Years ago, Ming swore to everyone that he would never again spend Christmas in Wisconsin. He would never again deplane into a white tarmac of nothingness; never again slog knee-deep without boots across the airport rental lot under the frigid sky. Never again lay eyes upon his childhood street in winter, with its modest houses feebly outlined in strings of colored lights. He told everyone he would rather spend the holiday in New York, alone in his apartment, than return to this godforsaken heartland of deprivation.
So he wouldn’t normally be here this late in December, but for his mother’s personal request that he attend the luncheon tomorrow at the temple. Because she’s asked him to pick up James and make sure his brother gets something to eat, he’s now embroiled in the kind of family conversation he hates: charged and futile. James has blurted everything that happened at Union Station. He’s described a photograph: a man and woman, a girl with bangs, a beagle. He’s described the exhausting, terrifying process of performing CPR. Ming has no desire to dwell on his brother’s trauma of having a man die under his hands. He can’t stand to hear James describe his sense of piercing solitude, his shame. He steers the conversation toward the jia li jiao.
“There might be fish oil in the curry,” he says. He skirts the south end of the lake, turns off the freeway, and steers past the big box stores and then the office buildings, toward the local businesses. It’s all even more insignificant than he remembered. “Ma quit seafood this fall, when she moved in with the nuns. So it doesn’t matter you gave away her present.”
“I wanted to do something for his family,” James persists.
“They don’t eat anything with eyes. Even their dogs are vegetarians.” Tiny flakes whirl down; Ming switches on the wipers. “You shouldn’t involve yourself in other peoples’ private lives,” he says. “Not even out of the best intentions. You’ve never performed CPR. That family could track you down and file a lawsuit.”
Ming steers the rental into an alley. This is also the kind of route his father and older brother take—circuitous and perverse, pointlessly sneaky. And Ming has inherited the Chaos’ intense physicality, with his greyhound leanness and the aerodynamic way he carries himself, putting the tip of his nose forward over the wheel.
“You don’t have to stop at the restaurant,” James says.
Ming thinks of his mother’s instructions. “You haven’t had dinner.”
“You can just drop me—” James’s pocket buzzes as if something is trapped inside.
“Who’s that?” Ming asks.
But he knows it’s Dagou. Thrilled that James is coming home, Dagou must be pelting him with texts. Not that Ming is being left out. James, the sad-sack poker player, is holding the phone so anyone can see it. Ming peers over, and indeed, the text is from their older brother.
O, James! My heart is a fucking rose in bloom!
Now their phones buzz together. It’s a group text, also from Dagou. Each looks at his phone, then at the other’s.
Tomorrow, at the Spiritual House. Please be on my side.
“On his side about what?” James asks.
“He’s on the warpath.” How could Ming explain? How could anyone describe the chaos that had descended on the Chao household as soon as James left home for college? Four months later, their mother was living with Buddhist nuns and Dagou had bulked up by thirty pounds. “And he’s crazy,” he tells James, unable to stop himself from adding, “How he manages to stay engaged to Katherine is beyond me.”
Ming can’t figure out how Dagou has attracted the devotion of a woman like Katherine Corcoran. Too smart for him, too attractive, too accomplished, and too good. Too much of a good thing, and Dagou unable to avoid fucking it up. Dagou, falling in thrall all over again with Brenda Wozicek, that pansexual demon of his high school days. Brenda Wozicek, who in her junior year slept with every boy and girl on the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar. (She had been chosen, inevitably, to play Mary Magdalene.)
“What do you mean?” James asks.
Where to start? Way back in high school, when she’d inflicted lasting damage on their brother by not giving him the time of day? “I think it started to go bad last year when Dad hired Brenda as the new server.”
“No.” James defends their brother’s long-term relationship, and no wonder: Dagou and Katherine are like parents to him. They’ve been dating since college, when James was in the third grade. “Brenda was just a high school crush. He told me about it. She was always, um, with other people. And white guys. Like that football player, Eric somebody.”
“Eric Braun. Her stock has dropped since high school. Now she’s a denizen of Haven, a waitress, a hopeless villager. She has tattoos. She has blue hair,” Ming says. But Dagou has never gotten over those six months, in high school, when Brenda was a blonde. In Dagou’s mind, she’s still on prom court.
“Dagou loves Katherine,” James insists. Of course, James, who’s obviously still a virgin, believes it’s Katherine who has made Dagou’s heart into a rose in bloom.
“Like father, like son,” Ming says. He turns back to the wheel, avoiding James’s expression of confused na?veté. How is it possible he and his brother were born of the same parents, grew up in the same house, witnessed the same fights? The tumultuous conflicts over food and women, from which Ming recoiled, have turned James into an obedient son, a good little premed, close to Dagou and their mother, even to their father. James is a sap. This is a tragedy, but Ming prefers to see it as a comedy.
“Ma asked me to fly home for this special luncheon at the Spiritual House tomorrow,” he says. “So I called Dagou, made him tell me what’s been going on. It turns out the place is a madhouse. Dagou’s sleeping with Brenda Wozicek, and he’s raving like a nut. All of a sudden he’s saying Dad owes him. I tell him, ‘If you wanted Dad to give you a cent, you should have gotten it in writing.’ He doesn’t listen. Instead, he’s sponsoring this community luncheon tomorrow. He has a showdown planned, with Dad, in front of Ma and everyone they know. He asked Gu Ling Zhu Chi to adjudicate.”
“What good will that do?”
It will do no good—no good at all. “He has this crazy hope that Dad will obey Gu Ling Zhu Chi because she’s the head nun,” Ming says, “or abbess, whatever. If he thinks she’s going to take his side, he’s in for disappointment. These Buddhist types live on handouts. Ten-to-one they support whoever has more money.”
This Ming has believed ever since he gave the grateful nuns the dowry for his mother’s living expenses. He supported Winnie’s sudden decision to leave his father and take refuge at the Spiritual House. But the thought of her absence from home makes him uneasy. This is the real reason he’s staying in a hotel.
James says, “Isn’t Ma still a Christian? Won’t she want Ba to be charitable to Dagou? To enter the Kingdom of God?”