12

MAR VISTA

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

“When was the last time you saw them?” Corinna asked Kitty when they were comfortably seated in the Tesla that had come to fetch them from the airport.

“Three weeks ago. I try to spend a week every month here, but honestly, it’s become a huge challenge lately because of my daughter’s regimen.”

“So it is true. Bernard and your daughter are here in LA for medical treatment?”

Kitty let out a weary laugh. “I have no idea how that rumor got started. Bernard was here for treatments, but not the kind you’re thinking of.”

“What kind of rare disorder is it?” Corinna asked, her eyes widening.

Taking a deep breath, Kitty began her story: “It all started right after we got married in Las Vegas. We stayed there for a few days, and one night we went to see the latest Batman film. I didn’t realize then how obsessed Bernard was with Batman, how he saw himself as an Asian version of Bruce Wayne. With his obsession for exotic cars and creepy interior design, I should have guessed. So when we got back to Hong Kong, Bernard was fixated on wanting to look like that actor from Batman. He found this top plastic surgeon who supposedly specialized in making people look like celebrities, this doctor in Seoul. We had long talks about it, and hey, I didn’t mind if my husband wanted to look like some handsome actor. I thought it was quite exciting, actually. But then…”

“My God, they botched the surgery, didn’t they?” Corinna said, on the edge of her bucket seat.

“No, the surgery actually turned out perfect. But a colossal mistake was made by the prep team before the surgery took place. It was a computer mistake—the most advanced plastic surgery in Korea is all computer-aided these days, and the AutoCAD 3D imaging program that was ‘designing’ Bernard’s new face received the wrong information. It was a language issue—the nurse heard the name wrongly from the doctor before the surgery and she typed the wrong actor’s name into the computer. So all the anatomical impressions they made were a mistake, and all implants were fabricated for the wrong face. Bernard came out of the surgery looking nothing like what he intended to.”

“I have to ask, who was the actor the nurse confused him with?”

Kitty sighed. “It was supposed to be Christian Bale, but instead the nurse heard Kristen Bell.”

Corinna’s jaw dropped. “That perky blond actress?”

“Yes. Turns out they had another patient from Hong Kong that was transitioning from male to female. It was an honest mistake.”

“Is this why Bernard has been hiding from everyone in Asia?”

“No. I mean, at first, yes, but that’s not really the reason anymore. Bernard and I came to Los Angeles so he could get corrective plastic surgery. He found a great doctor who has been slowly transforming his face back to normal. But now the problem goes far beyond his surgery.”

“What do you mean?”

“This experience has completely changed Bernard. Not just physically but psychologically. You’ll understand when you see him.”

At this point, they arrived at a small two-story English cottage–style house in Mar Vista where a little girl and a man were doing yoga in the front yard with a tall blond instructor.

“Oh my goodness—is that cute little girl your daughter?” Corinna asked, staring at the girl with the long braided hair executing a perfect downward-facing dog.

“Yes, that’s Gisele. Here, put on some of this organic hand sanitizer before you meet her.”

As soon as the car came to a stop, Gisele broke from her yoga pose and came running toward them.

“Did you put on the Dr. Bronner’s?” Bernard yelled urgently at Kitty.

“Of course,” Kitty yelled back, as she hugged her daughter tightly. “My darling! I’ve missed you so much!”

“You’re not supposed to say that! We don’t want to implant attachment issues,” Bernard chastised. “And you’re supposed to speak to her in Mandarin only. I get English and Cantonese, remember?”

“Hoy es el día de español, no?” the little Chinese girl said, furrowing her brow.

“My goodness, she can speak Spanish so well already! How many languages is she learning?” Corinna inquired.

“Just five right now—she has a part-time Colombian nanny who only speaks to her in Spanish, and our live-in chef is French,” Kitty replied. “Gisele, this is Auntie Corinna. Can you say hello to Auntie Corinna?”

“Buenos días, Tía Corinna,” Gisele said sweetly.

“We’re going to start her on Russian when she turns three,” Bernard said, coming up to greet the ladies.

“Bernard, my goodness, it’s been much too long!” Corinna said, trying not to appear too shocked as she studied his new face. The man she had seen at so many galas was transformed in a way she could never have possibly imagined. His roundish Cantonese features had been replaced with an angular jawline, but it was incongruously paired with the tiniest birdlike nose. His cheekbones were newly chiseled, but his eyes were strangely elfin and upturned at the corners. He looks like the love child of Jay Leno and that Hermione girl from the Harry Potter movies, Corinna thought, unable to stop staring at his face.

“Come now, it’s time for Gisele’s cranial-sacral session, and then we can have lunch,” Bernard said as he shepherded the girl indoors.

Corinna was already quite shocked that Bernard Tai, who grew up in huge mansions and on the biggest superyachts, would be living in such modest surroundings, but nothing prepared her for what she saw upon entering the house. The living room had been turned into a kind of clinic, with all sorts of unusual therapeutic contraptions everywhere, and Gisele lay quietly on a professional massage table as her cranial-sacral specialist gently stroked her scalp. Next to this was an alcove room that resembled a Scandinavian classroom, with simple blond-wood stools and little tables, hemp fabric cushions on the floor, and a corkboard wall where dozens of children’s drawings and finger paintings were pinned up.

“This used to be the dining room, but since we always have mealtime in the kitchen, we’ve turned it into a learning space. Gisele’s coding class meets here three times a week now. Come, let me show you to your guest room, where you can freshen up before lunch,” Bernard said to Corinna.

Corinna tried to do a bit of unpacking in her cramped bedroom. She took out the tin of Almond Roca candies that she had splurged on and went downstairs, where she found the family was already seated around a wooden farm table on the small patio deck.

“I brought you a little present, Gisele,” Corinna said. She handed her the shiny pink tin with the plastic lid, and the two-and-a-half-year-old stared at it in absolute puzzlement.

“Wah lao! Plastic! Put that down now, Gisele!” Bernard gasped in horror.

“Oh I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you—there’s no plastic in this house,” Kitty whispered to Corinna.

“Not a problem. I’ll just take the candies out for her and you’ll never see the container again,” Corinna said calmly.

Bernard gave Corinna a withering look. “Gisele is on a sugar-free, gluten-free organic farm-to-table Paleo diet.”

“I am terribly sorry—I had no idea.”

Seeing the look on Corinna’s face, Bernard softened a little. “I’m sorry. I don’t think guests, especially those visiting from Asia, are prepared for our lifestyle. But I hope you will appreciate the conscious, nourishing food we consume in this house. We have our own farm up in Topanga where we grow all our produce. Here, try some of this fennel-stuffed acorn squash. We just harvested it yesterday. Gisele plucked the fennel with her own hands, didn’t you, Gisele?”

“Sólo comemos lo que cultivamos,” Gisele chirped, as she began chewing carefully on her tiny slices of medium-rare grass-fed-and-finished filet mignon.

“I guess you probably won’t be drinking the Johnnie Walker Black Label I brought for you,” Corinna remarked.

“I honor your gesture, but I only drink reverse-osmosis water these days,” Bernard said.

“I honor your gesture?” My God, look what happens to Hong Kong men when they move to California, Corinna thought in horror.

After Corinna had politely swallowed down the blandest meal of her entire life, she stood in the foyer watching as Bernard helped Gisele put on her TOMS sneakers and her little hemp sun hat.

Kitty pleaded with Bernard. “We just arrived. Can’t Gisele skip one session today and be with us? I want to take her to buy some cute clothes at Fred Segal.”

“You’re not buying her any more clothes from that temple of materialism. The last time you got her those frilly pink princess dresses, we ended up donating all of it to Union Rescue Mission. I really don’t want her to be wearing clothes that reinforce gender stereotypes and fairytale narratives.”

“Okay, then, can we just take her to the beach or something? The beach is still allowed, right? Isn’t sand gluten-free or whatever?”

Bernard took Kitty around the corner and said in a hushed tone, “I don’t think you really understand how much Gisele needs these biweekly mindfulness sessions in the sensory deprivation float tank. Her Reiki practitioner tells me that she still struggles with retained trauma and anxiety related to her passage through the birth canal.”

“Are you kidding me? In case you don’t remember, I was there when she was born, Bernard. The real trauma was how she murdered my birth canal because you wouldn’t let me have an epidural!”

“Shhh! Do you want to add to her repressed guilt?” Bernard said in hushed whisper. “Anyway, we’ll be back by six. Her float session in Venice Beach only lasts forty-five minutes, and then she has an hour of undirected play with her real-world-immersion friends in Compton.”

“So why would that take five hours?”

Bernard gave Kitty an exasperated look. “Traffic, of course. Do you know how many times I have to get on the 405?”

After saying adiós to Gisele as she was being carefully strapped into the custom-designed car seat in Bernard’s Tesla, Kitty and Corinna sat down to talk.

“I understand now why you said I had to see this with my own eyes. When did things get this bad?” Corinna asked.

Kitty looked at Corinna sadly. “The problem began when Bernard started getting his corrective surgeries in LA. He would spend a great deal of time at Dr. Goldberg’s clinic, and he became friends with some of the patients in the waiting room—mainly these super-competitive young Westside mothers. One of them invited him to a weekend retreat in Sedona, and that was all it took. He came back to Singapore a changed person, declaring that he wanted to stop all the surgeries and embrace his new face. He talked about his terrible childhood and how he had a father who ignored him and just threw money in his direction and a mother who was too obsessed with her church to care. He wanted to undo all the generations of damage by becoming an enlightened, conscious parent. The first year after Gisele was born was the worst. Bernard moved us to Los Angeles when Gisele was just two months old—claiming that Singapore was toxic for her, that his parents were toxic for her. Here, I was totally isolated, with Bernard hovering over us every second of the day, policing every single thing I did. Nothing I ever did was right—I was always exposing the baby to something. I mean, the only thing I was exposing her to were my tits! We went to about fifty different specialists a week for every little problem. The last straw was when he redesigned the master bedroom to suit Gisele’s sleep patterns. I couldn’t sleep in there with all those strange glowing LED lights, the over-purified air, and the Mozart playing in her crib throughout the night. That’s when I started coming back to Hong Kong every month. I couldn’t take it anymore. I mean, just look at how we live!”

“I was very surprised when we pulled up to this house,” Corinna said.

“We moved out of our mansion in Bel Air because Bernard wants Gisele to experience ‘real-world preparedness.’ And he thinks that by living in this lower-income zip code, she’ll have a better chance of getting into Harvard.”

“Does Bernard ever ask you what you want for your daughter?”

“I have no say in any of this, because apparently I’m too stupid to understand anything. You know, I actually think Bernard prefers it when I’m in Asia. I think he’s afraid I will somehow make this child more stupid. He doesn’t even care if I exist anymore. It’s all about his precious daughter, twenty-four hours a day.”

Corinna looked at Kitty sympathetically. “Take it from me, speaking not as your social consultant but from one mother to another, if you really want your daughter to grow up normal, if you ever want her to take her rightful place in Asian society, you have to put a stop to all this.”

“I know. I have been working on a plan,” Kitty said softly.

“I’m glad to hear that. Because if Dato’ Tai Toh Lui could see how his only granddaughter was being raised, he would be spinning in his grave! This little girl should have a bedroom in Queen Astrid Park or Deep Water Bay that’s bigger than this whole house, not sleeping with her parents every night!” Corinna declared, her voice quivering with conviction.

“Amen.”

“This little girl needs to be raised properly—by a team of sensible Cantonese nannies, not interfering parents!” Corinna pounded on the table.

“You got that right!”

“This little girl should be dressed in the prettiest clothes from Marie-Chantal and taken to the Mandarin for afternoon tea and bright pink macarons every week!”

“Fuck yeah!” Kitty roared.