Page 36 of That's Not a Thing

“Except for me.”

We are both quiet as we digest these words, and the silence begins to stretch between us. Finally, he says the last thing I am expecting.

“Well, then you have to make it your business to be there for him. I’ll help.”

Chapter Sixteen

March 2017

I’m just getting to work when Lana calls.

“Hey,” I answer, dropping into my desk chair. Nicola isn’t here yet to roll her eyes at me for engaging in non-work-related chitchat.

“Are your parents hosting Mother’s Day again this year?” Lana asks, without preamble.

“I guess so.” Mother’s Day is still a couple of months away, and I can’t say I’ve given it much thought. “Why?”

“I’m not inviting Reese.”

“Okay.” I still don’t know where we’re going with this. I hear voices in the hallway as other attorneys and admins arrive. I push at the glass door of my office with my patent leather–covered toe; the frosted door swings closed while I wait for Lana to explain what she means.

“I’ve had it. I think it’s time he starts getting left out of the family affairs that he enjoys so much, so he can see what life might be like without me.”

“Lana, what are you talking about?” I laugh out loud. “Why does Reese care whether he comes to my parents’ Mother’s Day barbecue?”

“Oh my God, for real?” she demands, her voice rising a couple of octaves. “It’s like the highlight of his year every year, the whole down-and-dirty barbecue thing.Dope, actually, is how I remember him describing it to his dad last year. The Altmans are sodope.” Her voice is laced with ridicule as she draws out the last word. She pauses for a second, and I can hear her sipping on something, which I imagine is her daily nonfat vanilla iced latte. “Also, he’s obsessed with your dad’s blue cheese sliders.”

My dad isn’t much in the kitchen, but he does grill like a champ. Between the backyard smoker he added to his arsenal a few years ago and the next-door neighbor’s deep fryer, I think it’s fair to say that our annual Mother’s Day get-together actuallyispretty dope.

“So, what’s the plan? He misses out on his Jeff special and then he decides he can’t live without the Altman Mother’s Day barbecue, which translates into not being able to live without you? Cue proposal?” I can’t say I’m impressed by the plan here.

“No, dumbass,” she quips. “I was thinking that I could tell him he’s not invited, which is the first blow, and then spend the whole afternoon with one of Aaron’s cousins or some hot doctor friend that you can tell him to bring. I’ll post a whole bunch of pics on social media for Reese to see after the fact, and maybe that will get him thinking.”

“Okay, I have problems with this plan on so many levels, the first of which is that you should not need to make your man jealous in order for him to realize how much you mean to him.”

My mind flashes to the mind-blowing sex Aaron and I had last night, and I wonder if I’m actually right about that.

“Secondly, if this is how you’re feeling now—today, or last month, or last year—why are you waiting until Mother’s Day to take action?”

She sighs so heavily into the phone that I wonder if she has to grasp it tighter so it won’t blow away. As I wait for her to respond, I reach for the mouse on my desk and wiggle it to bring my computer screen to life.

“I just need a little more time,” she says, as if she’s pleading with me, “before I start making waves. I’ve kind of given myself until May, and if it seems like he’s still not ready to get serious, I’m going to rock the boat. But I don’t want to start the rocking until I’m ready to deal with the consequences. I know how to push Reese, and I’m just worried that I might end up pushing him in the other direction.”

“Okay, fine. I guess that makes sense. A little.” I open my email, tensing as I wait to see if I have any messages from attorneys that are going to ruin my day. Nothing jumps out at me from within the list of bolded, unread messages, just some firm-wide announcements and possible spam. “I can’t imagine that the barbecue is anything other than on, but I’ll double-check and keep you posted.”

“Awesome,” she says, and I can hear that subtle shift in her voice that tells me she’s turning her focus to something else, maybe readying to get back to whatever work she has sitting on her Lucite desk.

“Hey, Lan,” I say, trying to hold on to her attention for one more minute, “you’re one of the most fabulous people I know. You’re breathtaking and exciting and full of fun. If Reese can’t see that or can’t appreciate you in the way you want, another guy will. You need to know that.” I don’t tell her how lucky she is to know her mind, to at least be able to understand her own emotions.

“Thanks, man. I know,” she says, with too much resignation in her voice. “I just really wanted it to be Reese.”

I TAKE ADVANTAGEof the lack of tyrannical emails in my inbox and devote my morning to Moe’s asylum case. In only a few more hours, Moe will be returning to our office for our next client meeting, possibly the final meeting before we have to file his papers, and I’m trying to create an efficient agenda. The firm allows me to devote only so many hours and resources to this case, but there are still numerous questions I need answered. I have a passing worry that I might face negative consequences when the partners, or whoever it is that reviews my time charts, notice how many of my ten-minute billing increments I have allocated to this case. Even so, this man’s whole future is at stake and I can’t give anything less than 100 percent.

I pull up the Human Rights Watch report, the document I used as my first jumping-off point to learn about Myanmar when I began working on this case. I read it over again and find the information still useful but a bit broad, too generalized, sort of like the stories I’ve been hearing from Moe himself. I’m having a hard time actually putting myself into Moe’s narrative, following the chronology from point A to point B. After another Google search, I find several videos about resettled Burmese people who are now living productively in the United States. Many of them have settled in Southport, Indiana, which is where Moe says he plans to go once his immigration status is settled. I click on one link after another, reading articles and stories about displaced Christians, tortured Muslims. I see the same statistics over and over, and my eye keeps catching on the fact that 1.2 million Muslims continue to endure human rights abuses in Myanmar. I wonder how it’s fair that such a small percentage of these people escape to safety. I wonder what happened in the cosmic universe that allowed for Moe to get out while so many others were murdered or trapped in his very same village.

Against my will, my thoughts jump back to ALS. I don’t remember the statistics I saw about the prevalence of the disease, what percentage of the population it affects, but I again wonder about fate and what made Wesley fall into the category of the damned.

Before I know it, a couple of hours of online searching have passed and the honest truth is that I feel no more well versed in the workings of Burmese society than I did when I walked into the office this morning. I’ve consumed an overwhelming amount of information, and it’s difficult to separate truth from propaganda. For example, I discovered something called the 969 Movement, which one website says is a violent initiative meant to limit the spread of Islam, and which another site describes as a peaceful attempt to preserve Buddhist culture. I’m not familiar with the organizations behind either website, and there’s no way for me to decide which information to believe. Instead, I ignore the question for the time being and stand up from my chair to seek out Rose Conway, the senior associate who is technically supervising me on this case. Although I’m doing all the work, she joins me for the meetings with Moe, and when the time comes to present our case before the immigration judge, she will sit first chair.