Things to Make and Break

by May-Lan Tan

  By the side of the tub is a wooden, cushion-back hairbrush with her soft, streaky hairs caught in it. Wound around its handle is some kind of child’s ponytail holder with red plastic horses. I unwind it carefully and push it onto my wrist, rolling it under my sleeve and up to my elbow. When I come out of the bathroom, she has unwrapped the book and is leafing through it. She’s like a little kid, kind of stroking the pages as she looks at them.

  “Nice. Who’s it from?” I say in a friendly way.

  “I don’t know. But look, it’s all—Why would someone send me such a used book?”

  “Maybe you sent them one,” I offer helpfully.

  “Huh,” she says, annoyed. “Well, thanks.”

  “OK,” I say. “Thanks.”

  I find my clipboard and let myself out. As I kick up the stand on my bike, I realize I’ve completely wasted a turn. You can only meet a person one more time before the whole thing starts to look weird.

  He’s asleep. I cross the dark bedroom and lie on his legs.

  “What,” he says. He always wakes up instantly.

  “Tell me about her for the third time,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “But not about the library and everything—I’ve heard all that.”

  “Oh my God, you’re obsessed.”

  “I know.”

  He laughs.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “Um. Actually, I bumped into her a few months ago. She still lives around here.”

  “Oh? How was she?”

  “She looked amazing,” he says.

  “OK,” I say. “Great. And what happened, did you go for coffee or something?”

  “Nah.”

  “Is she still a trapeze artist?”

  “She gave it up because of a knee injury. Knees never heal all the way.”

  “Oh,” I say, disappointed. From now on I’ll always picture her in her apartment, smoking a cigarette. “What does she do instead?”

  “Just anything, it looks like. When I bumped into her, she was spraying Christmas shoppers with perfume.”

  “But you and me, we’d go for coffee, right?”

  “Yep, and cake, and broken-up sex,” he says.

  I glance up at him. “Seriously, though.”

  “Seriously?” he says. “Well, seriously, I’ll have to now, won’t I?”

  The end of her street turns onto a bigger street where people are always walking up and down, so I wait for her here on the corner. It’s a hot, bright evening with that vacuum-packed feeling before a storm, and I hope I won’t have to bike home in the rain. I’ll be glad when I give all this up. I’m here from just after five until six or seven most days. I see almost everyone in her building come home except for her.

  I watch the women clipping past me in their heels. It’s mesmeric, the way their asses tick from side to side like a watch on a chain, their polished limbs and blown-out haircuts glossy as sucked candy. The prettier they are, the faster they move. They brandish their carefully packaged bodies as weapons, as medals, as currency. I wonder what they’ll do when they get back to their apartments. Probably they’ll make salads and wear those camisole and boy-short sets that you see in the store and think, Who even wears those?

  Later Holly emerges from her building dressed all in white. She walks a goddess walk like she’s on wheels. I follow her two blocks to the Korean market and wander around, dropping random sachets and jars into my basket and looking at her through the shelves. Once, I go right up and stand with my back to her, pretending to read the labels of cans. We’re so close I can smell her piña colada shampoo. I bump her with my shoulder, as if by accident. “Sorry,” she says, moving down the aisle. I watch secretly from the deli section as she pays, the tattoo on her wrist flashing when she unzips her coin purse. It’s something on fire with a tangle of thorns around it. Then she leaves, and I have to put back my groceries.

  In one of the photographs she has her arms stretched above her head and you can see it clearly. I sketch it on the back of an envelope, then draw it on my wrist with a black Sharpie. I buy cigarettes and smoke one after lunch. It makes me dizzy. I dial her number again.

  He wants me to strangle him while we’re doing it.

  “Just don’t kill me,” he says. “I should turn white but not purple.”

  We start with me on top, him lying with the belt loose around his neck. It takes a long time because I’m nervous and can’t get off. When he’s almost there, I slide the buckle up to his ear and pull and don’t let go. I do it just the way he said.

  Afterward I say, “Can’t we ever make it straight?”

  His eyes fog up like breathed-on glass. Behind them, my dollar is dropping.

  At eleven o’clock in the morning on my day off, Holly strolls out of her building, tightly wrapped in a long coat and carrying a sort of case, like a hatbox. I tail her at a distance along the main street and down into the subway. When the train comes, I close in, climbing onto the same car. I stay by the doors, and she sits with her case on her lap. She’s wearing so much makeup that her face looks like a drawing of a face. The flesh on her cheeks judders as we hurtle along.

  She stands at the station exit, scanning the crowds, and I think she might be meeting someone. I interest myself in a blown-up advertisement, peeking around from time to time. A busker plays classical guitar, and a man on stilts hovers above our heads.

  Holly plunks down her case in the middle of the sidewalk, pops the latches, and removes a piggy bank, which she sets on the ground. Then she peels off her coat to reveal a shiny green leotard and pink trapeze shoes. She shuts the box, covers it with her coat, and stands on top of it, posing like a music-box dancer but letting her head hang. She stays frozen like that. People stroll by and some of them look at her, then at me watching her.

  Finally a couple drops some change into the piggybank, but they don’t hang around—they just keep walking. Holly does her act anyway. The premise seems to be that she’s a kind of clockwork automaton locked in a display case. It’s a combination of my two least favorite things: miming the existence of a glass box and robot dancing. But with the guitar music and the lattice of scars, it’s sort of heartbreaking, as if she’s tried and failed to escape before. Her movements are practiced and cynical, almost sarcastic. She spanks herself and swivels her hips, popping her joints to make it look like the gears are sticking. The whole time her expression is deadpan; her eyes open and close like a real doll’s when you tip it.

  As the money runs out, she gradually winds to a stop. By now a small crowd has gathered, and someone slips more coins into the slot. There’s something so barefaced about the whole enterprise that I have to admire it. Other people—tourists—watch her with bemused smirks, their eyebrows slightly raised as if to say, Is that it? I feel like telling them who she is and what she’s capable of. Someone snaps a picture. Holly blinks but forgets to mechanize it, unprepared for the flash. People walk away, bored. They make me so mad.

  We’ve broken up but I haven’t moved out, and I’m cutting his hair. He keeps shifting, trying to read the newspapers spread beneath his chair. His real hairdresser is away having a nervous breakdown.

  “Will you please keep your head still?”

  “Don’t make it too short, or too even. I swear, last time she came back she could tell I’d had it cut by someone else. She made me look god-awful for two months.”

  “And you kept going?”

  “She understands my hair.”

  “You should see a real barber—I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

  All the lights are on and it’s dark outside. We’re reflected clearly in the kitchen window. He should give me the Motörhead T-shirt he’s wearing. It looks so much better on me.

  He’s been dating an out-of-work actress who thinks I’m renting the spare room. I wonder why she isn’t the one not-cutting his hair.

  “How come you never bring her here?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “I’m looki
ng at places,” I tell him. “I saw two today.”

  “Uh-huh,” he says. “Just, whenever. Anyway, she’s not around.”

  “Where is she?”

  “At a screenwriting course in Ann Arbor. Cheating on me. It’s obvious.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I know her. She’s lazy. She’ll hook up with someone who lives ten minutes from wherever she has to be in the mornings. To her, an extra hour of sleep is worth having sex. I don’t care. I’m getting too old to care whether people have sex without me.”

  “Oh,” I say. This story isn’t as good as the other ones. “What are you going to tell people about me?”

  “Probably about how you kill bees, using your hands.”

  “Well,” I say, “try to keep your head still.”

  I’ve taken the whole day off to move out, but by ten-fifteen in the morning I’m completely packed. It turns out nothing here was mine, apart from four kinds of loose-leaf tea and the contents of the shower caddy. I cancel the cab I’d booked for this afternoon. I’ll just take my things over on the subway and come back later for my bike.

  I wander around the apartment, picking books and films off the shelves. I pull his Motörhead shirt out of the dryer. It’s soft and warm, and there are still prickly bits of hair caught in the fabric. I take the tax papers envelope and the handheld electric beater for making iced cocoa, and lay them on top of the clothes in my suitcase.

  I sit on the bed, scrolling through the numbers on my phone. I select the one labeled US. It takes a moment to connect. Holding the phone with my shoulder, I reach into the suitcase for the envelope. As the line beeps just out of sync with the phone ringing shrilly next to me, I slide out the photos and glance through them. At the bottom of the stack, beneath Holly’s, I find the ones of me. The message clicks on. A recording of my voice echoes in the earpiece: “Hi, it’s us. We’re pretending not to be here—”

  The sheets in the photographs match the sheets on the bed. The body looks good. The face isn’t much. I smile. I’m one of them now, a blade in the guts of some future girl. I end the call and delete the number. I stuff the pictures back into the envelope and leave it in its drawer.

  He calls me in my new place to ask if I can cut his hair again. I say fine, I’ll come over later. I don’t, and he never calls back.

  I cross the wooded part of the park to the empty playground. I used to be able to see it from his bedroom window, the slide like a high-heeled shoe. The kids come here only at night to smoke joints on the merry-go-round. At the swing set, I hold the chains and do a running start, jump with both feet onto the sling seat just as it takes off. The chains squeak softly as I pump, standing tall on the rush forward, curling slightly on the roll back, wind zooming in my eyes. As I rock higher and higher, I can see why she liked it here. At the tip of the arc, my body is stretched parallel to the ground and weightless. I drift like that for a moment, staring down at the concrete and pretending it’s a sea of upturned faces.

  Date Night

  I’m watching an infomercial for spray-on hair for baldies and picking a scab on my knee when I hear the elevator stop on our floor. I run to the dining room and pull the Yellow Pages out of the shoe cabinet. The doorbell rings.

  “Don’t answer it,” my mother screams in Cantonese.

  I like opening the door, but she only speaks Cantonese when she’s totally stressed out so I guess I’d better not. The pages of the phonebook slide back and forth under my feet as I peep through the spyhole at Henry Shum, who has come all the way from Tai Koo Shing and is standing a bit too close, so he’s just a giant nose. The TV audience is clapping. I hop down and patter to the kitchen, breathing in the sweet scent of chopped onions.

  My mother’s teetering on her highest heels and pouring macaroni and cheese into a Pyrex dish, scraping the globs with a wooden spoon. Her face is colorful and plastic, and her earrings wink against her long hair that looks blacker and straighter than normal. She’s been acting weird lately. She eats salad by itself as a meal, and when she’s on the phone she laughs in this low voice, like mm hm hmm. She clacks over to the sink, her butt quivering beneath her dress that’s dark pink and glossy, like lipstick. The doorbell rings again.

  “Crap,” she says, dunking the pan into the foamy water. Blobs of gray scum flick out and cling to her hair. She smoothes her skirt and yells, “Just a sec!”

  “Why can’t I meet him?” I ask, scratching a mosquito bite on the back of my leg with my big toe.

  The oven rack makes silvery sounds as she slides the dish onto it. “Because,” she says, banging the door shut, “he could still turn out to be an ass-hat.” She presses the back of her hand to her forehead and looks at it.

  “But you said he’s great.”

  She gives herself a hard glance in the shiny black glass of the microwave.

  “Everyone’s great on the internet, sweetie. That’s what it’s for.” She sniffs her armpits.

  “You have soap in your hair,” I tell her. “Where’s he taking you?”

  “French food,” she says, combing her hair with her fingers.

  I follow her to the dining room. She clicks over to the shoe cupboard and starts moving things from her everyday purse to her clutch. I feel like she hasn’t looked at me all week. After my father left, we lay in bed for days, staring into each other’s eyes.

  “Davy!” she calls.

  Our new maid comes out of the hallway wearing yellow rubber gloves and clutching a blue sponge. She lives behind the kitchen, in the room that used to be the laundry room. She’s small for an adult and stands very straight with her chin pushed down. She has a long ponytail, and big eyes peeking out from under her bangs.

  “When you’re finished, go to Movieland and rent some Japanese cartoons for Lily,” my mom says, holding out a red hundred note and the membership card.

  Davy takes them and slips them in the back pocket of her jeans. One finger of her glove gets trapped in her pocket and stretches very long before snapping back. She picks the phonebook up off the floor and puts it back in the cabinet.

  My mom tucks her clutch purse under her arm. She checks the face of her watch, which she keeps turned to the inside of her wrist. “The macaroni will be ready at eight. Make a salad, and put sliced pears on it.”

  Davy nods. She points with her chin to the door. “He outside, ma’am?”

  My mother grins at Davy like they’re friends. “Will you take a look?” she says behind her hand. “I’m too nervous.”

  Davy smiles at me shyly and walks over to the door. I notice her toes are jumbly and spread. She goes up on tiptoe to peek through the spyhole, and turns to face my mom. “Good,” she says. “Tall.”

  “Does he have three heads?” my mom whispers. “Is he a hundred years old?”

  Davy giggles, padding back to the hallway, her ponytail swishing from side to side.

  “Take a bath, and don’t make trouble,” my mother says in Cantonese, getting the keys from the big seashell and looping them over her finger. She opens the door narrowly, and squeezes through. “Sorry,” I hear her say as she pulls it shut behind her.

  The lock turns from outside. I get the phonebook from the cabinet and push it against the door, stepping up just in time to see the elevator doors close. I go to the kitchen and pick up the handset of the entryphone to make the picture come up on the screen. It shows the sidewalk outside our building from above the lobby door. My mom comes walking out and Henry follows. She turns to say something to him, her eyes surprised and shimmery. I hang up the receiver and run to the living room.

  On TV, the spokesmodel is interviewing a man who got married because of his fake spray hair. I stand on the sofa and slide the window open. We live on five, but this is actually the fourth floor. They don’t call it four because the Chinese word sounds almost exactly like the word for death. I see my mother and Henry crossing the road diagonally to a dark blue car parked in front of one of the furniture shops. A paper cup skips after them and the sid
ewalk trees crumple in the wind. My mother’s bright dress flutters like a pink flame, and she glances up at the window with her long hair wrapped across her mouth. I can’t see Henry’s face, just his pencil-gray suit and the way he fits his hand to her back and pushes her toward his car. I picture them clinking glasses of wine over plates heaped with croissants and french fries.

  I watch my mother sink into the blue car, pulling her long white legs inside, the evening sun flashing in her window as Henry swings the door shut and struts around to the other side, but I don’t watch them drive away. I turn around to catch the end of the hair commercial. I’m dying to see how they actually spray it on.

  I chew, pushing the lazy susan back and forth. The dark gray glass turns smoothly on the metal ring. One side is piled with snack foods in shiny packaging, pinched by Little Twin Stars clips. Davy sits sideways in my mother’s chair, her arm resting on the table.

  “Aren’t you having dinner?” I ask her.

  “I’m already eat.” She has a cute way of talking, skipping words, and poking her tongue through her teeth when she says the letters t and n and d. “Indonesian food.” She pronounces it in the nation food.

  I swing my legs under the table. “Why? Don’t you like macaroni?”

  She shakes her head very fast, as if she’s scared.

  “Indonesian food tastes better?” I try to say it the way she did.

  She nods, upward.

  “That’s where you live?”

  “Yah.”

  “What part?”

  “Solo. I like because”—she makes a fanning motion—“nighttime not hot.”

  “It’s cool at night?”

  “Cool. Nice. I’m sleep good.”

  “I’ve been to Bali twice,” I say.

  She gets up and comes around to refill my glass. “I’m not yet go to Bali,” she says and goes and sits back down. I can see a faint picture of the dining room in the window behind her.