By Paige Tokay
I met a man in the Common once who told me that it rains like Vietnam in Boston. I see him from time to time at the Dunkin’ counter on days that I don’t mind spending a five on coffee. We have not swapped words or nods since, but he was nice—which can seem beautiful and rare most days.
This is what I am thinking as the rain picks up.
We are standing just inside of the Italian grocery store—the one with the overpriced apples you love—and you have dropped my hand. It is no small thing.
Both of our faces are raw with cold, and I am wearing all the wrong clothes: a fall jacket that sops up the rain rather than stops it and these clunky tennis shoes that don’t fit onto my narrow feet right, always flopping off in the back. I don’t even have an umbrella. We tried to share yours, but it is really only large enough for one person. Two if they are thin enough—small like children, which we are not.
January is the worst time of year in Boston. It is a hard thing for me to admit. When I first moved here, long before I ever met you, the city was in the throes of it, with wind so bad my mother had to cup her hands over her ears to shield them as we moved in and out of my new Fenway apartment.
You’re sure you want to live here? She had asked, brows drawn tightly together.
Yes, yes. I repeated. The cold really isn’t so bad.
I was too thrilled then to feel it. Thought with no small part of childish naivete that it would never hit me so hard.
The man at the register coughs pointedly, eying the space we occupy in front of the door. Even without looking, I know you are making that sheepish sideways smile, blush brushing in broad strokes from the tips of your ears all the way down your chest. It is just something you do.
I walk backwards into the fruit aisle as you shake out your umbrella in stilted half-motions, watching the jolted way you move your body only for a moment before turning away.
I have never been to Vietnam.
This is what I am thinking as I palm oranges, testing their firmness with practiced ease like my mother taught me in the aisles of the grocery stores I grew up in.
Like this, Anna, look, she’d say, taking her hands in mine. Gentle. You have to be gentle.
I have never been to Vietnam, but I bought a world encyclopedia once that had a whole page and a half dedicated to the fruit there.
Guava, jackfruit, lychee.
This was the year we dreamed of traveling, back when we were just shy of six months together and very much in love. Casually flipping through travel guides had been at the top of my list of hobbies then, sitting on your sofa, my bare feet dangling off the side as I narrated foods and landmarks and never the costs.
You wanted to go to Rome. You wanted to learn Mandarin.
And I thought you could do anything short of moving mountains. And I thought,
One day.
One day, I will be his wife.
I can feel your warmth from behind me as I put down the orange, pick up a mango (native to the southern regions of Vietnam), squeeze it gently, gently.
I think of my grandfather.
He always used to let me steal sips of his mango juice when I would visit, my small, child body framed in front of his chest. And the thick freshness that would burst onto my tongue after the first sip. And the smell of his cologne, which, ironically, reminded me of rain then.
You are looking at my hands. Where my nails rest within ripped up cuticle beds and scrape across the orange-red-green of the fruit skin, faded ombré like a sky or rock segment or healing bruise.
I do not make the mistake of asking what you are thinking.
I might’ve, once, my lips caught mid-laugh behind the long expanse of my fingers as I giggled at the faraway gaze of your eyes while we walked arm and arm, ate dinner, laid next to each other, naked and in bed.
What are you thinking? I would ask, bubbles of love filling the insides of my chest. Tell me, what are you thinking?
Nothing. You’d say it simply, but there would be an arrogant sort of defiance to your face that I would’ve found so charming, despite not comprehending it at all. Nothing? How could you be thinking of nothing? The blankness compelled me then and frustrates me now. I have never understood this part of you.
I do not ask what you are thinking.
Instead, I keep walking forward, mango cradled between stiff fingers.
The rain looks like it’s starting to slow, you say, as if to bookend something spilling.
I nod once, short and firm. Set the mango on the cashier’s counter as I fish my wallet out of my pocket and pay. You don’t question this, not even with your eyes.
It is only after we have left the store and walked a block in the drizzle that I take a bite, thin water droplets trailing past my lips as I break the skin. You are a beat behind me, rain collected on the peaks of your umbrella streaming onto the edge of my back. The juice of it hits me exactly as it does in memory, and the air smells thick and earthy like Boston almost never does.
I hope that Vietnam feels like this all the time.
And then,
If you asked me to marry you tomorrow, I know exactly what I would say.
Author Bio
Paige Tokay is a First Year Creative Writing major at Emerson College, and a Pittsburgh native. She both reads and designs for multiple magazines on campus, and her written work is slated to be published in Concrete Magazine’s 2024/25 issue.
