Portrait of a Thief

by Grace D. Li

Imagine pulling up a plant by its shoots to try and force it to grow.” Her parents had a garden on their balcony, small and almost inconsequential. That was what she thought of now—how carefully her father tended to the herbs there, how her mother wrapped each plant in plastic when the weather threatened snow. There had been pride in their eyes when she left for MIT, and though she had known they were disappointed when she dropped out, they did not say it. She would have been the first in her family with a college degree.

Forgiveness, Alex thought. She did not know Daniel’s dad, but she knew family, how they were always hurting each other in new ways, always trying to figure out how to put themselves back together.

there was no shortage of money in tech, and after so many years of waiting to be here—it felt like she had finally arrived. There was so much she was going to do. That year, her parents’ rent doubled. And so—quietly, efficiently, Alex packed up her dreams. She accepted the offer without telling her family, called them two weeks later from her new apartment, her first Google paycheck already on its way. It had felt worth it, then. It had felt like the best thing she had ever done.

It had been ten months since Alex had dropped out. Anyone else might have felt relief. Silicon Valley glittered like California’s gold mines once had, full of vast, infinite possibility, promising a trajectory that could only go up. Still, in Alex’s perfect job, in her perfect life—she was overcome with this impossible, aching grief. Once, she had wanted so much more than this, had thought it was all within reach.

Alex thought of the past year, of everything she had left behind. How lonely California felt, even now. Her ambitions, her family’s needs, all of it in conflict, all of it so far away. “When I moved here,” she said, “I thought I could make it a beginning. But it’s been less than a year, and already I want a way out.”

He’s good? Alex texted Daniel under the table. The best. She glanced at Daniel. For all the tension between him and his father, there was a glint in his eyes that hinted of pride. His father, the sole expert on Chinese art theft in the Western world, asked to consult on cases that spanned countries and continents. What must it have been like to grow up like this, with a father who caught thieves for a living? What must it be like for Daniel now, to know that he was going to become one of them?

This evening was not supposed to mean anything, and yet she could not help but think about one week from now, a Swedish palace and the five of them piecing together a heist from nothing but books and movies and blind ambition. And then—Mr. Liang going over security tapes of that same heist, searching the museum for fingerprints, footprints, anything they might have left behind.

Alex thought of Daniel and his father moving around each other like faraway planets, their orbits never quite touching, how different this house was, with its silence and its grief, from her family’s apartment, loud and messy and full of love. She would not have said she had an easy childhood, but it had not been like this. Yi Hua Lou, her grandparents had named their restaurant, and in English it was something of harmony, something of home. “Anytime,” she said. “Well,” he said, “see you next week, Huang.”

Still, as she drove away into the vast, vast dark, Alex’s mind drifted back to that empty study. She was not thinking about the computer, with its password and its possibilities, but that carefully framed photo and the paperweight that marked Daniel’s zodiac year, all the ways father and son reached for each other without the other one knowing. There were so many ways this could end in grief.