Escape Route

The snow had stopped falling but not before nearly covering the heavy tread of the paramedics up to the front door. Alexa could see where the ambulance had veered into their driveway. She turned the key in the lock and her back on the blank, shut door. She couldn’t remember the last time the house had been empty when she’d left for school. 

It was a mushy day in March. Her breath made weak puffs as she waited at the bus stop. Daylight tore ragged edges into her eyes and she felt dizzy with tiredness. She breathed in and out, exhaling the events of the night out of her body. She imagined pushing it out her lungs in vapid, colourless streams. Exhale: the thumps that woke her in the middle of the night. Another: her mother’s weak cries. And again: the ambulance’s wheeling red and blue lights through her bedroom window, the sound of boots in the hallway. Her dad’s limp hand dangling over the stretcher that she’d glimpsed when she jumped up out of bed and opened her bedroom door. From the top of the stairs, she watched the medics carrying him down carpeted stairs. If he were awake, he’d be annoyed at the wet boots on the carpet, Alexa thought. When her mother came back up and saw her daughter up, she waved both her hands like a frantic bird.

“Lei goh Baba beng-ah,” she said quickly. Your father’s sick. “Ngo tong kuh heu yee yoon. Lei heu fang fung gow.” I go with him to the hospital. You go back to sleep. 

Alexa watched her mother climb into the back of the ambulance, her winter coat wrapped around her pyjamas, the doors creaking closed, the ambulance backing out of the driveway and emitting one low vowel before zipping off under the thick streetlights. Then the house was quiet, but as the hours passed Alexa could hear warm air pushing in and out of the vents and the refrigerator chugging below. She heard a small voice telling her, There’s nothing you can do. You don’t know where to go. It was the last thing she remembered before finally falling asleep, a shallow, roving sleep.

There were messages on her phone in the morning. 

Dad is ok. I come home tonight. 

The bus veered towards the stop, and Alexa got on, fumbling for her pass. Her movements were uncoordinated and slow. Some of the kids from her school were huddled at the back, so to avoid them she sat near the front. She’d slid on those wide front seats when she was little, with her dad and her sister, Mei in his lap and her brother Leo holding the pole and pretending the careening bus floor was a surfboard. Mei, on a theatre trip in New York, was due back tomorrow, and Leo was away at university out west. Alexa wondered if she should call them, or if her mother already had. Alexa tapped her brother’s number and it went to voicemail before she remembered the time difference. She hung up without leaving a message and stared out the window at the boxy government buildings, each of them like small fortresses, suspicious of each other.

Today of all days she could’ve skipped first period, hell, she could’ve skipped the whole day. The evening before, she’d studied for a test on King Lear, answered problem sets for trigonometry, packed her bag with her work uniform—pale yellow ball-cap, black t-shirt stitched with the Megaplex logo. She was annoyed at herself now for doing these things like they actually mattered. She tasted acid in her mouth, her stomach sending up bile and clenching on the instant cinnamon and raisin oatmeal she’d eaten for breakfast. 

The idea of school, with its clinical hallways and metallic, inarguable bells made her feel seasick. She thought about getting up off the bus and walking downtown, along the river that was beginning to unlock itself from its cage of ice. The bright cold air, how she would suck it greedily into her lungs. Next stop, she thought. But the bus stopped and she couldn’t get off. Next one, said the voice in her mind. 

Get up. Get up now and don’t think about it. But she couldn’t move. 

Yesterday when Alexa got home she knew her parents had been fighting. A sour feeling of frustration hung in the house heavy as grease. Usually her mother would be reading at the table or washing vegetables for dinner. Lately she had been borrowing elementary English books from the library, textbooks on bookkeeping. Her dad came home and either watched the news or checked the stock market on the computer. Alexa heard her mother on the phone upstairs. She couldn’t find her dad in the house, but then saw his combed-back thinning hair and cigarette smoke on the back deck, looping through the dusk. A glass of something amber on the metal table. 

Her mother came downstairs and began warming up some leftover chicken and dropping bundles of egg noodles into boiling water. “Tell your father dinner is ready,” she told Alexa. 

Alexa pulled open the porch door. 

“Baba, sek fan,” she said. 

Her father looked up at her as if vastly amused. 

“Hoa-ah,” he said. “Lei gun,” Fine. I’m coming. 

Dinner was quiet without Mei’s chattering and her brother, Leo, fending off their dad’s incessant questions with monosyllabic answers. Alexa, the middle child, was at times accused of sullenness, but otherwise she slipped between her parents’ attention like a thin note sandwiched in a thick volume. She ate quickly, anxious to go to her room. It was daunting to be left with her parents alone like this. She could hardly taste her food with the tension hovering above them. 

She willed herself to be elsewhere, to remember the good things, the good times. She thought of the times he had relieved them from the monotony of Saturday homework and chores by hustling them into their turquoise Mitsubishi Expo and speeding off to the racetrack, the observatory atop the local university, the historic fort, the strawberry farm, the royal mint. On these excursions he’d urged them towards the front row, to taste the fresh jam or to ask for directions, despising timidity in his children. Leo would stoically obey, and Mei ran eagerly forward, but Alexa hung back. The more determinedly energetic their father became, the more a sense of dread would paralyze her, because his good cheer could vanish as quickly as a comet. 

As a child, Alexa almost preferred the times when, locked out of the house with her siblings for some wrong word or complaint, she could pull weeds in peace while her brother raked leaves and little Mei entertained them with her antics. Once, when their father had driven off in a rage, she’d thought how much more peaceful it was to walk home with her mother. Even his penitent apologies exhausted her. When he told them again and again how lucky they were, she knew she was required only to be an empty vessel. Something for her father to look through, to see possibilities on the other, distant end. 

When Alexa went upstairs after clearing the table and thanking her mom for dinner (her dad insisted all his children do this after every meal), she heard her parents restart their arguing. She paused in the hallway to listen. They had been arguing more and more about money. Her Cantonese was weak but from what she could understand, her dad wanted to make investments, buy another property, while their mother wanted to save, pay off the house. 

Before they came to Canada, her mother was studying for her accounting certification. But since becoming pregnant at 22 with Leonard, then with Alexandra, and then Amelia, she had only found a job once all three of her children were in school. She worked part-time at a bank branch in Chinatown where most of the Cantonese customers were happy to lean over the counter with someone who didn’t only explain transaction fees in English. Their mother had wanted to continue with her accounting studies in Canada, but after taking one night course in English that she’d failed, their dad exhorted that an extra income was needed. He’d worked in an engineering firm in Hong Kong, sourcing materials and excelling at supply chain logistics. His salary had been enough to support his parents and their young family, since they could still live in his parents’ apartment below Victoria Peak. But in Canada, working as a construction site manager, with a mortgage and three children, their father couldn’t adjust himself to the idea that so many things would have to wait, or might be out of reach—a bigger house, private schools, trips back to visit his aging parents. In the meantime he spent more and more time online trading, doing well enough some years for a new car or a holiday, but losing thousands in the dot-com bubble and most recently, bad property investment advice from an old school friend. 

Alexa had rarely heard her mother so fierce and bitter. Her words sounded like acid, thrown on the walls, burning with accusations. Everything she knew about her parents, she’d pieced together from overheard conversations, sticky comments other people thought unimportant enough to throw over the heads of their nieces, nephews, cousins and grandkids. 

Exhausted, she lay on her quilt with her arms by her sides. She had the smallest bedroom in the house, but she liked it because it had the biggest window, overlooking the shady street with its sociable oaks and maples. When she was little, she realized that if there was a fire in the house she would be the only one to escape safely. Her window screen could be removed and it was a short drop below to the garage roof, where she could swing from the branches of an elm tree to the ground. She always meant to practice one day. 

Stop, drop and roll. She imagined smoke curling from under the door, wrapping around her bed, reaching for her ankles. It occurred to her that if she was asleep, she’d likely asphyxiate before she could put her escape plan into action. 

By letting her arms and legs do the work, Alexa pushed through the day. Habit was strong in them. She was writing her English test and at the same time she was still in bed, struggling to push off a burning weight. She was in the raucous stairwell and could feel in her stomach unseen collisions. But no matter how much she denied present moment, her father had still nearly died.

At the lunchtime bell she saw a text from her brother, and she felt a lift of gladness. 

-Hey saw you called 

She texted back: 

-Dad’s in the hospital 

In a few moments, she saw her brother’s response: 

-Yeah I know Mom called me 

Her phone started to buzz and she answered her brother’s call. 

“Hey, how are you doing?” 

“Wait, I can’t hear you, it’s too loud in here.” Alexa got up, grabbing her backpack, and walked to the stairwell where she and her friends sometimes ate. 

“Is that better?” 

“Yeah but you sound all echoey. You at school?” 

“Yeah.” 

“You could’ve skipped today.” 

“No way. I hate being home alone.” She paused. “What did Mom say?” 

“She said Dad was stable.” 

“Did she say anything about why he’s sick?” 

“What, you don’t know?” 

“No. All I saw was the ambulance and Mom went with him and she didn’t come home.” 

“She told me he fell out of bed, or maybe he fell on the way to the washroom and when she heard the noise she saw him on the floor and she couldn’t wake him up. So she called 911.”

This was the bare minimum that their mother would reveal to any of them, though she tended to tell Leo more because he was her eldest, and only son. Alexa suspected she told him things as if to rely on him in ways she couldn’t rely on their father.

She could see the whole scene in her head, as if she’d been crouched on the floor or under the bed the entire time, the way she and sister used to do to see how long they could hide before being missed. 

Alexa said nothing but she made a sound so that her brother knew she was still there. 

“She thinks maybe he mixed up his medication.” 

“Do you think he did?” 

“I don’t know.”

Their father was on medication for insomnia and anxiety, and sometimes he took one or two extra in times of stress. He also had medication for heart palpitations, which a cousin had sent him. It was also easy to imagine her father taking more than was safe that evening. They added this instance to the long list of things they would never know for sure about their parents. 

“They were fighting a lot last night.” 

“Yeah.” He paused. “Should I come home?” 

“I’m not sure if there’s any point.” 

Alexa saw a pair of legs in light blue jeans, felt someone’s arm slide against hers as she sat down. Her best friend, Livvy. 

“Mom said that if things continue like this we might lose the house,” Leo said. 

“Oh my God.” Alexa could feel Livvy listening, and tried not to react too much. 

“You have to get out of there,” her brother said. 

“I still have another year of school.” 

“Go on exchange. Come out here. You can stay with Uncle Louis too.” 

“In my senior year?” 

“It doesn’t matter, all that high school graduation stuff.” 

“Are you coming home for the summer?” Alexa asked, already knowing that he wouldn’t be. 

Leo didn’t say anything, and in the background she heard other voices. 

“Like you said, there’s maybe no point. And I think Uncle Louis wants me to look after the house.” 

Their sister Mei would be heading to the same dance and theatre camp she had attended for years, now as a junior counsellor-in-training. Alexa felt like she’d missed a silent alarm her siblings had heard. They’d made plans without her, and now she was scrambling to catch up. 

When Alexa hung up, Livvy was halfway done her sandwich.

“Are you still coming over tonight?” she asked with her mouth full of ham and cheddar cheese.

 Tell her, the voice said. Tell someone. “I don’t know,” she paused. 

“What?! But my future depends on you! How else am I gonna get out of this…this existential crisis of a city?” 

Alexa couldn’t help laughing. Livvy began making moaning noises, clutching at Alexa’s arm. 

“Ok, ok, are you rehearsing for a drama audition too? I didn’t know.” 

“Yes, I didn’t want you to be overwhelmed by my many talents, but if you don’t help out I’ll be stuck directing high school productions of Porgy and Bess for the rest of my career.” Livvy wiped the back of her hand against her forehead, smudging her mascara.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Alexa said. “There are worse things than the George Gershwin songbook.” It was relaxing to be in someone else’s drama for awhile. They’d been friends since grade school, and though they were not alike, their teachers mixed them up constantly. Alexa knew that if Olivia were in her position, she would not hesitate about calling her mom, insisting on going to the hospital, and streaking across the school’s front lawn to catch the first bus to where her father lay breathing slowly, breathing under the weight of what he hadn’t done. 

In the near future, heading towards her like a car with its headlights on, was the moment she would have to unlock the front door at home to everything that waited for her there. Alexa wanted to avoid that unlatching for as long as she could. When the final bell rung, Alexa trudged through the wet, snow-melty streets with Livvy to her house. 

Livvy had played violin since she was six, and unlike other kids who gave it up by third grade, was in the city youth orchestra and an assistant director with the school ensemble. Alexa had agreed to help her film some audition tapes. She’d borrowed a tripod and camera from school, and spent half an hour fussing over the lighting set-up, losing herself in the angles the light made. Livvy tuned her violin and then warmed up as Alexa dragged an assortment of lamps into the living room. 

“The light’s best in the morning,” she grumbled. But she was happy for the distraction. Behind a camera, she felt the world pull into limited perspective. 

“My violin teacher wants me to drop this off to her tonight,” Livvy said, rubbing resin on her bow. “Besides it doesn’t matter how fabulous I look, only how I sound.”

Alexa got her camera in focus and hit record. Livvy began playing a quick piece that sounded like a bird hitting a wall, again and again. Then a few minutes in, the bird got free and soared above the trees. She was lucky, Alexa thought. Her parents had willingly given their daughter a means of getting out of their small, sterile government town, through thousands of hours of lessons. Her instrument of opportunity was firmly grasped between her chin and collarbone, and Livvy didn’t even need to use her hands to hold it. 

“Hi Alexandra, you want to eat dinner with us?” Mrs. Chao arrived home holding a couple of take-out bags, the smell of charred pork wafting around her like a scarf. 

“Oh thank you so much, but I gotta go to work.” Alexa hefted her knapsack off the floor onto her back, swinging it so hard that it hit her shoulder. Livvy’s dad was always away on business, so it was usually just the two of them. Waiting for the bus downtown, Alexa nibbled on the steamed bun Mrs. Chao had insisted on pushing into her hand while sucking the air through her teeth. Like all Chinese parents, Livvy’s mother had no need to vocalize their misgivings about other parents’ children. Yet the freedoms Alexa and her siblings enjoyed were not granted because of parental magnanimity, but because her father required a different kind of vigilance. 

When she reached the theatre, Alexa felt heavy, slow and useless. She wished she had called her manager earlier, but she hated making requests of that kind. All day she had been where she was supposed to be, as if to make up for the fact that her dad wasn’t. In the dark theatre her eyes felt cool but the other Alexa in her head was asking her what the point of it all was. Obeying her mother and staying at home, mindlessly going to school instead of the hospital, and showing up for a measly five-hour shift, were signs to herself that she was incapable of any real courage. 

In the staff room, Gabrielle, Tyler and Kim tossed heys and nods at her. 

“Have you come to my rescue?” Kim asked. 

“Here she goes,” said Tyler, leaning back in his chair. 

“What’s going on?” said Alexa, taking off her coat.

“Can you cover my shift tomorrow? 11 to 6?” Kim put her hands in prayer and raised them to her chest. “I’m already working tomorrow. Closing shift.” 

“Oh poo,” said Kim. She was in her junior year, like Alexa, but at a different school. “Could you come in…” 

“Oh are you doing the schedule now, Kim?” Gabrielle rose from her chair. “That’s great, saves me a lot of work. But no way is Lexie working a twelvehour shift.” 

“Sorry Kim,” Alexa said. “I could come in earlier, I don’t mind.” 

“See? She doesn’t mind!” 

“Don’t let her take advantage,” said Gabrielle. 

Alexa grabbed the broom and dustpan. She didn’t look at them when she spoke. 

“It’s not like I have anything else going on,” she said as they watched her. Saying it made it true.

Besides having an excuse to avoid going home, the other bonus with this job was that staff could see new releases at a discount. Most of the time, her coworkers didn’t bother taking her money and simply waved her into the theatre. Watching films, Alexa believed, was the easiest way of escaping without having to actually go anywhere. She was amazed at being able to watch emotions step across the faces of actors, lingering there, fleeing. If Alexa watched carefully, she could see everything, the moment they came to a decision, the moment they fell in love. She could see how it was supposed to look. 

Close to eleven, when the theatre was finally empty of its last Friday night couples, her coworkers tried to convince her to come with them to the pub down the street. She waved to them outside the theatre, but turned the other way. Once or twice she’d gone with them, ordering fries and a soda, and someone would surreptitiously pour her a glass of cider. In applying for this job, Alexa was following her brother’s lead. Since the age of 12 or 13, he spent as little time at home as possible. His movements were always on fast forward, a constant cycle of school practices, track-and-field, co-op placements, volunteering, and summer jobs. Their father protested, but Leo was still home for dinner, brought home good though not exceptional grades, and did his share of his chores on weekends.

But when she spent long stretches in other people’s company, their voices began sounding like foreigners speaking with exaggerated accents. Surely there was some calm place, a place where things slowed down enough for her to hold onto them. You’ll leave this soon enough, said the other Alexa, the future Alexa. One day she would miss all of this, the quiet streets, with hardly any people walking or driving down them, even the sense of things taking place elsewhere. Her father’s accident—if that was what it was—brought the world of events so close that she felt its hot breath, like a passing car, but still she couldn’t catch up to it. The possibility that he would want to leave them, even unknowingly, overwhelmed her with another possibility—that the father who caused violent concentric centres to ripple from his words and actions had himself felt caught in the deep plunge and surge of their impact. That his discontent was not the cause of their upheaval but another effect of it. 

Waiting for the bus, she thought of her mother, waiting at the kitchen table. Her father, sleeping in the hospital, maybe wearing a thin gown instead of his warm navy pyjamas. Mei in a hotel room with her besties. Her brother running laps on the university track. It seemed everyone had an arrangement except for her—her classmates, her siblings, Livvy—all had places they were bound for. 

Alexa turned the key and opened the front door to the tall brick rowhouse. The hallway was dark but she could see the kitchen light on in the back, and knew her mother was sitting there with her account books. Their father often talked about the big house he’d buy them one day, even though this house had enough bedrooms for all of them, and was twice as big as their apartment in Hong Kong. Alexa had been five when they’d come to Canada and remembered the narrow hallways and dark kitchen, sharing a bedroom with her grandparents. 

“Alexa, ham-hei lei-ah?” her mother called. Alexa, is that you? 

She came into the kitchen, and her mother got up to cover a bowl of noodles with an overturned plate, reaching over to the microwave. 11:11, the microwave flashed. The stovelight made her white hairs gleam. Alexa hadn’t seen them before. 

“How’s Dad?” she said, wondering how many more times she would ask that question in her lifetime. 

“Kuh wooh tin yut fang leh,” she answered. He’ll be home tomorrow. 

“So soon?”

Her mother nodded. The microwave spun the bowl around, then stopped with a beep. 

Alexa thanked her mother and drew up her seat to eat. As usual, chopsticks and napkin were already on the table. No matter what grief, her mother would still be folding paper napkins into triangles and placing chopsticks on top of them. The noodles weren’t heated all the way through but she ate them anyway. 

Her mother refilled her tea cup from the hot water dispenser, and started to stack things away, her calculator, with its big buttons wrapped in plastic, the household bills and her chequebook. 

“Lei yeu mm yeu tong ngo fan heu geen PohPoh?” Her mother asked, when Alexa was almost done eating. Do you want to come with me on a trip to see grandma? The casualness of this question, more than the request itself, jerked Alexa’s head up from her bowl. Her mother could’ve been asking her if she wanted to go to the mall on Saturday or if she wanted some mango jello.

“What? When?” 

“Ha goh jyut.” Next month. 

“I can’t, Mom, I have school. And work.” 

Her mother shrugged, as if to say, No big deal.

Alexa stopped eating and stared at her mother, who still wore her pyjama top under her sweater. They had only been back to Hong Kong once in the past eleven years, and then it had been a trip months, if not a whole year, in planning. They had gone then during Lunar New Year, and Alexa remembered how many friends and family they had visited, how her parents had spent hours sitting in kitchens and restaurants with glasses of iced tea and Crown Royal, over mah-jong and card games, while she and her siblings propped themselves in front of TVs and aquariums like dolls. 

“For how long?” 

“We can stay the whole summer,” her mother said, in Chinese. 

“Is Dad coming too?” 

“I didn’t ask him.” 

“What about Leo? Mei?” 

“They can come.”

Alexa couldn’t quite swallow and got up for a glass of water. Her mother, too, had been making preparations. They weren’t the kind of people who asked questions other families found easy. 

“What about your job?” 

“They are planning to close the branch this summer. Better I quit now,” she said. 

The thought of her dad alone for the whole summer, going to work, making his own meals, coming home to an empty house, made her ache. Her stomach clenched and she rose, scrapping the rest of her dinner into the garbage, rinsing her dishes. As she wiped her hands on the dishtowel, her mother touched and squeezed her palms. Her mother’s plans included her, if she wanted them to. 

Alexa thanked her mother for the meal and went to her room, feeling light-headed. She closed the door and sat on the carpet, leaning against her bed. Her clock radio glowed green at 11:54, then 11:55. Something had made her father the way he was, and maybe something could unmake him. If you’re here, then you’re here. Her curtains were open, and the halfmoon was trying to make up its mind. The streetlight slid over the rooftops and spilled wastefully on the pavement. If she smelled smoke, she would want to know where it was coming from.

 

 

Cover photo by Aditya Vyas