Soy Sauce for Beginners Read online

  My hand shot up to my greasy, unwashed hair. I saw no point in primping if I wasn’t going to see James. I pressed my fingers to my eyelids and reveled for a moment in the darkness. “Thanks. And you wonder why I never want to come out.”

  “I know exactly why you’re too busy to come out,” she said, her voice razor sharp. She stabbed her fork in a mound of linguine and twirled.

  “Kat,” I said, “I really don’t need relationship advice right now.”

  She finished chewing. “I was talking about your mother.”

  We both knew this was a lie. “But since you brought it up,” I said, “we just checked my mother into rehab, and now she isn’t speaking to us.” I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d chosen this moment to reveal the news, or why my voice was filled with spite.

  Kat clamped a hand over her mouth. “Gretch, I’m sorry. How are you and your dad holding up?”

  I told her I was fine, and as far as I knew, he was fine, too. Everyone was doing just fine.

  She set down her fork. “Why is it so impossible for us to have a conversation?”

  I pushed away my plate, my appetite gone. “How can I tell you anything when all you do is judge me?”

  “So now I’m not allowed to show concern?”

  I said, “Why don’t you just say it? You think I’m a bad daughter. You think I choose men who treat me like shit.”

  “I’m worried about you,” she said evenly. “You’re not a bad daughter.”

  “Can you imagine what it’s like to lose your husband?”

  “I’m trying to understand. Help me understand,” she said.

  How could I tell her that even though Paul had cheated on me and left me, I would take him back? How could I explain why I clung to James? How could I say all this to Kat and expect her to feel anything but pity?

  We ate quickly and paid the bill.

  “Call me when you’re ready to talk,” Kat said, to which I said nothing at all.

  Back at my parents’ house, I sliced open the cardboard box of books I needed to read or re-read before beginning my thesis semester in January. I emailed the same brave, lighthearted update to Marie, Andrea, and Jenny at the conservatory, reaching out to them for the first time since leaving San Francisco. Given Ma’s fragile state, I held off on planning my trip to the trade show. Still, I searched online apartment listings for studios and small one bedrooms with good light, wood floors, gas stoves. And even though I jumped each time James called, I spent more and more time day dreaming about Paul. I imagined running into him outside our old neighborhood coffee shop or at our favorite taqueria in the Mission or simply on the street somewhere in our city. “I didn’t realize you were back,” he would say, coming toward me with outstretched arms. Coolly, I would reply, “There’s no reason you would.”

  Nights, I lay awake in bed, my mind racing through everything I needed to do before I left Singapore, and everything that awaited me in San Francisco. When sleep truly escaped me, I reached over to my nightstand, turned my metronome to forty, the slowest setting, and counted the steady clicks. Once the needle got going, all you had to do was keep time.

  Halfway through Ma’s second week, I asked Frankie to come with me to the rehab center. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending another evening staring at my mother’s stony face, or over the balcony at the condo complex emerging slowly but surely through the distant treetops. I’d sipped endless Styrofoam cups of watered-down Lipton tea from the giant thermos in the waiting room. I was desperate. Frankie and Ma had met several times over the years, and had always enjoyed each other’s company.

  “Gretch,” Frankie said, “I had no idea.”

  I felt a pang of affection for Kat, who’d kept the news to herself. “So, you’ll come?”

  Perhaps Frankie saw my invitation as a gesture of goodwill; perhaps she simply felt sorry for me. At any rate, she agreed to come.

  After work, we took the Bukit Timah Expressway, passing the reservoirs and nature reserves in the very center of the island. Just east of the factory, just west of the central business district, the greenery was almost blindingly lush. When we stepped out of the car, the air was startling in its stillness, untainted by the whirring motors and ringing cell phones and low, electric drone that formed the backbone of this city.

  As I scribbled our names on the visitor sign-in sheet, the receptionist, a young Malay woman in a purple floral headscarf gazed at Frankie with interest. “Are you from US?”

  Frankie ducked her head and muttered, “Yes.” She knew to be wary.

  “Which part?” the receptionist persisted. “New York?”

  I’d walked past this woman at least a dozen times. While she’d never been rude, she’d never spoken to me before.

  “California,” said Frankie.

  The receptionist nodded knowingly, as though that would have been her second guess. “How lovely. I hear it’s nice there.”

  At Lin’s our co-workers had gotten used to Frankie, and I’d forgotten that elsewhere she attracted this kind of attention every day. All over Singapore, shopkeepers, security guards, taxi drivers watched her with interest. Over half a century removed from British colonial rule, our nation’s lingering fascination with the West manifested itself in larger-than-life billboards of Caucasian and Eurasian models, in local newscasters’ approximations of the Queen’s English, in whole airplanes filled with students heading to universities abroad. Once, at a bus stop, a group of teenage girls wanted to know if Frankie was a certain Australian actress. When Frankie blushed and shook her head, they huddled together and erupted into giggles. Nothing remotely similar ever happened to me in San Francisco, where, if anything, I prided myself on blending in.

  Now I led Frankie down the corridor to my mother’s room, “Don’t be surprised if she flips out.”

  Frankie assured me she was prepared.

  Ma was on her balcony, reading, her back to us. When she turned, the book fell from her hands.

  “Ma, I brought a friend.”

  Ma hurried to us. “Frankie Shepherd,” she said. “You look stunning.” I couldn’t believe she was actually speaking, if not directly to me. And then, for the first time since the morning we’d left her in this room, Ma looked straight at me and said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing Frankie? I would have tidied up.” Her hand fluttered up to her fully made-up face, the subtly rouged cheeks and penciled-in brows. The room was spotless, the turned-back edge of the white cotton blanket on the twin bed the only clue of inhabitance.

  I wanted to wrap my arms around Ma, and then around Frankie, who had already leaned in to hug my mother. “It’s so good to see you, Mrs. Lin.”

  “No need so formal, lah,” Ma said, who only used Singlish with people who were in on the joke. “Call me Ling. Or since you’re Singaporean now, Auntie Ling.”

  “Auntie Ling,” Frankie repeated.

  Ma sat herself on the edge of the bed and gestured to a chair. “Sit,” she said to Frankie. “It’s good to see you after all these years, even in this unfortunate setting.”

  Frankie gazed out the balcony’s sliding door. “But what a wonderful view.”

  “It’s a regular Ritz-Carlton. My husband and daughter would settle for nothing less.”

  I stiffened, unable to measure the malice in her tone, but then Ma said, “As far as these places go, this one isn’t so bad. Or so I’ve heard.”

  The backs of my eyes began to smart. I couldn’t help myself.

  My mother turned to Frankie and said, “Tell me everything. How are you liking Singapore this time around? I’m sorry we missed you when you were last here. And how is Lin’s? You certainly showed up at an interesting time.”

  When Frankie began to tell her about work, I slipped out the door to fetch us all some tea.

  Lingering in the corridor, I peered in an airy, high-ceilinged room, where a half-dozen ladies and a single, older potbellied man strained their stiff, lumpy bodies into a basic yoga pose. The instructor was young and
taut with short, spiky hair. She radiated such health and wellness that here, among the patients, her presence stung like a well-placed slap. Out in the Japanese garden by the fishpond, a painfully slight girl with bruised arms threw chunks of bread at fat orange carp, while a graying middle-aged couple—her parents?—looked on. Some of these patients would stay for up to a year, while my mother was already halfway through her three-week tenure. I didn’t need her counselor to warn me that relapses were common. He told me he himself had relapsed twice before finally staying sober. Proudly he said that his ten-year “sober birthday” would fall on the following month.

  Disappointment, heartbreak flowed through corridors, connecting these spacious rooms, and yet all these people kept stretching, straining, striving. America’s favorite talk show host’s plush voice filled my ears: “You will get better because you are here.” As if things could be so simple.

  I returned to the room with three cups of tea on a plastic tray.

  My mother was listing movie stars in an attempt to uncover the kind of man Frankie hoped to date. “Brad Pitt,” she said. “Colin Firth. Mark Ruffalo. Who’s that young guy? Adrian Grenier. I can see you with someone like him.”

  Frankie giggled and shook her head.

  I handed them their tea; they thanked me absently.

  “None of these?” Ma asked in disbelief.

  When I expressed admiration for her familiarity with Hollywood’s leading men, Ma pointed out she’d spent nearly three decades surrounded by undergrads. Indeed, she’d won the university teaching award so many years in a row, her colleagues used to joke that the administration should fold the prize money into her salary and forgo the annual announcement. Now I wondered about her students, the ones whose A-level scores were too low to read law, the ones who couldn’t afford to go abroad. How they must have missed my mother.

  Ma turned her attention back to Frankie. “So there’s nobody special right now? I find that hard to believe.”

  “That’s the problem,” Frankie said, throwing up her arms. “I’ve barely dated at all. I don’t know where to start.”

  Ma pursed her lips, and Frankie went on. “It gets worse every year. Soon I’ll be the thirty-one-year-old, or thirty-two-year-old, or forty-year-old who’s never had a boyfriend. I hate first dates. When I tell the truth about my past relationships—or lack thereof—the guy always looks at me like I’m some sort of freak.”

  She’d told me all this before, and I never knew what to say, except a version of, “You just need to meet the right guy. He’ll understand.”

  My mother took Frankie’s hand. “For one thing,” she said, “everybody hates first dates.” She said it with such conviction I momentarily forgot how many decades had passed since her last first date. She continued, “If the only issue is your lack of experience, then for Christ’s sake, just lie.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the laughter streamed out of us, Frankie and me.

  Ma looked pleased. “Better yet,” she said. “Tell those nosy men it’s none of their business. Let them think your past is more checkered than it is.”

  Frankie grew serious. “You’re right. That’s a great strategy.”

  Ma squeezed Frankie’s hand, and something swelled inside me. I had so much I wanted to discuss with my mother, so many questions on my mind. If our relationship had been different, if I’d been as truthful and open with Ma as she’d always tried to be with me, what words of wisdom would she have shared?

  At the end of the hour, Ma took Frankie in her arms and told her to come back and visit anytime. Then she reached for me, and I hugged her back with all my might until she laughed and said, “But I’ll see you day after tomorrow.”

  Out in the waiting room, I clasped Frankie’s arms. “Thank you. I haven’t seen her that happy in so long.”

  “Thanks for bringing me,” she said. “And thanks to Auntie Ling, I might actually get some action now.” She undid her ponytail and shook out her hair, and I asked where she was heading off to this evening.

  “I’m having drinks with some girls I met by the condo pool. Want to come?”

  “Can’t tonight,” I said, as though I would have said yes at any other time.

  “Next time, then,” she said.

  The receptionist in the purple floral headscarf waved as we stepped out the door.

  Out on the curb, we hugged good-bye, and Frankie said, “Have fun with James.”

  Something in her delivery begged for a response, but I didn’t answer. Grateful as I was for Frankie’s support this evening, I didn’t need to justify my decisions to her.

  I was already in the car before I noticed I’d left my cell phone in Ma’s room. I hurried back to the center and was surprised to find my mother in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin.

  “What are you doing back here?” She struggled to sit up.

  “Are you feeling okay? Do you want me to get a nurse? Should I stay?” I retrieved my phone from the nightstand and slipped it in my purse.

  “Nonsense. Of course not.” She fluffed up her pillow and set it beneath her lumbar region.

  I eyed the door and then immediately felt guilty. I took a step toward her. “I’m sorry it had to happen this way,” I said.

  She pushed down the covers. “I didn’t make it easy for you.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” What I truly wanted to know, I couldn’t put into words.

  She brushed away my question with one of her own. “What’s this trip you have planned?”

  I grew very still. “Frankie told you?”

  Ma nodded, and I wondered if Frankie had also shared her thoughts on Paul.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. Not with you here.”

  With a perfectly polished finger, Ma beckoned me close. “Listen to me. Go find yourself an apartment in San Francisco. Go back to living your life.”

  I took a step back, banging my hip on a folding chair.

  Ma’s eyes gleamed. “You’ve wasted enough time here.”

  “Ma,” I said. “You have to get better.”

  “I’m telling you to go.” Sitting up in that pristine white bed, she looked calm and reasonable and perfectly in control.

  Somewhere outside the room, a staff member rang a bell, signaling the end of visiting hours.

  “We’ll discuss this some other time,” I said, and she arced her brows and gave me a pointed look. But when I leaned in to kiss her, she turned her head and kissed me firmly back, leaving a faint lipstick imprint on my cheek that I wouldn’t notice until later.

  The door to James’s condo was open.

  “Come on in,” he called from the kitchen.

  Of course I knew he liked to cook; he’d practically grown up in his family’s restaurants. Still, when he’d mentioned earlier that he felt like making dinner, my heart had soared. Why now? Why was he putting in all this effort when I was getting used to his careless approach to dating?

  I found James standing in front of the shiny, commercial-grade range, tending a large copper pan into which he tossed a handful of minced garlic, light and fine as wedding confetti. The garlic landed with a sizzle, and pungent smoke billowed in the air. James batted it away from the smoke detector with an oven mitt.

  I waited for him to stop flailing his arms before closing the distance between us. He was the kind of guy who always smelled clean, even when he was sweating over a pan of garlic. I tongued the slick skin on his neck, and he glanced back, surprised, then let me peck him on the mouth.

  On the menu were a fennel and orange salad, orecchiette with kale and Italian sausage, and chocolate ice cream for dessert. He described this last course somewhat sheepishly—the ice cream was store bought. I found this so adorable that I reached around, pinched his cheek, and was promptly banished from the kitchen.

  The dining room’s parquet floor was smooth and cool against my bare feet. I helped myself to a lightly chilled bottle of pinot noir, and then folded my legs in
to a roomy cream-colored leather chair. From this vantage point, I watched as James chopped and tossed and flipped with ease.

  Throughout my childhood, my father had been in charge of Sunday dinner, on the maid’s one day off. He’d sit me on the counter, far enough away from the hot pans to avoid sauce spatters, but close enough so he could reach over and give me a taste from his wide wooden spatula. When he made my favorite bak kut teh, a fragrant, spicy soup with tender pork spare ribs and fat shitake mushrooms, he always had me sample the stock. He taught me to make a big slurping sound as I sipped to avoid burning my tongue. He taught me to discern the warmth of cinnamon, the tang of orange peel, and the mellow licorice of star anise. Most importantly, Ba taught me to appreciate the way a dash of Lin’s light soy sauce brightened each of these flavors while pulling them together into a single, harmonious whole.

  Earlier in the year, before my cousin’s disaster, during Ba’s first attempt at retirement, he’d talked about taking a French cooking class. He’d always been interested in incorporating soy sauce into Western cuisine. After all, real soy sauce was so much more complex and flavorful than plain old table salt. These days, however, when the maid was off, Ba ate out, or picked up prepared food from the grocery store. He was working more than ever; who knew when he’d have time to cook again?

  In the kitchen, James worked, the muscles in his back and shoulders rippling beneath his thin T-shirt. I let myself imagine that this was my life: coming home from a day at the office to a handsome man, a glass of wine, a home-cooked meal; my family a short drive away.

  But now that I had Ma’s approval, I was going to the trade show, and I had to tell James. I had no idea what I’d say when he asked if I was planning to see Paul.

  “How’s work?” he called over his shoulder.

  I took a deep breath. “Did I tell you I’m going to San Francisco next week?”

  “Oh, yeah? What for?”

  I told him about the trade show.

  “Cool,” he said. He emerged from the kitchen with two large serving bowls. “Hope you’re hungry.” He set the bowls on the table and reached for the wine. “Is this any good?” He turned the bottle so he could read the label.