got to choose his partner. What was hard was balancing on one foot. When he started to wobble, her silent laughter made the whole window shake.

  BEDTIME STORY

  One long winter night, Ezra Washington’s wife walks in on him telling their younger child stories from his rollerblading days. The room is as dark as a coal mine and his voice floats sonorously from somewhere in the vicinity of the trundle bed. He is remembering a time long before the child was born, a time when he was a poor graduate student living in New York City with nothing but his own body and mind for entertainment. Saturdays were spent in the narrow park that runs alongside the Hudson River, him blading up and down the path very fast as if his happiness depended on it.

  “She was coming straight at me,” he says. “To the right of me was the river. And to the left a pack of bicyclists. She was coming around the bend with a look of panic in her eyes.”

  From the doorway his wife wonders silently if he is speaking of her, the younger self who, on the three or four occasions on which she’d joined him, may have worn this expression.

  “She was going fast, too?” their child asks in the dark.

  “No, not at all, she was clearly a beginner. Which made the situation that much more dangerous,” Ezra says patiently. He then explains how he called out to her in the instant before they collided. I’ve got you! he cried to the inexperienced skater as he grasped her by the forearms and guided her down between his legs until her bottom gently touched ground. “By then she was laughing,” he said. “That laugh you’d know anywhere.”

  His wife doesn’t recall ever laughing while on Rollerblades. Her first wild thought is that all these years she’s been wrong about herself. But then the child shifts in his bed and sets the comforter to rustling and casts the story in an entirely new light. “She’s the one who plays the mom?” he asks. “With the big teeth and the long brown hair?”

  “Well, I’d say it’s more of a reddish brown. An auburn color. But yes, that’s right,” Ezra says to the child. “Julia Roberts.”

  “Julia Roberts went right between your legs,” the child confirms.

  “Yes, but don’t repeat that,” Ezra says. “Better to say we crashed into each other. Or that Julia Roberts crashed into me.”

  The child falls silent, as if committing this to memory.

  Ezra adds, “It’s not an exaggeration to say she was the biggest movie star in the world.”

  “Back then,” the child clarifies.

  Fine, his mother thinks, back then, all children by their nature sticklers, but in fact the poor kid has no idea. Never will he know the stunned sensation of emerging from the darkness of a matinee on Senior Skip Day, speechless at what they’d just seen: Julia Roberts as an adorable streetwalker. It confounded the imagination. Whatever had possessed them to spend their day of mutiny in this ridiculous way? They would never forget it. A whole group of them milling about on the sidewalk outside the theater, boarding school students let loose on the world and now at a loss for what to do next, Ezra with his arm resting lightly across the shoulders of his girlfriend, Christina, his serious senior-year girlfriend Christina, and Christina looking shy and t
riumphant because already more than one person had said, You know, you kind of look like her …

  Yes, she was there that day, witness to the spectacle of Ezra and Christina, and though she was sandwiched in the middle of the crowd, she saw them as if from a great distance, from a far, chilly point on the periphery. She kept half an eye on Ezra out of long habit, for she had done so, without quite wanting to, through all the weeks and months of high school that had come before, and maybe he had noticed: when he and Christina broke up after a run of graduation parties, it was she whom he called. He was miserable but talkative. One still had to pay for long distance in those days. On a Saturday morning in early October, he appeared on the steps of her freshman dorm, despite having enrolled at a college more than three hours away. By the time Ezra got into graduate school, they were an old couple, a familiar sight. She, too, had her tales of New York. The park he spoke of, and its hazardous paths—she once knew them well.