The Kidney Hypothetical

by Lisa Yee

  “A true gentleman would have offered her one. As it was, I offered her two,” he said.

  “You’re an idiot,” I muttered.

  I hated it that people sometimes confused us.

  Zander was a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant with a ridiculously chiseled chin that looked like plastic surgery run amok. I was of mixed race (Chinese/English), though my father would say that I slightly favored my Asian side, and my mother would say the opposite. My hair was black, my eyes were brown, I stood six feet even, and I had a strong but lanky build. Old ladies often told me that I had a charming smile.

  HIGGS ZANDER

  Debate Team Captain Academic Decath Co-Captain

  Prom King Homecoming King

  Track Team (high jump) Golf

  Co-Valedictorian Co-Valedictorian

  Honor Society President Senior Council President

  Early Admissions: Harvard Early Admissions: Princeton

  Jazz Band: Alto Sax Band: Drum Line

  Girlfriend: Rosemary “Roo” Wynn Girlfriend: None

  The Proclamation Newspaper Reflections/snoitcelfeR Yearbook

  Boys State Representative Exchange Student (Madrid)

  Zander Findley and I were pretty much tied in terms of who ruled the school. However, the upcoming Senior of the Year award would decide that once and for all. Not to leave anything to chance, on Saturday, Nick and I had plastered “Higgs for Senior of the Year” flyers all over campus. The rationale was that on Monday, the selection committee members — no one knew who they were — would see them and be reminded of me when the votes were cast.

  “Well, sorry about your girlfriend,” Zander said, not looking sorry at all. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m bored.”

  “Likewise, I am sure,” I said, yawning broadly.

  “Oh, and Higgs,” Zander said, “your crown is crooked. Or should I say c-c-c-crooked?”

  I winced, but only for a second.

  “Shove it, Zander,” I said. “You won’t be so happy when I get Senior of the Year.”

  “Ah, but that’s not going to happen, is it?” he said ominously.

  My anger rose as I watched him walk away. I could have destroyed him right then and there. However, if I did, he could have done the same to me. We knew each other too well.

  “I’m going to find Samantha,” Nick announced.

  I had forgotten he was there. From the moment he and Samantha set eyes on each other in freshman Honors English, they had been in love, or so they claimed. I’m not sure I know what being in love is.

  When I was little, I asked my dad what love is and he was silent for so long that I thought he hadn’t heard me. Finally, he said, “Love means taking out the trash before you are told to.”

  When I asked my mom what love is, she glanced at Dad, then said, “Love is overlooking the flaws.”

  So if that’s love, I didn’t need it.

  I dunno. Maybe if Leonardo had hung on to his own life instead of trying to save Kate Winslet, he wouldn’t have drowned.

  Roo was playing the part of the innocent victim to the hilt, repeating the story each time someone new showed up. “… he refused to give me a kidney, and when I asked again, he threw up on me!”

  I couldn’t pass a girl without getting glared at, that’s how quickly the kidney hypothetical had gotten around. If it weren’t for Nick, there’s no way I would have survived the rest of the Senior Sail. He was my lookout, and whenever he spied Roo, who was on the rampage, he steered me away from her.

  “Pizza?” I asked as the ship neared shore. My appetite had suddenly reappeared and I was famished.

  Nick shook his head. “Señor Carlos.”

  Oh, right. Señor Carlos. The four of us had planned on having dinner there. It was our usual place. Great food. Cheap. “You’re still going?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah,” Nick said. “You and Roo may have broken up, but that doesn’t mean that Samantha and I have too.”

  I don’t know why that surprised me, but it did.

  When I got home, my mother was talking to Jeffrey. She was always talking to Jeffrey. “Can you believe that your little brother is graduating from high school soon?” she asked. When he didn’t answer, Mom continued, “It didn’t seem like so long ago that you were graduating….” Her voice trailed off.

  “Hey, Higgs,” my father called out from his leather armchair. Golf was on the television and the sportscasters were whispering even though they were nowhere near the tee.

  Dad held up an empty glass. I added four fresh ice cubes, before pouring the Chivas, and handed his beloved Scotch on the rocks back to him. I didn’t know how he could drink that stuff, especially because of what had happened. After the accident, it seemed like my father picked up his pace as if to make up for my mother, who had stopped drinking alcohol entirely.

  “What are you doing home?” Mom asked.

  She gazed at the oversized portrait of my brother in his high school graduation cap and gown, his good looks and effortless smile forever beaming down on us. Below it, on the fireplace mantle, was the Jeffrey Arthur Bing shrine — trophies, high school diploma, baby shoes; it was all there.

  Even though it had been years since my brother died, my parents still talked to him. In fact, they talked to him more than they talked to each other.

  “I just wanted to be with you guys,” I said. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Oh, Higgs …” Mom’s voice cracked. “I am going to miss you so much when you leave. We’re going to be all alone here.”

  “So nice to know how much I’m loved,” my sister said as she slumped into the room. Her wardrobe consisted of ratty jeans, ratty Converse, and ratty, yet expensive, T-shirts designed to convey the message of rebel youth with an artistic bent. She hung out with the artsy crowd, who took great pains perfecting the I-don’t-care look.

  “You know we love you.” Mom stared at my brother’s portrait as she hugged my sister. “It’s just that Higgs is —”

  “We all know what he is,” my sister said, pulling away. “He’s the Higgs Boson, the God particle, the missing link, the answer to all the questions of the universe.”

  “Drop it, Charlie,” my father said without taking his eyes off the television.

  Charlie. That’s my sister’s name.

  Maybe I’d better explain. My father’s full name is Charles Arthur Bing. My great-great-great-grandfather, Ah Bing, invented the Bing cherry when he lived in Oregon. Later, he was deported back to China under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. So, yes, that cherry pie so many Americans enjoy every Fourth of July was courtesy of a deported immigrant.

  My mother was an immigrant too, though no one has ever attempted to throw her out of the country, probably because she has a refined accent. Mom hailed from Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. Strangers often mentioned her resemblance to the actress Kristin Scott Thomas, who starred in the movie The English Patient alongside Voldemort, or at least the actor who played him. Despite her having lived in America for most of her life, Mom still spoke as if she were ordering high tea on the Thames. Her name is Elizabeth Mary Barrington Clarke Cooper Miller, and she is three-quarters Jewish. My mother kept her maiden name. All of them.

  The Asian Jewish English American thing was a real stumper when it came to filling out my college applications. In Ivy League circles, being an overachieving Asian was actually a detriment, and it was rumored that colleges had a secret quota. Being Jewish was of little help since it didn’t qualify me as a minority. In the end, my college coach suggested we list me as “other.”

  Mom had a BA in astronomy and a master’s in astrophysics. She was working on her PhD at the time of the accident and was a respected scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, a couple of miles from our house. It was her idea to name me Higgs Boson, after the elusive particle. Dad wanted to name me Charles.

  “But he’ll already be named after you — his last name will be Bing,” my mother countered.

 
The compromise was that the next child would be named after my father, which is how my little sister came to be called Charles Louise Bing, a.k.a. Charlie. Ever since she found out that Charles was supposed to be my name, she’s been pissed at me — which means that she has been pissed at me for most of her life.

  Charlie was a freshman and got good grades, which was mandatory in my family. Yet she acted like she didn’t care. She was a straight-A slacker. My sister didn’t do much, unless you counted slouching around the house or stinking up her room with paint and art supplies. Every so often, she’d go off on some rant about artists being underappreciated and persecuted. When that happened, we’d just ignore her.

  A commercial for the new courtroom TV series Annie McAndrews, Esq. came on. “She’s got beautiful teeth,” Dad said.

  He ought to know. My father was “Dr. Charles Bing, the painless dentist.” With his athlete’s build, thick black hair, and magnetic smile, Dad was so handsome that everyone — men, women, babies, dogs — stared at him. He could have been in Charles Bing, DDS if there was such a thing as a Chinese American television star who was not skilled in martial arts. However, it didn’t matter that he couldn’t break bricks with his bare hands. In the Bing family, we brandished our awards and diplomas like weapons.

  I had never seen my father happier than the day I got into Harvard. He kept telling me how proud he was that I was carrying on the family tradition. I was on track to be the third Dr. Bing, DDS, my grandfather being the first. It made me feel great that Dad felt so great.

  “So then,” my father said as he changed the channel and landed on CNN. It looked like there was a revolution going on, but I couldn’t tell where since the TV was now on mute. “Martin Gowin, you know, the lawyer from Rotary, has a daughter your age.”

  Why was he telling me this? I wondered.

  “She’s in France right now on a student exchange program,” Dad explained as buildings burned on TV. “She goes to Our Lady of the Holy Cross Excelsior Academy and will be attending Tufts in the fall, and then the plan is on to Yale for law school. Tufts isn’t too far from Harvard. Maybe when you’re there you could visit her. That way you’ll both know someone from home.”

  As if on cue, a television commercial for Gowin, Gowin, Gowin & Gowin came on. “Go win with Gowin!” the lawyers said as they turned and pointed to the camera in unison. I wondered how many takes it took them to get it right.

  “Great slogan,” Dad noted. “Martin’s the second from the left. So, what do you think Higgs? It wouldn’t hurt you to be nice to her.”

  “What would Roo think of that?” my mother asked.

  “Roo might be glad to be rid of Higgs,” Charlie volunteered.

  I had no desire to befriend a shy future lawyer from Gowin, Gowin, Gowin & Gowin. “May I be excused?” I asked as I headed outside.

  “You always are, Farmer Higgs,” Charlie quipped as I walked past her. “Be sure to check on your dingleberries.”

  “Dingleberries — what’s that?” Mom asked.

  “Just something Higgs grows in his garden,” Charlie said, laughing at her own joke.

  My tomatoes were doing well. The cucumbers were getting big too. And the strawberries were as red and ripe as I had ever seen them. The plot of land had been used for Jeffrey’s batting practice. After he died, Mom couldn’t stand the sight of it, so she planted an English vegetable garden like the one her grandmother had back home. It was one of many hobbies my mother attempted to fill her days with. She also went though a bread machine phase, collected ceramic owls, and took Bikram Yoga — but didn’t even make it through the first class. “I don’t like to perspire in public,” she explained. “It’s undignified.”

  The garden was different, though. It proved to be surprisingly therapeutic and had staying power. Not for my mother, but for me.

  That night, I couldn’t sleep. All I could think about was Roo and the whole kidney hypothetical. I felt so guilty. Not about refusing to hand over a kidney, and not that we had broken up over a hypothetical — but rather, I felt guilty that I didn’t feel guilty.

  The truth was that for months I had wanted to break up with Roo. Once you got over how gorgeous she was, there really wasn’t much “there” there. Roo always got the starring roles in our school plays based on her looks, not her talent, she was a less than stellar student, and she refused to read Kurt Vonnegut. I couldn’t see us being together while I was at Harvard.

  Long-distance relationships rarely work out. We had seen Still Friends, that movie about a high school couple who tried to stay together while going to college on separate coasts. Being apart caused them to question their love for each other, and in the end, the guy committed suicide by riding his horse off a cliff. I thought the movie was prophetic and I worried about the horse. Roo thought it was romantic.

  Even though it was late, there was a knock on my bedroom door. Mom. My heart sank when I saw that she was wearing the fluffy pink bathrobe that Charlie had nicknamed the “Robe of Depression.”

  “I saw your light on,” my mother said. She wandered around my room and ran her fingertips across a framed photo of me, Charlie, and Jeffrey standing in front of the Christmas tree. I was nine, Charlie was five, and Jeffrey was eighteen.

  “Well,” Mom said, absentmindedly picking up a Top Cop baseball cap and putting it on. It had belonged to my brother. Top Cop was his all-time favorite television show. He was obsessed with cops. No one was allowed to talk to him when it was on. “I just wanted to remind you to make sure that Roo’s parents know they are invited to your graduation party.”

  I nodded. There was no way I was going to tell my mother about Roo when she was wearing that bathrobe.

  My mother had been acting weirder than normal lately, and she moved around as if in a fog of forgetfulness. For example, she’d be standing in the living room holding a pair of scissors and saying, “Why am I holding these?” Then there was the crying. Mom would cry over things like when the cottage cheese expired, or when a down-on-his-luck singer won a TV talent show. Or when she thought about my brother. She cried about him the most.

  My mother sat on the edge of my bed and stared at me in that mom way. “Oh, Higgs, you’re going to graduate soon. It’s so hard to believe. I remember when you were just starting kindergarten, and now look at you.”

  When she began to weep, I gave her a hug. “Everything’s going to be all right,” I told her.

  She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. “That’s what your father always says,” she told me. She sounded bitter. “Higgs?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re just like him. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Like Dad?”

  She winced, then shook her head. “Please, no, not your father. Like Jeffrey. You’re like Jeffrey. Handsome. Top of your class. Going to Harvard. You be careful, okay?”

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised her.

  She kissed me on the forehead and got up to leave.

  “Um, Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “The baseball cap.” I motioned to her head.

  “Of course,” she said, giving it to me. “What was I thinking?”

  It was past midnight. I put on some John Lennon. Nick would have approved. Good old Nick Milgram. In elementary school, we ate lunch together every day, we both belonged to Cub Scout Pack #475, and we shared a bunk at Camp Cougar Mountain, which had neither cougars nor a mountain.

  In middle school, Nick and I excelled in student activities, honors classes, and music. Slowly, we went from invisible to center stage. Whereas in elementary school we admired the popular kids, in middle school we became them. In sixth grade, we were on honor patrol. In seventh, we were both on student council. In eighth grade, I was class president and Nick was vice president.

  Like my brother, I started playing alto sax in the fifth grade. When Nick first started band, he was a 70-pound weakling and could barely lift his tuba. While others might have given up, Nick stuck with it. Several
years and 110 pounds later, he would be realizing his dream and marching in the USC Trojan Band this fall.

  Samantha was going to USC too, which surprised me. I didn’t think she had the grades, but apparently she aced her SAT. Nick and Samantha only applied to the same colleges. Roo was going to DePaul University to major in theater.

  “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” I had told Nick when we were writing our college essays. “You and Samantha are going to get in a huge fight right before finals, and then both of you will fail and have to drop out of school.”

  Without taking his eyes off his laptop, Nick slapped me in the head. “You’re such a prick, Higgs,” he said.

  I was going to miss Nick. Now that Roo was out of my life, I thought that maybe I could talk him into ditching Samantha and we could hang out. Without Roo, I was going to have so much free time that summer. I could graft those peaches in my garden, and I could set up a stall at the farmer’s market. I could finish reading Breakfast of Champions, and even date other girls, something I hadn’t done in years. I could do whatever I wanted.

  Yes, a Roo-less summer was going to be a great thing.

  The more I thought about it, the better my world looked. Shoot. I was going to Harvard. I should have been proud of that, right? Thirty-five thousand applicants and only 6 percent got in. All that I had left to do was to slide through the last week of school. Everyone knew that for seniors, it was like a vacation. And there was Senior of the Year too. I was looking forward to accepting that award.

  It was funny. Earlier in the day, I was distraught over my breakup with Roo, but after carefully thinking things through, I was certain that I was heading into the best week of my life.

  Charlie slept in on Monday morning, which was unlike her. As rebellious as she liked to appear, my little sister prided herself on being punctual. Then again, the last week of school made kids do strange things. Same for the teachers — some of them actually smiled. With tests done, grades in, and the promise of summer beckoning, everyone let their guard down. It was liberating.