Sam ignored any mention of the Great Love of His Life.
“Seriously, Sam, you were in a bad place for so long,” said Fin. “Monster-ass chem trails coming out of your ears, man.”
“They’re not for her,” Sam said.
Fin hung up his backpack, threw on an apron, and glanced at the rack that held bloopers. “Can I kill these?” Sam nodded, and Fin took down a misshapen glazed in a single bite. “Mmmm,” he said, cramming another half into his mouth. “These are way too good for her anyway.”
PENNY.
It was the big day. Penny considered feeling sad. It was supposed to be bittersweet, wasn’t it? Leaving home and going off to college was A Thing. She blinked for moisture—no dice. Along the lines of having a sneeze you can’t find or an itch that lives too deep under the skin, college felt surreal, conceptually out of reach. Even the application process felt like it was happening to someone else. It was unimaginable that there would be any consequences to filling out the forms and writing the essay. She applied to only one place—the University of Texas at Austin—and got in. By law. Everyone in the top ten percent of their Texas high school did.
Penny’s new phone chimed next to her on the bed. It was Mark.
Good luck baby!
Text me when you get there!
Penny rolled onto her back and smiled. She considered what to write back. The screen beneath her thumbs was so shiny. God, her phone was beautiful. Rose gold, in a black rubber case that read, Whatever, Whatever, Whatever, it was easily nicer than anything she’d ever owned. She wiped down a smudge with her T-shirt. It was way too pretty to be desecrated with nudes. Especially with a 2436-by-1125-pixel resolution at 458ppi. Penny sent a generic smile emoji back.
She went downstairs. While Penny’s walls were bare, every other surface in Celeste’s home, much like her car or her desk at work, was covered with keepsakes.
According to Penny, her mom wasn’t very mom-like, much less Asian-mom-like. It wasn’t solely that she dressed like a fashion blogger and was younger than other moms. Celeste didn’t monitor Penny’s homework or insist on piano lessons. Okay, so maybe Penny’s idea of an Asian mom came from the movies, but she hadn’t grown up with a lot of Asians in her life. Let alone Koreans specifically. Penny had a Korean name and it was bogus. It was “Penny”—not even Penelope—spelled out phonetically in Korean characters so it didn’t actually mean anything.
When she was three they’d visited her grandparents in Seoul, but she’d been too little to remember anything and they’d never gone back. Celeste did, however, dedicate a Korean corner in her home. An altar of sorts. It included a miniature Korean flag and a framed poster of the 1988 Olympics with the cartoon tiger mascot. There was also a small laminated picture of the pop star Rain in a white suit from years before he went into the military for mandatory service. The first time Penny’s friend Angie came over, she asked her if it was a photo of her brother.
Elsewhere in the house there were snow globes galore, Eiffel Towers of varying sizes and framed pictures of World-Famous Art—two renditions of Van Gogh’s Starry Night (one on a tea towel), Monet’s water lilies, and several of Degas’s blurry ballerinas. Penny called the whole lot “fridge magnet art.” Stuff you’d seen enough times that you could imagine the factory workers in China rolling their eyes about having to keep churning it out.
The only memento Penny prized was a framed picture of her parents. She’d carefully wrapped it in a T-shirt and stowed it in her backpack to bring to school. It was the only photo she had of them, possibly the only one in existence, and Penny treasured it. It was the source of 50 percent of the material in her “dad” dossier. Other information included:
1. Penny’s mom and dad had met, of all places, in a bowling alley on dates with other people.
2. Her dad had a cute butt (Celeste’s words) because he played baseball in high school.
3. They were inseparable. Until, of course, they weren’t.
4. He was Korean too!
5. His name was Daniel Lee and as far as Penny knew he lived in Oregon or Oklahoma. It could have been Ohio. In any case, it started with an O.
6. In those three states combined there were 315 Daniel Lees. Some were probably white. Or perhaps black.
In the picture, Penny’s parents are at the beach at Port Aransas. They’re kids. Celeste hasn’t visibly changed over the years (Asian don’t raisin) except her face was rounder then, fuller in the cheeks and lips. They’re sitting on a black and yellow Batman beach towel. Daniel Lee has a straw cowboy hat perched on his head but no shirt. Celeste’s wearing a trucker hat that says PORN STAR, a bright red bikini, legs crisscrossed, and she’s grinning behind huge white sunglasses while holding an ICEE. Celeste swears the ICEE must have been a pregnancy craving since blue raspberry usually makes her gag. To Penny, it’s cosmically unfair that her mom’s tummy can be that flat while she’s pregnant, but then it’s hardly fair that her dark-eyed father would skip town two months before Penny was born either.
“He was the funniest guy I’d ever met,” Celeste said when Penny unwrapped the parcel on her eighth birthday. “He asked the best questions.” Penny had been asking a lot of questions for a genealogy assignment. She wanted to know everything (mostly as it related to her)—whether he asked about Penny, if he had another family with brothers and sisters for her to play with, when she could see him. But Penny could tell Celeste hated talking about him. She became withdrawn and went to her room with a headache. So Penny shoved the questions to the back of her brain and never brought him up again. The photo, she kept in a drawer.
Downstairs, Celeste was sniffling in the kitchen, as she’d been when Penny went to bed. Penny suspected a performative aspect to her mom’s crying. Comparable to YouTubers sobbing during heavily edited confessional vlogs, Celeste bawled lustily during the semifinals of reality singing competitions and any movie involving animals. Penny would rather eat a pound of hair than reveal her true emotions. Not to mention how Penny wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop once she got going.
“Mom?”
Celeste glanced up from the wadded tissues in her hands. Her eyes were puffy as if she actually had been crying all night.
“Hi, baby.” She smiled before crumpling again. “Can I please come with you? I could buy you lunch. Help you decorate?”
“I can buy my own lunch,” Penny said. “Plus, you’d have to trail me in your car and drive all the way back by yourself. I’d have to get back in my car and follow you to make sure you got home safe. A vicious cycle.”
Celeste swallowed. “You know, I didn’t know it would hurt this bad?” She seemed genuinely surprised. Celeste’s narrow shoulders quivered like an agitated Chihuahua. Penny sighed and hugged her. She was going to miss her.
Oh, shit. Am I going to cry?
She squeezed her eyes tighter for any reciprocal condensation.
Nope.
“Well, I’m proud of you,” Celeste said, pulling away and smiling bravely.