15
Jia had accomplished more in the two weeks she’d been at The Sunset than she had probably in her last three jobs combined.
And this was just for fun. Not for money. Not for title. But because she loved seeing people get the respect they deserved
and have the opportunity to live their lives with joy.
Unfortunately, her parents did not see this as success.
“What’s the status of the job search?” her dad asked on the phone. Her parents had basically taken turns calling or FaceTiming
her every few days to nag.
“It’s coming along. It’s only been a couple weeks. Things don’t move that quickly in this market,” she said. “I still have
two weeks left to find something. Please don’t nag me in the meantime. You’re killing the vibe.”
“Jia . . .” her dad warned. “I knew we shouldn’t have let you go out and stay with your grandmother while your life is in
flux. The two of you encourage each other to behave like there isn’t a care in the world except having fun.”
“Well, let’s be honest, Dad. That’s exactly how Mimi should be living. She’s eighty! She deserves it.”
“She could be doing whatever she’s doing in Palm Springs out here in Florida.”
“Mimi doesn’t want to move to Florida,” Jia reminded him. And neither did she. But she knew better than to bring this up again.
Not when she still had two weeks to get them off her back. “And just to remind you, I’m twenty-seven years old. I can come
stay with my grandmother without your permission if I want to.” There, she’d put her foot down.
“You are unemployed with no means to take care of yourself, Jia. When that situation changes for you, your mother and I will
be less involved in the details of your well-being.”
Damn, he was good at shutting her down.
“Fine. But listen, Dad, I gotta run. Important business going on here that I need to attend to.”
His exasperated sigh made it clear to Jia better than any words could that he was not in the mood for her whimsy.
“Tell Mom I said hi. Love you.” She ended the call.
Her parents weren’t terrible. They were just . . . a lot. From the time she was in the womb and gave her mom the hardest time of her life to them always trying to pick up the pieces from Jia’s mistakes, Jia just couldn’t shake the feeling that all she did was
disappoint them. And it made it really hard to feel good about herself.
If only they could have some patience and try to understand who Jia was and what she was hoping for for her life.
Maybe Jia didn’t even know. But she was starting to get a better sense.
She’d left New York broke and broken. At least she thought she was.
But here, with her grandmother, with her new friends, with her community, she was building something and, in turn, was building someone within herself. Here, Jia could be her true self, a person filled with joy and wanting what was best for others, and no one had a problem with that. Go figure.
The community center felt like her blank canvas, the residents her paint colors. Since she’d been here, she’d more than tripled
the amount of things available to the seniors. A once-quiet, semi-sleepy neighborhood now buzzed with life between the hours
of seven and four.
She didn’t know what the end game would be after her month-long stay, but a secret part of her never wanted to leave. And
how ridiculous was that—a twentysomething happily living among seniors in a retirement community?
These were the thoughts running through Jia’s mind as she lounged in her favorite chair by the four-feet marker of the Sunset
Hills community pool. It was a quiet day.
The aqua aerobics class had finished about an hour ago, and though Jia hadn’t been there today, she could tell by the robust
gathering of people around the coffee machine that it had been well attended. The residents loved the new instructor she’d
found who had been working part-time at the Froyo shop downtown. She was a licensed lifeguard, a dancer, and had amazing energy.
How perfect was that?
The stragglers who walked laps in the pool either after class or on their own were also finishing up, leaving only Jared walking
up and down lane one and his chocolate Lab Clementine swimming next to him in lane two.
Jia kept an eye on Jared as he exercised. He was blind, and though Clementine, his service dog, was obviously more than capable of making sure Jared was safe, Jia liked watching his steady pace and the dog faithfully moving beside him.
She let out a deep breath, the feeling of satisfaction flowed through her lungs.
“Jia, honey, do you need some more sunscreen? I got some here in my bag.”
Jia looked up to find her grandmother in the doorway of the community center, a red-and-pink floral swimsuit on with a cute
yellow sarong wrapped around her waist. What a stunner. She’d had her roots touched up, and an effervescent glow radiated
from her skin. Her Mimi was back.
“I’m good, Mimi. Thanks. I brought extra,” she said, raising the tube of sunscreen that lay by her side.
“Okay. Well, don’t stay in the sun too long. Your skin is too precious. You don’t know it now, but you’ll regret it when you’re
my age.”
“I should be so lucky looking like you do at your age, Mimi,” Jia called back.
“Well, I put in enough years with my ten-step Korean skincare regimen. It better look good,” she called back. “I’m heading
home. See you later. Oh, Jia, before I forget, the contractor who did my fantastic kitchen remodel left a message on
the home machine. He’d like you to call him back. Said there was some question with the invoice. Sounded important.”
Jia looked up at her grandmother, but she seemed unbothered. In fact, the smile on her face made it very clear to Jia that
all she cared about was that she had a brand-new kitchen island. She trusted Jia with the rest. The last thing she wanted
to do was cause Mimi any stress. But the last time she’d talked to the contractor, everything was on track and all invoices
had been paid up to date. This was odd.
Jia had gotten a couple estimates for Mimi’s kitchen remodel and had chosen the one who was neither the most expensive nor the least. But he had great references and could get the job done in a couple days. Mimi couldn’t be without use of her kitchen for too long, so that was a selling point.
Jia was kind of nervous overseeing his work and the budget. But she’d managed costs and receipts and payments in her previous
job. How’d that end up for you? Jia asked herself in her head, suspiciously in her father’s voice.
Jia’s heartbeat sped up, and she found it hard to breathe. She felt real trauma from being fired from her last job over a
mistake, one she wasn’t convinced had entirely been her fault. In fact, the more Jia had thought about her termination, the
more she believed it shouldn’t have happened the way it had. And if she wasn’t so happy where she ended up, she might have
done something about it.
Who was she kidding? She was powerless against the big guns of the Bakerson’s Group. And frankly, she wasn’t interested in
rehashing it all or even thinking about anything from those days. Except for maybe Henry Shin.
Jia had been thinking a lot about him lately, and she wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Jia picked up her phone and walked to the picnic table shaded by a big red umbrella. She took a seat, pulled up the number
for Martin, their general contractor for Mimi’s renovations, and pressed Call.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Martin. It’s Jia Chung. I got your message about some error with the invoice? How can I help?”
Jia liked Martin. He seemed like an upstanding kind of guy. But she’d been told by some of the residents that no contractor was entirely trustworthy. She didn’t want to believe that, but she had proceeded with a tiny bit of caution nonetheless.
“Yeah, Jia, hey. So I was auditing the papers and looks like the marble for the kitchen island wasn’t included in the invoice.
It’s gonna be seventeen ninety-nine plus tax. I gave you a bit of a discount because of the countertops. Can you get me payment
for that by the end of the week?”
Eighteen hundred dollars? Jia had carefully budgeted out an additional bathroom renovation for Mimi’s house based on what
they’d spent on the kitchen. This would screw everything up. How could Jia have missed this? She went through the invoice
line by line. The total cost even equaled what Martin had originally estimated. She remembered seeing everything there and
accounted for before sending the check.
Didn’t she?
“Martin, I need to get home and look over the invoice again. I’ll call you later, if that’s okay,” Jia said. She hustled back
over to her lounge chair and began packing up her things.
“Sure thing, Jia. Give me a call when you can. But sooner than later. I gotta pay my marble guy,” Martin said.
“Will do. Bye.” Jia hung up the phone. “Jared, do you have a lot of laps left to go?”
“Just about done here, Jia. You can take off. Clementine will make sure I get out okay. Don’t worry.”
Jia hesitated. She wanted to stay. But if Jared said he’d be okay, she didn’t want to doubt him or baby him. He knew his limits.
Just as she put Mimi’s old sundress on over her bathing suit, she saw Jared carefully step out of the pool, Clementine by
his side.
She smiled their way, grabbed her bag, and headed home.
Jia looked through all the papers lying haphazardly on the coffee table. It was a mess, but it was Jia’s organized chaos. She knew this was the only place she kept the renovation stuff. Jia grabbed the invoice on the top of the pile and began going through each line item.
“Whatcha looking for, sweetie?” Mimi asked.
Jia hesitated. She didn’t want Mimi to know she might have fucked up the budget and they might be an additional eighteen hundred
dollars in the hole and that might change all their plans and Jia might just be a royal screwup after all. But it was no use
trying to keep anything from Mimi’s prying eyes.
“Martin says they missed a charge on the invoice and I underpaid him,” she admitted.
“Well, that’s nonsense. I watched you review that thing myself. You were meticulous,” Mimi assured her.
“I don’t know, Mimi. I could have made a mistake. I just need to check and see.” Jia hated doubting herself, but after always
being considered a screwup when it came to these kinds of things, she sometimes allowed herself to believe it to be true.
“We went through all of these receipts together, sweetie. So if there’s an error, it’s just as likely my fault as yours. Don’t
get down on yourself. How do we know it’s not Martin’s fault, huh?” Mimi squeezed Jia’s shoulder as she walked past her to
the kitchen. Jia watched her as she put a mug down on the kitchen island to make herself some tea.
The marble of the island was gorgeous. They’d gotten it from a slab company that had leftover pieces from larger commercial builds.
A remnant piece that perfectly matched the countertops.
The countertops. Jia looked at them and then back to the island.
Wait, the counters and the island were cut from the same slab of marble.
They were cut down to size. There would be only one line on the invoice because they only bought one piece.
“AHA!” Jia screamed, waving the invoice in the air. “I figured it out! We didn’t make a mistake after all. It’s a clerical
error, if anything,” she squealed.
“Just like I told you, honey. Now, why would you doubt yourself? Just because some man made it seem like there was no way
he was the one that was wrong?” Mimi’s words pierced Jia. It was a moment of déjà vu. A man, her boss, telling her she’d made
a mistake, that there’d been an error—hers—when she absolutely knew in her gut she was right. Questioning herself. Too scared
to fight back to clear her name.
Jia wanted to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over her head. Justice wasn’t for the weak, for those too soft, like
Jia.
This whole day had started off so well. Jia was starting to feel safe, secure, and at peace. Happy. Now, because of Martin’s
message, all the bad memories and feelings of inadequacy crept back up to haunt her. And though she was, she firmly believed,
right in both instances, she couldn’t shake the frustration of so easily being blamed as the one who was wrong.
She should let it all go. Just appreciate where she was now.
If only it were that easy.