North of Beautiful

by Justina Chen Headley

  “Tell me something,” Erik said gruffly, waiting for me now.

  I pushed back my hair and studied Erik, his full mouth that I had always thought too lushly feminine for his face. Those rough hands that had touched every bit of my body. Now those hands balled up the napkin and were tossing it along with the roses into a trash bin a few feet away from us. He made the shot. When had he ever not?

  “So what’s with that guy?” he asked, nodding over at Jacob, who was striding with his luggage and his mom’s out the door without a backward glance at me. Norah lifted her hand for a halfhearted wave before disappearing through the sliding doors, too.

  I knew what Erik was getting at: Why Jacob? Why this lanky kid who Erik could take down in a moment?

  “He got me,” I said simply.

  Chapter thirty-two

  Magnetic North

  IF IT WEREN’T FOR OUR luggage by the front door where we had parked them, we might never have left the house. Within minutes of Erik dropping us off (after what was quite possibly the most uncomfortable car ride in the history of girlhood), Mom was back in the kitchen. And I was back to hovering in the background, patrolling in case Dad blew.

  We’d been gone for eleven days, and the first thing Dad had to say when he finally deigned to notice us from where he was sitting in the kitchen, reading his newspaper? “What are we having for dinner?”

  As though Mom knew she was being set up for a crime she didn’t commit, she opened the refrigerator cautiously. The three main shelves were empty. Not even Mom, the culinary miracle worker, could do much with only organic butter and homemade jams, jars of honey Dijon mustard and plum sauce for ingredients.

  “He didn’t go grocery shopping?” Mom muttered to herself. I don’t think she was even aware she had spoken aloud. My stomach tightened, and I glanced automatically at Dad. I hoped he hadn’t overheard.

  Naturally, he of the big ears heard every word. “If I didn’t have to go for the past week and a half, why would I have gone now?”

  At least I could make tea, placate Dad while I ran to the store.

  Hastily, I turned on the Instant Hot faucet. I was in such a rush that I scalded the mound of my palm in almost exactly the same spot where Claudius had cut himself over Christmas. Slow down, I told myself as I ran cold water over it. Calm down. Jacob had told me that the best coffee — and best tea — began with cold water gently boiled. And that is what I did. Dad could wait for his tea. More mindful of my actions, I filled the kettle from the regular faucet, set it on the stovetop, switched the heat on.

  Silently, Mom opened the freezer. Every single precooked and prepackaged homemade lunch and dinner that Mom had prepared in the weeks before our trip, neatly stowing them in their own Ziploc bag complete with her precise thawing and cooking instructions — all of them were gone, eaten. She just stood there, riveted by the sight of her freezer so cleaned out.

  Without moving from her spot, Mom tugged her orange silk shirt down as though it had shrunk a size in the caustic heat of Dad’s presence. Or like she was finally gearing up for battle.

  Not now, Mom. Dad was hungry; I was tired. These were not good battle conditions. All I craved was a quick retreat to my bedroom, forget about Dad and Erik and Jacob. Jacob and his last look of utter betrayal before he left the airport. But I couldn’t leave Mom.

  Dad, of course, had to notice Mom adjusting her shirt. “Are you sure that’s a good color on you? It’s like looking directly into the sun, isn’t it?”

  The kettle whistled. By accident, I had overfilled the kettle so that water leaked out and sizzled on the cooktop as it hit the hot surface.

  “We’re out of tea,” Dad said accusingly, implying that I was the biggest idiot this side of the Cascades. “So why would you be heating up water?”

  I turned off the heat and glared at Dad through the wispy steam. My tiredness disappeared. I was fully alert now. Mom was bending down to her tote bag.

  Dad’s pent-up criticism, stored over the last week and a half, all but spewed out like storm water in a stopped-up gutter. He slapped the newspaper on the table.

  Deliberately, Mom pulled out the three expensive boxes of tea she had selected especially for Dad in Hangzhou: dragon well tea leaves, handrolled into tiny pearls. Bundles of jasmine leaves, stitched together into a pellet, which would bloom like a flower when steeped in hot water. Aromatic strands of Iron Goddess. She set them down on the island now, one after another, in a straight soldierly line.

  “Which would you like?” Mom asked mildly.

  Dad’s lips tightened, thwarted. His eyes narrowed at Mom, at those tea packages that offered her this unexpected reprieve. “Are you sure they’re safe? They didn’t spike them with preservatives? Chemicals?”

  Diffuse him. Since Dad didn’t choose a tea, I did randomly. With surprising calm as though Dad weren’t in the room with us, I sliced the package open, shook out a heaping tablespoon into the waiting tea-pot, and poured the boiling water slowly over the dried leaves.

  Mom murmured so softly I could barely make out her words, “If you don’t want them, I can find someone else who would.” And then, as though shocked, as though she heard the echo of those words, the implications reverberated inside herself. She could find someone else.

  Mom looked at Dad then, scrutinized him.

  She could find someone else.

  The same look of dazed surprise that she wore after her rickshaw ride and again when she talked our way into the orphanage now emboldened her eye. It was as if it finally occurred to her that she had been navigating Dad’s ever-shifting mercurial moods, always changing her course to accommodate him. Every time he lashed out and harangued and criticized and demeaned, Mom apologized and rationalized and accepted the blame, a tango that kept her off-balance.

  He glowered, then repeated his question — “What are we having for dinner, Lois?” — more slowly, like Mom had lost her language skills in China. I maneuvered myself closer to Mom so that I stood between the refrigerator and the kitchen table, ready to defend her if it came to that.

  Mom frowned at me. “I’m not hungry. Are you, Terra?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then I think we both better go to bed. I’ll do the grocery shopping tomorrow.” As clearly as Dad did upstairs in his office, creating his maps, Mom drew a line now, firm, unmovable.

  She didn’t so much as glance uneasily at him when she collected her bags from the front door. Instead of going upstairs, Mom rolled her suitcase to Claudius’s bedroom, retreating there, fully conscious of her decision. Her statement. I thought she might close the door now, but instead she said so firmly, “Come on, Terra, it’s time for bed,” I could have been a little girl, the one who needed protecting.

  The tea had steeped for too long in the hot water. No doubt, it’d be a bitter brew, but I poured Dad his mug of tea, placed it on the table. Only then did I see the box I had opened blindly. Iron Goddess.

  “What are you doing, Lois?” demanded Dad, ignoring the tea to stalk toward Claudius’s bedroom.

  Mom didn’t answer, waiting calmly for me to find safety in my bedroom. When I was at my door, she nodded. “Good night, Grant.” And only then did she close the door. Do not cross this line.

  “What? Why should I have gone grocery shopping?” Dad demanded. “You were the ones gallivanting off on vacation. I had to do all the work around here.”

  Even from my bedroom, I heard the click as Mom locked the door. Her answer was all too clear: I don’t trust you.

  And then I did the same.

  At first, I waited for Dad to pound on her door, threaten to break mine down. Certainly, we must have had the key to these bedrooms lying around somewhere.

  Nothing.

  I slumped against the door, listening, remembering every story I had ever read about fathers snapping and killing their families.

  Still nothing.

  And then it occurred to me that maybe Mom didn’t need my protection as much as I thought she did. She
couldn’t have drawn her line more clearly. Her line that said, From here you do not cross. From here I will not budge.

  She’ll be fine, Norah had assured me in China. For the first time, I allowed myself to truly believe that my mother just might be fine. And I was free to breathe.

  Chapter thirty-three

  True North

  ACCORDING TO KARIN’S WEEKLY PODCAST, Love and Hate in High School, thou shalt not call a boy more than once a day, preferably every other day if one must. Broke that rule by nine that night. Not that it mattered. I kept ringing directly into Jacob’s voicemail. It was probably for the best; how many ways can you say you’re sorry? How many times can you try to explain yourself before your excuses sounded more and more like guilt-ridden rationalization?

  At the very least, I would have thought that jet lag would knock me out. But between Mom’s snores rumbling from Claudius’s bedroom and my habituated listening for Dad, I couldn’t sleep. I flipped over, covered my head with my pillow, and finally flung it to the floor. The clock read two. I sighed and decided I might as well be productive. As I powered on my computer, I could almost hear Jacob teasing me about it: are you always this compulsive?

  Well, yes. You know that . . . just as you knew I hated roses.

  Impatient at myself for pining like the pathetic boy-centric girl I vowed I would never be, I grabbed my camera from my backpack and downloaded all five hundred and twenty-two of my China photos. If anything, reviewing the pictures made the trip seem even more distant than it really was. We had said zaijian to China less than twenty-four hours ago.

  There was Mom and me at Sea-Tac Airport, the one Norah had taken of us at the gate, waiting to board. We looked way more nervous than I remembered, with the same half smiles, the same pocket of worry creasing the middle of our foreheads. Then came the shot of Mom and Norah on the airplane, giggling as they clandestinely swigged their mini-bottles of wine. They hadn’t seen me sneaking up on them. And then at dinner after their first day of shopping in Shanghai, Mom wearing the same bright silk shirt she had worn today.

  I cropped the picture down to Mom’s face. This wasn’t the pale vestige of the beauty queen Mom had once been, but the queen herself. Her head was cocked to the side and she was smiling mysteriously, transported by a great story. Ink was so expensive, I saved it for the really good pictures. This was one of them.

  As the printer worked its magic, I studied the next photo, a group shot at that same dinner. It wasn’t Jacob or Mom that held my attention, but Merc who was — surprise, surprise — checking his BlackBerry, frowning, completely unaware that he was sitting before a feast. I flipped through a sequence that Mom must have taken, one of me sleeping in Merc’s apartment, mouth open. I almost deleted the three of them, but then, that was the trip through Mom’s eyes.

  I skipped ahead to the orphanage, wishing I had been able to take more. But it was a miracle I had been able to snag even the few shots I did before I got chastised by one of the nervous staff members. Photographs within the orphanage walls still weren’t allowed. But there was one of me and Peony — I finally teased the girl’s name out of her before we left the orphanage — cheek to cheek, birthmark to birthmark. Another picture worthy of my printer ink.

  But it was the last photograph, the one I had asked Mom to take of me and Jacob on the doorstep outside the orphanage that made me lean forward. Something about our expressions was different. I zoomed in. More than relieved, we looked whole. Triumphant. Only then did I notice Jacob’s scar, that faded rainbow over his upper lip. When had I stopped seeing it when I was with him?

  You know, I don’t even see your birthmark, he had said to me at the lake’s edge in Beijing. Which makes me sad.

  I understood that now: how nothing looked more beautiful than that scar of his, that borderline that separated what Jacob could have been had he stayed in that orphanage from who he was.

  While the printer whirred for yet one more ink-worthy photograph, I knew better than to check my cell phone, turned to its highest volume and placed by my bed so I wouldn’t miss his call. But I did. No messages. What had I expected? It was compulsive and control freakish, but I wanted to clean up this mess I had made between us, make things right. I could have listened to one of Karin’s podcasts. But I didn’t need her relationship advice; I needed a map that would tell me where to go, which way to proceed. I lifted my eyes to the wall, papered with Merc’s maps. Those weren’t going to help. Merc was more lost than I was, mistaking exhaustion for enlightenment.

  Anger that I never allowed myself to feel expanded inside me now. I could feel it strumming in my stomach, my head, my fingertips. I had been there, in Merc’s adopted country, in his apartment, and we had spent a total of six hours together. Jumping to my feet, I ripped down the maps: the free road maps from AAA. The cheap topographical ones inserted into National Geographic. The world map pinholed with the places Merc wanted to visit, and the places he had already seen. The pins scattered on the floor, making even tiptoeing dangerous. But I excelled at that. After all, didn’t I walk on pins whenever Dad lurked nearby?

  Spent, I fell into bed, closed my eyes, and dreamt of torn maps falling on me like fresh snow.

  The next morning, just as I was finishing my e-mail to Merc, I heard a light rap on my bedroom door. Mom called softly, “Terra? Are you awake?”

  I pushed away from my desk, scampered across the floor swept clean of last night’s rain of pushpins, and unlocked the door. Mom was back in her pink sweats and sneakers. But she had makeup on, lipstick, eye shadow, the works.

  “I’m going grocery shopping. Is there anything you want?” she asked. She noticed the maps strewn on my floor, raised an eyebrow at me. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m redecorating.”

  “Is that all?”

  “And e-mailing Merc.”

  Her eyebrows rose even further.

  When I awoke this morning, I realized had I been straight with Erik and Jacob and myself, I wouldn’t be in this mess. Just be honest. So I told her, “I want Merc to know that it hurt that he didn’t want to spend more time with me in China.” I bit my lip. It was hard to be that vulnerable, to make my feelings known. “It’s good to let him know how I feel, isn’t it?”

  For the longest time, Mom stared at the overlapping maps that created a great collage on my floor. Then she nodded. “That’s brave of you.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll go with you to the store,” I told Mom now, suddenly.

  “You have school.” But then she looked at my baggage, still unpacked in the corner, the photographs laid out on my desk. She walked over to them now, inspecting them silently one by one. Then she murmured, stunned, “These are beautiful.” Mom picked up the picture I had worked on last night, the cropped one of her at the restaurant. I thought she’d put herself down, comment about how fat she looked, how many double chins she had. Instead, she set the photograph carefully back on the desk. “I don’t suppose missing one more day will hurt. Can you be ready in five minutes?”

  “Twelve,” I countered, like we were bargaining in one of the markets she had dragged me to in Beijing.

  Mom laughed. “Ten.”

  After I threw on some clothes and brushed my teeth, I went back to my computer, ready to hit send, but hesitated. Before I sent the e-mail to Merc, I wanted to review my words one last time, make sure I said what I wanted to say without antagonizing him or accusing him. The wrong words could damage our relationship; that’s not what I wanted. So I clicked on save instead.

  Control freak that I am, it was one thing to have my clothes still neatly folded inside my suitcase, and another for the maps to be strewn like a great, messy collage on the ground.

  A collage.

  When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. That’s what Lydia always advised. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift. So when I had the impulse to roll up the maps and scrounge under my bed for my Beauty Box, I followed it. A layer of du
st had settled on the box’s lid since the last time I had added to its contents. I grabbed the pile of China map travel bugs I had removed from the cache outside and kept in the bottom drawer of my desk, under a box of old papers. I now swept them into the Beauty Box. Then I stowed box and all inside my backpack. I was about to leave my bedroom when — don’t ask why — I darted into my bathroom and plucked my vials of makeup off the counter — the thick Covermark made especially for port-wine stains, all my concealers in descending shades of beige from tanned brown to ashen white, my powders, both the cakey ones and the shimmery sheers.

  Only then was I ready for Mom.

  Like always, I headed to the mudroom to take the car keys off the rack so I could drive. But as I passed Claudius’s bedroom, I stopped. Mom had covered the bed with her new duvet, the one she had bought in China. So cheerful and bright and wholly feminine, it should have looked out of place with Claudius’s fantasy books and posters. But like all of Mom’s creations, this mysterious alchemy of design worked somehow.

  Mom was waiting for me outside, facing the valley spotted with cabins and homes among acres of rolling green from the few remaining farmlands. As expansive as the view was, my hometown had shrunk without anything changing but my perspective. This, my home, was an anthill compared to even the smallest towns in China, which numbered at a million people.

  We headed silently to the garage. Dad’s keys had been missing in the mudroom. And so was his car. It wasn’t like him to leave the house this early.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked Mom, worried. What was he up to now?

  Mom shrugged — she didn’t know. Or maybe she didn’t care. “Shall we?”

  “So,” I said casually, as I opened the trunk to stow my backpack, “I saw your sheets in Claudius’s room.”