The Family Recipe

Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

Bingo

“Where are my boxers? I’m so late!” Iris bemoaned as she scurried all over the back office of the abandoned Duc’s Sandwiches that Bingo had converted into her temporary living situation in Philadelphia. Iris rifled through old cardboard boxes, sneezed over dusty white linen that had yellowed over time, yelped when she uncovered a swarm of spiders in one corner, and threw a mighty curse when her knee collided with the metal frame of the spring cot. Though her face tried to contain her disgust, Bingo worried that things were starting to sour between the two of them. Bingo was starting to feel that she was the equivalent of cis men who didn’t own bed frames, but who insisted instead on putting mattresses on the floor, while Iris was the “cool Asian girl” who had her life together.

Bingo’s face continued to burn scarlet as she saw Iris quickly finger-brush her hair, while throwing another cursory look around the room as she swished some mouthwash around in front of the stand-alone sink. Her anxious attachment style began to rear its ugly head, and though she wanted to scream at herself to shut up and pretend that everything was fine , she was unable to stop the car crash from happening.

“So,” Bingo began to spill out, her eyes downcast, not able to look directly at Iris. “I know this probably isn’t the best time to ask this. But what are we? It’s been… I mean what is this? And I was just wondering what you were thinking—” Snap . Iris had slipped on her bike helmet and was hurriedly putting on her jacket. Bingo could tell she was itching to leave faster; the tension in the room was thick.

Somewhere between landing in Philadelphia, that fateful run-in with Iris, spending almost every waking hour with Iris, and learning how to cook with Iris’s arms wrapped around hers, Bingo lost track of time, or her purpose for being in the city. When Bingo fell in love, she turned that person into her whole world and forgot how the earth spun. Everyone and everything else were inconsequential—including herself. There was just something so sexy about being with someone from the same background and how they didn’t even question putting Maggi on everything. There was no explanation needed between them, no silly argument over food restrictions, what kind of mommy issues they carried, or if they had gone to therapy. They could just simply be .

“Look, I’m late, and the meeting is all the way across town,” Iris said, almost too placatingly. “Let’s talk about this later? You know today’s a big day for me.”

Bingo nodded solemnly. She walked Iris to the front door, her feet dragging and getting heavier and heavier with each step. They passed by more storage boxes, broken window displays, and crooked shelves—everything still in its same place as the day Bingo arrived in Philadelphia, and in the same place as it was ten years ago, when the shop shuttered.

Bingo hadn’t done anything to her store. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, she just couldn’t find the energy to. Her mother’s depression had been passed on to Bingo the most, out of all her siblings. While her sisters were far better at pretending to handle their depression, Bingo couldn’t fake it at all.

She unlocked the front door, which was still taped with old shipping cardboard containers to cover up any cracks, and she let Iris out into the nearly empty street. To Bingo, it felt as if the dying neighborhood was somehow managing to die a little bit more every day since she’d arrived. She still couldn’t shake off the inkling that her father had sent her here to fail. That, perhaps, she was the one he cared for the least.

“Good luck today, okay?” Bingo said. “Those investors would be a fool if they didn’t give you all the money in the world.”

Wordlessly, Iris leaned in and gave Bingo a quick peck on the cheek, and Bingo instantly knew it was the kiss of death between them.

“Thanks, Bingo,” Iris said wryly. She gave another look around the place. “Maybe you should consider doing something today. Take a walk maybe? Get some fresh air.”

“Maybe.”

“What about cleaning this place up? What happened to working on the shop?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Bingo could feel her voice growing faint, defensive almost. She knew Iris’s affection was waning, and she felt defeated. “Are you going to break up with me later? If so, just get over it now.”

“I mean, we weren’t ever official official, so there’s nothing to ‘break up,’?” Iris said awkwardly. “I just think you’re a bit lost, Bingo.”

“Who isn’t?” Bingo’s defensiveness was getting stronger. “How are any of us expected to live? Have you seen the rising interest rates? We’re all just living to survive—”

“Look, I really have to go. Let’s talk later, okay? Meet back at my place?”

Bingo stood there haplessly and helplessly, while hopelessly in love. She simply nodded as she watched the cool Asian girl with the sleeve tattoos—and the self-determination to pull off micro-bangs—hop on her bike and pedal away toward a future without Bingo in it.

She managed to hold it in until she closed the front door, locked it, turned around, and allowed her father’s spirit to channel through her. Frustrated, she screamed and began to throw boxes around, trashing the already trashed place. She fought through her hurt, wondering what the hell was wrong with her and why all the girls she’d ever wanted could never see a future with her. And why, oh why , did it especially hurt more when cool Asian girls couldn’t see her the same way she saw them?

She couldn’t stop. She kept taking it out on the store, her father’s anger flowing through her, while her mother’s depression exacerbated her actions. She wanted love and purpose. Needed to be accepted, to have a reason to wake up in the morning, to not feel so heavy to the point she just wanted to rot away.

Eventually she found a hammer and swung, again and again, until she had nearly completed the half-finished demolition from ten years ago. She turned her focus on the back office and whipped open old boxes, throwing old papers into the air. She kept going until an old black-and-white photo flew out of the box and landed squarely at her feet, among a sea of broken glass and shredded papers. It was enough to make Bingo stop. She reached down and picked up the strange photo.

A photo of her mother, Evelyn, young, nearly the same age she is now, pregnant, and standing with her arms wrapped around a man who was not Duc. A man who—but it couldn’t be? Could it?

A young Mr. Ng?—so young, she almost didn’t recognize him. They had their arms around each other in a way that implied they were more than just acquaintances, and they were standing in front of the original Duc’s Sandwiches back in Houston.

Bingo kept staring. Curious. Questions piled on top of one another. She wondered where her father was and why Mr. Ng? was standing in his place instead. The more she stared at a young Mr. Ng?, the more she couldn’t help but think that he looked like Jane when he was her age, and how wide her mother’s smile had been. She couldn’t ever remember seeing her mother smile once growing up. Her mother’s smile lit a fire in Bingo, and she realized just how deeply in love she was with Iris, and how she couldn’t go the rest of her life without smiling like that again.

It’d been over three decades since Mr. Huey Ng? stepped foot in Philadelphia; he hadn’t been back to Pennsylvania since he first landed in America. But Philadelphia wasn’t the first city he experienced; it was Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Imagine his surprise at twenty-two, when he had traded in war-torn Vietnam for a town that still used horse-drawn buggies as transportation. His first impression of America was not the advanced promised land he had thought it would be. Where were the bright lights, rock ’n’ roll, give them hell attitude he kept seeing emanating from the American soldiers? Instead, Lancaster reminded him of home a bit. Farmland as far as the eye could see and involuntary solitude. The men worked traditional jobs, and Mr. Ng? admired their woodworking skills from afar, and he quietly observed the women, who never met his eyes, their heads covered in white bonnets. It was strange indeed that this was where he landed. Out of potentially fifty states, with a width of nearly three thousand miles, he had landed in a town frozen in time—with, ironically, a Christian family who sponsored his resettlement, and who taught him his first English words: fork and spoon .

Now here he was back in the same state, trying to track down Duc’s third-eldest child, Bingo, to check in on her progress, which was a mystery to him and to Duc. She’d gone radio silent, and he knew it was time to show back up in the same city that introduced him to Americana.

Mr. Ng? sighed, and the moment he checked into his hotel, he decided to take a smoke break and walk the streets again out of nostalgia. The familiar stench of the city came roaring back to him. The city was a mash-up of an eternally broken sewer line and sweaty, angry sports fans, even though they had just won. As he walked down Broad Street, he didn’t bother checking to see if he was heading in the right direction; time was finite at his age, but in this moment, he simply wanted to remember what it felt like being twenty-two again, and that feeling of sinking his teeth into his first-ever Philly cheesesteak, and wondering why the first two English words he learned were fork and spoon , yet he was eating with his hands. He wanted to remember the moment he became an Eagles fan, which he still secretly was, despite being a Texan now. He wondered how life would have turned out for him had he not left Philadelphia and followed a commercial fishing job all the way down to Louisiana, where he met the infamous Duc Tr?n.

As he continued strolling, and the sun began to set, any time he ran into an Eagles fan sporting the comforting colors of kelly green, silver, black, and white, he shouted in their faces Go Eagles! , which was shouted back with equal enthusiasm, perhaps even more. It was an instant bond, a shared moment, turning them from strangers into friends. He wondered if Bingo was also making the same memories he had, wandering the same streets and rediscovering her joy. Because out of all the children, Bingo was the one most likely to ignore the rules of society, such as knowing where to properly place a fork and a spoon .

But he knew better than to worry about Bingo; she always found her way, somehow.

Didn’t she?

As the sun set, so did Mr. Ng?’s knees, and he began to feel his age, so he traveled to the old Duc’s Sandwiches shop. Though spying on all the adult Tr?n children wasn’t exactly what anyone thought of as a good time, he had been excited to watch their progress in secret. It’d been months since he’d explained the inheritance game to them, and it was time to compile a report and update Duc, who was hiding out in Vietnam, getting drunk somewhere and probably gambling away his life savings—even though he had told Connie V? that Duc was hiding at an infamous Buddhist monastery outside the city of ?à L?t, to throw her off his scent. There was no reason to mess with Connie; he just simply thought she was a paranoid woman and liked fueling that paranoia for his own entertainment.

Though there was a pep in his step as he rounded the corner, there was a bit of a fear as well. Call it lawyer instincts, call it being Duc’s sidekick for almost five decades, call it some kind of paternal care; he began to walk faster. He couldn’t help but allow the what ifs to penetrate his mind. He had observed Jude’s and Jane’s lives in Houston, and though things seemed shiny on the surface, he had that worry in the back of his mind. He was always worried for the Tr?n children, and whether or not Evelyn and Duc had permanently scarred them. He loved that family dearly; it nearly killed him to do so.

Though Duc had stopped worrying a long time ago, Mr. Ng? never stopped. He worried if he’d made a mistake, decades ago, when he and Duc made that promise to each other, out on the boat down in Galveston, and whether or not the children’s traumas were all his fault. But what if? What if everything they had done to bury it all, to protect it all, turned out to be in vain?

With pained knees, he began to hobble faster toward the old shop.

Bingo rounded the corner, carrying an obscenely large bouquet of flowers. She wasn’t the type of woman to buy flowers, but to hell with it. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Her hair was pinned back, she had on a crisp white button-up, and she looked like someone playing a caricature of a woman who had gotten her life together. She caught her reflection in a nearby window display. Jagged edges revealed her face back to her, and all she could see was a young woman with blank eyes. She shuddered and marched on. Her mother had the same blank look in the days leading up to when she left them. Her mother assumed nobody had noticed, but they all did. Especially the children. It was impossible not to. Her body was there, but there was nothing else behind it.

The idea of losing Iris terrified her. Philadelphia had brought more riches than Bingo could have ever imagined. Bingo had stumbled into the arms of a woman, and she’d finally experienced love in the little moments: having a bottle of MSG around as seasoning, and being able to split food, just to try a little bit of everything. It wasn’t until Iris had come into her life, and, one night, crawled into bed at midnight with a plate of sliced mangoes, that Bingo burst into tears, and she realized what she had gained, and what she had lost. Duc had never cut fruit for her, nor had Evelyn. But seeing the mangoes haphazardly thrown onto a plate, by the hands of a second-generation Vietnamese lover, whose cuts weren’t neat but conveyed effort, Bingo felt safe for the first time in her life.

Bingo couldn’t lose her.

And there Iris was at her store, standing behind the fire as she always did, stoking the flames, which danced in her eyes. Her bangs were coated in the familiar grease Bingo had come to love. The smell of burnt lemongrass filled the air, and she could hear Iris laughing with her employees as they sped through orders with smiles on their faces.

Bingo looked past the flames and all she saw was what her life had been like in Philadelphia. She cared not once for her old life in Portland, or for her father’s mindfuckery games. She didn’t care about the money or duking it out with her siblings. She didn’t care about any of it. She just wanted a real shot at something. She recalled the old photo she had found of her mother and Mr. Ng?, and how it put into question everything. Who was Mr. Ng? to her mother? To them? And why did he smile at their mother like that? But also, why couldn’t she allow herself to wear that same smile when it came to romantic pursuits?

Once you bypass the fear of the unknown, con, this place will become your favorite city, too.

Duc’s words haunted her. Philadelphia had become her favorite city for one reason, and one reason only. She owed it all to one woman who resuscitated her, who taught her not to hate Vietnamese food anymore, who reminded her that not everyone leaves, and that there could be joy found in the mundane. Hell, she could even become an Eagles fan because of this woman. Maybe.

But as Bingo observed Iris, her feet couldn’t move forward. Iris flitted everywhere, from manning the fire, to taking over the till, to joking with customers. Her presence was infectious, and it made Bingo smile. She watched as Iris and everyone took celebratory shots during a lull in service. The investor meeting must have gone well. Though Bingo was excited for her, she acknowledged a difficult truth. She wasn’t someone Iris should be with. She had issues, the same kind of issues her father had, that caused her mother to leave. She had to learn how to be the person who cut fruit for their lover instead of waiting for it to come to her. Bingo didn’t want to wake up ten years from now, only to watch Iris walk out on her. She’d have to do it first.

She carefully placed the bouquet in the spokes of Iris’s bike, chained up outside the old warehouse, and walked away from the white-picket-fenced dream she’d always lied about having.

An elderly man was in the middle of Duc’s Sandwiches, a broom in his hand, sweeping gently, forming a small mountain of shards and debris. His silhouette was instantly recognizable. But it was his particular smell of off-brand cigarettes and how shiny his receding hairline was that gave away his identity.

“Mr. Ng??” Bingo asked, surprised, as she walked through the open door. “What are you doing here?”

Mr. Ng? turned around in response, a small half smile on his face. Though Bingo had sworn her entire life that she didn’t miss anyone from back home, seeing her uncle’s face again, a staple of her childhood, her father’s eternal, loyal sidekick, made her feel relieved. A familiar face, in a strange city. It was a piece of home. But the same thought lingered: Who was Mr. Ng? to her mother? Had he been a type of home to Evelyn?

“I was just supposed to observe from a distance, but when I saw all this”—he gestured at all the mess in the store—“I knew you needed my help. What happened?”

Embarrassed, Bingo couldn’t find words. How could she explain that her father’s anger was in her? That she was frustrated with how her life had turned out? Instead, she just shrugged.

“I was hate-crimed?” she joked.

He threw her a look, serious as always. “Did you hate-crime yourself?”

Bingo scoffed but didn’t refute him. She quietly picked up a broom and joined in on the sweeping. Together, the old lawyer and the third oldest of Duc’s children worked side by side. They began to take down the broken shelves, removed the rotting cabinets, and swept away the broken glass. Soon it was nearly two in the morning, and the middle of the room had bags and bags of trash piled up. Even Bingo was surprised by how transformed the store looked—it looked ready for a new start.

“So, what really happened?” Mr. Ng? asked. They now sat on two old red plastic chairs, in the middle of the store. He took out a cigarette and lit up without a care in the world.

“I just didn’t want to play Duc’s game anymore,” Bingo said, giving a half-truth. “Someone else can have the money. I’m done. I’m out. I’m planning on heading back to Portland at the end of the week. As per usual, I’m the loser of the family, and I’m ready to accept my place.” She remembered flashes of Iris’s laugh, and she grieved the loss of not being someone who was worthy enough for her, worthy enough for anything.

Mr. Ng? took a long drag from his cigarette, not saying anything. His face flickered with the ghost of an emotion. Disappointment?

He finally got on his feet, let out a small groan of pain, and rubbed his knees vigorously. Before Bingo could stop him, he began dragging the trash out onto the sidewalk, the crisp autumnal freeze sharply hitting his face as soon as he opened the door.

“What are you doing?” Bingo rushed to her feet and tried to wrestle the trash bag from the old man’s hands. “You’re ancient; you’re going to kill yourself.”

“I’m going to help you,” he argued back. “I’m going to stay and help you get on your feet. I don’t think you should give up so quickly.”

“Why? Why do you care so much?” she snapped back. “Just leave me alone!” As the two of them bickered back and forth, the old photo came to mind again. A young Evelyn and a young Mr. Ng?, who tenderly embraced each other. The photo burned bright in her back pocket, and as she reached for it to confront him about it, she looked at Mr. Ng?’s face again, and the rumors that had nagged them for a lifetime stared right back at her, taunting her.

Her mind began spinning and Bingo released the trash bag, allowing Mr. Ng? to take hold.

“You need help, Bingo. So let me help.”

He was just the family lawyer. So why—why was he so keen on helping her? She wondered if she was missing the bigger picture behind all of this, and if Mr. Ng? was the key to it all.

“Okay,” she relented out of curiosity. “You can stay. And I’ll stay, too.”