“Ba would more easily go through the eye of a needle than enter the Kingdom of God.” Ming squints at the windshield. The air is chill, the sky is moonless: gray, thick level clouds lower to meet the earth. What’s that feeling in the air? Both quiet and disquiet. It’s going to snow a lot more.
“Your problem is that you love everyone too much,” he says. “But things have taken a steep downhill around here since you left in August. Stay out of it. Don’t get involved, and go back to school right after Christmas. You’re young, James, there’s still hope for you. You stay away from Dad and Dagou. You listening?”
“Is Alf all right?” James asks, reaching for the one remaining source of comfort.
“Alf is fine. You need to bring him to the luncheon tomorrow. Ma wants Gu Ling Zhu Chi to pray for him with all the other dogs.”
“Holy Alf.”
“We’re here.” Ming turns into the parking lot. It’s ten-thirty and the restaurant is closed. Upstairs, in his bachelor apartment, Dagou’s lights are out. Downstairs, the small, shabby dining room is deserted. Only the red neon sign is still lit: fine chao.
“Get something to eat; Dad is here. He’ll bring you home.” He pulls his rental into a space next to their father’s Ford Taurus. Leo has kept their mother’s car, the Honda, which she renounced along with the rest of her material goods. Now Leo has two cars. But Ming has rented his own vehicle. It is an ignominy to return to Haven, the site of shame, torment. He won’t add to it by borrowing a family car, eating at the restaurant, or sleeping in his childhood room. He wants to be beholden to their father as little as possible. “I’ll meet you and Alf tomorrow, at the Spiritual House, around eleven. Ma will be happy to see you.” He pops the trunk. “Don’t forget your luggage.”
James gets out and moves his things into their father’s much larger, fuller, messier trunk, where they’ll be lost among the packages, the dumbbells, and the snow shovel. Sitting behind the wheel, Ming checks his phone. He reads his brother’s reply to the group text: I’m on your side. Love, James.
The Dog Father
Entering the Fine Chao Restaurant through the back door, James passes, on his left, the stairs to the basement, and on his right, the restaurant office with its old television murmuring. Next is the kitchen, where nothing has changed in fifteen years. There’s the bulletin board covered with scraps of paper, yellowing with age. These are notes Leo and Winnie Chao wrote to each other over the decades. When they fought, these missives were a primary method of communication. (The other was to use the children as messengers.) The notes are written sometimes in Chinese and sometimes in English in order to confuse the workers. There’s also a schedule, now eighteen years old, of Dagou’s high school orchestra rehearsals. From a time even before then, from before James was born, there’s a list of frequently requested items in English and Chinese:
Egg rolls
Wontons
Pot stickers
Crab rangoons (What are these? Winnie, their mother, annotated in Chinese. Their father wrote underneath, Wontons filled with cream cheese.)
Beef with broccoli
Following a scattershot statistical analysis, Winnie also compiled a list of things Americans liked:
Large chunks of meat
Wontons and noodles together in the same soup
Pea pods and green beans, carrots, broccoli, baby corn (no other vegetables)
Ribs or chicken wings
Beef with broccoli
Chicken with peanuts
Peanuts in everything
Chop suey (What is this? Leo wrote. I don’t know, Winnie wrote.)
Anything with shrimp (The rest of them can’t eat shrimp, she annotated. Be careful.)
Anything from the deep fryer
Anything with sweet and sour sauce
Anything with a thick, brown sauce
And there is, of course, the list of things the Americans didn’t like:
Meat on the bone (except ribs or chicken wings)
Rice porridge
Fermented soybeans
In a small fridge for employees, there are containers of stir-fried vegetables kept separate by O-Lan, the woman from Guangzhou who is one of three outside kitchen employees, and who doesn’t eat meat; beers for JJ, the second chef, and for Lulu, the other server (who after years of silent courtship have unexpectedly gone to San Francisco together over the holidays); and Dagou’s personal stash of pork with jiu cai and noodles. James heats a pile of pork and noodles on the stove. He’s starving.
As he transfers the food into a bowl, a pounding noise comes from below. It’s the sound of his father, Leo, Big Chao, coming up the stairs—footsteps that reverberate and thump with the authority of a man larger than he actually is. To these footsteps is added deep and resonant grumbling, profanity growing more audible until, when he reaches the top of the stairs, a full question detaches itself and sings into the kitchen in a ringing baritone:
“Who the fuck is coming to clean up half an hour after close?”
James abandons his dinner, edges into the hallway. “Baba, it’s me.”
He’s the only son who still calls Leo “Baba,” which Dagou shortened to “Ba,” and Ming changed to “Dad.” Sometimes his brothers refer to Leo as “Aw, Gee, Pops”—this is one of the only jokes they share.
“Oh, it’s you!” Leo yells, emerging into the hall. “I smelled those disgusting jiu cai noodles and thought it was your worthless brother. But it’s you.”
He grins, delighted, and claps James on the shoulder.
He’s a sturdy, vigorous man with tadpole eyes and a dark, strong-featured face thickened by food and living. James catches a whiff of cooking grease, pipe tobacco, and stale clothes.
“Your hands are cold,” he says, pushing away an image of the man in Union Station.
“I was in the basement, freezer room! Picking out something for tomorrow.” Over Leo’s shoulder is slung a restaurant delivery bag.
“You shouldn’t go down there when no one else is in the building.” The freezer door locks automatically. “It’s not up to code, Baba.”
“It’s fine,” his father says. “Jerry Stern worked his magic with the city inspector. I told your big brother, study law, but he doesn’t listen, majors in music. Now Baby Mozart’s paying off his loans cooking for Americans.” Like the rest of the community, Leo uses the term “American” to describe any outsider. The term is half ironic, half utilitarian.
James is disappointed Dagou isn’t here to welcome him home. He doesn’t dare ask his father where Dagou is, doesn’t want to provoke him.
But Leo, guessing his thoughts, says, “Your worthless brother’s making out with his new girlfriend. Or getting ready for his big showdown at the nunnery tomorrow.” He gestures to the hall. “Come to my office! I got something strong for you.”
The office is crammed with detritus from thirty-five years of business, including an ancient adding machine and a naked fake Christmas tree. James sits in his mother’s old chair, his father in the recliner. Leo catches James’s eye, shoots him a flare of approval. Despite all Ming has just said, James feels a metabolic, answering spark of happiness, kinship, recognition.
“Try this.” Leo Chao holds out a tumbler to James.
“Did you get this from those guys you know in Chicago?” James asks, eyeing the unmarked bottle on Leo’s desk.