He would rent a car and drive to New York City. Wait out the storm there for a couple of days, dealing with an electronic blizzard of its own kind, with Phoenix. Ming chose a sport utility vehicle with four-wheel drive, a white BMW. He would blend into the snow. He felt an urgency to hide himself, to reveal his location to no one. Someone could be coming after him. This is irrational, he thought. You should go to a hotel and rest. But he was being perfectly rational: white was neutral, white was invisible, white was innocent.
He’d opted out of all of this. Chosen to live his life away from his family. The stupidity of Dagou, the na?veté of James. The cruelty of his father. He’d done everything he could for them. Had paid dowry to the SH, given his mother what she wanted. Had tried to talk to James, to tell him to get away. There was no way to help Dagou. But he’d warned Katherine, repeatedly. Hadn’t he told her to give up? What else could he possibly have done? But he’d left Katherine in Haven while Winnie was sick. (His mother would be all right, she would forgive him. She knew he needed to get away as badly as she did.) Was it possible, had Katherine been trying to tell him, that his brothers weren’t as strong as he, that his mother’s illness would be especially hard on them? Hard on Dagou? (He’d sent Katherine in his place. He’d left town. Katherine knew he had done this.)
He drove over the metal teeth at the rental exit, steering the BMW through a flurry of snow toward Interstate 91. He would turn south, toward the city.
But when he reached the highway his hand shot out and flicked the signal to the left, toward the north. He stared at the blinking arrow and thought of O-Lan’s little triangular teeth, like a cat’s teeth. He must follow it, the blinker heading not south, toward New York City, but north, into Massachusetts, where he would reach Interstate 90, which would lead him back to Haven.
The roads around the airport had been plowed. Not until he turned onto the highway did he realize there were at least four inches of churned-up snow on its surface. It took an hour to drive the twenty-five miles north to Springfield, Massachusetts. There he left 91 and slowly followed the white exit ramp onto Interstate 90, a broad, churned snow trail west, into the Berkshires.
As he drove into the mountains, the storm grew worse. Snow fell through the headlight beams in silvery gusts, pouring down on the narrow tire tracks before him, as if someone above had opened up an enormous box of glitter and dumped it over Western Massachusetts. The lone car in front of him crawled along at twenty miles per hour.
Ming pulled in at a rest stop to buy coffee. The parking lot was crowded with shaggy white cars. Making his way between their shapes, Ming slipped. He was obliged to right himself by plunging his arm into the layer of white covering another car. The shock of cold up his sleeve enraged him. His phone fell into the snow. He crouched in the snow, pawing through it until his ice-block fingers bumped against something solid.
In the food court, travelers had hung their damp coats on the backs of their chairs. They sipped coffee and played cards. He checked his phone, then the clock on the wall. His phone said one a.m. but the clock said three a.m. What time zone was he in? Leaving the bathroom, Ming felt a buzz in his pocket. He turned off the phone.
A few of the travelers glanced up. He sensed, with the instincts of someone who had grown up as an outsider, that their eyes rested upon him for a moment longer than they normally would. They were thinking what was he doing here. Quickly, he checked his reflection in the window. Of the three brothers, only Ming, the smallest, favored running and biking. Like all of the brothers, he had their father’s high cheekbones, and eyes with strong epicanthal folds and not a hint of a double eyelid. All of the brothers were good-looking, but only Ming had Winnie’s pale skin.
When he went back outside, he couldn’t find his car. The parking lot was freshly covered, unfamiliar. Back and forth he walked between the rows of vehicles, scraping windows, license plates. Snowflakes sifted down his collar. Finally, he decided on a methodical approach; he clicked his key fob at the beginning, middle, and end of every row. This proved successful. He turned on the engine and heater, used his arms to swipe at the windows. There were no other cars at the pumps. Cowards.
He waited at the entrance ramp and got behind a pickup draped in white. He followed, creeping along, sipping from his coffee. Heavy snow churned under his wheels. Then the pickup turned off the highway. Ming drove on. Here and there were swipe marks where a car had slid off the road; cars lay overturned like dead roaches, and on one of the long inclines near Lenox, several trucks lay on their sides. Police cars twirled their lights. After Lenox, he was able to drive behind a snowplow for dozens of miles, but the plow turned off near the state border and he was alone, the lone car traveling west, an invisible white car in the white storm, traveling secretly past Albany.
There had been a maddening superiority about the corners of O-Lan’s mouth. But despite her warning to him that he wouldn’t be able to return, he was coming. As for Katherine, who’d called him up for the sole purpose of chastising him for leaving Haven, leaving his brother: he would show Katherine; he would arrive after traveling heroically through the night, and she would be astonished, humbled.
Gradually the snow grew pale; the sun had risen. He hadn’t yet reached Rochester. It was the morning of Christmas Eve; Dagou would be preparing for the party.
All day, Ming drove on, stopping for coffee and catnaps in the passenger seat. As he had guessed, the snow gave out near Erie, Pennsylvania; the highways in Ohio were well plowed. At three a.m. on Christmas Day, the sky was clear. He went into a service plaza to stretch his legs. Holding a fresh black coffee, he walked past a man and a boy wearing puffy down jackets. The boy was sleepy but the man and Ming locked eyes for a moment. The man’s eyes popped open. Startled, Ming checked his reflection in the window. An alien and yet familiar creature stared back at him from the semidarkness. Its face was that of a stranger: sallow, greenish yellow skin, slits for eyes. The creature was unshaven, his dark mug protruding. Ming raised his arm; the creature raised its arm. He hurled his coffee and a blotch covered the window. The smell of coffee hit the air. Hot dark drops splattered on his shirt.
“Hey!” somebody yelled.
He bolted through the doors and out into the snow, ran to his car, and pulled back onto the highway.
It was afternoon on Christmas Day before he turned on his phone and found several voice messages from Katherine, Please call. It was from Katherine that Ming learned his father had died in the cold.
An Imagined Family I Never Had