Edge Case Read online

  It had been a Saturday, the day he proposed. I can’t recall anything of the day outside. We had sex first thing in the morning, and then we let the shades stay drawn into evening, both of us half undressed and optimistically yelling, “Sex all day!” with bravado from time to time. It was a long, lazy afternoon of streaming videos while absentmindedly petting each other until arousal turned into rhythmic comfort. I was contented, sprawled out on the couch with my head nestled on his shoulder.

  When Marlin shifted his weight under me, I thought he needed to go use the bathroom. Instead he maneuvered himself onto his knees and pushed a card into my hands. I fingered its crisp edges and read:

  MARLIN % EDWINA == 0

  “What is this?” I asked, completely bewildered.

  “That percent sign means you’re looking at a modulo operation,” he said.

  I no longer recall his exact explanation, but my understanding is that the modulo is used to find the value left over after division. For example, 5 % 2 == 1, because five divided by two yields two, given two times two equals four, and five minus said four equals one. That one was therefore the remainder, the output of the modulo operation left untouched after division. A kind of surviving figure.

  “So you see,” he said, “I’m trying to tell you that if you and I were to be divided, there would be absolutely nothing left. Zero. You are everything to me.”

  My laughter came out as a shout, followed right away by tears.

  “That’s . . . so corny,” I gasped.

  He grinned and admitted that he’d planned it this way so he could see the exact moment I realized I was being proposed to, the turn of my face from confusion to joy. He wanted to see my happiness in its entirety, right from its very first arrival.

  Now our memento of that singular day had been chopped up. I turned over the piece I was holding.

  MARLIN %

  Had he replaced me in the equation? Fingers trembling, I flipped over the other half from under the knife.

  EDWINA == 0

  I got up and paced. If this was a riddle, then it was one with a blatant answer. He was clearly communicating I was nothing to him. A big, fat zero.

  I walked in circles, too agitated to stop. I strode from one corner of the apartment to another, listening to the AC’s hiss and hum, wishing it would grow louder and louder until my ears rang with its static. Then I was back at the hallway closet, squeezing the door handle so I could feel my hand hurt. The suitcase that was no longer here—it was lime green, a color we’d strategically chosen so it would stand out on luggage conveyor belts. That had been Marlin’s idea, a “hack” as he called it, to make our travels to and from America more efficient. Over the years the suitcase had acquired a smattering of barcode stickers, many of them printed with “PEN,” for Penang International Airport.

  I let go of the handle and looked to our microwave for the time. It was after eleven at night, which meant it was almost noon in Malaysia. My mother-in-law would have just started preparing lunch, dicing onions, laying out little bowls and pewter trays for her mise en place. It was her unfailing routine, or at least it had been until Marlin’s father passed away.

  The phone rang on the other end. After four rings someone picked up, but said nothing. “Mummy?” I whispered. The syllables were strange and lumpy in my mouth. I called my own mother something else. Marlin’s mother had cornered me before our wedding ceremony, holding both my hands in a tight grip, and insisted I start calling her Mummy. While she spoke, I kept peering over her shoulder. Whenever a man rounded a corner into view, my heart lurched. I was expecting my father to somehow appear to surprise me, announcing that he hadn’t been dead for eighteen years after all. Only much later would I realize how oxymoronic it was, to expect a surprise.

  “Mummy?” I tried again.

  “Edwina, is that you?” On the phone, Mummy finally spoke. “Can’t hear you well. The line must be bad.”

  It sounded like an indictment. I swallowed saliva and tried to follow through on my hastily thought-up script. I was just calling to check on her, to see how she was doing in the wake of her husband’s passing. Six months was not at all long ago. There was nothing suspicious about a concerned daughter-in-law calling.

  “How are you doing, Mummy? Making lunch?”

  I sensed a hesitation before her “Yes.”

  “What are you making?” Memories of her hands, busy, proudly showing off herbs fresh-plucked from her garden. Her shooing me out of the kitchen, from which she produced elaborate dishes of kangkung with belacan and sizzling Japanese tofu.

  “Actually I’m just microwaving some noodles that I tapau.”

  “Oh? How come you’re not cooking?”

  “There’s not much point, isn’t it, now that I’m all alone.”

  The resigned sadness in her voice made me ball up my body, dizzy with relief. My head was almost in my lap, phone wedged between ear and thigh. She was speaking to me normally, as far as I could tell, even revealing some vulnerability. No anger or iciness. It meant Marlin hadn’t said anything about the end of us. And if he hadn’t, there was a possibility our marriage wasn’t over. This break, this breach in normality, it could be temporary. All I had to do was find him and convince him—of what? I wasn’t sure yet, but right then it felt like I had the beginnings of a plan.

  Before

  February 2014

  Start from the beginning? Impossible to know when that was, but I’ll begin somewhere, if you think it’ll help.

  It had seemed, at first, like just another lunar New Year spent away from home. I showed up for a party in a fellow Chinese Malaysian’s one-bedroom apartment. A dog brushed against my jeans on its way after a ball. I simultaneously wished to be home home and happy that I wasn’t. At home home, the TV would be blaring all day with variety shows from mainland China and Hong Kong, so that we in the diaspora could, for one week, feel as brassily Chinese as possible. The women would be in the kitchen cooking a double-digit number of dishes, and I would again refuse to join them because I didn’t want to be part of a stereotype. Then everyone would get annoyed at me but would have to hold it in because it was new year, a time when we were all supposed to be one happy family, back together for 团圆, pronounced “tuan yuan,” a phrase that, appropriately, manifested tight, fencelike boundaries.

  That particular year of the horse in Tom’s Upper East Side apartment, there was a similar plenitude of food, minus the guilt. This gathering, too, was a keening for authenticity, but softer, gentler on the ears. The attendees were all from some country that was neither the United States nor China, and we all identified (or were identified via peer pressure) only with the aesthetics of being Chinese. We wanted the five-thousand-plus years of culture, the history of world-changing inventions, and the somber respect due a sophisticated ancient civilization, but we disavowed the clichés of squatting on toilet seats or spitting on sidewalks, not to mention the Communist Party. Certainly we wanted nothing to do with the Falun Gong people at Union Square whose expressions signaled life or death as they performed their deliberate exercise moves.

  My contribution to Tom’s potluck was kailan (hideously termed “Chinese broccoli” by Americans) and mushrooms in oyster sauce. This was a self-preservation tactic, knowing Tom’s network of meat-eating friends as I did. If I didn’t make and bring my own vegetarian dish, I’d go hungry until I couldn’t stand it anymore, and then I’d run downstairs for a “quick cigarette” in the form of a dollar pizza slice.

  I noticed Marlin right away, of course. He stood out, his skin a shade that I had seen compared to food items like chocolate or coffee in American books. Looking at him, I thought not of food, but of a neutral coolness that disguised something else, like an envelope that contained either really good tidings or earth-shattering bad news. Marlin sat next to a man with the crispest collar I had ever seen, and I thought at first they must be partners. Marlin was perched uncomfortably on the arm of a sofa, his right leg bouncing up and down with the impatience
of someone corralled into attending a social function.

  The room was loud. Faces shone bright with Asian alcohol intolerance, but no one was really drunk. No one ever got that drunk at these things. I took a picture of the crowded space so I could later show my mother just how unmiserable my new year was, how I had an entire community while being so far away from home home. I was applying a horse filter and a red festive border to the photo when Marlin snuck up on me.

  “Spying on someone?” he asked, his voice soft, his emphasis on “ying” letting me know that he was from back home home after all.

  “Just capturing the moment,” I said, a pleasant kind of shock tingling in, of all places, my left elbow.

  “You know that is not possible, right?”

  “Oh?”

  “At least Husserl thought so. You see a moment you want to capture, but by the time you act on your intention, that original moment has already passed, so all you are really capturing is the next moment, or the moment after that, depending on how quick you are with your hands.”

  He looked down at my hands. I had never known my fingers to blush.

  Tom swept in, playing the host, clapping Marlin on the back. “Marlin, my favorite Chindian! Talking cock again?”

  Turning to me, he rattled on, one pointer finger aimed at my plate of kailan. “Edwina! Surely you’re not dieting on Chinese New Year?”

  “I’m vegetarian, remember? Why do you always forget? Am I your only vegetarian friend?”

  Both Tom and Marlin’s eyes lit up. They talked over each other excitedly, a jumble of “Him, him—” and “I thought—.” Tom’s finger now jabbed aggressively at Marlin, joined by Marlin’s thumbs poking himself in the chest.

  “Okay, I’ll leave you two birds of the same flock,” Tom said, eyeing a newcomer through the door. “Or”—he delivered his parting shot—“whatever the veggie equivalent of that saying is.”

  “Kailan?” I said to Marlin, lifting my plate with a flourish.

  “Sure.” He beamed. “Is it vegan?”

  “Yes,” I said automatically, the word a response to his smile, his big black eyes, rather than to his question. Then I caught myself. “Wait, actually there’s oyster sauce.”

  “Oh.” He deflated. “So you’re not a real vegetarian.”

  “Oysters are like one step up from single-cell organisms.”

  “Yes, and that’s a huge step, probably millions of years of evolution.”

  I didn’t want to debate him. What I wanted was to see him smile again. So I said: “I can’t wait for the movie called Assault on the Planet of the Bivalves.”

  “If I were you, I would clam up on that idea. Someone might hear you and steal it.”

  Laughing, I pretended my lips were hinged mollusk shells. I clasped and unclasped them all night, until, eventually, he kissed me outside a dollar pizza joint.

  After

  Day One (Wednesday)

  You’d assume otherwise, but I did sleep, a little, the night Marlin disappeared. After I got off the phone with Mummy, I resumed pacing the apartment. The relief I’d experienced while speaking to her quickly wore off. While it still felt like the door to repairing my marriage had been left slightly ajar, I had to wonder why Marlin hadn’t announced our separation to his mother. He was close to her—had been close to both his parents, in fact. He’d taken his father’s death very hard.

  Unsurprisingly, Marlin did not pick up when I called.

  “Marlin, please pick up. We have to talk about . . . whatever this is.”

  When I called a second time an hour later, a chirpy voice announced to me that the person I was calling had not set up their voice mailbox. He’d turned it off. I looked around our bedroom, unsure what to do. Then I noted, numbly, that I hadn’t seen our cat. Marlin must have taken him too. It was probably better that way. Marlin was always good at taking care of Buster.

  Sometime after midnight I sat down in front of Marlin’s desktop computer. Should I? He had built it with his own hands, curating and assembling various parts into the quiet machine in front of me. One panel of the computer chassis was see-through. I peered into the machine’s innards. A fan was spinning so fast it looked like a solid, static circle.

  No, I decided. I wouldn’t do it. It would be an invasion of privacy to snoop around his digital life. I ran a thumb across the chassis as I stood up. Dust smeared across my fingerprints. Something was wrong. Something missing besides Marlin and the suitcase. I looked at the microwave again. Too late to call Katie. She was the one person I’d semi-confided in about Marlin, but she had a toddler and a demanding job. She’d have been asleep since ten.

  My mother? The thought of baring it all to her made me crumple onto the bed, narrowly avoiding the DFaVK. My mother, who had never remarried since my father passed away in her late thirties. Who remarked, when I’d casually brought up the demise of Brangelina as small talk to fill the silence during one of our Skype calls: “It’s his second marriage, isn’t it? It’s like this: people in the West don’t know how to love. They’re always divorcing!”

  Impossible to admit the huge question mark hanging over my own marriage now. Especially since she’d taken to Marlin immediately, from the moment he’d waved to her through a computer screen. “You’re very lucky,” she kept reminding me on my wedding day.

  I WOKE TO A LOUD, ECHOING CLANG. RUBBING SLEEP FROM MY EYES, I realized I’d kicked the DFaVK off the bed. The knife glinted, menacing in the faintest of dawn’s light. When I moved to pick it up, I saw a nick on my left foot, a streak of blood underscoring my ankle.

  The microwave had the time as 5:56. Seeing the rich red against my skin, I felt suddenly afraid. Even though the missing suitcase indicated that Marlin had left of his own volition, flashes of violent scenarios lit up my mind. Marlin backing away at knifepoint, his hands raised. Worse: bright steel held stark against his own wrist.

  I scrambled back to his desktop. There might be a note if he were thinking of hurting himself. Half of me vehemently denied the possibility; not a chance, Marlin would never take such a step. The other half provided reminder after reminder that my husband had changed so much, I no longer knew what he was capable of.

  The monitor screen’s harsh glare made me squint. Marlin was not an idiot, so I could dismiss things like “12345” or “qwerty” as possible passwords. Same for birthdays. He was too sophisticated for that.

  “Husserl,” I typed. Incorrect. “NicolDavid.” Malaysia’s most famous squash superstar, whose career Marlin had closely followed. No good. I tried “DatukNicolDavid” for good measure, tacking on her honorific title. Still wrong. I pounded the keys. “YangBerbahagiaDatukNicolAnnDavid.” Asterisk stars rushed in a row, taunting me.

  It was foolish to think I could ever guess a software engineer’s password. I picked up a loose stack of papers by his keyboard and rifled through them, searching for a clue. Even though he was too savvy for it, I hoped against hope that he might have written his password down.

  Receipts. A flyer for a Women in Tech meetup at his office. A menu from our favorite restaurant, Keep Calm and Curry On. I glanced at the hours. Maybe I could stop by tonight, on the off chance Marlin would be there. But no, he had taken a suitcase with him. Didn’t that indicate he was somewhere far away by now?

  Not really. He could be anywhere. The Holiday Inn five minutes from our apartment. An Airbnb in New Jersey. Under a bridge. No, no use being morbid. He simply needed some time off from us. Maybe he was just taking a long-needed vacation. Right at this moment he could be touching down in Hawaii, ready for his lei and the first of many tiki drinks. No, wrong again. Hawaii was my dream vacation, not his.

  Think logically. Think like an engineer, like Marlin before his personality change. I turned over a Best Buy receipt and starting making a list of places where I might find my husband.

  Hotel (impossible, too many of them to search)

  Vacation (also impossible, unless I can find a booking confirmation or a brochure?)

&nb
sp; Home with Mummy (unlikely, based on phone call yesterday)

  His office (possible, though need an in to get past building security)

  Crashing with someone? Best friend Eamon (possible, all the way out in College Point)

  Friends from work (possible, could verify by visiting office—see above)

  Climbing gym partners? (can’t remember names other than Eamon)

  Climbing gym (possible, given three-times-a-week routine)

  Favorite restaurant (too close to apartment? worth a try anyway)

  The list somewhat quelled my paranoid fears. Some of these were concrete locations that I could physically visit, one after another. There were numerous possibilities to check off before I had to consider the void of death or other unknowns. But first—I glanced at the microwave—I still had to report to work. Now, of all times, I could not afford to be fired, voiding my work visa. I had to be at my desk.

  After

  Day Two (Thursday)

  I squeezed onto the subway, sucking in so I would fit. The Cortlandt station was right by a Hilton, and I’d had to tamp down a wild desire to rush in and demand the concierge give up Marlin’s hiding place. The World Trade Center memorial across the street did not help either, conjuring up images of dust and ash.

  I texted Katie on the train, one elbow hooked around a subway pole. “Can we meet up soon?”

  In an instant: “Sure! Brunch this weekend?”

  The lightness of her reply distressed me. I had assumed my five-word text message would convey the magnitude of my emotional turmoil. It must be lack of sleep. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I tightened my grip on my satchel, trying to gird up for the workday ahead.