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Lonely.
And a precursor to becoming my mother.
Her whole day people manage and touch her, operating under this unspoken rule that she’s the person paying them to do their jobs. It's transactional socialization. And it ends when everyone leaves, she tells me. After you’ve spent all this energy chatting to people, trying to be perfectly charming and gracious, you are left in the quiet—kind of forgetting how to talk when you don’t have to play a part. When you don't have to be their boss.
You are my real, my mother has told me many times.With you, I’m not playing a part.
I’ve never quite understood what she meant by that, but as I stare at Huan, I see it clearly. There’s no lighting, mirrors, orsmoke I curate with him. It's... real. There is no other word for it. He feels real. I'm real with him. Hopefully, he is able to feel real with me?
“Don't feel pressured to include me for this experience,” he says.
“And deprive myself of watching you squeal over tiny treats? Please.”
As the server brings over another setting place, he says, “I’m way too dignified to squeal.”
“Except this isn’t your ordinary afternoon tea,” I tell him. “According to my research?—”
He laughs, but not because I’ve made a joke. It’s because I’ve said something expected, and there is something dangerous about a person knowing you well enough that when you do something that is very muchyou, they recognize it in a flash, and it amuses them. Maybe it delights them.
“This place,” I continue as if I’m not affected, “serves cakes, cookies and sandwiches inspired by the latest fashion trends on the runway. Everything is going to be beautiful and fancy. Get ready.”
As I look at Huan, I think he fits right in. He's wearing a white button-up where the first button hits below his collarbone, so I see a window of his skin. And his slacks are charcoal. They are tailored around his thighs and tailored around that lightly creased zippered front. Whoever thinks women don’t do bulge checks?—
Good thing the tea comes out quickly. Huan serves it so smoothly that I accuse him of being a “tea person.”
He puts down the kettle. “Tea is boiled suffering.”
“So you’d rather be drinking Kombucha?”
“I want to say yes, because I know the weird joy it gives you to make fun of what you think is my secret hippy identity, but my favourite is chai.”
I smile. “India has a way of sinking into people.”
“Is there anywhere else you would want to live?”
“Never. And have you been back to Beijing since you left?”
“No, but my dad has." Huan drowns his tea with enough milk to offend the entire country. "He visits my sister’s resting place for Qingming Festival. Do you want milk?”
“No, I like my boiled suffering natural. What’s Qingming Festival?”
“You visit the tombs of your ancestors to clean their gravesites and make offerings. But mostly, my dad goes to talk to Becca.”
“And you don’t?”
Huan glances around he’s doing a perimeter check. “I don’t. But my dad wants me to go with him so I can forgive myself and move on. His words, not mine.”
“Do you…” I start, then stop. “You don’t want to?”
Our eyes meet. He's a bit flushed. "Sorry, I don't want to hijack the conversation with—this."
"You aren't. If you are comfortable sharing, I would like to know."
His eyes lower. “It's because I can’t imagine going to her grave and talking about how badly I feel.”
When you first meet Huan, you think quiet and self-assured—and it’s not that he isn’t those things, it’s that he’s also hard on himself. For him, I can say with confidence now, strength is important. He sees the hurt he’s caused but is blind to how holding onto it pokes back into his own body.
We’re quiet for a bit, and for someone so comfortable in silence, this one weighs. “Huan.”
