The Wangs vs. the World(22)
Maybe! She turned around and sat down with a bounce, feeling encouraged as she fastened her seat belt. Maybe this was why her siblings had been reluctant to tell her about the inheritance, why she didn’t even know that there was a Talk and a Lunch. And, after all, didn’t this make so much more sense than the cover story? That her father had lost everything?
Ridiculous. Impossible.
Maybe Brownie was actually in on it. Actually, Brownie probably resented her. No one who had money would ever be stuck working at some boarding school in Santa Barbara, not even teaching, just . . . administrating. If Brownie knew, then that meant she’d been keeping the secret during the whole computer exchange; it all just made Grace feel more conspiratorial glee at the way her father had come out on top.
They were flying down the hill now, speeding past middle-aged cyclists in ridiculous spandex outfits, and Grace knew, just knew, that Andrew and Saina were both headed back to L.A. for some sort of party at the house. That was probably why they’d kept not calling her back, and why they didn’t even seem all that upset about everything. They’d never been very good actors.
Or maybe everyone was going to keep up the charade for a few days. In fact, maybe it wasn’t so much a joke as a test, something to teach Grace the value of money by making her think that it was all being taken away from her. Like that movie with Michael Douglas—was it called The Game?—where his whole life is ruined and then he ends up jumping off a building but there’s a net at the bottom for him and then a whole party. Her birthday wasn’t for a few more months, but she was a New Year’s Eve baby so it probably would have been too complicated to pull off the whole thing over the holidays.
Seven million dollars!
Well, she’d be good and earn it all. There would probably be tasks, like on The Amazing Race, challenges to solve, places to prove that she wasn’t a snob, even if her dad totally was. She wouldn’t complain, she wouldn’t whine, she’d just play along. What if someone was actually filming the whole thing? Though her dad probably wouldn’t let that happen—he hated reality TV.
“Xiao bao, ni you zhang da le,” said Ama, reaching over to squeeze Grace’s hand.
Maybe this was all Ama’s idea. Grace was pretty sure that she was Ama’s favorite, and she couldn’t remember anything like this happening when Saina or Andrew turned seventeen. Of course, she had only been a kid when Saina was seventeen, so it might have all been hidden from her—since everyone was so good at keeping secrets from her—but this definitely hadn’t happened back when Andrew turned seventeen and sprouted eleven proud hairs on his chest. It was kind of gross, but they’d counted them.
“Hi, Ama,” said Grace, bringing their clasped hands up to her cheek. The older woman’s hand was soft, like the underbelly of some baby animal, and Grace rubbed it absentmindedly against her face. “Oh, I haven’t really grown up all that much, I’m not even seventeen yet.” Was that a smile from Ama? A conspiratorial wink?
Ama took her hand back and settled it in her lap. “Da yie shi big,bu zhi shi old.”
“Oh, I know. I grew another inch.” She marked the distance with her fingers and Ama nodded, satisfied.
Grace slouched down, driving her knees into the back of Barbra’s seat. This had been her mother’s car when she was still alive. Her mother, who Grace didn’t have any actual memories of because she’d died just eight weeks after Grace was born. All she had were borrowed ones, taken from Andrew’s own barely there memories and Saina’s infrequent stories. Or made-up ones that she thought up herself as she flipped through albums of old photographs and scrapbooks of her mother’s modeling shots.
Their mother, cutting open oranges and feeding them into the industrial-looking juicer that still lived in the kitchen, hidden deep in some closet or cabinet. Their mother, scooping out the seeds from a maw of pulp and teaching Saina and even Andrew to spit them using some sort of tongue-funnel technique that they’d never been able to successfully explain to her. Their mother, dressed to go out for the evening in a scarlet-pink gown with flowing skirts—probably Oscar de la Renta, Saina had added—whispering stories to baby Andrew while Daddy shouted for her downstairs.
Their mother laughing. Their mother braiding hair. Their mother telling stories about her mother, who was in a nursing home now, but had owned a Chinese restaurant downtown. Their mother getting mad at Daddy and throwing a bowl of salad against the wall, a clang and then a shower of green.
Their mother stepping into a helicopter.
That last one was the story Grace told herself over and over again. It was based on a photograph she had tacked up in her dorm room, the final image of their mother, the one Rachel had skipped over in her death catalog. The story had only two lines.
“She had me. She got into a helicopter.”
Sometimes there were variations, but it was still always just two lines.
“I was a little baby. She got into a helicopter.”
And: “She had me. They went to the Grand Canyon.”
And once, just once: “She died. Daddy didn’t.”
Grace opened her bag and flipped through the manila folder of images she’d pulled off her wall and slipped out the photo, laying it on her lap so her father wouldn’t be able to see it in the rearview mirror. There was still a little Blu-Tack left on the back of it, just enough to make it stick. Bending down slowly and shaking her hair over her left shoulder so that it made a sort of shield, Grace reached over and stuck the picture onto the bottom edge of the car door. Its ’80s colors faded now, the canyon a sepia wash behind her mother’s buoyant perm and snakeskin cowboy boots, her father behind the camera, clicking her mother into place, making her always thirty-two years old, the pregnant fullness forever just fading from her cheeks.