Thirty-Four
When the phone wakes me up, I want to ignore it because I’m curled against Sam and he’s warm.
“Forget it,” I mumble.
“It might be important.” He gropes around the night table and hands me the phone.
He’s right because the nurse on the line tells me Mom’s distressed again. “It’s been a few days since your last visit,” says the nurse. “It might cheer her up.”
I hang up and Sam leans over to cover my body with his. Last night was… I can’t think about it because I need to be out the door in a few minutes.
“Everything okay?” he asks. He brushes my hair back from my face and nuzzles into my neck.
“I need to see Mom.”
“Want company?”
I do, I realize. Sam gives me a kiss on the forehead, which is good because the idea of kissing anyone, even Sam, with morning breath is not a pleasant one. “Give me twenty minutes,” he says.
He disappears and I get out of bed rejoicing. The morning after is always a crapshoot, filled with worries about making things weird. But it wasn’t; Sam is as attentive in the light of morning as he was in the dark last night.
Which was very attentive indeed.
I almost skip over to the shower, where I wince when the water hits the burn on my skin left from Sam’s stubble. Towel-dry my hair, minimal makeup, a dress, and I’m out the door. Sam’s waiting by the elevators.
We take public transit and don’t talk much. Sam sits close to me, lazily watching the people around us from under the brim of his hat. The fact that no one has noticed us on previous outings must have made him more confident about coming out with me.
I want to curl up into his shoulder. It would be so nice to keep going on this bus and never look back, but guilt hits the minute I think it. What kind of a daughter thinks such selfish thoughts? Sam tucks my hand in his and an ache goes through me when I remember Dad picking up Mom in those bear hugs or planting raspberry kisses on her cheeks as she laughed.
It hurts. I pretend I need to check my phone and take back my hand. When he doesn’t reach out again, it’s almost as if I have proof that he doesn’t care. Why am I doing this to myself? We had a great night and he’s here with me now, on the bus, to see Mom. That’s what matters. He wants to be here and I’m not forcing him.
When we sign in at the home, the smell of bleach is almost unbearable and it stings my nose. Mom’s in her room, the album of photos open in front of her. Her eyes skate over me to land on Sam. “Xiao He,” she says, her fingers stroking the page in front of her. Tears stream down her face and I don’t know what to do. I’ve seen my mother cry exactly once in my life, when we came home from the hospital after Dad died and she tripped over a shoe he’d left by the door. She’d picked it up and hugged it and sobbed as I held her. She hadn’t even cried at the funeral.
She’s crying now for her dead brother and talking in fast Mandarin.
“She’s back in China and begging him for help,” whispers Sam. “I think she’s reliving a memory.”
“Xiao He,” calls my mother.
“She thinks I’m her brother again,” Sam says.
I grab Mom’s hand as if my touch can yank her back from the past. “Mom?”
She mutters in Mandarin but Sam shakes his head in confusion when I look at him for a translation.
“Xiao He?” Now her voice is tremulous and pleading.
I say the idea before I think it through. It makes sense. It might work. “Can you be her brother?”
He turns to me, perplexed. “What are you asking, Gracie?”
I don’t think, just whisper so Mom can’t hear. “Please, pretend to be Xiao He to calm her down. Only for a minute.”
Sam steps back. “I can’t do that.”
“You’re an actor for fuck’s sake.” I stand up and work my hand out of Mom’s grip to motion Sam to the far side of the room. “You do this all the time.”
“Not this,” he says in a quiet voice. “I won’t do it.”
He won’t do it, when I know he wouldn’t hesitate if it was Fangli who asked? If he cared about me at all, he would. “Please.”
“Gracie, no. It’s wrong.”
The pettiness of his refusal is like a match lighting up my stressed mind. “It’s wrong?”
“To fool your mother like this, yes.” A muscle twitches in his jaw.
“This is wrong. You helping me out with my mother is wrong. Me pretending to be Fangli isn’t? Where were your high morals when I was tricking that kid at the hospital? When we were lying to him? How come the ends justified the means then?”