Holding Pattern: A Novel

1.

Heartbreak was its own kind of incandescence that morning, scrubbing the world raw with its floodlight. I felt acutely out of place among Marin’s pristine streets and quaint signage, its veneer of health and wealth an insult I couldn’t answer. As we entered the bridal shop, my mother wrapped a hand around my biceps and squeaked her excitement, and this grated on me, too: Not so many years ago, she might have clung to me like this, her breath a lank cloud of vomit and liquor.

Inside the shop, a series of alcoves illuminated a froth of white dresses. The other clients were expensively dressed, model-esque women with the exception of a boy in a basketball jersey who was slumped on a clear acrylic bench, frowning at the handheld Nintendo between his knees. I cast a line of hope in his direction, seeking an acknowledgment of our mutual misery, but he kept his eyes trained on the game.

Good morning, ladies! A bridal consultant tottered toward us, legs bound by a black pencil skirt. Welcome to Francesca’s, she said in chirping tones.

My mother fitted her sunglasses onto the crown of her head, removing her hand from my arm. My grief swelled again to the boundary of skin. Hi, I’m Marissa—we have ten o’clock meeting. Her halting English, which I’d grown accustomed to, newly rankled in the marmoreal perfection of the shop. This my daughter, Kathleen. Today she find the dress for wedding.

The consultant, who introduced herself as Greta, pumped my hand. So exciting! Congratulations on the engagement, Kathleen.

Actually, she’s the one getting married. I’m her maid of honor, I said.

Greta’s smile froze. Oh, that’s wonderful. Why don’t you girls come back with me?

As we followed her, my mother whispered in Mandarin, Let’s have fun. Don’t worry about how much it is.

This excursion, and the Big Sur wedding that was three months away, was being financed by her fiancé. Brian Lin owned a software company called Wayfindr that, as far as I could understand it, leveraged personal data and real-time location to herd people into buying lattes or visiting the zoo. When they had started dating a little more than two years ago, my mother had said I’m going to love him in the same tone she might have used for I’ll finally be able to redo the kitchen.

Money had always been elusive for us. We were diligent with our frugality, elevating it to a kind of morality—especially after my parents’ divorce. Birthday parties I attended caused agonizing negotiations over the spending limit, and inevitable shame when the kid unwrapped a mountain of presents more titillating than mine. Trips to the movies were tolerated only if we strung together three back-to-back screenings. I learned the strange pleasure of self-denial, of trying on a pair of jeans I’d lusted after for weeks only to slough them off and leave the would-be version of myself hanging in the dressing room. In that way, everything in my adolescence was calculated against assimilation, every precious dollar diverted from the frivolity of fitting in bringing us closer to the middle class. At the grocery store, my mother paused in each aisle as she sifted through the stack of coupons she’d dutifully harvested from the mail. Often, by a trick of sales and double coupons, the store owed her cash at the register. It had seemed like a triumph, however measly, over the system.

Now we entered a cavern of dresses arranged by color, the fabrics a rustling hedge of satin and silk. I had never liked frills, to my mother’s frustration. Warmth crept up my cheeks. I felt as though I were choosing lingerie in front of an audience.

My bridemaid wearing pink, purple, my mother told Greta. She tapped her phone, enlarged the Pinterest image—Brian must have shown her how to use the app—and held the screen aloft. I think long dress. My daughter like a size six.

Ten, I amended.

So pretty, said Greta, nodding at the screen. Any preference in neckline?

Not strapless, I said, my words colliding with my mother’s, No straps.

Greta laughed, exposing a long incisor. "Opinionated women! Okay, let me just grab a couple of dresses that I think you’ll adore, and I’ll meet you in the dressing room."

The private room had a trifold mirror at one end and a padded bench at the other. My mother set down her bag and began walking heel-toe, heel-toe toward her reflection, her body contoured by performance wear. I’d only been back in California for a week and I was still adjusting to the new Marissa Cheng. This woman was happier than the one I’d grown up with, more robust. This woman was empowered and had means—or at least she would be marrying her means atop a seaside bluff come August. With her new fiancé, she sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, hiked, climbed sandstone boulders, ran loops in the Oakland hills. All things unimaginable for the Marissa I knew, who had spent her spare hours cleaning the house and watching television, a bottle of wine beside her. But now, as she described her recent outings with Brian, my gaze grew slack, and her face separated into two overlapping orbs. Then I studied the unfamiliar features. It wasn’t that the nose had grown or the lips had migrated, it was that I was seeing her from the perspective of a stranger, as if for the first time.

There were, of course, real physical changes: at fifty-three, my mother had always been petite, but now she was trim, her hair smartly angled toward her jaw. Her recent weight loss had revealed the delicate planes of her face, like petals flaking away from a shrouded bud. She had traded her mom capris and department-store blouses for athletic gear. In her spandex pants and fleece half-zips, she looked sporty and self-possessed, the type of woman who might race up a switchback with a mantra pulsing in her chest: If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. I missed the old Marissa. At least she would have provided a dreary comfort.

As we waited, she swept a strand of hair from her face, then flinched and swore.

What’s wrong? I asked.

It’s my bracelet, she said in Mandarin, holding out her wrist so that I could see the matte-black band. Someone could mistake it for a minimalist watch; it had a square screen that glowed green when she tapped it, revealing a countdown. It gives me a shock if my hand gets too close to my mouth during fasting hours. I still have an hour and fourteen minutes until lunch. I can also deliver manual shocks if I’m about to make a bad decision—have a cupcake, for example. She paused. Or have a drink.

I looked at her, aghast. "I’m sorry—it shocks you? Why would you do that to yourself?"

To be more disciplined, she said matter-of-factly. I sized down for my wedding dress, you know. It has to fit. She encircled one wrist with the other hand, touching the middle finger and thumb together, and then moved to measure my forearm, too.

Mom, that’s awful. I shook her off. You don’t need to lose any more weight, and definitely not through torture.

She ignored me, fiddling with the device. She’d been chronicling her diminishing body, but she’d never mentioned this. I wondered what other torments she’d adopted in the manic renovation of her life.

Ever since my father’s infidelity barreled through our home twenty years ago, my mother had been managing grief, uncertain finances, and an eternal homesickness for Shanghai. For most of my grade school and undergraduate years, she’d medicated with drink, the habit eroding her until she was as faceless as a river rock. Then she’d met Brian—the same year I’d met Oren, my ex—who had jolted her back into being. Something I hadn’t been able to do for her, though I’d been there all along. I watched her body turning in the mirror now, her reflection somehow more familiar than the flesh.

Greta burst through the curtain, pink gowns draped over her arm like deflated bodies. She hooked them on the wall and said breathlessly, Okay, ladies, here comes the fun part. I grabbed a couple in different sizes so you can get a feel for what you’re most comfortable in, and keep in mind that we can always get them custom fitted.

Beautiful, my mother said in English, sighing. She plucked one dress out by its plastic covering and cocked her head at me. You want try on?

It had a sweetheart neckline, which I’d opposed to avoid the burden of cleavage, but I obliged. Both women watched as I stripped. Discarding my raglan T-shirt and denim shorts, exposing a soft belly and the hump of flesh under my bra band, I found that I had transcended physical lumpiness—I had somehow become spiritually lumpy. I stepped into a ring of chiffon while my mother fussed at my front, jerking the dress over my breasts, patting me down as if it would make me smaller. Her armpits smelled like spoiled milk and lemons. I regarded the black bracelet warily, bracing for a shock.

High class, she said, fingering the thin beaded band at the waistline. She stepped away, freeing my view of the mirror and the trio of reflections. I remembered the fragments she’d told me about her rationed childhood in Shanghai, when she woke hours before dawn to line up for her family’s precious share of rice, pork, eggs, and other scarcities during the end of the Cultural Revolution—including the cloth with which she would learn to sew her own dresses. How she’d clutched the coupon book in her pocket to keep it safe, shivering in the half-light. Things had been even more dire in the countryside, where our relatives shared a single pair of trousers, wearing them in rotation whenever one of them left the house. It never seemed like the right time to ask for more details; against these stories of suffering and famine, my mother’s reticence, my shyness, and the mundane needs of the moment always won out. Now, my mother clapped her hands with delight as Greta closed my dress, cinching the breath out of me.

I don’t know about this, I said.

Try put hair down.

I tugged it out of its ponytail, but it retained an unflattering crease where the elastic had been. What is this, a six?

Yes, it is, said Greta.

Well, that’s the wrong size.

My mother toggled into Mandarin. We’ll do something about that before August, she said, then switched back to English. So pretty. Look like princess.

I gritted my teeth. Why don’t we try another?

The last time I’d dressed up had been a mere month ago, though it felt like another lifetime—it’d been another wedding, an intimate party in the backyard of a dive bar, which I’d attended with Oren, suspecting nothing. I had been ecstatic, caught up in the delicious pooling amber of other people’s love, imagining looking up at him at the altar.

Oren had had to dump me twice. The first time, he made such a kind and gentle incision that I hadn’t recognized it as a severance at all. When he left our apartment to spend a week away, I took it as a chance for the two of us to regenerate, to reconnect as more intentional, lucid versions of ourselves. It was only when he returned and unfurled the air mattress that I understood—understood with my whole body the way, as a child, I had recognized death in the mute outline of my pet rabbit from across the room. I’d had to endure the same speech from him, delivered just as tenderly, though a bit more emphatically. It wouldn’t be fair to pretend, he’d said, and the realization that he’d practiced that line drained the world of its color. We’d be denying ourselves the kind of love we both deserve. But I’d thought what I deserved was Oren.

After the breakup I’d keened in my adviser’s office until she granted me a leave of absence. I had been struggling in my classes anyway. Oren was five years into the cognitive psychology PhD program at Johns Hopkins, and was relocating to Gainesville for an internship at his top-choice university. Me, on the other hand: I was back at home with a useless master’s degree, preparing for my mother’s matrimony instead of mine.

As Greta leaned into me, disentangling my bra from the hanger strap of another dress, I saw where the dark foundation ended on her jawline. She looked at me, and our eyes snagged.

This dress had a lace yoke that cut into my armpits. My mother hummed a note of distaste.

I don’t think this is the one, either, said Greta, wrinkling her nose. I’ll head back and grab some final selections, and you’ll have a chance to think through your options.

Thank you very much, Greta, said my mother. As soon as Greta left the room, Marissa shifted her civic smile—the one she used with waiters and bank tellers and lost tourists—on me. Then it faded into a slack line of disappointment. You’re making her uncomfortable, she said in Mandarin.

What do you mean?

"You’re standing there like a si ren, stone-faced at this, stone-faced at that. These are designer pieces, Kathleen."

I hadn’t told her about Oren. Telling my mother would make it real, a fact outside of myself that would go on the family record. Instead, I leaned into my irritation. I’d feel a lot better if you didn’t make me squeeze into things that clearly don’t fit.

"They will fit, she insisted. You don’t plan on staying this big, do you?"

I saw it then: her old face, her eyes filled with arctic dark. We were picking up an old conversation. Part of me felt relieved that the woman I wanted to hold accountable, that I wanted to accuse, was still there.

Of course not, I said. I was thinking of getting a cattle prod—you know, the new diet trend.

Say what you want about it, but it wouldn’t hurt to put a little more effort into self-improvement. Your cousin Ingrid just lost ten pounds.

How is that possible? She weighed ten pounds to begin with.

And she just got into Harvard Business School.

Related, I’m sure.

Of course it’s related. It’s called discipline. Hard work. Determination.

You’re being so superficial, Mom. You can’t judge someone’s work ethic by how thin they are.

She tutted. Don’t twist my words.

I get it, okay? Ingrid is brilliant and perfect! I’m sorry I’m not Ingrid! My mother was good at this—forcing me into desperate, exaggerated stances that I thought I’d outgrown.

I’m not asking you to be perfect, and I know you’re not Ingrid. She looked down at her hands and then spoke into the mirror, where our faces were less searing. You’re always too defensive to listen. I wouldn’t worry about you if you were a man. Money, looks—you need them to survive as a woman.

I’ll be fine.

"Kan ba," said my mother. We’ll see.

A bolt of rage shot through me. "You didn’t have money or looks before you met Brian, I snapped, so don’t act like you knew what you were doing."

At least I knew what I was missing. When I think about how hard I worked to raise you—

Yes, you, mother of the year! You must not remember the nights that I cleaned up your piss and put you to bed. I’ve come as far as I have because your life was depressing, not because of any magical parenting. My words went agitatedly in and out of Mandarin, picking up shards of English.

I was sick, she said, sounding stricken. Her features deflated. I tried to hold on to my anger as the seconds ticked by, but it only curdled into hot shame. Finally, she said quietly, When you have kids, be sure to have more than one, or she’ll grow up too selfish to think of anyone but herself. That was my mistake.

Her attacks could be so masterful, aimed from a shocking distance, each word a precise shaft. Sometimes they made me stagger in anger; other times, like now, they delivered me to a smothering darkness. I looked at her face, its beauty clarified by fury, and understood how much she loved me. I heaved the words at her feet. Mama, I said, Oren broke up with me. And I told the school that I don’t know if I’m going back.

"Shenme? What are you saying?"

Oren doesn’t love me. At least not enough.

A hesitation, and then she surprised me by encircling me with her arms. I tried to relax into their unfamiliar hardness, feeling the new architecture of her body, but the gesture made us both too self-conscious to be any real comfort. Don’t worry. You’ll rest at home. Spend this summer on yourself, and you’ll feel better enough to go back to school.

That’s what you’re focusing on?

Xiao Mao, she said, using my pet name. She rubbed my shoulders and looked around the dressing room, as though remembering that we weren’t like this: We weren’t articulate with affection. "Now is the time to focus on school, your career. Someone even better will come along, ni xiangxin."

A wild loneliness settled in my body. But what did I expect? She’d never shown much interest in my relationships, perhaps preoccupied by her own dramas, perhaps afraid of further burden. She knew that I’d meant to marry Oren, which had always felt like enough information. I was also reluctant to share my life. Growing up, I thought being aloof would make me less vulnerable to the times she would come home from work and slump toward the bedroom without saying a word, or the times she would drink and screech. It hadn’t occurred to me until recently that maybe her reciprocal coolness had been a way of feigning strength.

If it was meant to be, it would have been, she continued. Maybe there’s something to learn from this.

This is not helping.

You’re always the one being broken up with, she said in a tone of pity and accusation. Maybe that’s saying something, too. And you know I never thought he was very good-looking. He has giant eyes, like a bug.

I’d heard enough. I’m going to the bathroom, I said.

I punched my arms through the sleeves of my shirt. It was my fault for expecting anything but judgment and blame. Sweeping aside the dressing room curtain, I felt oddly menacing. Bull in a china shop, I thought, picturing a hoof impacting the encrusted throat of a gown, a spray of Swarovski crystals studding the air.

The restroom was down the hall, across from a door marked employees only. I paused at a water fountain. Leaning into the dribble, I heard Greta’s voice say in muffled tones, That’s not even the end of it. This morning he tells me he can’t do dinner. So I’m supposed to entertain his sister alone. Like, what? I’m sorry, there isn’t enough wine in the world to make that worth my time. The door swung open before she’d finished her sentence and the final words rang out in the corridor. The workroom tittered; the door closed again.

Greta and I stood facing each other. She touched the side of her blond bun, then laughed airily and said, Sorry. Watercooler talk.

It’s okay, I said, glad for the distraction. We all have that one relative.

Gotta love family. She swept an arm toward the end of the hallway, inviting me to walk. She said, You and your mom are so cute. It’s sweet that you’re supporting her as her maid of honor.

It was hard to imagine the dressing room scene as sweet, but I was relieved that we appeared so to an audience. Sorry we’re being so indecisive with the dress.

Not at all! We’re going to find you The One. Greta said it with a flourish of capital letters. In fact, while I have you here, let me get your opinion. Her skirt made shushing noises as she led me to a corner of the main floor, where she paused before a rack of dresses. She slid a hand across the shades of cream as if gliding across piano keys. These are technically bridal gowns, but they come in other colors, too. I had this one in mind as a maybe—what do you think?

As she pulled it out of its plastic sheath, I felt a surprising prickle of interest. The dress had two elongated petals over the hips and braided straps that harnessed the collarbone. She raised it in the air and rocked the hanger back and forth, undulating the skirt. It really moves, she said.

I don’t hate it, I said.

Okay, okay, getting warmer. How about this? Greta held another dress against her body and slow danced with one hand on its hip. The asymmetrical seams and draping reminded me of a candle melting—an effect I liked, immediately and mysteriously.

I’ll try that on. Then, with some relish: My mom’s going to hate it.

Greta waved her hand. You can’t go wrong with this label. Veronika Kraus. She’s an up-and-coming designer from Austria. Her stuff has an edge, she said, and laughed in a way that made me wonder how