The Family Recipe

Chapter 43

CHAPTER 43

Duc

Everyone should have known Duc Tr?n was never going to be sequestered in a Buddhist temple, tucked high up in the mountains in northern Vietnam, praying for world peace. Duc Tr?n was a man about town, the sentient embodiment of b?i ??i—a dust-of-life kind of soul—one who lived for life’s hedonistic joys: bar food, gambling, karaoke, cheap beer, even cheaper cigarettes, carom billiards, and the endless hum of magical Sài Gòn nights, which could lead him anywhere at a moment’s notice.

The moment everyone landed in Sài Gòn, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, Mr. Ng? led the group straight to Duc’s lair, no longer willing to maintain his attorney-client privileges in the face of Connie’s wrath. Down an unmarked street, somewhere along the invisible border of District Three and District One, there was a long, winding alley, where the only lights that guided the path were from connecting houses or flashing headlights from motorbikes whizzing past. Faint laughter coupled with drunken insults echoed down the alley, but the laughter was quickly replaced with yelling and beer bottles being thrown about and insults about how ugly one looked. Had it not been for the rich smell of pressed baguette, dripping with honey and enough butter to send you into cardiac arrest, the group would have run for the hills from the explosive argument.

Connie sniffed and clutched her expensive bag close to her. “Don’t tell me Duc is down there ? Why isn’t he at the Park Hyatt in District One?”

Mr. Ng? laughed so hard, he nearly sent his glasses flying. “Duc? Duc Tr?n at the Park Hyatt?”

“We always stay at five-star hotels!” she exclaimed defensively. “He knows I’m always at any Four Seasons at any given moment, around the world. They know us by name!”

“ You stay at five-star hotels, they know you by name,” Mr. Ng? said, raising a brow. “Duc prefers a thin mattress on the ground and at least two or three fans pointed at him at all times.”

As if on cue, Duc’s distinct voice floated down the alley, along with the smell of his favorite off-brand pack of cigarettes. To rub salt in Connie’s wound, Duc started laughing uproariously—it was the kind of laughter that was side-splitting, not only indicative of being three sheets to the wind, but a laughter that carried no weight and no problems attached. Duc was having more than a good time; he was thriving.

Like any wildfire, the probability that the fire was caused by a human is roughly 85 percent.

But Connie had no desire for it to be accidental. She wanted to burn the whole alleyway, the whole street, the whole district, the whole city down. Everyone immediately stepped aside as she shoved her purse into Evelyn’s arms and stormed headfirst into the alleyway, screaming Duc’s name.

Sheepishly, one by one, everyone else followed her in a snake line, weaving in and out of red plastic stools, people milling about, vendors packing up for the day, delivery motorbikes, loose electric cords, and laundry hung out to dry.

Upon hearing his name screamed, Duc’s laughter dried up faster than any water source in Houston on a triple-digit summer day. “DUC TR?N! You better come out now!” Connie yelled. “Or else I’m going to take you to court!”

“Americans are always the first to be so litigious,” Mr. Ng? said.

“Tell me about it,” Jane whispered back.

“Listen, if there was universal basic income or people opted for the general strike—” Georgia began whispering. Everyone groaned and told her to please stop, and that now was not the moment to solve late-stage capitalism.

A shuffling of chairs screeching across tiles; poker chips clinking against the ground in a rush; whispers from men in shadows telling Duc that he was still ugly and that he still owed them money; multiple feet running away down the opposite end of the alley; and finally a door opening and slamming behind. Out of the darkness, a stout man, similar in age to Mr. Ng?, came shuffling out from behind a curtain.

His face looked nothing like that of Jude, Jane, Bingo, Paulina, or Georgia. Instead, his face was more sunken, his hair greasier, his eyes a bit turned down, like sheet corners that weren’t pulled down correctly. He walked out onto the street and as his eyes adjusted to the flickering streetlamp, he began to see eight faces staring back at him, descending from angriest (Connie) to the least angry (Georgia). Everyone in between, he took in stride. His best friend and lawyer (Mr. Ng?), his pretend wife and pretend mother of his children for the past thirty or so years (Evelyn), and then everyone else (his pretend children)—none of these faces fazed him more than Connie V?’s.

Soon everyone began talking at once, at various decibels. The anger rose and fell—sometimes above sea level, sometimes below—and Duc had no choice but to receive it all. He stood there rubbing his belly, as if he had opened up an employee anonymous feedback box, but unfortunately took the brunt of it all.

“Why did you pretend to be our father for so long?”

“Why did you write me out of the will, you son of a bitch?”

“Anh, it’s over, they caught us. Just tell them the truth.”

“Is there even an inheritance?”

“Anh, I’m sorry, I tried to explain to them all, but they don’t know what it was like for us back then. They were just babies. They don’t know what we had to do to survive.”

“Are we even legally married???”

“Were you playing Texas Hold’em back there? Do they play that here?” (That was Georgia.)

“Anh, they don’t understand the sacrifice you made for us.”

“What’s your favorite restaurant here?” (Georgia, again.)

“Did you even love us?”

Duc was more than eight beers deep, and all the king’s men couldn’t have brought him to sobriety more than the last question he heard. Did you even love us? Duc cursed under his breath and his stomach rumbled at the same time. He opened his mouth and everyone stopped talking at once, waiting for the infamous Duc Tr?n of Duc’s Sandwiches fame to finally say something profound, to explain the mess that he had laid in his wake for the past year, and for the past thirty-five years.

Then Evelyn pushed through, and she stared at him with vitriol, a haunting in her empty eyes. Decades of pent-up anger welled up in her, and Duc stepped back, frightened for the first time.

“What really happened to Tu?n that night on the boat?” Evelyn asked, anger bubbling in her throat, as she turned to both Duc and Mr. Ng?. “I heard you two. Twenty years ago, outside my bedroom window. Did you kill him? How did he die?”

All the children instantly grew quiet. Even Connie took a step back, shocked by the accusation.

The two men grew pale. Duc instantly sobered up as it dawned on him that twenty years ago Evelyn had walked out on them. He and Mr. Ng? looked at each other, trying to find another way out of this.

“No more lies,” Evelyn said. “No more lies. I want the truth. Don’t tell me that he was a martyr or any of that. I’m sick of your lies and your empty promises.”

Only Mr. Ng? stepped forward. “Em, he was drunk, okay? Believe me. He was just drunk that night, and he fell overboard. We didn’t realize it until morning. But it was too late by then. All of us were just waiting the night out, you know we were cornered that night. You saw the boat. It was charred to pieces. I’m sorry, em.”

Duc managed to swallow his pride and finally stepped up. “It really was just an accident. We just couldn’t tell you. You… you were in so much pain. What good would it have done if you had known how he really died? Would anything have changed? You went on to have a good life, didn’t you? The children were cared for.”

Evelyn stared at Duc. “If I had known what had really happened that night, I would have done everything differently. Everything.” She pivoted to look at Mr. Ng? accusingly.

“All we’ve ever done is try to protect you,” Mr. Ng? said, with regret, as he turned to all his children. “To protect all of you. I’m sorry. We are sorry. We are sorry for lying for so long, but it was the only way. I was scared back then. I still live my life in fear that they’ll come after each of you, for being my children, for being my wife, my family.”

A steep silence had fallen. As they braced themselves, waiting for Evelyn to react, to show any emotion, Georgia nervously eyed the narrow alleyway, wondering if she should block it somehow in case her mother ran again. But instead, Evelyn hunched her shoulders forward, collapsing from the weight of it all. She suddenly looked smaller than normal, her bones more brittle, and her crow’s-feet more defined. Evelyn looked tired.

“I’m hungry,” she said finally, her voice hollow, her eyes sunken, resigned to her life of constant grief. “I’m really hungry.”

Georgia stepped up, recognizing that it was her turn to make sure her mother ate something. “Should we get some food? Snails and clams?”

“I know a spot,” Duc offered up quickly. Everyone soon surrounded and flanked Evelyn, protecting her as if she were the frailest thing on the planet, making sure she got there safely.

Which came first—the karaoke machine or Vietnamese fathers?

Duc had never known peace; he just accepted life for what it was—that it was difficult and long, and in order to survive, one needed bad karaoke and snails.

He led them to his favorite local snails and beer spot, next to the Sài Gòn River. All the chairs faced the water as sweaty servers scurried around carrying buckets of beer while simultaneously juggling plates of grilled oysters, mussels, and snails drowning in a coconut milk sauce. The crowd was boisterous, and the sound of beers clinking together seemed to be in rhythm as the night wore on. There were hardly any tourists at this spot, which was becoming increasingly rare in the city. Vietnam had become a tourist trap in more ways than one, the boom caused by young travelers trying to “find themselves” in more cost-efficient ways. But it was strange that these young tourists and expats were doing that in a country that still had undiscovered land mines leftover from the war, hidden in the countryside.

A harried server came by and haphazardly dumped a bucket of snails and plates of razor clams on their table, splashing everyone with a mix of green sauce, butter, and hot sauce in the process. Duc grabbed a toothpick from the table and used it to pull out the snails from their shells, tossing the mantle into his mouth and chucking the exoskeleton onto the riverbank. Mounds littered and piled up on the riverbank, a graveyard of snails, clams, and mussels. Mr. Ng? grabbed a toothpick and joined in, soon Evelyn joined, both their eyes lighting up from the thrill of being able to eat snails again by the water.

Jude, Jane, Bingo, Paulina, Georgia, and Connie watched them eat, their mouths open, chewing loudly. But they all held their tongue, waiting for Duc to speak, even though they were desperate for more answers.

“Anh, eight beers, please,” Duc called out to another server walking by. “And keep them coming all night.” There was a smile on Duc’s face, but the smile didn’t travel to his eyes. He could feel eight pairs of eyes on him, waiting for him to address the (many) elephants in the room. The server nodded, and threw up eight fingers to the person in the back, who immediately rushed out, a bottle somehow nestled between each finger, and expertly placed one in front of everyone.

Down at the riverbank, someone kick-started the karaoke machine, an old beat-up projector somehow still standing, and someone began wailing away, singing a lost Vietnamese song from the eighties.

Connie’s eyes stabbed Duc through the chest. Her eyes were sharp, angry, and repulsed. She pressed him, unwilling to wait anymore. “Where’s the money, Duc?”

Duc groaned, chucked a snail as far as he could throw it, and leaned back into his white plastic chair. He seemed to have aged faster the past year than ever before. He pinched his brows together and began to rub his temples. “Money, money, money,” he said, rolling the word over and over in his mouth. “What is money, really? Nothing but funny money.”

“Why does that sound… disconcerting,” Jane said tensely.

“Something a charlatan would say.” Paulina laughed nervously.

“Why does that sound like an ABBA lyric?” Bingo whispered to Jane.

“Okay, look. Here’s the truth, I lost everything,” Duc sighed. “There’s nothing left but the stores I gave you all. The ones in Houston, Philadelphia, San Jose, and New Orleans. That’s it. We just didn’t know how to tell you all so—”

Mr. Ng? shifted in his seat. “—so we planned it in a way—”

“—that you all would each get something and start anew,” Duc finished. “That had always been our thought process, that the kids would each get a store, if rough times ever hit.”

“… and that time is now.” Mr. Ng? nodded solemnly.

Evelyn was shocked. “You lost everything ? How? We started the store with Tu?n’s money! How could you do this to his memory?”

Connie, nearly bowled over with anger, stood up, knocking over beer bottles and snails. “ Nothing is left? What do I get, then? If there’s only a few crusty stores left?”

“What happened?” Jane whispered.

Duc chuckled nervously. “Mounting debt, inflation, loan sharks, but mostly it was because, well, after your mother left, the food went downhill. People stopped coming. Your mother was the heart and soul of the operation. People didn’t want fast and cheap, they didn’t like the changes. You know how picky Vietnamese people are. The chain just lost its way. We… we just lost our way. It just wasn’t making any sense anymore.”

“Why didn’t you stay?” Jane asked, turning to her mother, her tone becoming accusatory, though that was the wrong choice. “Why did you abandon everything?”

Evelyn watched the drunk karaoke singer on the riverbank, doing his best to follow the lyrics on the screen, but his eyes were turning lopsided, and were dimming lower and lower. Eventually, the singer was booed off and an argument broke out about who should go next.

Her voice was low but still pure fire. “Maybe you’ll never understand what it’s like to have five kids and never be able to fully recover from it all. Do you know what it’s like to give birth to a baby, release it from your body, and then feel nothing but emptiness? I just couldn’t live my life in the shadows anymore,” she said finally. “I needed to know what it’d be like to be free, and not live a lie anymore.

“Do you know what it’s like to have to pretend to be Duc’s wife for so long, and hide your real father’s identity? Do you know what it’s like to have to pretend to go into the bedroom but then wait for night to fall, for your real father to swap places? To pretend in public that I was in love with someone who I wasn’t? It wasn’t just me the lie was killing, con, it was also killing your father. It killed us.”

Mr. Ng? stared at Evelyn, and he reached his hand out to her, and without protest, Evelyn took it. All the Tr?n children watched with mouths agape as Evelyn’s and Mr. Ng?’s hands entwined. They were two older Vietnamese people finally stepping out into the light together, so far removed from Seadrift, from Houston, and from watchful, hateful eyes.

Repressed memories of Mr. Ng? began bubbling up. He was always helping Evelyn around the house, helping her when she was pregnant with Paulina or Georgia, running to get her specific cravings. Still, the siblings had never seen Mr. Ng? and Evelyn touch, not even a hug. Now they knew why.

They’d never fully understand how bad it was down in Seadrift, the fearmongering, the racism, the threats to their livelihood that their parents faced. They just had to accept that they had done their best. And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to quiet the rest of their questions.

“Wait a minute, though,” Jude said suddenly. “Why did you want me to get married then?”

Mr. Ng? shrugged as he picked at a snail absentmindedly. “That was Duc’s idea. I mean, he was kinda hoping you’d marry well . Maybe someone rich? You know? Save the business in a different way. Also, you were lonely, con. What kind of life were you really living before? That all of you were living before?”

No one responded, unsure of how wrong they had been about everything and everyone in their lives. The two people they had thought didn’t know them had actually known them the best.

There was a loud commotion down by the riverbank, and everyone realized that Duc had somehow escaped the group, found his way down, and wrangled the karaoke microphone out of a drunken stranger’s hands.

“What the hell is he up to now?” Connie moaned. Duc tapped the mic, and after setting up the next song, he turned his attention toward all the siblings.

“You all asked me if I had ever loved you?” Duc shouted into the crowd, switching seamlessly between English and Vietnamese. “You may not think of me as your real father, but I am your father, I am a father. Just because I’m not one in your definition, doesn’t mean I didn’t do it all for you. I never had children of my own—”

“Thank god,” Connie muttered.

“—because you all were enough for me,” Duc finished.

All the confused faces in the crowd transitioned into smiles as everyone recognized the familiar opening notes: C, A, A, C, D, G. The universal anthem for all father figures, of all types, across the universe.

Duc, with his heavy Vietnamese accent, pulled out a cigarette and began singing into the microphone, and looked first at Georgia, Paulina, Bingo, Jane, and, finally, at Jude.

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad…

“Oh no,” Bingo whispered. “Please, please, not the karaoke. Someone stop him.” Flashbacks of past memories of Duc slurring heavily into a microphone arose for all the children. But Duc sang on, undeterred, off-key, skipping parts of the song to take long inhales of his cigarette.

On and on Duc droned, pitchy and out of breath, sometimes hacking up a lung. Soon enough, the very Vietnamese crowd began singing along with Duc, encouraging him. Everyone raised their beer bottles, clapped along, and pointed at the children. Each of the Tr?n children looked on, horrified, watching as Duc belted out the most American song ever sung by a British band.

Na na na nananana, nannana, hey Jude…

Someone next to Georgia leapt up from their chair and began belting the lyrics as loudly as they could, screaming into the humid Sài Gòn night. Startled, she knocked her beer all over herself.

Huey looked at Evelyn, grateful for the distraction around them as he pleaded with her, their hands still knotted. “Will you come back to us? It’s been too long. If you are ready to come home, please. I… I miss you. Even if you don’t miss me.”

She couldn’t look at him yet. She just kept watching, bemused as Duc got drunker and drunker and his singing got sloppier and sloppier.

The children did their best to pretend they didn’t hear the conversation, even though they were all eavesdropping intensely.

“I’m ready to come back home,” she said finally. “But I don’t think I can be with you again, anh. You have lied to me for so long. Both of you. It’s time for me to be free. I’ve been on my own for the last twenty years, I need to keep being on my own. For my own sanity.” Evelyn let go of his hand first.

Huey’s hand fell limp at his side, but he didn’t fight back. He just continued looking at her longingly, waiting, as he had done, for most of his life, for her to love him back one day. He would wait forever, and he was okay with that.

Light pollution clouded the skies, and drunken, singing neighbors sloshed beer on all of them. But the Tr?n family didn’t care. The crowd continued swaying along to the song, and Duc was now seemingly howling at the moon.

The children looked at one another. Jude, Jane, Bingo, Paulina, and Georgia. They looked at their parents next to them with renewed eyes, and they looked at everyone around them, watching the crowd swaying along. Everything that had transpired up until that moment seemed so distant. Under a half-moon, in a country they could never claim as home for themselves, they instead decided to claim each other as family. They all stood up and began belting it as loud as possible, heads tilted up toward the sky.

Na na na nananana, nannana, hey Jude…

“To hell with it.” Connie sighed as she grabbed a beer, stood up, and joined in on the singing as well.

Na na na nananana, nannana, hey Jude…