Soy Sauce for Beginners Read online

  With mild disdain the waiter plucked my mother’s glass from the table, like a wilted rose in an otherwise perfect arrangement. I raised my glass and tried to drink as casually as possible. My father took a small sip. Around us, the rest of the family swirled and sniffed and swished and chewed.

  Finally, Uncle Robert cleared his throat. “Kor,” he said to Ba. “The boy has something he wants to say.”

  Auntie Tina pushed back her glass and interlaced her fingers as if saying a prayer. Rose’s husband slid his phone into his breast pocket and exchanged looks with Lily’s husband. My mother refilled her teacup.

  Ba waited.

  Cal brushed a thumb over his wedding band like it was some sort of good luck charm and took a long drink of his wine. When he began to speak, his face was calm, his eyes solemn and sincere. “Uncle Xiong—no, all of you.” His gaze circled the table. “My family.”

  His mother dabbed a tissue to the corners of her eyes. His sisters made small, sympathetic noises. Even Ma refrained from whispering a snide remark.

  Cal started again. “This past year, I was so thrilled with the new line of sauces. I’d finally made something from start to finish, all on my own.”

  I had to admit it was a good strategy—claiming that if he had any faults, it was only because he cared too much.

  “But I got caught up in the excitement. I let my pride get in the way. I didn’t take the time to examine all the necessary details. That was wrong.”

  My aunt choked back a sob.

  Cal bit his lip. “Uncle Xiong,” he said at last, “I know what Ahkong and you and my dad have put into this company. I care about Lin’s as much as you do. I’ve worked here my whole life.” His voice cracked. For once he seemed unsure of himself. “I can do better. I will do better. Please.” His voice trailed off.

  All heads turned to Ba, who studied the place setting before him, as though expecting the answer to surface in that white ceramic plate. When he looked up he said, “Cal, I accept your apology.”

  Auntie Tina gasped. Lily and Rose traded small hopeful smiles.

  “But I cannot change my mind,” he said. “You can’t come back. I’m sorry.”

  Everyone spoke at once, drowning out the rest of Ba’s words.

  “You can’t be serious, Kor,” said Uncle Robert. “He made a mistake. We all make mistakes.”

  “He’s just a kid,” Auntie Tina wailed.

  And, “He’s family. You can’t get rid of family.”

  And, “Who do you think you are anyway?”

  And, “Robert, you’re the goddamned president. Do something!”

  “Some mistakes have greater consequences than others,” said Ma.

  I thought I saw my parents’ hands touch beneath the tablecloth.

  The manager swept into the room, followed by a waiter bearing a porcelain tureen the size of a washtub. Everyone fell silent.

  “Double-boiled fish soup. Compliments of master chef,” the manager announced, her voice wavering when she noticed the distress on our faces. “The soup simmered for over twenty-four hours?” she added hopefully.

  This dish was one of my favorites; I wished I hadn’t lost my appetite.

  The silence continued as the waiter ladled out milky broth, laden with plump slices of white cod and lacy curls of spring onion. Beads of sweat dotted his nose as he worked; the poor chap clearly couldn’t wait to leave the room.

  We dutifully dunked our soupspoons in the broth. Auntie Tina whispered in Uncle Robert’s ear, and he grimaced and brushed aside whatever she’d said. Ba, too, picked up his spoon and began to eat. For a moment, the strangely hypnotic sounds of slurping were all we heard as each of us waited for someone else to make a move.

  Ba continued to eat mechanically. In between bites he said, “Yes, everyone makes mistakes.” A pause. “And, yes, every decision involves some element of risk.” Another pause. He turned to Cal. “I want to make this very clear: You were fired not because you made a mistake. You were fired because you lied about it.”

  Cal’s spoon landed in his bowl with a plop. “I was trying to take some initiative, to solve the problem myself,” he said, but Ba held up his hand.

  To Uncle Robert, Ba said, “You can’t run a company with people you don’t trust.”

  “He’s my son,” Uncle Robert said, and then he pulled back and switched tactics. “I can’t run a company alone. We’re in the middle of the biggest expansion Lin’s has ever seen. Please, Kor. Give the boy a chance. Let him prove he’s trustworthy.”

  Beside me, Ma shifted in her seat. She was attentive and alert, so different from previous family dinners. Typically, by this point in the meal, she’d be on her second or third glass, spewing forth a steady stream of sarcastic commentary that both amused and horrified me.

  “All right?” she mouthed at me.

  “All right,” I mouthed back.

  By now, nobody was eating, and the leftover twenty-four-hour double-boiled soup cooled in our bowls.

  My aunt blew her nose into her tissue. “You’re wrong about him, Xiong,” she sniffed. “You’re so, so wrong.”

  “Mummy, come on,” Lily said, reaching across the table to press a hand to her mother’s.

  The sight of so many miserable faces seemed to weigh on Ba. “Look,” he said. “Cal has done some excellent work. No one is questioning his dedication.”

  “Then, why?” asked Auntie Tina, drawing a warning look from her husband.

  “Go on,” Uncle Robert said.

  Ba pressed his napkin to his lips. “Here’s what I propose,” he said. “Why not put Cal in charge of our real estate holdings?”

  I wondered how long he’d been mulling over this solution.

  To Cal, he said, “It’ll be good for you to experience something besides soy sauce.”

  My cousin’s fist hit the table so hard, my body recoiled. His wine glass toppled on its side, splashing Chateau Lafite ’99 all over the starched white tablecloth and his wife’s cream blouse.

  “Wie Schade,” my mother muttered, sounding like her old self. What a shame.

  Cal leapt to his feet. “I’ve spent my entire adult life at Lin’s. I’m the only one who put in the time.” He gestured wildly to his sisters and to me. “Now you want to make me a glorified landlord?”

  His wife dipped her napkin in her water glass and drew it across the long dark stain in the center of her sternum. “Oh, dear,” she whispered. “Oh, dear.”

  “You must be crazy,” Cal said to my father. “I would rather work for Yellow River.”

  “That’s another option,” Ba said quietly.

  Cal’s jaw hardened. He yanked on his wife’s arm. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

  “You better sit back down, Boy,” said Uncle Robert.

  “You can’t leave,” said Auntie Tina. “We have to resolve this.”

  I’d forgotten that here in Singapore, no matter your age, no matter your accomplishments, you’d always be “Boy” or “Girl” to your parents.

  Indeed, Cal hesitated, perhaps reluctant to defy his parents in front of the whole family. But then he shook his head, almost in apology, and charged out of the room. His wife followed closely behind, nearly slamming into the two waiters who were standing by the door with the next course.

  The waiters dropped the cast-iron platter and a stack of plates on the lazy Susan and rushed from the room without splitting the dish into individual portions. The crispy eel and leeks continued to sizzle and caramelize in the pool of hot peanut oil, and the intoxicating fragrance of sugar and fat filled the room. No one reached for a plate.

  My uncle threw aside his napkin. “Listen to me, Kor. Cal’s my son, and of course I want him at Lin’s, but you also have to be practical, mah. We’re not getting any younger.”

  And then my father played his final card. “What would our father have done?”

  Uncle Robert’s mouth fell open. It was clear he’d been caught off guard.

  “What would Ba have done if one
of us did what Cal did?”

  Uncle Robert found his voice. “That’s just it,” he shouted in triumph, or desperation—it was hard to tell which. “Can’t you see? That’s just it. There are two of us, and there’s only one of him.”

  Slowly, my father turned to me.

  Before I could register what was happening, Ma spoke. “No,” she said, raising an index finger. “Don’t you dare. This company is not her problem.”

  “Her?” my aunt cried. “She just started. What could she possibly know?”

  My uncle slapped the side of his head. “That’s what this is all about?”

  “Doesn’t she have school?” asked Lily.

  “Does she even want to stay?” asked Rose.

  Ba’s eyes locked onto mine. On his face was an expression I’d seen before. The voices around us faded, as if someone had reached for the volume knob and cranked it all the way down.

  During those weekly childhood lessons, Ba had taught me about chemical hydrolysis, the process used to make the cheapest sauces. Ma’s laugh rang out as she floated past, her arms laden with books. “You really think your six-year-old knows what you’re talking about?” Ba placed his hand on top of my head and said, “She’ll get it soon enough.” And there was that expression: his eyes never wavering, his smile calm.

  Uncle Robert reached out to grasp my father’s forearm. He said, “Gretchen is welcome to stay as long as she wants. Hell, she can stay forever. But this isn’t an either-or situation. Cal deserves another chance.”

  I wanted them to stop talking about me like I wasn’t in the room, but the look on my father’s face made me hold back. He sat there, saying nothing, watching me and waiting.

  11

  IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, as San Franciscans celebrate the first summer-like days of the year by baring their pasty limbs in cut-offs and sundresses, Chinese Singaporeans prepare for a very different kind of celebration: Zhong Yuan Jie, or the Hungry Ghost Festival.

  On the seventh month of the lunar calendar, they say the gates of Hell fly open, freeing the souls of the departed to wander the Earth for the next thirty days. To nourish these starving spirits, the Chinese set out whole suckling pigs, braised ducks, mandarin oranges, and other delicacies. They burn offerings of joss sticks, fat wads of hell money and papier-mâché renderings of TVs, cars and jewelry, filling the air with sickly sweet smoke. They construct large outdoor stages for traditional Chinese puppet shows and operas, as well as contemporary song and dance performances—the latter presumably to appeal to the more recently departed souls. At each getai performance, the front row of seats is reserved for these guests-of-honor and must remain empty.

  As a child, I observed these preparations from the passenger side of my mother’s Mercedes as we drove past the government-subsidized housing estates. Occasionally, Ma would stop at the Lorong Mambong wet market, located in one of the larger estates, affording me a chance to get closer to the festivities. In those days the supermarket was strictly for packaged foods; the wet market was where everyone bought their fresh produce. While Ma haggled with vegetable and fish vendors who raised their prices because they could tell she wasn’t from the neighborhood, I lost myself among boxes of intricate, papier-mâché Louis Vuitton handbags and Rolex watches—offerings fit for the chic, label-conscious ghost. Eventually, Ma took my arm and led me away, her impatience signaling her feelings toward silly superstitions.

  Our family was staunchly secular. Aside from a small altar in the corner of Auntie Tina’s living room, none of the Lins paid attention to the festival, though I did notice my aunt’s reluctance to let Lily and Rose swim in our pool at this time of year. Rose told me malicious spirits lurked in the water’s depths, waiting to drown small children. At this, Ma rolled her eyes.

  Even though I’d always observed Zhong Yuan Jie from a strictly anthropological perspective, this year, the significance of the time period was difficult to ignore. As Ba and Uncle Robert continued to debate what to do about Cal, each claimed to best understand what their late father would have wanted. In photographs on our office walls, Ahkong smiled benignly at us as he shook hands with the minster of trade and industry, tasted soybeans straight from the jar, held up Lin’s very first bottle of soy sauce—in the same packaging we continued to use today. His eyes sparkled, his lips formed that familiar lopsided grin, and yet we all knew his other side. When he was alive, he rarely deployed his sternness on us grandchildren, but I’d seen him and Ba and Uncle Robert fall into heated arguments that only ended when Ahkong pounded his fist on the table and announced, “Gao lor.” Enough. The decision was made.

  Now, however, with no one to step in and pound his fist, neither son would back down.

  As the days passed with no compromise in sight, Ba postponed his retirement once again. He and Uncle Robert dealt with their frustration by working longer and harder. They started coming to work earlier and earlier, sometimes before the night watchman finished his shift. My uncle devoted himself to the Mama Poon deal, which was finally official. He scheduled conference calls on California time, prompting the Americans to ask admiringly if he ever slept. My father studied the research that Frankie and I had completed when we’d first taken over the US Expansion Project. He started to look for suitable American distribution channels for our premium sauces. For the first time since my homecoming, Ma insisted on driving herself to dialysis so Ba could focus on work, and when I offered to be her chauffeur, she cast a long look in Ba’s direction and said, “He needs you more than I do.”

  Out on the office floor, rumors swirled that some kind of buyout was inevitable; if that failed, they said, Lin’s would split in two. From time to time, my co-workers huddled together to debate which brother to pledge allegiance to. Frankie told me they competed to come up with names for the spin-off company: Lin’s Soy Sauce Number One, Sibling Rivalry Soy Sauce.

  Meanwhile, Frankie and I tried to keep busy, and so did Cal. All of us knew our work could prove to be meaningless, depending on which of our fathers prevailed. Somehow, Cal and I tacitly agreed to avoid mentioning the family dinner. He and I took pains to never end up in the same room alone, and when forced to converse, we were civil yet terse.

  Then, one morning, my uncle brought a thick folder to Cal’s office and told him to figure out how quickly Lin’s could ship its first batch of fiberglass-aged sauce to California. My uncle left the door open, making it clear he had nothing to hide.

  Less than an hour later, Ba knocked on my door. I braced myself, sure he would try once again to pressure me in to staying at Lin’s, long-term. Instead he handed me a list of American specialty food importers who might be interested in our premium sauces. He wanted Frankie and me to contact the ones who’d be best for Lin’s.

  Just like that, the battle lines were drawn.

  If Frankie wished she’d ended up on the other side, she kept that information to herself. She’d never witnessed a family feud of this magnitude, and each new development left her bewildered. I tried to assure her that Ba and Uncle Robert would reach a resolution, as they always did, though I too was beginning to worry that this feud would never end.

  For now, we were glad to have some guidance. Frankie and I divided up our tasks and got started. I was drafting an introductory email to send to our future partners when a buzzing sound rose from my bottom desk drawer. I located my phone in my purse and identified the caller: James.

  Twelve days had passed since our first and only date. Twelve days, during which I’d received four meager text messages, all responses to baldly desperate, trying-to-be-witty messages I’d sent first.

  “Hey, what are you up to tonight?” was all he said when I answered.

  I lowered my phone and stared at the screen, as though it could provide insight into James Santoso’s perplexing mind. I returned the phone to my ear. “You have got to be kidding.”

  Frankie appeared in the doorway. “Kidding about what?”

  I signaled for her to give me one minute, but when she kept st
anding there, I tried to continue my phone conversation without instantly revealing whom I was talking to.

  I settled for, “Explain to me why it’s so impossible for you to plan ahead.”

  His laugh was warm and gravelly. “Work’s been crazy. My contractors are incompetent. The restaurant’s two months behind schedule. I’ve barely had time to eat.”

  If not for Frankie, I would have asked how he’d found the time to practice his beach volleyball skills. But there she was, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, tapping her foot against the floor.

  “What do you need?” I asked Frankie, covering the mouthpiece.

  She asked if I’d finished drawing up the spreadsheet she’d requested, and when I said I hadn’t started, her face darkened.

  “Hey,” I said into the phone, pleased to have an excuse to hang up. “I have to go. I have work to do, too, you know.” I tried not to look at Frankie’s face.

  “Have dinner with me tonight.”

  “Give me one good reason why.”

  “I haven’t had a proper meal all week,” he said. “And I want to see you.”

  “Fine,” I said, sighing heavily.

  When I put down the phone, Frankie said, “Who was that?”

  I suspected she already knew. “James,” I said nonchalantly. “Apparently he’s been swamped with work.”

  “Oh, Gretch,” she said.

  My cheeks burned. “What?”

  She bit her lip and ducked her head. “You should do whatever you want.”

  Something flared within me. “I am, and I will.”

  She reached out, closed the door, and came right up to my desk. “You don’t have to drop everything the instant he calls.”

  “I’m not dropping anything,” I said. “I don’t exactly have a packed social calendar right now.”

  “Okay. Just get me the spreadsheet before you leave.”

  “Let’s say tomorrow morning to be safe. I can’t stay late tonight.” I watched Frankie struggle to hide her irritation.