What was it that Robert Burns wrote, something about the best-laid plans going awry? Well, wouldn’t you know it, I’m in the middle of my all-time favorite dream come Friday morning, the one where I feel like a human hummingbird, hovering in the air above the mountains, the sun warm, but the air cool when the curtains around my bed are yanked open. One could call it a rude awakening.
“Rise and shine,” says Grace. She whirls around to flip open the blinds in my windows, but the only light that streams into my bedroom comes from the moon.
This is not how I pictured my negotiations with Grace to begin.
“God, Grace, what time is it?”
“Time to work out.” With her hair plaited in two braids down her back and in workout clothes, she looks like Pippi at boot camp. Great, now she’s taking a Grand Tour of my bedroom.
For a moment, I miss the old Grace who ignored me. But that thought is as fleeting as last night’s sleep, especially when I remember what this morning is: Victory in Vancouver. Yawning, I haul myself into a sitting position. It’s tiring to watch Grace flit around my room, checking the multitiered antique Chinese wedding basket next to my desk, the upholstered reading chair in the corner. She stops in front of the silver-plated frame of herself and Wayne on some vacation they must have taken together.
I pretend I’m not paying attention as I stretch in bed, wondering how pathetic I must look to her, harboring a picture of them when I’m sure no such photo of me sullies their bedrooms.
“This doesn’t feel like you” is Grace’s final judgment. Her hand sweeps my entire bedroom and its priceless contents, including the bonsai Mama has displayed on my desk.
Once, I would have thought, As if you know me. But Grace is right. My bedroom feels nothing like me. I crawl out of bed and lean against one of the posts to get my bearings. “I told the interior decorator that I couldn’t sleep in a bed that’s four hundred years old because every time I closed my eyes, I saw a village of people staring at me. Do you know what she said?”
Grace shakes her head.
“She said, ‘Nonsense! It would be aristocrats staring at you since this is an imperial piece.’ ”
“She did not.”
“Yeah, she did.” Shyly, we smile at each other, and I decide that it is definitely worth having my REM interrupted at five thirty in the morning for this very moment.
Half an hour into the workout, Grace isn’t Little Miss Rise and Shine anymore. I swear, her face is so red, feet pedaling and hands gripping the arms of the elliptical machine, I’m afraid she’s going to go into cardiac arrest, and my CPR training from my avalanche rescue class two years ago is just a tad rusty.
“Why don’t we cool down now?” I say.
“God,” she puffs. “How long do you usually go for?”
“About this long,” I tell her, sensing that she’s got enough Cheng competitive spirit to match me, minute for minute.
“Don’t lie to me.” Huff, huff. “Just tell me the truth.”
So I do. “Fifteen minutes longer.”
She groans.
“But you know,” I lean over to point at the warning label on her elliptical, “it says right there that you should consult a doctor before you begin an exercise program.”
“Yes, I am aware of that.” Huff, huff. “My new client is, after all, in the physical fitness business.” Grace looks at me accusingly while she pants. “You’re not even breathing hard.”
“I’m saving energy for weights.”
“Okay, done.” Grace presses the emergency stop button on the elliptical. As soon as she’s off, she bends over so that I can see every one of her vertebrae and her ribs through her thin top.
Skinny, I realize, isn’t the same thing as strong.
Me, I could stay on the treadmill for at least another thirty minutes, crank up the speed, I’m feeling that powerful this morning. That must be a sign to begin my negotiations. So I step off the treadmill and stretch beside Grace, crossing my right leg over my left, and reach for my toes.
“What are you doing next week?” I ask her nonchalantly, because according to The Ethan Cheng Way, you shouldn’t let the person on the other side of the negotiations know how much you want anything. With that small bit of knowledge, power shifts.
“You still want to go to Whistler, don’t you?” counters Grace unexpectedly. But then again, I should have known that the Master of the Rude Q and A would be good at guessing.
“Actually, I don’t,” I say, and cross my left leg over my right.
Grace arches an eyebrow at me, the kind of expression that says, I highly doubt you.
Surprisingly enough, it’s true. Somewhere between receiving that rejection e-mail from RhamiWare and visiting Children’s Hospital, I lost my burning need to go to Wicked in Whistler. I’d rather find out about Po-Po.
According to the Syrah Cheng Road Trip to Vancouver Rude Q and A, I should be prepared to answer why she should give up her precious working hours over the weekend to spend time on me.
Grace beats me to the punch. “I’m working next week so I really can’t drive you five and a half hours each way to Whistler.”
“Can you drive me three hours to Vancouver instead? It’ll just be a weekend trip,” I say, and lie on my back. Bending my left leg, I place the ankle on my scarred knee and stretch my hamstrings. Grace doesn’t stretch, but sits next to me, knees drawn to her chin.
“What’s in Vancouver?” she asks.
My internal voice, the one I’ve squelched since it didn’t lead me away from Jared but to him, now gives an impatient tsk, unmistakably impatient as Bao-mu. This Rude Q and A may work for Grace, and The Ethan Cheng Way may work for Baba, but none of that is working for me.
Facing Grace, I tell her what I want. “I just found out that my grandmother passed away a couple of days ago in Vancouver. I have to go to her funeral Saturday.”
“Wait a second. Didn’t your grandmother die about ten years ago?”
“That was Mama’s adopted mother.”
Grace’s eyes widen, but other than that, her face doesn’t change. Finally, she asks, “Why isn’t your mom taking you?”
“That’s what I need to find out.”
Grace isn’t looking at me anymore, but out the window where the sunrise is slowly displacing darkness. Telling her what I want hasn’t been particularly effective. So I ask for what I need. “Can you drive me? It’s important.”
Grace stands up quickly, like she’s brushing crawling ants off her lap, and asks instead, “Are we going to do some weights?”
Disappointed, I nod, telling myself that I hadn’t really expected Grace to come through for me. Less than a day of civility does not a doting big sister make.
“So we should start on our big muscles first,” I say softly. “The ones that support us. How do lunges sound?”
“If it makes my butt tight like yours, okay,” says Grace.
How sad is it that the mention of my butt in the same sentence as the word “tight” works like a commercial break, interrupting my internal churning about having no way to get to Vancouver? This demonstrates two things: a little flattery can win me over, and Grace is a master of controlling conversation.
To regroup, I demonstrate the proper posture of a lunge for her, sweeping one foot in front of me, bending the back leg until it almost touches the floor.
“Keep your front leg at a ninety-degree angle,” I correct her, as she lunges. “Chest up.”
Out of the blue, Grace says, “You’ll get a bigger turnout if you stage Ride for Our Lives in Seattle, not at Snoqualmie. Do you know of anyplace that’s already set up for a snowboarding event in town?” Breathing harder now, Grace asks, “Anyplace we don’t have to pay for the venue?”
“No,” I start to say, but remember how over one summer, Age dropped me off at Baba’s office and drooled over all the steps leading to the front door.
“Those rails are wicked good,” he’d said, eyes glittering at this snowboarders’ nirvana. I could see back then that he was already plotting to ride them come the perfect winter’s night.
“Are you kidding?” I told him, unable to even fathom the trouble I’d be in if the headlines ever screamed, CHENG DAUGHTER, 14, ARRESTED FOR RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT AND TRESPASSING.
So now I suggest to Grace like I’m half-kidding, “Well, DiaComm would be free.”
Instead of scoffing at me, Grace looks thoughtful for a long moment, and then she says, “Actually, the parking lot is big enough to set up a stadium and a ramp or whatever it is you snowboarders use.”
“Rails. But DiaComm? Come on, that would be a no.”
“Why not?” Grace swivels around so effortlessly, she’d be a natural at snowboarding. Facing me, she demands, “What symbolizes mobility more than snowboarders? Matching up snowboarders with DiaComm would be a PR coup.” The way her eyes gleam at this new challenge, this new opportunity, I can tell she’s fallen in love with the idea. “If you’re going to do something, do it big and do it right. Remember that.”
“Okay, but first, I need Baba to buy into my plan.”
As if she’s assessing whether I’ve got the guts to follow through with that—guess what, I do—Grace continues to study me, and then she nods. It’s as if we share one of those sister bonds I read about in my favorite manga series, The Shaolin Sisters, about three girls who share the same father, but different mothers because, I swear, Grace says, “You’re onto something big.” Before I can react, she uses her shoulder to wipe a trickle of sweat off her cheek and asks, “So when’s the funeral?”
“Saturday at two.”
“We’ll have to leave Sunday morning.”
“Really?” I can’t keep the squeak out of my voice.
“I wouldn’t offer unless I meant it,” she says sharply, back to the Grace I know.
“Thanks,” I tell her, feeling weightless in a way I haven’t since the avalanche poured down the mountain behind me. I know what has been lifted. Not my insecurity or my neuroses or my fear. But my loneliness. At a dinner a couple of months ago, a researcher whose work Baba personally funds told us that the mortality rate for single men is higher than it is for married ones. That weight of loneliness, of feeling like you don’t matter to anyone in the world, can literally kill you. I can’t help it. I gush, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Grace says, holding my gaze in the mirror, an unwavering look that tells me I matter and that she won’t change her mind.