Nobody laughs. It’s a good thing most of them don’t know what a prenup is, because Dagou making a marriage joke about Katherine is offensive.
“Well,” says Mary finally, “some girls very shy. You boys want it bad, you need to wait. Sometimes it take one year after marriage, maybe more, for her to get used to the idea.”
“Give up, Ma,” Fang says.
“We ended it two weeks ago,” Dagou says, “because I wanted to give her time to make other plans for Christmas.”
There’s a murmur of disappointment. Yet no one but Ming notices Dagou’s lack of consideration. Two weeks to make new Christmas plans? Dagou is an ass.
“Well,” says Mary. “These things run their course.” The course of the relationship was twelve years. “It’s better to break up before having kids. Once you have kids, you can never change your mind.”
“Until they go to college,” puts in Leo Chao, smirking at their mother.
“What if she signs the prenuptial agreement?” someone asks.
“That was a joke.” Dagou looks around hopefully. When no one laughs, he hangs his head. “I just don’t want to marry her,” he blurts. “The more I thought about it, the more I knew I’d be making a terrible mistake.”
“Let’s talk to Gu Ling Zhu Chi,” Winnie says. “Come here.”
Ming is dismissed. At last, Gu Ling Zhu Chi is done decrying his goals, his health, his work habits. Gu Ling Zhu Chi said one thing, in particular, that Ming finds laughable. She said Ming needs to “return” to his family. As if detaching from his family—the most significant accomplishment of his life—is not the primary reason for his survival. This is what Katherine does not know, since Katherine is, maddeningly, drawn to Dagou in part because of his family, because of Winnie. As ever, the thought of Katherine’s attachment to Dagou, to all of them, fills Ming with an unaccountable irritation.
“Gu Ling Zhu Chi, you know William, my oldest.”
Dagou bends humbly toward the old woman in his coral-pink dress shirt, like a jumbo cooked shrimp.
Their father has disappeared. Aside from An and Winnie, most of the nuns have also left the gymnasium, presumably to help with lunch. But everyone else has now edged onto the stage, venturing closer, in order to hear. Winnie and Gu Ling Zhu Chi whisper to each other. Ming peers at his older brother, who is listening intently. With the exception of their mother, Ming has never seen Dagou care about what anyone told him to do. Could Brenda Wozicek be the cause of all of this? Then Dagou faces Gu Ling Zhu Chi and begins to mutter in his childish, flat Mandarin.
“Thank you for agreeing to talk to me. It is very, very important.
“I have been working at my father’s restaurant for six years. It started when my mother got run-down, got pneumonia, and my father asked me to come back to Haven. I didn’t want to leave New York. Ba promised me that after Ma was better, I could have a choice. He would give me a lot of money to help me resettle in New York. Or, if I decided to stay in Haven for good, he would make me a partner.
“Now six years have passed. I want my half of the restaurant. Half ownership, half of the profits. What is your advice?”
The old woman shakes her head and says a few words in Mandarin. Ming makes out “Xiaoxin.”
Winnie raises her hands up to her face.
Dagou fishes a handkerchief from his pocket and offers it to her. “Hey,” he exclaims. “You’re upsetting my mother!”
Gu Ling Zhu Chi fixes a severe stare upon him. “William, you may stay for lunch,” she says, clear and strict as a schoolteacher. “But then you go to your apartment. You stay home until after the Christmas holidays. Be careful. You are getting in ‘hot water,’ as the Americans say. If you are not extremely careful, something very, very bad will happen.”
Dagou meets her gaze with a frown, a severity of his own, that surprises Ming. “I was hoping you would help me,” he says. “I’ll stay for lunch, but then I’m going back to work.”
“Don’t work,” Gu Ling Zhu Chi says. “Stay away from that restaurant. You’re inserting yourself into a story you don’t know. Now go away,” she commands, as if Dagou were a pesky child. “I want to talk to your mother.” She turns abruptly to An. “I’m tired.” An takes hold of her right elbow, and Winnie the left. Ming follows at a discreet distance, listening. The three women make their way out of the room, murmuring about Dagou’s spiritual jeopardy, ignoring James and Fang, who wait at the door.
“Ming, what did she say?”
“It’s his soul.” Ming shrugs. “She says his soul is more important than the restaurant.”
At that moment, Leo Chao’s shout breaks brightly through their conversation. “Time for lunch!”
The Hunting Blind
The nuns seat them in a row: Dagou, Ming, and James. The handsome son, the accomplished son, and the good son.
Under the long table, Alf settles at their feet with his bottom wedged against Ming’s new Ferragamos. The temple dogs stay on the far side of the room. Ming suspects they’re tired of vegetables.
He himself feels uneasy around so much food. His face is sticky from the steam rising off the vegetable dumplings arranged in perfect spirals, savory garlic stems bright green beneath their translucent skins. To his left is a platter heaped with pressed tofu skin, sesame lima beans, and black mushrooms. Set evenly along the center of the table are platters of mock meats: a sleek mock fish, its shining surface slashed into tic-tac-toes, and a helmet of golden brown mock pork, patterned like medieval scale mail. Ming puts a few mushrooms on his plate, but doesn’t eat them. He’s sworn off big meals. He’s sworn off carbs. But he especially swore off Chinese food, long ago.
Five minutes into the meal, Dagou nudges his right arm. “Hey, Mingo,” he mutters. “I put a month’s salary into this food. Why aren’t you eating?”
“I don’t eat lunch.”
“But these su cai jiaozi are really good,” James pipes up.
“It’s over-the-top,” Ming mutters. “Think of the woman-hours they put into making this ‘plain food.’”
James gapes at his half-eaten dumpling; it’s clear this hasn’t occurred to him. It hasn’t crossed his mind that somebody—perhaps the two novices seated opposite them—worked for an entire morning in the cafeteria kitchen soaking, cleaning, and slicing the massive quantity of dried mushrooms. Someone spent an afternoon combining the xianzi of the mushrooms, garlic sprouts, bean threads, and greens; and someone rolled the dumpling skins by hand. The SH claims its labor is communal, implying an advanced anarcho-communism, but it’s easy for Ming to imagine that Gu Ling Zhu Chi works the nuns as dictatorially as his father works JJ and O-Lan. The place is actually precapitalist: exploiting unskilled labor, redistributing the surplus in the form of vegetarian delicacies designed to please the palate of its ruler.