The Leavers

“I know she was. How did you even find me?”


“I googled Peter and Kay Wilkinson and found a website with an article Kay Wilkinson wrote and it said in her bio that she had a son named Daniel. I found a profile picture of a Chinese-looking Daniel Wilkinson that looked like it could be you. It mentioned SUNY Potsdam, so I looked that up and figured out your e-mail address.”

“Shit. I’m glad you did.”

“I’m glad you wrote me back. When I found those papers, I thought you could’ve ended up with a bad family, anything could have happened to you.” Michael looked away. “That morning, that last time I saw you? I would’ve tried to stop my mom if I knew where she was going. You guys went out and when she got home, you weren’t with her. I was scared.”

After he and Angel took the cab to the Bronx and saw the family who wasn’t his, Daniel had gone home to Ridgeborough and cried at night for weeks. Four months later, he and Peter and Kay had gone to court and a judge had approved his adoption. They’d signed papers. The judge congratulated them on becoming a forever family. He received a new birth certificate, listing Peter and Kay as his birth parents, and his name as Daniel Wilkinson.

“What did your mom tell you?” he asked Michael.

“Back then? She said she found another family for you to live with and take care of you. At first, she said it was only going to be for a little while. I was pissed, freaked out. Especially since it wasn’t for a little while, you know? It never seemed right. But I couldn’t do anything, I didn’t know how to find you. So over Christmas, after I found the forms, I asked her and she didn’t want to talk about it, but I kept bugging her, and finally she said she’d done it because she had no choice. We were broke. She said she did the best thing for you.”

“The best thing.” Daniel concentrated on reading the list of drink specials over the cash register. VEN-TI LA-TTE. The words seemed strange, like they weren’t English. The smell of coffee and artificial sugar was overpowering and cloying. “Does Leon know I was adopted?”

“I’m assuming my mother told him, but I can’t say for sure.”

Daniel rested his face in his hands, pressing down on the spot between his eyebrows. Indefinite placement, he thought. “I can’t believe this.”

“You were like my brother, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“I tried googling you before but there were never any results for Deming Guo.”

“Well, that’s no longer me.”

“Your parents—I mean, Peter and Kay Wilkinson. Were they good parents?”

“Sure. But I lost my whole family.”

“You never heard from your mother?”

“No. And I guess you never did either.”

Michael shook his head. “But my mom wants to see you.”

“What?”

“She wants to have you over for dinner.”

Michael watched Daniel’s face, awaiting Daniel’s response. Like he used to when he was a kid, ready to pack up and run away to Florida without hesitation.

“Are you serious?” Daniel said. “No fucking way.”

FRIDAY NIGHT, DANIEL TOOK the subway out to Sunset Park, Brooklyn Chinatown, and as he walked down Eighth Avenue he recognized the neighborhood as where the Chinese couple had lived, where Peter and Kay had come to get him. He didn’t know how he would get through this dinner without saying something terrible to Vivian, but the chance to say anything to her pushed him on.

They lived on one of the numbered streets off Eighth Avenue, in the bottom half of a two-family home, a two-bedroom apartment with a large front window that looked out onto the street. The house smelled like rice and pork and garlic. He removed his shoes and jacket, returned Michael’s hug, and saw Vivian padding toward them in fuzzy purple slippers, plumper than she’d been ten years ago. He didn’t remember her teeth being so bright before.

“Deming! You look the same,” she said in Fuzhounese. “Big and tall and healthy. Exactly like your mother.”

How could she mention his mother after what she had done? “Hi, Vivian.”

“Do you still like pork?”

“Of course.”

“I made pork and fish.” Vivian pointed to the kitchen. “We’ll eat soon.”

Michael and Daniel sat on a dark brown couch facing a wide-screen television and a shelf with glass figurines of unicorns. “Remember that couch we had?” Daniel asked.

“That thing was busted,” Michael said. “It had those giant flowers in puke colors. Remember that time that kid beat me up and you went and beat him up?”

“And then your mom went and beat me up.”

Michael laughed. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

“I really loved that apartment.”

“You remember that kid Sopheap? I heard he’s in jail. And there was that time those guys got killed in the park—”

“I don’t remember that.”

Daniel ran names, tried to match them to faces, the kids of P.S. 33 with their giant backpacks. He tried to remember Sopheap, the park—which park?—and was alarmed at the inaccuracy of his memory, wondering what else had he forgotten, how much had he gotten wrong about his mother, Leon, even himself.

“Remember Tommie? Our neighbor? I used to think my mom ran away with him.”

“That guy?” Michael cracked up. “No way.”

“I heard he got married.”

“God. I haven’t thought about him in years.”

Timothy arrived, carrying with a white bakery box wrapped in red string. “You must be Deming,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you.” His English had Chinese-shaped tones, and his vowels were warm and curved.

Vivian had cooked a casserole of tofu and beef and mushrooms, greens with garlic, noodles, crispy pork, even a whole steamed fish. The smells were comforting, ones Daniel hadn’t experienced in years. Timothy handed him a plate. “You’re in school, Deming?” he asked in English.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be called Deming. “I’m a Communications major, at SUNY. I play music, too. Guitar. I go by Daniel now.”

“Daniel. So you like the arts and the humanities. Michael is more into the sciences.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m a CPA. Accountant. That’s how Vivian and I met.” Timothy switched to Mandarin. “Vivian worked in the office across the hall.”

Vivian cut the greens. “I cleaned the office.” It sounded like a script she and Timothy had recited before. “Me and Michael lived with my friends in Queens. We had no money.”

“One day we met in the elevator at work,” Timothy said.

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