Chapter 15 Magnolia
MAGNOLIA
Do you know what irony is? People often say, “That’s ironic,” and then it turns out their example has nothing to do with irony.
Here’s what was truly ironic: within five months of Iris coming back to Jakarta, she’d not only fulfilled her promise of starting her own business, but she’d also met a Chindo guy, fallen wildly in love, and married him.
Yep, that’s right. My sister, who’d always been so adamant about not believing in the “institute of marriage” because it was “a social construct designed to subjugate women,” was married. All before Parker and I managed to book a venue for our wedding. Now that’s irony.
Of course, her being Iris, she would never stoop so low as to do things by the Chindo book.
No traditional Chindo wedding for her, with two thousand guests, a Chinese tea ceremony, and a big, sparkly white dress.
No, Iris went to the courthouse one morning on her way to her office, and by the time she came out, she was married.
Mama and Papa were aghast when she told us. I was aghast too, but as per my usual, I was quietly aghast.
“Married?” Mama gasped. “Is this a joke?”
“No.” Iris opened her briefcase and took out a piece of paper. It was her marriage certificate.
“What—why would you do this?” Mama said, shying away from the marriage certificate as though it were coated in poison.
“I’ll call Uncle Handry,” Papa said, already pulling out his phone from his pocket. Uncle Handry was a lawyer. “He’ll get it annulled.”
Iris’s face twitched. It looked suspiciously like she was close to laughing. “Oh, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Iris, let your papa fix this,” Mama said.
“Yeah, but I thought it would be prudent to get married before the baby arrives.”
All the noise and commotion screeched to a sudden stop. Mouths froze open, eyes stared unblinking.
“The…baby?” Mama hissed.
Iris gave a sheepish grin. It was clear she was enjoying this. “It’s about two months along. I have a feeling it’ll be a boy.”
A choked sound scratched its way up Papa’s throat.
He raised his hand, and for one horrific moment, I thought he might actually hit her.
My body moved on its own accord. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I stepped forward.
Before I could get to them, Papa had turned away abruptly and stormed out of the room.
My muscles turned into water, and I almost sank to the floor.
“What have you done?” Mama said, her eyes bright with tears. “Stupid girl. You think this is a game? You’ve ruined yourself. You’ve ruined your sister!”
All traces of Iris’s smile disappeared. “If Parker leaves her because her sister is married and expecting, then maybe he’s not the kind of guy she wants to marry.”
I was so sick and tired of them talking about me as though I weren’t right there in the room.
“I know what kind of man he is,” I said.
“And this won’t make him leave.” As soon as I said that, though, doubt immediately sprouted in my heart.
In fact, I didn’t know, for sure, if he wouldn’t leave me over something like this.
But I tried to hide it, to raise my chin with a confidence I didn’t feel.
Mama paced the room. “We can fix this. We—we’ll tell everyone that Iris was already engaged for a while, and she—she had an intimate ceremony in—in Bali. Yes. Bali!” She nodded to herself. “We were there, of course. And she conceived right after the wedding. A blessing.”
“There we go,” Iris said easily.
Mama swung round and caught Iris’s arm. Even from where I stood, a few paces away, I could feel the heat of Mama’s rage radiating from her.
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Mama hissed. “Just. Don’t.
You have done enough.” She released Iris and started to walk out of the room but then stopped.
“And when will we meet this—this husband of yours?”
Iris was rubbing her arm where Mama had grabbed her. “Anytime you want. I’ll start packing today.”
If Mama was surprised to hear that Iris was moving out, she didn’t show it.
She left without another word. Then it was just Iris and me and the terrible drowning silence between us.
When I look back at this moment now, my heart breaks, Izzy.
I wish I’d said something kind to her. In hindsight, I realize that beneath the bravado, she must’ve been quaking with fear.
Of course she would be. She was young, so young, and pregnant and newly married to a man none of us knew, and our parents had just rejected her with shocking coldness.
I think of myself then, smug and self-righteous, and I want to shake that version of myself.
But as much as I wish I could rewrite history, I haven’t figured out a way to do that yet. So here’s what I did do:
I thought of my relationship with Parker and how fraught it already felt, what with all of the wedding planning drama.
Every week it seemed like our parents had a new thing to disagree over.
For the past two weeks, we’d been in negotiations over the Sangjit—the Chinese engagement ritual where the groom-to-be’s family was supposed to come in a procession to the bride-to-be’s house, bearing gifts and red packets filled with money.
The ceremony would end with the groom-to-be putting a necklace round the bride-to-be’s neck in front of both families, symbolizing the betrothal.
The gifts they came bearing had to include clothes, food, jewelry, a suckling pig, candles, fruits, and money, each one symbolizing something like fertility or good fortune.
It was a complicated ceremony, made more complicated by expectations placed on the gifts from both sides.
Mama demanded the clothes had to be of a certain brand and that the jewelry had to be sizable.
“I’m not being materialistic, Magnolia,” she’d told me.
“These gifts are supposed to symbolize your worth; I’m not going to sit by and let the world think my daughter is worth so little. ”
It was an awful affair all around, and by now, all I wanted to do was be done with it.
And with Iris’s announcement, I was at the end of my rope.
I had nothing left in me to give. And so I lashed out.
I looked my older sister in the eye and said, “I wish you’d never come back. ” I left without waiting for a reply.
I don’t want to dwell on the next few months.
Suffice to say, Iris moved out to stay at an apartment she was renting with her husband, Erik.
Erik seemed nice enough, but we didn’t spend much time with him.
They were soon out of sight, and out of mind.
Something I have come to regret over and over as well.
Time marched along, as it has a habit of doing, and despite all of the bumps in the road, Parker and I made it to our wedding day.
I wrote a letter to Ellery the day I got married. Let’s see…here it is.
Dear Bellery,
Guess what? I’m married. When the pastor said, “You may now kiss the bride,” I thought: Bellery would say, “Can’t believe my lil’ Tulip is married!
Whaaat?” Which is probably a weird thing to think when your newly married husband is leaning down toward you for your first kiss as a married couple, but there we go.
I’d promised you that I would learn to banish all thoughts of you from my mind years ago, and here you are, still very much on it the day I got married. This feels like a failure on my part.
As I walked down the aisle, an utterly ridiculous thought flashed through my mind.
You, jumping up when the pastor said, “If anyone knows of any reason—” But the thought ended there.
I didn’t even let myself wonder what you might’ve said.
I smacked my hand down as hard as I could on that stupid thought and hissed to myself to stop being so dumb, because.
You. Left. Me. You left me and never looked back, and that was why my smile never wavered as I walked down the aisle, not even when I saw Parker’s parents at the front pew looking at me and smiling in their very prim way.
You left me and I’ve also left you behind—mostly—and I will only look forward from now on.
I won’t spare a thought for you. I won’t think of how you’re doing in London, whether you’ve fallen in love with English tea and scones with clotted cream and gooseberry jam and whether you get tipsy off Pimm’s cocktails.
I won’t wonder about whether you now have a bit of an English accent or whether you sound just as American as I remember.
I won’t think about your hair and wonder how long it is now, or maybe you’ve cut it short because you were always threatening to do that?
Do you have a little balcony in your apartment (maybe you now call your apartment a flat?) where you grow a small but surprisingly abundant garden?
Do you call zucchinis courgettes and eggplants aubergines?
Ugh, okay. I’m stopping. I won’t wonder.
Because I’m somebody’s wife now. Can you believe that?
Somebody’s WIFE. Jesus. I feel like I’m a kid still, but I’m not, I’m a quarter of a century old and I’m somebody’s wife.
You’d like Parker, I think. Well, you’d like making fun of him, at least. You’d tell all sorts of dumb jokes to try and get him to crack up, then when he finally did, you’d go, “Phew, that took a while.”
You know who else is married? Iris! Isn’t that wild?
You know what’s even wilder? She’s pregnant!
She actually got pregnant even before she got married, which is so Iris.
You always did say that she marched to the beat of her own drum.
I don’t see Iris much, even though her place is less than five miles away from mine.
Sometimes, I even forget that my sister is back in Jakarta.
Sometimes, I feel sad about that, but most of the time, I don’t really think about it much.
Parker is now getting groomed to take over as CEO of Mama and Papa’s clinic.
It sounds nonsensical, especially since he’s not a doctor, but as Papa pointed out, “The owner of the multinational bakery, Epic Bread, has never baked bread in his life.” They said Parker had every potential to run a successful business, and at the end of the day, the clinic was a business.
His parents were relieved; their family company was too crowded, what with Parker’s siblings and cousins being involved and all.
It’s just way too messy and stressful. This is the perfect solution.
This way, Parker inherits a business to run, and the clinic will flourish under his directive.
I know it will, because Parker has good instincts and isn’t so traditional that he won’t listen to me.
In fact, thanks to Parker, the clinic is starting to integrate a new software system.
We bought new computers and are in the process of migrating our hard copies into virtual ones.
The staff was dubious at first, but Parker convinced them this is the only way to remain competitive.
I’m happy at the direction the clinic is going into, but…
Bellery, can I tell you something super petty?
It was my idea first. I know, there is no me or him anymore.
Just an us. We are one unit. I know. But I’d been arguing for ages to computerize everything, and they merely laughed at me.
I vented about it to Parker, who listened quietly.
Then he presented the idea to Mama and Papa, which was so sweet of him to make my idea heard.
But the thing is, he didn’t mention that it was my idea.
I know that he probably left that part out because he knew that if they thought it came from me, it would be easier for them to reject it.
God forbid any idea comes from a lowly feminine mind!
I understand the reasoning behind it, but still.
A tiny part of me can’t help but feel a teensy bit betrayed.
Which I know is silly. He’s doing what’s good for everyone.
This is another stupid thing to think about right after I’m married, isn’t it?
Anyway, I can’t write too long. I’m supposed to be packing the last of my stuff up to move into our new place.
Oh, that’s one of the (many) good things about being married to Parker—we have our own house!
His parents, ever the traditional Chindo parents, have provided us with a house.
It’s three doors down from theirs, and it’s newly built and very nice.
Four bedrooms, because they expect multiple grandkids, of course.
I’m excited about this new chapter in my life. I think it’s going to be a good one.
Your friend,
Tulip