A Messy Relationship - baby electric toothbrush

Townies is a series about New York and other city life.
On the morning of November four years ago, I received a phone call from my mother.
Before I could say hello, she spoke out of her message: she was just at the home of a client.
Their son Douglas is visiting and is more handsome than she was the last time she saw him.
She has his email. mail address.
Am I ready for the pen?
When I said I didn't know who she was talking about, she got angry and I got angry.
My parents are housekeepers in rich towns near their home in Quincy, Massachusetts.
It won't be the first time my mother has tried to get me with their clients.
But for those T-
My mom's shirt and socks?
After a while, I remembered that I met this person when I was 19 years old a few years ago.
In the past eight years, my parents have cleaned his parents' home every two weeks.
When my parents told them that I had a tough first year at New York University, they advised me to meet their son, a 35-year-old. year-
Old artist living in Brooklyn
It was just a sympathetic gesture that took me out of the school's predicament.
I don't remember much about that day except I met Douglas at Hotel 4
Facing the clock in the center of the central station, we visited a rare bookstore after lunch.
I don't remember our conversation, the cafe where we ate, even the way he looked.
To appease my mother, but also because I was moved by the idea he had met a few years ago, I
Send it to Douglas to express condolences for the death of his grandmother, which is why he came home. After a few e-
We plan to see a dance show.
On that cold night, in order to keep warm, I waited behind the door of the theater and looked at Douglas through the glass.
It surprised me that I recognized him, but he did not change much.
He is slim and burly.
He had brown eyes and dark hair on his forehead.
He was wearing a black Pike coat and a turquoise knit scarf with the bright purple book I was going to use to identify him.
For a moment, I watched him sweep the crowd for me, and then I pushed the door open and walked towards him. âx80x9cHi.
"I didn't cry," he said, wiping his eyes.
My eyes will shed tears in winter.
Inside, a woman handed us the show.
Douglas put him down and the woman, and I watched him pick it up on his knees.
Are you nervous, sir?
She made fun of me and blinked at me.
I laughed, and at the same time, for reasons I don't know, I feel very gentle about this person.
I don't know if he was embarrassed or just didn't hear her, but he looked for the aisle and brought me to our seat in silence.
Shortly before the show began, we arrived and had little time to speak.
He said to me when the lights went dark, I think it would be very good.
Throughout the performance, he leaned forward in his chair and became fascinated.
I want to look at his face and see how he reacts to the movements we see on stage.
I'm trying to remember what his parents' house looks like, and if the few labels I 've cleaned with my parents are enough to recall where all the trash cans are stuck next to the toilet, hidden under a table or in a walk-in closet.
I was wondering if my mother or father had forgotten the turquoise scarf when he came home if he picked up the soft wool and folded it up.
My arm rubbed his discarded coat and hung it in his seat;
I thought it was his arm.
He came from a small, hard place in my heart, a jagged land filled with filial piety, Clorox and dust, and I was struck by my appeal to him.
We see more and more others.
One night a few months later, Douglas told me two things at a small restaurant in Astoria, Queens: first, he really liked me.
Second, he felt sad about liking me: I won't say that our age difference won't worry me, I know the situation in our family is very difficult.
If we are together, I would like to address these issues with you.
Then he sat back with a shocking look on his face.
My mother's reaction to our relationship was so enthusiastic that it aroused my suspicion.
I wonder if her excitement has anything to do with Douglas's white and his American spirit.
Unlike most traditional Asian mothers, she encouraged me to date white men.
People who grow up in American culture will certainly be more secure in economy and society;
Of course, my American boyfriend will be able to navigate the culture that has plagued her for so long.
She also thinks that white people cherish me more than Asian people, because I have different origins from him.
On the bed, my eyes trace the blue veins through the milk of his skin, like cracks in the eggshells, and then the prominent veins, extending to his feet like a net.
I was fascinated by the difference between his body and mine. The skin under his alert eyes relaxed a little bit, and occasionally he had a gray line on his dark hair.
We dare not talk about it, but it is as tangible as the sound of the car horn outside our window: what happens when he gets older?
I do math: Douglas will be 46 when I am 30;
When I was 35, he was 50.
More variables: if we had a child when Douglas was 45, he would be 60 when our child was 15.
Sometimes I feel cheated by time: if we can meet early, if he is younger.
If X equals this, Y equals that.
Y is always greater than X.
I didn't think of it at all other times.
We had a great time together for four years.
Our apartment is very messy, I often don't clean the 1950 red Formica table belonging to my grandmother Douglas, it is more like a dump than the restaurant: unopened mail, pen, receipt, A lamp with a ceramic dog seat, two electric toothbrush chargers, and a wire shaft with a green hemp rope.
The back of the chair is covered with coats and jeans.
We had dinner on the floor of the living room.
I stretched my legs in front of me, and he kicked over and leaned against me.
He carefully trimmed the fat off the edge of the steak and transported the pieces to my plate where he knew they would be tasted.
Our differences gradually receded in this era.
My mother and father still stripped the sheets off the curtains, sponge the dry toothpaste off the mirror and vacuumed the carpet.
Every two weeks, they will clean the bedroom that once belonged to him.
Their son was an artist, and when we tidied up the cushions on the living room couch a few years ago, my father said to me.
That's him over there. âx80x9dHe pointed.
Two intensive students stared at us from behind the glass painted in the big frame hanging on the wall.
This is Douglas's cafeteria.
Portrait, made of stained charcoal.
I didn't want to take a closer look.
Since then, I 've been working on the painting, and its intensity has kept me away from the Thanksgiving dinner to study the holes and lines that I'm very familiar with now.
He was only 19 when he painted, and I was 19 when I first met him.
Locals welcome the town @ nytimes submitted. com.
Titi Nguyen's work has appeared in three reviews.
A version of the article appears on Page SR2 of The New York edition, with the title: the relationship of confusion.
Series on life in New York
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This week, Sandy SooHoo, a freelance photographer and writer, published an article that he is collecting prose.
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