Hold Me

  I glance at my shelves, where his last three books stand next to a giant orange text on applied mathematics. I’ve spent all my time with the math.

  “Love you,” I whisper. But he’s already hung up.

  Dad’s most successful book to date came out when I was a junior in college. It’s a thick volume with a maroon cover, and it’s followed me around from dorm room to apartment, from one office to another. It never gathers dust. I pull it out and look at the cover every couple of weeks and tell myself that I’ll read it. Next month. When I have time.

  I glance at it now, and vow that I’ll read it before December.

  It’s a lie. I don’t even have expectations of myself. His book is about a man who lost his child. I read the dedication the day it came out and put it down. Ever since, I’ve been too busy to read any further. I’ve made sure of it. I’ve filled every hour as full as I possibly can.

  It sounds stupid to say I forget about my parents. But I try hard not to remember my family, and mostly I succeed.

  * * *

  I haven’t precisely managed to forget by that night, and I’ve been trying. Trying so hard, that I don’t even realize it’s almost ten and I’m still in my office until my phone pings.

  Hey, A., Em writes. Is everything okay?

  It’s fine. I frown. Why?

  Because you weren’t the first person to question me about radioactive half-lives. Just checking in.

  Shit. I look at the time. I pull up her blog. And—after seven straight hours of working—I recognize that maybe, maybe I have an issue. My eyes hurt. My back is cramped. My mouth is dry.

  I sit at my desk and look at the deserted courtyard below, shadows and concrete barely visible through my window. I roll my shoulders, feeling my muscles complain. I am so busy that someone I don’t even know is checking in on me.

  Nothing unusual, I write with a grimace. Just coping with generalized guilt at my inability to accomplish things.

  Writing those words in the dark of my office makes them real. The generalized guilt settles on me more specifically, enveloping me like a heavy parka.

  Let me guess, Em writes. You’re still in your office.

  I frown at my surroundings and type very slowly. Heh.

  Well? comes her response. What are you waiting for? Get out.

  But, I start to type. I don’t get a chance to finish my thought.

  Is there anything that must urgently be done by tomorrow morning?

  I backspace. Not really, but—

  She must be at a keyboard, because she’s typing ten times faster than I can on my phone. It’s never a good idea to give in to guilt.

  I give up and backspace again.

  Fine. But you’re walking home with me. I hit send before I can think better of it.

  She doesn’t respond immediately, and I know just how fast she can type.

  I stand up. I put my pencils back in the drawer, file the stray papers and lesson plans for tomorrow, and find my messenger bag.

  She still hasn’t responded by the time I’ve finished.

  I tap my foot almost impatiently.

  Her answer finally comes. You mean virtually?

  I roll my eyes. No, Em. I mean in real life. I’m not leaving my office until you get on a plane and meet me here. I have three Clif bars and a blood-orange San Pelligrino, so I assure you, I can wait a long time.

  Her only response is an emoji of a person sticking her tongue out.

  I slip out of my office door and type as I go down the hall. And they say tone doesn’t come across on the internet.

  People do say that, and I guess I can see why. If you aren’t familiar with the ways that sarcasm or fancifulness or humor are typically signaled, internet conversations must seem like a confusion of lies.

  Em and I are on the same wavelength tonight. Who are these people who are magically understood by all in real life? she asks.

  I think, I say, they’re…normal? It’s been a long time since I spent any time with someone who could be called that. The last time was probably…Gabe’s sister, Maria. Pretty because she tried to be. All too aware of the reaction I had to her. As annoyed by me as I was by her.

  I don’t think normal exists, Em says. I think it’s a myth, like the rational economic man. The only question is if we see “normal” as something to aspire to.

  Ha.

  I’ve been trying not to think of my conversation with my parents all day, but it comes rushing back at that.

  I type a little more slowly. When I was a freshman in high school, I got an A- in Spanish.

  To anyone else, this would look like a total non sequitur. Not to Em. Tone comes through on the internet for her. Campus is dark, but not truly empty. I can hear the strains of music playing, the shout of someone laughing and drunk off in the shadows.

  Watching the screen of my phone ruins my night vision, but I don’t care.

  My mom, I write, took one look at the grade and shook her head.

  You monster, Em replies. An A-.

  My dad was worse. He said, “Well, let’s be reasonable. Maybe that’s the best he can do.” And he looked at me and asked: “Is that really the best you can do?”

  Oh dear, she responds. Your parents are cruel.

  I nod in semi-agreement even though she can’t see me. I’m off campus now, trudging through the first few blocks of restaurants and grungy apartments.

  Yep. My mom would insert the knife; Dad would twist it and ask if I was bleeding.

  And you’ve been trying to meet their unreasonable expectations ever since, Em says.

  I’ve told this story before. It’s recognizable. It’s normal. It’s another variant of the “Oh my god, my Asian parents” story that half my friends can tell.

  It’s the truth. It’s just not the full truth. Maybe that’s why I tell her the part I’ve always left off.

  No. I send this single word out. The air is cool against my fingers, and I take my time measuring out my next words. My senior year, I fucked up. Really badly.

  Beyond all forgiveness.

  After that, I type, they stopped having any expectations of me at all.

  Tone shouldn’t come through on the internet, least of all in silence, but it does. There’s a comfort to the way she doesn’t respond, as if she’s letting me pick my words, think my thoughts through.

  So, I say, I’ve had to make my own unreasonable expectations ever since. I figured if I make them big enough, maybe one day they’ll believe in me again.

  Oh, A., she writes. I’m sorry.

  I shake my head. I don’t want her pity. I want to fix this. It’s taken me this long, and dammit, I’m not letting up.

  But Em is still typing. There was a point in my life, she writes, where I really needed to hear these words: You are enough, just as you are. So I’m going to say them to you. You are enough, just as you are.

  I stop walking. I look at my phone. The concept just doesn’t make sense.

  Worse; it feels dangerous on this dark night. Enough means being ungrateful for my million-in-one tenure track job. Enough means ignoring what I did to my parents, my brother. Enough is selfish. I’m not enough, not now. Maybe one day I will be, but it will never happen, not if I let myself believe…this.

  Yeah, I type. This is why I prefer not knowing anything about each other. I don’t want you to make me feel better or to badger me to leave the office. I’m fine.

  They’re mean words. The instant I hit send, I want to take them back. She was trying to be nice; it wasn’t her fault I didn’t want her comfort.

  But maybe my tone comes through too well on the internet, because she hears it—not just the sarcastic dismissal I sent, but the hurt behind it.

  Sure, big guy, she writes. Just remember that those words are here any time you want them.

  Streets quiet as we go farther from campus. I head uphill a few blocks. Find my house. Take out my keys.

  My chest feels weird. My throat feels hoarse from the conversation, and
I haven’t said a word.

  It’s one thing to flirt with someone you’ve never met. But these? These are actual feelings. I’m not sure what they mean or what to do with them.

  I think about asking her something personal. Something like…her name. Her location. I want to know what shoes she’s wearing now. I want to call her, to hear her voice.

  But I don’t have her number, thankfully—just her ID on this messaging app we use. And I can’t stop moving. I can’t.

  So I put my phone on the charger and ignore her the rest of the evening.

  6

  MARIA

  Sunday dinner is a tradition in many families besides ours. I have vague memories of it from my preteen years. I know the mythology of it from TV—a big table where people gather around home-cooked food. They pass rolls and salad around the table. There’s usually apple pie for dessert.

  I’m not opposed to the idea in principle. In practice, though, when it comes to my grandmother, the traditional Sunday dinner is a nonstarter. God forbid that Camilla Hernandez Garcia cook.

  “I don’t want to do it,” Nana told me once. “You don’t want me to do it. I am done with that.”

  This is why my brother and I have decamped with her to an Italian restaurant, where someone else is in charge of not burning the rolls, and the markup on red wine isn’t terrible if you know what to order.

  “So,” my grandmother says. “You’re both looking for jobs this year. How is that going?”

  “Well—” Gabe starts to say, but she holds up a hand.

  “No, wait. Let me guess.” She puts her fingers to her temples. “Maria, you’ve sent out fifty résumés. You have three contingency plans and a spreadsheet. Gabe…” She shakes her head at him. “Ha.”

  Gabe mock-frowns as he adds Parmesan from a shaker to his pasta. “That’s not fair. I’m not disorganized. The academic job market just sucks.”

  Nana ignores this. “That birth order stuff skipped you two.”

  “Hey!” My brother points a finger at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m the perfect older child. I have a PhD in physics from Harvard. And—”

  “Did you buy your plane tickets to Portland yet?” I ask sweetly.

  Gabe blows out a breath. “Whatever.”

  I turn to my grandmother. “He has an interview there in a month.”

  “They just called me a week ago! I have plenty of time to get tickets.”

  “Did you turn in your reimbursements from North Dakota yet? Because you told me—”

  Gabe picks up his glass of wine and moves his chair six inches away from me. “I don’t know why I even come, when the two of you just make fun of me.”

  “Free spaghetti,” I deadpan.

  “Oh. Right.” Our eyes meet; there’s a glint of humor in his.

  Gabe and I argue. Especially when we are around family. I don’t know why we do it; there’s just something about being around each other that makes us both revert to childhood. The first time Jutta, his fiancée, observed it, she nearly died of embarrassment. We had to stop mid-argument and explain to her that we weren’t serious, and the goal was to make the other person laugh.

  “So what are your three options, Maria?”

  “It’s not really three. The company I interned at last summer wants to hire me full-time.”

  They were offering something that would look like a decent salary if they weren’t based in San Francisco. On the other hand, they had decent healthcare benefits. The job is, to put it bluntly, incredibly boring. But…health insurance.

  “That’s really the only one I’ve put on my spreadsheet so far. I’ve applied to a handful of consulting firms—”

  My brother guffaws. “Actuarial consultants? Who needs an actuarial consultant? That’s not a real thing.”

  I fold my arms and glare at him. “Okay, dude who worked at the literal Hadron collider on a project designed to figure out if the universe is covered by an indetectable field. You would be the expert on things that are not real.”

  “It’s not indetectable, it’s—”

  “Oh, excuse me. You might be able to prove it exists if you can find your God particle. I stand corrected.”

  “Don’t call it that.” But he snorts, on the verge of cracking up.

  I shrug. “Have it your way. Actuarial consultants don’t exist. I mean, they just have webpages and business cards.”

  Nana shakes her head in mock dismay. “Children, children. Behave yourselves.”

  Gabe points at me. “She started it!”

  “Did not!”

  Nana glares at us. “Children who argue about Higgs bosons over dinner don’t get dessert.”

  “Who says?” Gabe turns to her.

  “Sorry, kids. It’s the law. San Francisco municipal code section 415.1. If I saw the restaurant violating it, I’d have to shut them down, and it’s my favorite restaurant.”

  Gabe and I meet each others’ eyes across the table, and we both crack up.

  She raises her arms in victory. “I win!”

  “Fine,” I grumble. “Be that way.”

  “And Maria was telling us about her possibilities,” Nana says. “What’s number three?”

  “Number three…” Number three is not even an offer. It’s a non-possibility.

  But it arrived in my email—MCL’s email, that is—two days ago. It was from a microchip company that sourced supplies globally. They’d read my post about the collapse of western civilization after the great helium shortage of 2028. I had, apparently, correctly predicted some of their supply chain vulnerabilities and freaked out their upper management. Why their upper management was not freaked before, I do not know. All of the information I used was public domain.

  Still, they wanted to hire me to do a risk assessment at an hourly rate that staggered me. Two weeks of work would have paid off my student loans.

  But I’ve seen the arguments about who I am online. There are several people who are convinced I’m a professor at some university. They think I have credentials. I can’t imagine how they’d react to me in person.

  Hi. I’m still an undergrad.

  Yeah. That would go over really well.

  I’d declined; they had written back and told me the offer was open indefinitely.

  I can daydream as much as the next person. A part of me loves the idea of doing worldwide risk consultations and getting paid for it.

  It’s just a part of me. I learned long ago to avoid the mountaintops of life. Sure, it’s fun to get to the top. But storms come and lightning strikes, and it’s no fun being exposed on top of the world in those moments. Daydreams are great, but an established salary and health benefits have to come first, thank you.

  So I just smile. “Number three is nonexistent. The job market sucks everywhere. And Gabe? I’m sorry I made fun of your God particle. I’m sure you won’t destroy the universe.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yet,” I add, and he glares at me.

  * * *

  “We die,” Tina says, “we live to fight another day.”

  We’re sitting at the granite island in the kitchen, sharing barbecue pork buns and talking shit about... Well, technically, we are talking shit about her parents.

  “It won’t be that bad.” I promise her. “I mean, I know your mom is indiscreet, but...”

  She shakes her head. “Oh my god, Maria. She’s terrible. It’s not that she’s indiscreet. She’s seriously collecting articles on Cyclone’s business in China and highlighting portions. She has the scrapbook of shit-talking that she is saving for Adam Reynolds. She prints things off the internet. ‘Just in case I forget.’”

  “It’ll work out,” I promise. I don’t know that this is true, but Blake is pretty easygoing, and even though his dad is an asshole, it’s worked so far.

  My phone dings. I look down at the notification.

  In conclusion, A. has written, I am a horrible fraud, so give me more grant money.

  It’s been a few
weeks since I argued him out of his office. We’ve fallen back into our friendship after he snapped at me, but it feels like there’s an edge to it. Still, I find myself smiling in spite of myself. I tap out a quick response: Yay, you finished!

  I set the phone down and look up at Tina, who is watching me with one raised eyebrow.

  “Sorry,” I say. “But look—as long as your parents don’t meet, you’re going to be dreading worst-case scenarios, and from experience, that’s—”

  My phone dings again, and I look down.

  I have a bad case of impostor syndrome, A. writes. Grant writing makes it worse. It’s always YES, MY RESEARCH WILL CURE CANCER. In reality, ha.

  I look up. Tina is eyeing me. She points at my phone. “Do you need to get that?”

  “No,” I say guiltily. “No. I’m listening. I swear.” I try to remember what I was saying. Something something something her parents? Dang it.

  “You’re smiling,” she says.

  I cross my legs primly on the barstool. “Listening and smiling are not incompatible.”

  “Who are you texting?”

  “I’m not texting anyone.” I look her in the eye and manage to keep the silly smile off my face. “I’m using a chat application that simulates texting so I don’t have to give out my number.”

  “Oh, well.” She matches my tone. “That’s completely different.”

  We look at each other, twin expressions of innocence on our faces. I break first, laughing, and she follows suit.

  “Seriously, who are you texting?”

  “Some physicist,” I toss off.

  “Ooh, a physicist. Is he hot?”

  I don’t look at her. “I wouldn’t know. We just talk science.”

  “Does this physicist have a name?”

  “I’m sure he does,” I say. “He just hasn’t told me yet. He comments on my blog sometimes.”

  “So it’s no big deal.” Tina looks at me suspiciously.

  “I met him through my blog. We mostly talk about plagues and nuclear explosions.”

  I’m not lying, not really. I’m just not telling her the complete truth.

  She indicates my phone. “Are you going to answer?”