The Wangs vs. the World(59)

Suddenly, finding Ama didn’t matter as much to Grace. “Hold up, Uncle Nash had a crush on Mom? How did you know?” Worried, she looked at her father in the rearview mirror, and whispered, “Does Dad know?”

Saina laughed. “I don’t think it was that big of a deal. He just used to always compliment her and open doors for her and stuff.”

“I guess it makes sense,” said Grace. “She was so beautiful.”

“Do you want me to message Kathy?” asked Saina.

“I don’t know,” said Grace. “What do we write? ‘Dear Kathy, sorry we kept your mom for so long. But at least we gave her back. Love, the Wangs. PS. Um, BTW, what’s her name?’ You guys didn’t see how mad Kathy was. She’s never going to talk to us unless maybe we tell her that we’re coming to give the car back.”

“What do you mean?”

Andrew and Grace rolled their eyes at each other. “Saina, what car do you think we’re driving?” he asked.

For a long minute, she was quiet. Andrew pictured her sitting in one of the weird invisible plastic chairs that were in the pictures she’d emailed of her new house. Once she moved out to the Catskills, the house was pretty much all she talked about anymore. Wood flooring and contractors and something called subway tiles—for a while it had seemed cool and grown-up, like everything that Saina did, like she was some sort of New Age pioneer, but now it all sounded pointless to him. She’d isolated herself in a lonely outpost, and now they were all going to live there, too. It was as if she’d been building a prison for them. A pretty, pretty prison.

“I didn’t think about it,” said Saina. “Yours? Wait, is Dad driving the whole way? You guys should split it up.”

“Yeah, like he’s going to let anyone else take the wheel—we tried. And nope. Not mine. Ama’s.”

Grace looked at him as she replied. “You know, our mother’s.”

“Across country?”

They both nodded, and then Grace said, “Yeah, if we make it.”



They were driving her mother’s old car? What else had she missed? Saina picked up her bottle of beer and took a long swig. Leo was in the kitchen, rendering duck fat that they would later stir into a vat of rice, making each of the grains glisten. “But it’s ancient! I didn’t know that we still had it, even.”

“You’d remember if you came home last Christmas.”

She glanced towards the kitchen, not wanting Leo to overhear. “Gracie, you know why I didn’t come home.”

“Yeah. Because sitting in a room and crying was more important than seeing your family.”

Yoga breath. Yoga breath. “I couldn’t even brush my teeth. There was no way I could have gotten on a plane and flown to L.A.” Yoga breath.

“We would have still loved you with gunky teeth,” said Andrew.

“And smelly feet,” added Grace.

“And greasy hair.”

“And hairy legs.”

Saina laughed. Grace and Andrew, bumping around in the backseat of the old station wagon, probably hurtling down the highway at ninety miles an hour—her dad had always been a fast driver—drinking Slurpees and eating Cheetos, falling asleep leaning against each other.

Leo called out from the stove: “Hey, which bottle do you want to open? The red or the white?” Before she could even respond, Grace pounced.

“Saina! That was a boy! Who is that? Do you have a new boyfriend?”

Leo was in the doorway now, holding the wooden spoon between his teeth and waving both bottles in the air. She smiled at him. “Leo, my sister wants to know who you are.”

“Who’s Leo?”

He raised an eyebrow and spoke with the spoon still clenched. “She doesn’t know?”

“Who’s Leo?”

“I wasn’t sure if you were ready to meet the kids.”

“Saina! Who’s Leo?”

“And now?”

“Saina! C’mon!”

“Guys,” she said into the phone, her eyes locked with his. “There’s something I haven’t told you. I like a boy.” Saina wanted to hook a finger through one of his belt loops and pull him towards her. She winked at Leo and nodded towards the bottle of red.

Her boyfriend turned back to the kitchen with the Malbec held aloft as Grace whispered something Saina couldn’t quite hear.

“What?”

“I said, can we tell Dad? He just asked who Leo was.”

“Yeah, because you kept screaming it!”

“Well, you were ignoring me.”

“It’s oka—”

Before Saina finished, Grace was saying, “Daddy, Saina has a new boyfriend! Leo’s the new boyfriend.”

“Is it serious?” asked Andrew.

“I think so. You guys will meet him. You’ll like him—he has a farm.”

“Like, a real one?”

“Crop rotations, fertilizer, harvests, the whole shebang. He even has a tractor. But it’s organic.”

“The tractor?”

“Yeah. It runs on daisies.”

Grace broke in. “I think Daddy’s happy.”

Faintly, she heard their father call back, “Daddy happy if Jiejie is happy.”