by Lillian Li
The first months after the arrest and the treatment program, Pat’s progress had seemed unbearably slow, and no matter how Nan pestered his therapist, she heard only that her son’s haziness was normal. He just needed more time. Nan promised herself she would be patient, but she couldn’t help worrying that she’d lost her son in the fire after all. Then, two weeks ago, after his mandated counseling capped off its final hour, Pat took his first faltering steps toward his new life. One morning, she came downstairs to find him waiting at the kitchen table, two pieces of paper in front of him. He’d printed out their airplane tickets.
“You can have the window.” He’d held the papers delicately in his hand.
“No, not for me,” she said. “I don’t like to be so close to the outside of the plane.”
“It’s a long flight. Seven hours. Maybe we can buy a neck pillow at the airport.”
He hadn’t spoken so many words at once since his arrest. The proximity of a new start, with both his parents, had shaken the impassive mud off his face. Nan could accept, finally, that the program had not damaged Pat beyond repair and that she, who had put him there in so many ways, was not an accomplice to any more crimes. The day she’d dropped him off at the treatment center in Pennsylvania, she had been sure she was putting him in more danger. The center treated both juvenile fire setters and sex offenders, and if the alternative had not been prison, she would have driven him straight back to Maryland. During visits the first few weeks, she saw that her son had developed a series of nervous tics: chewing on his mouth and nails, scratching at the back of his hand. He was afraid of the other boys in his program, though he refused to admit it. But, as his counselor reassured her during their weekly phone calls, “Teenagers are resilient.”
The day she picked her son up, he let her hug him for as long as she dared. She felt his ribs through his shirt. When they walked to the car, his eyes never left the ground. On the highway, he’d shuddered at a cigarette dropped out of a truck window.
Though Pat held on, almost stubbornly, to his tics, once Nan could see that he was excited about his future, she felt strong enough to push back her own feelings about the move. She had yet to find anything more invigorating than her own child’s excitement.
“You’ve never tried cocaine,” had been Ah-Jack’s little quip. But he was trying not to let his glumness taint their meetings, which had taken on the gloom of a countdown.
She reached out for his hand now and hooked her fingers around his. He patted them with his free hand, then shifted in his seat, embarrassed by the quiver in his chin.
“It’ll take some time to save the money for the ticket.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them quickly. “But I’ll come visit you.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second,” Nan said.
She shrank back into her chair. How small Ah-Jack’s life looked without her in it. His new job let him sit down but required no more skill than walking a plate from the kitchen to the table. His customers enjoyed his presence, but they were mostly Chinese. They didn’t respond to his clowning ways the same as Americans had. Or, perhaps, they were merely reacting to the new strangeness in his antics, which had grown weary, like a forced smile.
Michelle had not survived. Cells from the original cancer had been hiding in her bone marrow, dormant for years. Her decline had been aggressive, so shocking that even now Ah-Jack refused to talk about the weeks he’d spent at her bedside, rubbing elbows with Gary while she slept. He had never come back to the Glory, forfeiting his job without fanfare. Equally soundless, Nan’s relationship with him had ended.
Nan understood that Ah-Jack’s guilt had swallowed him up. He’d spent some of the last moments of Michelle’s life in bed with another woman. It didn’t matter that she and Nan had worked in tandem to keep him in the dark. It didn’t matter that in the terrifying days after Pat moved to Pennsylvania, Nan needed her friend more than ever. She knew that for a while her presence would only wound him. Whenever she felt the urge to call him, she called Ray instead. Listening to her husband complain about his employees soothed her. It was, at least, a voice in her ear.
Ah-Jack broke his silence on the day Michelle died, weeping but intelligible while he passed on the news. Slowly, they had started meeting for lunch, and while so much had changed in the landscapes of both their lives, the core of their individual selves, and therefore the core of their love, remained. As long as Ah-Jack was himself, Nan would always be devoted. As long as Nan was herself, Ah-Jack would always have someone devoted to him.
If she was so devoted, then why wasn’t she staying with him? She swallowed the question, a burning lump in her throat. Devotion, she could only say weakly to herself, was a case of mind over matter. Ah-Jack would always be in her thoughts; he would never go a single day without knowing that someone across the country was thinking of him. This was all she could offer: a domain inside her head, where he was as good as king.
Her own domain was about to grow beyond her control. She had fought against such expansion since she’d left Macau. She knew the growing pains. Ambition had numbed the ache when she was younger. No such solution could be brewed up now. Here, she was happy in spite of her hardships; in California, would she be able to see beyond the spite? Would the smell of grease and the pain in her fingers and feet ever be secondary in a sentence? But that kind of happiness wasn’t the point. She had let her son go hungry for too long. She was determined to starve for the rest of her life so that he might be able to eat.
The day she’d told Ah-Jack about the move, she was surprised by how ready he was to receive it. She had talked on and on, too nervous for his reaction, until he’d stopped her to reveal that Pat had broken the news to him weeks earlier.
“Your husband is there, and your son,” he said, showing an empathy that almost shocked her eyes dry. Ah-Jack had seen beneath her chipper optimism, her talk of travel guides and new suitcases, to the quiet devastation that moved between her bones. He didn’t require her false smiles or her real tears. He had held his finger up to her nose, a return to his old sense of humor. “You promise you’ll fly back when I’m about to meet my maker.”
She’d grabbed his finger. “I promise.”
At the hotpot table, they both stood up and he slapped her shoulders as if she were a young man going off to war.
“If I had my way, you would never leave my sight,” he said. “Or you would at least be within hearing distance. In case I fell down the stairs.” They both laughed, and Nan took the opportunity to blow her nose.
Then he turned her around to face the door. A chill shot straight up her spine. Everything around her looked too beautiful to leave. He gave her a little push, and she finally walked away.
*
Nan had the unsavory last task of returning her carver’s uniform to the Glory and picking up her final check. To pay off Pat’s legal and program fees, she’d had to return to her job. With the pregnant, ruddy moon extended over the sky, she had carved duck after duck on the outdoor patio. Her picture had gotten into a newspaper review of the new restaurant, which had its official grand opening during the Harvest Moon Festival.
She never grew as close to the Beijing Glory carvers and waiters as she had with the Duck House staff, and, of course, she didn’t see Ah-Bing, Ah-May, and the rest of them either, except for accidental run-ins at the H-Mart and Costco. She hadn’t expected to learn such an unkind lesson this late in life, of the fleeting nature of friendship built on context and proximity. She didn’t see much of Jimmy either, in the back of the house, and when she dropped into the Georgetown restaurant at the end of lunch service, she wasn’t surprised to see him crouched by a table, entertaining a potential VIP. She’d never seen anyone adapt so quickly and fluidly to so much adversity. A fire; an arson investigation; a new, at first faltering restaurant; potential bankruptcy. Yet here he was, not a pound heavier or lighter, not a single hair missing from his head.
She gave him a small wave after she’d exchanged her hat and tools f
or her month’s pay. He surprised her by standing up to wave goodbye to her. The man he was speaking with also turned around in his seat. The oily way he waved his hand—she nearly mistook him for Mr. Pang. Then saw that he had all five of his fingers.
She left quickly through the swinging glass doors. The goosebumps on her skin had nothing to do with the whipping wind outside. She turned the heat all the way up in her car before she drove away. Her son was waiting at home.
*
“You should go see Dad’s restaurant,” Johnny had said over the phone that morning, and for once Jimmy had listened. Now, when he should have been resting, he was here instead. He looked up at the Duck House, its new-old brick façade. What color had his father’s bricks been, before the fire?
The construction of the building’s exterior had finished a few days ago. His mother, true to her word, had rebuilt the entire restaurant. It was slated to open in a few months. He’d driven over right after he’d sent the last customer away with a carryout bag of duck.
From the outside, the Hans had come out on top, and, according to his mother, the outside was all that mattered.
“You are the stories people tell of you,” she always said. Jimmy had never agreed.
He lit a cigarette and took his time dragging on it while he circled the restaurant. What did he know, in the end? The Glory was doing better, but his customers had yet to repeat, no matter how many tables he’d chatted up, how many bills he’d comped. Had he hoped that a sight of the small cage that once held him would make the Glory look downright palatial? He was a true idiot. All the Duck House did, surrounded by the same dirty establishments and rushing traffic, was to remind him that the Glory was only another cage, slightly larger, slightly fancier, but not so different, after all, from his father’s glory.
Back at the entrance, Jimmy ripped the plastic covering off the front doors. Sure enough, golden ducks perched where the handles should have been. He passed his hand over one of the gleaming heads before stubbing his cigarette out, leaving an ugly gray streak on the mallard’s bowed head. He might never crawl out from under the shadow of the Duck House. But he would not be Jimmy if he did not keep trying, setting aflame what could not be burned down. This was the story he would tell.
He rubbed again the gray streak on the duck’s head, until the color dulled, and the raised ash fell away. He convinced himself the mark was permanent. That this bit of gray and gold would outlast them all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am nothing without the people in my life. Thank you to the following, who have rendered me speechless with my own good fortune:
The faculty and staff at the Helen Zell Writers Program, who taught me all that is tangible and intangible about writing: Andrea Beauchamp, Michael Byers, Nicholas Delbanco, Sugi Ganeshananthan, and Doug Trevor. Extra gratitude to Peter Ho Davies, whose mentorship extends outside the classroom, and Eileen Pollack, whose influence on early drafts made all the difference.
My Princeton teachers—Susan Choi, Jeffrey Eugenides, Chang-Rae Lee, John McPhee, Lorrie Moore, and Evan Thomas—who set me on my path and gave me the strength to keep walking. Special thanks to Ed White, my earliest patron and constant guide.
My beautiful cohort, for being the strangest group of people I ever did love and admire. The entire Michigan MFA community: I became a full(er) person in your midst.
All my early, middle, and late readers: Rach Crawford, Maya West, Mike Higgins, Emily Tseng, Michelle Chua, and Sam Krowchenko. You saw me at my worst and stuck around until I got better.
Kathleen Summersgill, for teaching me about fire. The Aiken Burd Thesis Travel Grant, for sending me to Chinatown. Helen Zell, for financial and creative peace of mind. Mike and Hilary Gustafson, and all the Literati staff, for loving books as much as you do. And Kundiman, for giving me hope.
Adam Eaglin, my agent with a poet’s soul, who rescues me again and again with his unflappability, his intelligence, and his beautiful phone voice. Elyse Cheney and Alex Jacobs, for going above and beyond.
Everyone at Henry Holt deserves a room filled with their favorite flowers, but here are a few to start: Carolyn O’Keefe, for putting up with all my harebrained publicity ideas. Jessica Wiener and Maggie Richards, for answering all my questions. Kathy Lord, for fixing all my mistakes. Callie Dietrich, my impromptu cover artist, for being at the right place at the right time. Meryl Levavi, for making the inside of my book look as good as the outside. And the entire art department, for giving me the best jacket a girl could ask for.
Barbara Jones, who has done more than any editor should, who has approached my book like a surgeon, a personal trainer, a therapist, and a magician; and her intrepid assistant, Ruby Rose Lee. A blessing also for Kanyin Ajayi, my fairy godmother, who plucked my book from the pile.
Finally, my parents, Yin Li and Hongying Wang, and my didi, Christopher. I would not understand the world without your eyes. Your love has been my earth and sky.
About the Author
LILLIAN LI received her BA from Princeton and her MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of a Hopwood Award in Short Fiction as well as Glimmer Train’s New Writer Award. Her work has been featured in Guernica, Granta, and Jezebel. She is from the DC metro area and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Henry Holt and Company
Publishers since 1866
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New York, New York 10010
www.henryholt.com
Henry Holt ® and ® are registered trademarks of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
Copyright © 2018 by Lillian Li
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Li, Lillian, author.
Title: Number one Chinese restaurant: a novel / Lillian Li.
Description: First edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017033308 (print) | LCCN 2017042542 (ebook) | ISBN 9781250141309 (eBook) | ISBN 9781250141293 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Chinese restaurants—Fiction. | Families–Fiction. | Domestic fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3612.I14 (ebook) | LCC PS3612.I14 N86 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017033308
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition 2018
This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imaginati
on or are used fictitiously.