I met Gabe Dove when I was sad and attracting men who liked me sad.
There was the jeweler with goopy eyes, the lawyer who overtexted. Men with lotioned hands, combed beards, tight jeans. Many had allergies. Few ate bread. Inside of two coffees, they were chronicling the history of their itchy and unrested bodies. I listened. I was too weak to protest. All of our hearts had recently been destroyed. They brought me tulips, sent me jokes from the Internet. I think they enjoyed observing somebody sadder than them. They thought me gentle, soft, easy on their hearts.
“Enough of these limpdicks,” said Angela, unwrapping a beef sandwich on her desk. I stole a fry. Angela was admin like me, ten years younger, and generally exasperated from repeating her own advice. “You’ve got to meet someone normal,” she said. “Someone from Shelby.”
Shelby was Angela’s neighborhood. Shelby was where my mom played mahjongg in a hair salon. Shelby wasn’t the kind of place I’d go looking for a man. “But these uptown guys,” I said, pressing ketchup from a packet. “At least they have money.”
“They’re snobs,” said Angela. She licked a trail of beef juice from her wrist. “Go on—I can’t finish. Look. Do you want a good one or not? Or just sleep with someone, why don’t you. You’ve got to break the seal.”
I described my latest dream to Angela. Tunnels of blood, winds, the sensation that I’d been murdered. Sure it’s sleep, but how is it rest? The fry sagged in my fingers. “It’s just that I can’t stop thinking about him. I can’t stop thinking about—”
“Hold up,” said Angela, raising her hand. “Remember? His name is Mr. Fuckbag.”
Mr. Fuckbag. Right.
“Practice saying it,” she said. “I want you to say it twenty times a day.” She put down her sandwich and looked me squarely in the eye. “Fuckbag. Fuckbag. Fuckbag.”
I wanted a good one. I was ready. But I knew that these things don’t happen right away. You have to go through some months. You have to go through some people. Who knows why, but that’s how the universe works: it doesn’t cough up your people right away.
In the meantime, there are some opening acts. Some vaudeville.
Some asked about my triathlon stuff. Some did not. A lot were the type who liked Asians. Their googly eyes were too enchanted, too soon. They marveled at my tiny frame, my hairless arms, how they could wrap their fingers all the way around my wrist. They liked me small.
Fuckbag was funny, but I couldn’t laugh about this stuff, I’m sorry. Not about Ex.
I’d slept with none of them. I don’t know. I could have. But I thought like maybe I would be hurting Ex if I did that, like somehow he would know. Did you get what you want, Chuntao? Did it solve all your problems?
Some days I’d say I was working from home. I’d steal Oreos from my new roommates and guiltily replace them, measuring the columns in their crinkly plastic trays. Outside, the sidewalks rippled with people. Sometimes I put on real pants and walked among their swishing hair, their sniffing dogs. But the feeling always came back. The park, the office, the bench under the trees: there was nowhere I could go where I would feel okay.
In my latest dream, Ex lifted my dangling leg and swallowed me like a pill. I bumped along his mute red veins. The rumbling I heard was his voice.
I tried swimming in the river. Coach had said, Stay in the pool, take it easy, don’t push. But pushing’s the whole point—you want to feel it, don’t you? So I did the ninety minutes in the cold and craggy waves. In the river there were no other swimmers: just hunched men in dinghies, a speedboat or two. Lily pads clogging the shores. Floating branches to push out of the way.
But always there was Ex. Even with my face in the water, ears plugged all the way to my brain: Ex was there. It was for Ex that I glossed my nails, for Ex that I curled my hair, for Ex that I tried on twenty scratchy blouses in the litter of the fitting room. I could not decide. What did I want? I wanted him to see. To see me and rethink how things had gone.
Sometimes, in the river, I had this sensation that I was drowning. Ridiculous, I know—I’m an ace, I’m an expert. I was all-state three times. But I tell you: I couldn’t breathe. Once I had to stop. I was choking, I had to curl myself over a branch like a kid in her very first lesson, the one who still needs plastic floaties, the one nobody wants to be.
Angela said, “I know him from church.” And I guess—because Angela and because church—I was expecting a white guy.
She thumbed his number into my phone. “Gabe . . . Dove,” she said. “Don’t be surprised if he takes a while. He’s a doctor.” She nodded approvingly.
Our texts were brief, all logistics. At home I watched an episode of Spy 25, but only half. I put on my orange twisty dress. I did my hair.
I waited by the hostess stand. He’d agreed to come to my neighborhood, to a bar called The Vault. It was a nothing place, a comfortable place. The walls were covered with autographed photos of local celebrities: Popovich, Robinson, Duncan doing a lay-up. I commented on the hostess’s cool necklace—she always wore the best jewelry. She thanked me and I laughed. I was nervous, I guess because of Angela. I liked Angela. She took the time.
So in walk these guys in baseball caps and shorts. I search their faces but they’re going straight for the bar, not for me. Then the revolving door spins and suddenly, in a cold gust of air, there’s this guy in a suit. The whole works—tailored cuffs, pressed pants, shiny shoes. All wrong for this bar. He’s searching the room, neck stretched, holding the handle of a small suitcase on wheels. He looks like somebody’s dad.
“Are you . . . ?” he said. He dipped toward me, extending his hand. “You must be Chuntao. Hello!”
We shook, him sandwiching my hand like I’m some long-lost friend. “Hi,” I said, eyeing the suitcase. “Were you on a trip?” He explained that ha, if only, everybody asks him that, but no—he just doesn’t want to ruin his back. I nodded at Gabe Dove. He followed me to the bar, shoes clicking behind me, the suitcase rolling so loudly that I could hear the hostess staring.
He was Asian. Did Angela pick him because of that? Maybe she had that on her mind. Maybe like that would make us more compatible. But what about the rest of me, Angela? What about all that? These were my thoughts as Gabe Dove excused himself to wash his hands.
“I see you’re getting back out there,” said the bartender, who winked and poured my usual.
“Just pretend you don’t know me, please,” I said. On the mirrored wall behind the bottles my watery arms were adjusting my ponytail. All that time I’d spent blending my eye shadow—I could have been finishing my show.
Gabe Dove returned. We sipped. Me, my Bud Light, him, brandy on ice. Brandy—like an old person. We discussed my job (admin at Livagon Insurance) and his (ear, nose, and throat). He worked at Veterans. TV was not his thing. Despite his weird suit, he rested his elbows comfortably on the sticky bar, his eyebrows very interested in the stuff I was saying. He had an accent I didn’t know, lilting up at the ends of sentences, making them sound like questions. A Rod Seeger song came on, my fave, and I got distracted—Gabe Dove’s explaining face, lit green and white by the flashes of a soccer game.
We talked about Angela: her easy laugh, her Bible group, that kidney thing with her mom. We got quiet. That was about all I knew about Angela.
Gabe Dove spun his cardboard coaster. “So. What kind of Asian are you?”
“Chinese,” I said. “But I’m from Mississippi. That’s where I was born. I was born in the U.S.”
“Mississippi!” he said, leaning back. “That’s unusual.” I myself had never thought it was unusual, but more and more, that was the feedback I was getting.
Gabe Dove searched my face. Finally he said, “So . . . me. I’m from Burma.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said.
“Yes. From Rangoon. I was ten when we left.”
“Cool,” I said, and gulped my beer. I had a feeling there were things I was supposed to know about Burma, that I was supposed to be asking questions. But my brain was Styrofoam, all the way through.
Gabe Dove asked if I’d been to China, seen all that it had to offer.
“Nope,” I said. “For so long it was hard to go there. Laws and stuff.” That part I knew. Mom used to complain—not because she wanted to go back, but because that era constituted yet another intolerable fact of her life.
“We lived there for a year,” Gabe Dove explained. Some border town in Yunnan. He described thick winding streams and lush mountain gorges, obviously thinking I’d enjoy this window into my ancestral country, but in truth, I wanted to slap him. I didn’t want his reportage. It embarrassed me.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “Before that, I’d only known the Myanmar jungle.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “What’s in Myanmar?”
“Oh,” said Gabe Dove. A concerned expression flitted across his face. “They’re the same thing, actually. Burma, Myanmar. Just different names for the same country.”
My face burned. “Oh, yeah! Of course.” In my lap I squeezed my leg, nails digging in. “Stupid, stupid.”
“No no, not stupid!” he said. His eyebrows reached out to me. “It’s totally confusing. The history is all screwed up. Lots of people don’t know.”
I excused myself and went to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet. I’d already drunk too much. My heart knocked hurriedly, like it was trying to get out. I dropped my head to my knees and watched the band of my underwear, breathing penitently into the elastic and the frayed, tiny loops.
I swung open the stall door and blinked into the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot, crazy. I cupped a hand under the faucet and gulped. Slowly I could feel my toes inside my shoes. And I thought, Okay, let’s get back out there. Let’s show him what you’ve got. Not quite like I wanted him, but like I wanted to show that I wasn’t who he maybe thought I was. I licked a corner of a paper towel and fixed my shadow.
“Sorry,” I said when I returned, easing myself onto the stool. “I get the flush.” I pointed to my red face.
“Do you?” said Gabe Dove, smiling worriedly. “I don’t, but my cousin does. Sometimes he can’t hear. I wonder if it has to do with his vestibular.” He tapped his fingers on the bar, eyeing me. “Maybe we shouldn’t be drinking.”
“No, no,” I said. “We should.” I swiveled toward the wall of bottles, brushing his elbow with mine. The arm inside his sleeve felt solid, assured. And at that moment something shifted in the gravity around Gabe Dove. He adjusted his posture, pressing back, and it surprised me—this quiet weight of him.
I’d never been with an Asian guy. I don’t know. They reminded me of my cousins. Too familiar. Wouldn’t Mom like to be here, nodding over her glass, endorsing this scene.
And I thought, Why not. He’s safe. He’s a known quantity. Whatever happens, he can’t hurt me much: he doesn’t have the power.
It’s like Angela said. You’ve got to break the seal.
I yawned fakely. I stretched provocatively. He suggested that we leave. His white-line hair part communicated that he wasn’t the adventurous sort, but as we walked into the sprinkling rain he said, “Want to go back to your place?”
My place. I pictured my bed: three shoved-together couch cushions on the carpet of a bedroom belonging to my colleague’s cousin’s landlady. No sheets.
“What about your place?” I said.
“I’m down in Shelby,” he said. “So . . .”
“I’m in Dale,” I said. “West Dale. Way west.”
“It’s just that I hate the bus,” he said.
“Who doesn’t?” I said, staring ahead at the sidewalk dampening under our shoes. Not to budge: that was the challenge. I wanted desperately to kiss a man, to remember the dormant powers inside of me, but also to be far from anything that reminded me of my life. So we walked. His suitcase squeaked behind us. I let us shift along in silence, the rain blowing through a triangle of streetlight, pricking my eyelids.
Finally he said, “It’s not the greatest place. It’s sort of embarrassing.”
“I don’t care,” I said, and I didn’t.
We waited for the 64. In the bus shelter was a backlit ad for Pawsh Dog, and Gabe Dove stared at the slender hand brushing the terrier. We gripped the bus loops, swaying with the corners, and I tried not to step on his shoes each time the bus hit a pothole.
By Exit 32 the sign for Fantasy Hair rose up from the earth like a ghost. Somewhere inside was the ripped card table, the clinking tiles, Mom’s friends talking too fast to understand. I watched my hands, the little curled hangnails. Generally I tried not to linger in Shelby.
The home of Gabe Dove was right off the highway, behind the erected wood sound barrier: a squat, cube building of schoolyard brick. “Here goes nothing,” he said, unlocking the second padlock. His apartment was one long hallway, with doorways slinking into low square rooms. Two-burner stove. Stacked milk crates for bookshelves. He kept apologizing. Doctor, yes, but there was all that debt and helping out the fam.
Gabe Dove gazed into the cabinet, selecting a crystal-cut tumbler and a scratched jam jar. He gave me the tumbler, poured us Campari, said cheers, and plopped a hand on my shoulder. It didn’t move. I didn’t move either. We both let it hang there, as if we’d just made roadkill of a squirrel and didn’t know what to do. But I tell you: it was nice. The refrigerator humming at my back, the jittery ceiling fan, and me thinking, I don’t have to do anything. I don’t even have to speak, I can just keep lowering this syrupy red medicine into my mouth. Things will happen.
The first time Ex kissed me, we were below deck on his family’s boat. His parents, his sister—their flip-flops above our heads, dragging around the bar cart. That was the thing about Ex: he didn’t give a shit. It felt wonderful to be around that—he made me feel bigger, made me want to be somebody. He gripped my body like every piece of me was worth something immeasurable. My butt, my back, my neck, my stomach. He tried lifting my shirt but I tugged it down—I have always been self-conscious about my breasts. They hang down my front like the breasts of an old lady, like two bags. Sometimes I wear a bra to bed, thinking it will help, knowing it won’t help. There is nothing I can do. I have consulted all the forums.
What I do like are my legs—long, muscular, with shapely calves. Swimmer’s legs. Sometimes in store windows I see my reflection and think, Are those attached to me? I made sure that Ex got a good long look at them, flexing them in the air, balancing my elbows on the bolted cushions.
I followed Gabe Dove to his bedroom and he closed the door, as if someone might interrupt us. He flipped off the lights. Then he removed the whole suit, all at once, belt and pants and tight white underwear, like a fitful toddler, like he couldn’t wait to be out of his clothes.
He had a tattoo on his chest: curls of writing, indecipherable, faded to blue.
His breath was herbal. His mouth hard, gyrating, searching in the dark.
Overall I’d say he was blunt and methodical, his limp hands pausing nowhere. Like someone working over me with a mop.
When we were having sex I sort of wished that I wasn’t, that maybe this was a mistake, I’m not ready, it would have been better if I’d just kissed him quickly and gone home before I ended up V-legged and jiggling underneath this person: Where was my dignity? Here was the moment I had dreaded and craved. But it didn’t feel like things were happening. It didn’t feel like much was being accomplished.
Through the rain, through the sound barrier, an eighteen-wheeler grumbled down the highway, the driver suddenly accelerating, as if seizing a lane or waking from sleep.
When it was over, Gabe Dove got me a glass of water. He stroked my hair while I sat on the edge of the bed, sipping. “Sorry,” he said. “That was kind of fast.” But I wasn’t sorry; I had wanted him to hurry up. I wasn’t sure what to make of him holding my waist like this, easing the glass from my hand and lowering it to the nightstand. He thanked me. “Thank you,” he said, bending to kiss my shoulder. “Thank you for being here.” For being here? I didn’t know what to say.
“Do you want to stay?” he said, lips resting on my skin.
“Do I want to stay . . .” I said I didn’t have a toothbrush. Or stuff for my contacts.
“Stay,” he said. “In the morning, we can go to this bakery down the street. Their donuts are otherworldly.”
And I am telling you that I stayed, on the promise of a maple-glazed donut. I told you: I was sad.
I slept well. In the morning, the unfamiliar cracks in the ceiling made me think I was dreaming. Gabe Dove snored loosely, his hand asleep on my stomach. I saw that he had hair all over: torso, chest, sprouts from his nipples. Despite the clicking of the radiator and the fact that I had to pee, there was, overall, an unmistakably peaceful feeling. His bed was a real bed—thick mattress, solid frame. A pot on the windowsill, with an orchid arching effortlessly.
The body of Gabe Dove shifted. He stuck his nose in my ear. “Hello.”
“Hi,” I said. Then Gabe Dove burrowed his face in my armpit. I laughed.
I wanted a shower. He brought me a toothbrush on a folded towel, like a ring bearer. The water was extra hot, the pressure strong. I filled the bathroom with steam, wiped my hand over the mirror. I looked dewy, refreshed: wouldn’t Coach be proud. Here I go. Taking it easy.
I went to the living room. Papers slopped on the coffee table, paint-chipped trims—what had depressed me the night before now seemed like homey clutter. I made us coffee. Percolation, rich smells. Gabe Dove hummed from the bedroom, folding things.
He emerged, hair wet. We did it again. In broad daylight this time, on the couch. It was more fun this go around. I got into it. I even took off my shirt. Why not? I was never going to see this guy again.
Afterward he searched between the cushions and found me my underwear. “Donut time,” he said.
We walked. To my relief Gabe Dove left his suitcase at home, making him seem lighter, more spontaneous. He whistled. I listened. The arm of Gabe Dove was around my shoulder. The streets were desolate, so many parking spots open. Sunday morning: everybody’s at church. Only later did I realize that Gabe Dove wasn’t, that he must have made a decision about it, that maybe Angela would see him missing from the pews. He led me down the broken sidewalk of a strip mall, to a shop between a laundromat and a Claire’s.
Okay: so these donuts. They were good. Crusty and soft—they deflated when you bit in. Sugar smashing on my tongue. I ate four. Gabe Dove kept bringing napkins to our plastic wobbly table. He was grinning, but not from the donuts. He was grinning at me, at something on my face or something goofy I was doing. But I wasn’t doing anything. I was eating my donut.
A glistening crumb dangled from his chin, and again I had the urge. I wanted to reach across the table and slap his sticky, dumb expression.
“I’ve had a great time,” he said. “Do you enjoy bowling?”
Gabe Dove. His was a name that compelled you to utter it in its entirety. And in general that seemed true of Gabe Dove: you looked at him and had the feeling you were seeing all of him, all at once.
“Sure,” I said. “Okay.”
In Mississippi, back in the day, you would never go out with a white guy. Or—as my mom put it—they would never go out with you. She’d see them everywhere—driving to sock hops, slurping milkshakes, tutoring black boys on the weekends for church. You can look but you can’t touch. Laws and stuff.
Not that you’d want to, Mom would say, brushing the memory aside with her hand. So rude. So entitled.
But I wondered. When she spoke of it, her eyes would gaze at some far-off mountain. What had she wanted? Who? But it didn’t matter. She turned nineteen, they selected my father. Arrangements were made.
Years passed. The government changed. They lifted the dam from the river. Now all of Quitman County could have at each other.
And yet, my mom would say. The rivers didn’t mix. Not in the way you’d expect. She’d shake her head, gazing again at that invisible mountain. You still couldn’t have them, see. Or, more accurately, they wouldn’t have you.
But Ex’s family: they loved me. His mother squeezed my thick hair and marveled at my creaseless eyes. I was this special thing. On the boat his sister and I would compare tan lines like old girlfriends. “Of course she tans,” his father said once. “She’s a Chinese.” His wife laughed, nervous, looking at me. I laughed too, loudly. I let them know it was A-Okay.
One time we docked and tied the rigs, the family yawning from the sun. I followed their strolling bodies to the city center and watched them kneel in a little park with cars zooming all around. They flapped out a blanket. We ate salty cheeses, plush bread, slices of watermelon dribbling to my elbow. It was a wonderful feeling, licking my fingers like that.
But then they started rolling up their jackets. They stuffed their sweaters into purses. I didn’t get what was happening, until they lowered their heads onto the grass, onto the makeshift pillows. They slept. I put my cheek on Ex’s chest, shutting my eyes against the chirps and swishes of people walking by. I didn’t sleep, but I will never forget it: the rise and fall of his lungs, the sun warming my face.
I described the scene to my parents. That night they were in the kitchen, using a calculator to check a pile of receipts. My father coughed into his fist and said it was something he’d never do—he would never sleep in public. Mom rubbed her temples, as if just the image gave her a headache.
Because they had ideas about what could happen. They said people would steal your stuff, would call the cops, call anyone. People would think you were a drunk.
“Gabe had a great time,” Angela said, grinning and rubbing her hands together. She described my whole date back to me, but with more sparkle than I would have put in: the colorful bar, the misty rain, the speeding bus driver.
“He’s a great guy.” I dropped my purse on my desk. “But he looks—how do I put this? He looks like my cousins.”
Angela frowned. “He does?”
“I mean, he’s so nice. No question. But he looks sort of like my brother.” I didn’t have a brother, but what did Angela know?
She crossed one leg over the other. She seemed to be inspecting my clothes, the whole outfit I had chosen. “It’s not like he can control it,” I said. “That’s just the way he looks.”
Angela leaned back in the swivel chair, her arms behind her head. I had never seen her do that before. That was something our boss did. “Don’t you think that sounds a little . . .”
“A little what?” I said.
“Like something you shouldn’t say?” Angela bit her lip as if to stop more from spilling out. Great. So here we were. My white friend trying to tell me what’s what.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Sure thing.”
I kept sleeping with Gabe Dove. I made sure Angela knew.
And at any rate it was fun; it was good to get back into practice. We would meet after work, or sometimes on the weekends. I started saving him a Friday or a Saturday. Sometimes he wanted to have dinner first, or walk along the river, which was nice, sure, but really I wanted to hurry back to his bed, where I could take off my clothes and remember what it felt like to be irresistible.
We kept on for some weeks. Some weeks became months. I don’t know: it was nice. His apartment. His humble body, rounded at the edges. The way I could let my gut hang out: I didn’t care.
One night we’d just finished doing it. I helped myself to his T-shirt and gym shorts, crawled under the sheet, and put my cheek on the chest of Gabe Dove. “You know, most people call me just Gabe,” he said.
“Gabe. Gabe. Gabe.” I tried it out. “Nah.”
He laughed and kissed my hair. “Fine. Have it your way.” The blue loops of his tattoo stretched to my horizon. I tapped it with my finger. “What does it say?”
“That?” he said, looking down, as if he’d just noticed it was there. “It’s nothing.” He shifted underneath me. “I was young.”
“Is it a saying?” I said, rippling my fingers over the words. “Is it some sort of poetry?”
“I’ll tell you later.” He spoke like someone shooting an arrow into the ground.
“Is it a lyric from a song?”
“It’s a name,” he said.
“A name!” The thought excited me. “An old girlfriend?”
The arm around my shoulder went still. It seemed careful not to move. “Not a girlfriend.”
“Someone important?”
“Hey,” said Gabe Dove. A hand squeezed my shoulder. “Do you want to go on a double date? Angela’s seeing someone.”
I stopped. Okay. It’s not like I even really wanted to know. So I let us turn our attention to this guy of Angela’s. Rory, or Rufus. Some dude she’d met at the pool hall. I didn’t exactly want to be out with the three of them. Gabe Dove was someone I liked enjoying in private, out of sight of anybody else. “Um,” I said. “When would this double date be?”
“I don’t know. We can coordinate.” I listened to him describe his schedule at the hospital, the upcoming visit to his dad’s. It made me tired. “I hope it isn’t weird for you,” said Gabe Dove, kissing my hair again. “It’s just that I’m excited. I feel really comfortable with you.”
My stomach turned. Suddenly I wanted to kick him. Pinch him. Do something to snap him awake. “Hey,” I said. “How about you punch me?”
Gabe Dove stopped the kissing. “Punch you?” he said.
My toes were tingling. They flexed under the blanket. “Yeah.”
He propped his head up on his elbow, gazing confusedly into my face. “Like how?” he said. “Like where?”
“I don’t know. In the stomach? In the arm?” It was just a punch. Good god, did I have to decide everything?
Gabe Dove frowned. He made a fist, limply, and nudged me in the shoulder. “No, no,” I said. “Do it for real.” I opened my arms, exposing my belly, the whole of my torso.
“I’m not sure I understand,” he said. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.” He was thinking too much. That was his problem.
“I mean, it’s a punch,” I said, staring at the ceiling, exasperated. I was matter-of-fact. “Like what do you know about pain?”
Gabe Dove hovered over my face, as if examining something trapped under glass. One eyebrow twitched uncontrollably, and his scrunched-up face was crisscrossed with new lines. On his lip was a thin white scar that I’d never noticed before, from an old piercing or some sort of cut. But all of this was secondary to the hugeness of his eyes, swollen with concern. I thought he might shout, or shake me. But then something passed, like a storm come and gone. His shoulders subsided. He relaxed.
“I’ll punch you,” he said quietly. “But not now.”
Gabe Dove lay down and pulled the sheet over his shoulder, exposing my feet to the cold.
“You’ll what?” I said, thinking I’d heard him wrong. “What was that? Gabe?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, turning away, adjusting his pillow. He switched off the lamp. “You’ll see.”
I blinked. The radiator, the curtains, the crates of books: all went mute in the dark. It took a minute to notice my hands clenched around the sheet, my heart knocking at my ribs. I watched the back of Gave Dove. His round shoulders, his quiet breathing. Was he asleep? Was he pretending?
In the morning we went for donuts. We walked along the sound barrier and past the tossing circles of the laundromat. But something was different. He didn’t sling his arm around me. He didn’t kiss me at the crosswalks, or whistle songs from the radio. Instead he followed behind me, silent. The sidewalk moved beneath us like a conveyor belt. I kept thinking, Will he punch me at the bus stop? At the streetlight up ahead? Will he punch me as I’m biting my donut, when I’m least expecting it, a burst of crumbs and sugar spraying from my hands?
He opened the door and I walked in. He closed it. He didn’t punch me. I ordered two donuts and waited at the counter beside him. He didn’t punch me.
We sat. I chewed my donuts. They tasted like water, like air-filled plastic. I was so excited. I fussed with a paper napkin, wiping each finger and the curved edge of every nail. I was aware of his feet moving under the table. But Gabe Dove’s eyes sat unmoving behind square sunglasses that he didn’t take off, revealing nothing. “What’s wrong?” he finally said.
I giggled loudly. “What do you mean, what’s wrong?” I squeezed my hands between my thighs. My fingers were so cold.
“You just seem like not yourself.”
“Don’t I?” I wanted to laugh. Suddenly everything was funny.
Gabe Dove’s mouth maintained its solid straight line across his face. He sucked on the straw of his iced double coffee.
I played along. I kept my laugh to myself. We ate in silence, me watching his every gesture, each cough and shift of weight ripe with possibility.
The next Friday we went to Mermaid Bowling. I waited for it the whole night—through the shoe rental, the weighing of balls, the sitting on our little bench. But it didn’t come. We went back to his place. He closed the door. Still nothing. We undressed. We did it in the foyer—I couldn’t wait for the bedroom—but afterward he just went to the bathroom and started his electric toothbrush. In bed he turned away again, no cuddling and no punch.
Weeks passed. I waited for it in elevators, across parking lots, at the bus stop of the 64. Any time we were quiet, even for two seconds. Then I realized it might happen in the middle of a conversation. Why not? My voice got jumpy, readying for surprise. Everything I said sounded flirty, more alive.
I bought Angela a box of six cupcakes. No reason. Half carrot and half chocolate, her faves. “Gee, thanks,” said Angela, peering under the lid. She lowered it and looked at me. “Is anything wrong?”
“No,” I said. “Or, yes. But in a good way.”
That day Gabe Dove picked me up from work. We went to a horror movie, The Chopping Mall, and I hid behind our popcorn as the lights went dark. Gabe Dove munched, staring ahead, his jaw moving and preoccupied.
I wondered if he’d forgotten. Like maybe it’d slipped his mind. I wanted to ask, but that would ruin the whole thing. So I just had to wait. I had to be patient. During the previews he was quieter than usual: that told me something. He touched my thigh and I nearly jumped out of my skin, laughing. He spooked me.
“Since when are you skittish?” he whispered.
“Since now,” I grinned.
The movie was bad and I hugged Gabe Dove’s shoulder through all the bloody parts. It felt wonderful to squeeze my eyes, to grip him like that, everything thrilling and safe. I thought about that patch of grass with Ex and his family. It wasn’t their boat I wanted. It wasn’t the cheese and the wine. It was the napping on the blankets. Closing their eyes wherever they pleased.
What was wrong? I thought in the dark. What was wrong was that I was getting better.
A week later I swam across the entire river. The water gave way beneath my hands; my breaths were deep and easy. I emerged panting onto the shore, seaweed clinging to my legs, aching and glorious. I regretted that there wasn’t more water to cross. Even the twigs strewn on the sand looked shiny, invincible. I took my time strolling back, feeling the warm sun dry the droplets from my skin. I was going to be late. It felt wonderful not to give one shit.
I met Gabe Dove on the esplanade. He was sitting on a park bench, suitcase at his side. Atop the suitcase was a flattened paper bag, and Gabe Dove was peeling an orange and balancing the shreds of rind on the bag. I approached him but he didn’t look up from his orange. “What kept you?” he said.
I was so awkward sitting down: all jacket sleeves and purse straps and wet stringy hair. I settled myself. I kissed the scruff by his ear. Gabe Dove stretched his arm along the bench but didn’t touch me, maybe not wanting to get his orangey hands on my back. “Guess what?” I said. “I swam the whole river today.”
“That’s great,” he said.
“I can’t believe it. I have to call Coach. I used to swim for ninety minutes straight, but not lately, thirty’s been like all I can do. But after today? Wow.” I crossed my legs and admired the smooth lines of muscle forming in my thighs. “Hey,” I said. “How about we go to Mermaid’s?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, twisting toward me. “Truthfully, Chuntao, I don’t think that this is working for me.”
I blinked. “Working for you?”
He raised his head from the orange and looked at me with steady eyes. “I don’t think we’re right for each other. I think we have different values.”
“Values?” His face: it was the same face. But it was making no sense at all. “What the fuck are you saying?” I said, my voice arriving at my ears like it wasn’t my own.
“Well,” he said, “if really you want to know, I think you’re mostly concerned with yourself, and you don’t care about other people, and you don’t listen, and you’re scared, and you’re immature, and you lie, and you have a vision of what you want that’s very narrow, and self-serving, and fucked up, and you’re willing to use people to get it. People like me.”
I couldn’t speak. Wind flew in my mouth. “I don’t even like you,” I yelled. “I never liked you. You’re boring and you’re predictable and you’re bad in bed and you look like my fucking cousins. For fuck’s sake!”
Gabe Dove opened his mouth but bit it closed, grimacing as if at some odor. His head tilted. His eyes changed. “How does it feel to be punched?”
There was something happening to my chin. My eyes crumpled and burned. I was crying. My hands were pulling at my face.
“You want to hurt me,” I said.
“You want me to be someone else,” he said.
“Never, never,” I said. But he was right.
I was choking. I couldn’t breathe. I leaned over my knees. The grass zoomed in all directions, a thousand blades shifting in blurs and sharp glints. “I feel like there’s something wrong with me,” I said.
“Could be,” said Gabe Dove. Warmth spread across my back. Gabe Dove was rubbing my back.
“Something is wrong with me and I don’t know what it is.”
Gabe Dove was tracing a circle over my shoulders. He was offering me a cold slice of orange, placing it in my shaking hand.
“Seems so,” he said.
Years later I checked out a book about the history of China. Seven hundred and forty-one pages, 2.5 inches thick, written by Poverman and Levitsky. I could have gotten the e-version, but I sort of liked the weight in my backpack, like I was on some quest, like I was climbing a mountain. I took it to The Vault—it was now called The Lounge—and sipped Bud Light while reading it on my stool. “That’s a big book,” grinned the men at the bar. “Does it have any pictures?”
The book: it wasn’t my favorite. It didn’t really grab me. Opium wars, rebellions, people killing and getting killed. Now, years later, I can only tell you that they happened. Not when or where or who exactly was involved.
But there was a chapter toward the middle, about fighting in Rangoon. A devastating loss, it said, to the people of Myanmar.
And I thought: No.
It’s Burma, guys. Didn’t they know?
I lugged the book to the grocery store. I pushed it in my cart, in the seat meant for children. Tubes of cookies tossed beside it. Cheese chunks, plastic-wrapped.
Burma. Two round sounds. Like the name of a woman.
“You sure know a lot about Burma,” said my mother in the hospital. She whimpered and scratched the band at her wrist.
Burma, I said aloud down the shaking elevator at Livagon Insurance. I said it through the windshield wipers, blurring the red lights.
What do you know about pain? I’d asked Gabe Dove. And the thing I remember only now is that he didn’t ask what I meant. About the punch, sure. But not about the thing I was asking him about.
“You’ll see,” he’d said. And he turned off the light to show me—to show both of us—the things that he knew.