Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
Jude and Jane sat on opposite ends of the kitchen table, facing away from each other, while Georgia and Bingo sat between them, forced to switch between being referees or bodyguards at any given moment. Silence filled the blank spaces in the dining room. In any other ordinary circumstance, the quiet would have been indiscernible to strangers, but between the oldest daughter and the firstborn son, it was a declaration of war. Though tensions were already running high, the summer heat at noon magnified it. Texas summers were unbearable, and what made matters worse was that the air-conditioning appeared to be broken. Everyone was molting, shedding layer after layer. Even Mr. Ng? revealed a vulnerability, removing his suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves—a rare occasion seeing him without his full lawyer’s suit of armor on.
“So! The prodigal Tr?n daughters have finally all come back to Houston,” Mr. Ng? exclaimed, clapping his hands together. He set his briefcase on the table and began to pull out five red envelopes, each addressed individually to the children. Their names, written in haste with a white marker by their father’s hand, though all of the daughters’ names were misspelled. There was one for his son, Jude, one for John (he meant Jane), one for Paul (he meant Paulina, who sat the farthest from everyone), another one for Ringo (he meant Bingo), and finally, the last one for George (he meant Georgia). “Your father has missed you all very much.”
The four daughters stared at Mr. Ng? as if he had just told them that the earth was flat.
“No need to sugarcoat for us. You of all people know how our father is,” Jane said to Mr. Ng?. “I’m pretty sure you have to be loved first in order to be missed.”
“The man probably forgot he was supposed to meet us here, just like when he would ‘forget’ to pick us up from school,” Bingo said, running her hands through her choppy hair.
“Maybe he’s just stuck in traffic?” Georgia asked, her eyes wide and blissfully clueless.
“He’s coming. Why else would he call us all back here for the first time in a decade?” Jude said a little too desperately, perhaps needing to believe that he’d have backup soon. “I know he’s coming.”
“Look, apologies for the rush, Mr. Ng?, but most of us traveled from faraway places, and we weren’t planning on sticking around for very long, especially not for some accidental family therapy session,” Paulina expounded. “May we please just get on with it?”
“I mean, I don’t really have anywhere urgent I need to be—” Georgia started saying before Bingo hushed her. Georgia’s mouth zipped up and she shrank back, physically and emotionally.
Mr. Ng? waved his hands and attempted to calm everyone down. “Now, now. Let’s just all take a breather.” He shuffled the red envelopes in his hands needlessly, and began to pull out other paperwork from inside his briefcase, almost as if he was stalling. Jane eyed the red envelopes and her eyes thinned, her suspicions palpable to everyone.
“What exactly are in those envelopes—” Jane began before she was interrupted by Paulina, who had left her seat. She opened and slammed the cabinets in frustration. Paulina, who was known for starting world wars over simple miscommunications and impatience, began shoving old newspapers off the countertops and stacking empty take-out containers on top of one another. “I forget how much of a hoarder our father is,” Paulina said, commenting out loud to no one in particular, unable to hide the judgment on her face.
While the exterior of the home appeared pristine, albeit nouveau riche, the inside revealed a hoarder who had a strange affinity toward buying in bulk. It was the story of a man who, despite having seven figures in his bank account, suffered from PTSD and war trauma, had a scarcity mindset as an immigrant refugee, and had hints of some kind of mental illness. Though the house belonged to their father, none of them knew it well, especially the four sisters. All around them, piles of toilet paper and soda cans formed a makeshift fort, reaching all the way to the ceiling. Each corner of the house formed a vignette, a trail of Duc’s madness as he filled the southwest corner with nothing but kibble and other pet food… despite not having a dog. The southeast corner was full of things fermenting in jars.
Paulina continued to pace all over, removing dust with her fingertip from random shelves, straightening things out that didn’t need to be, and doing her best to toss out little knickknacks, here and there.
“Also, where’s Connie?” she asked with a stiffness. “Where has our favorite stepmother been hiding?” In the corner, Jane gagged at the mention of Connie’s name. Though Duc and Connie had been married for over five years, none of the sisters were ever able to recover from the fact that Jane and Connie were the same age.
The Tr?n girls were notorious in Houston for leaving town the moment they turned eighteen. Gossip used to run wild at the old Buddhist temple about how sad it was that Duc Tr?n and Evelyn Lê had four daughters, and yet not one of them was willing to stay behind to take care of their parents. The gossip grew more vicious after Evelyn had infamously abandoned them all. How broken the family must be, for a woman like Evelyn Lê, who came from nothing, to have not only abandoned her children but also her newfound wealth. Rumors, gossip, tattles, whispers around Houston’s royal Vietnamese family derived from fear, envy, but worst of all, it stemmed from pity.
What kind of mother would leave in the middle of the night without saying good-bye?
What kind of father would let his daughters leave?
Did you notice how Jude looks nothing like his father or his sisters?
How did Duc become so successful? Where did the money come from?
His sandwiches aren’t even that good. The old man has lost his touch.
“Your father went back to Vietnam for a bit,” Mr. Ng? responded carefully, still mindlessly shuffling the red envelopes in his hands, flipping and turning them over and over, as if he was about to deal a hand. “He had some last-minute affairs he needed to sort out over there.”
“What affairs?” Jude said, surprised. “I saw him two weeks ago and he didn’t mention anything to me.”
Mr. Ng? stared at the five Tr?ns, whom he considered his nieces and nephew. There was a brief pause, a slight hesitation in his body language, and he corrected his reading glasses, which had gone askew on his face. “Connie had a bit of a… fit last week over some news. So, she flew to her happy place . You know how much the Four Seasons on Oahu calms her down. Her reactions can be quite… strong.”
“Still being a problematic queen, isn’t she?” Bingo said with a straight face. “I thought everyone knew to leave Hawaii alone.”
“She threw a fit over what?” Jane asked, sitting up straighter, her lawyer persona coming out, interrogating Mr. Ng?. “I thought we were just here to settle the will?” All five siblings looked at each other, then they looked at the envelopes that were still in Mr. Ng?’s hands.
“He’s not sick, right?” Paulina asked, her voice veering on unsympathetic.
“Wait, he’s sick sick ? Like… deathbed kind of sick?” Georgia asked, alarmed and full of concern.
“Oh god, is it cancer?” Bingo asked, more curious than anything. “Stage four, right? Lung cancer? It’s gotta be lung cancer. Honestly, though, the way he drinks alcohol like water… maybe something to do with the liver?”
Mr. Ng? stared at the children and began to laugh uproariously, breaking the tension. “Duc? Duc Tr?n sick ? That man has smoked two packs a day for over two decades, eats canned Vienna sausages like it’s crudité, and drinks Hennessy for electrolytes. No, he’s not sick. He’s just retiring. Which, to Connie, is the same as death. Who will fund her love of designer outlet malls now?”
He looked down at the envelopes, sighed, and, seemingly reluctant, began to pass them out. He leaned back on the creaky wooden chair and popped some nicotine gum into his mouth, his loud smacks filling the air as everyone opened their envelopes and read the letters addressed to them.
“Remember to not shoot the messenger,” Mr. Ng? said between chews. “I’ve known your father since before you were all born, and while he’s not perfect, he’s always meant well.”
Each of the Tr?n siblings’ faces looked as if it was about to go through the seven stages of grief as they read their letter, but at some point, their faces seemed to be stuck in the anger phase.
“Look, I tried to talk him out of it,” Mr. Ng? continued, another loud pop from the gum erupting. “But he’s a stubborn old man.”
Duc’s words, addressed to each of them, began to sink in, and a murmur of confused whispers escalated into angry tangents. They double-checked what they had just read, and then triple-checked. Their faces turned redder and redder the more they consumed.
“He’s always been a bit eccentric,” Mr. Ng? rambled on. “I guess you have to be a bit of a tortured genius to have acquired all this wealth.”
Slammed fists on the tables, spitballed accusations—the siblings tried to understand the “rules” they had to abide by in order to win their inheritance. How long did they have to stay in the city they were assigned to? What kind of revenue did they have to hit? Was it true? That they had exactly one year to play their father’s inheritance game, or else they’d lose out on all the money? Forever?
“Look, the rules are simple enough,” Mr. Ng? said, in a poor attempt to placate them. “You also don’t have to play along. But if you do decide to try to win your inheritance, you do only have one year.”
“Just because the rules are simple doesn’t mean it’s fair,” Jane said, her face still in shock. “What city did everyone get?”
“Philadelphia,” Bingo said, still looking down at her letter. “What the hell am I going to do in Philly? I’ve never even been to the East Coast.”
“I got San Jose,” Paulina said, mortified. “Didn’t we all go there when we were kids?”
“New Orleans?” Georgia offered up. “I’ve never been to the South.”
“Jane?” Bingo said. “What city did you get?”
“Houston,” Jane whispered. “I’m staying here. The old man did me dirty. He’s always wanted to trap me here. He’s wanted to punish me ever since Má left.”
All four sisters turned to look at Jude, to confirm which city he got, but all they saw was how ashen his face had become.
“Jude?” Georgia asked, extending the first olive branch toward her brother. “What city did you get?”
Mr. Ng? coughed nervously as he shifted in his seat, the chair scraping the cold tile, screeching loudly, piercing everyone’s ears. “Jude isn’t playing by the same rules as you all are,” he said. “Your father didn’t think he should take over a shop; he wants him to set his goals on something else.”
“What are you talking about?” Jane pressed harder.
All four sisters turned to look at Jude, who had been silent the whole time in the corner, and looked more sick than angry. Unlike his sisters, who had scowls carved into their jawlines, Jude looked like he needed a bucket to throw up in.
“Don’t tell us you get the money without lifting a finger,” Bingo said. “You’ve gotten everything you ever wanted!”
“Firstborn Vietnamese sons truly are the worst,” Paulina whispered.
“I think after all of this, we should try family therapy,” Georgia said to no one and everyone in particular. “Do some healing, you know?”
Jude lifted his card for them all to see. “Duc wants me to settle down, get married,” he said, his voice hollow.
“That’s it?” Bingo howled. “Are you joking? Meanwhile, the rest of us need to uproot our lives, go live in some city we don’t know, and revitalize a failing Vietnamese sandwich shop in order to get a chance at the money?”
Again, Mr. Ng? cleared his throat. “Those aren’t quite the rules. Let me clarify. Whoever is able to turn their Duc’s Sandwiches shop around, bring up the revenue first before the others do, will get all of your father’s fortune. However , if Jude manages to marry someone first, then Jude gets it all. It’s winner takes all here, not a split. You have a year to figure it out.”
Everyone began bombarding Mr. Ng? with questions, then each other, and then aimed at their father, who at least had the common sense to leave the country to avoid dealing with this mess in person. Had the old man gone insane? Was this even legal ? Hell, was this even moral ? But had Duc Tr?n ever been of sound mind or law-abiding?
As everyone continued spiraling, their mother remained in the back of all their minds. They not only wished she was here to stop Duc, but they wished she had also asked them to run away with her, all those years ago.
Out of nowhere, the reverberations of the gong came at them once again. Even Mr. Ng? looked up in surprise as everyone turned to find the culprit. There was young Georgia, holding the mallet in her hand, with a small, sad smile pasted on her face.
“Can we at least argue over food?” she said tentatively. “You know, before we’re all scattered across the country again for a whole year?”