Page 6

From the diary of Monica Tsai, backed up on five servers spanning three continents

August 20, 2018 (2018-08-20T23: 29:09.

208112)

loc: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

United States of America (42.

3721865,71.

1117091)

I’ve been thinking a lot about journals lately and how much Prof.

Logan loves them.

He’s read pretty much every article there

is on their benefits.

Even without radical sharing, he’d be thrilled if the only thing EMbrS ever did was make people journal

more.

One of the big ones he talks about is how it’s supposed to help us deal with our trauma since it’s a way of processing

on the page, framing the story into something the writer can begin to understand and share.

That’s not the way our family works though.

There is an unspoken understanding that grandfather told me the news.

Grandmother

and I won’t ever talk about it, and if possible, grandfather and I won’t talk about it again either.

It’s what we do when

faced with an obstacle—let everyone know so we are all aware.

Otherwise, continue as normal.

Not great for processing, I am

realizing, but writing this out is helping it feel more contained.

Maybe if I had been keeping a journal when my father left,

things wouldn’t have gone so poorly.

I was eight years old.

Nobody told me he was leaving.

There were only two signs.

The first, a furious argument between him and my grandparents that I overheard in the middle of the night.

He accused them of being overbearing and driving my mother away.

They accused him of being irresponsible, abandoning his daughter in favor of a risky business opportunity in Shanghai.

They only stopped shouting when grandmother heard my sniffling on the stairs.

And the second sign: my father gave me a folded piece of paper with an email address on it.

The next day, he was gone, all

the way on the other side of the world.

I cried the whole night.

I’m not sure grandfather will ever stop being angry at my father, but he couldn’t refuse when I asked for his help sending

my first email.

He set me up at his workstation.

His chair nearly swallowed me; the bulky computer whirred underneath.

He

pointed at the monitor and showed me how to compose a message, and because he’s grandfather, he taught me how my message would

be encoded and passed along cables that lined the ocean floors, connecting Cambridge to Shanghai, and how there were well-established

protocols to ensure my email reached my father safely.

I sent my father a message, and when he replied, moments later, saying he missed me, that was it: I was in love with technology.

I loved the idea of my little stream of words bouncing around the world’s servers, being guided to their destination.

I loved

the way grandfather described the sending protocols and receiving protocols, like they were little guards hanging out waiting

to ferry my note, even though I was just some inconsequential kid missing her dad.

Computers can do anything, I thought.

At first, I emailed him every day, and he always replied.

As I grew older, I found I had less to say, and slowly not even the magic of technology could mask my growing resentment.

He came home only twice—for my elementary and middle school graduations.

After my middle school one, I told him he had missed my last five birthdays.

The bouquet of flowers trembled in his hands as he cried.

He made no promises about future birthdays.

Mostly, we never talked about him at all.

Grandmother stored her sewing machine in his seat at the dining room table, the three of us eating around her threads and fabrics.

I had not spoken to him since I applied to college and needed his signature on the financial aid forms.

Now I needed to send

him another email.

It felt entirely different than it did when I was eight.

There is no magic in email anymore.

I asked if

he knew about grandmother’s illness and hit send.

dude if you want to talk lemme know

I blinked.

For a long moment I thought my father had considerably changed his style of writing.

Then I smiled when I saw Louise’s

name there, infinitely preferable.

I started to reply with a no, I was fine, I would figure it out, but that I appreciated her thoughtfulness, when my fingers

paused, as if they could sense the lies in the words and refused to type them.

I put my phone away.

Instead, I focused on my most immediate problem.

Grandmother was sick and grandfather elderly.

He would not be able to take

care of her by himself.

My father was in Shanghai and could not be relied upon.

My mother was long gone and had no love for

my grandparents.

How could I return to school and leave them like this?

The answer was obvious: I couldn’t.

And in that realization, I found I could suddenly breathe more easily, like the task no

longer seemed so insurmountable.

I would stay home for the semester, longer if needed.

They wouldn’t be happy about it.

But

it was for the best.

School was important, though surely not more important than family.

Then I thought of all the progress I had made with EMbrS.

How much I had learned about technology, how excited I had been to feel that magic again.

To build tech that connected people, no matter how far apart they were.

I told myself it was only a pause.

It would not be a larger sacrifice than that.

It hardly mattered, really.

I had made up

my mind.

That morning, I made a list of everything I wanted to learn from grandmother—how to make shaobing, how to cut garlic really

thin, that kind of thing.

And to ask about the happiest days of her life?

The saddest?

I had no intention of wasting any of

the time we had left together.

Armed with these questions, I went downstairs to the kitchen, where she was in the process of making lion’s head meatballs.

They’ve always been my favorite.

“How would you like to spend your days before going back to school?” grandmother asked as she shaped the ball between her

hand and a spoon, the pork smothered in a cornstarch and soy sauce mixture.

I jotted down some notes on my phone about how she dipped the meatball in her sauce mixture and lowered it confidently into

the oil.

“I don’t think I’ll go back to school this semester,” I said carefully.

“What?” Oil lightly splattered.

“Why not? Did you have a bad time? Did somebody hurt you?”

I sputtered a no, that wasn’t the case at all.

I just wanted to stay here with them.

“You can’t do that.” Her voice continued rising.

The meatball was browning quickly in the Dutch oven.

“What about your tuition?”

I told her I could defer it.

I didn’t know how that worked, but the most important thing was winning the argument.

“But why?”

“Because—”

It was impossible to say.

We don’t talk about that sort of thing, even though she had to know that I now knew, grandfather must have told her, so why could I not say it?

That she was losing her memories and needed help, and I wasn’t going to let grandfather do that alone, and I wanted to make sure I learned from her before it was too late, and that I had a list—

Grandmother flipped the meatball over.

Sizzling renewed.

I don’t know what changed.

Whether she thought about the situation

objectively, or felt bad for my inability to speak, or merely forgot what we had been talking about.

She continued pan-frying

the meatballs, eight total, as I took my silent notes.

Eventually, to restart the conversation, I asked a question from my list: What were the happiest days of her life?

“The years I spent raising you,” she said without hesitation.

“Oh, c’mon.” I blushed.

“That can’t be it.”

“But it is.”

“What about when you were young?”

“You mean when we were being invaded by the Japanese?”

“...After that, then.”

“You mean during the civil war?”

It was clearly my fault for not knowing the history.

Or really much at all about grandmother’s past.

“After that?” I attempted.

Grandmother shook her head and smiled.

“I am telling you the truth. It is an easy answer for me. You have always been my greatest joy.”

I did not know what to say to that, so I fumbled through my phone, looking for another question.

“My turn,” grandmother said before I settled on one.

She scooped the meatballs out one by one, then filled the pot with napa

cabbage, letting the leaves soak in the leftover juice.

She pointed her oil-shimmering spatula at me.

“Are you even trying to find a boyfriend?”

“Oh god.” I swiveled away from her.

I most certainly was not.

I could not say that to her though.

We had never talked about relationships, or in my case, lack of relationships.

“Is that really what is most important to you right now?”

“I want to make sure you have someone once we are gone.”

“I’ll be fine,” I lied.

“And you won’t be gone for a while,” I said, as if saying it out loud would make it true.

“If there’s no one you’re thinking about, then why do you keep checking your phone?”

I had not realized I’d switched from my list to my messaging app, that I was staring at Louise’s offer to talk, my own blinking

cursor.

I shoved my phone away.

“Just hoping my professor will reply to me soon,” I said, which was not a complete lie.

Prof.

Logan owed me a code review.

She stared at me, a question in her expression, then her stare continued too long, as if she somehow went from looking at

me to looking past me, her eyes widening.

She took a step back, bumped into the stove and the handle of the pot, took a step

forward again.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Forget to chop the scallions?”

She had always made the kitchen seem easy, graceful.

She worked in a restaurant when she first came to America—that much I

knew.

But in that moment, she appeared totally lost, and as if looking for something, anything, to do, she opened the lid

of the pot.

Steam erupted, enveloping her unmoving hand.

She froze there as her hand burned.

I stood to say something, to push her out of the way.

Before I could, she dropped the

lid, the heavy ceramic crashing onto the kitchen tiles.

I ran her to the sink, throwing the cold water open, forcing her pink hand into the stream.

I’m sure I said something, or

asked her what happened, or demanded why she removed the lid, why it took her so long to move, but she remained silent, not

even a whimper of pain.

She stared at her hand.

Grandfather was yelling from the stairs, and I yelled back that we were fine.

He ran down anyway.

I tried to stop him from bending to pick up the lid.

He waved me off, stooping low, using the counter as support, grunting as he stood with the lid still miraculously intact.

“Reflexes aren’t what they used to be, hm?” grandfather mused.

He returned the lid to its pot, lowered the heat.

Grandmother was still looking at her hand.

The scars along her arm were especially apparent against her reddened skin.

She

rubbed at her wrist, as if looking for a pulse.

“Where is it?” grandmother asked, rubbing even harder.

“You don’t need to do that anymore,” grandfather said.

He stepped between me and grandmother, taking her hands in his.

“We’re

safe here.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but his words seemed to mean something to her.

“Let me get a pencil, just in case they come—”

“We’re in America,” he said.

“Look, Monica is here. No one is coming for us.”

She turned to face me.

Her eyes were wide.

As they searched my face, they gradually relaxed.

She smiled weakly, and I tried

to smile back.

“Monica,” she said, in her old familiar tone, without any of the earlier tremble.

I asked if her hand was okay.

She nodded slowly.

“I think a nap might help,” she decided.

I helped her remove her apron.

She left the kitchen, heading up the stairs.

“What was that about?” I demanded once she was gone.

“Is this... Has this been happening all summer?”

Grandfather took his time running a sponge under warm water, wringing it out, wiping the oil splatter on the stove with it.

He rubbed carefully, as if it took all his concentration.

“More or less,” he said.

“I’m staying home this semester. I’ll stay with you and help grandmother.”

His wiping became even slower.

Then his arms dropped to his sides.

“If you really want to,” he said softly, “I won’t say no.”

I could not speak.

That he had not protested, that he had not brought up anything about the importance of an education or

making friends—it was as much of an admission of defeat as he would ever give.

Later, in the safety of my room, I texted Louise back.

thanks, I really appreciate it.

I’m planning to take next semester off, so we’ll have to delay hanging out

Would we really have spent time together if I had returned to school?

It was true that our schools were not far apart.

I rarely

left the bubble of campus though.

Even trips to Philadelphia, advertised as a short twenty-minute train ride away, were unusual.

A drive to New Jersey would be at least twice as long, and require a car.

And she was not going to drive to me.

It was a fantasy

that never would have happened.

Staying at home was really no loss.

She replied sooner than I would have liked.

okay I know this isnt really my place to say

but

have you talked to anyone?

I might be totally wrong, but it feels like youre processing in a mechanical way.

like doing things

you can control.

even if theyre not in your best interest

tell me to stop and I will!

I felt really small then.

I imagined my grandparents in the kitchen, their bent-over figures doing the same thing they had been doing for decades, but slower, less steady, their decline undeniable.

I used to be able to ignore their age, their increasing frailty.

Now there was a diagnosis—an official label that spelled out our future, our waning time—and when they were gone, who would I have left?

A long-gone mother.

A father I had talked to more over email than in person.

A stab of feeling suddenly so alone and human and with no control.

I could not help but direct these feelings at Louise.

I rubbed my eyes to clear my head, steady my breathing.

She was just

some economics major at a fancy school, a network packet firmly traveling along its well-worn lines.

Did that qualify her

to be an expert in my life?

I regretted telling her about grandmother’s condition.

It was a family matter and should have

remained that way, like how I had never once told any of my friends in school that I didn’t live with my parents, that my

father had left when I was in elementary and my mother had done the same long before that.

I didn’t reply to her that night, or even the next morning.

Instead, I biked to Arby’s first thing before grandmother and

grandfather were awake.

The closest one was miles away.

There used to be more, which was how grandmother became such a fan in the first place.

But

it turns out Massachusetts, especially the area along the shore, is quite passionate about roast beef, with tons of local

shops that are admittedly tastier, though none of them have such a good coupon.

I biked all morning, out to the suburbs, along the river and the shaded path.

I felt light for the first time since I came

home.

Like things would be okay as long as I remembered to take moments like this, to feel the wind, to keep moving toward

a destination.

I received some skeptical looks going through the Arby’s drive-through on my bike, but even those felt more

amusing than embarrassing.

It was almost noon by the time I made it back to our neighborhood.

The early morning chill had faded, and after the long ride, I was sweating and tired.

I parked outside the café grandfather used to stop at for coffee on his way to work.

I wondered if the café would remember this scene: this bike, parked temporarily out front, waiting for its owner.

I sat on the bench to cool off before going home.

Cambridge, without its students, was quiet.

I pulled out my phone and read Louise’s messages again.

With my head clear, thanks to the ride, I clicked on her name.

I mentally gathered a few things to talk about, a few backup

points—about the weather and school starting, just in case.

can I call you?

I only had to sit on the bench for a minute before she replied.

of course!

I hit the phone icon.

“Hey!” She picked up on the second ring.

“Hi.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees.

“Thanks for taking the time to talk.”

“Oh, no problem.” In her background, there were faint noises of people chatting and vague thuds.

“How are you feeling?”

“Not great,” I admitted.

I watched an ant crawl around the perimeter of my shoe.

“But I’m feeling better. I got out of the

house for a bit, and it felt good.”

“I’m glad you had that at least.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your messages earlier,” I said quickly.

“I think—I think I was mad that you were trying to tell

me what to do. But you were trying to help. So thank you.”

She laughed.

“Please tell me if I’m being a pain. But I do mean it. Having someone to talk to can really change your perspective

on things. That’s what I’ve learned from my therapist.”

She was so open in a way that, I now realize, frightened me.

“So you’re really not going back to school?” she asked.

There was genuine disappointment in her voice.

“No. I want to be here for them.” I made more room for the ant by bringing my feet under the bench.

“Her condition is going to get worse, and grandfather is the only one around to take care of her, and he’s not young either.”

“What about your parents?”

I remembered the rows of beautiful houses in her neighborhood.

The type of town that needed large houses for large families.

Families that weren’t fractured into pieces.

Cambridge was not much better, if I was being honest with myself.

The houses

were smaller though, and somehow, I had equated that with more broken families like my own.

She must be the type of person

who grew up in a place where everyone had their parents shuttling them to all their after-school activities, helping them

build up their résumés.

How else could she ask about my parents so casually?

“They’re not in the picture anymore.”

“Oh. I’m sorry I asked.” There was a particularly loud thump from her end.

I imagined her in a gym, sitting on a bleacher,

observing volleyball practice.

“It’s alright. I don’t really think about them.”

“So what are you going to do the rest of your day?”

“It’s grandmother’s birthday,” I said.

“So we’ll eat roast beef sandwiches. And I’ll email the registrar.” And hope grandmother

doesn’t have any lapses like she did the day before.

I longed for the birthday I had imagined a week ago—a trip to her favorite

restaurant, a reunion with a long-lost cousin.

The rest of the day seemed suddenly very bleak in comparison.

“Oh, well, happy birthday to her! You sound a little glum though. Maybe if you had something to look forward to every day,

that would help. Oh! Do you want to try something?” she asked, suddenly eager.

“What is it?”

“At the end of each day tell me a story about one thing that made you sad and one that made you happy.”

“I don’t want to turn you into my therapist.”

She laughed again.

“I’ll do the same for you. It’ll be an experiment in story sharing. And it will help me figure out what my thesis should be

about.”

“Really?”

“Maybe! Anyway, do we have a deal?”

I fidgeted.

“I want to. But I don’t want you to feel like you need to talk to me just because...” I could not even say grandmother’s

condition out loud.

“But I want to talk to you,” she said, in such a straightforward way my cheeks warmed.

“Oh.” I stumbled.

“Okay. I guess that’s fine, then.”

“Nice! Alright, I gotta run now. See you later!”

Her voice and the sounds of the gym cut off.

I let out a breath, then walked grandfather’s bike home.

They were thrilled when I slammed the bag of ten roast beef sandwiches onto the kitchen table.

Grandmother set out the good

plates.

I stuck a candle in her sandwich.

She declared it her best birthday yet.

In the evening, we revived our tradition of getting ice cream after dinner.

Armed with grandmother’s coupons, we walked to

the local grocery and bought a box of ice cream sandwiches.

Grandfather opened it before we were even outside, pulling out

one for me and one for him and grandmother to share.

We walked along the river that separated Cambridge from Boston, bikers

and runners passing us.

We were by far the slowest-moving people.

I would not have had it any other way.

Somebody stopped

grandfather in the middle of the sidewalk.

It happens often—former students or colleagues.

Grandmother and I sat on a bench

facing the river, waiting for him.

“There is something I would like to teach you,” she said.

She bit into her ice cream sandwich delicately.

A kayak rowed past

us.

“What is it?” I asked.

I figured it would be a recipe, maybe for her beef noodle soup, or if I was lucky, her stir-fried rice

cakes.

“About pencils,” she said.

“And the pencil company. It’s something I am not proud of. But I would like you to know. Before I forget.”

I looked away so she would not see the tears in my eyes.

She is the smartest person I know, the most adaptable, the one with

the quickest wit, wit so sharp I can feel it even when I can’t understand half her language.

She survived wars, moved all

over the world, learned new languages and customs, how to use a computer when most would have given up.

Now her mind is going

to betray her, slowly and steadily, and in her words— before I forget —she knows.

She knows what will happen, that her lucid thoughts are numbered, and yet she wants to spend that time reliving

her regrets.

I faked a sneeze as an excuse to blow my nose.

“Hurry up and finish your ice cream,” she said gently.

“Let’s drag grandfather away from his fans.”

At night, I composed my message to Louise.

: the cashier wouldn’t take our slightly expired coupon

: grandmother’s lion head meatballs

Louise replied half an hour later.

fuck that cashier!

I grinned, then prompted her:

what’s your ?

The dots animated to show her typing.

: didn’t make it to the dining hall before it closed.

had stale peanut butter cookies for dinner instead

: talking to you!

I was lying on my bed, phone hovering a few inches from my face.

I brought the phone to my chest.

With its light covered,

the room darkened.

I let it sit there, resting on top of my rapidly beating heart.

She was only being nice, I told myself,

she was just so impossibly nice, even to someone she barely knew.

It couldn’t be more than that, could it?

I wished the computer

could help me like it always had before, when I wanted to contact my father, or find Meng.

But there was no technology to

help with grandmother’s fading memories or that could decipher what Louise’s words really meant.

I felt suddenly that I owed

her something in return.

Rather than feeling bad about it, I got a rush of excitement, thinking of what I could do for her.

I typed a question.

hey, what’s your address?

can I send you something?

She replied with her full address without hesitation.

So open, as usual.

Maybe there is something to it, after all: sharing

your life.

Writing all this is helping, I think, if only for myself to look back on, to run through these conversations again,

to keep grandmother’s memory alive somehow.