by Justina Chen
18
Middle-aged men in tuxedos and women in black cocktail dresses swarm the Spanish Ballroom in the Fairmont Olympic like well-coiffed socially conscious ants. You can guess who the Queen is. Across the room, Mama glimmers in her gold-dusted dress and large jade pendant. Her peck-in-the-air ritual with her friends is just beginning.
As an old guy raves to Baba about an epiphany he had reading The Ethan Cheng Way, my second-guessing game begins. Maybe I shouldn’t have e-mailed the rep without putting together an entire plan. Maybe I should have worked my video over a couple more times. It’s easier to beat myself up than consider the possibility that maybe my riding just wasn’t good enough even when my knee was perfect.
“Right, Syrah?” I hear Baba ask.
I blink, give the requisite “hmm, wow, amazing” answer, and just as I tune back into my worries, a new one emerges on the horizon, an old guy who leers down at me, his blue eyes gleaming under a silver ridge of eyebrows. I can’t remember which “O” he is: chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer. Whoever he is, Chief Overaged Ogler says, “You remember me, right? Bill Radcliffe? You’re growing up before my very eyes.”
I don’t think Mr. Radcliffe is referring to my munchkin height. Not when—for real—he’s staring at my chest. However much I want to carve around the lech like he’s nothing but an ancient tree, my job duties have been ingrained into me since Baba’s company went public when I was ten. Life, according to my parents, is one big networking opportunity. So I smile prettily at Mr. Viagra, who takes it as an invitation, because the old guy oozes, bending over me with dried-out, puckered-up lips: “Good to see you, sweet Syrah.”
Oh. My. God. He’s going to kiss me. He’s got to be at least twenty-five years older than I am, making him old enough to be my… husband. I want to tell him, just because there’s a thirty-one year age gap between my parents doesn’t mean I’m shopping for one of those September-May relationships myself.
Quickly, I murmur to Baba, “Excuse me, I see Mama waving to me,” and make a fast getaway.
Like always at these events, I comprise the entire under-ancient crowd, and have to swerve around conversations like “Have you seen the new BMW?” and “We just upgraded to a sixty-foot yacht.” A waiter offers me a coconut shrimp skewer, but in this sea of taut tummies, I dare not go down the slippery slope of just one taste. Especially when the one with the tautest tummy beckons me to her conversation.
“And here’s Syrah,” says Mama, smiling at me. “We were just talking about everyone’s winter break plans.”
Right, “just talking.” When it comes down to it, this crowd’s “just talking” is nothing more than Black-Tie Boarder Cross, the down-and-dirty event played out in the ballroom.
Ladies, on your marks, get set…
The first woman whose green eyes glitter competitively bolts out of the starting gate, saying, “I can’t believe winter break is in a week. I can’t wait to get to Aspen. So where are you all going?”
A pallid woman with seaweed-straight hair jockeys into the front position. “I can tell you where we’re not going this year. The Virgin Islands.”
The competition roars, “No! But you always go there.”
Pulling ahead into the lead, the pale woman shakes her head. “I know. I was just saying to James on our way here, remember how we used to spend a month in the islands every year before the kids? But now, the kids are so busy, it’s just not worth going all that way for seven days. So we’ll go to the Big Island instead. The Four Seasons, the only place worth staying.”
A new competitor lays her sapphire-encrusted hand on the pale woman’s arm, cutting her off neatly. “Seven days or seven weeks, it’s such a chore getting everything packed. Especially when you’re skiing and going around the world to Switzerland. There’s all that equipment to haul.”
I want to scream, not because she’s going to Switzerland to ride, but because I sent my video to RhamiWare. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It wasn’t ready; it wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t good enough.
Out of nowhere, Mama, the reigning champion, darts to the forefront. “I hate to admit it, especially with Syrah standing here, but I’m a little relieved that we’re going to Hong Kong instead of Whistler this year.”
Ms. Switzerland is confident of her lead and murmurs, “Hong Kong?”
Smiling modestly, Mama nods. “Nothing exciting.” And then, like the all-time champion she is, she pulls even farther ahead with a deft move. “But when world leaders personally ask your husband to attend, well, duty calls.”
The pale woman grows paler, sensing she can’t make up this distance. Faintly, she repeats, “World leaders?”
Mama now leads so far ahead of the pack, there’s no chance of anyone recovering. “Oh, you know, the regulars. Ethan wasn’t planning on attending the World Economic Summit. He’s been traveling so much lately, you know, wrapping up business before his retirement. But what can we do, right?”
The once and forever champion of the my-husband-is-more-powerful-than-yours competition leads everyone into the ballroom for dinner, burning more brightly than all the candles on the gold-draped tables. As I follow Mama’s ego-bruised competitors, I know I don’t want to be a woman who derives her self-importance from her man. Or her father. However amazing these men are, I want to be amazing, too.
Salad is being served when Grace slides into the empty chair next to mine. Her favorite accessory, Mochi, glitters like a miniature fireworks show, wearing a collar that coordinates with Grace’s bracelet.
A waiter armed with wine bottles advances and asks Grace, “Syrah or chardonnay tonight?”
One guess which Grace chooses.
The ballroom lights dim, and a spotlight illuminates the executive director for the Evergreen Children’s Fund; a middle-aged woman whose bouffant is leftover from a couple of decades ago smiles broadly from the podium on the stage.
Sighing, Grace leans back in her seat, removing Mochi from her bag and propping him over her shoulder. At least she has something to distract her from the usual blah blah blah, thanks for your generous support, blah blah blah, we’ve made huge strides, blah blah blah, we need more of your money now. It’s almost enough for me to consider adopting a yippy dog of my own. Mochi bares his little teeth at me. Almost.
As predicted, the executive director sticks to the standard formula. “For the last ten years, I’ve had the privilege of working with Ethan and Betty Cheng. They’ve been passionate supporters of the Evergreen Children’s Fund.”
Really, this does make me wonder whether the snowboarding event I impulsively floated at the family meeting is just the fresh new fundraiser this jaded crowd needs. People may be turned toward the executive director, but those sedated expressions aren’t truly paying attention to the photographs of children, flicking one after another in time to soft music on the two large overhead screens. I smooth down my dress and hope that Mama and Baba won’t feel the need to drag me onstage with them, where they’ll inevitably go after this long introduction.
The executive director continues, “When I first approached the Chengs, I asked if they would consider covering our operating expenses, so that we could designate a full one hundred percent of proceeds to the children we help. At that time, most people didn’t understand the power of this unglamorous gift. The Chengs asked, ‘How much?’ ”
The audience applauds, but the executive director holds up her hand, quieting us, so that we can focus on the photographs of a woman I don’t recognize: on the floor reading to children in her lap. Wearing a smock and painting with a group of kids. Laughing as she kicks a ball, hair in an untidy ponytail.
Next to me, Grace gasps at the same time I do. This is Mama, she of the couture-only closet, the woman with the no-unmanicured-hands-in-public grooming rule. Her smiles in these photographs aren’t the practiced ones of her professional head shots; they’re real, natural, relaxed. And adoring. My emptied-out heart caves in.
“But t
hat doesn’t explain how involved Betty has become with our children,” drones the executive director. “For the last five years, she’s been volunteering once a week at a day care for homeless kids, one of the groups the Evergreen Fund supports, thanks to your generosity.”
Another photograph blinks onscreen, Mama playing ring-around-the-rosy. How is it possible that I’m jealous of homeless kids, some who, according to the executive director, have been beaten, others who’ve watched their own mothers prostitute themselves for cash, all who bring every last belonging with them to this day care because they don’t know where they’re sleeping that night? I’m so ashamed of myself as picture after picture changes—now duck-duck-goose, now a game of hopscotch—but I dredge through my memories and come up empty. I don’t have a single memory of hands-off, don’t-touch, this-is-a-new-outfit Mama visiting me at school.
“So please help me honor two of Seattle’s most warm-hearted, hands-on philanthropists, Ethan and Betty Cheng,” cries the executive director.
As Mama and Baba rise from our table and approach the dais for their speech, I clap robotically, stopping when everybody else does.
“As we all know, the true hero is Betty,” Baba says, his powerful voice reverberating through the ballroom without a microphone, “a woman who can raise more money with three phone calls than I could in five months of road shows. She has single-handedly increased the Evergreen Fund by four hundred and twenty-three percent since she announced that we had to be involved.”
The last photo remains onscreen, Mama kissing a grubby little boy on the cheek, his arms wrapped around her neck like she’s the one person he can count on in his shattered world. Her eyes are closed as if more joy, more bliss, more love she can’t handle. This unstudied image is the straw that breaks my Qué Syrah Syrah back. I can’t let this one go, not with a blithe whatever. Instead, I rear from the table. My jealousy sucks all the oxygen in the ballroom until I’m suffocating. All eyes are on Mama, glittering so brilliantly onstage that she blinds everyone, except for Grace, who looks at me with pity, that ugly half-sister of empathy. For the first time, I know how Grace and Wayne must have felt, shunted aside to make room for me, but it’s an uncomfortable thought I don’t want to try on when I’m shaking off my own mottled feelings.
Unable to stay with this Mama I don’t know but have always longed for, no matter if it’s going to cause my parents to lose face, I start to stand up. I don’t even know what I’m doing, what I’m intending until Grace grabs me, tugging me back down.
“Don’t make a scene,” she whispers urgently.
A scene? A scene? Of course, that’s all Grace would care about, all the Chengs care about. Protect the family name. Do nothing to besmirch the precious family honor. Forget keeping a stiff upper lip. It’s all about saving face, but after these photographs, there’s nothing of mine to save.
“Let go of me,” I warn Grace in a low voice, shrugging off her hold the same time I do my adoring little sister mask. I stride out of the ballroom, out of the hotel, and into the cold night.
19
I must be sending out girl-on-the-verge vibes, because there’s a ten-foot perimeter between me and the valets. Happy to be left in my own safety zone, I stand to the side of a mammoth planter, three times the size of Mama, and catch myself before I dial Age the way I usually do.
I breathe deeply. Inhale, exhale, wishing that I couldn’t hear Age’s accusation: I’m just your chauffeur, your back-door friend.
A couple gets out of their silver Jaguar, and before they can “Syrah Cheng!” me, I turn my back on them. Apparently, I need a remedial course in Denial & Consequences, because I, who complained about social class, was the one who kept a glass partition between me and my chauffeur, Age. A gust of wind blows a few leaves off the planter and into my face. As I swat away the dead leaves, I recognize Chelsea Dillinger’s parents as they leave the Fairmont.
While Mr. Dillinger deals with the hyperattentive valets, Mrs. Dillinger hustles to me at a speed that defies her four-inch heels. Like her daughter, she is what Mama would call obese when in reality she’s no more than ten pounds overweight, placing her somewhere between ample and voluptuous. Just like Natalia. When I groused to Mobey about how I just didn’t understand Age’s attraction to Natalia the first time they got together, he sat me down for a crash course in Boys & Other Unsolved Mysteries. According to Dr. Mobey, guys may like to look at skinny girls, but in bed, they want something to hold on to. Needless to say, I held up my hand, not wanting to imagine Age, Natalia, and a bed.
“Syrah, I swear, you and your mother are just looking more and more alike,” coos Mrs. Dillinger.
It’s such a bold-faced lie that I nearly snort. Yeah, the day Mama and I look more and more alike is the day I check into the hospital as an anorexic after finally waging a successful just-say-no-to-food campaign.
“But then again, your mother is simply ageless,” simpers Mrs. Dillinger.
Over her shoulder, I catch a glimpse of myself in the window, and realize that Mrs. Dillinger is right after all. For once, I look like Mama. I look simply Age-less, too.
“Now, what are you doing out here in the cold? A little girl like you, you’ll catch your death,” says Mrs. Dillinger, all concern but no action. She doesn’t volunteer her jacket or her husband’s.
“Leaving early, too?” I ask, wondering if I should beg a ride off them.
But as Mrs. Dillinger talks about how she’s got so much work to do before they leave for Whistler tomorrow, I know that there’s no way I could tolerate a ten-minute drive in the confines of their car.
She and all those women back at that Ode to the Chengs event masquerading as a fundraiser were wrong, griping about the pre-vacation hassles of leaving. Leaving is the easy part. The trick is forgetting all your old baggage. Just go. Isn’t that what my parents do? What Jared did?
What I want to do now?
Like Mama, I smile politely, waiting, waiting, waiting for the valets to bring around the Dillinger vehicle, yet another brand-new Hummer. Please. Black-tie functions may be polite skirmishes to establish wealth, power, and standing, but must we armor ourselves for the Fairmont?
As the Hummer rumbles away, I shiver, wishing now that, fashion be damned, I had packed my parka. My itty bitty jewel-encrusted sandals, which cost more than a season’s pass at Stevens, couldn’t last more than ten city blocks. With nowhere else to turn, I set out of the circular driveway.
“Syrah, wait!”
The wind blows Grace’s hair fetchingly as she hurries to me, Mochi a shivering bundle in her arms. Here is the moment she’s been waiting for since Bao-mu carried me home from the hospital. My moment of ultimate disgrace.
Instead of gloating, Grace asks quietly, “You ready to go home?”
Embarrassed that she’s witnessing this new low in my life, I look toward the Dillingers’ Hummer, still stopped at the light. My only other course of action is to return to the ballroom and pretend that everything is okay. That I’m fine with a mother who showers more love and attention on homeless kids than she ever has on me.
Being a model Cheng-ling and a star publicist to boot, Grace doesn’t take my “no comment” for an answer. Instead, she strides, relieved to have something to do, all woman-on-a-mission, to the valets and announces, “I need my car.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The valets practically salute her, one sprinting in the direction I should be walking.
“Don’t even think about it. You won’t be able to snowboard for two weeks if you try walking home in those,” says Grace, guessing that I’m planning to hike home on my own. By the time I turn to stare at her, she has Mochi swaddled in a color-coordinated cashmere wrap.
While we wait for Grace’s car, she doesn’t push me to talk, nor does she make ephemeral cotton-candy conversation that means nothing and is forgettable the instant it vanishes. Only later, when we’re at the gates protecting The House of Cheng and Grace leans out the driver’s side window to press the four digit cod
e—1937, the year of our father’s birth—into the small metal keypad on the gate, does she speak. “Do you want me to come in?”
The gate swings open slowly, like it doesn’t want to admit us any more than I want to admit that our silence during the drive to The House of Cheng is loud with questions we aren’t asking each other. Why is she doing this, driving me home? Did Baba yell at her all the time when she was my age, the way he did tonight in my closet? What does she think of me now?
“So, do you?” she asks again as she slowly drives down the winding driveway.
I keep my eyes out the side window, as inexplicably I think about Baba’s yes-but-no chapter. The strategy to use when you need to buy time while you make up your mind. Yes, Age has been my best friend and he’s dated other girls. But I never invited him inside my house, just my heart. So no, I can’t take his rejection, no matter how much I might deserve it.
Yes, Mama is my biological mother. But she mothers these abused and neglected and homeless kids in the way that I’ve always wanted to be mothered. So no, I don’t feel like a beloved daughter, a little sister, or a friend. I don’t feel anything at all.
As we pull up to the front door, I glance at Grace, surprised that she’s looking back at me, not with pity, but with tenderness as if she knows I’m going to yes-but-no her.
Yes, I’ve always wanted a big sister who would listen when I needed her, who could have dispensed free boyfriend advice that might have saved me from Jared, who would know what to do with girls whose personal anthem is “This closet is your land; this closet is my land.…” But you and Wayne made it perfectly clear you never wanted me. So no, I can’t trust your insta-sister act no matter how much I’ve yearned for this very moment.
It is absolutely ludicrous that now that I have the entrée to Grace that I’ve always wanted, I feel too raw to talk, too mixed-up to make any sense, too brittle to even try, which is why I yes-but-not-now her.