by Helen Hoang
Her mom’s eyes hardened. “And look where that’s gotten you.”
Mỹ looked down at her girl. “It also got me her.” She regretted being with her daughter’s heartless father, but she’d never regretted her baby. Not even for a second.
She brushed the damp baby hairs away from her girl’s temple, and that enormous love expanded in her heart. Gazing at her daughter’s face was like looking in a mirror that reflected a time twenty years past. Her girl looked exactly like Mỹ used to. They had the same eyebrows, cheekbones, nose, and skin tone. Even the shape of their lips was the same. But Ngọc Anh was far, far sweeter than Mỹ had ever been. She would do anything for this little one.
Except give her up.
Once Ngọc Anh’s father had married, his wife had discovered she couldn’t have babies, and they’d offered to raise Ngọc Anh as their own. Again, Mỹ had turned down an offer everyone expected her to accept. They’d called her selfish. His family could give Ngọc Anh all the things she needed.
But what about love? Love mattered, and no one could love her baby like Mỹ could. No one. She felt it in her heart.
Still, from time to time, she worried she’d done the wrong thing.
“If you don’t like him,” her mom said, “you can divorce him after you get your green card and marry someone else.”
“I can’t marry him just for a green card.” He was a person, not a stack of paper, and if he decided to marry her, it would be because she’d succeeded in seducing him, because he cared about her. She couldn’t use someone that way. That would make her just as bad as Ngọc Anh’s dad.
Her mom nodded like she could hear the thoughts in Mỹ’s head. “What happens if you go and you can’t change his mind?”
“I come back at the end of the summer.”
A disgusted sound came from the back of her mom’s throat. “I can’t believe you need to think about this. You have nothing to lose.”
As Mỹ looked at the black screen on her phone, a thought occurred to her. “Cô Nga said he doesn’t want a family. I have Ngọc Anh.”
Her mom rolled her eyes. “What young man wants a family? If he loves you, he’ll love Ngọc Anh.”
“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it. If a man knows you have a baby, most of the time he’s not interested.” And if he was interested, all he wanted was sex.
“Then don’t tell him right away. Give him time to fall for you, and tell him later,” her mom said.
Mỹ shook her head. “That feels wrong.”
“If he tells you he loves you but backs out of marriage because you have a daughter, you don’t want him anyway. But this woman knows her son, and she chose you. You have to try. At the very least, you get a whole summer in America. Do you know how lucky you are? Don’t you want to see America? Where in America is it?”
“She said California, but I don’t think I can stand being away that long.” Mỹ brushed her fingers across her daughter’s baby-soft cheek. She’d never been away from home longer than a day. What if Ngọc Anh thought she’d abandoned her?
Her mom’s forehead creased with thought, and she got up to dig through a pile of boxes kept in the corner. They were her mom’s personal things, and no one was allowed to open them. Growing up, Mỹ used to snoop through them when no one was looking, especially the bottom one. When her mom opened that box specifically and rustled through its contents, Mỹ’s heart started sprinting.
“That’s where your dad is from. Here, look.” Her mom handed her a yellowed photo of a man with his arm thrown around her shoulders. Mỹ had spent countless hours peering at this photo, holding it close, looking at it upside down, squinting, anything to confirm the man’s eyes were green and he was, in fact, her father, but nothing worked. The picture had been taken from too far away. His eyes could be any color. They appeared brown, if she was being honest with herself.
The lettering on his shirt, however, was easy to read. It clearly said Cal Berkeley.
“Is that what ‘Cal’ stands for?” she asked. “California?”
Her mom nodded. “I looked it up. It’s a famous university. Maybe when you’re there, you can go see it. Maybe . . . you can try to find him.”
Mỹ’s heart jumped so hard her fingers tingled. “Are you finally going to tell me his name?” she asked, her voice whisper thin. All she knew was “Phil.” That was the name her grandma whispered with hate when she and Mỹ were alone. That Phil. Mister Phil. Your mother’s Phil.
A bitter smile touched her mom’s lips. “He said his full name was ugly. All anyone ever called him was Phil. I think his surname started with an L.”
Mỹ’s hopes shattered before they’d fully formed. “It’s impossible, then.”
Her mom’s expression went determined. “You don’t know until you try. Maybe if they use the expensive computers, they can make a list for you. If you work hard, there’s a chance.”
Mỹ gazed at the picture of her dad, feeling the yearning in her chest grow bigger with every second. Did he live in California? How would he react if he opened his door . . . and saw her? Would he accuse her of coming to ask for money?
Or would he be happy to find a daughter he’d never known he had?
She opened up the picture of Khải on her phone and held the two photos side by side on her lap. What had Cô Nga seen in her that she thought Mỹ was a good match for her son? Would her son see it, too? And would he accept her daughter? Would her own father accept his daughter?
Either way, her mom was right. She wouldn’t know until she tried. On both accounts.
Mỹ typed out a text message to Cô Nga and hit send.
Yes, I want to try.
“I’m going to do it,” she told her mom. She tried to sound confident, but she was quaking inside. What had she just agreed to?
“I knew you would, and I’m glad. We’ll take good care of Ngọc Anh while you’re gone. Now, go to sleep. You still have to work tomorrow.” The light clicked off. But after the room went dark, her mom said, “You should know with just one summer, you don’t have time to do things the traditional way. You have to play to win, even if you’re not sure you want him. As long as he’s not evil, love can grow. And remember, good girls don’t get the man. You need to be bad, Mỹ.”
Mỹ swallowed. She had a good idea what “bad” meant, and she was surprised her mom dared to suggest it with her grandma in the room.
CHAPTER TWO
Present day
As Khai’s running shoes hit the cracked concrete of the driveway leading to his Sunnyvale fixer-upper, which he never got around to fixing up, the timer on his watch beeped. Exactly fifteen minutes.
Yes.
There was nothing as satisfying as perfect increments of time. Except for hitting whole dollar amounts when filling up at the gas station. Or when the restaurant bill was a prime number or a segment of the Fibonacci sequence or just all eights. Eight was such an elegant number. If he added a minute to his run, he could set a checkpoint in the middle. Wouldn’t that be entertaining?
He was mentally rerouting his daily commute when he noticed the black Ducati parked next to his bird-shit-smattered Porsche on the curb. Quan was here, and he’d driven that, even though their mom hated it and Khai had provided him with all the death and brain damage statistics multiple times. Giving the motorcycle a wide berth, he jogged to his front door, avoided the thorny weed bush that thrived in the shade beneath the awning, and let himself in.
Inside, he removed his shoes and immediately peeled his socks off. Heaven was bare feet sinking into his house’s 1970s shag carpet. Initially, he’d hated it—the pea-green color was offensive—but walking on it felt a lot like taking a stroll in the clouds Mary Poppins style. It used to smell funny, but time had fixed it. Either that, or he’d assimilated the scents of mothballs and old ladies into his identity. He was going to keep the
carpet until the house became officially condemned by Santa Clara County.
There Quan was, sitting on Khai’s couch with his feet up on Khai’s coffee table, watching some finance program on CNBC as he drank Khai’s only cold can of Coca-Cola—he could see the condensation dripping over the cursive lettering just like in a commercial. The rest of his soda was room temperature because you could only fit one can into his fridge at a time. The valuable real estate was taken by Tupperware containers filled with his mom’s cooking. She thought he was going to starve to death if she didn’t personally feed him, and in true Mom fashion, she never did anything halfway.
“Yo, you’re home. How’s it going?” Quan asked as he took a long slurp of Coke and then hissed as the burn worked down his throat.
“Fine.” Khai narrowed his eyes at his brother. The hiss and burn from the cold Coke was one of Khai’s favorite things, and now he had to wait four hours until a new can was ready. “Why are you here?”
“Dunno. Mom told me to come. Apparently, she’s on her way.”
Ah shit, he saw nonsensical errands in his near future. What would it be this time? Driving to the grocery store all the way in San Jose to buy discount oranges? Or importing commercial quantities of seaweed extract from Japan to cure his aunt’s cancer? No, it had to be something worse, because she needed both her sons involved. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it might be.
“I need to take a shower.” His clothes were wet and sticky, and he wanted them off.
“You might wanna be fast. I just heard someone pull into the driveway.” Quan took a good look at Khai then, and his eyebrows arched. “Did you just run home from work in a suit?”
“Yeah, I do every day. This kind is engineered for motion.” He pointed to the elastic cuffs at his ankles. “And the fabric breathes really well. It’s also machine washable.”
Quan grinned and took another slurp from his pilfered Coke. “So my brother’s been running the streets of Silicon Valley like an evil Asian Terminator. I like it.”
The strange imagery made Khai hesitate, and just as he opened his mouth to respond, a familiar voice outside the house announced in Vietnamese, “Here, here, here, here, I have lots of food. Help me bring it in.” His mom never spoke English unless she absolutely had to. Basically, she spoke English to the health inspector at her restaurant.
“What?” Khai asked in English. He honestly didn’t know how to speak Vietnamese, though he understood it well enough. “I still have lots of food. I’m going to start feeding the homeless if you—”
His mom appeared in the doorway with a proud smile and three boxes of mangoes. “Hi, con.”
Because he didn’t want her to break her back, he stuffed his socks in his pocket and took the boxes from her. “I don’t eat fruit, remember? They’re going to go bad.”
He was almost back out the door with them when she said, “No, no, they’re not for you. They’re for Mỹ. So she doesn’t miss home too much.”
He paused. Who the hell was Mỹ?
Quan got to his feet. “What’s going on?”
“Help me bring in more fruit first.” To Khai, she said, “Put those in the kitchen.”
Khai walked the boxes into his kitchen in a state of utter confusion. Why was this fruit in his house when it was supposed to prevent Mỹ, whoever she was, from feeling homesick? He set the boxes on his Formica countertop and noted they were three different varieties of mango. There were big red-green ones, medium yellow ones, and small green ones in the box that bore Thai script. Had his mom purchased him some manner of fruit-eating jungle monkey? Why would she do that? She didn’t even like dogs and cats.
Why was it taking Quan so long to bring the boxes inside? Khai went to investigate and found his brother and mom deep in discussion out by her beat-up Camry. Khai and his siblings had pitched in together to get her a Lexus SUV for Mother’s Day last year, but she insisted upon driving this two-decades-old Toyota unless it was a special occasion. He noted there was no one sitting inside it. No Mỹ.
“Mom, it’s wrong. This is the United States. People don’t do that,” Quan said, sounding more exasperated than usual with their mom.
“I had to do something, and you need to support me. He listens to you.”
Quan looked heavenward. “He listens to me because I’m reasonable. This isn’t.”
“You’re just like that stinky father of yours. You both let me down when I need you,” their mom said. “Your brother is always reliable.”
Quan made a huffing sound and scrubbed his hands over his face and buzzed head before he took three more fruit boxes from the trunk. When he saw Khai, he halted midstep. “Brace yourself.” Then he carried the boxes inside.
Well, that was ominous. In Khai’s head, the hypothetical jungle monkey morphed into a giant male gorilla. This fruit would probably feed such a creature for one day. On the positive side, he wouldn’t need to pay to get his house bulldozed, and he might even be able to file a claim on his homeowner’s insurance. Reason for damage: rogue gorilla in a mango rage.
“Grab the jackfruit and come inside. I need to talk to you,” his mom said.
He hefted up the spiky jackfruit—holy fuck, it weighed like thirty pounds—and followed her into his kitchen, where Quan had set the new boxes next to the mangoes and seated himself at the kitchen table with his Coke. Worrying about the sturdiness of his counter, Khai carefully eased the jackfruit next to the other fruit. When the counter didn’t immediately collapse to the floor, he sighed in relief.
His mom considered his seventies kitchen with a frown. That look on her face was textbook dissatisfaction. If he lined up his old facial expression flash cards with her face right now, they’d match perfectly.
“You need to get a new house,” she said. “This one is too old. And you need to move all those exercise machines out of the living room. Only bachelors live like this.”
Khai happened to be a bachelor, so he didn’t see what the problem was. “This location is convenient for work, and I like exercising where I can watch TV.”
She waved his comments away, muttering, “This boy.”
A long silence ensued, broken only by the occasional slurping of Coke—Khai’s Coke, goddammit. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he looked from his brother to his mom and said, “So . . . who is Mỹ?” As far as he knew, mỹ meant beautiful, but it was also how you said America in Vietnamese. Whichever way he looked at it, it seemed an odd name for a gorilla, but what did he know?
His mom squared her shoulders. “She’s the girl you need to pick up from the airport Saturday night.”
“Oh, okay.” That wasn’t horrible. He didn’t like the idea of ferrying around someone he didn’t know and changing his schedule, but he was glad he didn’t need a rabies shot or an FDA permit. “Just send me her flight schedule. Where do I drop her off?”
“She’s staying here with you,” she said.
“What? Why?” Khai’s entire body stiffened at the idea. It was an invasion, clear and simple.
“Don’t sound so upset,” she said in a cajoling tone. “She’s young and very pretty.”
He looked to Quan. “Why can’t she stay with you? You like women.”
Quan choked in the middle of drinking Coke and pounded his chest with a fist as he coughed.
Their mom aimed her dissatisfied look at Quan before she focused on Khai and straightened to her full height of four feet ten inches. “She can’t stay with Quan because she’s your future wife.”
“What?” He laughed a little. This had to be a joke, but he didn’t understand the humor.
“I chose her for you when I went to Việt Nam. You’ll like her. She’s perfect for you,” she said.
“I don’t—You can’t—I—” He shook his head. “What?”
“Yeah,” Quan said. “That was my reaction, too. She got you a mail-order bride from
Vietnam, Khai.”
Their mom glowered at Quan. “Why do you say it so it sounds so bad? She’s not a ‘mail-order bride.’ I met her in person. This is how they used to do it in the olden days. If I followed tradition, I would already have found you a wife the same way, but you don’t need my help. Your brother does.”
Khai didn’t even try to talk then. His brain had shorted and refused to compute.
“I bought her all sorts of fruit.” She moved the boxes on the counter around. “Lychees, rambutans . . .”
As she continued to list off tropical fruits, his mind finally caught up with him. “Mom, no.” The words came out with unintentional strength and volume, but it was justified. He ignored the instinct that told him he was committing sacrilege by saying no to his mom. “I’m not getting married, and she’s not staying here, and you can’t do things like this.” This was the twenty-first century, for fuck’s sake. People didn’t run around purchasing wives for their sons anymore.
She pursed her lips and propped her hands on her hips, looking like an aerobics instructor from the eighties in her hot-pink sweat suit and short hair with a flattening perm. “I already booked the banquet hall for the wedding. The deposit was a thousand dollars.”
“Mom.”
“I picked August eighth. I know how much you like the number eight.”
He raked his fingers through his hair and suppressed a growl. “I’ll refund you the thousand dollars. Please give me the contact information for the banquet hall so I can cancel.”
“Don’t be this way, Khải. Keep an open mind,” she said. “I don’t want you to be lonely.”
He released a disbelieving breath. “I’m not lonely. I like being alone.”
Lonely was for people who had feelings, which he didn’t.
It wasn’t loneliness if it could be eradicated with work or a Netflix marathon or a good book. Real loneliness would stick with you all the time. Real loneliness would hurt you nonstop.
