The Bride Test(4)

“Ah, that is—You have mixed blood.” Leaning forward, the lady clasped M?’s chin and angled her face upward. “Your eyes are green.”

M? held her breath and tried to figure out the lady’s opinion on this. Sometimes it was a good thing. Most of the time it wasn’t. It was much better to be mixed race when you had money.

The lady frowned. “But how? There haven’t been American soldiers here since the war.”

M? shrugged. “My mom says he was a businessman. I’ve never met him.” As the story went, her mom had been his housekeeper—and something else on the side—and their affair had ended when his work project finished and he left the country. It wasn’t until afterward that her mom discovered she was pregnant, and by then it was too late. She hadn’t known how to find him. She’d had no choice but to move back home to live with her family. M? had always thought she’d do better than her mom, but she’d managed to follow in her footsteps almost exactly.

The lady nodded and squeezed her arm once. “Did you just move to the city? You don’t seem like you’re from around here.”

M? averted her eyes, and her smile fell. She’d grown up with very little money, but it wasn’t until she’d come to the big city that she’d learned just how poor she really was. “We moved a couple months ago because I got the job here. Is it that easy to tell?”

The lady patted M?’s cheek in an oddly affectionate manner. “You’re still na?ve like a country girl. Where are you from?”

“A village close to M? Tho, by the water.”

A wide grin stretched over the lady’s face. “I knew I liked you. Places make people. I grew up there. I named my restaurant M? Tho Noodles. It’s a very good restaurant in California. They talk about it on TV and in magazines. I guess you wouldn’t have heard about it here, though.” She sighed to herself before her eyes sharpened and she asked, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“You look younger than that,” C? Nga said with a laugh. “But that’s a good age.”

A good age for what? But M? didn’t ask. Tip or no tip, she was ready for this conversation to end. Maybe a real city girl would have left already. Toilets didn’t scrub themselves.

“Have you ever thought of coming to America?” C? Nga asked.

M? shook her head, but that was a lie. As a child, she’d fantasized about living in a place where she didn’t stick out and maybe meeting her green-eyed dad. But there was more than an ocean separating Vi?t Nam and America, and the older she’d grown, the larger the distance had become.

“Are you married?” the lady asked. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No, no husband, no boyfriend.” She smoothed her hands over her thighs and gripped her knees. What did this woman want? She’d heard the horror stories about strangers. Was this sweet-looking woman trying to trick her and sell her into prostitution in Cambodia?

“Don’t look so worried. I have good intentions. Here, let me show you something.” The lady dug through her giant Louis Vuitton purse until she found a manila file. Then she pulled out a photograph and handed it to M?. “This is my Di?p Kh?i, my youngest son. He’s handsome, ha?”

M? didn’t want to look—she honestly didn’t care about this unknown man who lived in the paradise of California—but she decided to humor the woman. She’d look at the picture and make all the appropriate noises. She’d tell C? Nga her son looked like a movie star, and then she’d find some excuse to leave.

When she glanced at the photograph, however, her body went still, just like the sky immediately before a rainstorm.

He did look like a movie star, a man-beautiful one, with sexy wind-tossed hair and strong, clean features. Most captivating of all, however, was the quiet intensity that emanated from him. A shadow of a smile touched his lips as he focused on something to the side, and she found herself leaning toward the photo. If he were an actor, all the aloof dangerous hero roles would be his, like a bodyguard or a kung fu master. He made you wonder: What was he thinking about so intently? What was his story? Why didn’t he smile for real?

“Ah, so M? approves. I told you he was handsome,” C? Nga said with a knowing smile.

M? blinked like she was coming out of a trance and handed the picture back to the lady. “Yes, he is.” He’d make a lucky girl even luckier someday, and they’d live a long, lucky life together. She hoped they experienced food poisoning at least once. Nothing life-threatening, of course. Just inconvenient—make that very inconvenient. And mildly painful. Embarrassing, too.

“He’s also smart and talented. He went to graduate school.”

M? worked up a smile. “That’s impressive. I would be very proud if I had a son like him.” Her mom, on the other hand, had a toilet cleaner for a daughter. She pushed her bitterness away and reminded herself to keep her head down and go about her own business. Jealousy wouldn’t get her anything but misery. But she wished him extra incidences of food poisoning, anyway. There had to be some fairness in the world.

“I am very proud of him,” C? Nga said. “He’s why I’m here, actually. To find him a wife.”

“Oh.” M? frowned. “I didn’t know Americans did that.” It seemed horribly old-fashioned to her.