LAST DAD STANDING: First—my daughter is Chinese.
IRENE T: That’s great! I didn’t know you’d adopted.
LAST DAD STANDING: Not exactly.
And she’d thought: Not exactly? What did that mean? They’d stolen her?
LAST DAD STANDING: That brings us to the second thing. Her parents are Chinese, too.
She almost typed back, “Of course her parents are Chinese.” Then the penny dropped. Joshua Lee.
She felt a rush of embarrassment: retroactive, conditional embarrassment. Had she ever said something bad about Chinese people? Or Asians in general? She mentally scrolled back through the messages they’d exchanged. But of course a racist wouldn’t even remember if she’d said something off-color.
Then she became doubly embarrassed when she realized he must be waiting for her to respond. And probably laughing. What a jerk, to tell her this way! Quickly she’d typed back:
IRENE T: Have you told your daughter yet that her parents are Asians?
LAST DAD STANDING: Heh. We’re waiting for the right time to break it to her.
IRENE T: And me, too, evidently.
LAST DAD STANDING: Are you mad I waited?
IRENE T: No. I don’t care what you are.
LAST DAD STANDING: That’s a relief. Because I’m actually an 80 yr old grandmother in Flagstaff.
IRENE T: Then stop typing and knit me something.
They exchanged biographical details like trading cards. He was third-generation Chinese, she was third-generation on the Irish side and who-knows-how-many generations on the Greek side (Dad was hazy on his family history). Culturally, the widest gulf between them was southwestern versus mid-. (They ignored Male versus Female and White Collar versus Working Poor, and she didn’t bring up Sane versus Psionic.)
She tried to tell him his race didn’t matter, that he didn’t even need to mention it, but he said of course he did; it would have been the first thing she noticed if they’d met face-to-face…
…which was what they were about to do.
The flow of exiting passengers slowed to a trickle, then stopped. Half a minute later, a pair of flight attendants came out, wheeling their micro bags behind them. Where was he? Did he slip past without her noticing? Or was he not on the flight?
“Irene?” a voice said.
She turned, and looked up into Joshua Lee’s smiling face. Of course she recognized him. He was exactly himself.
She lifted her arm as if to shake his hand, then realized that was ridiculous. She leaned forward and hugged him. His chest was solid. And his hand against her back, so real. The thereness of him shocked her.
“So this is you,” he said.
“It’s me,” she said.
“It’s so good to—”
“No!” she said. “You promised.”
“Right,” he said. “The rules. No pleasantries.”
“And no emotion words.” She winced apologetically. “I know it’s weird.”
He started to say something, then stopped himself. “Is hunger an emotion?”
“Edge case,” she said.
“Can I ask if you’re hungry? Would you like something to eat?”
“I’ll allow it,” she said.
“Because I’ve got three and a half hours before my flight, and I want to try that sandwich you were talking about—the combo.”
“Oh, you can’t handle the combo. Besides, it’ll take us a half hour to get to my car, another twenty minutes to drive to the restaurant—”
“That’s plenty of time.”
They walked toward the exit, her skin inches from his. She’d been so wrong. Hunger was no edge case.
One night in the chat room, he’d mentioned that he frequently came through Chicago on the way to New York and sat through long layovers. She ignored the hint. He brought it up a couple more times, and then finally came out and said that he was flying through O’Hare next week and wanted to see her. She tried to explain that this was impossible, and that led to a long discussion of what he called her “trust issues” and she called her “reality issues.”
LAST DAD STANDING: Why are you so afraid I’ll lie to you?
IRENE T: Everybody lies. I’m not saying you’re a bad person. I lie all the time. I’ll lie to you!
LAST DAD STANDING: You can see how I might have trouble with this.
IRENE T: That’s why it won’t work for us to meet. I just can’t take it in person. Not with someone I care about.
LAST DAD STANDING: See? You care about me! I win.
IRENE T: Unless I’m lying. But I’m not. You see how nice it is to believe me?
But he wouldn’t give up. He wore her down, and eventually she agreed to meet him at that airport, but only if he followed certain rules.
IRENE T: You can’t say, It’s so nice to meet you. You can’t say, You look nice.
LAST DAD STANDING: What if you DO look nice?
IRENE T: Doesn’t matter. If you say it once, then you’d feel you have to say it every time.
LAST DAD STANDING: I don’t see the problem if I’m telling the truth. If I’m happy to see you, I want to tell you.
IRENE T: Tell me here, if you have to. But not out there.
LAST DAD STANDING: Where you can see my big lying liar’s face?
IRENE T: I’m sorry. I can’t do this any other way.
LAST DAD STANDING: Then that’s the way we’ll do it. I’m happy to try total honesty. No lie.
As they drove out to Johnny’s Red Hots, trying to fill the silence without tripping over her conversational rules, she realized she’d made a terrible mistake. “Total honesty” was not what she was asking for; that was what they already had, when they were online together, talking in the dark through their keyboards. She was asking for something impossible: earmuffs that filtered out untruths yet let the rest of his voice through.
Johnny’s had just opened for lunch. She wasn’t hungry, but she ordered fries to be sociable. He ordered the combo and carried it back to the table in wonder.
“I can’t believe this is allowed by state law. You can’t just put a pile of shaved beef—”
“Italian beef,” she said.
“Italian beef on top of a sausage—”
“Italian sausage.”
“Right, and then they just let you eat it?”
“In Chicago,” she said, “meat is a condiment.”
Food was a safe topic. As were weather, traffic, air travel, and everything else they didn’t want to talk about. She wanted to ask him if he’d spent as much time picking out his clothes this morning as she did; if she looked like, sounded like what he expected; if he was as nervous and giddy as she was. But all that was off the table, by her own decree. When Joshua finished the combo (and he did finish it, sopping up the juice with the last of the soggy bun and popping it into his mouth like a born Southsider), she realized that even with the drive back and the walk through security, they had an hour to fill and nothing to fill it with.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done this.”
“What are you talking about? I’m glad—” He stopped himself. No feeling words.