“Our fiftieth anniversary is coming up,” Gene’s mother said to him as he jostled the mouse to bring her computer back to bright. One time the problem had been Caps Lock on; another time it was a matter of hitting Escape. Gene hadn’t been able to solve this particular tech issue over the phone so had taken the subway from Nostrand to Penn Station where he switched over to NJ Transit, then waited at the lip of the parking lot until his mother pulled up honking and waving. Gene didn’t know how he was able to recognize the crown of Korean mom curls so like the others, but something about her silhouette was distinct to him, as if she were the skyline of a famous city.

“That’s a lot of years,” Gene replied.
Gene’s parents had been together five decades of their seventy-four years on this planet. Something about the ratio of time together versus time apart was incomprehensible to Gene. If his mother’s life were a pie, two thirds of it would be taken by his father, the remaining slice shrinking with each passing day.

They had wed at a slightly nicer-than-average Holiday Inn in Rochester, New York, where Gene’s father had been in graduate school and his mother was one of six women in her architecture program. Gene only knew this last fact from an interview he had done with her for a high school lit class entitled “Lives of Girls and Women.” There was a photo from the reception: his mother – young, unlined, childless – smiling with lips closed next to his father; the best man at one end of the table, her father-in-law on the other. None of her side of the family was at the ceremony; it had been hard to travel from Korea back then without connections or wealth. Her father-in-law had gone with them on their Hawaiian honeymoon, ogled white girls in bikinis with his son on Waikiki Beach. She had wept, Gene’s mother told him once. At the wedding and during their honeymoon. But her father-in-law had paid for everything so what could she have said. 

“Do you want to do something?” Gene asked. “We could rent a space, throw you a party.” 

“No,” his mother said after a pause. “Those parties are depressing. Mr. and Mrs. Shin had one last year and it felt like a funeral, except they were alive.” 

“Isn’t it better to hear all those nice things people have to say about you when you’re still in the room?”

“What’s the point of all those old stories?” Gene’s mother said. “Do they really mean it? Anyway, the whole thing would just me feel old.” 

“Then what?” Gene asked, staring at the blank screen on his mother’s computer. 

“I don’t know. Think of something. Your father will be upset if we don’t do anything.” 

“Will he?” 

“Come on. Don’t you remember that fancy party he and your aunts and uncles organized for your grandparents? At the Grand Hotel?”

Gene did remember. A huge ballroom in Seoul stacked with men and women in dark suits and glittering gowns, an MC making announcements every ten minutes or so in a voice that reminded Gene of a circus. They had entered the room in order of increasing standing: his father’s sisters and their families first, then Gene’s youngest uncle, after which Gene’s father ushered their family into the bright lights, a tight grip on Gene’s shoulder. Stand up straight, he had hissed. His sisters fussed under their itchy dresses as Gene’s father paraded them across the dance floor. Gene felt the hundreds of eyes as claps fell like heavy rocks. Could they tell, just by looking? Gene’s oldest uncle’s family followed, his father’s elder brother walking with his chest thrust forward, his pretty wife like a peacock two steps behind holding her son’s hand. Gene’s grandparents entered the ballroom last: the patriarch shrunken and white-haired even then; Gene’s grandmother small in her billowing sky blue hanbok. All energy in the room vectoring towards the two of them as if they were the center of a black hole. In a photograph of that day Amy is a squirming toddler in their mother’s arms, Gene leaning into their mother’s legs. Emily stands next to their father, taller than Gene by a full head. The oldest uncle dead now of cancer after driving the family textile business into the ground, choosing to live his last days in the Philippines with his other family. The middle aunt also dead after years of estrangement from the rest of them due to her husband’s hostile takeover of the family company. Everyone said he couldn’t have done it without her. The grandparents now dust: Gene’s grandfather ten years after his grandmother, in his sleep, painlessly, at ninety-four years old. 

“I mean, he still hasn’t gotten over the first paycheck thing,” Gene’s mother continued. She paused. “Not that it matters to me. But it bothered him. Still does.”

Gene’s father had two stories he liked to tell: how he had handed his first university paycheck over to his father, his first full-time job after years of being supported by money wired overseas, fat envelopes and tuition paid. The second story was about a solid gold Rolex he had purchased for Gene’s grandfather as a seventieth birthday gift. It was back in his possession now, after Gene’s grandfather’s death. Just getting the watch cleaned had cost hundreds, even though Gene’s grandfather had scarcely worn it, the watch being too heavy for his frail arm. Gene’s father had shown it to Gene after that cleaning, saying it would be his one day. The watch was a hard, shiny yellow, monotone in its tackiness, its obviousness. Gene would never wear it. 

He rolled his eyes. 

“My first paycheck was probably less than three hundred dollars,” he said to his mother. Gene’s first full-time job out of college had been as an artist’s assistant where he washed paintbrushes in pools of mud-colored water and mopped floors for minimum wage. 

“So?”

“I was dead broke.” 

“Yes,” she said. “I know. We were paying your rent.”

“Exactly. What would be the point of giving you a paycheck if you were paying for everything anyway?”

Gene’s mother shook her head slowly from side to side as if she were giving a secret signal. “How did you kids get so American?” she finally said. 

“So we need to do something lavish and expensive to make up for the past?” Gene tried to keep the resentment out of his voice. Not for the first time he wondered what he was doing there, why he had come all that way. Gene was busy; he had things to do. Was he there because he wanted to help? Because it was his duty? Or was it some kind of effort to earn favor back, to regain, visit by visit, what he had lost simply for being himself and not lying to them about it. And even then, what did it matter? Apparently there was always more to make up for.

“All I’m saying is that we should do something to mark the occasion. For your father.” 

“But mom,” Gene said. “What is it you want to do?”

Gene watched his mother as she gazed out the window. The lawn beyond was neat as always, not a dropped leaf to be seen, the straw yellow grass trim and contained, no snow or ice in sight. This was part of the appeal of this place, all the work associated with a house taken care of: the snow shoveling, the leaf raking, the gutter cleaning, the lawn mowing, the tree trimming, the weed pulling. And everything his parents needed on the main floor so they wouldn’t have to go up and down the stairs. It wasn’t a problem now but would be before too long. The two extra rooms downstairs were furnished with the beds from Gene’s childhood home for when Gene’s sisters and their families visited. It wasn’t assisted living, it wasn’t a senior home – it was planning for what was sure to come. Gene had helped them look into options, culled the sprawling five bedroom house into this compact condo fewer than ten miles from where he had grown up. 

“Part of me just wants to let it pass by,” she finally said. “But I don’t think I’ll be here for the next big one. Anything could happen. You never know.” 

Just then the computer glowed to life, sounding off that familiar chord. 

“Fixed it,” Gene said.  

“Oh good,” his mother said, moving her reading glasses from the top of her head to her face as if she were bringing down an eye shield on a helmet. “I’m dying to know what happens next in Kingdom of Tears.” Gene’s mother’s favorite show was also his own, the story of a Han dynasty princess masquerading as a mercenary for hire to restore her family’s honor, all while falling in love with her rakish partner-in-crime unaware of her true identity and gender.
Gene’s mother looked over at him, her eyes magnified into a startled fish. “Do you want to stay and watch with me?” 

Gene was four episodes behind but knew his father couldn’t stand dramas. He pictured, for a moment, his mother alone in this room watching heroics and lovemaking on the screen, and then remembered that he, too, usually watched alone. 

“Sure,” he said. “I’d love to.” He slid the desk chair over to make room for her.

◆

Later that weekend when Gene mentioned his parents’ 50 years and his thought about the ratio to Jim, the white guy he had been seeing the previous couple of months, Jim said something about Asians never divorcing, which Gene didn’t necessarily disagree with but thought inappropriate for a few reasons. He debated about saying something but ended up not having to as he caught Jim at a bar in Chelsea with another East Asian on a night Gene was supposed to be at his studio. Rice queen, Gene thought to himself before another, smaller voice echoed back to him: but my rice queen. When Gene confronted Jim about it later, Jim stumbled with something about not agreeing to be exclusive but had nothing to say about the racial aspect of it, which sealed Gene’s resolve that he deserved better. 

Gene had deleted Jim’s contact information from his phone but recognized the number when it flashed across the screen a few weeks later. He didn’t pick up but listened to the message right away even though he was on his way to a client presentation. Gene, I know we’re not talking and that you probably don’t want to hear from me. I’m sorry about doing this by voice mail but . . . I’m positive. I’m calling everyone who . . . Well, you should get tested. Even though, well. Just to be safe. Sorry. Sorry again. You don’t have to call me back. Unless you want to. Take care. 

Gene listened to the message three times while standing on the sidewalk in downtown Manhattan, waves of heat pulsing through him. He thought of Jim and his long body, soft and freckled, his face like a flag in the dark. They had been safe, Gene was pretty sure, but a sound ticked off inside of him: what about that time they started drinking Margaritas at noon? And hadn’t there been a time when the condom broke? Gene wasn’t sure. 

Jim was older than Gene, had lived through those years of war and genocide. To be positive now, after decades of surviving, when it was no longer a death sentence but a distant reverberation of all those young men grown thin and skeletal, covered in sores and shame until finally disappearing into a jumble of clattering breaths. A generation gone but enough time had passed that the younger ones really had no idea, thought of HIV as something like herpes. Some part of Gene imagined Jim would be resigned, thinking that the inevitable had finally arrived. Jim wouldn’t allow himself to think about a shortened lifespan or possible side effects, but would instead brush those thoughts away and take one last glance in the mirror to double check that no signs of concern remained before he joined his friends in their tight fitting t-shirts, arms like lifts between the well-worn bar and their waiting, open mouths. Gene watched the bodies in suits and coats and clacking heels rushing by him and wondered which ones held disease, which ones were a ticking bomb set off too soon. 

An alarm went off on his phone; Gene was going to be late for his meeting, and he needed the money from this job. He turned the alarm off, deleted the voice message and stepped into the river of people making their way through the corridors of concrete and ash. 

He somehow got through the next hour, apologizing for his tardiness, presenting four logo designs, listening to the comments and feedback, nodding and taking notes. Gene felt his body going through the motions; what astonished him was his mind on auto-pilot, his brain pushing the words out of his mouth, making shapes with his lips, generating sounds out of air pushed from his diaphragm up through his larynx. Gene watched his machine body from afar as it shook hands goodbye and descended through space in a metal box. Its feet took him around sharp corners and down through train doors and then up and back into a familiar street where he climbed the steps one by one until he was inside the four walls of his painting studio and he could finally breathe. As Gene put brush to canvas he felt a knitting back together. He would get tested and take it from there. 

Gene was working on a series of interior portraits: family and friends inside their homes or offices, each canvas no bigger than a couple square feet. He worked from memory, sitting one of them in a room he had been in and remembered, conjuring a face, sometimes shoulders, hands, elbows. The walls tilted around the figure, a spotted green plant floating or the floor where a flaking ceiling would be; a wooden chair here, a small vase of red flowers there. Gene thought of them as dream paintings – what the sitters would see as they drifted off to sleep under his gaze, his brush hovering, dripping with color. Gene had three finished pieces – his sister Amy, his ex Miguel, and Saeed, the owner of the corner bodega – and one just started, his other sister Emily. He thought he needed at least five before having anyone for a studio visit. It had been a few years since he had last shown: the graphic design work paid the bills but drained away precious time and energy.

His mind emptied as he worked. Under Gene’s hand his sister receded, and his mother appeared. He stroked her hair into life, curved the straight plain of her cheek. A heaviness settled into the flat surface and he heard what she had said to him: anything could happen, and out of nowhere Gene thought back to the time he brought his mother a paper bag full of persimmons he had seen stacked in a gleaming pyramid at a gourmet market in the city. 

These remind me of Korea, when I was young, she had said as she peeled the soft body. We had a tree in our backyard, and my father would put them in a huge bowl that would be waiting for us when we got home from school. They were so sweet, so juicy. Sometimes my mother would hang them upside down to dry and make soojunggwa in the winter. 

Gene’s mother shut her eyes as she brought the fruit to her mouth, the persimmon taut and auburn against her gently bagged skin. Her father had suffered a severe stroke at 45 and was never able to work again. Everything changed after that, his mother said, and wouldn’t say more. Gene remembered visiting his grandparents’ small apartment in Ohio – always warm and humid and smelling of beef soup – and coming across a spiral bound notebook filled with English words along with a condensed dictionary bound in marbled brown plastic meant to look like leather. He flipped through the onion skin pages and saw words with faint pencil check marks next to them, barely visible notes written in Korean in the margins. His grandfather studied and memorized into his old age but he and Gene never did much more than nod and gesticulate, one or the both of them occasionally uttering words they could recall: butterfly, refrigerator, candy. Gene loved his grandfather and the gentle way he moved through the world, how he laughed with his whole mouth. He was such a different kind of father with his soft hands and down sloping eyes; patting Gene quietly on the back until he fell asleep, making small sounds that were neither Korean nor English but something in between. The first time Gene had ever seen his mother cry was at his funeral when the casket closed for the final time. 

Gene’s mother told him her story about the tree in her childhood backyard every time she ate persimmons. Gene nodded along every time, listening as if it were the first telling. There weren’t many stories in her repertoire like that one. Most of them were more like the one about when she first arrived in the States: I was in a foreign country, in a new language, and he was so different. He had become a stranger. I still don’t know what happened while we were apart. I was so alone. The year she and Gene’s father spent apart while she waited for her student visa to come through had transformed her fiancé completely. From who and into what, Gene would never hear about. His mother would shake her head as if she had water in her ears and tighten her lips, saying nothing more.

Now Gene painted the persimmons around his mother in her room, flaming orange, glowing pumpkin, sunset bright, finally blood red. They were floating pillows; they were blooming flowers. His mother was surrounded by the fruit of her youth, her eyes hooded and aged, nothing more wrong with her than having weathered the passage of time. Gene’s mother had painted once too, watercolor over ink on paper. She had been the first to teach him to transform what he saw with his eye into lines on the page, into quick strokes of color left behind by movements of hand and arm. My father was a fine draftsman, she had told him. He was an engineer. It’s from my side that you get your abilities. She had trained as an architect but only worked a few years after graduating; she got pregnant with Gene’s oldest sister and that was that. I sometimes feel I’ve wasted my life, she said to him once. He had been thunderstruck at the time, unable to think of anything to say. A swath of regret as wide as a lifetime, as shocking to him as the sudden understanding that they had not been enough, Gene and his sisters. All this time he had thought it had been, the shuttling from school to lessons, the packing of lunches, the washing of laundry, the wiping of hands and dinner tables and fresh tears. That was years ago, he realized as he continued to mark her image onto the canvas in front of him. What did she think now?

◆

“We want to renew our – what do you call them? – vows,” Gene’s mother told him over the phone a week later. 

“Your wedding vows?” Gene said. 

“Yes. People do that, right?” 

“I guess so.” Gene couldn’t figure out what else to say. 

“We want to go back to Hawaii, where we had the honeymoon. Your father is going to invite his brother and his wife from Korea. And his best friend. All you kids will come. So just a small thing. But nice.” 

“June is only four months away.”

“It’s the off season there. I know you three can pull it off.” 

“This is what you want?” 

“Yes. We discussed it.” 

“Are you inviting anyone?”

“Hmm.” His mother paused. “I hadn’t thought about it.” 

Another beat passed. Gene began to brainstorm: “Mr. and Mrs. Shin? Big imo?” 

Gene’s aunt and uncle on his mother’s side lived in Ohio but they rarely saw each other, as Gene’s father didn’t care for the uncle – he talks too much, his father said. Mostly about himself. 

“I don’t think so,” Gene’s mother finally said. “Probably not. Did I tell you? Mrs. Shin had a big problem recently: she cut herself with a knife and you know, didn’t think anything of it. I mean, why would she? She went to Korea like they do every year and while she was there the cut somehow got infected and wouldn’t heal. I don’t know if it was the travel or bad circulation, or being in Korea or what. She ended up in the hospital for two weeks. She almost died.” 

“Oh god,” Gene said. He had known Mrs. Shin his entire life: she was a sturdy woman with a large head and a thick neck, hands as big as a man’s. The thought of her almost dying in a Korean hospital made Gene queasy. A woman like that brought down by a cut. His next thought: what if he’s positive? Gene felt panic swell, rippling just under his skin. “How terrible,” he managed to say.

“I know,” Gene’s mom’s said. “Isn’t it? You never know what can happen.” She made a clucking sound with her tongue and Gene knew she was shaking her head from side to side. The rhythm of if all calmed him, a steady heartbeat. He thought, for a moment, of saying something to her: mom, I may be sick. Mom, I’m scared. 

“Hey, Mom,” he began.

“It’s too much trouble,” she continued. “I don’t want to be a bother – she’ll feel obligated to come and she’s only just starting feeling better.”

The ultimate sin: to be a bother. Gene swallowed his words. He didn’t even know anything yet. There wasn’t anything to say. 

“Okay, whatever you want,” Gene said instead. “Hawaii it is.” He kept himself from reminding his mother what she had told him about their honeymoon. Didn’t she remember she had been miserable? 

“And make sure all the grandkids come. I was there when each one of them was born; I want the whole family to be together.” 

Gene’s mother had flown out to be with his sisters each time they had given birth, staying the first six weeks to make miyukgook for Emily and Amy to eat and to help take care of the baby. Every time she told them stories of what it had been like when she had given birth to them: recovering from a C-section but still having to go up and down stairs to fix dinner for their father. I was on my own, my family far away and your father up all night and sleeping all day while working on his dissertation or an article or whatever. I didn’t have any help at all, and I had to take care of him too. Their mother supported Emily’s decision not to have another child: it’s not worth it, she had said. And Emily is too old. 

“You’ll work it out with your sisters?” Gene’s mother asked him. “They’re good at planning.” 

“Yes,” he reassured her. “We’ll take care of everything.” 

◆

After an exchange of emails and the circulation of a scheduling app, Gene and his sisters got on a call together. 

“Hawaii works for me,” Gene’s younger sister Amy said. Amy lived in San Francisco with her husband and two children and drove an hour every morning to her job in marketing at a B2B startup whose function Gene never understood, no matter how many times Amy explained it to him. Amy ran marathons and kept a spreadsheet of friends by location so she could remember who to get in touch with when traveling for work. 

Gene’s other sister Emily, the oldest, was skeptical. “Renewing their vows?” she asked. “Do they even know what that means?” Emily lived in Boston where she taught sociology to college students and her Spaniard husband was a cardiologist at Mass General. Their daughter went to a progressive dual language immersion daycare in Jamaica Plains and spoke perfect Spanish. 

Gene shrugged. “This is what she says they want to do.” 

“We should pay,” Amy said. 

“For the whole thing?” This hadn’t occurred to Gene.

“For the house and the arrangements,” Amy replied. “Everything but the airfare, I suppose.” 

“It’s annoying but probably what dad wants,” Emily said. “Remember the first paycheck thing?”

“Mom was just telling me about that again the other day,” Gene said. “You knew that still bothered him?”

“Oh yeah,” Amy said. “None of us did it. World class failing.” 

“Way to go, Em,” Gene said. 

“Way to go, Gene,” Emily said back to him. 

“I’m not sure how much I can put in,” Gene said. “I mean, I can do some, but I’m not exactly rolling in it, you know.” Gene thought of how much it might all cost and then added on time away from work, time away from the studio and his paintings. He worked to pay for the studio; he worked for time and freedom. He looked in on his parents regularly, spent more time with them than his sisters with their full-time jobs and their children and the miles between them. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Amy said briskly. “Emily, can you look into a venue?”

“I guess so,” Emily said after a moment. “What with all my free time and everything.” She sighed into the phone.  

“I hope we can find something on such a short timeline,” Amy said. “Maybe some place by the beach, or at least with an ocean view?”

“Try my best,” Emily said, a sour note at the edge of her voice. 

Gene imagined the scene: all of them standing on a picturesque cliff, strings of white and pink orchids around their necks, his sisters’ skirts flapping around their shins as they stood next to their white husbands and rested their slim hands on the shoulders of their mixed race children. His uncle would be there with his square head and round glasses, grinning while Gene’s aunt squinted in the tropical sun, her pale city skin shimmering like the ocean around them. Stanley Kahn, Gene’s father’s best friend all these years, a color-faded copy of that original photo, would be there with his wife. His father liked to tell people about his first experience with roommates in the United States – they were all Jewish, he said, can you imagine that? The first ones I ever met. We got along great. Stanley Kahn had invited Gene’s father to his house for Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays, and then again for the Christmas break when they both didn’t observe Christmas and went to the movies and had buttered popcorn and Coke for dinner. 

At the center would be his parents. Gene couldn’t imagine their faces, or how they would look at one another, or how they might hold hands and say words while sliding a ring on the other’s finger. He didn’t know if it would be moving or awkward or romantic, if he’d feel a part of it, a part of the family, their coupling, their history – something. He didn’t know what stories they would tell about that day in the ones that would come after, each day ticking by just as sure as the water came rolling in on waves, one after the other, just as steady as the moon that pulled the water towards them and then away like a sheet revealing all those secret scuttling things. Gene could only see swaying shadows and his own body standing there next to them, possibly healthy, possibly sick, alone in that crowd. 

“It’ll be fun,” Amy said cheerfully. “I’ll look into places to stay.” 

The three of them agreed on the delegation of work assignments and planned a time a week later to talk again. 

◆

Gene was in Manhattan that weekend picking up art supplies when he ran into Jim. Gene hadn’t spotted him, weighed down as he was with bags and a heavy backpack filled with paint tubes, thinking only of getting to the subway, but he heard his name, faintly, and then again, louder. Gene recognized the voice immediately. 

“Gene,” Jim said, panting slightly from running Gene down. He looked good, his skin pink and flushed, his grey-streaked hair combed up and styled to the right as it always was. 

“Jim. Hi.” 

“How are you?”

“Fine. I’m fine. Getting some supplies,” he said, gesturing to the bags in his hands. 

“How’s the painting going?” Jim asked.

Gene looked at him and briefly debated whether to answer that inane question. He decided to allow Jim his delay. 

“Fine. Not enough time in the studio but what else is new.” 

Jim nodded and the two of them stood there looking at one another as the traffic flowed up 6^th Avenue until Gene got tired of waiting and said, “Well, good to see you,” and started to move down the sidewalk. 

“Wait,” Jim said. “I saw you and wanted to . . .”

Gene knew what he wanted: of course. 

“I don’t know yet,” Gene said. 

Something crumpled deep inside Jim’s face and Gene realized his idea of Jim taking the news of the diagnosis so easily, so cavalierly, was wrong, unnecessarily cruel. How could a thing like that not affect a person, no matter how much progress had been made, no matter how many years the internet said you might live. Just because Jim hurt him didn’t mean he was dead inside. 

“How are you holding up?” Gene asked, ashamed it had taken him so long to ask. “How are you feeling?”

Jim took a deep breath and squinted up to the blue sky peeking down at them between the Manhattan skyscrapers. “Okay so far,” he said. “No side effects. It’ll take some time to see how I respond to treatment.” He paused. “I know I don’t have any right to ask, but if you could let me know when you find out, it would mean a lot.” 

Later Gene would wonder whether Jim wanted to know out of concern for Gene or because he wanted to know what his weight of responsibility was, and Gene would decide that it didn’t matter either way. They were connected, the two of them, perhaps just for a moment or maybe for a lifetime. 

“Sure,” Gene said. “I will.” 

◆

“Maybe we should think about hiring an event planner,” Amy said on their next conference call. 

“That’s a great idea,” Emily responded. “I really don’t have much time for this.”

“A friend of mine hired someone when her parents turned 75,” Amy continued. “She said it was worth every cent.” 

“Hey guys,” Gene interrupted. 

“You know someone?” Emily asked. 

“No. Not that.” Gene hesitated, and then: “I’m having second thoughts about this. I’m not sure I can do it.” 

Gene still hadn’t gotten tested. He kept putting it off, telling himself he didn’t know where to go, that he didn’t have time to research clinics, that he couldn’t afford his deductible, that it didn’t really matter all that much right now anyway since he wasn’t seeing anyone or having sex of any kind. He hadn’t told his sisters or any of his friends. He didn’t want to worry anyone unnecessarily. He told himself he was probably negative. He told himself even if he was positive, treatment these days was so good a diagnosis scarcely meant anything. But he thought about it constantly, examined and cross examined every cough, every sniffle, every ache, every twitch, every scab that seemed to take too long to heal. He continued to run every other day, incorporated a new high intensity interval workout, did sit ups and push ups and went to yoga every Sunday. He thought about getting sick, about losing weight, about taking pills everyday, of having to go to the doctor regularly, of becoming a new category of something, of taking on a yet another identity. He thought about having a new thing to come out about after all these years of being done with that; he thought about when he came out to his parents by mail and how his mother had shown up at his college dorm room, slapped him across the face and then wept until finally collapsing onto her knees and praying for him through her tears. He remembered how he thought then that the whole thing would be hilarious and ironically campy if not for the traumatic dimensions. His father didn’t speak to him for a year after that and when he did wouldn’t look Gene in the eye. Gene thought about how he had once been the favorite – he was the only boy after all – and how he had killed that dead. He thought of all the trips to New Jersey and the dumpster he ordered when his parents moved and the hours of research to find the condo and the tech support and the phone calls to check in to see how they were doing and he realized he did all this not out of the goodness of his heart or from any kind of filial duty but in the hopes that he would somehow prevail and make up for the fact of who he was. And always at the back of his mind with the paintings was some hope he’d score a big gallery, win a prestigious prize, get a big spread and a glowing review in ArtForum magazine, so that his parents would finally understand and having something to say to their church friends, have something to point to and say, See? My son is successful, and not have to shrug and say he’s a graphic designer, leaving out anything about the painting because that was just a hobby after all. And now there might be even more to atone for. What else could he possibly do? 

“What do you mean?” Amy said. 

“It’s just – the more I think about it the more it doesn’t seem like a good idea.” 

“For who?” Emily asked. 

“For me.”

“This isn’t about you,” Emily said softly. 

“I know.” 

“It’s about making them happy,” Amy added. 

“That’s the thing,” Gene said. “Is that even possible?”

His sisters were silent on the phone. Gene didn’t know what they were thinking, whether they were agreeing with him, or condemning him in their thoughts, or hearing something said aloud for the first time that they had been longing to hear or afraid to hear or something in between. 

“Listen, you two should do what works for you. Me, I might just sit this one out. I’ll tell Mom myself. Please don’t say anything to her or Dad.” 

And Gene knew they wouldn’t, because they so rarely spoke with or saw their parents, and when they did it was through a video call so their parents could see the three year old and the baby or the oldest niece and hear her read her latest school composition, leaving no room for adult conversation or interaction in any sphere that could come close to conflict. 

Emily finally said: “I wish you would come, Gene. It won’t be the same without you.”
Exactly, Gene thought to himself. 

◆

Gene was at his parents’ house overnight the next week; he had an early flight out of Newark to do a meeting in Chicago. His mother agreed to drop him off and they were up in the pre-dawn hours of the house fumbling through the coffee maker and travel mugs and locating the car keys. She told him she had been up since three, worried she’d oversleep. Her eyes were puffy behind reading glasses, her pouf of curls smashed and lopsided. The two of them were seated and strapped in and turning onto the highway when it dawned on both of them just how dark it was. The sky was deep black and the streetlights glowed orange, oncoming cars casting bright white glances in balletic arcs. It was as if night had just fallen, dawn hours away. Gene’s mother swerved slightly to stay in her lane. 

“It’s so dark,” she said. “I didn’t realize how hard it would be to see.” 

“You okay driving?” Gene wasn’t sure why he hadn’t taken the wheel. Habit, he supposed. Mom’s car meant Mom would drive. Even this late in life. 

“Yes, yes, it’s fine,” she said as she leaned forward, peering out through the windshield. 

The sedan pierced the suburban New Jersey landscape: late winter trees with their skeletal hands, old snow and ice encrusted with the exhausted breath of car after car. It hadn’t snowed in weeks. Others swooshed by on both sides in streaks of accelerating speed. Gene could feel the pulse of his mother’s foot on the gas pedal as she squinted into the night morning, ebbing and flowing to some rhythm he couldn’t discern. He thought of the number of times she must have driven to the airport on this very highway, the one he still didn’t know the name of: on their family trips, when he left for college and then when he came back home again, picking his sisters up, dropping his father off. She had taken this route hundreds of times, his mother with her excellent sense of direction. And yet. 

“Aren’t you supposed to take that exit?” Gene asked, pointing to the sign leading to the adjoining freeway. 

“Oh yes,” his mother said suddenly. “I didn’t see it,” and she lurched the wheel and the rest of it, the two of them inside that box of steel and screws. Gene slid on the seat to the far right, his shoulder pushing up against the door. A neighboring vehicle let out a long blast and Gene caught a glimpse of that angry face, white behind a pane of glass, a finger up in exasperation. Gene could practically see the man’s thoughts: fucking chink lady driver! Get off the road! His mother didn’t seem to notice. 

“It’s like night,” he heard her mumble under her breath, and Gene felt a tension creep up his arms and down his back. He had intended to tell her that he wasn’t going to Hawaii. Gene had rehearsed it in his mind: say he had an important work conflict he couldn’t move; say that he knew how important going on the actual date of the anniversary was to them; insist he didn’t want them to reschedule on his account; don’t mention anything about money or expenses; express sincere regret and sorrow. He wouldn’t be able to do any of that now. He was afraid of having his mother talk and drive at the same time. 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, fine,” she answered, peering straight ahead as if reading fine print on the inside of the windshield. 

“To the left,” he gestured, as she began to drift. 

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked again.

“Actually,” his mother answered, “I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Bad dreams. Thinking about things in the middle of the night.” She paused. “Your father went through this a few years ago, before me. It’s my turn now. I can see the end. It’s there, all the time. Any time. You don’t know when.” 

Gene said nothing. He didn’t correct her, clarify his intention. 

“Neither of my parents lived this long,” she went on as the darkness enveloped them. “And at the end I didn’t see them much. I was so busy with you three and well, you know your father. I wish I had talked to them more while they were alive. We didn’t have long together as adults. I sometimes wonder what it would have been.”

She fell silent then and the rush of space as they moved forward on the treacherous highway filled Gene’s ears and he was suddenly afraid of this road and his mother on it and how clear it was that she was driving blind, exhausted and sleep-bare, unable to see the familiar path she knew by heart, the one she could probably recite in her dreams. He imagined her alone after he left her, making her way without his gestures and nudges, without his set of eyes. She could crash. Another car or a railing, its impact crumpling the vehicle and the person inside. Gene felt a panic rise. 

“Mom, you can’t drive back like this without me. Promise me you’ll park somewhere at the airport and take a nap until the sun rises. It’s too dark. It’s dangerous.” 

Even as he said it he knew she wouldn’t do it. It was still before 6 and the sun wouldn’t rise for another hour and a half. 

“Okay,” she said. “Don’t worry.” 

And so they drove on in quiet, his mother’s concentration reverberating in his ears. Gene pointed to the right, motioned left, held his breath. A green sign overhead with its gentle sloping white letters; a smaller one with an arrow pointing the way; a looming yellow billboard with a black block of a building announcing New Homes Now. They all appeared out of nowhere revealing their messages and Gene raked his eyes over them one at a time, keeping pace with their journey. He knew these signs by heart: the one exalting the gentlemen’s club, the one for the family restaurant three quarters of a mile away, the one for an insurance company with three smiling men in suits with their arms crossed. Gene recognized each one but couldn’t have said what would come next. He had been gazing out the window all these years, taking it all in but not really seeing. 

At last they arrived at the airport; his mother veered to the departures. She pulled to the curb and they sat there for a moment panting slightly in their wobbly exertions, breathing in the jet fuel billows seeping into the car. 

“We made it,” Gene’s mother said. 

“Yes.” 

Gene felt his pulse slow but the images behind his eyes shone bright: a lurching collision, twisted metal, a slow drip. The thought of it made his stomach churn. 

“Mom, please,” he said, turning to her. “Just go to the cell phone waiting lot and sleep until the sun rises, until it’s safe. Promise me.” 

“Okay, okay,” she said. 

“Really, please. I worry you won’t make it home.” 

“Don’t you need to go?”

The clock was counting down. He unlatched the door, as did she. They met at the rear of the car, Gene leaning down slightly to embrace her goodbye. She felt slight and soft in his arms, like her bones would bend if he squeezed too hard. This was his mother. Her life unfurled behind her like a bright ribbon rippling in the wind and he was not ready to be without her. He was not ready to leave her. He was a child and she was still a young woman with her face turned to the sun. It would always be that way. 

“Don’t worry,” she said to him. “I’ll be fine. I don’t want you to miss your flight.” 

Gene’s mother gave him a gentle squeeze on the arm and as he looked into her familiar face, swollen with fatigue, light purple crescents under her eyes, Gene wanted to tell her that he was afraid of what could happen, afraid he was positive. He wanted to tell her he was afraid of saying to some young person in the future that he wasn’t sure whether he’d wasted his life or not, their look of dumb incomprehension a slap in his face as they both contemplated the impossibility of time going by without noticing, the absurdity of a life coming to a slow close.

“I promise I’ll wait until it’s brighter to head home.” His mother shrugged. “I need to get some gas anyways.” 

“Now go,” she said, pushing him away, as if she had some sense of the rise of words in his throat and knew, wiser than he, that it’d be a mistake. 

Gene waited on the curb, bag in hand, and watched as his mother drove away into the thick dark, tail lights blinding him to her familiar silhouette. He didn’t know if she would keep her promise. Gene didn’t know what he was going to do. He turned to go, his own life making its pull on him, as it did every day, every hour, every minute. The weight in his hand kept him steady; he tightened his grip just as he knew his mother would do, the way she had taught him to hold the brush while making a mark, just as she could be doing that very moment as she curled her fingers around the wheel and made her way without thought, without words, nothing but the memories in her body guiding her forward.