Chapter Two #2
Is he really going to ask about Mom? I glance at the time on my phone. The restaurant Charlotte mentioned is in SoHo, so it shouldn’t take longer than forty-five minutes to get there. I don’t have to leave yet, but if Dad starts airing his grievances, this won’t be a quick chat.
“If you go, you need to get better at speaking Mandarin. Lots of foreigners get ripped off all the time, and you’re going to be an easy target too. You open your mouth, and they’ll think, ‘Ignorant American.’”
“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Another master class in the Tsai family art of deflection.
This is where I learned to dance around uncomfortable subjects: divert and repress, repress and divert.
It’s clear to me that as long as Dad keeps his feelings about Mom to himself—does he hate her?
Has he moved on?—I should extend the grace of never asking.
That’s how it’s always been since the divorce.
I was six when the papers were signed, and it only took two weeks before Mom packed up her easel and art supplies and flew back to Taiwan.
There was no messy custody battle; Dad had job security and wanted me to continue my education here, and Mom wasn’t exactly making waves in the art scene stateside anyway.
Incidentally, returning home was the move her career needed to flourish, enough to live comfortably in her Taichung condo with the “free-spirited” Jin, a man fifteen years her junior.
It’s always been my understanding that what happened to my family is simply off-limits for discussion.
Most Asian couples of Mom and Dad’s generation don’t entertain the idea of divorce and would rather live miserably ever after if it meant saving face.
The resulting shame seems to be why we fell out of contact with her side of the family, namely my grandparents.
A year after she left, Dad and I moved across the state, from an Oregon cul-de-sac to Silverpine, an even tinier pocket of suburbia.
He allowed me to take one box of items she’d left behind—VHS tapes, a few books, and other keepsakes, all buried in a drawer in my room—which was his way of putting the whole thing to rest.
“By the way,” Dad starts over the phone, “you remember Parker?”
A coat hanger nearly slips out of my hand.
I haven’t heard that name in years. Another ghost from my past. Of course I remember Parker.
I’ve been cursed to, until they finally invent a technology that can wipe my memories.
Possibilities flood my mind: He got married.
He won the lottery. He flew to space—that would be just like him.
“What about him?”
“I heard from his parents that he’s in New York.”
I try to resist frowning. “People come to New York all the time.”
“Maybe you can meet with him.”
“Um, no. Why? No, never.”
“I will never understand you two.” I can almost hear Dad shaking his head from three thousand miles away. “You two used to be so close. Since the day we moved to Silverpine, you spent every second together. I only saw you fight once, over the PlayStation.”
The days of Parker and me arguing over who had dibs on Final Fantasy don’t just feel like a long time ago; they feel like another lifetime.
I’d be convinced I’d jumped universes if Dad’s memories didn’t line up with mine.
He was there for that first meeting on the driveway, and I know he saw the immediate spark—a seamless connection between two seven-year-olds, as if they’d known one another in a past life. The beginning of all beginnings.
Having grown up around families who didn’t look like us, I did a justifiable double take when the Trans strolled over to introduce themselves.
Linh Pham and Hieu Tran—by their insistence, I was to call them C? and Chú—ran the local pharmacy, they informed us.
By their side was Nathan, four years older than me, all lanky limbs and wire-framed glasses, and next to him was Parker.
Parker, with the tan lines on his arms, stark where his T-shirt sleeves ended. That big grin, missing his two front teeth. Scraped knees and hands clutching a football that looked too big for them.
C? brought it up first: “Parker, you and Dani are the same age! Make friends!”
He asked if I wanted to split an ice cream sandwich and whether I had any Pokémon cards to trade. I said yes, and from that moment on, our childhoods were definitively entwined.
“That was forever ago. You know that I haven’t seen or spoken to him in years.” Not that I had a choice in the matter. He’d decided that on his own. The milkshake in his lap may have been the nail in the coffin, but Parker already hated me before that. “Anyways, I thought he was in San Francisco.”
After moving to New York, I stopped visiting Silverpine as much.
It’s been nearly two years since my last return.
Parker also left town, although he moved just across the state to play for the University of Oregon.
I heard—not of my own volition—that he’d eventually relocated to the Bay Area after college.
By the grace of higher powers, I have not seen him in seven years.
Milkshakegate is my last memory of Parker Tran, and I don’t think I’ll be crushed if things remain that way.
“Apparently, he’s there for work. His mom thought it would be nice if you showed him around.”
Guilt seeps in at the mention of C?, like water under a closed door. “I’m going to be really busy if I get this job. I won’t have time to meet with him, and I’m sure he doesn’t want to see me either.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Parker I know.”
“Yeah, well, people change.” Sometimes they up and leave you. Other times, they become strangers. “I’ll call you later, Dad. I’ve got to head out soon.”
After I hang up, I consider texting Mom about the job interview, but I think better of it.
I’ve seen my mother a total of four times since the split: two summertime visits to Taiwan; a brief trip at sixteen to Seattle, where she had an exhibition; and most recently, during a trip to Asia after I graduated college, when I carved out just enough time to drop by and be formally introduced to “Uncle” Jin—he was thirty-five, I was twenty-three.
Aside from the birthday greetings over text and occasional video call, we didn’t really keep in touch.
There’s no reason to update her on something that isn’t even a certainty.
Before I leave my apartment, I take one last scan in the fulllength mirror. With a defeated sigh, and twenty minutes to spare, I get out my curling iron.