I asked if my mother had noticed all the water kettles. How through this, Fang was at least trying to make her feel more at home.
At home I have only one kettle, she said. And it’s not fancy like these, it’s very plain and old. Your baba boiled all of our water.
We sat side by side on the barstools, along the massive kitchen island. My mother held the hot water mug to her face and blew steam off its surface like smoke.
I asked if she could do me a favor.
She took a slow sip.
Could she not tell the others about my coming here today?
She took a slower sip.
I’m serious, I said. Because she and Fang were the casebook mother-son pair. They spoke to each other about all and rarely fought.
Who am I going to tell? she said. Your business is your own. She wasn’t going to get involved.
When the hot water was finished, an hour had passed and it was time for me to leave. I got into another cab back to the station, and this cabdriver asked the same thing: You live back there, miss?
I said my mother did for now.
So, where to? he said, as we went down the driveway and onto the road.
I didn’t answer him.
Spa? Country club? Where we going, miss?
I didn’t answer him.
He pulled over to the shoulder after a red light and stopped the cab.
She doing all right? Your mother?
I said I didn’t know yet, it was too early to tell.
Just her in that big house then?
No, I said. My brother lives there too, my sister-in-law, three boys under ten, a rotating staff.
But my father, I said, and after those words, I had to look out the window.
I can understand that, the cabdriver said, and turned his blinkers on. Just let me know when you’re ready.
Twenty minutes later I said he could take me to the station.
* * *
—
THERE IS NO REAL fight against death because death will always win. But death can be handled well or poorly.
The first death I saw happened when I was a child. My mother, who had been holding my hand, stopped holding my hand to scoop me up and to turn me away. But I had seen it. A hit-and-run. The man’s body facedown on the side of the street, with blood pooling at the elbows and knees; the skin ballooned outward, blue and thin, like plastic bags about to burst. A death handled poorly.
My father’s death had been handled well. In China, I had reviewed all his charts, alongside a translator, from routine checkups in his last decade to the adverse event itself, and deemed the stroke properly managed, with the right meds given and the right algorithms performed. Disease can have no reasoning to it, coming down to either bad genes or bad luck or a combination of both. Every death was sad, but in a hospital at least there was a process around it, a box, and once that process was clear, death, while always the victor, could be contained.
* * *
—
ONE LARGE PIECE OF mail that did not fit inside my box was left on the floor beneath.
A thick silken envelope, color burnt orange, or rust, or autumn maple, with my name written in cursive and green foil lettering. The envelope came attached to a wicker basket.
I was cordially invited, at the end of the month, to Fang and Tami’s annual Harvest Bash. Activities would include an on-site horse-drawn hayride, a petting zoo （goats, peacocks, and mini horses）， face painting （back by popular demand）， and make your own cornucopias. Come taste our handcrafted seasonally spiced cocktails, the invite said. RSVP required two weeks in advance.
Last year’s Harvest Bash didn’t have a petting zoo.
I imagined someone with a peppermill cracking fresh flakes into every drink.
The basket came with one pound of Royal Riviera pears, two pounds of seasonal apples, six ounces of gouda cheese, four ounces of cheddar cheese, a cranberry orange loaf cake, a pumpkin spice loaf cake, trays of assorted nuts （pecans, roasted almonds, honey roasted cashews）， one pound of cranberry pear chutney, one pound of caramel sauce.
Goats had rectangular pupils, I knew, and sometimes screamed like humans. But did they care for cranberry pear chutney? Or caramel sauce?
I didn’t know what to do with the sauces. The Royal Riviera pears I gave to my doorman, cheeses and nuts to Mark. Loaf cakes I could eat and in two nights they would be gone.
The day it arrived, Fang texted to ask if I’d received a basket.
I texted back that the basket was safe and mostly consumed.
Good, he wrote. Then he asked for my RSVP to the bash.
Right now? I wrote back.
Cool, he replied. I’ll put you down for two. Bring a friend. Anyone you like.
* * *
—
I HAD NO WALL decor in my living room except for a giant wall calendar about half my height, with just the grid of the dates, all lines and numbers, no pictures. When the month was over, I ripped the half-body sheet clean off and, more than the breeze from my handouts, the calendar produced a gust.