Chapter 27
CHAPTER 27
Georgia
Georgia’s van crept behind her mother’s Vespa for the third time all week. Evelyn knew she was being followed, but this time, she didn’t care. Together, the two of them formed a tight trail as they went about their days, running errands together, but not together . For the past month since Evelyn had come back after her (third) attempted run, they’d somehow grown closer by dancing around each other. Amid the long, sweltering dog days of New Orleans, they let the other into their isolated, small worlds. The two women even began to gift each other the type of empathy that had been missing from their lives.
Once they reached the grocery store, Georgia parked and went inside, following Evelyn down aisle after aisle, meandering from frozen foods to the fresh vegetables. She watched as her mother carefully sniffed each fruit or rolled each lime, dedicated to finding the best one in the stack. She saw her mother press avocados and intuitively, somehow, pick the best watermelon, after passing up six others. Occasionally, Evelyn would call over to her, asking if she had developed any allergies to certain ingredients, and Georgia would respond back, talking over service dogs and crying babies, that no, she wasn’t allergic to anything, nor had she become lactose intolerant (yet). Evelyn nodded and wandered over to the meat aisle, where she asked for a pound of pork belly, and barked at the butcher to give her the good cut, not the leftovers.
As the two women returned to the parking lot, bags full, the sun was starting to come down, and Georgia helped her mother load the groceries onto her Vespa before sliding back into her van. She tailgated her mother’s Vespa, until she came up the familiar dirt road where her mother turned in to her parking spot. Georgia watched from a safe distance as her mother unloaded groceries into her apartment. Once it was confirmed her mother was safe, Georgia began to settle in for the night, doing her own routines in her yellow van: turning the stove on, unrolling the mattress pad, prepping dinner. Suddenly, a loud slap against the side of the van caused her to yelp. Surprised, Georgia slid open the door and was face-to-face with her mother, who stood awkwardly, and had changed into a pajama set.
“Is everything okay?” Georgia asked, with deep concern. “Do you need me to give you a ride somewhere again?”
Evelyn wrung her hands together and, after some time, worked up the courage to ask her youngest daughter a question that had been plaguing her since Georgia’s arrival.
“Would you want to have dinner with me tonight? I’m cooking th?t kho,” her mother asked. It almost sounded as if she were asking Georgia if she could play with her on the playground. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had my th?t kho, but it’s one of my specialties. You might have been too young to have had it. My place is very small, but there’s room. Or I can bring it out here. Whatever is… more comfortable for you.”
Georgia tried her best to hide her elation, and not scare her mother off. After nearly seven months of trying to get through to her mother, Georgia, with the patience of a saint, simply nodded. She turned off her stove, locked up her van, and followed her mother into her apartment for the first time. She spotted Anne through the window, who’d been spying on them. Anne sneakily gave Georgia the thumbs-up. It was a small win, and perhaps the first win that Georgia had really had ever since she landed in the city. Georgia gave Anne an awkward thumbs-up back, and soon the smell of braised pork belly and fish sauce hit her hard like a sauna when her mother opened the door to her apartment.
Georgia tried her best not to cry as she sat down in front of her mother and accepted her home-cooked meal.
“Con, is this enough?” her mother asked hesitantly, tilting a bowl of rice in her direction.
Georgia nodded. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
The following week, the roles were reversed. And this time, it was Evelyn who followed Georgia’s van into the bustling center of the enclave where Duc’s Sandwiches was located. Georgia pulled up to the dilapidated storefront and both women got out, staring down the shop that was the root cause of all their pain. The chain that had caused the chain reaction of unpredictability that brought them to this very moment.
The store stood frozen in time, stuck at the end of the block, far away from the main road. Graffiti tags marred the walls so that neither woman could tell the original color. Georgia didn’t even need the key she was given. She simply pushed the door open. The mustiness was foul, but Georgia opened the door wide, allowing her mother and herself to step in. Evelyn didn’t speak for a while.
“This store is cursed, con,” she eventually whispered, finally allowing Georgia a glimpse into her mind. She rarely offered something about herself, about the past. “All the stores are cursed. Everything Duc has ever touched has been cursed. Do not profit off any of the stores, do you understand me? Don’t take a single cent. Don’t take a penny of your inheritance, it isn’t yours. It was paid for by blood. Do not blindly follow that man off the cliff anymore. Do you hear me, con?”
“Blood?” Georgia repeated, shocked. Blood was the last word she ever expected to come out of her mother. “What are you talking about, Mom?” Georgia pressed on urgently, preserving every kernel of truth her mother dropped for her.
Evelyn blinked at “Mom.” But if it truly bothered her, she didn’t let Georgia know, she just shook her head gravely, unwilling to speak more. “Just please, leave all of this behind, con. Move on with your life. Don’t give in to Duc’s games anymore.”
“You need to answer me. What did you mean by ‘paid for by blood’? Talk to me, Mom, please. Please. ”
Her mother’s face twisted with something. Was it pain? Did it look like grief? She didn’t know. But if grief had a face, she could have sworn it would look like her mother. Georgia stepped forward slowly, hoping that by the time she reached her mother, they might even attempt a hug. Not once in the past year had either woman attempted to hug the other, but Georgia was desperate to curl her head deep into her mother’s bosom, and fulfill her fantasy of what it was like to cry while having her mother hold her for once. She wanted to be up close to her mother’s scent again. May rose, jasmine, and a hint of bourbon vanilla.
But it was as if Evelyn was suddenly spooked, a stray dog unable to tell if the stranger before her was going to hurt her or save her. Evelyn took a step back, and Georgia could see her physically recoiling. Her mother threw her hands up in the air, spewed profanities, and stormed back outside, unwilling to divulge more.
Georgia was at her wits’ end, watching her mother start her Vespa, hop on, and drive off. She left. Again. How much more of this could she take before insanity settled in? She threw a final cry behind her mother’s back. “You want me to stop chasing you? Fine. I’m done with this place. I’m done with you. You want to never be found again? You got it. You don’t want to give a real answer to any of my questions? Don’t worry, I’ll make it all up in my head.”
Georgia meant every word. She was done chasing a living ghost. A stubborn ghost who didn’t want to be found or brought back to life. Anytime she came close to uncovering the truth, her mother would force her back a hundred steps. Now at twenty-three, after a sad birthday spent in her van keeping watch on her mother a month ago, Georgia had spent her entire life wondering what her mother was like. Now that she’d put a face to the woman in her dreams, she preferred the version of her mother in her head to the one before her.
She turned on her heel, furious, and headed back to the Duc’s Sandwiches shop. Anger had never once governed Georgia’s life or emotions; she saw it as useless and counterproductive. But now, Georgia felt anger. It traveled through her bloodstream, battling every white cell along the way, and it tasted foul and metallic in her mouth. Nothing about this moment was fair, and she suddenly understood how her older siblings carried their anger around like war medals pinned to their jackets. Evelyn and Duc had turned everything into a war zone. She was done with her mother, and done trying to be patient. The pain of the reversal of time singed her. She tried hard to remember how her mother was once a parent to her, and somewhere along the timeline, Georgia became the parent, and her mother, the child. This felt crueler than usual for some reason, considering how Georgia had never known what Evelyn was like as a mother.
But the anger continued to surge out of her, and she relished it. This must be how Bingo feels 99 percent of the time. She turned back around, and began chasing her mother again, not allowing her to walk away unscathed this time. Her words became her daggers, aimed right at her mother’s retreating back. “They say never meet your heroes, and I wish we’d never fucking met. You want to die all the time? Go ahead.”
With that, she headed to her van, wondering where she would go next after this, now that she was free. Maybe she’d drive back west to Baja, camp along the beach, or maybe she’d head to San Diego. Anything was better than this.
But Georgia stopped in her tracks once she saw a figure standing by her van, and it was none other than Connie V?, her father’s second wife and her stepmother, standing so still, she could have been mistaken for a statue. Beside her was an older-looking woman, who looked like a mature version of Connie. Their faces seemed wry, steely, and unimpressed with what they just witnessed.
“Connie?” Georgia whispered, her mouth agape. “What are you doing here?”
“You Tr?ns are really something,” Connie said in a sinister voice. “All you do is destroy everything in your paths. You really are all insane. You all think you can just take me for a ride? You, Duc, Evelyn? Everyone? You think I don’t deserve a penny? Neither do any of you brats.”
Georgia’s eye began to twitch at the word insane . Unlike her siblings, she’d spent her whole life pursuing a different avenue to release her emotions. She wasn’t as removed as Jane, as standoffish as Paulina, or as angry as Bingo. She clung to a different identity; she was the zen one, the peaceful one, the one furthest removed from the drama. But she wasn’t immune to the gossip and stories about her family, from the neighbors to her high school classmates to the people at temple. They’d called their family every word imaginable.
Insane, crazy, embarrassing.
Connie took another step toward the Duc’s Sandwiches store, and she pulled out what appeared to be a can of some kind. Before Georgia could piece two and two together, she watched in horror as Connie and the elderly woman threw gasoline all over the building. The smell was pungent yet somehow sweet at the same time.
“Wait a minute, what are you doing—”
But before Georgia could finish her sentence, the two women took a step back from the store. The elderly woman struck a match and held it up high.
“You tell me, right now, where Duc Tr?n is hiding or my mother lights up this store,” Connie said, so eerily calm, it caused mountain ridges to form along Georgia’s arms, the hairs standing up straighter than they ever had before.
“But I don’t know where he is! No one does!” Georgia said frantically. “And why is your mother here?”
“This store is under your name, correct?” Mrs. V? spoke up in a stoic tone. Like mother, like daughter. Mrs. V? held the match up higher, causing Georgia to panic.
“YES! Yes! It is!” Georgia shouted. She could feel her stomach dropping as if she were on a roller coaster.
“Call up Huey then,” Connie said. “Tell him to transfer the deed to this store to me.”
“Who the hell is Huey?!” Georgia said, confused.
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Connie said. “Duc’s lawyer. Mr. Ng?.”
“ Why the hell would I remember his first name?! I just know him as the weird uncle! Also, why is his name Huey ? That’s a bit strange, isn’t it—”
“Just shut up! SHUT UP! Call him right now—”
“But why do you want this dump—”
“Oh god, you stupid—”
“I don’t understand—”
“Insurance fraud—”
“There are better things to ask for—”
“Fire. Payout—”
“This place is a shithole—”
“Duc isn’t even your real—”
Back and forth it went between Connie and Georgia. Mrs. V?, who stood still next to Connie, grew frustrated and began to yell at her daughter to wrap it up.
Out of nowhere, a cloud of dust and gravel kicked up in everyone’s faces as the roar of a Vespa ground to a halt.
Evelyn hopped off her Vespa and began to head toward Connie and Mrs. V?, her eyes focused but enraged.
“Evelyn—” Connie sneered.
“Mom,” Georgia pleaded. “Help.”
Before anyone could say another word, Evelyn shoved Connie and Mrs. V? out of the way, took out a lighter from her pocket, lit it, and threw it against the building. Everyone began scrambling out of the way. Daughters ran after their mothers, ensuring they were safely out of harm’s way. Connie grabbed her mother, Georgia grabbed hers, each one yanking them out of the way, back onto the road, far, far away from the burning building. A roar of orange, and before anyone could understand what had happened, the blaze had overtaken the building. The fire reflected back in all four women’s eyes and raged on.
“Don’t you ever call any of my children insane again,” Evelyn shouted as Connie stumbled backward onto the ground. “You haven’t seen real crazy yet.”
“Mom,” Georgia whispered as she watched flames engulf the building, swallowing it whole. A burst of orange pierced the sky as the old building cackled under the weight of all of Duc’s sins, collapsing the roof inward. “What did you do?”
“Freeing us, con,” Evelyn whispered. All four women looked on, watching Duc’s Sandwiches burn to the ground, along with Georgia’s inheritance, and Evelyn’s past. “Freeing all of us.”