Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune

by Roselle Lim

  I tapped the glass and waved.

  He waved back, gesturing for me to come inside.

  The floor was a land mine of loose parts, discarded cardboard, Bubble Wrap, and assorted tools. I tiptoed around a box of ceiling tiles to get a closer look. The strong smell of fresh paint dominated the space. A calming turquoise hue supplanted the eggshell on the walls. Three plastic-covered club chairs and an area rug had replaced the unused bookcases—a reading corner.

  The bookstore was undergoing a renaissance.

  “Mr. Shen, how are you?”

  “Great. Do you like the new wall color?” He set down his screwdriver. “Maybe I should go bolder with teal or scarlet.”

  “No, no. This is perfect. Very soothing and conducive to reading.”

  Older Shen adjusted his collar. “I want to have local authors come in. Get more kids and families in here. That reminds me—the children’s section needs to expand too.”

  The revitalization had also affected his wardrobe. He wore a sharp, peacock blue jacket with a black silk shirt over dark denim jeans.

  “I love the changes you’re making. It will be great for business,” I said.

  “I hope so,” he replied. “I love books. The business is much tougher now than it was when my grandfather ran the store. I’m going to adapt and not let it die out.”

  I smiled.

  I had helped him find his voice. This was the Older Shen who’d been hidden underneath the candied ginger and pistachio shells for all these years. He had found his courage, his boldness. Perhaps I really had fulfilled all of the conditions and could move ahead with my plans. Then the neighborhood, including my restaurant, would be saved from the real estate vultures who wanted to gentrify it.

  The neighbors could have left at any time if they had wanted to, but roots ran deep. Because they’d stayed, their situations had grown more dire. If I had been in their shoes, I guiltily realized, I would have sold and run. “Why did you stay?”

  “My family had always been here. My parents and their parents were a part of the business association. They taught us how important it is to be a part of the community. Guang and I are the only ones left: our cousins have all moved out to the suburbs to expand their families.”

  “I thought you were like Celia, that you liked running the store.”

  “I did. I’m starting to remember why I chose the bookstore in the first place.” Shen picked up his screwdriver again. “Oh, I’ve also started doing something I’ve always wanted to do for years.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ballroom dancing,” he said, smiling.

  The thought of Older Shen practicing the Viennese waltz or Argentine tango made me happy. With its romanticism, passion, and nobility, it was a pursuit worthy of him. I hoped I would get a chance to watch him in full regalia, twirling a partner in a frothy confection of sequins and silk.

  “That’s wonderful, Mr. Shen.”

  He blushed. “Are you ready to open the restaurant?”

  “Not yet, but I’m working toward it.”

  “Good, because a new restaurant will do wonders for the neighborhood—especially if the chef is a Tan. You cook as well as your grandmother did.”

  Older Shen’s compliment touched me. Warmth flooded my cheeks, and my vision clouded with unshed tears.

  “Really?” I whispered.

  He nodded. “It’s in your blood.”

  It was. I was a Tan woman. My grandmother and my mother were strong. Their strength was mine.

  * * *

  With evening approaching, I grabbed my purse and headed to the market again for fresh fish. Celia was expecting a wonderful dinner, and I knew exactly what to cook for her. I picked out a fat red snapper whose crystalline scales rivaled the trendiest pieces in the jewelry district in SoMa. As I walked home, I heard the underlying sound of the erhu embedded in the soundscape of the busy intersection. I checked in the usual places, but Mr. Kuk Wah was nowhere to be found. I wanted to look for him, but I knew if I lingered too long, Celia’s special dinner would suffer.

  I returned upstairs to cook, bypassing the restaurant; perhaps because this was my own dish and not Laolao’s. I was preparing inihaw isda, a recipe I had first tasted in Manila over an open fire pit.

  My fingers caught the deep nick in the lower corners of the wooden cutting block. It was made by Ma-ma’s cleaver when she’d sliced a stubborn piece of beef tendon. Though my mother was gone from this world, it gave me comfort that her presence lingered in every spice and utensil.

  I reached for the two beefsteak tomatoes in the grocery bag. The shade of their skins bore a hint of orange, indicating the firmness of the juicy flesh within. My sharp blade sliced into the fruit: dripping, sticky, dotted with the jeweled seeds inside. I cut the flesh into tiny cubes as the scent of sunshine and vines filled the air. I transferred the tomatoes to a ceramic bowl before rinsing the board and knife clean.

  Using the flat side of the blade, I smashed three cloves of garlic. The fragrant aroma teased my nostrils as I rolled a fat red onion onto the board. The papery amaranthine skin crinkled under my fingertips.

  According to Ma-ma, the red onion contained too much chi, the reason it caused so many tears. She compared the red onion to Younger Shen—rich in color and bold in flavor. I never questioned her logic, for no other onion induced the same reaction.

  I popped a strip of peppermint gum into my mouth. When I was very young, my mother had prepared a hot and spicy tofu dish that included a red onion. As always, I had stood by the counter, watching, waiting to steal a morsel. The instant her knife cut into the red onion, it was like a pipe burst within me, unleashing a torrent of tears. My mother picked me up by the armpits and carried me to the claw-foot tub in case my tears overflowed while she phoned and asked Mrs. Chiu to run a quick errand. Ma-ma returned to the bathroom with packs of peppermint gum from the Chius’ convenience store. Whether it was the novelty of the chewing gum or the powers of my mother’s secret knowledge, my tears soon stopped flowing.

  I dispatched the onions into a neat pile of translucent half crescents as the artificial mint flavor coated my tongue. The next ingredient involved the bouquet of coriander resting at the edge of the counter. I pulled a generous clump from the bunch and plucked the leaves from their stalks in my culinary version of he loves me/he loves me not.

  I lifted the bowl to my nose and sniffed. This needed more garlic. I rechecked the ratio of ingredients and peeled three more garlic gloves. Tossing the components together, I set them aside and turned my attention to the fish.

  First, I placed the cleaned snapper on a bed of aluminum foil sprinkled with sea salt and olive oil. I then stuffed the tomatoes, garlic, onions, and coriander into the belly of the fish before sewing it shut. The first time I’d tasted this, the snapper was skewered and turned over open flames. To accompany it, I’d drunk the sweet juice from young coconuts cut with machetes, taken off the very trees above us. Now that I was back to apartment living, I had to modify the recipe and grill the fish in a closed packet. The texture of the skin wouldn’t be as crisp, but the flesh would be even more tender. If I had thought Celia preferred the crisp texture, I would have fried it with the stuffing mixture served on the side.

  The fish was ready to be baked. I prepared sinanag, Filipino garlic fried rice, to accompany the fish: jasmine rice, smashed garlic cloves, sea salt, and a sprinkle of vegetable oil. Knowing Celia, she would love her apartment to be the theater for the meal—provided I could convince her to remove the stack of magazines currently in her oven.

  * * *

  “I come bearing gifts,” I announced as Celia opened her front door for me.

  She cooed over the mysterious foil packet resting in the baking pan. “Dinner cooked by someone else is the best kind of courtesy a guest can give.”

  We settled into the couch, waiting for the oven to heat u
p. Celia poured us both a glass of sparkling Italian blood orange sodas. She might not be able to cook, but her stock of beverages was impressive.

  “You’d think the extraction process would have been easy today.” Celia wrapped her arms around her middle and giggled. “But Anita had a death grip on Wayne’s neck. Guang had to pull them apart. I have to say, though, I heard they were like this as teens. It was common to see them making out in odd places, and I believe your laolao even had to separate them at one point. I’m happy for them. I don’t think they’ve spent much time with each other in the last decade.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help but be pleased with the results of my efforts. I had to tell Celia about the true nature of the recipes. “I did it,” I declared in a loud whisper. “I did this.”

  Celia’s eyes widened behind her glasses. Her mauve painted lips formed an O. “How?”

  “Laolao’s recipe book.” I reached into my tote bag and produced my grandmother’s book. “She has hundreds of recipes in here. When Miss Yu gave me the prophecy, she also gave me this from Ma-ma.”

  Celia gawked. She made a vague gesture that looked like a hybrid of the sign of the cross and Madonna’s “Vogue” dance moves. “It’s real. I always suspected your grandmother had a book because I caught her writing something down in the kitchen a few times.”

  “Do you want to read it?” I asked.

  “No, no.” She blushed. “It’s a family heirloom. I feel honored enough that you trusted me to show me.”

  Celia had proven herself my only friend—one I had desperately needed since I lost Ma-ma. I’d never had many friends, even before I left home. Ma-ma had taught me that she and I were enough, and while we lived together, we had been. But in the last seven years on my own, I had learned that loneliness wasn’t the best companion.

  The scars from my father’s abandonment had shaped me into a paradox, someone who didn’t want to be alone but still shut people out.

  My mother had physically isolated herself from the world, and I’d done the same in my travels. I often wondered how much daughters emulated their mothers with or without their conscious control. Had I inherited Ma-ma’s habit of human quarantine like I had inherited the shape of her face? I realized now that trust could be liberating, especially when placed with people like Celia who treated it with care. I had thought I was completely alone when I lost Ma-ma, but I wasn’t. I had Celia. For a brief moment, I contemplated telling her about my meddling. There was still a secret between us. Although it worried me to keep something from her, I told myself that some good deeds were better left unsaid.

  “Of course I trust you.” I tucked the book away, my fingertips lingering over the embossed leather cover. “You mentioned you had news?”

  “I think I have a solution for increasing business for the shop and the neighborhood.”

  I clapped my hands. “That’s excellent! Tell me everything.”

  “This morning’s tour bus was a blessing. I wondered what would happen if I could get regular traffic coming to my shop, so I started talking to the driver and the tour guide. They said they stopped here because of a specific request: probably from Old Wu’s nephew. Apparently, he had to call in favors because over the years, our neighborhood has lost its appeal. For the last decade, the buses would drop off people at the paifang, then move them deeper into Chinatown, never stopping in front of the store like it did yesterday. Sure, we were lucky if we had a few stop by, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “Why didn’t you all do this earlier? Asking the buses to stop by?”

  “We did. They weren’t interested, and over the years, the local ones stopped taking our calls. Maybe the problem is that we didn’t think big enough. This had me digging into out-of-town tour operators. I think I have a solid plan that might save us all. If Old Wu’s nephew can do this, so can I. I’ll book the tour groups myself. I swear my luck has been on fire lately,” she said.

  “Luck is all about making the right choices. You’re making your own good fortune,” I remarked, feeling a pang of guilt for not telling her what I’d done.

  Celia’s smile brightened her lovely face. “I saw Daniel walk by. Do you have news too?”

  “He said he’ll ask me out tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Why not today?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m nervous, so I’m okay with the delay,” I confessed. “I like him a lot.”

  “He’s adorable. And if I was younger—”

  The oven dinged, leaving us laughing at the timely interruption.

  Despite my warnings that it would take another forty-five minutes, Celia parked a chair before the oven to stare into the window, watching the foil packet for any micro-reaction. As the fragrance of the fish diffused in the air, she moved closer, sniffing with the tenacity of a bloodhound.

  “Snapper?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  When the timer rang out, Celia jumped to her feet, clearing out of the way so I could open the oven door. I pulled the pan out and placed it on the stovetop. The foil packet sighed as I pulled it open, hissing as it yielded its bounty. Clouds of steam puffed upward, releasing the tantalizing aroma into the air. The fish’s reddish skin had a beautiful overlapping pattern that looked as if it had been painted by some wayward mermaid. My sharp scissors snipped the stitches in its belly, spilling the filling onto the plate.

  I scooped us both two helpings of the garlic fried rice and portioned the desirable parts of the fish, the head and the belly, for Celia, while I took the tail.

  The piece of fish on my fork bore the sign of perfect execution: moist, milky translucence, and a silky texture that sprang to the touch. Infused with the fragrant stuffing, the tender fish melted in my mouth, dissolving in a mélange of delicious flavors—the trio of boldness from the coriander, garlic, and red onion tempered by the sweet tanginess of the tomatoes.

  Success.

  “Oh, this is divine,” Celia purred. “I haven’t had many Filipino dishes before. You’ll have to remedy that.”

  “Thank you.” I sighed. “I can’t believe I’m getting ready to open the restaurant.” Or that by doing so, I was putting down roots.

  “This is for all of you,” I said. “And for Ma-ma and Laolao.”

  “I am glad you stayed. Now you realize that you’re one of us and we take care of one another.” Celia patted the empty spot beside her on the couch.

  After we finished eating, I loaded the dishwasher, turned it on, and returned to the living room to take my seat beside her. “I’m glad Ma-ma had your friendship when I was gone.”

  She squeezed my hand and sighed. “I think it’s time I tell you what happened after you left home. The day you hopped on a plane, Anita told us that Miranda quarreled with you and that you’d left. We knew she was alone so we all helped. Fai came by once a week to drop off new books and magazines for her. Guang took over buying her groceries. Evelyn delivered teas and stopped in for frequent visits while I’d come over to watch K-dramas with her.”

  I hadn’t known any of this. My face must have betrayed my distress because Celia squeezed my hand.

  “She made us promise not to tell you. Your mother didn’t want you to feel guilty and come home. Miranda loved you too much. Even though you had parted on ill terms, she didn’t doubt that you’d come back eventually. She understood that you had to leave to pursue your dream, and she respected that.”

  Ma-ma, you weren’t alone. They loved you. I smiled. My brilliant mother, who couldn’t go outside, had brought the neighborhood inside instead.

  Then a question escaped from me, something I had been keeping to myself for so long that it had eaten a hole in my heart and poisoned me. “Where were you all when I was younger? When Ma-ma couldn’t get out of the house and I was left to pick up the pieces . . .”

  “Oh, Natalie . . .” Celia embraced me. “I’m so sorry. We should have done more. W
e wanted to, but Miranda insisted that we leave you two alone. She didn’t want our help. In hindsight, we should have been more adamant. Miranda was very angry back then because of your grandmother’s death and your father’s disappearance. She didn’t want anyone’s help. She shut us out for years.”

  A sob escaped, shaking my shoulders. After all this time, I thought they’d shunned us, yet it was Ma-ma who was responsible.

  “I think when you left, she finally realized that we did care about her, and she let us in. Are you all right?” Celia asked.

  I wiped the stray tears from my eyes. “Yes. It makes me happy knowing Ma-ma was in such good hands.”

  “We loved her. Miranda might have kept herself physically isolated, but she was never alone.” Then Celia’s eyes, through her tortoiseshell glasses, grew distant. “We should have done more. We should have insisted on helping, if only for your sake.” Her elegant brows furrowed as if asking a silent question.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I still don’t know why Miranda stepped outside the day she died. It was so unlike her. I can’t stop wondering what happened.” She blushed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  I had wondered the same thing when I arrived. But to investigate further would only bring heartache, for there was no answer as to why Ma-ma had left the apartment. I had to come to terms with this.

  “It doesn’t matter now because we can’t change the past; we can only alter the future.” I cleared my throat and mustered a smile. “So, the restaurant . . .”

  Celia brightened. “I am so happy you’re doing this.”

  “I am not sure if the building needs to be inspected. I’ve done some research and filled out a ton of forms. I imagine there will be issues bringing the restaurant to code since it’s so old.”