She stomps off before I can answer. Hiding so much of myself from my family, in retrospect, that totally counts as shutting them out. There was only so much of my life I could share with them. Once the water began falling I couldn’t even lie to them. But I hid because I wanted to keep them, not abandon them.
Dinner is going well, too well. My sister is a gracious hostess, too gracious to complain when Gus and I sit next to each other. Instead, her eyes question my every action. Why is my right hand below the table? Why am I spooning tofu onto Gus’s plate? What am I saying when I whisper into his ear?
Gus eats as if he has pig’s ear and cow’s tripe every Christmas. When we get home, the next time it’s my turn to cook, he’s getting pig’s blood soup for dinner. I’ve wasted years afraid he’d hate my favorite foods.
My nieces love him. They stop dueling each other with chopsticks when he asks them to. To half the adults at the table, he may as well be speaking classical Greek, but they laugh at his jokes and listen with rapt attention as he talks about the time it thunderstormed as he and his brother were climbing the steep eastern face of Mount Whitney. My mom resuscitates stories of her childhood in 台南. Even my sister is sick of those stories. Gus, however, asks about raising chickens and about the grandmother I barely remember. Okay, I’m translating like mad, but the point is they enjoy Gus’s company and Gus enjoys theirs. In the rapid fire exchange of words, my parents surprise me by asking about my research in biotech. I almost forget the impending doom hanging over me like an uttered paradox.
“你已經三十多歲了,” my sister’s father-in-law says as I’m clearing the table after dinner. “你甚麼時候會給你的父母生孫子?”
No family meal is complete without the marriage question. Actually, it’s always some variant of “You’re over thirty. Where’s the grandson?” Marriage is just the necessary precondition.
I think I’m smiling blandly, but Gus’s eyes reach mine and I realize he sees the marriage question on my face. It’s hard to believe the man doesn’t read minds. My sister’s glare is this pressure that squeezes my chest.
Telling everyone I haven’t met the right woman might humidify air, but it won’t cause the water to fall. It’s true so I won’t even feel any angst. Gus will understand and, for once, my sister will be happy with me. She and I can’t be in the same room for ten minutes but we’ve always wanted the best for each other. But she doesn’t need to tell me what that is anymore.
“我找到了我的對象. Gus.” I’ve come this far; I might as well go all the way. “他上月向我求婚.”
Providing a grandson can’t be that important in the grand scheme of things. Kevin’s parents still love him. Maybe mine will still love me. And they seem to like Gus as my friend. Now that they know he’s proposed, maybe they’ll also love him as their son-in-law.
My sister’s fury explodes and overwhelms every other reaction in the room. Her words are clearly in English, but the only ones that make any sense are “Get out, and don’t ever come back.” Kevin’s trying to calm her down. Gus weaves around the family toward me. However, I’m upstairs in the bedroom before I realize I’ve moved.
Gus is extremely tidy. It’s easy to repack his luggage. I never unpacked so I don’t have to repack. He’s such a generous soul. For all I know, he may still think we’re not leaving. I shouldn’t have left him downstairs. Maybe the nieces can translate for him.
“Matt, you’re leaving out of spite.” The doorjamb neatly frames Gus. “Okay, your sister had a bad reaction, but poe poe and gohng gohng don’t seem to be taking it badly.”
I blink and shake my head. It takes me a few seconds to realize that he’s talking about my parents.
“Did you just call my parents 婆婆 and 公公?”
“Yeah, poe poe and gohng gohng.” He looks confused. “I tried to call them Mr. and Mrs. Ho this afternoon, but they both corrected me before I got past hello. Am I pronouncing it wrong?”
“We can work on that, but that’s not my point.” I shut his suitcase. “‘婆婆’ means husband’s mother and ‘公公’ means husband’s father.”
That he can call them that without water falling on him…
“They’d already figured us out.” Gus steps into the room to make space for Mom, trying to burrow past him. “Hi, poe poe.”
“Lonely boy.” My mom looks at Gus, but points at me. “He always lonely boy.”
I really wish she’d just let me translate for her. In Chinese, she’s effortlessly witty and erudite. That’s the person I want Gus to know, not the inchoate stranger I knew until I’d spent a decade trying to get my Chinese up to snuff.
Gus takes her hands and doesn’t speak too loud or down to her. Metaphorically, that is. Literally, he’s about a foot taller than Mom.
“Not if I can help it, poo-oh poo-oh.” He’s trying too hard to imitate the way I said it and now he’s overpronouncing. “I’ll make sure he’s never lonely again.”
Mom turns to me. At first, I think she wants a translation, but she must have understood because she doesn’t give me a chance to speak.
“你是研究生物科技的. 孫子能給我嗎? 有你們兩個的基因的?” Ok, this isn’t an example of her being witty or erudite. My mom is also very practical and direct.
I hear my heart pound. Gus is looking at me for a translation. We don’t have a relationship if I filter what he hears.
“She said: You’re a biotech researcher. Can you give me a grandson? One with genes from both of you?” Gus must have really impressed her. “What were you two talking about this afternoon?”
“Not that.” He looks as surprised as I feel. We’ve never discussed kids. He turns back to her. “We need to talk about it.”
And I need to win a Nobel Prize if she’s dead set on a grandson with both our genes. Parents.
The clincher is that she leaves, trusting Gus to talk me back from the edge. Normally, she tells me that once Michele calms down, she’ll want me to stay. Michele’s only angry at me because she loves me. But now, it’s Gus’s job to keep me civil. Mom’s probably so happy about this, she doesn’t care that Gus is a guy. Gus isn’t any better at keeping me from the edge than Mom though.
The motel is a five minute drive from my sister’s house, but it feels like another planet. For one thing, we’ve gone from Victorian Christmas Land to Operating Surgery Land. It still smells like pine, but the flat, medicinal one. For another, when I drop my suitcase and curl into a ball on the bed, it’s as if I’ve held one of Gus’s bizarre isometric exercises for weeks and I’ve finally let go. Just like the end of any other trip home except this time I’m still tethered to the world. Gus stands at the door. Snowflakes glisten off his hair and hooded sweatshirt.
“They’re your only blood relatives in the country.” Gus flicks on the light and clicks the door shut. When I turn away, his weight dents the bed. My body falls toward his. “Matt, don’t freeze me out too.”
Gus’s words pummel me no matter how softly he tosses them. My own words scrape my throat. I taste salt and metal when I swallow. Lying then letting the water wash my throat and fill my lungs tempts me as much as pretending Gus isn’t sitting on the bed. Every trip, I decide that I’ll sort things out later. Then I go home and pretend the trip never happened. That won’t work this time. Gus is, if nothing else, a witness and a reminder.