A Pho Love Story

by Loan Le

  Our plan to do a two-for-one deal combines Ba’s talent for advertising and Mẹ’s cooking, or so Ba claims. But I’m already dreading the flood of people who’ll come. We’re understaffed as it is; we had to say goodbye to three servers who were seniors off to college. We hired replacements, but only one of them seems like they’ll last.

  Before I realize it, Ba appears at our table. He sets down a plate of hot, crispy egg rolls that Mẹ sent out from the kitchen. Ali literally oohs, like she hasn’t eaten a gazillion in the lifetime we’ve known each other.

  “Cảm ơn, Ba.”

  He reaches for my sketch, appraises it. “Con vẻ này hả?” he asks evenly. I nod and he dips his chin in acknowledgment. I know he sees I can draw. He wouldn’t have asked me to make the flyers if he didn’t at least approve of my work. “Did you do your homework already?”

  “Dạ, Ba.”

  Ba nods, satisfied, and walks back into the kitchen.

  There used to be a time where I brought home every single art project in elementary school and middle school, and they would take it, hang it up. A picture of flowers in a vase still hangs in the kitchen by the in-and-out door. I knew they were proud.

  But high school is different. In my freshman year, regulars would come in daily, updating my parents on their kid who went to Harvard, or won a prestigious award, or graduated with honors, or bought them a house. That was when my parents really started paying attention to my grades—the ones that actually mattered and could get me into a good school.

  Toward the end of junior year, I’d brought home a physics exam that I aced and it was only because I studied without sleeping, abandoning an art project I had at the time. The test was worth too much. Mẹ had mentioned it to a regular customer who mentioned a niece who was good at physics and now works as an engineer. Somehow that idea has stuck, and my parents have been pushing engineering as a path for me ever since.

  I’d never seen them look so eager.

  “Have you told them yet?” Ali pulls me from my thoughts. She is watching me. She’s one of the few who can guess my moods, read me instantly.

  “About coffee with Quyền Thành? No, it’s pretty much all set. I can’t back out now.”

  My parents don’t usually ask for favors from regulars or their friends. Here’s how it goes: If something is broken in the restaurant and a friend offers to fix it, they protest. That same friend shows up with a toolbox anyway, and my parents grudgingly let them in. When all things are fixed, my parents offer to pay them, but their friend protests and argues all the way to the door.

  In that case, an envelope of money might mysteriously end up under their doormat, or in a pocket of their jacket they might hang up inside the restaurant.

  But my parents had pulled in a favor when Evie was deciding among schools, and called a few friends of friends to help weigh in. This time they used up another favor, arranging a coffee meeting with that niece who was an engineer. They tell me it’s a chance to ask questions and learn more about “my future.”

  How can I say no?

  “Con,” Ba calls for me. He’s halfway into the kitchen but he gestures to the front where a family of four are waiting to be seated. I slip into my role as waitress, something I’ve done since freshman year—and even before that. When we’d just opened the restaurant, I remember tagging along with other servers, armed with my own notepad and pen—or was it a crayon?—the customers indulging me with smiles.

  “Table for four? No problem. Just follow me.” I lead the family to one of the center tables, until Jonathan, the most competent of our new hires, easily swoops in.

  I slip back into my booth with Ali. She’s chewing on the end of her pencil, stuck with an article she’s writing.

  It kills my parents, even now, to have Evie a day trip away instead of at home. Evie was the better server out of us, calm and cool under service. Orderly. Mẹ never had to tell Evie to fill up the napkin dispensers or the bottles holding tương phở, because they were probably already filled.

  And she’s definitely more charismatic, like Ali, with the other customers. It’s unsaid, but I know, in the way they ask after Evie, that some longtime customers must be disappointed to have me replace her—me who would much rather be in my head or in front of a canvas. They tell my parents how proud they should be of her.

  “She’ll be a doctor in no time,” these customers say fondly. Then they look significantly at me. “And maybe you can be the same.”

  Perhaps in other families it would have worked out. I mean, me and Evie are only two years apart, but if anyone didn’t know better, we might as well have been raised under two separate households.

  Mentioning that I want to major in anything remotely creative? Impossible. Back in freshman year, when the idea of doing something with art just came into mind, we had a regular who had one daughter who couldn’t be more perfect. Straight As, active in everything in her life, her hair always in a perfect bun. She was also one of the best seniors on the dance team and naturally decided to major in dance at college. Supposedly, the dad was more lenient, hence why she was even allowed to, I don’t know, live after announcing her decision. Her mother’s reaction, though, stays with me: “I want to die sometimes! She’ll be poor her entire life. It’ll never work out.”

  And my mom just consoled her as if she had lost a child, agreeing with every word. The woman and her daughter used to be close; now the girl’s a choreographer and rarely comes home. Whenever her mom drops by the restaurant, loneliness comes off her in waves.

  Now I glance around the restaurant, my eyes landing on the familiar parts that make up a place that’s been like a second home for years: our red shrine greeting customers; our private shrine in the back room, where the ceiling is black with soot after so many years of joss sticks lit for worship; the people who come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, people from way back, like Mẹ and Ba’s refugee camp days, who apparently remember everything about me as a child, even if I don’t remember them. I mix them up half the time.

  Nothing is bad. Nothing is wrong, really.

  But it doesn’t feel enough. There’s something urging me to go a bit farther than here. Am I just being selfish?

  Ali has gotten up to stretch her legs. She stands by the window with Ba and has started talking to him. Leave it to her to talk to someone who doesn’t like to talk unless he has reason to. Off-and-on charisma. Ali laughs at something, but Ba looks serious. I leave my sketch and join them, curious.

  “I can always sneak in, you know. Pose as a customer and steal some recipes.”

  Ba doesn’t answer right away. It even looks like he’s considering. I roll my eyes. “Ba, no way.”

  Anything the Nguyễns do, we have to do better. They knock down their chả giò price to four dollars for two rolls, we have to do three dollars and fifty cents for the same number of egg rolls. They have five flavors of sinh tố; we have six flavors. I’m never sure who’s winning.

  My parents are still trying to catch up to the others in the area, like the Nguyễns, still cognizant of how hard it was to open a new restaurant in the place of one that had, for all purposes, looked successful.

  I remember Bác Xuân, the previous owner, coming over to our old San Jose apartment whenever he had a free weekend—stopping by after seeing his only daughter and his four grandchildren. The oldest, Fay, is getting married later this fall. I remember the slow way he’d shuffled inside and given a satisfied sigh as he sunk into our only comfortable La-Z-Boy chair. He told my parents he wanted to retire and that his daughter, a coworker of my mom’s from a nail salon where she used to work, would rave about my mom’s phở.

  If you make good phở, you can open this restaurant, he’d said.

  Things happened so quickly after that. We moved. I transferred schools. The restaurant opened… and suddenly I was only a few feet away from that boy who’d asked me to draw him a Spider-Man. It would have been a good coincidence, and I could have made a friend—if only
it wasn’t made clear that I should never step near their place.

  “Gia đình đó thì dữ lẳm, lại rất là xấu.”

  “But how are they mean?”

  “They don’t pay their staff anything. They owe their suppliers too much money. They—”

  “Just don’t ever associate with them.” My mom had cut my dad off, rarely doing so.

  I know Vietnamese people like to judge one person based on the whole family, and to my parents, the Nguyễns are the worst, but Bảo is a mystery to me. There, but not. In four years of high school, with more than 2,500 students, we haven’t had one class together. As if our school administrators know of the rivalry and have conspired to keep us apart.

  And high school will be over before I know it and we’ll lead even more disparate lives.

  “Mr. Mai,” Ali says in a mockingly grave tone, “I am more than happy to spy on our enemy if it helps the restaurant biz. Just tell me when.” She goes back to the booth to pack up. “Think I’m about to head home now. I’m on deadline.” She puts on her backpack, groaning at the weight of her books. She stops by the pass-through shelf and pops her head in. “Can I take home some broth, Mrs. Phạm?” Pro tip to getting on my mom’s side: Address her by her maiden name, which she kept instead of taking Ba’s. “My mom’s dying for her next phở fix.”

  Perfect pronunciation, thanks to me.

  It’s like you’re confused and asking, “Huh?” except there’s an f.

  Oh. Yeah, I get it. In the pitch that kind of loops around, right? But it’s also like if you’re swearing and saying, “Fu—”

  Okay, yeah, you got it.

  In Vietnamese, my dad mutters in awe and confusion about how he’s never seen a mỹ trắng—a white person—eat phở so many times a week.

  I hear my mom’s pleased smile in her voice. “Of course!”

  Her hair tied in a loose bun—with a pencil, which I can’t ever figure out how to do—Mẹ appears from the back, wipes a hand on her apron. She offers Ali a plastic cylinder filled with our signature homemade chicken and beef bone broth.

  Ali beams at her. “Awesome. Thanks so much, Mrs. Phạm!”

  We both watch Ali leave the restaurant until Mẹ gushes, “Allison is so dễ thương!” She’s proud that I have a friend who likes her cooking.

  Ba shakes his head. “Con đó khùng.” I laugh. According to my parents Ali can only be cute or a bit weird. I’ll take my dad’s side this time.

  “You’re not eating?” She points to the egg rolls.

  If I say I don’t have the stomach for it now, she’ll be worried. “Yeah, working on it.” Remembering Ba’s reaction to my sketch, I close my pad and stash it in my backpack, rustling the paper tucked inside.

  Ms. Yamamoto gave me that flyer two days ago. It’s for an exhibition at the Asian Art Museum that will only be there for one night and morning. Chang Dai-Chien’s piece will be displayed, donated by his living family members. He’d been one of the first to elevate ink painting and traveled all around the world before focusing on perfecting the art of Buddhist paintings. Yamamoto thought I’d be interested. She’s always telling me how it seems I like capturing memories—rather than something posed—in my artwork.

  “Just check it out,” she said, as class was letting out. I was already late for work and ran out the door after grabbing the flyer with a quick thanks. But as I looked at it on the walk from La Quinta, I knew I couldn’t miss out on it.

  Mẹ disappears, then returns from the kitchen with her own bowl of phở. She likes to eat before the dinner rush. My insides sigh at the smell: star anise, cinnamon, the earthy tones of chicken and beef bones. She dresses it with shredded thai basil and fresh bean sprouts, a spritz of lime here and there, and finishes it with a generous swirl of hoisin sauce, glossy under our lights. A work of art.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” She inhales, a small smile on her face. Mẹ’s loud when she’s cooking—and she’s happiest when she’s eating. And I love her for it. I always want her to stay this way.

  She gets sad sometimes—mornings when she doesn’t let the sun in, leaving the window shades closed so that only slivers of yellow peek through. She buries her head in her pillow, both temples dotted with dabs of dàu xanh to soothe her headache. I hate the smell. It reminds me of sickness and tummy aches, because that’s what they used on me as a kid. Ba cooks on these days. Dinner is always a simple canh sườn bí, which always has less salt than it should, and never measures up to Mẹ’s cooking.

  It’s worst whenever it hits the anniversary of her escape in 1983 or when a relative’s death anniversary is just around the corner. Mẹ’s story about her boat escape to the Philippines is the stuff of nightmares. I grew up listening to these tales. I’m not sure why—a lesson, maybe? Like in a hey, listen to the hell I went through so you can have a good life kind of way. But should an eight-year-old have dreams about a pitch-black sea and a boat packed with thirty-nine people, including crying, starving babies?

  It’s not depression, I don’t think. Sometimes, she checks out. That’s all. Like she’s remembering something and can’t get it out of her mind.

  It helps when she calls my aunt, her older sister by six years, the one who stayed behind in Vietnam. She’d planned to escape with my mom in tow, along with their older cousins. But the officials had gotten to her, so she pushed my mom ahead, trusting their cousins from there on. They eventually made it to a camp in Palawan, Phillipines. My aunt wasn’t held back in Vietnam for long, and might have bribed her way out.

  But she understood then that she wouldn’t be as lucky the second time.

  Mẹ says I remind her of Dì Vàng because we both like to draw and sketch. My aunt had visited us when we lived in San Jose. I was five. I remember thinking she was like a colorful painting come to life, and when I saw a Kandinsky painting in my sophomore-year art theory class—one of his Compositions—I thought: This is her. Kandinsky had always talked about a connection between himself and the viewer, how the role of the artist was to not only excite the senses but trigger the viewer’s soul. Colors and soul—I saw that in my aunt.

  When my mom and my aunt get on the phone, I know things will be okay. They took care of each other back in Vietnam—since my grandparents had passed away when my mom was eleven—and they still take care of each other now. The almost nine thousand miles between them is insignificant.

  Mẹ smiles as a young couple comes in—Vietnamese, by the way she greets them. Ba shows them to a table. Charisma on. He’s already pushing the upcoming phở deal by handing out my flyer along with the menu. Dad’s latest marketing scheme might work, but it’s going to be hell working during those nights. It will track in a bunch of other Vietnamese people, who were trained by their chopstick-wielding mothers to eat what’s in front of them, then eat some more even if they’re full.

  The sight of the flyer tickles something in the back of my mind.

  “When is it again?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Phở Day.” Or whatever you call it.

  “September thirtieth, remember? We’ll need your help that day.”

  Until three weeks ago, we were down three waiters and waitresses. Julia, Kingston, and Huy were a grade above me and left for college. But to say that the new workers were making things easier would be a complete lie. Jonathan was just okay. Lisa, the hostess, gets flustered too easily. And Tài has slippery fingers.

  I lean back in my chair. Some of the air in the padding squeezes out.

  Of course it’s September thirtieth. The same day as the exhibition.

  “Is Evie coming back to help?” My sister texted the other day and sent me a long string of pictures of her dorm room, a selfie with her new roommate, and a sunrise view of the campus after a morning run.

  Maybe if she comes back, she can help out like she used to and I can sneak out.…

  My mom frowns. “Con, you know your sister is busy with school.”

  What about me? I’m busy. I have
other things to do. I have a life.

  But I can’t say those things. “Yeah, right, I remember now.”

  Mẹ sighs as she mixes up her phở. “I know this is not the best situation. I know this isn’t how you want to spend your time.” I try protesting, but she only adds, “You are not so hard to read. Your face always tells me everything. I just know.

  “But we want this to go well. We need it to go well. Or else your father will be grumpy for days.” She glances over at Ba, who’s taking a couple’s orders to the kitchen.

  There’s no way I’ll be able to see the exhibition. No way at all.

  I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. I bite into my egg roll. Soggy.

  CHAPTER THREE BẢO

  I regret many things in life, and I know I’ll regret many more at the rate I’m going. But my number-one regret now is taking journalism as my elective. Astronomy, the easiest class any senior can take, was already filled up. Việt was lucky enough to get in. I thought journalism was the second easiest. Since freshman year, Hawkview’s been filled with crossword puzzles, sudoku games, and What’s the Difference? games, and always ended up stuffed in toilets or cafeteria trash cans.

  Then Allison Dale became the editor in chief. I swear she’s tougher than any staff member at the Los Angeles Times. She’s not even in this class—she has study hall last period, which means she can technically leave school early, but doesn’t. Even though this is our first journalism class, Allison’s already expecting us to chase news stories from things like the chess team embezzling money from their joint fundraiser with the checkers team—how Allison sniffed that lead out, I’m not even sure.

  The adviser, Ben Rowan, should step in more often, but he seems more like a glorified babysitter. Rowan lets Allison run everything on the newspaper. He’s the kind of guy who looks like he says “sorry” a lot.

  We’re at the tail end of our editorial meeting about assignment statuses. I take the back seat at this meeting and try not to fall asleep, since it’s the end of the school day. But a part of me is still recovering from being accosted by theater nerds at the club fair during lunch period. Traumatic. They were demonstrating some circle game in the quad, but to me, it looked like they were trying to summon demons. Other clubs were less intimidating. Apparently there’s a new TikTok club? I even managed to dodge the Vietnamese Student Association.