The Family Recipe

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Jane

Jane was the first to arrive at her assigned shop. The journey wasn’t as far as it would be for her younger sisters, who were all en route to their new lives in Philadelphia (Bingo), San Jose (Paulina), and New Orleans (Georgia). All Jane had to do was drive twenty minutes from her hotel in downtown Houston, back to Little Saigon. But those twenty minutes felt like twenty years, each passing landmark reminding her of all they’d lost as a family. But it especially reminded her of memories made without her mother.

At 8:00 a.m., Jane walked into the original Duc’s Sandwiches shop, located at Dakao Plaza, nestled between a beauty wholesale supply store and a dilapidated travel agency, which was known for shepherding buses full of little old Asian women to Vegas monthly—not to shop or tour the buffets, but to gamble their life savings away. She remembered the plaza well, as much as she didn’t want to. She remembered running through the parking lot as a child, and the joy it brought her hiding behind cars, waiting to be discovered. Old faces and lost memories began bubbling up—all those years of watching her parents toil day in and day out at the shop, and the neighbors who would come in to buy lunch from them. There was Th?y from the nail salon supply store, Duy from the travel agency, Xuan from the sketchy CPA’s office, and Linh from the refillable, filtered water store a few doors down. Neighboring business owners for over twenty years, who had watched Jane grow from a kid who clung to her mother’s skirts to a grown woman who no longer wanted to cling to anyone anymore.

The iconic white pylon sign stood at the entranceway of Dakao, crammed with names of dying businesses in its signature red font. Though every other plaza around them was attempting to be more modern, Dakao was still holding on to the citadel strong, refusing to convert to a sans serif font. It was more than just a sign; it was a sign of resistance and stubbornness from the old guard and gatekeepers of the first wave of Vietnamese refugees who settled in Texas.

“Wow,” she muttered to herself as she walked around the barren shop. There it was, the outdated Duc’s Sandwiches slanted lettering against a pale green backdrop, which taunted her, reminding her of all they had lost in the pursuit of an American legacy. “Some things really are untouched by time.” Vietnamese people were always the last to change but the first to complain. But nothing had truly changed in over two decades. When she had driven through the neighborhood, she begrudgingly noticed how some parts of Little Saigon had relinquished control to the second generation, allowing them to take the reins and breathe new life into the declining area. There was a renaissance happening here, albeit a small one. She just wasn’t sure if she wanted to be a foot soldier in that war.

Her mind wandered back to her father’s note. She had stayed awake all night, tossing and turning, reading and crumpling his words.

Jane, I hope you remember that once upon a time, it wasn’t all so bad. That I wasn’t so bad. That we weren’t so bad. The things that used to make us want to leave when we’re younger can make us want to stay when we’re older. Someway, somehow, we always make our way back home.

Since when was her father speaking to her as if he had just discovered Buddhism?

She spotted the same red plastic stools where her parents would sit for hours and prepare their specialty, xíu m?i, which tasted just as good as, if not better than, Italian or Swedish meatballs. Diagonal from that corner was the small plastic children’s table and stools where Jane first babysat Bingo and then eventually Paulina. Georgia had been born much later, nine years younger than Jane. By then her father had already expanded to several stores in the South, and his empire had grown.

“Jane?” a small voice echoed from the kitchen. “Is that you, con? Mr. Ng? told me you’d be coming.”

She turned around and almost lost her footing when she saw a little hunchbacked woman with the whitest thatch of hair. Jane’s face lit up for the first time since she arrived in Houston. It was a friction-fire sort of smile because, upon seeing the old woman’s face, she remembered the second mother who took care of the eldest daughter, when the eldest daughter in the family was stuck taking care of everyone else around her; an ouroboros of nurturers.

“Bác Cai? I can’t believe it!” Jane shouted with glee, and leapt forward. “I can’t believe you still work here!”

“You almost said ‘I can’t believe you’re still alive,’ didn’t you?” said Bác Cai, returning the smile. She shuffled her way toward Jane with arms outstretched. Jane drowned happily in her oceanic embrace, burying her face deep in her bosom like a little kid again. Bác Cai’s familiar signature scent filled her lungs: Tiger Balm, coconut oil, and a hint of smoke. All things Vietnamese, all things Texas. All the best reminders of childhood. Jane remembered it all. She remembered her childhood in full force again. And for the first time in a long time, Jane missed Houston. She missed home.

I hope you remember that once upon a time, it wasn’t all so bad.

Her father’s words nipped at her heart again, but she mentally tossed them aside. She almost wanted to shout at her father that now isn’t the time. “Seriously, though, I can’t believe you’re still alive,” Jane said, laughing as she pulled away. “You’re as ancient as this store.”

“I’m still spryer than you, though.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Jane peeked around the corner, waiting to greet the other kitchen staff. She’d been instantly rejuvenated at the sight of Bác Cai and was waiting for the other three women to emerge. The four elderly women were akin to fairy godmothers of the shop. Because while Jane watched Bingo, Paulina, and Georgia, the four fairy godmothers made sure she ate, brushed her hair, and got dressed for school. When a few ticks of silence went on, Jane remembered fairy tales weren’t real.

Bác Cai watched Jane curiously. “Con, what’s wrong?”

Jane looked back at her. “Bác Cai, where are the others? Bác Phúc? Bác Trieu? Bác Ping?”

She looked at Jane pityingly. “Not everyone can elude time, con. My time will soon be here, too, one day. Until then, I come into this shop every day at eight a.m. and I leave at seven p.m. All I have left is this shop and my routine. What else is there to live for? One by one, you all left.”

How could she not know the fairy godmothers of the shop and of her youth had passed away? Why hadn’t her father told her? Jane racked her brain. Had he? Had she ignored his calls while she was living her life elsewhere? She was overcome by the difficulty of admitting that this was her fault, and not Duc’s.

Jane rarely strayed from a linear path her whole life. And yet, nothing had worked out for her. Here was Bác Cai, still coming into the sandwich shop for the last sixteen years, making the same sandwiches, and she was more at peace with her life than Jane had ever been.

She turned so the older woman wouldn’t see the tears welling up in her eyes. “Well, you should take it easy, you’re no spring chicken,” Jane lectured. She forced herself to bury her reasons as to why she decided to stay behind in Houston and play her father’s game. This was neither the place nor the time for her to think of her own concerns. “It’s just been you here this whole time?”

Bác Cai shrugged. “Here and there. Mostly regulars, construction crew, and curious tourists. This shop is like a weird tourist attraction for a lot of Vietnamese Americans. You know how people feel about Duc. They look at him like the poor man’s Jack Ma. The real rags-to-riches story.”

Jane snorted. “Of course. The only people who look up to my father are strangers. They don’t know the truth about what an awful father he was.”

The old woman raised a brow. “He did the best he could, con. You know he did.” There was a slight warning in her voice. The continuous defensiveness of Duc Tr?n was something that Jane had held her tongue back on her entire life. But as the eldest daughter who escaped, who grew up, and who was standing on the old linoleum floors of her father’s old sandwich shop, she wouldn’t take it anymore.

“You don’t have to defend him anymore, Bác Cai,” Jane said. “It’s not like he cares about you enough to check in on you or this shop.”

Bác Cai raised her other brow, standing her ground. “Perhaps when you are my age, con, you can reflect back on your life and understand that your difficulties were not the same as our difficulties. That perhaps, your father also lived in fear, but a different kind of fear than you’re used to.”

Jane simply shrugged, unwilling to go into battle. “You know I’m a lawyer, right?”

“And you know I survived a war, right? I have more grit than you do.”

Laughter finally erupted from Jane, and she threw her hands up in the air, signaling defeat. “Alright, alright, you win. My father lives to see another day.”

“If only you knew…” Bác Cai’s voice trailed off.

Just then the doorbell sounded. The rusty old bell barely managed to notify the women that they had a customer. An elderly Vietnamese couple came shuffling in, their big sun hats barely squeezing through the door. Jane immediately knew they were from out of town, but she hung back and observed them quietly. They hobbled from one corner of the shop to the other, curiously picking up a dusty branded-green Duc’s Sandwiches cup that said “#1 Best Sandwich in Texas,” before they left without saying a word.

“Why didn’t you ask for their order?” Jane immediately grilled Bác Cai.

Bác Cai scoffed. “Who the hell comes in here to order sandwiches anymore? People from out of town come here out of morbid curiosity. Back in its heyday, Duc’s Sandwiches was a phenomenon. Now it’s just a decaying shop with food even I wouldn’t want to eat.”

Jane surveyed the shop again, this time with new eyes. She watched as the old Vietnamese couple took a photo in front of the first Duc’s Sandwiches in the country, and then walked back to their car. She no longer viewed it with a sentimental lens because tenderness and doing the right thing had never worked out for her. She needed to do right, not for father, or for her absent mother, but for the four women who had turned this shop into her second home and made it more bearable than her actual home. She needed to turn the shop into Little Saigon’s crown jewel again. The hub for all passing gossip, the place where everyone ordered their catering from for every milestone in their lives. She needed to preserve the best part of the shop’s history. Even when she’d spent the last ten years running away from it.

As her brain churned, so did Bác Cai’s words: Curious tourists. Morbid curiosity.

“Bác Cai,” Jane said slowly as her eyes turned into dollar signs. “I’m going to need your help one last time. We’re going to turn this shithole around.”

“What do you mean by shi—”

For the first time in years, Jane felt lighter. Jane had a plan. And when Jane had a plan, you should expect tsunamis, earthquakes, and lightning to step aside in fear.

The Tr?n women had to win somehow.

But unlike her three younger sisters, Jane knew she had the upper hand against them. She had a set of skills that only the eldest Asian daughter could wield: Her Vietnamese was better and she knew how to talk to old Asian people. Both of which were lost on her sisters, who ran like cockroaches from the light when they had to greet their elder relatives.

Bác Cai and Jane set off in the morning the next day to survey the neighborhood. Jane had compiled a list of recently opened modern shops, which catered to a younger, social-media heavy crowd. The following day, they did the same thing. Jane took notes, photos, and researched. Bác Cai complained heavily. Day after day, the two women, nearly forty years apart, schemed on how to beat out the other Tr?n children, and turn their shop around.

Jane couldn’t help but feel cocky, that the win was hers for the taking. It almost seemed… too easy. The more Jane tried to crack the formula, she realized all she had to do was follow the same cookie-cutter recipe as the other stores around her. The new shops were replete with giant neon signs, accented wallpapers, catchphrases on the walls, and diva lights installed in the bathroom mirrors.

Easy.

Their final stop on the modern list was a Vietnamese coffee shop called Cafe Cà Phê. For the past hour, Bác Cai had lodged an onslaught of complaints to Jane about how tired she was, how she needed to sit down in front of the air-conditioning, and how the younger generation was so strange. Jane was only slightly losing her mind. They walked into the brightly lit and crowded coffee shop. Bác Cai managed to groan, complain, and collapse into a chair all at the same time. She held out her hand to flag someone down, shaking it vigorously.

“Bác Cai, this isn’t a restaurant,” Jane chastised her, her face slightly red from the sun and embarrassment as she pushed down Bác Cai’s hand. “It’s a coffee shop. We have to go up to the counter and order.”

“Tr?i oi, these young kids,” Bác Cai whimpered as she massaged her calves. “Don’t they understand old-school hospitality? This isn’t a drive-through!”

“It’s just standard—” Jane began, an annoyance reaching her throat. Just because she was great at talking to old Asian women didn’t mean she could withstand it for eternity. Before something ugly came out of her, she managed to swallow it, shoving it all the way down. “Never mind. I’ll go up and order for us.” Jane turned around abruptly and slammed into the man standing behind her, causing him to spill his coffee on himself. A flurry of apologies and yelps erupted from her.

“No, no, please! I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said, his voice deep and smooth, going down easier than discontinued Japanese whiskey. He reached over her to grab napkins on their table. “Didn’t mean to hover or stand so close. That’s like the coffee-shop version of manspreading on the subway. I deserved it.”

Jane also grabbed a fistful of napkins and their hands collided awkwardly in the middle. She furiously began dabbing him all over, apologizing relentlessly and talking a mile a minute. When she looked up, silence overcame her from the sheer surprise of recognizing who it was.

“Henry?” she whispered, her hand frozen on his chest, wet napkin under her fingertips. “Henry Lam?”

“Jane,” he said, a small smile dancing at the sides of his lips as recognition also dawned on him. “You did look familiar. How long has it been? Eight? Ten years? You look great.”

She gazed into the eyes of the first boy she’d ever kissed and took him in, noting all the differences while celebrating the parts that remained the same. When he was fifteen, Henry had been sharp, rugged in all the wrong places, and highly emotional. Now he looked as if he was rugged in only the right places. She felt an inexplicable pull toward him, like the magnetic north.

He was a composite of all the best parts of growing up Vietnamese American and none of the ugly, generational-trauma parts. Henry was childhood personified: Maggi seasoning drizzled over sunny-side-up eggs, a warm baguette, white rabbit candy, paper lanterns during the mid-autumn festival—but most of all, he was a reminder of what life was like before her father became consumed with money and success, and before her mother was unable to acknowledge her ailing mental health. Henry represented an alternate reality. It was painful to be standing in front of him now, living out the alternative.

“Eighteen years actually,” she whispered. “But who’s counting?”

Jane remembered that day well. In front of a grocery store over on Blalock, on an ordinary Tuesday summer afternoon—between freshman and sophomore year—Jane had been sitting in the shopping cart as Henry spun her around like a go-cart. His laughter was maniacal and contagious, her shrieks booming and virtuous. Up until that point, they’d been nothing more than just friends. Just friends. But it all changed within a span of thirty seconds.

One moment he was running and pushing the cart, and the next he was staring down at her as she clutched the sides of the cart. Her bangs clung to her forehead in clumps, sticky from the humidity. He reached down and pushed her bangs to one side, framing her face into a heart shape. She grew quiet under his touch. In harmony, he leaned over and she leaned up, their shadows aligned for once—reaching the perfect symmetry between two very good friends, a rarer occurrence than a hybrid eclipse. She was taught in school never to look directly at the sun during an eclipse. So, she closed her eyes and let him kiss her first.

The things that used to make us want to leave when we’re younger can make us want to stay when we’re older.

Jane hated that she was thinking of her father in this exact moment, but Duc’s letter came back to torture her. She remembered how much she wanted Henry and her to work out when they were younger, how he was the only reason she’d ever consider staying in Houston.

“How long are you in town for?” Henry asked, finally breaking the awkward silence. He looked down pointedly at her hand still firmly on his chest. “Or are you doing your usual sneak-into-town-for-a-few-days-and-then-disappear act?”

“She’s here for a while,” said Bác Cai, piping up quickly, raising a walking cane and poking Jane with it from behind. An ominous (?) smirk on her face. “Isn’t that right , Jane?”

“Yes,” Jane breathed. “I’m here for a bit.”

“She thinks you two should get dinner and catch up,” said Bác Cai, piping up again, as she prodded Jane harder. “Isn’t that right , Jane?”

“Yes,” Jane said, surrendering herself over to her puppet master. “Dinner sounds great.”

“And Jane will call you soon,” said Bác Cai. Her final poke caused Jane to lurch forward into Henry’s arms. “ Right , Jane?”

“Yes, I’ll… I’ll call you soon.”

Henry laughed and helped Jane upright. “Perfect. I look forward to your call, then.” He gave her a final hug goodbye and walked out.

“I’ll be helping you alright,” Bác Cai said slowly, as they both watched him leave the shop, walk down the street, and slowly disappear from their view. “But it’s not going to be for what you think.”