Real Americans

by Rachel Khong

Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. —Cameron Awkward-Rich

A second would refuse to pass as it usually did, and I would find myself trapped in a moment—unable to progress beyond a minute or two.

ordered my regular latte—the latte I shouldn’t have been buying, because I didn’t make any money.

When I entered the immense glass building, I did so with a sense of importance and authority: I worked here. I was an unpaid intern, but still.

I handed Jerry his coffee, which he accepted in his sausagey pink fingers without a word.

Even the put-together people—the people who dressed exquisitely, expensively—I had come to learn, didn’t necessarily inhabit livable places.

“She’s Korean,” my boss added. I wondered why he said that—with such confidence, and as though it would be of interest. I felt instantly weary. “Chinese,” I clarified to the nephew,

“A reward.” The cookies were crumbles now. He poured them into his mouth all at once, which I liked.

“Does my uncle always do that?” Matthew asked. “Do what?” “Introduce you by what kind of Asian you are.” “Let’s see…. Third time he’s done it now?” I said. “It’s fine. Anyway, I’m used to it.” “I’ll say something. It’s not cool.”

Architecture had seemed to me so glamorous: imaginary structures, made real.

“Should we go to Paris?” I thought I heard him say. “What?” “Let’s go to Paris,” he repeated. “Let’s go now,” he said,

On the plane, we chattered, frenetic, covering ground urgently and exhaustively, like everything we needed to say had to be said now.

The cabin lights came on, and the stewardess’s voice crackled over the intercom, welcoming us to France.

Before I could register what was happening, he reached his other hand around the back of my head, brought my face to his, and kissed me.

“You’re not nothing to me,” I said, feeling that this was the beginning of something. That, after this, because of this, my life would not be the same.

“There’s no one like you,” he finally said.

Her rings tapped loudly against her glass when she switched her wine from one hand to the other.

The dog’s name was Hans.

An envelope was on my nightstand. Inside, there were twelve hundred-dollar bills. A note from my father said: Don’t tell your mother.

The dog was Reginald and the fish were unnamed.

“Sugar daddy wanted,” I typed. Did “sugar daddy” connote incredible wealth? I wasn’t looking for luxury. All I needed was rent money.

Jerry, thinking no one was watching, slid an entire salami rose into his mouth.

It wasn’t Luke, whose attention was on the stage. I turned to my left: It was Matthew.

It was the mix I’d given him—the CD I’d thrown away that night I’d felt, so strongly, that we should stop seeing each other. “I memorized it,” he said.

I had a talent for this: for considering a space, creating a home, anticipating needs.

He blew on my arm to cool it, and in that moment, what love was seemed so clear to me: the need to guard against loss. If I lost him, I thought then, feeling his cool breath against my hot arm, I would never recover.

“So long, comrade,” he said, saluting it, and I loved him.

Matthew proposed two weeks after the Hamptons.

Matthew plucked two and we ate them, me in my wedding dress, him in his suit, our heads craned at an angle, trying not to drip.

Goldfinches swayed on the branches.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just tired.” “I know,” he said, and kissed me. “I know you.” This was the thing he said that I craved the most. More than I love you, I wanted him to say that he knew me. Who else did?

I hadn’t met this person—only knew his shape and felt his movements—but already he was everything to me.

After a long pause, he said, in gently accented English, “I can help you.” Then he added, “You look exactly like your mother.”

Then your mother closed her fist, brought it to her mouth, and swallowed.” Here Ping paused, drank his tea. “That was your mother.”

“What was the magic?” I asked. “What?” “The seed. You said it was magic. What did you mean?” Ping seemed amused at my question. “The seed granted a wish. I assume your mother made one, but she never told me what it was.”

The contractions began while I was in our hotel room, watching, instead of the television, another pregnant woman in the window of a nearby building.

Cleaned, the baby was still pink, with light hair on his head. His eyes were blue.

After a few minutes he peered up at me with his eyes, as blue as the Atlantic, as blue, it struck me, as Matthew’s eyes.

The photo had creases in it, as though it had been folded and refolded. On the back was written, in pencil, 1966.

And there, beside her, arm around her shoulders, wasn’t my father, but Ping.

Ping and my mother looked correct together: content, as though they needed nothing else.

She had many ideas about what a new mother needed.

Despite my envy of the ease my mother had with Jenny, and Jenny with her, I loved these days we had together. I felt a part of something.

With each other they spoke loudly: Their voices periodically rose to excited shouts, and they laughed raucously. In English they were milder mannered, polite.

We offered them milk and tea, and they chose milk, like Santa.

“It is what it is, May,” Otto said finally. Her name sounded so familiar in his mouth.

The binders and notebooks bore a sailboat logo that seemed familiar to me.

I realized: It had been emblazoned on the side of the Maiers’ sailboat in the Hamptons, identical script that said “The Beacon.”

I remembered the difficulty I’d had conceiving. When I’d told my mother it was due to chromosomal abnormalities, she had seemed shaken but not surprised. When she had met Nico for the first time—could my memory be trusted?—there was wonder on her face. Ping’s letter flickered into my mind: I wonder who else you have harmed along the way.

What could I remember? I thought for an eternity until a memory came. I must have been three years old, in a white-walled room with bright lights, like a doctor’s office. “Hold still,” my mother said. My mother was telling me it wouldn’t hurt if I just held still. I didn’t know what they were doing to me, but I remembered Otto—I remembered him now—wearing the same silver glasses, watching. He didn’t scare me but my mother did. I was afraid of her.