Leigh, I’ve already spoken on the phone with your grandmother and given her this information, but my Hong Kong number is below, so feel free to give me a call. Or email. Let me know how you’re doing.
I roll my eyes and archive the note. There’s a more pressing matter—and that’s the new message from Axel.
FROM: [email protected] TO: [email protected] SUBJECT: (no subject)
Dory didn’t know I was recording her. I came over to hang out with you but you weren’t home for some reason. The door was unlocked, so I let myself in and Dory was on the piano. It was different from what she normally played. I peeked around the corner and it seemed like she was riffing off one specific melody. I recorded a good chunk of it and paired it with some synths and strings. Sometimes when I listen
The email ends there.
I click on the link at the bottom. Another MP3 track. It takes forever to load, but when it finally plays, a chill snakes its way down my spine.
It’s Teresa Teng—the very song Waipo put on as we ate breakfast.
Behind my eyelids, I can see my mother’s careful hands roving over the keys, feeling out the tune and its roots and its peaks, her eyes closed, the expression on her face suffused with the sepia hues of nostalgia, with viridian music.
I can see her.
I can see everything.
48
WINTER, FRESHMAN YEAR
It was the last morning of winter break. I made myself coffee using Dad’s French press and sat alone in the kitchen for a good hour, trying hard to forget the dream with the two girls from the photograph.
Their words echoed in my brain: Dory doesn’t have a daughter.
Being wiped away by those blackboard erasers had both itched and burned. The sensation was still in my legs. I couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to be known and remembered.
I needed a distraction. My fingers absentmindedly peeled open the Emily Dickinson book.
Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
“What’s that?” said my mother as she walked in.
I jumped in my seat. Coffee spilled over the lip of my mug.
“A book I found,” I started saying, half hoping she wouldn’t realize which book it was, half hoping she’d give something away in her reaction.
But that wasn’t what she was talking about. She pointed at the pieces of jade around my wrist.
“Oh. I found it in the basement. Is it yours?”
She gazed at it for a beat too long, eyes dark and narrowed. Then her face smoothed into neutral. “Yes. It is very old.”
“From when you were still… living in Taiwan?” I asked tentatively.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you want it back?”
“No. You wearing it look good.” She pulled out the waffle iron and turned to me, her eyebrows a question.
“Yes, please,” I said. “Can I have extra cream? You know, last day of winter break and all that?”
“Me too!” said Axel, letting himself in through the back.
“Me three,” said my mother.
We got extra berry preserves and extra cream, and Axel made my mother laugh by telling her the story of how, the day after Christmas, he and his sister tricked his little cousin into thinking one of Santa’s elves had moved into the basement.
“I don’t know where Angie got those weird shoes with the bells on them, but she put those out, and left strands of ‘elf beard’ on the couch. Angie was like, ‘Look, Jorge, if you wait here long enough, I bet he’ll come back!” And Jorge was like, ‘How do you know the elf is a he?’ And then he waited in the basement for two hours. He even brought the elf a plate of pasteles! He’s way more patient than I ever was.”
“That’s so mean,” I said.
Axel shrugged and grinned. “Kid’s got no siblings. Someone’s gotta mess with him.”
Later, when Axel had left, Mom sat down at the piano. Her improv was some of my favorite stuff—every performance was one of a kind. She had a handful of melodies in her arsenal that she’d made up or something, and she would play them again and again in different ways, sometimes with a little smile tugging at the edges of her mouth, sometimes with her eyes closed, looking wistful.
Things were almost normal. Except Dad had been gone too many days. Except Mom’s eyes had turned glassy like she was trying to go somewhere far away in her head.
Caro was back from snowboarding, so I dragged Axel with me to her house. It was the first time the three of us were hanging out together outside of art class.
“My grandparents were killing me,” Caro was saying as we went down to her basement. “Half the time they sat in the lodge making out. And Mom kept trying to check out other girls for me, which was too weird. Plus, you know, unfair to Cheslin.”
I smiled.
“I’m pretty sure one girl heard her say, ‘What about that chick? Think she’s hot?’ It was mortifying. But other than that, it was really fun.”
“That’s awesome,” I said.
She tilted her head. “All right, out with it. What’s up?”
“What?” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been listening to me, but you haven’t been a hundred percent present. Something’s up.” She glanced at Axel, who was sitting on a stool with his back to us, gazing at the wall of Caro’s photography. There was a question in the look she gave me.
“Well, we went through all those boxes in my basement.”
She didn’t question the we. She and I had still never discussed Axel, though I had a feeling she’d puzzled out a good amount.
“I knew it!” she said. “You found something.”
“A few somethings,” I told her. I showed her the bracelet and the Emily Dickinson book. I saved the photograph for last. “I was hoping you might be able to tell… something. Anything. Like how old it might be?”
She turned the picture in her hands, examining the edges and the back before taking a real look at the subject. “Who are they?”
“I have no idea. If I can figure a possible time period… maybe that’ll be a clue. Though Axel’s convinced that one of the girls is my grandmother.” I glanced at Axel’s back. He’d been weirdly quiet since we got to the Renards’. It occurred to me that he might, in fact, be feeling shy.
Caro shook her head. “I don’t know enough about the history of photography papers. I’d be able to give you a better idea if it were a carte de visite or like a cabinet card. All I can guess is… the oldest this could be is maybe like, early nineteen hundreds? But chances are it was made way after that.”
I tried not to look disappointed.
“What about the Emily Dickinson book?” said Caro. “What’s the copyright date on that?”
“It’s not dated,” said Axel as I opened the cover. “I already looked.”
I checked anyway. “What kind of book isn’t dated?”
“A super old one?” Caro suggested.
“So here we are,” said Axel. “An old bracelet. An old book of poetry. And an old photograph. Anyone else have any ideas?”
“We need brain food,” said Caro. “Then maybe we’ll have ideas. I vote Fudge Shack.”
“I’m allergic to fudge,” said Axel.
“Oh,” said Caro, clearly thrown off.
“He’s not allergic.” I rolled my eyes. “I once watched him eat six huge blocks of maple walnut fudge in one sitting. Paired with a liter of Diet Coke. At three in the morning.”
“Right, and then I puked in your bathtub. An allergic reaction.”
“We can go,” I said, ignoring him. “We just have to monitor his intake.”
“I’m not a babysitter, so I’m not monitoring anybody,” said Caro. “But know this: Puke in my bathtub, dude, and I will end you.”
Axel pounded a fist on his chest until a rough burp came out. “Acknowledged.”
I hid a smile. They were going to get along great.