Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong

Author:Rachel Khong [Khong, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner UK

April 1

The soap won’t lather and the reason, it turns out, is Dad’s painted the bar with clear nail polish. “April fool’s,” he says, happily.

April 2

I ask Dad how he and Mom met. Of course I’ve heard it before; I just want to hear it again. She’d appeared the first day of class, and he’d been drawn to her immediately. They’d gone to a student art opening together. They’d stolen a bottle of wine from the gallery—concealed in a purse—and escaped to the park to drink it.

This is when it occurs to me that it isn’t the story of my mother he’s telling—that actually, it’s the story of how he met someone else. He’s telling me about Joan.

“And didn’t you go to a Mexican restaurant after that?” I try to prompt.

“It was Ethiopian.” He frowns.

“Didn’t you eat tortilla chips?” I’m persisting.

“That can’t be right,” he says, with this expression, as though he’s hurt that I don’t trust his details.

My mother had also been his student, but that was different. They were both graduate students. After the semester was over, he asked her to have a drink. They went to a happy hour at a Mexican restaurant, where the deal was cheap drinks and all-you-can-eat tortilla chips. They shared a pitcher of sangria, and when a song with maracas came on my mother said she loved salsa. My father panicked a little, unsure if now was the appropriate time to admit he couldn’t dance. When he raised a chip to his mouth, my mother produced a homemade jar of it, triumphantly, from her purse. My father ate, relieved.

My parents had their wedding in Palm Springs, and my uncle John, ordained for the day, married them.

“May you love each other till the cows come home,” John said. “May all your quarrels be water off a duck’s back.”

He called me the other day—John did—in a panic.

“I locked my keys in the car,” he said. “I’m losing it, Ruth.”

“Did you call triple A?”

“It’s unlocked now.”

“You’re fine.”

“I’m a goner.”

I was about to ask him what he knew about the divorce, when I changed my mind, unsure of how I’d put it—unready, also, to find out. Instead I asked him about my mom’s parents, who died when she was six months pregnant with me. She had been their only child. Sometimes the loss still seemed so powerful I hesitated to ask her anything, and she rarely volunteered.

“Polite Arizonans,” he said, “who cut a mean rug. They danced all night at the wedding. They were wacky. It’s probably where you get it from.”

We’re not really related though, I don’t say.

“She was too young,” John said.

There was a pause so long I thought we’d been disconnected.

“Hello?” I said.

“Your mom, though,” John said. “She doesn’t take any shit. It was all about you, after that.”

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