Chapter 21 #3
Jamie turns toward me, crossing his legs.
“When Bà Ngo?i first came here, she said she hated it. She felt she’d moved through universes and there was no way to go back home.
Back then, she didn’t really know if the war in Vietnam would end.
Or how it would end. If she’d ever see her family again.
She had so many unspoken thoughts with nowhere for them to go either.
” He clasps his hands, pressing his lips together.
“Grandpa was… he was a good man for his time. But he didn’t get her.
Not with the basic Vietnamese he learned.
Not in the way his heart wasn’t a match for hers.
She eventually found a way for those thoughts and stories and conversations to be told.
She told them to the ancestors, to the sheep, to the sky, and to me.
She found that closure in me when she taught me Vietnamese.
” His features are softer than I’ve ever seen them before, and there’s a gnawing ache in his eyes.
My eyes prickle with unshed tears.
“I think there’s so much to see in this world,” he continues. “So many people to meet. I didn’t know you a year ago. And you didn’t have those murals. Did you ever think you would be here in October in a city that can’t stop talking about the murals you’re painting?”
I draw in a shaky breath. “No.”
The smile he has is full of serenity. “So imagine what more is out there for you. For the world. Maybe you’ll remember me saying this when you’re thirty.”
The words open up pockets of imagination in my mind. Like looking through a telescope and glimpsing a possible distant future. And even though it’s hazy, blurred in and out of focus, I know it can be mine.
Hope is a fragile bird nesting in my ribs. I press my palms against my chest, praying it doesn’t fly away.
“Your paintings will sell for millions,” he says. “Do you ever think about that? The type of art you’d make?”
I nod, my gaze anywhere but at him.
It’s strange talking about the future when the past has wrapped itself around my arms and legs like twine.
“Some time ago, when I could still see the colors, I came across this one post online of a destroyed house in Homs in Syria. Among the rubble, there was this painting with a broken frame. There was dust on the painting, but you could still see what it was supposed to be. It was the middle of the ocean, and it had every shade of blue. It was mesmerizing. I could see all the shades and how they merged with one another. It was alive. I think about the person who painted it because the talent is incredible. The post didn’t say who it was.
Whoever did it must have passed away or left.
But I imagine they lived in that house. Had a whole life and loved to paint.
” I look up at the sky and can see the painting so clearly in my mind.
“I’d like to recreate it. It’s strange to say, but it gave me hope.
Like this painting persisted even with all the pain. ”
“You should do it,” Jamie says instantly. “You should paint it.”
I smile. “Where do you see yourself at thirty?”
He lets out a low whistle. “Still in Wisconsin with Bà Ngo?i. But I’ve been thinking about doing something big for the farm.”
“What do you have in mind?”
He looks shy. “I was thinking about what you said. Studying something that helps the farm. Agricultural science sounds interesting, and I think focusing on horticulture would elevate it.”
“Horticulture?”
“Study of growing plants, fruits and flowers. We can grow cherry and fig trees so families can come in the summer and pick them. In autumn we’ll have pumpkins and roasted corn. Strawberry lemonade in the summer. It becomes not just a farm, but an experience.”
His dreams are a beautiful golden color, like morning sunrise. It washes him whole, spilling onto the pavement.
“Where do you think I’ll be?” I find myself asking, staring at the waterfall of gold.
He breathes in slow. “You’ll be all over the world. San Francisco is just the beginning. Your murals will shoot you up all the way to the sky. People will say your name in awe and wonder. I’ll see you pop up on the news because you invented a new way to draw.”
My lips twitch.
“You’ll be glamorous. Tokyo would be a weekend trip for you, and you’ll have a whole room in your mansion just to paint. You’ll have a long line of customers commissioning you for murals and paintings. You’ll get invited to fancy parties where they serve little mushrooms on snails or something.”
We both burst out laughing.
“I’ll be out with friends, and you’ll be on the cover of Vogue, and I’ll point at your picture and say I knew you. They’ll call me a liar, so I’ll pull up the yearbook.”
My heart twinges. “Knew?”
He pauses, and his expression turns shy. “You wouldn’t want to be friends with a small-town farmer.”
“A small-town farmer who goes to Braxton and lives in a town house in the West Village and his bà ngo?i owns, from the sound of it, a multimillion-dollar property?” I say teasingly.
He nods solemnly. “Exactly.”
I shake my head at him, smiling.
He goes quiet for a while, and I sit in that future he illustrated. It floats beside me, offering me glimpses, teasing me with the possibilities.
I don’t think it’ll happen as he described, but I hope some of it will. Having my own place where I can paint. To allow myself to dream of something bigger than San Francisco feels electrifying, a different shade of joy I forgot about.
Jamie clears his throat. “I think I should get going. Back home, I mean. I gotta read the booklet and see what I should do.”
I nod. “Yeah. Sure.”
We stand at the same time as a strange silence descends between us.
“If you have any questions, just text me.”
“Yeah, I will.” He raises his hand as if to pat my shoulder and then takes it back just as quickly, settling on a wave.
I wave back, watching him walk away.