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As I thumbed through that old journal, my energy ebbed until, by the time I reached the last words I ever inked as Liss Miller, I was already numb.
I do not love him the way he loves me. I cannot. I went back to him and I will marry him for better or for worse. The realization creeps forth that it is not the present I regret; it is in the future that I fear I will. At some point, I must stop asking whether this is the best life I could have had under any circumstance and just be happy that it is a good life. After all, we make the best choices we can at the time we make them with the information we have. These choices are based necessarily on what we know about ourselves and what we think we know about the world.
My heart ached for the girl-woman who composed those words.
NAO KAO
“What is it,Dad?”
“Hmmm, what’s that?” I looked up from phone and away from the ghost I’d encountered.
“You look startled. As though you’ve seen something wonderful or terrible.”
My daughter’s acute perceptivity astonished me.
“Ah, it’s nothing. I received surprising news from an old friend.”
She finished her eggs and gathered her things. I heard her start her motorbike and leave as I pushed now-cold eggs in a circle on my plate. Surprising news from an old friend, I’d told her. That might cover almost anything, but in this case, it barely scratched the surface.
Liss Miller was alive.
Despite the years that had passed, I still thought of her sometimes, of her stories accompanied by peals of laughter, of her broad smile and mane of red curls. I could be in my office, balancing budgets or reviewing proposals and those piercing green eyes would appear in my mind. Other times, it might be an image of her bent over her notebook writing, or looking over her shoulder at me in class. It would take my breath away when that happened. I’d offer a quick prayer for her, that she was alive and well and happy, but I’d long ago given up on receiving confirmation of such.
Until this morning, on LinkedIn, of all places. A perfunctory message accompanied the connection request:
Nao Kao–
I was sorting through materials from our master’s program and thought I’d see if you were on LinkedIn. You look to be doing well. I hope so.
– Liss
At least she didn’t ask if I remembered her.
I replied immediately. “What a pleasant surprise to receive a message from you, Liss. I’m glad to hear from you. All my best, Nao Kao”
I found my own memory box and lifted the lid. Tassel and cords. Three-ring binders of class notes and papers. Photos. Mostly of campus – the Diag under a blanket of snow; a portrait of a squirrel clasping a nut; the peonies in full bloom in the Arb, their pinks and whites and yellows profiled against a clear spring sky; the fall foliage at the Law Quad, the reds and oranges still vibrant after so many years. Twinkle lights strung across Main Street. Commencement at the stadium, the first and only time I set foot in the vaunted Big House.
At the bottom of the stack, photos from a day at the beach, Grand Haven as I remember it was called. A long pier capped by a red lighthouse, seagulls scratching at creamy sand, a man wrestling a massive blue and white kite. Memories I’d assumed I’d never share again. I thought again about the innocuous note she’d written. In all likelihood, I never would share them again.
I uploaded copies of a few photos of campus to Facebook with the caption “feeling nostalgic for Ann Arbor today,” then grabbed my helmet and gloves and keys for my bike. I rode until evening, through town and along the river, the great muddy Mekong that formed Laos’s border with Thailand guiding me south out of the city and toward the rice paddies where farmers were diligently harvesting their crop on an unusually clear day. The open road, with the sun beating down and the wind in my face, was a cure for most any ailment.
When I checked my LinkedIn messages that night, she’d already responded. I replied in kind, confirmation, I hoped, that my words were sincere. She was a pleasant surprise; I bore her no ill will. That night, I tossed and turned, and only knew I’d slept a wink by the fragments of dream that scattered when I awoke: snow in Ann Arbor.
Oh, Liss.
LISS
Ihad noshortage of ideas to fill Nao Kao’s summer with everything I thought necessary to experience the quintessential Ann Arbor summer in 2001, even, arguably, to experience the quintessential American summer. Although our afternoon at the Art Fairs had not been a raging success, Nao Kao – for whom “grudge” was a four-letter word and his frustrations only fleeting – was still eager to visit Top of the Park, where at least I knew overpriced home furnishings would not be on offer.
We went one evening after class, a half dozen graduate students high on the sweetness of languorous summer days, Nao Kao, me, and other assorted classmates. There atop the parking structure, we grabbed sandwiches from one of the concessions as music filled the air. The night was warm, and as dusk descended, lightning bugs came out in force, flashing their lanterns as we chattered away.
I almost did not enroll in grad school at Michigan, I had felt such a need to escape the phantoms I sensed in the shadow of every building. I told Nao Kao that once, when I learned that he, too, had seemed destined for another state, another university, another program. He expected to attend grad school at the University of Minnesota. To his surprise, shortly before he was to leave Laos, plans changed and he learned that he would study instead at the University of Michigan. He was used to life being decided by higher powers and unseen forces; nothing shook his equanimity. Nao Kao merely pulled out his map to learn where he was headed. The only thing that would have bothered him, he told me, is if he had not gotten to experience a “real” winter, and especially snow.
“Florida would have been a disappointment,” he said, though I figured that news, too, would ultimately have moved through him like water through sand, with no more than a slight disturbance as it continued on its predestined course back to the sea.
“Do you ever consider how little control we really have over our lives?” he mused one time, in a thoughtful mood, but for once I was not keen to pick up the thread of this morose notion, and I changed the subject.
Surely, with enough force of will, the universe could be bent, and life coerced, into taking whatever shape we desired.
