Page 74 of Double Exposure

Epilogue

Jade Choi

The shoot runs behind by four excruciating days. I didn’t have to stay, but I also couldn’t just leave. As I’m getting seated on the plane back to California, my cell phone goes off. It’s my dad’s agent, with a message from the director of The Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre in Central Kalimantan, in Indonesia.

They are partnering with a documentary film company funded in part by Nat Geo and would like me to join as a videographer.

When?

--Three weeks.

I can’t switch my ticket to go straight to Colorado. Even though we’ve texted every day and videochatted in the evenings, I need Carter. I crave his easy presence, his voice in my ear, his hands on my body. But I need to see Dad. I text Mom to tell her I’m shortening my visit to four days, adding:

I know you’ll understand—have to go to CO!

When I arrive and settle in, there’s an energy to the place and between them, I have not felt before. First, my mother will not stop fussing around the house, and my mother is not a housekeeper. They actually have one of those.

And Dad? He’s nervous, a ball of kinetic energy, asking me all kinds of questions about the excursion and then he lets it slip that he recommended me to the film crew. He knows the director.

Of course.

Dad, who is off crutches now and supposed to use a cane, is not. After discovering he is actually leaving in a week to shoot at Lake Malawi, I have to choose which battle to fight: use the cane/plant yourself in a chair fight, or decline the shoot fight. I decide on the one where I make breakfast and he gets off his leg.

“Besides,” Mom says, “this time I’m coming too.” And then there’s that touch to his earlobe.

I smile.

Mom doggedly cleans up after me as I cook, rinsing out the bowl I whipped six eggs in the moment I set it down, soaping the cutting board and drying the knife and grater. She pushes a strand of hair away from her face. Now that she’s taking a two-month break from her schedule, her hair is down, all the time.

I pour eggs into a cast iron skillet and make three omelets with a baseline of cheddar cheese, extra sharp. I use everything I can find: tomatoes, avocado, spinach, a little bit of salsa and sour cream, Korean chili powder, salt and pepper.

When I finish the third one, I pull the other two from the warming oven and slide them onto plates.

“Let’s eat outside,” says my mother and I insist on holding Dad’s plate while I shame him into using the cane.

Mom loves eating out by the pool. Mid-May in California is get-in-your-pool time and the patio is lush with fresh potted flowers, two new red canvas umbrellas for the two tables and chair sets. Bougainvillea, orange and avocado trees, geraniums and poppies grow in lush borders along the high decorative fence.

The pool water sparkles aqua marine, and in the distance the sound of surf crashing two blocks away is a reminder why the breeze tastes salty.

The four old, woven, bamboo chaises from Korea and my childhood, still perch, dark and frayed, by the edge of the pool.

It’s already eighty degrees out. Both my parents swim laps. I do too but I don’t carry the grace of either of them.

To my relief, neither wants to take a dip after breakfast. I brush my teeth, put my hair up in a ponytail and find an old swimsuit from high school, a bright blue two-piece with spaghetti straps and little strappy bows on each hip.

“I can’t believe I thought this was a good idea,” I say, crossing the living room.

“Where’d you find that?” My mother has already loaded the dishes in the dishwasher.

“In my box,” I say. Unlike many parents, my parents did not make a time capsule of my bedroom. Rather, they put whatever I left into sturdy boxes in the bedroom closet and then turned it into a guest room. There is no shrine to my past.

Thank God.

“Well, it looks great on you.”

I give her a kiss on the cheek. It’s automatic and warm but I think it startles her a bit. Then she recovers and grabs my arm for a moment.

“We are so proud of you,” she says.