New From Here, page 18
“You know what to say?” I ask him as he dials. “Are you ready?”
Bowen nods. “I was born ready!”
My brother puts the phone on speakerphone when the guy answers.
“Hi, this is Andrew Evans,” Bowen says, clearing his throat and putting on his deepest, most official-sounding tone. I recognize the voice from when we used to play Special Agents Rescue when we were little.
“Thanks so much for calling, Andrew. I’m Kyle Jones, the senior supervising attorney here,” the guy says. “So I’m looking at your résumé. Very impressive! Tell me, what kind of law were you practicing at Simden and Cadwell?”
Uh-oh. Bowen glances at me. I shrug—I didn’t know there were kinds of law!
“Uhhh… the international kind,” Bowen says. I give him a thumbs-up—good answer!
“Transactional, I assume?” Mr. Jones asks. “Or tax? Or governmental?”
“Yes. All of the above.”
There’s a long silence on the other end of the line.
“O… kay,” Mr. Jones says. “So tell me, why are you thinking of leaving?”
“I want to be closer to my family,” Bowen says, glancing at me and Lea. Another great answer! Wow. Bowen’s really good at this! “And I want to expand my horizons as a lawyer.”
“Oh, really? In what aspect?”
“Pretty much all aspects,” Bowen answers. “I’d love more…”
He scratches his head, trying to come up with an answer.
“More time off?” I whisper.
“More pens??” Lea tosses out.
“More choices,” Bowen finally goes with. “I’d love to get to decide what cases I’m taking on.”
“Just so you know, this is more of a junior position,” Mr. Jones says. “It’s fairly entry level, and you don’t get a lot of autonomy.”
“I can do entry level! I love entries!” Bowen says.
But it’s too late. Mr. Jones does not believe him. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Evans. Best of luck in your job hunt.”
With that, Bowen hangs up.
Chapter 62
Bowen’s so bummed he messed up his first job interview for Dad, not even the good news that Mom passed her second interview lifts his spirits.
“It’s okay…,” I try and console him later in our room. “You’ll get something else.”
Bowen mutters from behind his computer screen. “No, it’s not okay. I’m not like you. I can’t screw things up. Now, thanks to me, Dad will have to be a random undercover shopper.…”
He rests his face on his laptop keys with such grief, I want to hand him one of my T-shirts so he can go inside a T-shirt cave. At the same time, I’m stuck on one thing he said.
“What do you mean, ‘I’m not like you’?” I ask him.
“I mean I need to be good at things,” he says. He thinks for a long while before adding, “It’s my way of getting Mom and Dad’s attention, okay?”
I scrunch my face. Now I’m really confused.
Bowen closes his computer. “Ever since you were born, Mom and Dad have been so preoccupied with you. It’s always—we must find someone to help Knox with this. Or we have to take Knox to that specialist. I get that you needed it for your eczema and your…”
Bowen stops and looks at me.
“My ADHD. You can say it,” I tell him.
“Your ADHD. I get that now. But it was kind of like… I disappeared into the background.”
WOW. All this time, I thought I was the one who always disappeared into the background. The one my lao lao was least likely to brag about to relatives. Or whose shoe size my parents were most likely to forget.
“What about all the times Mom raves about your grades?” I ask Bowen.
“Yeah, because they’re good !” he says. “But the minute I stop achieving… I’ll be yesterday’s news.”
In that moment, I finally understand my brother’s pressure on himself. It’s crushing him like a tire.
He opens his computer and starts tapping madly on the keys. Tap-tap-tap.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Sending Dad’s résumé to every law firm in the Bay Area, even the ones that haven’t advertised on LinkedIn,” Bowen says. “One way or another, I will get him a job.”
I walk over and take a seat next to him, reaching for my own laptop. If he’s going to do this, we’re hyper-focusing together.
As we look up law firms and email their hiring departments, I stare at Bowen and admire his intense concentration skills. The way he’s able to scroll through pages and pages of confusing text on each law firm’s “Careers” page. Wade through the gobbledygook of corporate-speak. I would have pulled up at least five YouTube videos and bounced around from tab to tab, but he just stays on one page. It’s amazing.
“What?” he asks, glancing at me.
“Nothing,” I say. Then ask, “How can you just read that stuff?”
Bowen shrugs. “I just make myself do it,” he says. “Same as in school. I try to find something interesting about it.…” He points at one law firm’s website, on the “Benefits and Work Balance” page, where it says Flexible Time-Off Policy.
“There’s usually one neat thing in everything,” he tells me.
Which makes me sit up. “What about me?” I ask.
Bowen looks over and studies me for a long while.
“You’re not boring,” he concludes.
My face breaks into a smile. “Thanks!” I’ll take that. I want to lock away the compliment in my lockbox, but it’s currently floating in the Pacific somewhere. It’s the highest praise my brother’s ever paid me.
I gaze out at the crescent moon and take a breath. “I’m also starting to get good at school,” I tell him shyly. “I finally have a shot.… I have a teacher who cares.”
“You always had a shot, you just never took it,” he says.
I frown. That’s not true. My teachers in Hong Kong, they looked at me and decided I was no good at school, I tell Bowen. “Have you ever had that happen, someone decides what you are before you even do anything?”
Bowen turns back to his computer and continues tap-tap-tapping. For a second, I think the conversation is over and I feel bad revealing this part of me, until he says, “We just gotta prove them wrong.…”
And I feel myself soaring, high, high in the velvet sky, even more than if Dad had gotten the job today.
Chapter 63
Inspired by Bowen’s refusal to take no for an answer when it comes to finding Dad a job, on Friday I rummage through the garage before school. Mom’s taken a couple of carry-on suitcases down—probably for her trip to New York. Now that she’s passed her second interview, she’ll be going to the Big Apple soon. I climb on top of the suitcases and crane my neck. There must be something of Grandma Francine’s we can trade to get Mom’s earrings back from the Taradippin brothers—maybe another pair of earrings? That look expensive but aren’t quite rubies?
I don’t find any earrings, but I find something even better! Dad’s sealed box of old face masks Mom was looking for—he had written on the box with a Sharpie: Extra Face Masks from SARS.
Boy, are the Taradippins going to lose it when they see this! I hold the virus relics to my chest and holler for my siblings.
“Bowen! Lea! Come quick!!!”
* * *
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Lea asks after school, holding up the box of masks and blowing the dust off it. She glances behind at the wildflowers in her bike basket. I can tell she wants to get back to Mom. We told her we were going hiking up the hill by our house.
“Just follow my lead.” I walk up and ring the Taradippins’ doorbell. It makes a loud cowbell sound inside. Even their doorbell’s obnoxious.
This time, Max’s brother answers the door, holding a glass full of beer. There’s music playing in the background, like they’re having a party. Max is standing on top of a table throwing confetti while his dog barks. He’s got a mask under his chin and another mask around his forehead as the TV behind him blasts the second confirmed case of local community spread.
“Are you guys… celebrating??” I ask.
“Our sales have been through the roof!” Max says, pushing his forehead mask up like a hairband as he hops down from the table.
I shake my head at these two sad, pathetic creatures cheering on a virus.
“You back with more earrings?” they ask.
“No, actually, we’ve got something else,” I say. Nervously, I pull out the box of SARS masks. “These are from Hong Kong. They protected my dad during SARS.” To prove it, Bowen holds up his phone with a picture of Dad during SARS that he AirDropped from Mom’s phone.
Max gazes down at my box of masks, fascinated. I can almost see the dollar signs going off in his head.
“Dude, you know what we can sell this for on eBay?” Max asks his brother.
“Survivors’ masks! Two hundred dollars!”
“Naw, way more—five hundred,” Max says. He turns to us and asks, “How much you want for ’em?”
“We just want our mom’s earrings back,” I say. I point to the other two boxes Lea’s got in her bike basket—we found three boxes total in the garage. We were tempted to save a box for ourselves, but were worried two boxes weren’t going to be enough for the greedy brothers. “You can have all of them.”
Max and his brother go to discuss in another room. I wait nervously, while their terrier stands guard, barking and running around us in circles at their doormat. My eyes travel to the glistening bottles of hand sanitizer stacked along the wall. If only I can have one bottle for my classroom.
But as I reach for a bottle, Max comes out of the room. “We’ll take ’em.” He hands me back the velvet box.
“Yes!!!” we cheer. Bowen opens the box up to make sure the earrings are in there. They sparkle in the sun!
As my brother clutches the earring box tight in his hands—I still can’t believe my plan worked!—my sister hands Max the masks. I point at the hand sanitizers, finding the courage to make one last request. “Hey, you think I can get some hand sanitizer from you guys? It’s for my teacher at school.”
“Sorry, no can do,” Max replies, smacking my hand away. “These babies sell for seventy-five dollars a pop online.”
“Seventy-five dollars??? Who can afford that ?”
“Rich people!” Max answers, closing the door.
Chapter 64
Well, at least we got the earrings back!” Bowen says.
I nod. It would have been nice, though, to get a bottle of hand sanitizer for Mrs. Turner, too.
“Mom’s gonna be so relieved. Can I be the one to give them back to her?” Lea asks, putting her hands together.
“No way! I was the one who got them back from the Taradippin brothers!” I protest.
“We wouldn’t even have found the Taradippin brothers if it weren’t for me fixing Mr. Brady’s Wi-Fi!” Bowen reminds me.
“Hey! I was the one who remembered the poodle!” Lea says.
“Okay, okay, let’s all give them to her,” I say, waving my hands in the air and trying to get my siblings to focus on the bigger picture. “We did it! We actually got Mom’s earrings back. Remember how impossible that seemed?”
My siblings and I marvel at each other. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we don’t fight.
“It was actually kind of fun.” Lea smiles.
It really was.
Bowen glances at his phone. “Hey, look, the country club supervisor position got back to us.” He holds up the email invitation to connect by phone.
“I call dibs on that interview!” I blurt out.
* * *
That night, Lea stands behind Mom, covering her eyes with her small hands. When Lea moves her hands away, I unveil Mom’s earrings with a silk handkerchief.
“My earrings!” Mom cries as Bowen shines a flashlight on the glistening stones.
She reaches for them gingerly.
“We worked together, Mommy,” I say to her. Lea encourages Mom to try them on as Bowen hands her the wildflowers.
“I bet you did! Thank you so much, my bao baos.” Mom leans over and kisses the tops of our heads. “I don’t even know what to say.”
She holds the earrings up to the light. “I still remember when your dad got me these. It was the year we decided to move to Hong Kong together.”
Lea climbs into Mom’s lap as Mom sets the flowers down and tells the story. “Your dad thought it would be an adventure, seeing Asia. And I wanted to see what it would be like to live in a place where… well, where I stood out less.”
“Did you feel like a purple goldfish too?” I ask Mom.
She chuckles and tells us about her old job. “Back in those days, there was a lot of blatant discrimination. I remember trying to get more customers for the bank I was working for in San Francisco, and my boss said, ‘Why are you wasting your time? Chinese people all hide their money under the mattress,’ ” Mom says, shaking her head.
We all stare at her. No one is more stunned than my brother.
“They said that to you?” Bowen asks.
Mom nods. “I was worried that if I stayed, I’d eventually hit a ceiling.”
I look up at the ceiling in Mom’s room, imagining Mom bumping her head against it. Ouch!
“How about now?” I ask.
“Now things are a little better, but discrimination and racism still exist. The more we speak up about it, the less it spreads. It’s like a virus.” She smiles at us. “You know what the vaccine for racism is?”
I shake my head.
“Love,” she says, holding out a hand to us. We walk into her arms, even Bowen, who doesn’t try to wriggle away this time.
Chapter 65
I wake up the next morning smiling, thinking about what Mom said. I like this other side to Summer Mom, telling us stories. Even though some of her stories are sad, they’re real. And I like real. I might even like it better than going out for frozen yogurt and to the movies.
I find Mom downstairs mixing boxed pancake batter and talking to Auntie Jackie about the details of her flight to New York. It’s the last day of February, and I kick a soccer ball around in the backyard with Lea, showing her my moves.
“I can’t believe it’s March tomorrow!” she says excitedly. “One month closer to my birthday!”
The time sure passed by fast this month. We’d definitely still be in February if we were still doing online school.
“You think Dad’s gonna make it over for my birthday?”
I nod encouragingly, even though we’re not any closer to raising the money. Or getting Dad a job. Still, I don’t want to deflate Lea’s dream. We’ll get there, one way or another.
“You think Cody’s forgotten the way we smell?” Lea asks. “How long can dogs remember smell?”
I break out in a cold sweat, just thinking about it. Instead of answering, I try to distract my sister. I point to my feet, teaching her a soccer tip as I run with the ball.
“This is called the Cruyff turn.” I tell my sister about the move invented by Dutch forward Johan Cruyff as I turn, switch directions, and cut across Lea on the grass at an angle.
“Cool!”
We play until we get tired and take a break. We walk back inside the kitchen to get some water. I stick my finger in the pancake batter, feeling the thick and gooey mix, as I listen to Mom’s conversation.
“Oh my gosh, you’re a lifesaver!” she says. “It’s only for one day. I’m taking the red-eye from JFK right after my interview. Are you sure? I owe you one.”
Lea and I look at Mom as she hangs up the phone.
“Auntie Jackie’s agreed to take you guys while I’m in NYC!” Mom says, pouring the pancake batter onto the griddle.
Bowen stumbles into the kitchen in his usual groggy half-awake morning walk and grabs a muffin from the counter. “Auntie Jackie? She’s picking me up from track?”
“Oh, track! That’s right. I forgot,” Mom says. “I suppose I can ask her to make two separate trips. First get Knox and Lea, drop them off at home, then come back and get you.” Mom chews her lip. “That might be a lot, though.”
“What if we took an Uber over?” I suggest.
“Oh no, you’re not coming again,” Bowen says, wriggling his finger at me.
“Why not?” I ask. “I can kick my ball around!” My soccer practice doesn’t start for a few weeks.
“Good idea!” Mom says, taking Bowen’s phone and programming Uber onto it. I lean over, worried Mom’s going to see all of Bowen’s emails to the country club people.
“Don’t worry, I hid all of Dad’s job stuff in a special email folder,” Bowen whispers, reading my mind. “By the way, the interview’s next week. I sent you all the info. Check your email.”
Lea turns on the news as Mom hands Bowen’s phone back and finishes the pancakes.
“As of this morning in Italy, there are now more than one thousand cases of the coronavirus, the most by far of any nation outside of Asia. The hardest-hit region is Lombardy, Italy, where residents have been on lockdown since February 23. So far, twenty-nine people have died,” the newscaster says.
“More than a thousand cases?! How’d it jump so high in Italy all of a sudden??” I ask. I regret sticking my fingers in the pancake batter and immediately go and wash them.
“Here in the United States, a confirmed case is said to be in serious condition in Washington State, even as President Trump expressed optimism, claiming the coronavirus ‘will disappear.’ The World Health Organization, however, cautions that the virus has ‘pandemic potential.’ ”
Pandemic? My eyes jump over to my mom, who switches off the TV and reaches for our last bottle of hand sanitizer.
“Calm down,” she says, even though she herself is hugging the sanitizer like it’s a life jacket.
“Should we still go to school??”
“Of course we’re going to school,” Lea says. “I want to see our baby trout grow, and I gotta show Stuart my new soccer moves!”
