Chapter 13 #2
finally emerged from her apartment complex. Hyacinth looked to see if Sunbern would be following Shannon to at least pay his
respects to his mother and send them off—as this had been his brilliant idea in the first place—but he was nowhere to be seen.
Typical, thought Hyacinth. That son of hers behaved like he had been raised by ungrateful wolves.
After her driver opened the door, Hyacinth reached out her hand while Shannon went in for a hug, so Hyacinth ended up accidentally
poking Shannon right on her left nipple. The two women of Sunbern sat side by side awkwardly as the car pulled onto Hollywood
Boulevard.
“So I was thinking we could take a sound bath in Santa Monica before we head to Malibu for my sister’s party,” Hyacinth began
stiffly.
“You want to take a bath together?” Shannon asked, feigning confusion in a ditzy vocal fry. She knew exactly what a sound
bath was, of course.
Hyacinth grimaced. “No, a sound bath doesn’t involve water. We lay down in a dark room to receive music and sonic energy from
a healer. It’s very therapeutic.”
“How about we heal with some In-N-Out instead?” Shannon asked, smiling somewhat deviously at her companion.
Hyacinth looked like Shannon had asked her to board a UFO. “Do you mean the hamburger?”
Shannon shrugged good-naturedly. She had not worn her intense blue contacts that day, and so Hyacinth was finally able to
look into her pretty brown eyes for the first time, and the elder woman was surprised to find them to appear earnest and sincere.
“Sunbern wants us to bond, right?” Shannon asked. “What better way than over some junk food?”
Surprising herself, Hyacinth responded, “Well, it’s true I haven’t had lunch yet, so . . .” Come to think of it, she hadn’t
had fast food in perhaps a decade, and her stomach suddenly growled.
“Oh, yummy!” Shannon beamed. Knowing Hyacinth’s history with that nutty Venice cult, she had always figured that her boyfriend’s
mother’s default impulse was to be a follower. And just by being assertive, Shannon was instantly in control.
She pulled a small bottle of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky out of her purse. “Have you ever tried pouring this into their milkshakes? It’s life-changing!”
“Three hundred ninety-eight . . . three hundred ninety-nine . . . four hundred!”
Aiming carefully, Cristiano Baccay tossed the final guava to land perfectly onto the pile in Meadow’s old toy wagon. After
dropping her off at his parents’ in Gardena, he had returned to Malibu and spent the rest of the morning picking enough of
Roses’s prized fruits to send a few home with each guest that day.
Looking back in the direction of the compound, Cristiano saw that it was already teeming with the hired help for the Lunar
New Year party, caterers and decorators scurrying about, draping the household in red-toned fineries. He winced, already dreading
a very social day, and rubbed his hands on his dirty tank top.
Despite his dashingly good looks, Cristiano was shy around strangers, and he wondered if he could stay in the orchard and
pick another few hundred guavas instead of going back inside. It was not like anyone would miss him, least of all April; if
Cristiano’s wife had finally returned from the Sun cousins’ desert party, she had not bothered to look for him yet.
Cristiano reached above him and picked a guava for himself, taking a big bite of the sweet and sour flesh, with its unique
Styrofoam texture. As he picked the pale seeds out of his teeth, he wondered if April and Wayward had made peace like he’d
asked.
“Oh, there you are, Cristiano!”
He turned to see Roses approaching in her silk peignoir. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Roses chided.
It had been his mother-in-law who had assigned him the hard labor of harvesting her guavas, so this made no sense to Cristiano—but
as he always did with Roses, he wisely kept his mouth shut.
“Sorry, Ma,” was all he said good-naturedly. This was how Cristiano Baccay had survived for so long as her son-in-law, against all odds and expectations. Even though he stood more than a foot taller than the Sun matriarch, Cristiano knew his place in her clan.
Roses was inspecting the fruit in the many baskets lined up along her orchard. “Cristiano,” she said, scratching some dirt
off of a guava with her fingernails, “I just wanted to thank you for doing what we discussed.”
Cristiano knew exactly what she meant. “Of course, Ma.”
Roses looked up at her son-in-law. “So how did you approach it with him?”
He cleared his throat, slightly uncomfortable. “I didn’t need to. Way brought it up to me himself. Asked me what it was like
being a dad.”
She smiled, very pleased indeed. “Your friendship with him is so special, Cristiano. Look how much he trusts you.”
He nodded agreeably, despite feeling so very uneasy. “Right. And I encouraged him that he should do it. I’m not sure it was
all because of me though . . .”
Roses was toweling her long wet hair. “Weiwei may seem very assured and independent to many, but you and I both know how much
he relies upon the support of his family. And who is more family to him than you?”
Cristiano mustered up a cheerful smile. “Happy to help, Ma!”
Not twelve feet away, hidden behind a cluster of nearby guava trees, April and Chinoiserie stood listening to Roses and Cristiano’s
conversation, both of their mouths dropped open in shock. At Chinoiserie’s urging, they had been searching for April’s husband
to show him her Lunar New Year dress when they’d sighted her mother walking into the orchard and then followed her to this
very spot.
And there they learned of this secret agreement between the in-laws, every word of it.
April had on a stunning YSL gown the color of oxygenated blood that had only been worn once, on a Paris Fashion Week runway.
But not even its splendor could outshine the searing rage on her face as she watched her husband conspire against her with
her mother. Though she had been standing still, she faltered and had to steady herself against a tree as Chinoiserie reached
out to hold her arm.
“Oh, April . . .” Chinoiserie whispered sadly, her long-lashed eyes drooping with compassion.
April also spoke quietly, but it was because her voice was choked with fury. “My own husband, Serie,” she hissed. “My own
husband! I don’t fucking believe it.”
Chinoiserie gently shook April’s arm. “It might not be what it seems, honey. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
“That sounded pretty conclusive to me,” April snapped.
The two women watched as Roses patted Cristiano on the back and turned to head back into the compound. Cristiano then leaned
against a tree, staring up at the sky as though deep in thought.
April shot daggers toward her husband, then turned her crosshairs upon her mother as Roses reentered their home.
“What are you thinking, April?” Chinoiserie asked apprehensively.
“I’m deciding which one to kill first,” April growled.
“Maybe we could have a drink first,” Chinoiserie suggested, “before the killing?” But she knew there was no stopping her.
Pulling up her bloodred couture gown with clenched fists, April Sun charged.
“Aw, c’mon, Mooncakes!” Shannon groaned in a deep but familiar voice.
Hyacinth could not remember the last time she had laughed so much. Perched atop the roof of her Escalade, she was laughing so hard that she fell onto her back, holding her half-eaten Double-Double burger above her, which began to drip special sauce onto her ruby-red blouse.
“Oh no!” Shannon cried out, back to her normal tone, mirthful tears also streaming past her waterproof smoky mascara. She
rummaged through her purse. “Wait, I always carry a Tide pen.”
Still giggling, Hyacinth sat back up to take in the panoramic view around them. At Shannon’s suggestion, after grabbing lunch
they had driven up a scenic hill near Culver City that showcased all of the West Side, the sun finally shining brightly above.
Enjoying her cinnamon-whisky-spiked Neapolitan milkshake, notorious lightweight Hyacinth had been in stitches over Shannon’s
hilarious but brutally accurate impressions of Sunbern, capturing with an actorly precision his surfer-bro affectations and
his looks of blank confusion.
“Here it is!”
Hyacinth turned back to Shannon, who was already reaching over to dab at the stain at her shoulder with the bleach pen. Letting
her, Hyacinth turned her attention to Shannon’s vintage designer bag, which had a touch of elegance to it that she had not
expected from this girl from South El Monte.
“That’s a lovely purse,” she said. “Did Isaac get it for you?”
Shannon glanced over at it. “I actually bought it myself, but first it was my mom’s.”
“What do you mean?”
“My mom was going through a rough patch, and instead of asking me for money, she pawned her favorite purse. When I found out
about it, I went to that pawnshop and bought it back for her. But she insisted I keep it instead.”
Hyacinth sighed with a smile. “I always wondered what it’d be like to have a daughter. Turns out it’s quite lovely.”
Shannon chuckled as she finished the rest of her milkshake. “It wasn’t all purses and rainbows. Between my brothers and me, there were seven of us, and she worked three jobs to support us, after my dad bailed on us when I was a baby. Most of the time, my mom was too tired to even talk to me.”
Hyacinth reached over to place a hand on Shannon’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know we are from different worlds, but I do know
what that’s like, in a way.”
Shannon shrugged. “It’s actually what Sunbern and I bonded over when we first started dating . . . not knowing our fathers.”
Hyacinth removed her hand from Shannon, a bit of rose tinting her cheeks at the mention of Sunbern’s father. “I see.”
“I’m sorry,” Shannon said gently. “He did say that you don’t like to talk about his father. But Auntie Hyacinth, I love your
son, and I want to help him become a better man. While we were broken up, after the leaked audio, I did a lot of self-reflection.