Nightlife ✓

37 | tea

All of these visits were test runs for the big one.

Mom.

I had yet to tell my parents I was in a committed relationship. I had yet to speak to them since Christmas, other than general updates in the group WeChat.

I hadn't called Mom over the phone since our huge fight. So it was still unresolved.

"I don't know how she's going to react," I vented over dinner.

Mealtimes weren't just time for eating. They were for gossip, complaints, and laughter. They were home brought to the nearest table, and it was a comfort that Tommy and Quen shared the same tradition as I launched into my anxieties.

"She doesn't like me since I yelled at her."

"That's not true. Olly and I have been talking after each of her visits home—Mom's hurt. And she's guilty. You know that she doesn't parent in the white liberal way."

"I know that. And I still love her and appreciate everything she's done for us."

"But she didn't know that. To her, the way she parents is the only effective way to do it. She's always thought she was doing the best by you, because it worked for Olly and I, and when you told her that she'd been hurting you for years and years, well, she would have been crushed. Even Kevin never said anything that outright to her."

Fuck. My gut dropped. I hadn't meant to hurt Mom. And she hadn't meant to hurt me. The guilt swallowed me like the violent gush at the end of a water slide. I wished I was in New York. I wanted to hug Mom.

"She's doing some major soul-searching," Tommy continued, oblivious to my turmoil. Or incredibly aware and lightening the mood. "And she'll be fine. Remember how bad she wanted grandchildren from Olly? She'll be happy you're one step closer to popping kids out."

Quen coughed.

I shook my head at him. "Don't worry, I don't plan to do that anytime soon." I turned my attention back to my brother. "And Olly was older. Mom was worried about the leftover woman thing."

Leftover woman: the belief that any unmarried woman older than twenty-five must have been defective, somehow, cast aside like the unwanted fibrous stems of an okra pod.

"We all know how selective her double standards are," I reminded Tommy, though as a man he'd escaped a lot of the gendered expectations placed on the daughters. "I'm too skinny when she wants me to eat another serving, until I'm too fat when I'm not a size zero. If I'm twenty-something, I should be focusing on my grades and my career, and then— boom, you're twenty-something. When are you getting married? Do you truly think she'll react positively?"

Tommy sucked his cheeks in, mulling over my argument. He didn't even try to argue because it was true. We all had grown up wedged between extremely selective standards, with barely a hair's width for error.

Excluding Olly, who had the perfect doctor-daughter-wife shtick going on, we were all deficient. Tommy was living alone despite being twenty-seven—and he was vegetarian. This was a big deal for Mom and Dad, whose favourite mainland dishes heroed meat. Kevin had never gone to college. And now I was flouting all my years of tuition and diligent study to go into highly-exclusive research.

Tommy turned to Quen. "What do you study again?"

"Double major in Engineering and Physics."

"Current GPA?"

I frowned warningly. "Tommy."

"What? You want to know how Mom will react?" He jerked his chin in Quen's direction, who blinked innocently back at me, like a puppy being examined for adoption. Goddamn, he was too cute. "He's your make or break."