8
Rachel
•
NEW YORK
Nick brought it up so nonchalantly, as he was sorting the laundry on the Sunday afternoon before their big trip. Apparently Nick’s parents had only just been informed that Rachel was coming with him to Singapore. And oh, by the way, they had just been made aware of her existence too.
“I don’t quite understand . . . you mean your parents never knew about me in all this time?” Rachel asked in astonishment.
“Yes. I mean, no, they didn’t. But you need to know this has absolutely nothing to do with you—” Nick began.
“Well, it’s a little hard not to take it personally.”
“Please don’t. I’m sorry if it seems that way. It’s just that . . .” Nick swallowed nervously. “It’s just that I’ve always tried to keep clear boundaries between my personal life and my family life, that’s all.”
“But shouldn’t your personal life be the same as your family life?”
“Not in my case. Rachel, you know how overbearing Chinese parents can be.”
“Well, yeah, but it still wouldn’t keep me from telling my mom about something as important as my boyfriend. I mean, my mom knew about you five minutes after our first date, and you were sitting down to dinner with her—enjoying her winter melon soup—like, two months later.”
“Well, you have a very special thing with your mum, you know that. It’s not that easy for most other people. And with my parents, it’s just . . .” Nick paused, struggling for the right words. “We’re just different. We’re much more formal with each other, and we don’t really discuss our emotional lives at all.”
“What, are they cold and emotionally shut down or something? Did they live through the Great Depression?”
Nick laughed, shaking his head. “No, nothing like that. I just think you’ll understand when you meet them.”
Rachel didn’t know what to think. Sometimes Nick could be so cryptic, and his explanation made no sense to her. Still, she didn’t want to overreact. “Anything else you want to tell me about your family before I get on a plane and spend the whole summer with you?”
“No. Not really. Well . . .” Nick paused for a bit, trying to decide if he should mention the housing situation. He knew he had screwed things up royally with his mother. He had waited too long, and when he called to break the news officially about his relationship with Rachel, his mother had been silent. Ominously silent. All she asked was, “So where will you be staying, and where will she be staying?” It suddenly dawned on Nick that it would not be a good idea for the both of them to stay with his parents—not initially, at least. Nor would it be appropriate for Rachel to stay at his grandmother’s house without her explicit invitation. They could stay with one of his aunts or uncles, but that might incite his mother’s wrath and create even more of an internecine war within his family.
Not sure how to get out of this quagmire, Nick sought the counsel of his great-aunt, who was always so good at sorting out these sorts of matters. Great-aunt Rosemary advised him to book into a hotel first, but emphasized that he must arrange to introduce Rachel to his parents on the day of his arrival. “The very first day. Don’t wait until the next day,” she cautioned. Perhaps he should invite his parents out to a meal with Rachel, so they could meet on neutral territory. Someplace low-key like the Colonial Club, and better to make it lunch instead of dinner. “Everyone is more relaxed at lunchtime,” she advised.
Nick was then to proceed to his grandmother’s by himself and formally request permission to invite Rachel to the customary Friday-night dinner that Ah Ma hosted for the extended family. Only after Rachel had been properly received at Friday-night dinner should the topic of where they might stay be broached. “Of course your grandmother will have you to stay, once she meets Rachel. But if worse comes to worst, I will invite you to stay with me, and no one will be able to say anything then,” Great-aunt Rosemary assured him.
Nick decided to keep these delicate arrangements from Rachel. He didn’t want to give her any excuse to back out of the trip. He wanted Rachel to be prepared to meet his family, but he also wanted her to create her own impressions when the time came. Still, Astrid was right. Rachel needed some sort of primer on his family. But how exactly could he explain his family to her, especially when he had been conditioned his whole life never to speak about them?
Nick sat on the floor, leaning against the exposed-brick wall and putting his hands on his knees. “Well, you probably should know that I come from a very big family.”
“I thought you were an only child.”
“Yes, but I have lots of extended relatives, and you’ll be meeting lots of them. There are three intermarried branches, and to outsiders it can seem a bit overwhelming at first.” He wished he hadn’t used the word outsiders as soon as he said it, but Rachel seemed not to notice, so he continued. “It’s like any big family. I have loudmouth uncles, eccentric aunts, obnoxious cousins, the whole nine yards. But I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of meeting them. You met Astrid, and you liked her, didn’t you?”
“Astrid is awesome.”
“Well, she adores you. Everyone will adore you, Rachel. I just know it.”
Rachel sat quietly on the bed beside the pile of towels still warm from the dryer, trying to soak in everything Nick had said. This was the most he had ever talked about his family, and it made her feel a little more assured. She still couldn’t quite fathom the deal with his parents, but she had to admit that she had seen her fair share of distant families—especially among her Asian friends. Back in high school, she had endured dreary meals in the fluorescent-lit dining rooms of her classmates, dinners where not more than five words were exchanged between parent and child. She had noticed the stunned reactions from her friends whenever she randomly hugged her mother or said “I love you” at the end of a phone call. And several years ago, she had been e-mailed a humorous list entitled “Twenty Ways You Can Tell You Have Asian Parents.” Number one on the list: Your parents never, ever call you “just to say hello.” She didn’t get many of the jokes on the list, since her own experience growing up had been entirely different.
“We’re so fortunate, you know. Not many mothers and daughters have what we have,” Kerry said when they caught up on the phone later that evening.
“I realize that, Mom. I know it’s different because you were a single mom, and you took me everywhere,” Rachel mused. Back when she was a child, it seemed like every year or so her mother would answer a classified ad in World Journal, the Chinese-American newspaper, and off they would go to a new job in some random Chinese restaurant in some random town. Images of all those tiny boarding-house rooms and makeshift beds in cities like East Lansing, Phoenix, and Tallahassee flashed through her head.
“You can’t expect other families to be like us. I was so young when I had you—nineteen—we were able to be like sisters. Don’t be so hard on Nick. Sad to say, but I was never very close to my parents either. In China, there was no time to be close—my mother and father worked from morning till night, seven days a week, and I was at school all the time.”
“Still, how can he hide something as important as this from his parents? It’s not like Nick and I have only been going out for a couple of months.”
“Daughter, once again you are judging the situation with your American eyes. You have to look at this the Chinese way. In Asia, there is a proper time for everything, a proper etiquette. Like I said before, you have to realize that these Overseas Chinese families can be even more traditional than we Mainland Chinese. You don’t know anything about Nick’s background. Has it occurred to you that they might be quite poor? Not everyone is rich in Asia, you know. Maybe Nick has a duty to work hard and send money back to his family, and they wouldn’t approve if they thought he was wasting money on girlfriends. Or maybe he didn’t want his family to know that the two of you spend half the week living together. They could be devout Buddhists, you know.”
“That’s just it, Mom. It’s dawning on me that Nick knows everything there is to know about me, about us, but I know almost nothing about his family.”
“Don’t be scared, daughter. You know Nick. You know he is a decent man, and though he may have kept you secret for a while, he is doing things the honorable way now. At last he feels ready to introduce you to his family—properly—and that is the most important thing,” Kerry said.
Rachel lay in bed, calmed as always by her mother’s soothing Mandarin tones. Maybe she was being too hard on Nick. She had let her insecurities get the better of her, and her knee-jerk reaction was to assume that Nick waited so long to tell his parents because he was somehow embarrassed about her. But could it be the other way around? Was he embarrassed of them? Rachel remembered what her Singaporean friend Peik Lin had said when she Skyped her and excitedly announced that she was dating one of her fellow countrymen. Peik Lin came from one of the island’s wealthiest families, and she had never heard of the Youngs. “Obviously, if he comes from a rich or prominent family, we would know them. Young isn’t a very common name here—are you sure they’re not Korean?”
“Yeah, I’m sure they’re from Singapore. But you know I couldn’t care less how much money they have.”
“Yes, that’s the problem with you,” Peik Lin cracked. “Well, I’m sure if he passed the Rachel Chu test, his family’s perfectly normal.”