Chapter Nineteen
Heidi
No one could serve up food with as much guilt as my mother. And what was worse? She didn’t even know she was doing it.
It was nine in the morning and I was sitting in my parents’ kitchen eating my favorite feel-better food: egg drop soup with noodles and corn. It was a carb-and-cholesterol deathtrap, but it always made me feel better. She’d made it from scratch the moment I’d told her I wasn’t going to law school.
Naturally, my parents had assumed I’d done poorly on the LSATs and I didn’t correct that impression. Hence the guilt as I sat there scarfing down soup for breakfast while she tried to make me feel better by giving “helpful” suggestions.
“There are classes to help with the LSATs. You should take one of those and ace the test. Your father and I could help pay for that.”
“It wasn’t my LSAT scores, Mama. They were fine.”
“But they could be better, yes? Unless it was your essay.”
I’d written an essay because they’d hounded me to. I’d never actually put it in an application.
My father looked up from the newspaper, his expression sad. “It wasn’t her essay. I read her essay, and it was excellent.”
Well that was nice to hear. Until Mama tsked as she added some green onion to the already perfect soup. “What do you know about law school essays? It could be—”
“The problem is her job,” he interrupted. “She needs to work in a law firm.”
“No, Baba—” I protested, but Mama cut me off.
“You have lawyer friends,” she told my father. “You could find her a job.”
“I don’t need a job!” I argued even though I rarely did. And just to prove that my mother really knew how to twist the knife, she turned and frowned at me.
“I thought you got fired from your job.”
“I was laid off.”
She waved the distinction aside. “See. You need a job!”
“I’m a stringer.”
She turned back to the soup. “That is no job at all. A real job has benefits. Do you have benefits?”
I didn’t answer because she already knew the answer.
“What will you do if you get sick? How will you live?” She shook her head. “No, you must come back home, and your father will find you a job at a law firm.”
“No,” I said as firmly as I could. And as usual, it was like I hadn’t said a thing.
“I will ask,” my father said as he turned a page in the newspaper. “She will probably start low. Minimum wage.”
“It is a start, and she can live here. Too expensive in Indianapolis.”
“Chicago has a much higher cost of living—”
“See? That is why you need to be a lawyer. You like arguing.”
I sighed. There was just no way to win with her.
“And since you are home,” she added, “you can help me with my computer. Good deal, no? I will cook for you, and you can get the viruses off my computer.”
Just what I loved doing…not. Maybe law school was a better option than living at home. But no, I was determined on my path to become an investigative journalist. I just had to figure out the details before I told them.
“So you are ready to move? What about that Chinese boy you were seeing?”
Chinese boy? I looked at her with a frown but didn’t answer because the doorbell rang. I got up to answer, purely as a way to escape, but my mother waved me back into the chair.
“No, no. You are still in your pajamas.”
My cotton Hello Kitty pajamas covered more of me than I usually wore, but that wasn’t the point. It was all about appearing respectable and that meant real clothes, not sleepwear. I was just slurping some more soup when I heard a familiar voice.
“Hello, Mrs. Wong. I’m looking for Heidi. Is she here?”
My heart froze in my chest. Rob? It couldn’t be. He had a game this afternoon in Indianapolis. Nevertheless, I was out of my seat and rushing to the front door as fast as my feet could carry me. And yup, Rob stood right there looking rumpled and unshaven in the morning sunlight, and yet so handsome I almost wept.
“Rob!” I gasped.
“Heidi!” The relief in his voice was clear enough, but the joy in his eyes when he saw me slowed my feet to a shocked stop. He was happy to see me? Even after I’d run off in a huff?
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Don’t you have a game this afternoon?” Like in an hour.
“Yeah, I do.” Then he rubbed a hand over his face. “I mean, I did. But I told them I couldn’t make today’s game.”
I gaped at him. Sure players dropped in and out of the roster all the time, but without an obvious injury, speculation would run rampant. Plus rookies in the majors never took a day off just because. Never.
“What—” I asked, but my mother cut me off.
“Heidi Wong, do you know this man?”
I blinked. “Um, yeah. Mama, this is the boy I told you about. The baseball player? Robert Lee, this is my mother.”
“Ah no!” she cried. “You said the boy was Chinese.”
“No, I didn’t.” Then I thought about it. Oh hell. “Mom, there are plenty of Lees out there who aren’t Chinese.”
Her eyes widened. “But you didn’t say! And the Chinese are very good at baseball!”
Well, yes they are, but…
“Never mind! Never mind!” She stepped back from the doorway and waved Rob in. “Come in, come in.” Then she glared at me. “Heidi, go get dressed.” Then she turned back to Rob. “Are you hungry? Would you like some tea? I have just made some soup.”
Meanwhile, I heard my father put away the newspaper and come to the front door, his slippers making little shuffling noises on the wood floor. “Hello. I am Heidi’s father.”
Oh hell. The suitor grilling was about to begin, but it was pointless to stand around in my pajamas. Mama wouldn’t let me say anything unless I was properly dressed. I rushed to my bedroom and pulled on the first thing I could grab. But when I was about to jerk on my T-shirt, I remembered that my mother was not above sending me back upstairs to put on something more respectable. Arguing with her would be a waste of time, so I tossed aside the tee and pulled out an embroidered blouse from China. It was dowdy and screamed fresh-off-the-boat, but it was clean, and my mother would approve. Five more seconds to brush my hair and throw on some lip gloss, then I was tripping downstairs as fast as I could move.
I clattered to a stop at the base of the stairs just in time to see my mother taking Rob through our own Wall of Accomplishments. I’m sure she’d begun with my violin trophies and my brothers’ medical careers, but she was well on the way up the ancestral tree. Right then she was pointing to my father’s Community Pharmacy Residency Excellence award which was a big deal in his field. Next would be my uncle’s picture at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a high-rise in Hong Kong. After that would be my grandfather the professor at Hong Kong University and so on back through our roots in China. We didn’t have pictures of anyone before my grandfather, but we had carved ink blocks and jade stones. As for the women of my family, all we had on the wall was a pair of four-inch embroidered shoes my great-grandmother had worn back when women still had their feet bound.
I interrupted Mom just before she launched into my grandfather’s educational awards. “As a kid, I swore I’d get my picture on the wall doing something besides giving birth to the next generation.”
“Aiya.” My mother sighed as she turned to inspect my attire. “My daughter does not think being a wife and mother is important.” Then she lifted her chin. “And you will get your picture on the wall when you pass the bar.”
Or not. But before I could say anything, Rob turned to me.
“Tommy told me you’re looking at UCLA. It’s a great school.” He didn’t sound like his heart was in his words, but then it was hard to tell as my mother cried out in shock.
“UCLA! Aiya, Huifen,” she cried using my Chinese name. “You said you weren’t going.”
Oh shit. Shitshitshit. “I’m not. At least not for law school.”
I saw Rob’s eyes widen as he realized he’d just exposed my shame, but more than that, I saw my father’s brows draw together in a glower that was guaranteed to set my knees shaking.
“Um,” Rob began. “I didn’t realize…”
I shook my head. “Not your fault,” I said in a low voice, then I turned and faced my parents. I had to do this now and clearly. And if Rob hadn’t been standing there as a living example of following his passion, then I’m not sure I could have done it. Not this firmly.
“I’m not going to law school, because I don’t want to be a lawyer,” I said. “I’m going to be an investigative journalist.”
My father’s frown deepened. “The world has gone digital, Huifen. There is no future in print anymore.”
“But the world needs journalists, Baba. More than ever.” I desperately wanted to take Rob’s hand. I needed his strength. But I didn’t think I had the right, not after I’d stormed out of his apartment.
Meanwhile my father dismissed my dreams with a single shake of his head. “That is not a smart move.”
Meanwhile, my mother made a shushing gesture. “This is not a discussion to be had now. Not when we have a guest.” She suddenly brightened. “Huifen is going to UCLA. We must celebrate.”
“No celebration, Mama. Maybe when I get accepted into their journalism program.”
“Aiya,” she moaned. “You and all the different schools. When will you stop and just decide what you want? UCLA is an excellent place to study.”
I was going to strangle her. Right in front of Rob, I was going to strangle my mother. Except he stopped me by asking a simple question.
“Have you read her articles? They’re terrific. She did a piece on one school’s choice to divert art funding to the after-school program. It got a lot of people talking, and they’re re-examining the budget thanks to her.”
I stared at him. “How did you know about that?” It was published weeks before we’d gotten back together.
He shrugged. “We weren’t together all the time. I did a search for your byline.”
And wow. I didn’t think I could get all soft and gooey in the middle of this conversation, but the idea that he’d read my articles and knew about this piece set my heart to pounding. It wasn’t even my favorite of my work, but it had been important. At least to the kids who wanted art supplies.
Which is when my mother surprised me.
“Yes, yes, of course we do.” Then she grabbed a photo album that had sticky pages to press in pictures. It had been sitting on the end table beside the Wall of Accomplishments, and she started paging through it immediately, showing Rob every single article that had my byline. Every one of them had been meticulously cut out and pressed into those pages, and I hadn’t even known about it. “We have all of Heidi’s writings here,” she said. “There are more upstairs in her bedroom, but those are school papers. Not published writings like this.”
“You must be very proud,” Rob said.
“Yes, yes. She is a smart girl, our Heidi.”
And the weird thing was that I could see it was true. My father, too. They both looked at that photo album in the same way they gazed at the pictures of my brothers when they’d gotten their MDs. And at my father’s Excellence award. Even my grandfather’s university picture with him in his robes.
They were just as proud of me as they were everyone else. And I hadn’t really done anything yet.
“So you understand?” I asked. “You see that I need to be a journalist? Not a lawyer?”
“Aiya, no, I do not understand,” my mother cried. “But you like to argue.” She ran a hand over a piece I’d written about the school board elections. “I suppose you can argue with the politicians, too? Tell them not to cut school funding.”
“Um, yes. That’s the idea.”
My mother nodded, then turned to the kitchen. “I will go make tea.” It’s what she did when she wanted to think about something. Fortunately, that meant she was thinking and not arguing.
My father wasn’t nearly as easy. He had been staring at me this whole time with a tight frown. But when I turned to face him, not even blinking at his heavy stare, he finally relented. “I suppose we could tell your grandfather that you decided not to go to UCLA. Much better to turn down a fine school for something better.”
Right. Except I hadn’t applied, so I wasn’t turning down anything. Then suddenly his lips quirked in a small smile.
“We will say that it is because lawyers come too late.”
I blinked. “What?”
“The world does not change in a courtroom. It changes first in people’s hearts and minds. That is what a journalist does. It shows people what is wrong first. Then the lawyers come later.” He nodded as if that answered everything. “You will go first and lead. Let the lawyers follow later.”
And with that, he followed my mother back into the kitchen, presumably for some tea. And I stood there shocked at how easy that had been. Or not so easy because my heart was still pounding and despite everything, I found my fingers entwined with Rob’s. I had needed to hold on to him and he had let me. In fact his grip was so strong that I felt supported even though it was just his fingers.
“Your parents seem very nice,” he said in a low voice.
“Um…yeah. I guess they are.”
“They surprised you, didn’t they?”
“Um, yeah. They did.” They weren’t done, of course. There would still be worry and hand-wringing about how to explain this to my aunts who were the real gossip biddies in the family. But my father had already gotten his mind wrapped around a way. And whatever bumps lay ahead, they were mostly on board with my decision.
Which was a miracle of epic proportions. The only larger miracle was having Rob show up at my parents’ house.
“Speaking of surprises,” I said as I turned to him. “What are you doing here? Why would you miss your game?”
He flushed and looked down at our hands. I should have let him go, but I just couldn’t make my fingers release his. “I had to see you before you left for California.”
“I’m not going to California.”
“I know that now, but it doesn’t matter. I had to see you again. I had to say I’m a total dick. I never should have let you leave. And I never should have agreed to that Brittany thing.”
“I saw what happened on my Twitter feed. That was really clever.”
He shrugged. “It was the least I could do. Heidi, I’ve screwed up with you from the beginning. I should have moved heaven and earth to find you after spring break. But I’m not making that mistake again.” He grabbed my other hand. “Please say you’ll give us another shot. Please let me—”
“You were right,” I interrupted. “About spring break. It wasn’t the right time. And you have a career. A great career and I can’t expect you to be at my beck and call.”
“Not your beck and call, but I’m not going to lie about it, either. I still want you to move in. I still want—”
“And I had to figure out what I wanted first. I needed to decide about law school and journalism. About who I am and—”
“I don’t care what you do. I just want you with me.”
“—who I want to be with.” I took a breath. “I want to be with you, Rob. I want it more than anything.”
“I love you, Heidi. I have since spring break. I was just too stupid to realize it before.”
I stared at him, his words replaying in my mind. We’d been speaking so fast, talking over each other, but his last words caught up to my brain and I was stunned into silence. Had he really said what I thought he did? Was he really as in love with me as I was with him?
Then before I could ask, he said it again.
“I love you, Heidi. Whatever you do, whatever comes, I want to be with you.”
And then I realized that he really had just chosen me over baseball. He’d come here instead of playing in Indianapolis. And he wanted to be with me even though I was still a journalist. Especially since he didn’t realize I’d figured out a work-around.
“Heidi? Say something.”
I grinned. I flat-out grinned. And then in defiance of every rule my parents had about the house, I whooped in glee. “Yes, yes!” I cried. “I love you, too!”
And then we were kissing. Right there beside the Wall of Accomplishments while his five-o’clock shadow sensitized my lips to a delicious degree. And we would have gone on kissing while my toes curled, and he lifted me up in his arms, except my mother’s voice interrupted us.
“Aiya. So dramatic. That’s not good for a lawyer. But for a journalist? That’s very important. Now stop that and come and drink some tea.”