4. Chapter Three London
Chapter Three: London
A fter dropping Gloria off at her apartment, I didn’t go home. Instead, I headed to family dinner in the childhood home Perry and I have nicknamed “the Young residence.” It gives us about as many warm fuzzies as you would expect from a building with that title.
Pulling into the wide driveway and parking my Toyota Matrix between Troy’s Silverado and Savannah’s Mini Cooper, I spy Perry’s motorcycle in my rearview mirror.
I didn’t even need to look to know his Kawasaki Ninja was behind me; the engine roars loudly enough for the whole block to hear him coming.
Tonight’s family dinner features a special announcement from my dad, which is probably why Perry deigned to show up for once.
The mid-century modern home looms over me as I get out of my car and walk up the gravel driveway toward the sleek, flat-roofed house.
It’s beautiful if you like modern architecture—all wood and glass, with an open-concept design on the inside that makes you think you can see through the house.
But all you see is the presentable parts, hiding the ugly corners.
“Hey, London.” Perry approaches me from behind, his feet crunching on the gravel. “Long time no see.”
Perry is the black sheep of the family, and not just because he refuses to go by his given name of Paris.
(Since being nicknamed Perry the Platypus was cooler than being called Paris Hilton in school).
Our dad, a trial lawyer who turns his nose up at careers that earn fewer than six figures a year and thinks motorcycles are speeding death traps, hates Perry.
And his motorcycle. Ironically, Perry works in healthcare as a nurse.
He also rarely returns home. He’ll come back for holidays and birthdays, but he’s not here every week, like I am. But he has no reason for his absences, since he lives closer to our parents than any of us.
“Hey Perry. How have you been?” I ask him as we walk inside the house. I shouldn’t resent him for getting away from our parents. I would do the same if the guilt wouldn’t eat me up inside.
“Awesome as always.” Perry floats through life like God designed a cloud just for him to sit on. Nothing seems to ever bother him, not even our tumultuous family. “Work’s been keeping me busy, but I have a new girlfriend.”
Perry always has a new girlfriend. Between his six-foot-three build inherited from our former high school football player dad, and his motorcycle, there’s no shortage of women lining up to date him and his bad boy persona. “Who’s the lucky lady?”
“This girl from work. She’s whip-smart. She might even be the one.”
I don’t hold my breath on that one. Perry always thinks his latest girlfriend will be the one, and he’s thirty-three. But I’m the youngest in the family at twenty-seven, so I know he would never take my relationship advice seriously. “Cool. Maybe you could bring her around sometime.”
“Here? Not a chance.” He snorts as he kicks off his motorcycle boots at the front door.
“My boys!” Mom greets us, shucking off her oven mitts as she exits the kitchen and walks into the foyer. “Oh, it’s so good to see you again, Perry.”
She flings her arms around her second-oldest son and squeezes him tightly.
It’s a comical sight, seeing Perry hug our mom, who’s five-four and a petite immigrant from Hong Kong.
She moved here at the age of eighteen and met our father when she was working as a secretary in his law firm.
Our dad, who’s tall for being Chinese, lent his genes to create four sons who were all over six feet tall in addition to one five-foot-eight daughter, Savannah.
“Yeah, yeah.” Perry shakes his head, patting our mom on the back. “I’m going to go crush a beer with Brooklyn.”
“Dinner’s in an hour!” she calls after him. Then she fixes her gaze on me. “London, my sum gon bo bui .”
She always calls me that, her heart-liver-treasure , the classic Chinese endearment for one’s children, no matter how old I get.
And no matter how old I get, I never raise any protests at the term of endearment, because part of me is worried it’s true.
That I am as essential to my mom’s happiness and functioning as those vital organs.
“It’s good to see you again, Mom.” I just saw her last week.
She wraps me in a tight hug and kisses my cheek. “Sometimes I can’t believe all of you are so grown up. It seems like only yesterday—“
“That you were holding us as babies, yeah.” I finish her oft-stated sentence for her. “What’s for dinner?”
“Braised oxtail,” she says. My dad’s favourite meal. I study her, for one of the few times that I let myself, and really take her in.
Her brown eyes have dark circles underneath, which she tries to hide with expensive creams, and her slender frame always looks too frail to have birthed five children.
She’s wearing classy designer clothing as always—pearl earrings, and a Chanel blouse tucked into Ralph Lauren jeans—and a smile that makes me feel like I’ve done something important just by showing up.
“It smells good. Do you need any help?”
She ushers me in the kitchen to peel daikons and carrots before I finish my question. I don’t mind the work, as it keeps my mind off Gloria’s boyfriend list.
I tell her about Perry’s new girlfriend.
She tsk s. “He’s thirty-three. When is he going to settle down?”
“Maybe this woman will be the one to make him.” I chop the daikon into chunks with the Chinese cleaver.
She just shakes her head, the heavy silence hanging disapprovingly on her face.
But she won’t ask when I’ll get a girlfriend.
To her, I’m still building my career and shouldn’t focus on getting married until I’m Perry’s age.
Or maybe she knows if I married, she would lose me.
Lose the only person in our family who seems to actually care about her, since God knows my dad doesn’t.
The rest of my siblings are scattered around L.A.
, busy with careers and their own lives.
“I’m glad I have you to help me,” mom says as I toss the chunks of radish and carrot into the Dutch oven.
But I know she doesn’t just mean helping her make dinner.
She’s glad she’ll always have me around.
“Your father has been no help at all. I asked him to take out the trash last night, and you wouldn’t believe the rage he flew into.
It was as if I had asked him to scrub the floors with a toothbrush, with how angry he was. ”
Whenever she flies into one of these rants, it’s best to just nod and listen. I’ve perfected my nodding and listening skills. While my father has never been violent towards any of us, his short temper is a sight to behold, especially when he feels like he’s been slighted.
After the food is ready, we all settle down to eat at the dinner table.
My mom insists on holding hands to say grace, like it will transform our family into a harmonious one. It hasn’t so far, but a foolish part of me still holds out hope.
Halfway through rice with oxtail and gai lan , my dad makes his special announcement. “I’m retiring.”
Chopsticks clatter to the table and mouths drop open. Our father is sixty-five, sure, but he always seemed like the kind of man who would keep on working until the day he dropped dead of a heart attack .
“What brought this on?” Brooklyn asks. As the oldest, and an engineer, he falls into the dad-approved category of careers. “I thought you loved your job.”
“I can’t do it forever. The doctor told me the stress is bad for my heart.” He runs a hand through his hair, still thick and only faintly streaked with grey at the temples.
“And you listened to him?” Savannah arches a brow, chopsticks halfway to her mouth still.
Our father is a steamroller of a man, taking no captives in his rhetorical warfare. Him listening to anyone, even his doctor, is a shock to all of us. He doesn’t even listen to his wife, let alone a medical professional.
“Why do you all sound so surprised? I can listen when I know something is good for me.” Ah. There it is. “It’s not like I need the money.”
He turned his astute legal mind on the stock market decades ago and now racks up twenty-five percent returns, alongside a hefty real estate portfolio. Of course he would retire.
“I just don’t know what you’ll do with yourself with all that free time,” Troy says, sipping his beer. “You’re not exactly the type to kick back and watch football.”
“Does this mean you’ll finally mow the lawn?” Perry deadpans. My mother shoots him a warning look.
He’s never mown the lawn or done any yard work for as long as I can remember.
My mom claimed it was because he was tired from work and that since she chose to step down from her job to raise us, it was her responsibility to do it.
He always said he would hire someone to do it, but every summer, it was always my mom who pushed out the mower.
Dad glowers at Perry. “Are you insinuating that after all that I’ve done for you and this whole family, I still haven’t done enough?”
“No.” Perry sighs, rubbing a hand over his face .
“So after working hard for years so you could all have a roof over your heads and food on the table, you want to criticize me for not doing one thing,” he continues. Someone’s given him a perceived slight to his ego that he has to rebut. “I’ll hire someone to mow the lawn next year.”
We start talking about Savannah’s wedding in a few months.
She’s also a lawyer, but draws up contracts for those in the entertainment industry, so she makes the big bucks.
She asked all of us to be groomsmen, since her fiancé, Micah, also a lawyer, moved to L.A.
recently and doesn’t have many close friends here.
“London, could you do me a favour?” Brooklyn says. “I need someone to take Hattie and Queenie to their horseback riding lessons next Saturday. I forgot that’s my wedding anniversary, and I want to do something special for Rebecca.”
I chew on my lower lip. If I don’t do it, I doubt Perry will volunteer. Savannah is probably swamped with wedding preparations and work. Troy lives the furthest from Brooklyn of all of us.
“Sure. Text me the details.” It’s not like I have a girlfriend to worry about displeasing. I’ve given up my short-term dating ways over the past few months, too busy with work to need another commitment.
I excuse myself from the table and busy myself with the dishes.
Minutes later, Troy joins me. Since he owns his own construction business, he’s also a bit of a black sheep to our father since he works with his hands. “You good, man?”
Troy and I are the closest brothers in age. He’s thirty-one to my twenty-seven, with Savannah, who’s twenty-nine, between us. But he doesn’t seem to notice our parents’ constantly eroding marriage.
“As good as I’ll ever be.” I toss the sponge into a pan of soapy water and wipe my hands on a tea towel. “Do you think they’ ll ever get divorced?”
I try to recall a peaceful time when our parents could actually have a civil conversation, or when they could talk without complaining about each other.
It’s true that I love both my parents. Dad and I even bond over work discussions while relatives always talk about how proud he must be to have another lawyer in the family.
But it’s also true that I never want to imitate their mistakes in love.
Troy says, “No.”
I cling to his answer. Divorce, even now, when we’ve all moved out of the house—it would tear me apart, rip at the foundations and seams of my being. Or is that selfish of me? Should I want them to live apart and finally be happy?
The rest of our siblings have departed from the table and deposited their dishes on the kitchen island, going to the living room to watch TV or scroll on their phones.
The only two remaining at the table are our parents. Through the open-concept kitchen, I spy my dad on his phone, reading emails, while my mom picks at her bowl of rice listlessly, like she’s lost her appetite.
“You’re right. They wouldn’t get divorced at their age,” I say weakly. It’s rare for Asians to get divorced, and even more rare for them to do so when they’re senior citizens.
“Why did you ask?” Troy says, drying a wok.
I shrug. “You didn’t see how they looked during dinner?”
“Yeah. They looked normal. Stop reading so much into things, London. You’re looking for trouble when it isn’t there.” Troy sighs. “They’ll be fine. Every marriage goes through a rocky phase when they become empty nesters.”
I try to believe him.
But does it count as a phase when they’ve never gotten along for as long as I can remember?