“Sorry,” I say.
Then I’m out the door and alone in the alley.
Cheri’s is where this whole mess began. It’s fitting that it ends there.
Thirty-Six
I wander over to the fridge and open it to reveal a collection of condiments and no food. I don’t want to eat, anyway; I’m only looking for a way to distract myself.
It’s been three days since I saw Sam. True to her word to keep me informed, Anjali sent me Mikey’s photo from some stupid gossip rag, and the way it’s framed makes Sam appear in full bodyguard hero mode protecting Fangli. “Fangli’s hat looks familiar,” Anjali wrote.
It looks like I can be pulled back into being Fangli even when I try to avoid it. I tuck my hands behind my head. What would a moral Gracie have done in the first place? She would have said no to Fangli, even for the money. She would have squashed that little fame worm in her mind and told it we’d find our own way. Todd…I acted as best as I could have there, and I won’t blame myself for his actions.
Then what does a moral and slightly more daring Gracie do now? I look at my laptop, where despite Anjali’s nagging, Eppy has sat neglected for most of the week. That Gracie follows her dreams and listens to her gut.
The phone rings and my heart leaps before I remember I blocked Sam. It’s an unknown number but I have to answer. It might be a response to one of my job applications and I need one now, badly. I pick up.
“Hello?”
“Is this Gracie Reed?” The man’s voice is brisk.
“Yes.”
“This is Ken from the Xin Guang nursing home. I’m pleased to tell you we have a space open for Agatha Wu Reed. I know you’ve been on the list for a while.”
I have to stop myself from whipping the phone at the wall. Of course they do. A beep comes on the line and I glance at the screen.
Incoming call from ZZTV. I didn’t block them.
We pay well.
“We would need an immediate deposit to save the spot,” Ken says.
We pay well.
“How much?”
He tells me and my heart drops. I can pay it but there’s no way I can make the ongoing payments, and I can’t move Mom there only to take her back out again. “Is there a way I can pay in installments?” I ask.
“I’m sorry,” he says and he really does sound apologetic. “We offer premium care for our residents.”
I know they do, which is why I want Mom in there. “Can you give me some time?”
“We have a standard six-hour grace period before we go to the next person on the list.”
We pay well.
This time, I act the way I know I should.
The phone screen pulses one last time and ZZTV fades from it. Mom would kill me if I went into debt for this, and six hours isn’t long enough to get a loan. I should have thought of that earlier and guilt pulses through my blood but I let it fade. I’m only human and I’m doing my best.
“I’m afraid I don’t have the fees right now,” I say finally. “I’m going to have to pass.”
“I understand,” he says. “Would you like to be added back onto the wait list?”
“Please.”
We hang up and I lie back on the couch with the phone clutched against my chest. Rectitude. I roll the word around in my mind. I thought doing the right thing would make me feel good but instead I’m empty. I did the right thing—I said no to ZZTV—but who did I help? Not me. Not Mom. Maybe Fangli by not selling her secrets. Shouldn’t I have a deep satisfaction in doing the right thing?
I don’t, but as I lie there, quietly breathing, something happens. It’s not happiness, but it’s not guilt. There’s no shame. The decision I made was based on what I could do—me, not depending on anyone else or lying, not trying to ease someone else’s way at the expense of my own. It’s a small start, but it is a start.
Mom said I had integrity, and even if I don’t, I want to live up to her ideal. I couldn’t get her into that home this time, but I will and I’ll do it on my terms.
I pull my laptop close and start working.
Thirty-Seven
Mom smiles over at me. It’s cool for early August so I’ve tucked a blanket she knit twenty years ago around her knees. The zigzag orange-and-green pattern hasn’t faded since it was first folded over the couch in our old living room to Dad’s thunderous congratulatory applause.
Although I moved back to my apartment, I’ve made an effort to work from her room since I left the Xanadu and my life of luxury, and I think it’s worked out well for both of us. My productivity has been through the roof—Eppy now has an official website—and I asked Anjali and a couple of old work colleagues to test it. It’s a real thing in the real world now. Not wanting to put all my eggs in the entrepreneurial basket, which I guess is itself not very entrepreneurial, I keep applying for jobs and have an interview next week at a small nonprofit agency doing interesting work with newly immigrated Canadians. Baby steps.
Keeping busy stops me from thinking about Sam. I saw on a gossip site that a Canadian actor took on his Operation Oblivion role but that he’s due back in Toronto for the September film festival, so I assume he’s left the city. Knowing he’s gone left me confused because although I don’t want to talk to him, I gathered obscure comfort knowing he was on my soil. I assume they made a deal with ZZTV because nothing has appeared and my fear has decreased exponentially. Anjali has made me promise not to google myself and sends me daily iterations of “no,” “nyet,” and “nopeity nope nope” to assure me her alerts haven’t caught anything.
“Gracie, sweetie, will you get me a glass of water?” Mom holds out her cup and I take it to the sink. Mom has been talkative the last few days and moves fluidly between the now and the past. Today has been a mix. She remembers me, but she places me in her youth. Right now, I am Gracie but I am also with her back home in Beijing.
I hand her the water and she sips at it a few times before setting it down. “Bring me my album.”
This has been her comfort for the last few days as well, so I fetch it. She opens it to Xiao He and her waxy fingers stroke the page. I move to the other side of the bed to tidy her nightstand, and when I check on her after getting out a new box of tissues and rinsing out her water bottle, it’s to find Mom’s fingers still tapping gently on the page. Is this one of the symptoms the doctor told me to watch for? Heart hammering, I walk over to look at the page.
I’ve never looked too closely at the details in the photos, much as you do with anything that’s familiar. The one she’s looking at is of Mom and Xiao He, taken before she came to Canada. The two are standing near a set of stairs, both looking at the camera with passport-serious expressions. But Mom’s fingers aren’t connecting with the face of her brother, as I would expect given the amount she’s been talking about him. Instead they’re touching one specific spot on the page—her abdomen. When her fingers move away, I lean forward, wondering what has Mom’s rapt attention.
She’s wearing a cotton navy dress with a little ruffle around the wide neck, cinched in at the waist and falling to her knees. The wind is pushing the skirt back a bit and giving her stomach a strange, almost rounded shadow.
I want to examine it further but she turns the page. Now the photos change to Canada. Mom in front of the CN Tower. Mom with friends at Niagara Falls. Then Mom with Dad. There’s a series of now-pregnant Mom rocking bangs in front of those same standbys, the CN Tower and Niagara Falls, a page later.
Her fingers fall from the page, and I take the album off her lap to scrutinize the earlier photo.
That’s not a shadow on her stomach. Is she pregnant?
I look so close I almost go cross-eyed. Holy shitballs, she’s definitely pregnant. I suddenly realize the photo’s been trimmed. Xiao He is to Mom’s right and there’s the edge of a shoulder to her left. There was enough space between Mom and whoever it was that it wasn’t obvious at first that there was someone there.