Gavin had hoped to spend a nice outdoorsy weekend with his parents, hiking in the hills or walking on the beach or something that you couldn’t do in Indiana in February. (Or actually ever, since there weren’t really hills or beaches there). But it was pouring rain, so they went to the Vallco Shopping Mall instead.
“Was it raining in LA?” his mom asked. They were sitting on a bench outside a gadget store. It was the third one they had passed, and Gavin’s dad had to spend at least half an hour in each one.
“No, it was hot. It was like in the eighties.”
There were three bags of stuff they’d already bought on the bench next to Gavin’s mom: two filled with dad's computer gizmos and one with clothing for Gavin. His mother hadn’t bought anything for herself: I can shop anytime, she had said.
“Really?” The weather was always interesting to her. “It’s been freezing up here. I mean, not literally of course.”
“Well, it’s four hundred miles away.”
She patted down her messy platinum hair in the mirror behind the bench and sucked in her cheeks to make her face look thinner. She was pretty in a hearty kind of way, like she’d make a good farmer’s wife. People said that Gavin looked like an Asian, male version of her.
“How are things going in Indiana? Are you dating anybody?”
He almost wanted to say yes just to make her happy, but the word dating was too big a stretch for whatever was going on with Rona. Well, this one student offered to perform fellatio on me, but then she decided not to. He shook his head.
“It’s kind of hard to start a relationship when you don’t know where you’ll be living in six months, ” he said.
The mall was mobbed because of the rain. Gavin kept imagining he saw his dad coming out of the store, but it would turn out to be some other nerdy-looking Chinese guy, charging through the throngs of gothy teenagers and sporty teenagers and families with strollers, like they were just so many minor bugs in some computer program he was writing.
“That’s all right,” his mother said. “You’ll meet someone when you move to Los Angeles.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be moving there. It might be Kansas. Or neither.”
“Kansas.” Her eyes became spacey like she was formulating a complex and unheard of idea. “Have you ever though about getting a job at Berkeley?”
Yeah, awesome idea. I'll just get a job at Berkeley. It was only the second-ranked English department in the country, and so conveniently located half an hour from San Francisco. Oh, and an hour from Cupertino.
“Every time you ask that, I tell you that they didn’t have an opening in my field this year.” The only position had been in Nineteenth Century African-American lit, which was probably even more depressing than Stump.
“You do?”
“Like every time we talk. And then I tell you that even if there was a position, they would never ever ever hire me. I wouldn’t even get an interview.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” she said. “You’re very smart.”
It had been three decades since Gavin’s mother applied for a job. Both his parents got hired as engineers at Hewlett Packard straight out of graduate school, and they would continue working there until they retired or dropped dead in their cubicles, just like pretty much all of their friends.
“HP is always looking for tech writers,” she said. “We could introduce you to some people.”
Gavin’s phone vibrated. It was a text from Sinder. Fuck, it said. That was all. His exams were this weekend, which meant he had seventy-two hours to write three twenty-page essay responses. Gavin was kind of glad to be out of town.
You’re gonna ACE this, Gavin texted back. He didn’t know if it was true, but positive messages were supposed to enhance student performance.
When he looked up, his actual father was sitting on the bench next to his mother. “They had electronic picture frames for on sale for fifteen bucks.” He looked kind of like a shorter, even more Asian version of Gavin. He was wearing a Hewlett Packard t-shirt and a Hewlett Packard baseball cap, both of which, Gavin knew for certain, he had gotten for free.
“We don’t need any,” said his mother.
“Maybe for presents.”
“Presents for what? Christmas isn’t for nine months.”
Except for people’s outfits—light rain jackets, no ski parkas or snow boots, a few stubborn pairs of flip-flops even—this mall looked the same as the one Gavin went to in Indiana. Same stores with cheap crappy clothes or expensive fancy clothes, same stuffy air heavy with food smells. California had some pretty outdoor malls with trees and birdbaths and flower arrangements between the stores, but this wasn’t one of them, which was lucky because otherwise they’d be soaking wet right now.
“Hey Gavin, you know who I saw here a couple months ago?” his father asked. “A guy you went to high school with. Uh…Peter Wang.”
“Paul Wang,” said his mother.
“Paul Wang?” Gavin repeated. Wow, that was an old memory. Paul was his best friend during the second half of freshman year. They didn’t have a fight or anything, just stopped hanging out.
“He was working at the Starbucks,” Gavin’s dad said.
“He’s the manager,” his mother said. “And he lives at home with his parents.”
“I’m not moving back home,” Gavin sad.
“All our friends’ kids are moving back in. Bill and Loraine’s son, Jean and Ted’s younger daughter. Who else?”
“Both the Martinez boys,” said Gavin’s dad. He was rummaging through one of the gadget bags, checking out his purchases.
“The Martinez boys. Linda and Steve’s son for a while, but I think he moved out again.”
“I’m not moving in with you,” Gavin said.
A teenager in a half-shirt looked right at him, smirked and whispered something in her friend’s ear as they walked past.
“Of course not,” his mom said. “It’s just if you needed someplace to stay, you know, before you get settled. Of course you’d want your own place eventually, once you got a job.”
“There’s no job!”
She put her hand to her face like he had hit her. Fuck, you’re being a total dick. All she wanted was for her son to live a little closer. That was a normal thing for a mother to want, a nice thing. But it was a fact about his profession: he was not going to get to choose. Not where he worked, not where he lived, not much about his life at all. Maybe she didn’t like it, maybe Gavin didn’t even like it all that much, but that’s how it was going to be.
“Mom, I promise.” He rubbed the stiff curve of her shoulder, and it softened up a little. “If I ever get a job near Cupertino, I’ll move back in.”
Their evening plans were shopping, Chinese food and a movie, all without leaving the mall.
“Your son?” asked the waiter as he set a tea pot and three cups on the deep red tablecloth. He was a slim, not-so-nerdy Chinese guy, who, unlike Gavin’s American-born father, spoke with an accent. “Getting his doctorate, right?”
“He finally came to visit us,” Gavin’s mother said. “He was just interviewing for a job in Los Angeles.”
“Oh, Los Angeles!” The waiter winked at Gavin. “Maybe you can get a job closer, like in Berkeley.” Gavin looked over at his mother, who gave him a guilty smile.
How often do they come here, anyway?
“So, you want lemon chicken?” the waiter asked Gavin’s father. He was already writing it on his little pad. He hadn’t even given them menus. Gavin craned his neck to look around the giant restaurant. It was one of those banquet halls with tapestries and vases everywhere. He saw at least two other tables where the people had menus.
“That’s right. And—”
“Shrimp chow mein, sweet and sour pork, white rice.”
“Right!” Gavin’s father nodded, like finally someone who understands me. The waiter flipped his notepad shut and started to leave.
“Wait!” Gavin hated to yell, but there was no other way the waiter would hear him over the roar of families talking and laughing and screaming at their kids. “Do you have anything, um, lighter?”
After that Santa Clarita visit, he had vowed to go on a diet, maybe forever. Sweet and sour pork wasn’t going to get him down to zero body fat.
“Tofu with bok choi,” the waiter said.
“Great, perfect, thanks.” Not what he would have picked, but he didn’t want to make a bigger fuss by asking for a menu.
“Bok choi?” his father asked, as soon as the waiter had left. “Since when do you eat bok choi?”
“What’s wrong with bok choi?” Okay, it was kind of stringy , but it was a green vegetable and healthy and it tasted about a billion times better than kale.
“We’re not in China and we’re not at your grandmother’s house. We don’t need to eat bok choi.”
“Don’t fight,” said his mother. “Gavin’s only here for two days.”
“We’re not fighting.” Gavin’s father shot a mean look at her. “We’re just talking about bok choi.”
Gavin’s pocket vibrated. He pulled his phone out and looked at it under the table, like his students did at their desks. Another text from Sinder. Please fuck me to death with a spatula, it said.
Breathe, Gavin texted back. And then, WWSD. That was an inside joke: What Would Socrates Do?
When he looked up, the chow mein had already arrived. His father spooned noodles onto everyone’s plates.
“You’re not really going to move to Kansas, are you?” his mother asked. She took a sip of her ice water and wiped her mouth with the red cloth napkin. “Because your father really doesn’t want to move to Kansas.”
They both looked over at Gavin’s father, who was midway through slurping a giant pile of noodles off his fork.
“You’re not moving to Kansas,” Gavin said.
“If you move there, of course we will,” his mother said. “What’s going to happen when you have kids?”
“Kids?” Who the hell said anything about him having kids? “I’m only twenty-nine.”
“We’re not moving to Kansas,” his father said. The waiter came by and set down the pork and the bok choi. “We don’t even know anyone in Kansas.”
“We’ll know Gavin. Who else do we need?”
“Listen,” Gavin said. “Whatever happens, I’m probably going to have to move a bunch of times before I get settled somewhere. You’re not going to want to just keep moving around everywhere I go.”
“No!” Her jaw clenched, and her voice dropped to that low, gravelly register women used when they were becoming furious but didn’t want to be loud. “No, we do not want to move around everywhere you go.” She picked up her empty tea cup and tapped the rim on the table for emphasis. He was a little scared she was going to break it. “I’m going to be sixty and I want to live near my grandchildren. Do you think that’s reasonable?”
“It’s reasonable,” Gavin said. Relax and put down the tea cup. “Of course, it’s totally reasonable.”
“Can we change the subject?” his father asked. “I’d like to enjoy my dinner.” He used his fork to point at Gavin’s chopsticks, hanging idly in his right hand. “Eat your bok choi before it gets cold.”
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