Home Remedies Read online

  Write a play about a large, wrinkly alien who terrorizes Los Angeles.

  Fear of Flying (Because every time you fly, you land somewhere new and you have to make new friends.)

  Leave something you love in every city you’ve lived in. A record player in Shanghai, a kitten in Seattle, your best dresses hanging in a closet in Paris. That way you’ll always have a reason to retrace your steps back to old friends. So it means you won’t have to stay away forever. Learn to enjoy being alone, appreciate the silence of dinners where an entire roast duck can be gnawed away, cartilage and all, without conversational interruption. You are free and oh-so-mysterious. Think: Friends, who needs friends?

  Bilingual Heartache (From someone breaking your heart in a foreign language. It is like regular heartache but somehow it’s painful in a creative, new way.)

  Pray that a painful cold sore appears on your face so that you can instead wallow in self-pity.

  Self-Pity (A by-product of chronic dissatisfaction with your wide, uninteresting face.)

  Get your nails done by a seventeen-year-old Vietnamese girl who probably weighs about as much as one of your thighs. After she puts your hands in a bowl of smelly water, she rubs lotion into your fingers. She looks up at your face and says, “Your hands are so white and soft, you never do any housework, do you?”

  Open your mouth to protest, as if she were your mother, but then agree; she guessed correctly. Nod. Lower your head.

  Dwelling on the Past (You remember seeing your parents waltzing in the living room of the first house you lived in. You think about your father on his knees like a wounded animal, bent over the newspaper looking for work. You hear the echoes of your mother sobbing in the shower on your way to elementary school. These memories become a fable, entitled “The Legend of Mom and Dad,” and it is tied to you like a cloud-shaped balloon above your head.)

  Begin researching random things of interest. The history of Jamaica, for example, and the tragic disappearance of indigenous people is a good place to start. Start a blog about Jamaica and Jamaican cuisine. Establish a huge Internet presence.

  Insomnia (Because now that you spend so much time on the Internet in order to avoid Dwelling on the Past.)

  Make paper planes with New Yorker subscription postcards. Rearrange bedroom furniture. Tipple Nyquil from the bottle, and as your arms go numb and your chest sinks to the bottom of the mattress, think how much better life is now. Really! Your parents are no longer married, but everyone is eating high-quality local organic produce, only they’re eating it alone and now no one gets to argue. Isn’t that better?

  Desperation (General lustiness with no valid prospects.)

  Make up a long sordid story about the time you made out with a bartender who looked exactly like Joseph Gordon-Levitt (could it have been another Gordon-Levitt brother?) and then proceeded to fuck him on a park bench. You were wearing black leather boots up to your thighs like Catwoman, and you straddled him right there, under the moonlight, in front of that bagel shop you like. People could have been making bagels for the following day and they could have watched you. You know what? They were and they did. You are a woman of incredible sexual prowess, you are wild, and you are trouble.

  Tell this story to your friends, their friends, even your brother. Watch their faces as you imitate Gordon-Levitt’s O face.

  Double Shame (The first shame is when your grandmother, with her crooked stroke-ruined face, shits herself when you have friends over. The smell of shit fills the house, your friends file out, and you are filled with shame. Now comes the second shame, in that you realize you love your grandmother and without her there is no you. She has survived so much with bravery and dignity. How could you think these things about her? More shame. Double-edged shame. Double double shame.)

  Kiss her on the cheek until she loves you again. Until you make-believe she forgives you. Until you make-believe you forgive yourself. You try to avoid her on weekends. You stop inviting friends over. Every time you are filled with this double shame, you smother her wrinkly cheek with kisses.

  Regrets (Big ones. They look just like your mother’s and they are getting worse. On top of inheriting her big laugh, you also got these: her regrets. Not wanting to disappoint others, leading to betrayal of self, romantic failures, and loss of hope. Marrying the wrong man leads to a lifetime of unhappiness. Her regrets overtake you, until you drink her bitterness and cry her tears. These big regrets your mother gave to you, they take root, scratch, and grow.)

  Take on the persona of a really matter-of-fact, optimistic young lady. Occasionally spout aphorisms like “I believe in happy endings!” and “It’ll all work out for the better!” You hope this will soothe her regrets before they somehow permanently become yours.

  It’s worth a shot. After all, your mother is still your closest friend and you are afraid to ever be without her.

  Family Pressure (Not directed at you, but at your much-older brother’s marriage issue. His hair is receding, they say. You must act fast! It is your responsibility! How can you go on with your own life knowing that he, your very own brother, has no wife and child! How can he live like this! So lonely like this?)

  Promise your parents and grandparents that you will find your much-older brother a suitable wife. Say you’ll introduce him to your older friends, your language tutor, and there’s even the neighbor of a friend whose party you went to who is probably single.

  Don’t actually do anything. Why would you do something?

  Humiliation (From listening to the guy you’re sleeping with chatting to his out-of-town girlfriend on the phone, in your bathroom.)

  Act really cavalier about his having a girlfriend. You are not like other girls, you say, and demonstrate it by bringing up how “cool” with everything you really are. Watch his director’s reel while wearing his socks. He holds your hands when you sleep and you wake up smiling. This is love, you think.

  Imagine throwing yourself against him, an imaginary camera following at half speed, as lights blur and you’re suddenly more darling than you really are. And he will turn around and see you with this fine-boned teary face and realize it’s you he’s loved all along. It could all be different, you tell yourself, if only.

  After that, stop seeing him and start dating a tax lawyer named Linus. Linus barely has time for one girlfriend.

  Terrible Taste (In boyfriends, marked by erratic, impulsive decisions based on purely subjective and questionably assigned qualities. One bad choice after another. Each worse in previously unexplored categories. A long time ago a boy said that you purred like a cat while you were asleep. The tax lawyer finally says, “You know you fucking snore, right?” He also says your feet are fat.)

  Look down at your feet. Your stupid little feet and your sausage toes.

  Confusion (While visiting your much-older brother’s newly purchased well-furnished condo, find a DVD collection entitled Sexiest Gay Romp, Miami! Maybe it was mislabeled? Stare at the framed pictures of his first and only girlfriend, study her dull eyes. Maybe she’s just really nice? Remember all the times he flirted obnoxiously with waitresses, does that mean anything? Think of his devotion to church, the time he took you to an NSYNC concert, does that mean anything?)

  Tell your family your brother has impossible standards and you don’t bring up the DVDs with him. There are some things you cannot say to your older brother. He keeps you at arm’s length, as if you’ve never grown out of being a nosy toddler. Mysteriously you still love him, but you don’t know if he knows. You keep his secret and you don’t try to comfort him. Does this mean anything?

  Wanton Tenderness (Mercenary empathy for strangers you have nothing to do with.)

  When the old man alone in the restaurant begs someone on the phone to join him for dinner, resist the urge to comfort him. Watch him order all the dishes again once the first round gets cold and fight the inclination to join his sadness.

  Seriously consider adopti
ng a slightly disabled cat.

  Baby Fever (Contracted while Instagram-stalking your neighbors who are not only good-looking but seem in love and full of hope. You’ve never wanted a baby, but now you’re cooing and making faces at all of them.)

  Realize that the last thing you want to do is procreate with the man-child tax lawyer. His hair is receding so far up his head it’s almost as if he has space for an extra face. His eyes don’t look kind; what would your children look like? Break up with yet another boyfriend.

  Stomachaches (Having ignored his phone calls, your father now comes over to your apartment bearing cream puffs. You are initially happy. You love cream puffs! But then he, once again, tells you his divorce story. How your mother cruelly told him she never loved him and how lonely he’s been his entire adult life. He describes to you his past mistresses, girls your age, who also never loved him. He is losing his shit, he is crying. You stuff your mouth with cream puffs so you can’t say anything. You eat an obscene amount of cream puffs. You swallow without chewing so you don’t set off another round of tears. But now you have a stomachache.)

  Move to a city a thousand miles away.

  Longing (After you realized that every real lover you’ve ever had has moved on and perhaps you haven’t got a clue about what you’re doing. Longing that tastes bitter like your fingers after you absentmindedly kiss them while remembering someone else doing the same.)

  Make friends with women in their forties and let them give you long lectures about freezing your eggs.

  Take everything beautiful in every relationship you’ve ever had and bring it down to a word. “Fedora.” “Champagne.” “Objectification.” “Fetish.”

  Cry.

  Anxiety (Stemming from unfulfilled potential, general nail-biting about the future.)

  Stop drinking coffee, start rolling cigarettes, bake cookies and share.

  Gain weight and fret.

  Fag Hag Fever (Puking outside of a gay club after too many tequila shots while your gay best friend rubs your now whale-size back mechanically, as if he were washing a minivan. In your drunken rampage, you ask him if you two were the last people on earth, would he consider a domestic partnership?)

  Join a gym and torture yourself. Once you become skinny again, you can puke outside of regular clubs.

  Discomfort (From seeing your mother kissing another man.)

  Stare at the bouquet of white lilies on the kitchen island with disdain; will them to die with your hatred.

  Sadness (Visiting your father in his big house alone, surrounded by plasma televisions, a fridge full of beer, and a computer full of porn, and he asks you to play another round of Wii with him.)

  Take him shopping for new clothes, sign him up for dating websites, and discuss the women with whom he chats on the Internet. Act as if it’s not incredibly disturbing to you, though it is. When he calls you, slurring his words, on a Saturday night, drive to whatever bar he’s at. Collect his things, carry him to his car, take him home, tuck him in, and never mention it to him because he will not remember.

  Sadness (Gay brother sadness.)

  Suggest a weekend trip to San Francisco, where the two of you go to museums, line up for brunch, and taste wine in Napa. He gives you many good side hugs and laughs at all your stories. As the BART train is about to pull into the station, agree that you’ve both had a marvelous time. As the train arrives, your long hair flies up like a curtain around your face and only when the wheels have reached their crescendo shout to him, “Treat me as an equal! Be open and honest with me!” “What did you say?” he shouts back. When the train’s doors open, you reply, “Nothing.”

  Sadness (General sadness about the futility of life.)

  Drink.

  Sadness (For your mother never having been in love.)

  Pick a night when your mother’s running errands. Sneak in, break the water pipes, and flood the house. Three inches of water will cover the living room; the carpet will be a beige sponge. The wood floors your dad put in himself years ago will flare out at the edges like books turned upside down.

  When your mother opens the door, water will pour over her feet into the garage. She will turn on the light and then turn it off, afraid of the electric shock. In the dark your mother will scoop water out of the house with bowls and buckets. She will unplug appliances dutifully.

  She will call you, excited and giddy. Her sad disposition will be broken with the thrill. She will be laughing and splashing when she tells you something exciting has happened. A big undeniable something!

  Vaulting the Sea

  By the time they were teenagers, Taoyu knew every muscle in his partner’s back. As their bodies ascended the parallel steps to the diving board, he could trace from memory the particular slope of Hai’s shoulder blades. He knew, like the veins on a leaf, the path that the water would travel, from his thighs to the rungs below his feet.

  At the top, he counted out loud: three, two…

  In the air, they were one body reflected in a mirror. A dancer in a glittering spectacle whose pirouettes begin and end as quickly as a flash of lightning. Always the stronger diver must compensate for the weaker one, and without having to make eye contact, Taoyu knew where Hai was in the air at all times. He knew Hai’s eyelashes would touch his knees on the first revolution and then his warm breath would burst out in front of him at the extension. To the people in the stands, they looked like two wings of a single bird. The pool was the sea and the impact an embrace.

  Nothing else existed from the moment Taoyu reached the edge of the board to the moment he ripped into the water. The water burst open in a cosmic flower, blooming exuberantly before disappearing, its fizzing petals melting back into stillness.

  In those seconds, Taoyu denied all sense of himself until he felt his partner’s hand grip his neck in defeat or victory. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt right in that water, a space rapturous, ancient with life.

  Before each leap, Taoyu repeated a plea. That the water would cure him of his desires. That the impact would clean him, make him brand new.

  In everyday life, time isn’t agonized over in milliseconds; it can’t be slowed down and replayed on a screen as desired. Flicks of water off the end of an eyebrow cannot ordinarily be scrutinized and studied. Not in this life, where moments slip away unnoticed, the second hand braids itself into the minute.

  Almost a decade has passed since his last competition, but once in a while Taoyu still gets recognized. Even after he grew his hair out to his shoulders, changed his name, and moved to a third-tier city on the coast.

  It can happen anywhere—waiting in line, walking by a taxi’s open window—someone will stop him and ask, “Hey, do you and I know each other?” or “I know your face so well, we must have had a drink together before.”

  No, Taoyu always says no. Tells them they’ve got the wrong person. Because if he began his story, he wouldn’t be able to finish it. How could he tell these strangers who he is, without revealing who he was and who he had been?

  “Name’s Peng Hai, hai as in the great big ocean, but you’re younger than me, so you can call me big brother Hai,” said the first boy Taoyu sat next to on the bus. Taoyu’s eyes were still sore from crying, but he looked up at Hai’s buckteeth and flop of hair and was relieved to have such a happy seatmate.

  “I hail from Chang Ping First School. My dad’s a railroad worker. My mom’s a schoolteacher. I have two sisters and fifteen apple trees,” Hai continued. “What have you got?”

  Taoyu took in the boy’s sand-colored eyes and the flour sack of belongings just like his own. Objectively, he resembled all the other boys he’d grown up with, but there was something friendly and gentle about Peng Hai. A certain kindness in his face that gave Taoyu’s heart a tight squeeze.

  “One mom and one dad,” Taoyu replied, trying to hide the trembling in his voice. Just hours earlier, he had been hiccupping in his mother’s arms, begging
her not to make him go. “He’s not very mature,” she had pleaded with Taoyu’s father. “Maybe we can wait a year or two and then let him go.”

  “Out of the question,” his father had said. “We’re lucky anyone wants him at all.”

  Older boys pushed through the door and down the aisle, hollering their names at one another as they threw packages of instant noodles across the rows of seats.

  “Say, you’re awful quiet. Bet you’re really smart; quiet kids are always smart. My parents say I talk way too much to have any brains. But I can remember everything. I bet you still don’t know which fingernail grows the fastest?”

  Taoyu looked down at his hands.

  “The middle one! See! I can still teach you stuff you don’t know, you should stick with me. I’ll be your big brother,” said Hai.

  “Big brother Hai,” Taoyu repeated quietly.

  In the end Taoyu suspected even his mother was convinced that this was a cheerful sacrifice. “One day you will need to make it on your own,” she had said at the bus stop, her eyes shining. “We all have to leave home someday.” Nevertheless, when he had finally let go of her, he still hadn’t understood why he had to. It had made him angry with her. What was it he had done?

  Oh, to have found someone he liked, to not be alone in this place. What luck! Taoyu thought Hai was the best boy around.

  He remembered what the diving scout had said to his parents during tea. “This boy needs to start training immediately with professional athletes.” The scout had measured his arms and legs and the skin on his calves. “He is already seven years old, and in a few years he will need to qualify for the regional team.”

  When the same diving scout had visited Hai’s elementary school that spring, he had asked for volunteers for diving and Hai had raised his hand because he loved going to the beach. “Do you think it’s too late to change to a different sport now?” he asked Taoyu on the bus. His problem was that he wanted to try all the sports, but he didn’t know what they were. What if he was perfect for a land sport, or a team sport, or a sport that hadn’t been invented yet?