anymore.” Danny stuffs the paper into the crook of his ex-lover’s arm and walks away. He feels worse with every passing pedestrian, every shiny car that speeds down the street. He turns up Jervis, remembering there are prints to make and film to buy for the next wedding. He stumbles toward his own particular silence in his contained studio.
That evening, Danny steps onto the walk leading to his apartment building. The laurel shrubs on either side have grown taller than him and lean inward, their branches brushing his shoulders, their tops connecting like a roof. He is overwhelmed by the feeling that he is being swallowed by the bush, and he puts his hand out to swat away the glossy leaves.
A quacking duck flies through the dimming sky. Danny looks up at the sound and squints. As he pushes his key into the lock of the front door, his foot brushes a paper bag beside the welcome mat. He sees the message, FOR DANNY LIM, written in black marker across the front. He crouches down and unrolls the crumpled brown paper, so wrinkled it appears to have been used and reused, folded and stuffed into a drawer between uses. Inside is a glass pickle jar with its label scrubbed off. On the lid, a piece of paper reads, “Danny, some soup for you. From, Mommy.” He picks up the bag, one hand supporting the bottom, and carries it into the building. The jar’s vaguely green contents slosh as he steps into the elevator. He stares ahead at the textured light pink wallpaper, striated to look like linen, or, he supposes, Thai silk.
In his kitchen, he pours the soup into a pot and sets it on a burner, watching as the coils turn red. The empty pickle jar stands on the counter, residual solids from the soup lining the bottom. Danny wants to pick up the jar and fling it across the room, watch it smash into shards that fall to the hardwood floor. He can imagine his mother, wearing a pair of long walking shorts and a short-sleeved, button-down shirt, riding the bus to the West End. The backs of her legs stick to the vinyl seat. Her thickly knuckled hands cradle the soup in her lap. She switches buses, walks down streets she memorized earlier only because her son chooses to live here and presses the buzzer by the front door to his apartment building. He can imagine her waiting patiently, buzzing once, maybe twice more. After several minutes, she carefully places the bag by the welcome mat, where Danny is sure to see it. She hesitates then tightens the lid once more so the raccoons, with their strangely human hands, won’t be able to pry it open. And then she walks to the corner and boards the bus to return home, where Doug will be silent and brooding because dinner isn’t ready yet, where she will lie and say she was visiting Auntie Mona and lost track of time.
His mother was here, standing at the front door to his building, peering through the glass doors, watching to see if Danny might step out of the elevator into the lighted lobby. He grips the counter with both hands. His mother has stepped into his carefully constructed life, bearing a gift that will taste like his childhood, those days he spent helping her in the kitchen, his skin absorbing the ginger-scented hot oil until he was sure if he sniffed himself, his nose would recognize each dish his mother cooked.
One particular Sunday, Danny walked into the kitchen, blinking against the blazing lights. He wore the new pyjamas his mother had bought him for his eighth birthday. It was the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, and he still wasn’t sure if it was morning or night. Betty moved from stove to sink to table, her hands covered in rice flour. A patch in her hair released a fine white dust whenever she stepped forward or turned around, as if she were slowly shedding her outer self in small puffs. Danny sneezed before the thick smell of pork broth coated the inside of his nose.
“You must help me or I won’t finish before the solstice is over,” his mother said. She took Danny’s hand and pulled him toward the kitchen table. “You make the balls,” she said, pointing to a mound of white dumpling dough in a bowl. She pulled off a piece the size of a Ping-Pong ball