Opening Doors

It's past 3 in the morning, and finally the sound of the door awakes his mind and his heart. His son was coming back, and like many previous occasions, with just a few hour's notice. He said he was coming back with a friend. The old man never asked who the friend was. He has introduced him to many of his friends. This was the first time in a long while when he brought a friend back home. The young man is muted always with his private life, and the older version never gets nosy.

He is awaken by the sound of the door. The boy is startled. He knows his Dad was coming back now. Has he done all his chores? Has he finished his homework? To earn this moment of watching a sitcom about an equally weird family in which a white man is the foster parent of two funny black boys, He is afraid he would get in trouble. He looks at his sister, who is still doing her homework. He's better at math than she is, so he's already done. But the feeling of doing nothing, that luxury of watching TV, bothers him. Maybe he has to make sure the food was all prepared and done. But that's too late. The door is opening. His heart is racing.

His heart is racing because he hasn't seen his son in a while. Or for him, anything beyond a week, max two, is a while. When the adventurous young man was living in England, which was the last time he brought a woman home, the old man, with more hair then, told him on the phone for the first time that he missed his son. And now he's back, from dancing somewhere. It doesn't matter to him that his son comes to New York every weekend and almost never comes to see them. Seeing him once is beautiful already.

The door is familiar. Same keys to get in. They have changed the inner door, it appears. The college boy returns for the first time since leaving for college. It's Christmas time. He didn't come back for Thanksgiving. He was starting a relationship with a foreigner for whom Thanksgiving didn't mean anything. And this time she came with him to the city where he grew up, but she isn't now with him. He can't have her meet the parents so soon, not because it's a rule, because, by soon, he means forever. He is too ashamed for any of his friends to see this place where he was forced to call home for nine years. Too ashamed for friends, even more for a girl he became intimate with for the first time in his life. The door opens like it always had with the same keys. He enters and the same dim light greets him. The same sound of Chinese soap opera. The same smell of years of Chinese food infused into the furniture, despite the powerful ventilator in the kitchen so typical of Chinese homes. And so typical of his family is that his Mother doesn't say "Hi" to him, but he knows she's expecting him to say more than that to her. And he struggles to overcome his pride and says "Hi" to her without looking at her. His Dad smiles and calls his name, but that is all there is to the undramatic return since his departure four months ago. Perhaps later on his Mother will complain again that he didn't come home for Thanksgiving even though the college was only five hours away by bus. Six, max.

The old man takes a quick glimpse at the blond woman that comes in furtively, not because there is anything to hide, but because it is three in the morning and they seem to want to respect the people sleeping in the old house. But no one is sleeping, and he knows the young man knows this, for the latter has told him repeatedly not to wait for them. He complies by pretending to be sleeping. And yet, he has left the light on. He is afraid the boy might trip on something in the dark. Even though boy is 35, the old man does not want anything remotely bad happen to him. Through his fake sleeping eyes he sees the woman walking up with the boy. They aren't holding hands. They don't seem too close. Maybe they are friends. He lets the next thought go by quickly with its gratuitous pain: maybe he's gay. His wife stirs. And when the couple have disappeared upstairs and the sound of the door closing made itself visible, the old man sits up.

The teenager is angry now. He prefers to be with his guys talking about math or just nonsense. But not this time. The little baby is crying for the most senseless reasons. The other sister, still younger than him, is trying in vain to calm down the baby. Authority must be asserted. He screams at the toddler, who prefers to swallow her own screams than the food the two older children have been mandated to shove in between the lips of this unruly baby sister of theirs. The screaming doesn't do anything more than unnerving the other child. The parents are not around. He doesn't think about them. Doesn't blame them now for leaving the task of parenting to them. He does feel anger. Whatever the root is, he feels it. And the anger spills out onto his right palm as he slaps the toddler's already red cheeks from the screaming. The screaming doesn't stop. It only rises further, finally cracking the other child, who stands up in her own anger, yells at her older brother, and walks off to the kitchen. The toddler now is throwing everything on the little tray onto the floor. The crashing sound of plastic bowls and utensils, the sight of a mess than he must clean, only enrage him further. He screams at the toddler, at the sister who has abandoned him, at the living room empty of parents. And he slaps the toddler on the cheek and walks off.

"What do you think they are doing upstairs?" Her eyes are closed. But he realizes she is just as preoccupied with the visit as he is.

"Why does it matter? He is home."

"You think your parents mind? Sure?"

"If I am not sure I wouldn't let you come. I just hope you feel comfortable here. The bed is small and uncomfortable. But it's better than the floor. I can sleep on the floor."

"My brother's wife asked me the other day if our son was coming back for Fourth of July with that girl from last Fourth of July. Idiot. I bet they were only friends. Why does he have all these women and not a girlfriend?"

"I only hope he's happy."

"Really, this place isn't so bad. Not like how you prepare me for it. They are just different."

"The toilet doesn't let you throw toilet paper in, like we are still living in China."

"This might be serious. I mean, a girl in the same room. He might not be Chinese anymore, but that's still scandalous, I am sure he knows."

"Maybe we have to be more open-minded about how young people behave nowadays."

"You don't understand. I mean, maybe that means she is a real girlfriend."

"I hope you don't mind the breakfast tomorrow. It will be soupy stuff. Very weird. We can go somewhere, though this neighborhood doesn't have much."

"Don't worry. And don't sleep on the floor. Lie next to me."

"Go back to sleep, they are fine. Don't get your hopes up. She is just a friend, I am sure."

But he gets up instead, to go to the kitchen and boil some water. He doesn't drink cold water, thinking that it would be contaminated like water was back in the old country.

And he lies next to her, trying to feel at ease with someone he liked very much in a house he never did. When was the last time someone held someone in this house? He has never seen it. And the last time he brought someone back, they were friends by then. To hold someone in this house makes him feel the weight of his heart.