by Jackie Lau
What if that were all she was wearing?
Now that’s a nice thought.
“Earth to Josh!” Amrita says, throwing another chopstick at me.
Chapter 20
Sarah
When my family arrives at Happy As Pie on Sunday afternoon, I’m not in a great mood. I’ve spent an hour trying to fix one of our ovens without success. Of course it had to break right before our busiest week of the year. I’ll have to call my repair person and get her to come ASAP.
But when my six-year-old niece rushes toward me, I can’t help but smile.
“Auntie Sarah! Auntie Sarah!” Rosie throws her arms around my leg.
“Hi, Rosie,” I bend down and give her a hug.
“Mommy says you own a shop that only sells pie. Is that true?”
My niece and nephew have never been to Happy As Pie before. I gesture to the pies in the glass counter. “See, all pie!”
Rosie turns back to her mother, my sister Megan. “It’s like heaven!”
“It’s her new phrase,” Megan says. “Yesterday she said chicken nuggets were like heaven. The day before, she said the same thing about Tim Hortons.” She gives me a more restrained hug. “It’s great to see you, Sarah. You look good.”
Megan and I are close in age—she’s only a year and a half older than me—but our lives are completely different. She went to college in London (London, Ontario, of course) to become a dental hygienist and married her college sweetheart. She now works for the dentist in Ingleford, after taking a few years off when the kids were smaller.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask.
Just as the words leave my mouth, my mother walks in.
I immediately go over and give her a hug. It’s instinctive. I love my mother, and it’s been a while. Still, those words run through my head.
You’ll never make it.
But here I am, in my own pie shop, and I’m doing okay, though the cost of the oven repairs weighs heavily on my mind.
“Mommy said we can have two slices of pie each,” Rosie says.
“No, I most certainly did not.” Megan puts her hands on her hips. “Don’t you try to pull that one on me, Rosie.”
Benjy tugs on my apron. “Two slices of pie. Please?”
He knows I’m the weakest link. I don’t see my niece and nephew often, and yeah, I’m likely to spoil them when I do.
I describe each of the pies. Rosie and Benjy seem confused by the idea of savory pies, but they are very excited by all of the dessert pies. Rosie eventually decides on berry crumble pie, and Benjy chooses banana cream. Megan gets pumpkin pie and lets her children have a tiny taste of it. My mother initially says she’s not hungry, but when Megan tells her that’s unacceptable, she chooses the lemon-lime tart. She badgers me about my diet, saying I shouldn’t eat pie all the time, and about my love life.
“You’re thirty-one,” Mom says. “Megan had already been married for eight years and had two kids at that age, yet you’re still single.”
I open my mouth to say, Actually, I’m seeing someone, then think better of it.
Megan, however, notices my hesitation and raises her eyebrows. I suspect she’s going to say something when Mom isn’t around.
Sure enough, she brings it up the next day. The two of us are getting pedicures while Mom takes the kids to the museum to see the dinosaurs.
It takes a while for us to get to the topic, though. First, Megan tells me about Benjy’s birthday party, for which Grandma made a chocolate money cake.
“Remember when you swallowed a dime?” Megan asks.
“How could I forget? I thought I was going to die. Longest two days of my life.”
We laugh.
“Well, Dad told Benjy about that,” Megan continues. “He said a money tree grew in your stomach, and Benjy wanted to swallow the coins so he could grow his own tree.”
“Oh, dear.” It’s exactly the sort of thing my dad would do. He was always trying to convince us to believe ridiculous things when we were kids. He claimed chocolate milk came from brown cows—which I believed until I was six. “So Benjy decided to swallow the coins on purpose?”
“Fortunately, I heard Benjy bragging to Rosie about how he was going to grow a tree of quarters in his stomach and buy all the candy he wanted. So I put a stop to any deliberate coin-swallowing. Those cakes are hazardous, but Grandma insists on making them.”
“A man wanted me to bake an engagement ring into a pumpkin pie,” I say. “It was a really nice diamond ring, and I refused. Can you imagine swallowing an engagement ring?”
“And growing a tree of diamond rings in your stomach? Think of how rich you’d be! You might even be able to buy a house in Toronto.”
I’ve missed this. I should do a better job of keeping in touch with my sister. I don’t make it down to Ingleford very often, but we have fun together when I do. I’ve always been closer to her than to my brothers.
“Speaking of diamond rings...” Megan says.
I groan.
“You knew it was coming,” she says. “You’re seeing someone? How serious is it?”
“I just met him a few weeks ago.”
“Details! Come on, this is huge. You haven’t dated much in Toronto, although I’m sure there’s no shortage of men.”
“His name is Josh, and he runs a tech company.”
I’m not sure what else to add. He bought me flowers and a pi necklace? I accidentally stabbed him with a fork, and somehow that led to a kiss? I’m catering a Pi Day party for him?
In the end, I say, “He makes me do stupid things because I’m always thinking about him. Today I almost used salt instead of sugar in the shortbread cookies.”
I don’t usually go into Happy As Pie on Mondays, but I went this morning because we’ve got a big week ahead of us. I wanted to get the number-shaped shortbread cookies—for a hundred digits of pi—out of the way, since those can be made a few days in advance, and I also needed to be there when the oven repair person arrived.
I cringe when I think of the bill.
And the fact that I nearly ruined all those cookies.
“You, mooning over a guy.” Megan chuckles. “I did think you seemed a little different yesterday. In a good way.”
“I’m worried,” I admit. “I can’t afford to keep making errors at work. Is falling in love always like this?”
Although I’m thirty-one, I’m rather inexperienced in this area. Megan, however, is married, and she had a number of boyfriends before that.
“Yeah,” she says. “For me, anyway. Just at the beginning, though.”
Okay, that makes me feel better.
“Show me a picture of him. Surely you have one on your phone.”
While our toenails are being painted, I pull up a photo. Megan looks at it a beat too long before smiling and saying, “He’s cute.”
I know the reason for her hesitation.
Josh isn’t white, and my sister, who lives in a town that’s ninety-nine percent white, wasn’t expecting that.
A few years ago, the ice cream parlor in Ingleford got a mural painted on the side wall. It shows a diverse group of people enjoying their ice cream cones, something I find pathetically hilarious. There are more visible minorities in that mural than there are in the town, which has one black couple and one Asian family.
Toronto, on the other hand, is very diverse, and I love that. But Megan isn’t used to it. I doubt she has a problem with Josh being Asian, but it’s a surprise to her.
“Ooh!” Megan says. “He should come to dinner tonight.”
“Um.” I’m a little uncomfortable with Josh having a family dinner with us. It’s pretty early in our relationship for that, isn’t it?
But perhaps I could introduce him to my sister. Megan and I are going to the Eaton Centre after this, and his office is only a ten-minute walk from there. We could pop in and say hi.
I’m excited at the thought of seeing him again. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning, which really is
n’t that long, but I miss him.
This falling-in-love-business is strange.
And it still scares me. I’ve spent my adult life refusing to develop relationships that might in any way affect my goals. Josh understands my dedication to my job, and he treats me well, and Megan seems to think my silly errors at work will stop soon, but still.
I absolutely cannot fail. I imagine returning to my hometown, tail between my legs, the silly girl who dreamed too big and couldn’t make it in the city, and I can’t bear the thought. Life in Ingleford is claustrophobic. For some people, it’s what they want, and that’s great. But it’s not for me. It never will be.
I want to live in a city with multiple sushi restaurants within a five-minute walk of my apartment. I want to live in a city where my little pie shop is on the same street as an Indonesian restaurant, an El Salvadoran restaurant, and an Asian-inspired ice cream shop. I like the community feeling of Baldwin Village, but I also like being anonymous when I walk down a major street; nobody knows who I am and who my parents are. And English isn’t the only language I hear.
Of course I don’t think everyone in Ingleford is an unsophisticated simpleton, but the town is rather insular.
“Sarah?” Megan says. “Can I meet him? Please?”
I blow out a breath. I’m catastrophizing. Happy As Pie, despite the recent oven failure, is doing okay. We’ll do a great job with this party. We’ll get more catering jobs, and I’ll build the business I want.
But I can’t completely shake my unease.
I must absolutely make sure that Josh doesn’t distract me, but despite my niggling uncertainties about our relationship, I’m determined to show my sister—and my mother—that he’s a great guy.
So I text him and ask if we can pop into his office.
Josh says he has a meeting soon, but he’ll be done in an hour, so any time after that would be good.
After our pedicures, Megan and I head to the Eaton Centre for some shopping, and then we meet my mom and the kids at Dundas Square.
“Sarah has a boyfriend!” Megan squeals. “We’re going to see him now!”
Mom raises her eyebrows.
I take out my phone and show her the list of eligible bachelors under thirty-five, hoping she’ll be a little impressed that Josh is on it. As with Megan, there’s a bit of a hesitation when Mom sees his picture, but then she smiles and says, “He’s a CEO? You know, I just read a very good book about a CEO who has quintuplets.”
“The CEO’s Quintuplet Surprise?” I ask.
“You’ve read it?”
“Um, no. I was too horrified by the quintuplet part.”
We head toward Josh’s office. I’ve never actually been here before, so I’m curious, too. And freaked out and excited for my family to meet him.
“How should I greet him?” Mom asks. “In his culture—”
“Maybe try ‘hello’? That always works.”
“Why are you being smart with me, Sarah? I just want to make a good impression.”
“Treat him like you’d treat any other boyfriend of mine.”
“But you haven’t had any boyfriends, not since high school. Unless you were hiding them from me?” She looks at me questioningly.
I shake my head. “Josh grew up in Canada. Don’t compliment his English, and don’t tell him that you like the chicken balls at the Chinese restaurant in the next town over, or that you saw a Bruce Lee movie once.”
I don’t think my mom will be an awful caricature, but I’m a little worried now.
Crap. Maybe this is a terrible idea.
We arrive at Hazelnut Tech, which is on the second and third floors of a retrofitted old brick building. The space feels modern, yet comfortable and relaxed, and I can totally see this as Josh’s workplace.
His assistant, Clarissa, is expecting us, and she shows us into his office.
Josh stands up to greet us and gives my mother and sister one of his dazzling smiles. Seriously, his smile lights me up every time I see him. My mother is clearly charmed as well, and I can’t say I’m surprised.
“Aren’t you a little young to be a CEO?” she asks.
“I’m a year younger than Mark Zuckerberg, and my company is nowhere near as big as his. Clearly I have some catching up to do.”
Mom laughs.
“Are you Auntie Sarah’s boyfriend?” Rosie asks.
“Yes,” he says.
“Are you going to get married? Can I be the flower girl?”
I can’t help tensing up. I’m just getting used to the idea of having a boyfriend, never mind getting married one day.
“We’ll see,” he says, smiling at Rosie as though he’s not bothered by her question, but perhaps he is and just isn’t showing it.
“Sarah,” Mom says, “there’s a new wedding dress maker in London who—”
“Mom!”
At least she didn’t say anything about quintuplets. I’d much rather she talk about wedding dresses than five babies. I recall the pain my cramps caused me last week and imagine five babies-to-be in my uterus instead.
Dear God.
“What’s with the funny expression?” Megan asks me.
“Uh, Josh and I haven’t been together very long, and I think the talk of weddings is a little premature, that’s all.”
“It’s never too early if it’s the right guy,” Mom says, but fortunately she moves on to another topic. “What does your company do, Josh?”
“Custom software and mobile app development.”
“What’s an app?”
“You know on your phone—”
“Mom doesn’t have a smartphone,” Megan cuts in.
“Oh, dear,” Mom says. “This all sounds a bit modern for me.”
Josh takes out his phone and pulls up the food delivery app he used the other day. With a few clicks, he orders a Hawaiian pizza to the office.
“You don’t have to talk to anyone?” Mom asks, perplexed.
“Nope,” he says.
“But how does that work?”
“Mom!” Megan says in exasperation. “It’s the twenty-first century. Get with the program. Although I think pineapple on pizza is an abomination.”
“No,” Mom says, “it’s delicious. My favorite.” She beams at Josh.
We don’t wait around for the pizza, though. I hustle my family out after ten minutes so Josh can get back to work and so I don’t need to hear any talk about weddings. But I feel proud that this wonderful man has chosen me. Though at the same time, I’m disturbed that I brought my family to meet him. I can’t believe I did that.
Outside on the sidewalk, the kids are getting antsy.
“Benjy hit me!” Rosie says.
“Did not.”
“Did too!”
“That’s enough,” Megan says. “Let’s get some food. What do you want to eat? It’s Toronto. You can get anything here.”
“Peanut butter sandwich,” Rosie says.
“Me, too!” Benjy jumps up and down.
Megan sighs.
“You know,” I say, “how would you like peanut butter sandwich French toast?”
And that’s how I end up at a cha chaan teng for the second time in a week.
While we’re eating our Hong Kong-style French toast and Macau-style Portuguese chicken, someone in an inflatable T-Rex costume walks by the window, and the kids screech with delight.
I love Toronto.
Chapter 21
Josh
It’s Pi Day.
I didn’t go into the office this morning. Instead, I did some work at home, and now I’m driving to a restaurant in North York to meet my parents for dim sum, which was my mom’s idea. Toronto has a much larger Chinese community than Ottawa, and there are way more food options. She told me to pick a restaurant, and I picked a fairly fancy one, as far as dim sum places in Toronto go.
I can’t help freaking out, which is rare. I run a business; I’m used to important meetings.
But my father is in a class of h
is own.
My dad is a big, balding man with a salt-and-pepper beard, which he keeps neatly trimmed. He’s been going gray since I was a kid, but it’s as though, through sheer willpower, he has prevented himself from going completely gray. He looks a little like the father in Kim’s Convenience, and weirdly, I’ve started watching that show because I miss my dad.
But today, I hope he’ll actually speak to me.
My father can be stern and demanding and even ruthless, but he’s devoted to my mother, and he loves my sisters and his grandchildren, who delight in getting him to play horsey.
When I was little, I wanted to make him proud, and when I was a bit older, I wanted to piss him off—which I did.
Now I want him to be proud of me again. I want him to acknowledge I’m his son and actually wish me a merry Christmas when I go to Ottawa in December. That’s what I’ve wanted more than anything for years.
I want my father back.
I get to the restaurant twenty minutes early, as there’s no way I’m going to be late, but there’s another reason, too.
I want to slip the server my credit card before my parents arrive.
In many Asian families, people fight over the bill. Not that I’ve actually eaten at a restaurant with my father in my adult life, but I know he’ll try to pay the bill, and I’m determined to pay it myself.
Fighting over the bill can actually get rather vicious and lead people to do ridiculous things. I remember going out for dinner with my aunt’s family, the only extended family we have in Canada. My father snuck the waitress his credit card after ordering, and my aunt was pissed when the end of the meal came and she discovered the bill had already been paid. She chased my dad through the restaurant with a wad of cash in her hand. When he ran outside and opened the car door, she threw the money on the driver’s seat before he could stop her, then used an umbrella to fend him off when he tried to return the money.
With that memory in mind, I open the door to the restaurant and immediately see my parents seated at a table near the back. Guess I won’t be able to covertly hand over my credit card before the meal. I’ll need to make other plans.
