The Family Recipe

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Outside Hong Kong City Mall, all five Tr?n siblings (yes, even Jude was invited) hovered near the crowded swinging doors, hoping to win the lunchtime lottery and the fight against Asian restaurants that don’t take reservations. Their ears were constantly perked up, alert, ready for the moment their table was ready to be called. Tr?n, table for five.

“Do you know what’s worse than generational trauma?” Georgia asked her siblings forlornly as she attempted to fan herself with a menu.

“What?” Bingo responded as a gaggle of high school kids elbowed her in the face as they packed around one phone screen while walking past. She cursed at them to watch where they were going. “I forget how much I despise the youth. How are they so carefree? Don’t they know they’re living in late-stage capitalism?”

“Having to build generational wealth,” Georgia sighed as she finished her thought, and slumped all the way down into a squat and buried her face between her legs.

“No one has to build anything,” Paulina scoffed. “Money is fungible.”

“Oh shut it, Paulina,” Bingo griped. “Not everyone has pretty privilege as leverage. Some of us have to rely on our cheery dispositions to get through life.”

“And is that person with the cheery disposition in the room with us?” Jude muttered under his breath, causing Bingo to throw him a dirty look.

“Well, you know what’s worse than having to build generational wealth?” Jane snapped. “Having an immigrant father who had the whole rags-to-riches story, only to use his kids as pawns in his sick, twisted inheritance game, purely for his entertainment. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned nepotism? The one time we could be like the rich white kids and our father squanders our chances.”

“Well,” Jude barked, “maybe if you hadn’t been such a wet blanket all those years ago to our father, we wouldn’t be out here fighting for scraps under the table.” Despite lumbering around two hundred pounds, Jude managed to sidestep Jane’s hand as she attempted to pinch his arm, just like she used to when they were kids.

“Tr?n?” A server stuck his head out the swinging front door. “Table for five?”

Two groups of Tr?ns, side by side, roared at the same time. Jude, Jane, Bingo, Paulina, and Georgia glared at the other group, marking their territory, bracing themselves for a fight. But their staredown was only matched with the same vigor from the other Tr?ns, including a grandmother who had death daggers in her eyes.

Both groups turned to the server, looking for clarification while also threatening him. He whipped between groups, quickly calculated who would cause the biggest stink, and, to avoid any dramatics, pointed at the Tr?n siblings, and motioned for them to step forward.

A roar of relief and belts of glee united the siblings. They rushed past the other Tr?ns, gloating. Like a clown car, they excitedly filed into a single line and followed the server straight into the bustling lunch crowd at Crawfish the laughter soon became tumbleweed, taking hold of everyone.

“Forget the Princess Diana Beanie Baby, remember how angry Evelyn was when he bought that album? Till this day, I still don’t understand his obsession with the Beatles,” Jude said, wiping a tear away after the laughter that had engulfed him.

“Yeah, but remember how much fun we all had, dancing to it in that tiny, windowless kitchen?” Jane said. She cracked a small smile for the first time all day.

“Wasn’t there a toilet in the kitchen, too?” Paulina said as she leaned back in her chair, a small smile perched on the edges of her lips.

“Oh god, remember when Duc swung Evelyn around so hard, she knocked over that one ugly lamp?” Jane snickered.

“I forgot there weren’t any windows! Remember that time Jude took the biggest shit and we were choking on the smell for days?” Bingo said, an epiphany kicking in, her mood shifting.

Jude held up his hands, covered in plastic gloves, and pleaded the Fifth.

“Did our mother like to dance?” Georgia asked eagerly, interrupting her siblings as she leaned forward. She’d been silent the whole time, ears glued to these stories, hoping to catch scraps of memories of their mother. Out of all the siblings, she knew the least about her, the least about anyone. Nobody said a word and they looked down at their crawfish, as if suddenly interested in studying its exoskeleton.

Jane coughed, breaking up the awkwardness. “Look, Georgia, our mother was no angel.”

“The woman had issues. Big issues—”

“Has. The woman has issues—”

“But it’s okay to be curious about her, she’s still our mother,” Georgia said hopefully, breaking with her sisters. “It’s our right to miss her. Isn’t it?”

“No one has spoken to the woman in almost two decades,” Bingo said, with a surprising gentleness in her voice. “The woman doesn’t want to be found. Meaning, she doesn’t want to be found by us .”

Everyone grew quiet. Georgia lowered her eyes.

“I should have changed my name a long time ago,” Bingo whispered under her breath. “Out of all the names our parents could have chosen to play off of ‘Ringo,’ why did they choose Bingo?”

The waiter placed five more beers in front of them before scurrying away. Bingo was the first to grab a beer and raise her hand in a toast. “Look, let’s just give it our best shot and try,” she roared as she turned toward Jude to roast and toast him. “To the sad sack who ends up with Jude.”

“Let’s not toast to him getting married,” Jane said quickly. “To one of the Tr?n daughters getting there first.”

“We’ll see about that, sis,” Jude said, and though he was smiling, there was a tightness there.

“May the best Tr?n win the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” Paulina said, correcting the toast, as she stood up and raised her Heineken sky high.

“And remember it’s just money. We didn’t have it growing up,” Jane said, her oldest-sister didacticism kicking in. “We all walked away before; we can easily walk away again.”

“Says the lawyer, who doesn’t need the money,” Bingo shot back.

“Why do you always forget that I’m just an immigration lawyer, I’m not a corporate lawyer,” Jane said defensively. “I definitely need the money.”

“Just toast, damnit!” Paulina said annoyedly, still holding her beer in the air, waiting for everyone else.

“What kind of lawyer is Mr. Ng?, then?” Georgia pondered. “Why has he just always been… around?”

“He’s a shady one,” Jane said, glossing over their uncle, who wasn’t really their uncle. “Don’t go to him for anything. I still don’t really know what he’s all about, he’s just always… there.”

“But don’t you ever wonder how our father met him? Why are they as thick as thieves?” Georgia pressed on, still eager for any scraps of the past.

Her siblings shrugged and gave the same explanation. “They’re two old Vietnamese guys.” As if that was the only explanation their youngest sister needed.

“People, please!” Paulina yelled, still waving her beer in the air. “Let’s cheer and move on with our lives.”

Jude stood up and raised his glass next to Paulina’s. “See you all in a year?”

Everyone reluctantly stood, clinked glasses in solidarity, and murmured and agreed how it was just money. But as they each took a swig of beer, not one of them looked any other in the eye. Because Jane, Bingo, and Paulina had already begun plotting how to make sure their shop won, and Jude had already been scanning the restaurant the entire time, checking out every woman’s left hand to see if they were single.

Georgia was the only one not thinking or caring about the money: she was still pondering how Mr. Ng? and her father knew each other, where her mother was in the world, and if she was happier now or full of regret, but mostly, the youngest was wondering about the origins of it all and how she got to be where she was, exactly in that moment. She wondered about the thread that wove them all together, creating the illusion of lineage, and whether or not the thread was thick enough to withstand what was to come.