Chapter 29
CHAPTER 29
Jude and Jane
The car ride was deathly silent. Jude and Jane refused to acknowledge or even look at each other. Pride filled their chests, hurt filled in the rest. How could they get over decades of anger, resentment, and being pitted against each other? Jane even attempted to fiddle with the radio to try to add a third party into the mix. It’d been almost a decade since the eldest son and the eldest daughter of Duc and Evelyn were together like this. But this was proof that anything was possible, that if two warring Vietnamese siblings from Houston could learn to communicate with each other, then perhaps the rest of the irate world could follow in their footsteps.
Jude headed east of Bellaire, deep in thought. His thick eyebrows scrunched together as he sat in the awkwardness. Ding! A notification. Jane quickly grabbed her phone, furrowing her own eyebrows, her fingers flying across the screen. Ding! Ding! Ding! Rapid fire from Jane, and from whoever was on the other side of the screen.
Jude tried to ignore whatever was going on between Jane and her phone, but it was unusual to see his younger sister distressed. She furiously typed another message, heavily sighing.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Fine. Everything is just peachy .”
Silence.
“Are you sure?”
Jane opened her mouth, a slight hesitation holding her back from trauma-dumping on her older brother, someone who she had seen as her enemy her entire life. But then another ding! She read the notification, and the tips of her ears turned bright red.
Jane gave in to the rare, tender moment. “Do you remember my high school boyfriend?”
“Henry? Henry Lam? What about him?”
“We sort of reconnected. But then we got into a mini-fight. Then I avoided him. Then I told him to fuck off. Then I regretted it. Then I tried to apologize but, I don’t really know how to—”
“Apologize,” Jude finished for her. “You don’t know how to say you’re sorry.”
Another silence. This time, it lingered heavy in the air. An apology wasn’t just an apology in their world. They’d never heard it between their parents or each other, but they heard it plenty when they would see Duc and Evelyn constantly apologizing to everyone in America who didn’t look like them. They weren’t taught how to say “I’m sorry” to each other, but were taught how to always appear sorry, always begging for scraps.
“Yes,” Jane said, her voice small. “I don’t know how to say it.”
“But you want to say it.”
“… Yes.”
“Then, why don’t you just keep it simple and say those two words —I’m sorry ?” Jude suggested. “Apologies don’t need to be long. If they did, then no one would want to apologize.”
She didn’t reply, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw her thumb hovering over the send button.
“So, who are we going to see?” she asked awkwardly, brushing off his olive branch, attempting to change the topic.
“Mrs. V?ong,” he responded curtly, also welcoming the pivot.
“ Mrs. V?ong? The numerologist? The crazy old bat? Why? ” Jane asked, surprised.
The car skidded to the left as Jude pressed down on the pedal, encouraging the car, and, by extension, encouraging himself to barrel toward the truth faster.
“Mrs. V?ong said something to me way back then, when we all started down this crazy journey. She said something very odd. She said that Duc was afraid of the ocean. Of the Gulf. That he liked Phoebe’s profile the most because she knew how to swim, that she was a lifeguard. Isn’t that strange? Nothing makes sense.”
Jane shrugged, leaned back, and put her bare feet up on the dashboard, much to his dismay. “I mean, he’s an old bat, too. Why would you take anything he says literally? Nothing he says has ever made any sense.”
Jude just kept driving, because whatever was nagging him, was nagging him to dig deeper into their family. And he wanted his sister by his side as they got closer to the truth.
Mrs. V?ong’s office had all the hallmarks of a hoarder, like most refugees, but oddly enough, the stench wasn’t as bad as the visuals. Stacks of the local Vietnamese newspaper, The Viet Nam Post , touched the ceiling, each yellowed, frayed edge revealing how far it went back. Piles of old Chinese texts, maps, and translated works—from Cantonese into Vietnamese, from Vietnamese into Cantonese, from Vietnamese into English, and a true wild card, from Cantonese into Teochew into Vietnamese—formed a fort around the newspapers, preventing them from falling over. Windowless, the small but mighty office revealed a life well lived, with framed newspaper clippings of Mrs. V?ong throughout the years, and the lives she’d touched in Houston, Dallas, San Jose, and Oklahoma City.
She had always made sure her track record was pristine, and the proof was in the pudding inside five large rusted metal cabinets, containing the files of every client she’d ever crunched numbers for, dating all the way back to 1957, when Ho Chi Minh City was known as Sài Gòn—the Pearl of the Far East. Mrs. V?ong kept her receipts, ensuring that every chart she had ever done was well documented. Just in case.
“So, what brings you both in?” Mrs. V?ong said, leaning back in her leather chair, arms crossed defensively over her chest, her expression annoyed at the thought of having to deal with Jude Tr?n again—especially annoyed at him for his mistreatment of her and her meticulous matchmaking process. “How’s the wedding planning going? Isn’t it… next month now?”
Jude inhaled anxiously, gulping in a thick aroma of grated ginger and notes of stale green tea leaves, which sat moldy at the bottom of skunky mugs littering her desk.
“C? V?ong,” Jude said nervously, formally addressing her, his voice shaking slightly. “First, I wanted to apologize to you. I think I might have been too hasty. I have made a mockery of your matchmaking process. I’m sorry. I should have been more serious about it.”
A small smirk formed at the corners of her lips. She was relishing his penitence, and it made him squirm in his seat even more, remembering what it was like to be chastised by his mother. Even Jane looked over at Jude in surprise; this was all a first. Perhaps the last several months had done him good after all.
“An apology. I see. Starting to get cold feet?” she retorted. “Too hasty, huh? For picking the first file and thinking you could just have a sham of a wedding and then get your inheritance?”
Jude looked surprised. “How did you know I had to get married in order to get my inheritance?”
Mrs. V?ong uncrossed her arms, threw back her head, and laughed. It was the first time Jude had ever seen Mrs. V?ong display any emotion for anything other than numbers and matchmaking. “Con, the whole city knows it’s a scam,” she said as she managed to settle down through hiccupping chuckles. “The way Duc has made you all scramble, each and every one of you. You think we don’t see the monstrosity that Jane has made of Duc’s old shop over in Dakao Plaza—”
“Wait a minute,” Jane protested. “It’s not a monstrosity . Sure, I mean, it’s gone through some changes but—”
“Not now, Jane,” Jude hushed her.
“Oh, don’t you shush me—”
“You think we want to see the Duc’s Sandwiches logo on a tote bag all over the damn city? Also, you think we don’t know what’s going on in San Jose? Or in Philadelphia? Your sisters have also lost their minds. The world is much smaller than you think,” Mrs. V?ong said, barreling through. She circled her finger around, indicating a group of invisible people. “You forget that we love gossip and finding information. We’ve got all the time in the world. And unfortunately, most of the world hates Duc. He probably, honestly, still owes us all money.”
Jude’s cheeks flushed red. “Then why did you say my father preferred Phoebe’s profile over the other files? Why were you there to help me find a wife if you knew the whole time I had to marry to get the money? Why didn’t you say anything? Why doesn’t anyone ever say anything of worth around here?”
She sighed, resting both arms on the sides of the chair, tapping her fingers slowly. “I’ve known Duc for a very long time. Perhaps too long. But I did genuinely want you to find love, not for the money, but love , or at least have a real fighting chance at it. A good marriage can change you . It can be very beautiful, Jude. Phoebe’s and your chart were solid together, but there was someone else I had in mind, who was also standing in that line that day—”
Jude stared at the stacks and stacks of folders behind her, regret forming. The last several months could have turned out so differently, had he tried. Somewhere in that stack of folders, cabinets, and mess was someone who was an even better choice for him? It was incomprehensible. He couldn’t shake his feelings for Phoebe, but he began to wonder what would have happened had he done it all differently.
“I’ve always known your chart was never accurate, so I did my best.” She turned and grabbed the stack of files off the top of the closest cabinet to her and slammed them down in front of Jude. The label said FOR JUDE.
“What do you mean his chart isn’t accurate?” Jane asked, eyeing the stack curiously. “All you need is their birthdate and the time they were born. My mother took me in for this chart, too, when I was a kid.”
“I need a bit more than that,” she said, annoyed. “This isn’t Go Fish. I do complicated family charts, mapping entire destinies out. I chart different lives if one decides to make a different decision, and what that life could lead to. I make out whole different universes, different timelines, and answer the ‘what ifs’ for you. But in order for me to do this, I need the parents’ information as well. Do you understand?”
Jane looked confused. But Mrs. V?ong waited for Jude to put two and two together, before she realized she could be waiting for a long time.
“Soooo… what you’re saying is that Phoebe isn’t the one for me?” Jude said, waving his hand along. “And that I should go back to the drawing board?”
Mrs. V?ong clicked her tongue and began to rub her left temple in slow motion. “Listen to me carefully. I do not have your father’s information. I don’t know his chart, and because of that, I’ve never been able to give you a proper assessment of your life.”
“How can you not know?” Jude asked. But Jane’s face turned ghost white. “He’s been seeing you for longer than I’ve been alive! Surely, you would know his birth chart like your own palm lines now. Hell, the man goes to see you anytime the Super Lotto is above five million. Not that he needs it—”
“Yes, I know Duc’s chart well,” she murmured, looking fed up. She grabbed the pile of files of all the potential matches for Jude and threw them on his lap. “But you are not listening to me. I said that I do not know your father’s chart.”
“Oh my god,” Jane whispered as she turned to look at Jude. Suddenly she was one of those school kids, back on the playground, giving legs to the gossip. “I knew it. I knew it. Duc isn’t your father.”
Jude felt the world go cold. He was a dam with a crack in it. Everything he’d been suppressing, wondering if he was actually in love with Phoebe, if he was doing the right thing, winning the inheritance and beating his sisters to the punch, wondering where his mother had been hiding for the past two decades, why Duc hadn’t responded to his wedding invitation or reached out—none of it had more weight than the childhood rumors that had followed him all his life, tailing him all the way into adulthood. The rumors had been true all along: Duc wasn’t his father. Not only did he never have a chance to get to know his mother, but as it turned out, he never even knew who his father was, either.
Who was he really then, if he didn’t even know who or where he came from?
In the windowless office of Mrs. V?ong’s numerology practice, just east of Little Saigon, in another ordinary, inconspicuous plaza, Jane began cackling. She couldn’t stop. Laughter spewed out of her like vomit. Jude sat there helplessly as he watched Jane laugh at the stack of files of potential suitors and matches, with some of the spittle hitting Mrs. V?ong in the face. It grew louder and louder, aggravating him to no end.
Between gasps, Jane made a feeble attempt to apologize, explaining that she laughed in times of intense awkwardness.
“You are both clearly not understanding me. Let me be clearer,” Mrs. V?ong said, wiping her brow with her silk handkerchief. “When I say I don’t know your father’s birth chart, I also mean for all of your sisters as well. Which includes you as well, Jane. I’ve never once been able to accurately do both of yours, or Paulina’s, Bingo’s, and Georgia’s.”
Jane’s laughter immediately stopped. Her face turned pale and translucent, and Jude could see her veins throbbing—a million subway lines that kept Jane functioning. Suddenly, it was Jude’s turn to burst into laughter.
“Duc isn’t our father, either?” Jane said slowly, horrified. “Who the hell is our father then?”
“Who is our father then?” Jude echoed Jane’s sentiment. He began to feel lightheaded.
Mrs. V?ong sucked in her breath, closed her eyes, and though it seemed as if she were praying, it also seemed like she was cursing Duc’s name—and perhaps Evelyn’s name, too. “Like I said, I don’t know who your fathers are,” she said, exasperated, as if she were dealing with two unruly children who wouldn’t listen to her. “All I can tell you is what I don’t know. And I’m telling you both, I don’t have any of your fathers’ charts.”
Fathers. That was the second gut punch to both of them. Suddenly, nothing was funny anymore. Jude and Jane looked at each other as equals, both finding their way to the truth.
“There are two fathers?” Jane whispered, stunned.
“Yes, fathers,” Mrs. V?ong repeated, for no reason other than to plunge the knife deeper in. “Plural. Multiple. As in, more than one. Two.”
Jude’s mind began churning. He looked up at her. “Why would Duc send us on a wild-goose chase after our inheritance then? What was the point of all this? Some sort of sick joke to entertain an old man? Is the inheritance even real if we’re not even related to him?”
Mrs. V?ong looked between Jude and Jane, and simply shrugged. “You’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. I’m sure there were lessons learned in all of this. Duc had bigger plans, I’m sure.”
“Lessons? We’re not in school anymore,” Jane shot back, her voice rising. “What was the point of all of this?”
“What were we supposed to be chasing then?” Jude asked. He was losing it, like a machine that was overheating from an overcapacity of information.
Mrs. V?ong turned around and pulled out their mother’s file, and flipped to Evelyn’s future chart and began pointing at the numbers. “The only sure chart I have of your parents is your mother. This is guaranteed: She is your mother. Everyone knows Evelyn Lê had bounced around the past two decades. Some people think she settled somewhere on the West Coast or moved back east. But I always suspected she went south. I knew your mother was always a southern girl at heart. It’s in her chart, you see? Born in the southernmost tip of Vietnam, immigrating to Oklahoma City, she was always meant to be in the southern region.”
“Why are you showing us this?” Jude stammered. “Our mother is gone, okay? She doesn’t want to be found—”
But Jane leaned forward and grabbed their mother’s file from Mrs. V?ong’s hands. Her eyes were furious as her finger traced the lines that crisscrossed a map of America. Houston to Philadelphia to San Jose to New Orleans! She realized that Duc had been in many times to see Mrs. V?ong for the past several decades. There was a well-kept log of his visitations and how many times this file had been opened throughout the years. The last entry was the week that he had summoned them all home. New Orleans was circled many times over, drowning in question marks. Georgia’s name was next to it, with more question marks. Send the youngest one in to dismantle her?
He had pinpointed Evelyn’s location, or at least, he thought he did.
“Duc sent us to all these locations because that’s where our mother was possibly hiding,” Jane whispered. “He wasn’t sure of the exact location.”
Mrs. V?ong clapped her hands, pleased that Jane finally got there on her own. “Just so you know, this session isn’t free. I charge two hundred dollars an hour,” she said. “And I prefer cash.”