Soy Sauce for Beginners Page 17

  I told him it was, and waited for the inevitable question.

  He poured himself a glass, dug a serving spoon in the salad bowl, plopped a large mass on his plate, and pushed the bowl over to me. “It’s been ages since I’ve done this,” he said.

  I took a small bite. “It’s delicious.”

  “Yeah, not bad.” He served himself some pasta, and began to eat that. “Could use a touch more salt, don’t you think?” he asked, not noticing that I had yet to move on from my salad.

  When he returned with the saltshaker, I said, “Listen, I haven’t made plans or anything, but I’m probably going to see my ex.”

  He looked at me blankly.

  “In San Francisco.”

  He nodded. “Makes sense.”

  I waited for him to say more, and when he didn’t, I said, “I’m glad you’re okay with this.”

  A hint of smugness played in the edges of his smile. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  I chewed my orecchiette and swallowed without tasting it. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Most couples—most people who’ve been seeing each other like we have would probably want to discuss if one of the people was going to see his or her ex.”

  James watched me, amused. “Okay. What do you want to discuss?”

  “Forget it.”

  He took a sip of wine and wiped his mouth. “No, really, let’s talk about it.”

  “No, let’s not.” I laughed unconvincingly. “How silly of me to think you’d find this worth discussing.”

  The smug smile vanished. “Let’s not play this game. If there’s something you want to say, go for it. We’re both adults.”

  I released my fork with a clang. “Adults?” I repeated. “I’m not the one who wants to get laid every night, but can’t stand the thought of being attached in any way. I’m not the one behaving like a teenage boy.”

  He held up both palms. “Hang on, Gretchen. You’re the one who’s leaving in January.”

  I looked away, fighting to quiet the voices in my head: but he hadn’t asked me to stay. Not that I would have stayed anyway. Why did he have the upper hand when I was the one leaving? Why was I trying to make this relationship something it wasn’t?

  Already the adrenaline was draining out of me. I wondered what I could say to salvage the evening. The pasta had begun to congeal on my plate, taking on a grayish cast. I took a bite and said, “Yum.”

  “Gretchen,” James said.

  “Yes?” I asked hopefully.

  “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “I’m sorry I said anything. Let’s just enjoy this amazing dinner you made.”

  He shook his head. “Maybe it’s best if you go.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  I waited for him to change his mind, and when he remained silent, I pushed back my chair, scraping the chair legs against the parquet floor. I stalked into the living room to retrieve my purse. “So, that’s it? You’re kicking me out?”

  He filled his wine glass to the brim, and I imagined tipping the remaining pinot noir all over his pristine cream-leather upholstery.

  He moved the bottle out of my reach. “I guess I am.”

  “Well,” I said. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

  He didn’t get up from the table. “Good-bye, Gretchen,” he said.

  13

  PAUL: JUST A HEADS-UP that I’m going to be in SF next week. Would be great to see you. Otherwise, hope you’re well!—Gretch

  HOW I’D MULLED over these lines, swapping out the final exclamation point for a period, then changing it back again. I was going for casual and breezy, though I felt anything but.

  Hours, then days passed with no response. As the morning of my flight drew near, I busied myself with preparations: printing up posters, pamphlets and business cards for the trade show, lining up apartment viewings, making plans to see Marie, Andrea, and Jenny.

  The more I tried to convince myself I wasn’t waiting for a response, the more I checked my cell phone, hit the refresh button on my email and re-read my most recent exchanges with Paul for clues to his silence. Once or twice, I found myself wide awake in the middle of the night, unable to fall back to sleep before checking my email one last time. Not only was there never anything from Paul, there were no other messages either—not from Kat, James, or even Frankie.

  The night before my flight, I was still at work when I discovered that the hotel where Shuting swore she’d booked my room had mysteriously lost the reservation. I’d planned to visit Ma at the center, but now I had to scramble to find something within walking distance from the convention hall.

  Frankie stopped by my office to say good-bye, and when I explained why I was so frazzled, she said, “Want me to go? I’m always up for hanging out with Auntie Ling.”

  I handed over the metronome I’d been meaning to take to Ma ever since we’d discovered the out-of-tune piano in the center’s yoga room. “She needs to practice while I’m gone,” I explained to Frankie. “Tell her it doesn’t matter how fast or how slow as long as she keeps time.”

  Frankie cocked her head and smiled. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine here.”

  I noticed she didn’t offer any reassurance about what would happen in San Francisco.

  That night, I was in my bedroom, packing my suitcase, when I heard a knock on the door. My father stood in the doorway, a solemn expression on his face as he watched me fold and refold a thin ribbed cardigan.

  “Are you ready for tomorrow?” he asked.

  I told him I was.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  I waited.

  “This is a good thing you’re doing, taking our sauce to America.”

  “Thanks, Ba,” I said, the guilt already pooling in my belly.

  “And I think it’s a worthwhile way to spend your last few months as part of Lin’s.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  “Good,” Ba said, his gaze scanning the room. “Good.”

  I hoped we’d reached the end of the conversation, but he cleared his throat, a strange look in his eyes. “A wound is a funny thing,” he began.

  I didn’t follow. “A what?”

  “A wound, like an injury, a pain, lah,” he said impatiently.

  “Oh.”

  That brief outburst seemed to set him at ease. He told me to picture a knife plunged in flesh. Initially the pain was excruciating, enough to make the wounded person give up altogether. With time, however, the wound healed around the knife; the wounded person could live in more or less tolerable discomfort. In fact, more pain would be caused by removing the knife completely and forcing the wound to heal anew.

  “Do you know what I’m talking about, Xiao Xi?” he asked. Something about the way he said my name made my tear ducts well.

  I told him I did, once again hoping to end the conversation. Despite his efforts to connect, I was too intoxicated by the promise of my trip to focus on what he was trying to say.

  Before he left, Ba said, “I know you will do fine.” There again was that steady gaze. Like my mother, he was so sure of himself, so sure of what was in store for me.

  One pushed me to return to America, the other urged me to pull out the knife, let the wound heal, and remain in Singapore. But I was done choosing sides, pleasing one over the other. From here on out, I would find a way to please myself.

  “Good,” I could hear Ma say now. “All I ever wanted was for you to have a choice.”

  Ba would jump in. “The decision is always yours, what. But you must consider the full range of option.”

  “Options,” said Ma.

  I banished their voices from my head, if only for a moment’s peace.

  14

  THE SINGAPORE AIRLINES BOEING 747 touched down in San Francisco on an unseasonably cold, gray, October afternoon. An afternoon shrouded in rain so fine, droplets didn’t fall so much as seep through the seams of my coat.

  Despite my jet lag, I woun
d a scarf around my neck, pulled up my waterproof hood and went to see a potential apartment, a tiny studio in Russian Hill, not far from the apartment Paul and I had shared. The studio boasted a cracked bathtub and thick brown wall-to-wall carpeting that appeared to have been installed in the seventies. My mother’s look of horror flashed in my mind—a look so exaggerated it was almost cartoon-like. And then I remembered she would probably never again make the trip to San Francisco. In four days, she’d be released from the Light on Life Rehabilitation Center, only to be confined to a country traversable in under an hour.

  The next two apartments were no better, and fatigue didn’t help my mood.

  Several hours remained before I was scheduled to meet my classmates for drinks near the conservatory. Most of that time I spent telling myself how good it was to be back, even as I tried to remember if the fog had always been so white and so thick, if the public buses had always run so infrequently, if the neglected and the wounded had always monopolized sidewalks and park benches. The pink and green Victorians I’d once found so charming now leered at me like overpainted working girls. Every neighborhood felt gritty, every apartment too expensive and cramped.

  Over eight-dollar Belgian beers, my classmates asked how I was spending my semester off.

  “Aside from work, family, the usual stuff, I’ve watched a lot of TV—mainly Melody re-runs. She’s incredibly popular in Singapore.” Topics I didn’t plan to address included: rehabilitation centers, inter-cousin rivalries, and not-quite breakups with not-quite boyfriends. Topics my friends had not yet addressed, but no doubt would, included: Paul.

  “Glad to hear you’ve accomplished so much,” said Marie.

  “Did I ever tell you guys that I once ran into Melody at a yoga studio in the Marina?” asked Andrea.

  “Yes,” we said. “You’ve told us.”

  “You think she’d have a private yoga instructor come right to the house.” Andrea had told us that, too.

  “My cousin Suzanne just started working for Melody,” said Jenny.

  I asked what she did.

  “Some kind of assistant.”

  We drained our beers and pondered what life would be like as Melody’s assistant.

  Then Marie asked, “What’s Singapore like anyway?”

  “Clean,” I said, lifting my elbows off the sticky table.

  “Because they don’t let you chew gum,” said Jenny.

  “And they flog you for littering,” said Andrea.

  A waitress brought us refills, and I raised my mug to my friends—these girls who’d left quiet, suburban towns to embark on lives that made their parents shake their heads in wonder.

  “Here’s to dirty, smelly, wonderful San Francisco,” I said.

  “Cheers,” they chorused. “Welcome home.”

  Back at my hotel, I checked my messages—still no response. It wasn’t like Paul to not write back. I thought about resending the email, but decided to give him another day. In the meantime, I looked up the phone number for my favorite restaurant.

  Located in Berkeley, not far from campus, Café Mirabelle was French-inspired and wildly expensive. This was the place where Paul had proposed after making a one-night exception to his own ban on fine dining. We were twenty-four and dressed as if attending a college formal, even though other diners wore khakis and jeans. Gazing in Paul’s eyes across our steak au poivre and salmon en papillote, I’d felt impossibly grown up. A few years later, we returned to Mirabelle when my parents were in town. I’d just gotten into graduate school at the conservatory, and a prestigious journal had accepted Paul’s paper for publication. I squeezed my husband’s hand, marveling at our incredible good fortune.

  Now I dialed the restaurant’s number, and when a smooth female voice answered, I made a reservation for two, hesitating for only a split second when I was asked to leave a credit card number to guarantee the table.

  Outside my hotel window, the Bay Bridge gleamed through the evening mist. The wind had picked up, and beneath the deck the black waters churned and frothed.

  This dreary weather continued for the next four days as I awoke each morning to put on one of my two business suits, and traveled from my downtown hotel to the nearby convention hall, where four hundred and sixty-eight natural-foods businesses from around the world vied for the attention of American consumers. I found myself surrounded by vendors of Indian teas, Chinese ginseng, aged vinegars, fruit-infused olive oils, and other exotic foodstuffs. The woman at the neighboring table turned out to be the largest supplier of white truffle products in all of Western Europe.

  The hall was overheated; the fluorescent lights were blinding; my lips ached from smiling. But when the owners of a prominent Asian supermarket chain took a taste of our premium light soy sauce and proclaimed it better than any of the ones they currently stocked, I knew I could make this trip worthwhile. I reached out to anyone who so much as slowed down in front of my table; I perfected my pitch. The proprietor of one of San Francisco’s most highly regarded haute-vegetarian restaurants promised to send in his order as soon as he got back to the office. A famous chocolatier made plans to create a chocolate flavored with our dark soy sauce. By the end of the day I’d handed out most of my business cards and had to ask Shuting to FedEx more sauce.

  Each evening I emailed my uncle a daily report, and as I detailed the interest in our company’s premium soy sauce, I kept my tone neutral and did not gloat. I understood that a couple of orders here and there were hardly enough to affect Lin’s long-term goals, no matter how noteworthy the buyers. It would take something much larger to convince Uncle Robert that our premium sauces could be as marketable in America as our fiberglass sauce.

  Knowing that my updates would get back to Ba, I made a point of mentioning how pleased I was to be back in the city, how much I was enjoying catching up with old friends. In reality, I spent my nights alone at the hotel, looking over my notes, bracing for the onslaught of the next day. I didn’t make plans to see my classmates again, and they didn’t call either, aside from Jenny who sent a short, somewhat cryptic text message: Cousin might be at trade show. Looks like me with longer hair. Say hi!

  I called home one time, the day Ma left the rehab center.

  “How is she?” I asked Ba.

  “She’s right here,” he said, and I could hear his pleasure. “Ask her yourself, lah.”

  But I stopped him before he could pass the phone. “I just wanted to check in. I don’t actually have time to chat.” I didn’t know what was holding me back.

  I heard him tell Ma, “She can’t talk now.” He returned to the phone. “Everything good over there?”

  “Fantastic,” I said.

  By the fourth and final day of the show, the atmosphere in the convention hall had relaxed. A third of the vendors had already packed up and gone home. Ties discarded, heels kicked off, the remaining vendors sat around snacking on leftover samples, and I joined in, nibbling on raw sheep’s milk cheese and dark chocolate seasoned with lavender sea salt.

  In the middle of the afternoon, a trio of neatly dressed young women entered the hall. They paused by the large poster that mapped out vendor locations and jotted down notes on clipboards. Even though they looked too young and fashionable to be buyers, their efficient, self-assured mannerisms spurred us vendors to tidy our tables and pay attention.

  Word spread quickly: the girls were not buyers, but production assistants. Production assistants for Melody. They were here to find gift ideas for the talk show host to present on air in her annual Christmas episode.

  “You know who that is, right?” the white truffle supplier whisper-screamed in my ear.

  At that very moment, one of the girls was walking down my aisle, studying the placard on each table. She wore tortoiseshell glasses and her straight, brown hair was pushed back with a slim headband. Every now and then she stopped to ask a question, take a sip from a thimble-sized cup, spear a toothpick in a jar.

  The girl would have walked right past my table if I
hadn’t cried out in a shaky voice, “Susan? Is that your name by any chance?”

  Startled, the girl stopped. “It’s Suzanne,” she said slowly. “Suzanne Silver. Have we met?”

  I explained I was a friend of her cousin’s and added, “Please, you must try our soy sauce.”

  I launched into the pitch I’d been giving all week. I was Gretchen Lin, the granddaughter of the founder of Lin’s Soy Sauce. The last remaining all-natural brewer in Singapore, Lin’s was on a quest to urge home chefs to replace plain old table salt with premium soy sauce. I showed her photographs of the factory and walked her through our sauce’s aging process, taking time to describe Ahkong’s proprietary clay jars.

  The girl wrote on her clipboard and gingerly dipped a cracker in the small bowl I held out. She picked up a bottle of dark soy sauce, examined its white rice-paper wrapping, and ran her thumb over the gold sticker embossed with the Chinese character for our family name.

  I took the bottle from her hands and turned it to display the writing printed on the rice paper. “Xian chi zai tan,” or “Eat first, talk later,” had been my grandmother’s catch phrase, delivered sternly when business discussions threatened to upstage a meal at her dining table.

  Setting down her clipboard, the girl asked more questions about my family: How did your grandfather form the idea for this company? When did your uncle and father take over? How old were you when you knew you wanted to join the family business?

  “Six,” I lied. “I was six years old when I knew for sure.”

  She wrote this down.

  I described Ba’s dream of making soy sauce a staple for Western cooks. “He makes a stellar boeuf bourguignon with light soy sauce in place of salt,” I told the girl. The delicate flavors of our sauce enhanced the rich umami taste of the meat. Our sauce rounded out the stock, highlighting the bright, acidic tomatoes, preventing the red wine from overwhelming the dish.

  I told her how Ba never left the house without a sample-sized bottle of Lin’s in his breast pocket, which he poured on any food placed before him, and pressed on curious bystanders.