Yin Yang Love Song

Chapter 17 Chryssy

Chapter 17

CHRYSSY

I make a stop for BBQ pork buns at Pike Place before heading over to see Dad. There’s a lull between lunch and dinner, so we have the place to ourselves.

Dad started his restaurant nearly fourteen years ago, right around the time I left for college. He debated calling it Empty Nester or Filling the Void as a symbolic representation of the times, but ultimately landed on Pearl. It’s objectively a much more appealing name.

Tables line the perimeter of the restaurant, and the U-shaped oyster bar stands in the center. Stools surround it so customers can watch as their oysters are freshly shucked and served. On the other side of the large windows is a view of Elliott Bay. The blue water glitters as the sun hits it. It’s the kind of stunning Seattle day where the entire city reminds its residents that it can still show off when it wants to.

Dad greets me with a side hug, and I hand him his bun and a present. “Happy Father’s Day!” I say.

Dad rips the wrapping paper off, revealing a Velcro wallet with the words Big Shucks printed across it.

He chuckles. “Thank you. That’s one shell of a gift.” Dad eats half of the bun in one bite. “And thanks for that. I haven’t had breakfast yet,” he says before taking another. “A cook called out sick, so I had to step in to prep.”

“You need to be eating breakfast, Dad. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself,” I say. “Have you had any water today?”

Dad crumples the bun wrapper in his palm. “I had coffee. That has water in it.”

He pours crushed ice over the oysters to keep them cool. I lift one to examine its top. The light brown swirls into shades of white and mossy green before blurring into the dark brown of the shell’s edge. “Are you busy right now? Have time to shuck a few oysters?” I ask.

“For you, I’ve got all day,” he says, wiping up water drops on the counter with a linen towel. “Except for when dinner service starts. Then I gotta go.”

I set my bag on a stool and walk around to the center of the bar.

“I got in a fresh batch of Kumamotos this morning. Already scrubbed ’em,” Dad says.

Before we get started, he presses a few buttons on his phone. Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” flows out of the ceiling speakers seconds later.

Dad sets a bowl of ice between us for the shucked oysters as I fold a clean kitchen towel in preparation. We get to work, silently falling into step with one another. I was always my dad’s right-hand woman in the kitchen, helping him scrub clams, shuck oysters, and chop vegetables.

“You haven’t come by in a while. How’s In Full Bloom going?” Dad asks. “You look tired.”

I balk. “Dad, no one likes to be told they look tired.”

“Sorry, I’m concerned is all!”

I grab one of the small oysters and rub my thumb over the deep grooves of the shell. Ever since I first tried them, Kumamotos have been my favorite because of their mild brine and fruitiness.

“The flower farm we’re in talks with can’t give us their mums this year. Florists want them for weddings, which is honestly good news. Chrysanthemums are having a revival,” I say. “Well, all chrysanthemums but me. The inn is booked out for the year, and preorders keep going up. The cooking show led to more interview requests and more social media followers.” I shake my head.

“Those all sound like good things,” Dad says, confused. “Everyone wants to talk to the Heartbreak Herbalist.”

“Yeah, that added fuel,” I say with a tight laugh. “I worried that the title would be limiting, but interestingly, being the Heartbreak Herbalist gives people something tangible to grasp. It’s helpful when heartbreak—and for many, TCM—is more abstract.” A real smile forms. “People have been open-minded to healing in a different way than they have before.” I set the oyster on the towel. “But it was still too much exposure too fast, and we haven’t found a new farm to partner with. We weren’t ready. I wasn’t ready. Then again, who knows what will happen now after…”

“After… the show?” Dad guesses.

“You saw that?” I ask, glancing up at him.

“And miss the chance to see my daughter become a big TV star?” Dad asks. “Of course I saw it. The staff and I watched it here.”

I cringe. “Great, so now everyone who works for you knows your daughter is cursed.”

No. Now thousands of people know about the curse, something that’s remained mostly hidden for hundreds of years in my family.

“How’d that get out?”

“I’ll give you one guess,” I mutter.

“Great-Aunt Angelica?”

“Ding ding,” I say with forced pep, relaying what I learned from my aunties. As soon as Auntie Violet watched this happen live, she sent out feelers to the family to figure out how word got around. “Great-Aunt Angelica talked to someone named Miranda who worked at the Chihuly Garden and Glass gift shop. At least she got a discount on glass ornaments.”

Dad shivers. “I got stuck chitchatting with Angelica for an hour at a Christmas party one year. The curse was all she talked about,” he recalls.

“Sounds about right,” I say. “It’s just… it’s one thing when you believe something about yourself. It’s another when thousands of people believe it about you.” I take a long breath in. “If everyone believes it, does it make it… even more true?” My voice cracks at this. This must be how Vin feels.

I catch Dad’s concerned expression at my admission.

I try to shrug it off, mostly so he doesn’t worry. “It’ll all be fine. Great, in fact. Vin handled it.”

“I’d say,” Dad replies, and I can tell he’s trying to figure out how to navigate this topic of conversation. “Is he coming to the launch party?”

“Yes,” I say, warming at the thought of him. I don’t know if it’ll be as my boyfriend or what, but it’ll definitely be as our brand ambassador. I turn the oyster in my hand, positioning it belly side down, and tuck it between folds in the towel.

“It’s been a while since you’ve introduced anyone to family,” Dad says, swaying his shoulders to the music. “Regardless of who knows, I’m glad you’re not letting the curse stop you from being happy.”

I’d always wanted to be able to talk to Mom about my relationships, but it was a romantic notion to think that we would talk about boys while painting our toenails and eating ice cream. I can’t remember a single moment I’ve ever had like that with her. Conversations in general always skewed toward the curse, or away from it.

Dad positions the oyster knife into the hinge and works it up and down until the oyster pops apart, turning the blade sideways so it can’t snap back together. In one smooth, gliding motion, he slides the knife across the length of the oyster. He removes the top shell, lifting the belly cradling the oyster and its liquid to his nose.

“These are gonna be good,” he says. “They’re limited right now, but I wanted them, so I waited. We’re in for a treat.”

“You waited for these specifically? Don’t you have hundreds of oysters come through here a day?” I ask, laughing.

“Thousands, actually,” Dad clarifies. “But I wanted these ones. I only had to wait a few months.”

“Interesting.” I grab an oyster and grip it a little too hard, the ruffled shell digging into my fingers. I go quiet for a minute, retreating into my thoughts.

Dad rests his oyster knife against the towel. “Now that everyone in the Emerald City knows you’re cursed, I think it’s time we talked about this.” His tone takes a serious turn. “You’ve always heard your mom’s side about why we split. Maybe you should hear mine.”

“What more is there?” I ask. “Cursed is cursed.”

The lines in Dad’s forehead deeply groove in reaction to this. “It would be too easy to blame the curse for all of our problems.”

I scrunch my nose. “Then why do you? Why was that the reason I heard all the time for you two breaking up?”

Dad sighs. “I think your mom really believes the curse to be true, at least to some extent. I don’t know how the story has evolved over time that the Hua women would never find lasting love, but it seems to have taken on a life of its own through the generations. But here’s the thing: I never stopped loving your mom. Even after the divorce. I wish it were that easy. But emotions linger. The happy and the sad.”

This makes me pause. “What, you don’t think it’s real?” I ask, not quite believing what I’m hearing about the curse or my dad’s feelings toward Mom.

“I think the consequences are very real,” Dad says. “I think the trauma that has been passed down is real. And I think the fear is real. What I don’t think is real is that any of you are destined to never find lasting love. I certainly don’t want that for you, Chryssy. It’s why I’m glad you and Vin found each other. That you’re giving love another chance.”

“Sure, but—” I start. “Did you just say ‘love’?”

Dad looks over at me. “What did you think I said?”

“‘Glove’? ‘Above’? ‘Dove’? Anything but the L word.” I suddenly take great interest in an oyster. “‘Love’ is a strong word. I mean, yeah, I like the guy.”

Dad laughs. “Is that what it’s being called these days?” he asks. “In my day, when two people looked at each other the way you and Vin look at each other, it was called love.”

I hesitate, wondering how much I should tell Dad. He’s opening up to me, so I can’t lie to him. “It’s not love,” I say firmly, the words feeling false in my mouth. “We’re helping each other. We’re pretending to be together for a while.”

“What’s that even mean?” Dad asks, angling his head toward the oyster tucked in his towel. “That seems unusual.”

“We’re faking a few dates, and then we’re both going to move on with our lives. It’s simple. Date, break up, move on,” I say, waving my arms around. The oyster knife cuts the air.

Dad gently takes hold of my flailing arm and lowers it to the counter. “That doesn’t sound very simple. And that’s not what Vin said. Didn’t he declare that he has no intentions of breaking up with you?”

He did, and he only said it on-air to all of Seattle. To prevent myself from reading too much into his words and starting to question just how fake this fake thing is between us, I’ve clung to the two words prefacing his final declaration: I think .

“I’m sure he was just being nice,” I justify. We haven’t addressed it—or what it would do to his reputation—yet. All I know is that it was incredibly romantic, but romance is confusing and complicated. Even if I want what he said to be true. “Pretending to date was the worst idea, and I never should’ve agreed to it.” I say this defiantly, as if that might make it feel and sound convincing.

“Because now you both have to move on?” Dad asks, clearly trying hard to follow along.

“No, because now I’m happy. Can’t you see how bad that is?” I groan, crumpling a towel between my hands.

“Is this a millennial thing? I’m lost,” he says. “So you’re happy, and that’s… bad?”

“Exactly!”

“I don’t understand the world anymore.”

“He was frustrating when I met him. There was no way I thought I’d catch feelings. He was a heartbreaker. I was the last person who was supposed to fall for him. Honestly, I’m mad at myself. All I had to do was protect my heart, and I didn’t. And now I love—like—him,” I say. The words ring out loud and true. I can’t reverse them, can’t put them back in their shell.

Dad gives me an amused smile. “Is this a revelation for you?”

“Kind of,” I say. “This is not good. You know what my fate holds.”

He shakes his head. “This Hua family belief system has really gotten into all your heads. It’s an intergenerational game of telephone.”

Here’s where I’d say he doesn’t get it. That he’s not the one affected by the curse. But that just isn’t true. He’s been hurt by it, too.

“I think there’s a lot more to the curse that you don’t understand,” he says, his words nestling into my brain. “It kills me to see you living in fear of relationships ending all the time. If you go into a relationship thinking about the end, you won’t enjoy it while it’s happening. That’s no way to exist.”

If only Dad knew how fearful I’ve been or about the plan I have to keep myself protected. How, if I can control love, it won’t control me.

“But my relationships do all end. Every single one has, even the one I was sure wouldn’t,” I say. “I need someone who’s just right, you know? Not too hot, not too cold. Someone who, when it ends, can’t hurt me because it was just… meh.”

“Sorry, but a meh love sounds pretty terrible,” Dad says. “But if you love—sorry, like —Vin now, does that mean you want too hot now?”

“Of course I want too hot, but can I really have it?” I question. “Why would I do that to myself? Go into one extreme just for it to go away at some point.”

“You think the solution is to put up a shell to protect yourself,” Dad says, tapping his finger against the belly of an unopened oyster. He sets his oyster knife on the counter. “Chryssy, I fell in love with your mom the night I met her. That’s probably another reason she didn’t think it would last. How can something last forever when it was love at first sight?”

I blink. “Exactly. How can it?”

“I meant that sarcastically. I think it can. Hell, I know it can. That’s what happened,” Dad says.

My heart aches in my chest at these revelations about my parents and their broken relationship. A marriage destroyed because of a belief system, according to Dad.

“The curse is so ingrained in your mother’s side of the family. When we were together, she was always so worried that the curse was going to break us up. At first we were in a bubble,” Dad shares. “Then your auntie Violet’s husband passed, and the curse became all your mom talked about. I had to constantly remind her that the rest of her family’s fate didn’t have to be ours. At some point, I couldn’t convince her anymore that I wouldn’t leave. It got to be too much, always being told that I was going to do something I had no intention of doing. She thought I was lying to her. Ultimately, I never felt heard. My reassurance wasn’t enough. My love wasn’t enough.”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say, patting his shoulder.

Dad sighs. “I don’t want this to sound like I’m blaming your mom. I was old enough to know better. And I wasn’t perfect, either. I could’ve stayed and tried other ways to convince her. There are days I wish I had,” he says, shaking his head. “But no one wants to be constantly questioned about their love for you. We all have stories we tell ourselves, don’t we?”

I nod distractedly. It was how I was with Chris, blaming him, blaming the curse. Blaming everyone but myself. But I have some ownership here. Maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong.

I can feel the cells in my brain shifting as this information twists into a new shape. Was that how my parents started? Mom initially believing Dad when he fought for them before intrusive thoughts took hold and history was destined to repeat itself? But their history doesn’t sound fated. It sounds like a narrative that was not only told repeatedly, but one that was bought into. Over and over again.

Are we telling ourselves stories? Like how Vin tells himself he needs to work nonstop to compensate for his parents’ abandoned dreams. That he needs to continuously be improving. That he’s a heartbreaker. That he’s not going to be the one who breaks up with me. Was what he said on live television just a story to cover for me? Or was it the truth?

The squeaky wheels of a delivery man’s hand truck interrupt my thoughts.

“Thanks, Jim!” Dad calls out, waving to the guy as he walks past rolling boxes with images of potatoes and onions printed on the sides. “You know, when I first opened, I had a few oysters and a dream. At first, people mostly stopped by just to ask for directions to the Gum Wall. But I knew I made the best Oysters Rockefeller on this side of Elliott Bay, and when we were featured on a fancy show one day—not unlike the one you were on—overnight we had a monthlong waiting list to get in.”

“Oh, yeah,” I recall. “That was incredible.”

Dad smiles. “We weren’t ready. Didn’t have enough staff. Didn’t even have enough ingredients or tables. But when the reservations came in, we made it work. I took earnings from each night, invested it in more ingredients for the next booked-out day. I learned how to negotiate.” He chuckles, shucking an oyster without any effort at all. “It wasn’t easy, and we didn’t always make people happy. We had to say no often, and even closed for lunch some days to catch up.”

“Now this place is practically a Seattle landmark. A real gem. Or a pearl.” I nudge Dad when he’s not in a precarious position with the knife.

“It happened because of the exposure. My version of an irritant. And it’s because of that kind of irritant that pearls are made,” Dad says. “You and In Full Bloom are exposed right now and have more demand than you have product. Use that, let it irritate you. Your pearl is in the making.”

I nod, taking a second to think about how much the aunties and the inn have meant to me over the years. We’ve been able to help so many people with their heartbreak. I love the idea of it being a pearl in the greater Seattle area, too.

I wiggle the knife tip into the part of the oyster where the shells meet. It doesn’t budge. I remove the knife and try again, pushing harder against the hinge. My knife slips, and the tip jabs into the layers of towel.

“I haven’t done this in a while,” I say, grateful it was the towel and not my hand taking the hit.

“Here,” Dad says, angling a new oyster in the towel to demonstrate. “Apply just enough pressure, not too much. It can be hard to shuck oysters because they’re built to keep their shells closed. It protects them from birds, fish, hungry people named Chryssy and Dan. But if you’re shut so tight, you’ll always be in the dark.”

I bob my head up and down slowly in long nods. “Did you just tie this back to our earlier conversation? You just tried to make a metaphor for opening myself up to love, didn’t you?”

“It was before I realized halfway through that oysters literally stay closed for survival reasons,” Dad says. “And that’s what I’m trying to tell you not to do. Because when you do open yourself up, unlike oysters, you’ll survive. Hmm.”

“I appreciate the effort, Dad.”

“Let me try again. When your heart gets broken, it feels like it’s life or death. Okay, that’s not any better. I guess what I’m trying to say is, you need to slice that adductor muscle and open yourself up to love. Take the risk. That’s the best you’re gonna get,” Dad says, scratching his chin.

“Don’t play the final note before you’ve started playing the song?” I offer, Vin clearly on my mind.

“Yeah, that’s better,” he says. “If I ever try to make another mollusk metaphor, stop me. My last pearl of wisdom, or at least a question to mull over: If what Vin said is true and he doesn’t want to let you go, will you let him hang on?”

It’s a typical moment for me and Dad, one that we’ve had several times before. His open-ended questions about following in Mom’s cardiology footsteps, taking the leap out of med school, joining the Wildflower Inn. Never once have I regretted heeding his advice, even if it is disguised as a rhetorical question. When I hang out with him, there’s always food and food for thought.

For the rest of the afternoon until dinner service begins, we don’t utter the words “oyster” or “curse” again.