The Family Recipe

Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

Paulina

Though the robot arms were finally operating properly, they were now gathering dust. And though the delivery app had launched (but only for iPhone users), no delivery people walked through those swinging doors at the Duc’s Sandwiches in San Jose. Paulina stood in the shop, day in and day out, looking out the window, people watching, willing customers to come in through pure psychic prowess and desperation.

Despite all the promotion, buzz, and the “BUY 2 SANDWICHES GET 1 FREE” plastered on the windows of the revitalized store, the crowd avoided her sandwich shop as if it were the breeding ground of a plague disguised as julienned vegetables, head cheese slices, and a hearty spread of paté, all nestled within a warm French demi baguette. But the more people walked by, without giving a second glance at the modern Duc’s Sandwiches, the more Paulina felt like a failure. It reminded her of all the ways she had failed in her life. Of all the times in which she couldn’t see or understand her audience. But especially, of all the times she couldn’t recognize when her mother needed help.

Her siblings’ group chat lingered on her mind. A week had passed since then. Who was Duc Tr?n? Who was this man who had been parading as her father—as their father—for so long? Who was their real father?

But most of all, who was Paulina without all of this ?

Paulina kept tossing and turning at night, wondering who their father was, where their mother was, and what was the point of defining family, when family was just one giant escape room.

You’d be surprised at who will show up for you if you learn to ask for help.

Mr. Ng?’s last words to Paulina pierced through her. To Paulina, asking for help was akin to asking for money. Both were embarrassing, and she’d rather go broke than ever admit she needed help.

Paulina’s eyes narrowed. Everyone outside pretended the store was just a giant sinkhole, and they had to go around the edge. Everyone around her marched on with their lives, going from point A to point B, strangers kept being strangers instead of customers, and it all drove Paulina mad.

Paulina hated how right Mr. Ng? was. The old lawyer had warned her that the impatient old-timers hated technology or change of any kind and that she would be alienating her biggest customer base in San Jose. From the tiniest drop in the weather, down to having to get a new pair of socks, any minuscule changes in their rigid routines turned them off forever.

The store felt like a mausoleum. She’d automated the hell out of Duc’s old sandwich shop, replacing human workers with robot arms to make the sandwiches. The firing of Ch? Mai had rippled through the community, and everyone knew to avoid Duc’s, and to follow Ch? Mai wherever she had gone next.

Out of the corner of her eye, from across the street, Paulina saw signs of life; and they were walking straight toward her. But it wasn’t the sign she wanted to see. She swallowed hard, a lump at the back of her throat. The roughness of Oliver Chen’s scruff and his crisp white button-down shirt stuck out in a crowd of elderly people and their wool knitted vests. Clinging to his right hand was the smaller hand of a little girl whose hair was pulled back into two neat, low pigtails. Her eyes were wide and curious, radiating innocence, reminding Paulina that once upon a time, she was her age.

Esther. The little girl must be Esther.

Paulina scurried away from the window, and pretended to be busy wiping down the countertop, as she heard the ding of the front door open behind her.

“Pauly.” Oliver’s voice trailed behind her. “The store looks… great.” His voice sent vibrations throughout her body, despite his hesitation. His tenor crashed against her shores, reminding her of their past. The constant push and pull between them, the humiliation, the never-ending “will they or won’t they” tug-of-war, which turned into a real battle between them.

For ages, Paulina had thought she was winning the war in proving that she didn’t need Oliver to live, but now she realized she’d been losing the whole time. Oliver had just simply let her believe she was winning. She didn’t need Oliver; she wanted him.

God, how she loathed her father for sending her to the Bay Area. She hated San Jose. She hated the tech bros. She hated the locals. She hated all the transplants even more, including herself. She hated the tourists. She hated the 405N. She hated Silicon Valley. She hated this dumb shop. She hated herself for even playing along with her father’s insane inheritance scheme. (When he wasn’t even her real father!) She hated how stubborn old Vietnamese people were. She hated how those same old Vietnamese people refused to embrace her or her store. She hated that her sisters wouldn’t call her back, even though they promised each other they’d stick together during all of this, especially after the truth about Duc came out. She hated being so close to Oliver’s hometown, yet being so emotionally distant from the man himself.

Most of all, she hated how she didn’t know where her life was going. She thought all of this would simply be just another blip in her story, but she was stuck, in the very middle of it, with no way to move forward.

“Oliver,” she responded, whipping around to face him, sarcasm stuck in her voice like crystallized honey. “No need to lie. I know you know the store is shit—”

“ Language! ” he said hastily, quickly covering the young girl’s ears. Paulina quieted. “Pauly, there’s someone I want you to meet. My daughter, Esther. Esther, what do you say to the nice lady?”

Composing herself, Paulina took a sweeping, awkward step forward and thrust out her hand in front of Esther, as if she were a business deal she needed to close. “Nice to meet you, Esther. I’m… Auntie Pauly.”

“Hello,” Esther responded shyly, her voice barely louder than a whisper. The girl timidly took her hand, and upon holding the world’s smallest palm, Paulina felt a sudden emotion come over her. It was almost… maternal. She examined Esther’s palm in hers, so tiny and unscathed, and she wondered what her own hand must have felt like, at Esther’s age, grasping her mother’s hand. But Paulina had only reached for empty air. She wanted to shelter Esther forever from the outside world. Especially young children whose faces looked like hers.

“Are you hungry?” Paulina asked, her voice softening and contorting itself into a voice she didn’t recognize. She squatted down, so she was eye level to the mini-human in front of her. “I have an army of giant robot arms, ready at my command, to make you the world’s best automated sandwich.”

“You’re really not selling this,” Oliver whispered to Paulina, shaking his head.

Esther giggled, delighted at the thought of robots, and nodded. Paulina led her toward the tablet and instructed her on how to order a custom sandwich, and she stepped back, watching Esther order with ease. Kids her age were much better with tech.

Just in case the robot rebelled and readied to launch baguettes, she stood in front to shield the girl.

“It’s incredible how technology is so ingrained in children’s lives these days. They don’t even second-guess it,” Oliver said, reading Paulina’s mind. “It’s just so natural to them. Imagine what it’ll all be like when she’s older.”

“Honestly, I’m kind of jealous,” Paulina said, also enthralled, watching Esther’s delighted reaction to the robot arms. “Imagine growing up in a world where all the world’s information is seconds away at your fingertips.”

“I’m not jealous,” Oliver said. “I’m happy for them. The whole point is to watch each generation evolve… even if the technological revolution is through sandwich-making robots.” He smiled.

The tips of Paulina’s ears singed red. “What are you doing here, Chen?”

“Well, we haven’t spoken since you bombarded my office. You haven’t returned any of my calls, even when the robots were installed. I’ve… I’ve stopped by a few times, but you weren’t in the shop.”

“Why would I return the call of a complete stranger?” she said, lowering her voice so Esther couldn’t hear. “In all the years we’ve known each other, you never once told me you had a kid.”

“You think I wanted to bring my kid up any of the times we met up around the world? Why the hell would I haul a kid around for cross-continental booty calls?” he scoffed, running his hand through his hair nervously. He leaned against the counter. “Also, I didn’t know I had a kid until recently.”

“Oh yeah? How recent?” she said, crossing her arms, not believing him.

“Three years ago.”

“Oh.” Around the time when he’d stopped responding to her calls and messages. “Shit.”

“Shit indeed.”

Silence. A nervousness between them. Oliver had blamed her for not responding to his call; she had blamed him for not responding to a text. Now, none of it mattered. They had both stopped responding, and dropped off the face of the earth for each other, forcing lovers to become strangers—straddling the line between reality and insanity.

“What happened to her mother?” she asked softly, not wanting to hear the answer out loud. She could guess.

“She—she didn’t want to be a mother anymore,” he said, defeated. “So she quit. I have full custody now. I’m still new to all of this.”

This time, Paulina took several steps back, her triggers flaring up, her ears ringing. She had felt gut-punched at the news of Oliver being a father; now she felt as if someone had thrown her off the Golden Gate Bridge. Maybe it was the idea of another mother quitting that triggered her, or the fact that there was now shared trauma between the two of them, but something possessed Paulina. She was pulled in two directions: wanting to run up to Esther and hug her tightly, or grab Oliver and kiss him. Perhaps this was what Duc felt like, pulled from all directions when Evelyn left.

She hated to admit how Duc had stepped up, despite not being their biological father, and had financially cared for Paulina. How he had done the same for Jude, Jane, Bingo, and Georgia, in his own way, when their mother was long gone.

“You know, you’re operating at an extreme loss, Pauly,” he said, quickly changing the topic, noticing her sudden reaction. The absence of Paulina’s own mother hung in the air between them, possibly contagious, and it was as if the longer they were on the topic of absent mothers, the more it would spread. “At this rate, you might go bankrupt.”

“Heh, so much for the ‘if you build it, they will come’ mentality,” she said ruefully as she paced back and forth, also avoiding eye contact.

“Please don’t tell me you were following the advice of Silicon Valley swindlers,” he said, laughing.

Paulina said nothing. She just stared at the back of Esther’s head, admiring how neat her pigtails were. Knowing how new of a father Oliver was, she was struck by how there was not a single strand out of place.

Once Duc had tried to braid her hair when Evelyn had left them. After several poor attempts, Jane stepped in to finish the braids because they were late to school. Duc never attempted to braid her hair again after that. She wondered if Duc knew that low pigtails were also an option back then, or if he wanted so badly to replicate how their mother used to braid their hair, and prove that they didn’t need her.

She admired the simplicity in how Oliver tackled fatherhood. There were no grandiose promises of a perfect French braid, or a fishtail braid, or something to show off for others. There was simply the promise of someone showing up for you, no guarantees with how life will turn out, but that they’ll always be there. Paulina looked around at her cold, lifeless store, and saw all the life that was now bustling in front of it. She felt claustrophobic. This wasn’t her at all. Duc’s legacy wasn’t the life she’d ever wanted to maintain. All she ever wanted was a simple unfussy braid, and none of the theatrics of a more complicated one.

Through the window, Paulina spotted an elderly woman shuffling across the street—the same woman who had come into the store during renovations, the same woman who had asked repeatedly to buy her weekly loaf, and who Paulina had callously brushed off, nearly a year ago. She was with a group of other elderly women, flanking each other, side to side, front to back, each one dragging behind them a metal cart on wheels.

“One second,” Paulina said suddenly. “Watch the store for me.”

Oliver called behind her retreating back as Paulina dove out of the store, the little bell dinging. “There’s nothing to watch! It’s all automated, remember?”

“Wait!” Paulina cried out to the old woman. “Wait, please!”

The woman turned around, and looked Paulina up and down. There was a notable disdain on her face as she recognized who Paulina was.

“Yes? What is it?”

“Please, I just want to apologize for my behavior a year ago,” Paulina said, a bit out of breath. “I… I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Well, don’t apologize to me,” she huffed, and stepped aside. “Apologize to her.” She revealed Ch? Mai, the woman Paulina had fired. It’d been so long since she fired her, Paulina barely recognized her. But there she was, a head full of gray, who reminded her of all the aunties back in Houston, who watched her grow up when Evelyn disappeared. She realized that not even Duc would have been as callous as she had been. In all the years she’d been inside a Duc’s Sandwiches, it had been mostly female workers behind the scenes. Duc had always made sure these women’s livelihood was guaranteed.

Paulina was worse than Duc, and that made her feel like shit.

“I’m so sorry,” Paulina said quietly. She fumbled in her pocket for a bit, and then pulled out the store key and gave it over to Ch? Mai. “Here. It’s all yours. Do with it what you want. It’s time for me to leave.”

Before she could wait for Ch? Mai’s answer or any of the shocked women’s expressions behind her, Paulina turned on her heel. Watching Oliver and Esther interact through the shop’s window, she knew it was time to say goodbye to them, too. With a heavy heart, she walked back into the store, the infamous bell dinging again.

“Hey, you want to get out of here?” she said suddenly.

Surprised, Oliver looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s play hooky,” she said mischievously. “You, me, and Esther. Let’s go have some fun. The robots don’t need us here. You’re right, they can watch after themselves. We can… go have a picnic somewhere.”

She could feel his hesitation, his defensive wall starting to go back up, his shoddy attempt to keep her at arm’s length. But she could also feel how tired Oliver was, being a single father, and struggling to always make sure the little girl in front of him was cared for. The scales—she remembered Mr. Ng?’s words—were starting to move, finally, and Paulina began to see them even out between them. Perhaps having Esther on the scale helped.

“You’re about to go bankrupt and you want to abandon your store in the middle of the day?” he said incredulously, but a small smile danced on the edge of his lips. “And you want to abandon ship to go have a picnic somewhere?”

“What’s a few more negative losses today anyway?” She could feel him lowering his wall, or at least stopping the drawbridge from coming back up.

“I don’t know, foreclosure? Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy? The loss of everything, your inheritance, your father’s disapproval—”

“There are worse things in life,” Paulina said. Before Oliver could finish another sentence, Paulina had already stuffed a few sandwiches into her purse, grabbed his hand, grabbed Esther’s hand, and pulled them out the door. The bell dinged again, and Paulina knew that it would be the last time she would ever hear that bell.

Because Paulina knew it was time to go home. But she wanted one last chance, one last shot, at the real prize.