The Outer Harbour by Wayde Compton

Author:Wayde Compton [Compton, Wayde]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781551525730
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press

INTER RIVER PARK

The moment Kurt introduces Allan to his mother, she smiles and keeps it up until after the waiter has come and gone. Her English is better than her son’s, and she speaks it with a vaguely British tint. Allan throws around some gilded vocabulary, but it’s immediately apparent that it’s not going to be enough. He perceives the tension in her face, an inner closure, a barely noticeable withdrawal. Kurt has told him that his mother works in television and Allan wonders if this is her on-screen smile.

Mid-way through the meal, Allan moves to Plan B. He says to Mrs Ma that she has a very fine son, that he knows this for sure because he has noticed that Kurt keeps a picture of her and Mr Ma on his phone, as its “wallpaper.” Allan tells Mrs Ma that Kurt obviously keeps it there so that his family is always with him here in Vancouver, so far from home. A very good kid, Allan says. Kurt stays quiet while Allan goes on to tell Mrs Ma that he was inspired by this, and so also put a picture of his mother and father on his phone. I remember when people carried real photographs in their wallets, Allan says wistfully. And he takes his phone out of his pocket, leans forward, and shows it to Mrs Ma across the table. He watches her examine the picture, watches the furrow of uncertainty form on her brow, and then he says what he has rehearsed: That’s my mother and my stepfather. My father was a student from Africa—like Barack Obama’s father, you know?—but he went back there before I was even born. I never knew him. My mother married later, and they raised me. They are both school teachers.

Mrs Ma looks up at Allan, then back at the picture of the two white strangers that Allan took from the Internet, and he can see that she is working on this, thinking it over. It’s like watching someone doing long division in her head. Then she nods faintly.

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