[story] Liar

short fiction written at Columbia Summer Camp 2022

Mr. R was a born liar.

Mr. R learned how to lie when he was only six months old. When other babies were crying and begging for milk, Mr. R already mastered how to fake calmness, and then cry, so his parents would say, “this baby is promising,” and give him anything he wanted, milk, toys, and praises. Mr. R was most proud of the lie he told when he immigrated to the US. He forced his wife to say the trip was only for pleasure, hiding her nine-month pregnant belly, and giving birth to their child at a cheap motel in Los Angeles. Soon after his wife gave birth she died from fatal internal bleeding. Mr. R did not call the ambulance and told his wife to “hang on a little bit” until his wife suddenly looked the other way and laid her head down and relaxed. His old folks in China had told him that simply calling 911 would cost him 911 dollars, but he had only less than a hundred left. Luckily, the next day he recovered his calmness and started taking care of the newborn. He laid his son on the pillow wet with his tears and cleaned and caressed every part of the baby’s body with warm towels, making sure he did not interrupt his son sleeping. He did not have the money to buy milk, so he begged the passerby woman to feed his child, and lied that his wife eloped with another man.

Mr. R’s son, R, survived his first thirteen years of life in a state of near starvation until his father finally found a job as a construction worker and was soon promoted to the Assistant Regional Manager for his hard work. R went to a decent public high school in LA, but his father told him that he deserved better when he was seventeen, and transferred him to a private boarding school in New England. R had never gone to a place where students didn’t need a locker and their backpack wouldn’t be stolen. R called his father at school several times and said that this was the best place he had ever been to. His father always laughed for a very long time and said “don’t have too much fun”. R’s first year in boarding school passed so fast that he for the first time missed school.

When R returned from school, he was surprised by the narrowness of their apartment where he lived for seventeen years. The greyish pencil paints and the blackened stains of soot contrasted with his colorful expensive outfit too much, that he felt unnatural and uncomfortable living and talking to his father. R was regularly annoyed by his father’s talkativeness and responded to his questions with as few words or syllables as possible. To express his unjustified but strong disdain, he managed to show little to no emotion to his father’s excitement every day while the old cooked, hand-washed R’s cloth, or wiped the floor.

Two days before R’s 18th birthday, he requested the newest iPhone Pro Max for his birthday present. Not knowing what an iPhone is, Mr. R gladly agreed. For the first in a long time, Mr. R saw his son’s enthusiasm for him again. That night, he took his son to the best Chinese restaurant he knew in town and ordered him two of his favorite Chinese white liquor. While drinking, he told his son how he was the most good-looking man in his village in China, how R’s mom was obsessed with him, and how she insisted on going to the US with him. After R was drunk and blacked out, Mr. R finished the rest of the bottles and the dishes, and then lifted his son back home. After making sure his son rested comfortably, Mr. R opened his computer and reviewed the email from the school three more times. “No longer eligible for financial aid”. Grasping and rubbing his already bold head, he questioned if his eyes were too old to see the decimal separator three digits to the right. Seventy thousand dollars a year, he had never imagined such a number in his entire life, not even when he was drunk for three consecutive days and went to his friend’s apartment partying and dancing naked.

Mr. R recovered his usual calmness the next day. When his son woke up, he said to him, “Son, you did great last night.” After R fell asleep again from a side headache, he went to the nearest shopping mall for his son’s birthday present. When he arrived at the Apple store, his back was already sodden with sweat and the bright white light reflected off of the glass walls stung his eyes that traveled seven districts in the subway. He walked into the store but could not find the model his son wanted with the very few English words he knew. So he jotted down “iPhone Pro Max” in his yellow recycled paper notebook and showed them to the clerk and asked, “how much?”.

The clerk hesitated a little and said, “fifteen hundred dollars.” Usually, when Mr. R heard such a price for a cellphone, he would pick up a trashcan he found nearby and aim and throw it at the clerk’s head. But this time he just shook his head and said, “no money”, while looking down. “Is your son a student? We now have student summer discounts”, the clerk said. A subtle smile flashed through Mr. R’s face, “high school student”. “Sorry, discounts are not eligible for high school students”, the clerk said. Mr. R did not utter another word and walked out of the store quickly. On the street, several young millionaires were driving their fast race cars, pushing the throttles to the furthest end so that their engines screamed. “Farts!”, Mr. R shouted at their backlights, stomping.

Although Mr. R did not have enough money, he had a great sense of humor. On his son’s birthday, he woke up very early in the morning and went to the Chinese market, bought the best-looking apple on the shelves and a cellphone made in China that were slightly better than his son’s old one. Mr. R put the presents in a paper box and wrapped it with white and grey wrapping paper, and then drew an Apple icon on the top of the box with dark blue ink, and marked “Apple”. He thought he could explain to his son their situation. His son was finally a grown man. Wasn’t he? He thought his son would understand all these, that he tried his best, and be satisfied with what they had. Touching his beard that didn’t exist, Mr. R waits in the living room nervously.

The first thing R thought of when he woke up was his birthday present. He was so ready for his new cellphone that before he went to sleep last night he pulled out the SIM card from his old cellphone and placed it in the most obvious place next to his bed. R never questioned too much about the finance of their family. He simply thought his father wanted the best for him. He did let his father down either. He’d always been a straight A student. His father told him that he deserved the best. So he believed. He thought he should at least deserve what he wanted most on his eighteenth birthday. He thought a cellphone might be meaningful because his father always told him that a cellphone would distract him from studying and he should not get one until he has enough self-discipline. Plus, he thought this was not a big deal anyway as all of his friends at school had one. He had too much fun in school that he almost forgot his father was still a construction worker.

With blurry thoughts in his head, R walked into the living room. He saw his father with his excited face holding the present box with a blue Apple icon that he’d never seen. “Happy birthday!”, father laughed. Confused, R walked to his father and unwrapped the present box quite proficiently, and peeked at what was inside.

In less than half a second, before the father could explain anything, the son took the cellphone out of the present box and smashed it to the ground. The cellphone bounced and its back cover cracked from the middle. The battery flew out of the cellphone to under the sofa. The son looked at the father, furiously and nervously, waiting for his father’s response.

“Why? Why would you do that? That costs money.”, the father went under the sofa to search for the battery.

“You liar!”, the son cried.

Stunned, the father got out of the sofa and ran to the bathroom, picked up a broom like he always did, and hit the son’s arm with its handle like how he always disciplined his son, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was his philosophy. To the father’s surprise, the son fought back with his fists, crying “Fuck you”. The third time the son hit him in the face, the father threw the broom away and readied his hands, mumbling “I was the best motherfucking fighter at the village, you son of a…” While the father was talking, the son pushed the father’s chest with all the hatred he ever had. The father lost balance and fell back and hit his head on the unpolished corner of the dining table.

“Now what? You…”

As the father moved his head from the table, the blood burst out of his head like the son opened a bottle of champagne. The metallic blood splashed all over the son’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Some blood spilled to the clean white ceramic plate like some sort of modern art about red. The son was terrified when the father gave no response whether he called him a bitch or dad.

“Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

He wanted to call his father an ambulance, but opened his phone and saw the “no service”. He fumbled to his bedroom and picked up the SIM card, but could not open the slot on his old cellphone. He ran to the living room and found the ballpoint pen his father always used, tried it, did not work. He searched every space in the living room, no needle.

While he was searching, the father started murmuring. The blood flew out of his mouth and nose as he breathed. Bubbles came out of the hole on his head. Vision blurred with dark red, the father tried to stand up and lost balance again. The father kissed the floor with his face and crawled with his helpless limbs. The son wanted to help, but the father pushed him away as strongly as before. His hands swiped through the dining table for support. Everything on the table, bowls, plates, vases, and his wife’s framed photograph, fell off and hit the ground hard, shattered. The son followed like a robot. The father smeared the floor with his blood from the living room to his bedroom’s cabinet. He went through every drawer, where he hid all his money. He counted and gripped the money tightly, and gave them to his son. He hold the son’s hands firmly until he made sure that the son clutched the money as hard as he did. He took out his bank card from his blood-stained wallet and dipped his fingers in his blood and wrote six digits on the floor next to the card. As he finished, he laid down relaxed, staring at the dazzling white ceiling, and started producing unrecognizable sounds again. Mr. R meant to say the same three words he said eighteen years ago, “I love you”.

Mr. R died an honest man.