Chapter Fifty-Two
Marigold had never broken a heart before. Turned out, she was good at it.
Being a coward helped. She didn’t have the courage to do it in person, so she’d waited until Kenji was at baseball practice. Then she left a message on his answering machine.
An hour later, the phone rang. It didn’t stop ringing for days. Helen unplugged it, so Kenji started calling the bakery line. He knew that they couldn’t unplug that one. They needed it for business.
Then, after a month—as Helen predicted—the calls stopped. Marigold received a plain envelope in the mail containing the wooden comb that she’d left in his dorm. No note, no letter.
Kenji had given up on her.
It was what she deserved, Marigold knew. Still it hurt. It hurt miserably.
She put on her gloves, tucked the comb into the Altoids tin he’d given her, and snapped it shut.
She didn’t speak his name again.
. . .
That summer, Peony married Paul Wong.
It was the Chinese American wedding of her dreams. Rosie prowled the Gunne Sax outlet for weeks until she found matching pink-chiffon bridesmaids dresses for herself and Marigold.
The sisters hand-sewed sequins and tiny pearls onto Peony’s three wedding dresses: a ruffled white gown with a lace collar for the church ceremony, a brocade kwa embroidered with double golden phoenixes for the tea ceremony, and lastly, a red cheongsam that Peony had painstakingly embellished with eighty-eight beaded flowers that she’d change into during the banquet at Orchid Lounge.
It was a month of hard, tedious work, but the three sisters spent more time together than they had in years, whispering and giggling in the attic and cursing when Rosie spilled the jar of pearl beads.
During these precious moments, Marigold almost fooled herself into being happy.
Helen and Philip had invited the entire Yuen Association to the banquet, and Mrs. Kwan came bearing a three-tier sponge cake layered with strawberries and tangerines, with a plastic cake topper of a couple with black hair—it looked close enough to Paul and Peony.
To add extra auspiciousness, she’d painted the white bell over their heads gold and exchanged the fake white flowers for fake red ones.
Rosie was on the stage singing “We’ve Only Just Begun” in alternating Cantonese and English verses, while Marigold was on photographer duty. She liked being behind the camera; it meant she didn’t have to talk to anyone—including her parents.
Halfway into dinner, Marigold snuck away to help Peony change into her cheongsam. Paul ran up to her with a plate loaded with walnut shrimp and longevity noodles. “For Peony,” he said. “Will you make sure she’s not hungry?”
Usually Paul looked like he’d rather unclog a drain than make small talk with anyone, and Marigold and Rosie had pegged him as blander than plain, unsalted congee.
But tonight he was merry, passing out red envelopes filled with chocolate coins and crisp five-dollar bills to all the children and single adults, and laughing whenever someone tried to coax him for more money.
And suddenly Marigold appreciated her new brother-in-law.
They were more alike than she’d thought: both wallflowers, timid and a trifle awkward, who’d found a vibrant sun in Peony.
“You’re a good one,” Marigold told Paul. She took the plate.
Peony’s changing room was behind the bar in a storeroom cordoned off by a wooden folding screen.
“From Paul,” Marigold said, setting her sister’s plate atop a makeshift table of boxes. “You should eat before you get out there again.”
Peony was hungry. She picked the shrimp and walnuts off her plate and dove into the noodles. While she ate, Marigold helped her sister take off her wedding jewelry and undress. She patiently undid the twenty buttons on Peony’s kwa before helping her sister into the cheongsam.
Peony put on her gold wedding bangles, her expression turning wistful as Marigold closed up her dress.
“Feels like only yesterday that we were ten and nine and you were slicing my stuffed animals open to practice giving them stitches. Look where we are now.” Her eyes glistened.
“You, off to Harvard, and me . . . married.”
“No crying,” warned Marigold. “Rosie’s already drunk on cheap wine, and I promise if I have to fix your eyeliner, you’ll end up looking like a panda.”
“I like pandas.”
Marigold reached for a tissue, when Peony hooked her by the shoulder—and hugged her.
“I know you probably hate this,” her sister whispered, “but it’s my wedding day. I get to be selfish.”
Marigold’s arms were covered and her shoulders padded; she’d come prepared. “Be as selfish as you want,” she said softly. She held up her camera, angling the lens to capture them both, then clicked the shutter.
“What’s that for?”
“To remember now. Me with my big sister, sitting in the back of the Orchid Lounge like we used to, with a hundred crates of Belfast cider behind us. Except we’re grown up now, and it’s her wedding”—Marigold paused deviously—“and she’s got no idea she has big fat dollop of mayonnaise on her chin.”
“Oh my God!” Peony grabbed the tissue in Marigold’s hand and wiped her chin, her eyes shining with both laughter and tears. “Better?”
“You’re all clear.”
Peony purposefully rested her chin on Marigold’s shoulder. “You know, I’m going to miss you. Is it too late to change your mind and go to Stanford?”
For months, Rosie had gotten on Marigold’s case for rejecting Stanford for a school thousands of miles from home.
“Harvard’s got a better teaching hospital,” Marigold had replied. “Plus, it’s Harvard.” She put on a feeble smile. “You don’t say no to Harvard.”
Not once had Peony voiced her disappointment, until today.
“Rosie thinks you’re running away,” she said.
Marigold couldn’t deny it. “Just for a little while. I’ll come back.”
“I know.” Peony lifted from Marigold’s shoulder and, through her sniffles, put on a cheery face. She went to the bar and grabbed two glasses. “Come on, we deserve a soda.”
There was no grenadine in the storeroom to make their favorite Shirley Temple, so Peony twisted open a bottle of golden sparkling cider and filled two glasses halfway. Marigold poured in 7UP until the glasses were full.
Belfast Sparkling Cider and 7UP were the Chinese American salt and pepper, sure to be found on top of a lazy Susan during any proper banquet—at least in San Francisco. The sisters mixed the sodas together with chopsticks.
“Still tastes like Chinatown,” Peony declared, clinking Marigold’s glass. She gave her sister a sidelong glance. “You don’t want ice?”
“Got used to drinking soda warm. All those years of Mom nagging me, I actually prefer it now.”
“When was the last time you talked to her?”
Marigold flinched. “Twenty minutes ago, to take pictures with Uncle Francis and Eugene.”
“You know what I mean.”
She shrugged. She didn’t mention how their mother had come up to her, lips parted as if she had something important—maybe even conciliatory—to say. Only to state, “Your glasses are crooked.”
Marigold wouldn’t waste any neurons dwelling on it.
At the cost of her own happiness, she’d done what her parents had asked.
For months, Peony and Rosie had pleaded her case, but Philip was maddeningly stubborn, and seeing as how he could barely breathe without an inhaler, no one dared upset him too much.
What else could she do but move far away?
Marigold was thankful when the chattering of chopsticks started again. It was a boisterous invitation for the bride and groom to return to their table and kiss. “Come on, Mrs. Wong,” she said, “your party awaits.”
Marigold didn’t go home for Christmas. The night before her flight she came down with the flu, which triggered her childhood asthma, and it took her the entire break to recover. Boston winters were harsh, and after living her whole life in California, she was not prepared.
Nor was she prepared for how grueling medical school would be.
By nature she was an efficient student, but as soon as she mastered one concept, her professors assigned a dozen more.
With barely enough hours in the day to even sleep, there was no time to brood over Kenji or be upset at her parents, but she also didn’t call her sisters.
Her guilt kept piling up like the snow outside her dorm.
The only difference was, come spring, it didn’t melt away.
Before long she was a second-year, which was even harder than the first, for on top of studying for boards, she was shadowing a surgeon at Mass General and meeting patients. Marigold didn’t even remember her own birthday.
Her sisters did. She missed their calls and picked up their cards and packages a week later.
Rosie had recently started a part-time job at Tower Records and sent a cassette of herself singing “Happy Birthday,” Peony a box of sponge cakes that had gone sour—and the picture of the two of them at her wedding.
Marigold stuck the photo on her fridge next to her picture with Rosie at prom, and promised herself once the board exams were over, she’d visit home.
Late one March night the phone rang. It was midnight Marigold’s time, but she was still up memorizing patient histories and practicing the interactions she’d have the next day.
“You picked up,” breathed Rosie, sounding surprised.
Marigold set down her notes. Rosie had long since given up calling, especially on a school night. It had to be important. “What’s up?”
“Peony’s pregnant.”
“Pregnant! When’s the baby due?”
“Babies.”
“Twins?”
“Mm hmm. They’re due October 10. Can you believe it, we’re going to be aunts!”
Twins. A rush of joy swelled to Marigold’s chest, warm and full. “What’s the bad news?”
“Did I say there was bad news?”
No, but Marigold had intuited it from Rosie’s very first words. A year and a half away from home, and she still knew the up-and-down inflections of her younger sister’s voice.
There was a long, long pause. “Dad has cancer.”
Marigold felt the phone slip in her hand. The light from her lamp was too bright. She closed her eyes, stitching them shut. “Where?”
“Lung. Listen, I know you’re in the middle of exams, so don’t worry. Mom and us are taking care of him—”
Don’t worry. Marigold’s head was spinning.
Since starting medical school, she’d seen the myriad ways a body could fail.
A drug overdose, a slash across the artery, a genetic disease like cystic fibrosis.
In the name of science, she and her classmates had cut through cadaver tissue with all the emotion they’d have brought to slicing a mushroom, and they passed organs around like oranges.
Dissecting the mysteries of human mortality had become so routine that they discussed their findings over paper bag lunches.
Now here she was, faced with the undeniable mortality of her own father.
“When’s the operation?” she interrupted her sister.
She could practically hear Rosie swallow. “Friday.”
It was Wednesday. “I’ll get on the next flight home.” Marigold was reaching into her closet for her suitcase. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”