The Family Recipe

Chapter 38

CHAPTER 38

The Tr?n Siblings and Two Shadowy Figures

Up in first class, a stewardess in a red sarong kebaya for Singapore Airlines delivered an Old Fashioned to Jude, who was half-asleep, sunglasses crooked on his face, his seat partition halfway rolled up. She tapped his shoulder gently, and he jerked awake, wiping a bit of drool from his lips.

A soft groan escaped him as reality began to set in. He hadn’t been to Vietnam since he was a child. It was surreal that they were doing this just to track down a man who wasn’t even their biological father.

“Sir,” she said softly. There was just the tiniest hint of a Singlish accent. “I am sorry for disturbing you, but here is the drink you ordered.”

Jude grunted a thank-you, managed to sit up while still hunched over, and downed the entire drink in three gulps. The whiskey churned through his body, instantly warming him up, and his only note was that he wished it burned more. He gestured for another one, quickly changed his mind, and gestured for two more.

“You know we haven’t even left the ground yet, right?” Paulina’s voice called out from the next partition over. “Economy class is still boarding you know.”

Jude rolled his eyes and waved her off. “Can’t you save your judgment for when we’re up in the air, then? Also, how are you able to afford first class? Aren’t you broke from your failed shop? Go to the back of the airplane with the rest of the peons.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’m savvy with my savings,” she shot back. “You’re the one who should be a bit more economical these days with your cash flow. Haven’t you considered that perhaps Duc was lying about the ‘inheritance’ the whole time? He’s not even our real father, so who knows where the inheritance is really going or if it even belongs to us.”

It pained him to admit how right Paulina was. He hadn’t thought about the consequences of finding out the truth about Duc. Did Duc and Evelyn plan on hiding the truth from them for the rest of their lives? Questions upon questions piled up, but the truth was lost in the haystack. The mystery of it all continued to fuel his paranoia that they were all still missing something: Why would they go through all this trouble?

And even if they confronted Duc in Vietnam, would he even tell them the truth? Was he capable of the truth?

Jude thought about Phoebe, back in Houston. He still reeled from the fallout of a public breakup, while Phoebe walked away unscathed. The unanswered emails in his inbox from the banquet hall about catering and dietary restrictions, the thousands of decision-making details left on the final wedding touches, and the enormous guest list, which somehow had gotten ten times bigger since he last looked at it. It had all been so easily extinguished with a simple email, the subject line: WEDDING OF JUDE TR?N simply put, no one wanted him.

What added more poison to the wound was how easily Phoebe’s father had cut him out. Mr. Ph?ong had removed any traces of Jude from his life. How easy it was for parents, or parental figures, to snatch away love so fast, dangling the idea of unconditional love. Perhaps Jude should have been better equipped to handle it, after how easily their mother left.

Looking back, it all seemed so fruitless. But now, he wondered why Duc even cared in the first place if he got married or not, when he wasn’t even his real father. What was the point of all that? The stewardess set down two more drinks in front of him. The second glass went down easier than the first, but the third began to taste like water, and he knew he was drunk.

But Jude kept drinking. Drinking and drinking, hoping that it would numb the pain.

As more economy passengers began filing past him, haphazardly dragging their cheap carry-ons behind them, he slowly raised the partition all the way up to block out the rest of the noise. Just as the partition was about to close, he caught the eyes of Bingo and Georgia as they filed past him, also lugging ginormous suitcases behind them. Bingo, who looked distracted, gave an awkward nod toward Jude, but Georgia, being her usual young, sweet self, waved and attempted to make small talk, forcing him to lower his partition again.

“I can’t believe we’re going to Vietnam!” Georgia squealed at him as the economy line ground to a halt behind her. Jude groaned. They had twenty-one more hours of travel time to go. Georgia was between Jude’s and Paulina’s pods in first class. “This is so, so exciting. I wish my Vietnamese wasn’t so shitty, you know? I wish I knew more so I could speak there. You think it’ll be okay?”

“Don’t worry, you have us as translators. Also, this isn’t a vacation, Georgia,” Paulina reminded her again, her older-sister persona kicking in automatically. “We’re going to find Duc and confront him. About everything. The marriage. Why he pretended he was our father our entire lives, the inheritance, the games, everything. Why did he put us all through that for the past year? And who is our real father?”

“Also, we’re not staying long, either,” Jude said, slurring his words slightly. “So don’t get used to it. Vietnam isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, you know. Don’t let those travel influencers and all the rebranding fool you. I used to go with Duc all the time back when I was a kid, and hated it.”

“Speak for yourself.” Paulina scoffed. “You’ve got an archaic view of the country. A lot has changed since when you were a kid, and when Duc and Evelyn escaped Vietnam during the war. It’s sexy and modern now.”

“When were you last there?”

“Last year, dummy. I go quite often.”

Frustrated, the economy passengers began to inch forward a bit more, attempting to shove Georgia forward. Tired travelers bickered among themselves to hurry up and store their carry-ons faster before all the good bins were taken.

“I’ve never been to Vietnam before,” Georgia said forlornly. “I’ve always dreamt of it, but my Vietnamese is the worst out of everyone in the family. I never got to go with you all on all of Ba’s trips. Am I not allowed to be excited? I get to see the country where our parents came from.”

“Duc isn’t your real parent—”

“He took care of us, didn’t he?”

“When Evelyn couldn’t?”

The line suddenly began to spill forward faster, and before Jude and Paulina could say anything else, Georgia was carried away like a swift current, all the way to the back of the plane, near the bathrooms.

“We could have been more excited with her,” Paulina said quietly to Jude. “I forgot she’s the only one who has never been to Vietnam.”

A stewardess handed Jude two more drinks, and he managed to down another one quickly before answering. “She’s not our responsibility, Paulina. When would any of us have had the time to take her on a trip to Vietnam? We can barely even eat dinner together as a family; what makes you think we’d survive an international trip abroad?”

“Well, we should have been better older siblings,” she snapped back. “We failed her. When Má left and then Ba couldn’t handle being a single parent, we all went our separate ways.”

“Stop calling him Ba,” Jude sniped. “He’s just Duc. He’s not our father.”

With that, he pressed the button to roll up the rest of his partition and drown out Paulina. But as the partition began to close, an older Vietnamese woman walked past him, wearing a baseball cap low over her head. She made eye contact with him, her stare intense, as if judging him for everything he had just said to Paulina.

Jude squinted. He wasn’t sure if he had seen a mirage, but the partition shut before he could second-guess the image. The woman almost looked like his mother. But it’d been too long, two decades, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to recognize her in a police lineup, on the street, or in line at the grocery store. Still, though, it was something about the woman’s eyes. But also the faint scent she left behind in her wake. May rose, jasmine, and a hint of bourbon vanilla. He quickly pushed the button to roll the partition back down, but by the time he was able to stick his head out, the woman was long gone, far down the aisle, way out in the boonies in economy.

Next to him, Paulina also seemed confused by the woman. For she had also turned her head to look in her direction.

They both had the same thought but refused to say it out loud, afraid to get their hopes up.

Over in premium economy, Jane was crafting an email. Or at least, she was trying to. It wasn’t about a boy, but there was a boy she didn’t want to hurt.

The last time she ever expressed her feelings to a guy was, ironically, Henry, back in high school. Funny how love is often doomed to repeat itself with the same lovers, over and over again, in a vicious cycle.

Dear Henry.

Hey you.

What’s up?

Hey friend!

She couldn’t get past the greeting. All she could think about were the last ugly, parting words she had said to him. Tears began to well up in the corners of her eyes, and she closed her laptop on the tray. He must hate her. She laid her arms and head on the laptop. She hated crying in public. She hated crying in general, but nothing was worse than having people watch her cry.

She could feel snot coming out of her nose, and her breathing became ragged. She could feel her seat-neighbor inch away from her, and she could tell he’d rather be seated next to a crying baby for an international flight than a crying woman who kept making mistakes, over and over again, at her age.

A hand brushed against her shoulder, and she looked up, thinking it was a stewardess telling her to put her tray table away for takeoff. But as she looked around, all she saw was an older Vietnamese woman, wearing a baseball cap, shuffle away from her.

A few rows behind Jane, over in economy, Bingo was in a nightmare situation.

Wedged in the middle seat between two straight white men, who rested their arms on the armrests on both sides of her—the equivalent of a manspreader on a subway—Bingo felt a disturbance in the force. Before she had left, she had promised everyone that she would take a deep breath, think first, and then open her mouth. She would not blow up. She had also made a secondary promise to even not speak in some situations. But whipping her head between both men, and looking at the projected flight time ahead of her, Bingo thought she might break that promise.

Correction: She did.

“Don’t either of you have any etiquette? Manners? Were you raised in the basement?” she snarled at the man to her left, and then to the man to her right, “everyone knows the middle-seat person gets both armrests because we’re stuck in the middle. You sweaty, foul miscreants.”

“Who made up that rule—? That’s like the ‘women and children first’ argument,” the man on her left began to protest, his chest hair exposed and red. Bingo counted four unbuttoned buttons on his paisley shirt and wondered what was the point of even wearing a shirt.

“Foul? Miscreant? BASEMENT—?” The man’s face on her right burst into flames.

“Besides, I don’t see any ladies present—” grumbled the other man.

All three voices began to rise, each one trying to overpower the other, arguing beyond the topic of etiquette for sharing armrests. Bingo was now arguing for equality. The stewardess was alerted to the rising argument and stampeded toward them, a forced smile on. In the middle of the stewardess telling Bingo to calm down, and the two men gesturing wildly, and Bingo drawing on her napkin a graph of who gets entitled to what for each seat—even if it’s not written out in FAA regulations—no one saw what came next.

The man in the aisle seat yelped in deep pain. It took Bingo a few seconds to realize that his water glass had been poured all over his lap, and she quickly denied throwing water at him. He began rubbing the back of his head vigorously, bewildered, his eyes enlarged and confused.

“I didn’t do anything,” Bingo said quickly. “I didn’t throw that water or knock it over on purpose.”

“I know, ma’am,” the stewardess responded, also looking confused. Passengers continued to file past and around the stewardess.

“Someone hit me,” the man claimed, still rubbing his head. “Someone walking past hit me!”

The stewardess diverted her attention to now mollifying him, as his voice escalated even higher than Bingo’s. Bingo turned around and caught the eye of an older Vietnamese woman wearing a baseball cap, who was in the very last row. Why did that woman look so familiar to her? There was something about the curve of her face… and her scent. A trail of May rose, jasmine, and a hint of bourbon vanilla.

But also, why did the woman just wink at her?

After a rough two days of traveling, all five Tr?n children descended into N?i Bài International Airport in Hà N?i. It was the first time they had all been on a plane ride together in nearly two decades. The last time they had attempted to fly on a plane was for Georgia’s ninth birthday when they tried to go to Disneyland in California. But when Duc got to the airport he realized he was ill equipped to take five children to Disneyland on his own, without Evelyn handling everything. The children witnessed Duc’s very first public meltdown, and Mr. Ng? canceled the trip and took them out for ice cream instead.

The transfer from Singapore to Hà N?i was smooth and eerily quiet. Quiet could be both a good and bad thing for a flight. Jude, Jane, Paulina, Bingo, and Georgia continued to sit in separate rows, in separate classes, and in separate tiers, far away from each other, revealing the different gaps between them. As the plane began to descend closer to the tarmac, all the distractions that had followed the siblings for a year were no longer there.

Here, they were back in Duc and Evelyn’s homeland, naked, vulnerable, and exposed. Diaspora children were oxymorons; they belonged but also didn’t belong, and no matter which way the pendulum swung, they were still tourists at the end of the day, visiting a country they had no real connection to.

Duc isn’t our biological father.

They couldn’t admit it, but their anger and quest for the truth was what brought them together. The enemy of their enemy was their friend? And for once in over a decade, the Tr?n children were united in fighting a common enemy.