“My mother might have left my father in New York if he had chosen any other destination. She had already completed her training as a nurse. She had friends in Queens. But her sister, my Aunt LiLi, lived in Los Angeles. And while my mother would have to learn to drive, she liked the idea of a winter without snow.
“She got a job as a nurse, and my father found work too. We had a nice house with a yard. My father purchased a convertible. My mother started playing Mahjong again. My brother was placed in a special school that he liked. The arguments stopped for a while. But then my father lost his job. He was stealing from work. My mother was planning to leave him. The arguments started again.
“I don’t remember much about my first year without my mother and brother. I know I must have gone to school. I remember the room I had in my aunt’s apartment. I remember a new school where everyone walked around me and talked very slowly. Aunt LiLi worked as a secretary for a Chinese-language church. At night, we knelt at my bed and prayed to God to watch over my mother’s and brother’s souls. She kept photos of my mother and brother in her room, above the dresser. There were no pictures of my family that didn’t also include my father. I hated going into her room because I had to see their faces.
“I just recalled another memory of my mother waiting for my dad to leave the apartment. She asked me to pick out my favourite doll, my favourite dress, and my favourite book. She packed them into a suitcase along with my brother’s action figures. I saw her outside, stowing the suitcase in the trunk of her car.
“Here are other things I have no memory of: the shooting itself. The police coming. Leaving the house that night. The first few days after the shooting. The interview with the police officers and the child therapist. But all of that happened to me.
“My father had forged the signature of his boss to obtain lines of credit that he used to play Blackjack. His boss wanted to see him in jail. My mother may have known this. In his note, he indicated that he would take his entire family away before he could erase the shame of his own life. I have long wondered why he changed his mind. Why did he spare me?
“‘God saved you,’” Aunt LiLi told me. “‘It was a miracle.’” In truth, I was my father’s favourite. This is my opinion: I was the one possession of his that didn’t arouse shame. He was simply too vain to kill me.
“I have hardly anything of my mother’s. She left a tube of lipstick at my aunt’s house when she was visiting the week before her death. For years, I slept with it in my hand. Even when I couldn’t bear to look at her picture. Even during the time I was telling my friends in high-school that I never knew my mother.
“A year after my mother and brother were killed, Aunt LiLi insisted I get baptised. I didn’t resist her. She was a good woman. The church we attended—the one my aunt worked for—had a wading pool built into the stage. I was baptised with a few other new members. Each of them had their head dunked into water. I began weeping as I stepped toward the priest. I was upset because I had an irrational fear that the priest would drown me. I was upset, too, that I was sinful. And I was upset that the water would wash away my mother from me.
“When Markus died, some memories of my family were cracked open. I saw everyone afresh.
“Why did Markus choose to obsess over me? Did I choose Markus because he reminded me of my father?
“Some people have gleaned my family story. They pried into my silences for my own good. They asked well-meaning questions. I answered them as briefly as I could. You’re the only person I have told this story—the most complete version—to. I’m going to tell Janice too.” She looked up at him. She was done. “This felt good.”
Rieux sat with this story once it was complete. It was three in the morning, and he could not account for how much time had passed. They must have talked about other things. Throughout Tso’s account, he had asked questions and sought clarifications. Tso had cried, but not as much as he would have thought. At that time, everyone cried; tears had been as omnipresent as face masks and hand sanitizer since the outbreak and quarantine. The economical choice would be to describe the times nobody wept.
He worried throughout her telling of the story that he was not reacting to it properly. He wanted to convey his empathy. But he was allergic to expressiveness by disposition and profession. He could not touch her.
“I want you to know I appreciate learning everything about you,” he told her finally.
“You don’t know everything,” she said.
“The rest is trivia.”
Tso looked at him, then the table. She nodded.
Grossman interrupted them, flapping her hands as though they were aflame. “He’s awake.” She removed a glass from a cupboard and filled it with filtered water from Rieux’s refrigerator.
The mayor was sitting upright in bed. His hair was matted to his forehead with dried sweat. He swallowed the water in a gulp and asked for more. Rieux examined him. The fever had passed. The doctor did not have any extra “dipsticks”—the white plastic devices that could detect the bacterium in a blood or urine sample without a laboratory test—on hand. Now he thought that Parsons might not have had the disease. Perhaps it was a flu brought on by exhaustion. It may have been a coincidence, too, that patients brought in during the final weeks of the quarantine responded better to treatment. Their recovery rates were a reversal of the dismal results witnessed near the beginning of the outbreak.
Grossman returned with another glass of water. Parsons drained it and asked for yet another. Midway through the third serving, he put the glass on the nightstand. “I’ve finally had my fill,” he told them, wiping his wet chin with his hand.
Rieux and Tso exchanged looks of disbelief. For each of them, Parsons’ recovery was their first pleasant surprise in months.
He turned in the bed and drew his legs to the floor. He became aware that he had been stripped down to his boxer briefs and undershirt. Grossman sat next to him and patted him on the knee.
“We were almost finished writing your obituary,” she told him. “Thanks for nothing.”
“You can save it for later,” he told her. “Maybe you’ll need to add a couple of new paragraphs at the bottom. I don’t like the way it ends right now.”
Part Five
23.
By early February, optimism and anxiety coursed throughout the city. For the first time since the outbreak began, Coastal Health Authority officials reported steep drops in both infections and fatalities. The success was attributed to the vaccine, and the anti-vaxxers or those who’d found excuses to avoid a needle rushed to the various clinic sites. During this wave, supplies correctly anticipated the surge of demand.
With good news came opportunities to call as many press conferences as possible. In the second week of February, one media event was arranged by Dr Orla Castello to announce the imminent closure of the auxiliary hospital. In the ensuing question period, Castello admitted that discussions about lifting the quarantine had begun. “There will be another press conference when we have a firm date in mind,” she added.
Romeo Parsons kicked off a full return to his role as mayor by announcing a date in late May for a referendum on his anti-poverty plan. “It’s also a referendum on my leadership,” he said. If the people voted “No,” he would resign. He acknowledged again his personal troubles, blaming them on hubris and an “outdated sense of a private life” that had not considered digital security. In a separate press conference with Canada’s Prime Minister (onscreen through a satellite connection), he also announced details of a federal stimulus package that included infrastructure improvements like free wi-fi in the downtown core.