Out of Touch (5 page)

March 23, 2025 – Sacramento, USA

              At noon on Sunday, Sarah approached Mei Mei’s door again. She brought Russian tea cakes. Perhaps they were too messy to offer in such a grand house. But she had to bring something, and they were the only dessert she could make that was the slightest bit impressive.

             
Why hadn’t she said “no” to this invitation? Friday and Saturday she worked nights at the group home. Usually she slept through Sunday lunch. But Mei Mei’s invitation had said Sarah simply must come meet her children and her nephew while they were all in town. Besides, Sarah’s curiosity had been nagging her since her first visit. Mei Mei discomforted and intrigued her, and it wasn’t about the fancy house. Sarah wished she could have brought Reggie; he would know the right things to say and do. But Mei Mei didn’t know about Reggie, and he hadn’t been invited. Reggie thought she was sleeping.

Mei Mei led her into the sitting room, just as before. Sarah’s toes dug into the thick layers of rugs with gleeful recognition. But this time, Mei Mei’s daughter, Lisa, was there, framed by the light of the window. For a moment, Sarah was disoriented, reconciling the child she’d seen playing long ago with this woman, nearly her own age. Lisa looked just like her mom: perfect hair, straight back, smooth silk dress. But Lisa’s face, though younger and smoother, seemed more severe. The lips pulled a little tighter, the set of the jaw betrayed a bit more tension.

              “You must be Sarah. I’m Lisa.”

             
Sarah nodded, realizing her hands no longer held the plate of cookies. Mei Mei had disappeared with them somewhere.

             
“Glad to meet you, I mean for real, you know?”

             
Lisa smiled at Sarah’s awkwardness, and Sarah wished she’d never come. Lisa took a seat near the window, and Sarah guessed she should sit across from her.

             
“What do you do?” Lisa asked.

             
Mei Mei reentered the room and sat beside her daughter, smiling in a practiced way that nonetheless reassured.

             
“I work with emotionally disturbed adolescents.”

             
“Are you a psychiatrist?”

             
“No, I just work in a group home. I have a bachelor’s degree in anthropology. And you?”

             
“Pre-med at UCLA.” Lisa looked smug. Sarah decided not to mention that she’d started out pre-med.

              Mei Mei’s eyes flicked toward the window, “My son, Robert, is studying biology at Stanford.”

Through the big window in the sitting area, Mei Mei pointed out Robert. He had a squat, boxy build and short black hair. Standing just below the top step of a ladder, he tried to saw a crossing branch off the tallest tree in the yard. He did not look practiced or even stable as he sawed.

“My nephew, Howard, holding the ladder, is working on his MBA.” Howard was taller than Robert, maybe five six, with a narrower but still muscular build. His hair was also cut short, except for a tidy ponytail at the back. The way he stood, with his feet planted a bit too far apart, reminded Sarah of a movie Samurai. He looked up the ladder with strained concentration, as if he also doubted his cousin’s competence. His pants were tight and his shirt loose, and he didn’t seem as young as his cousins. Sarah realized she’d been watching the men a bit too long, and the room had drifted into silence.

             
Before she could panic, Mei Mei asked, “Did you find the cat?”

             
“Yes.” Sarah flooded with relief at the conversational lead, and wondered if lack of sleep was making her too emotional. Still, she flowed easily into offering a story. “It was rather strange really. When Tabitha, my Mom’s friend, showed up, I still had no idea where Spooky was. But Tabitha breezed into the house, giving her own tour, although she’d never been there before. She talked about things my mother had mentioned, mostly fix-it jobs she’d never had time to do. Tabitha is a big woman, and she was wearing this loose dress and several bright metal bracelets. Every time she pointed to something, the bracelets would jingle. Finally, she opened the sliding glass door in the back, jingled her arm across, exclaiming about the patio, and Spooky paraded in and rubbed against her legs. I guess Tabitha is as much of a cat person as my mom was. Spooky stayed by her for the next hour while we chatted and drank tea. It made me feel much better about sending him off with her.”

             
Lisa sat wringing her hands and looking as if she’d missed part of the story, but Mei Mei nodded and met Sarah’s eyes. Then Mei Mei gestured toward the ladder outside and said, “I remember when Robert was about ten, he decided he wanted a dog. He sat for a neighbor’s Great Dane, and the animal truly adored him. But we-“

             
Sarah, listening to Mei Mei and watching Robert through the window, saw the ladder start to tip away from Howard. There was no way he could stop it, and it was a tall ladder. Sarah braced herself. Several times as a gymnast and later a coach, she’d cushioned a fall without giving herself away. The trick was to slow things just a bit until the final moment, then really ease the impact in the instant before the person hit the ground. In the confusion of an accident, no one ever noticed a slight loss of momentum.

             
Here, she didn’t even have to move Robert at first. She slowed the ladder little by little and trusted him to hold on. With a quick twist at the end, she made it fall to the side as she cushioned his impact just inches before the real ground, as if a thick gym mat had materialized for a moment.

             
Only after Robert was safe did Sarah realize that Lisa had screamed and was running out of the room. Mei Mei stood strangely silent, her eyes fixed on Sarah. Sarah felt a wave of deepest terror but kept her face frozen. She stood, turning away from Mei Mei, and headed toward the back door that Lisa had left open.

             
Hurrying down the hill, Sarah tried to order her thoughts. She couldn’t guess what Mei Mei had noticed, though her face was hot and surely flushed. She felt she’d managed the save perfectly. Robert was already standing and dusting himself off. Maybe she’d kept him too safe, but no one had ever questioned such luck before. Sarah prepared herself to lie. Whatever Mei Mei or anyone suspected, there was no proof, and Sarah made a hobby of acting innocent.

             
The group was strangely silent as she approached. They moved normally, Lisa standing straight, Robert looking down as if his eyes might spy injuries he couldn’t feel, but there were no words. For a moment, Lisa and Robert looked exactly like Wednesday and Pugsly Addams, had the retro-TV kids been older and Chinese-American. For once, Sarah related to the normal people entering the Addams’ house, and felt the alienation from the other side.

Then Howard lay a hand on Robert’s shoulder and gave him a friendly shake, still without words. Sarah slowed a little in her charge down the hill. She glanced back to see Mei Mei walking calmly behind her, careful in high-heeled shoes. Sarah faced forward again just in time to see Howard shake his head at Mei Mei.

              Did she imagine Mei Mei’s stare on her back? She felt the urge to flee like a cold spike inside her, but leaving would be suspicious. Instead, she stood silently with the rest of them, not letting anyone catch her eye. Then she forced herself to look at Robert and ask, “Are you okay? That was quite a fall.”

             
He looked back at her with his mouth slightly open, as if he didn’t understand what she was saying. His mouth closed and his chin took on the hard set that meant a guy was either going to get angry or sulk. Sarah felt herself cringe just a little in anticipation, but then Howard spoke, offering her a way out.

             
“Wait. Sarah, come up to the house with me, to find some ice?”

             
He started walking, touching a hand to her back to get her moving. It was a very familiar gesture for someone she’d never met. What had Mei Mei told him about their previous encounter? It could just be a cultural difference, but it didn’t seem Chinese. She knew nothing about this “nephew.” Clearly he knew her name and felt comfortable using it and spiriting her away from a strangely charged social situation. Maybe he was with one of those touchy-feely groups, you could never tell, especially in California. Anyway, she was grateful to him and let herself be led up the hill.

At the back door, Sarah wiped her bare feet fastidiously on the mat. In her hurry, she’d run without shoes. Usually she loved the moist, prickly feel of grass on her feet, but this time she’d been too preoccupied to notice. Now she felt the dampness and smooth specks of soil trying to ride her feet into the immaculate house.

              Striding in ahead of her, Howard didn’t rush for the freezer. Instead, he moved through the sitting area to one of the small mahogany end tables. He pulled out a neatly folded page of newspaper and handed it to Sarah. A glance showed her it was an old story about her car rescue.

             
She didn’t want to deal with this. It was too rapid of a change after her awkwardness with Lisa, her babbling on about Tabitha, rescuing Robert, the strange look from Mei Mei, silence on the hill. She needed time to regroup, not another round of questions. And why was a stranger bringing this up now?

             
Howard waited silently, head tilted a bit, and one eyebrow raised.

             
“What?” asked Sarah.

             
The newspaper floated out of her hands and into his. Sarah stopped mid-breath. She’d given up on finding someone like her. Now all the childish hopes resurfaced, along with all the fear of being discovered or exposed.

             
“I was there to break Rob’s fall if you didn’t,” Howard said. It had been a set up, but she froze instead of running, not knowing where to hide. Would it do any good to deny it?

             
She looked him over again. His warrior posture and concentration from beneath the ladder were gone. He looked vulnerable, but he met her eyes. She could see his shoulder muscles tense beneath his shirt.

             
“Are you really Mei Mei’s nephew?”

             
“Yeah, but they’re not teeks, only teeps.”

             
The words were from books and movies, books and movies she’d wanted to escape into. But she’d given up on saying them or hearing them with real people. Or had she? How could she be what she was and truly expect to never use such words? She took a deep breath. Her hand and thigh braced against the side of a couch. Her voice sounded surprisingly calm in her own ears.

             
“Telepaths? What else exists? Do you know?”

             
“You really can’t hear us? They’re all too paranoid to deal with you now, but I saw how that ladder fell.”

Sarah gently flew the news clipping back to the end table. Howard smiled like they shared a joke.

“We thought all teeks were teeps,” he said. “My aunt thought she heard something from your house once. You would have been too young, but was your mother –“

             
Sarah shook her head. The initial shock had left behind a hollow space against her lower ribs. Her mind tangled with every question she’d ever wanted to ask and every thought she’d kept completely secret.

             
“Sit down,” Howard said, touching her arm lightly. “Should I call the others in?”

             
“Are you talking to them now? Can they hear our conversation? Can you hear my thoughts?”

“Shoot, I never thought I’d talk about this to someone who couldn’t do it.” After nudging her onto a sofa, he plopped down across from her, knees wide, back curved, hands in his hair, completely unlike Lisa who had sat there before. “No we can’t hear your thoughts at all. That’s part of why we thought you were a teep. Very few normal minds are completely silent, maybe one in a hundred. And Aunt Mei Mei thought she’d heard clear telepathy from your house that one time. Then she saw the newspaper article, just after you came by. She thought you were refusing to answer her telepathically –“

              “She tried when I came about the cat? Does she try everyone whose mind is silent?”

             
“We all do.”

             
“How many have you found that way?”

             
“None.”

             
“Oh.”  Like a roller coaster suddenly stopped, Sarah looked at Howard, leaning back across from her, hands tangled in his hair. But it felt like he was leaning toward her, like they were twins, separated at birth, but that was too tabloid. This was weirder than tabloids. Maybe she’d always wondered, but these people had been actively looking and found no one.

Or were they lying? Whatever she’d been feeling for Howard suddenly cut off, and she was scared by the connection she’d felt.

              “Can they hear all this? Are they going to join us?”