“Homework?”

“Kind of.” A half-truth, not a full lie. His attention is on the paper in front me, the scraps on the floor as well.

“Come eat. I made soup. Canh sườn bí.”

His signature, bland dish.

“Mẹ’s not coming home?”

“Working late,” he says.

I guess even if he were mad, he wouldn’t starve me. Without another word, Ba turns left, back toward the kitchen, where he’s already set the table. Two bowls are stacked on top of each other by the rice cooker. He fluffs the rice with chopsticks, but doesn’t fill the bowls. I sit down, sensing he doesn’t want me here just to eat. Maybe he wants to tell me again how disappointed he is, and I feel my stomach drop.

Ba settles in his usual seat. One of the light bulbs above us is dead, washing the top of Ba’s head in a dim glow. It highlights his white hairs—he has so many these days. And it doesn’t look like he’s shaved, the hair on his chin appearing as if it’s just sponged-on black paint.

“Mẹ and Ba are disappointed, con,” he starts. “We didn’t think we would raise a daughter who would lie to us so much. Lie and think we wouldn’t figure it out.”

I bite my lip, thinking of how I tried to argue with Mẹ and how poorly that turned out.

“It is not just that: disappointment. You hurt us.” I shift in my seat now, unaccustomed to hearing that word from him. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it said here. The concept is unfathomable—how could Ba be hurt? He’s always so forceful, so set in his ways. One of those Roman marble sculptures that miraculously never chip.

I whisper at his pause. “I’m sorry.” I repeat it in Vietnamese, though it doesn’t seem to register with him because he says right away:

“But a part of me wonders. Ba and Mẹ should have noticed more why you were acting strangely. Noticed that you looked… sadder than we are used to. I noticed that right here, in this kitchen that night.” He gestures to the spot where I’d been. He leans forward. “Ba không muốn con be sad.”

I don’t want you to be sad.

“But you are happy here.” It’s then that I notice Ba had something in his other hand. A clipping of a newsletter, the kind that businesses pass around door to door, and it had the photo of me and Bảo that someone had texted. Was that only two weeks ago? The Linh there is proud, proud of herself, and also happy in Bảo’s arms as they look on at the mural, her work, her art. Ba’s right. I was happy.

But why is he showing this to me now? Will he say something about Bảo? There’s no denying what we are in this pic. Instead, he seems to be ignoring him, literally putting him out of the picture.

“We want you to be happy, but we don’t want you to suffer.”

“Like Dì Vàng,” I whisper, recalling my mom’s words repeated over and over.

He shakes his head. “Like we did. Khi Ba tới nước này,” he starts, before switching to English. “When I came here, my English was not good. Still isn’t good. But back in Vietnam, I could stand in front of a classroom and speak without fear. My teachers told me I would be a great businessman. That I would make everyone broke because everyone would want to buy whatever I sold!” He smiles at the memory, proud. “After escaping, after coming here, I wanted to try that. I wanted to try marketing and advertising because it was something I loved to do, and before you were born, I went to school for it.”

A thought tickles my brain, and I go searching for it, finding it in a few seconds. In the box of photos, there was one showing Ba in a classroom. Maybe it was from that time? I knew Ba didn’t have a degree, but I didn’t know that he tried for it.

“But because of my English, I sounded unpolished in presentations. I couldn’t speak to even my classmates. It was hard, and I started to hate it. I started to hate doing what I loved to do, which I never thought would happen.

“I know other people could have moved on despite this. Your mother is someone who would, because she is strong. I wasn’t. And then Evelyn was born. And then you were born, and there was no more time for school. We had too much to worry about. We had to survive.”

I reach for his hand. A strange sense of understanding comes over me. He went after what he loved to do and couldn’t do it, or finish it, as hard as he tried. But that didn’t mean he was a failure.

“You can go back to school. There’s time.”

Ba waves away the suggestion. “I am happy at the restaurant now. In a way, I still do marketing and advertising.” Like the phở specials and how every time a new customer comes in he flashes his smile, his charisma. “But I am scared for you, con.” Another word I don’t often hear from Ba. “Art will be a hard life.”

I hold my breath.

Will. He might not know the significance—maybe he does—but this is the first time I heard it as a possibility.

I grab on to it, squeezing his hand. “Ba, I know it will always be hard. But I can do this. I am doing this, now.” I remember his words before, about how other people might have continued, unlike him. “Don’t you think I’m strong enough?”

“Of course con strong. You are Linh Mai,” he answers quickly.

I smile faintly. “I want to do this. I can do this. I know I can. Because I have you and… Mẹ. You guys did the surviving for me and Evie,” I say, bringing up his words from before. I wonder if Mẹ feels this way as well, and maybe that is why she’s never seen art as a path for me. She is scared, too, her own history tinged with so many struggles in Vietnam and after. It might be with her forever.

I know if I close my eyes now, I will see Mẹ, in this kitchen, tears in her eyes. I see her at my age, when she came here, when she didn’t have what I have now, which is opportunity. All because of them.

“Ba, all the struggles that you went through. You’ve surpassed them. Now you just deserve to live.”

Ba glances at the table, blinking. Holding back tears. I’ve never seen him cry, and I don’t think I will, but to see him this close unleashes my tears. I fall apart; I understand, now, just a bit more of what he’s gone through, mourning his life that he never got to really have. He’s tired. We sit there, hand in hand for a few minutes, until I feel Ba’s squeeze.

“Does it really make you happy? Painting?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to do engineering?” he asks.

I laugh now, shaking my head so that my tears fall to the table. “Definitely sure.”

“Thôi,” he says after clearing his throat. His voice is gruff. “Đừng khóc nữa. Rửa mặt đi, xong xuống ăn cơm.”

I laugh. Wash your face. The Vietnamese dismissal that I got as a child whenever I’d cry after getting yelled at. I rush down the hall to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and glance into the mirror. The redness is still there, but I feel different.

For the first time in weeks, I’m a bit lighter.

Ba tsks his tongue. “You try cooking it, and we’ll see how well you do.”

Our chopsticks hit the insides of our bowls, us eating our meal quietly, comfortably, even. When Ba finishes his first bowl, he sets it down.

“That boy across the street from us. The one who wrote the article that everyone is talking about.” Ba points to the photo with his chopsticks. “So you do know him.”

I take a large gulp, hoping that we’re not going to head into another argument, because that would break me. I nod.

“Is he your friend?”

Another nod.

“Bạn trai?”

Boyfriend. Not anymore. I’d hurt him. The urge to cry comes back, the corners of my eyes prickling. It’s not only Mom I’ll need to apologize to, but also Bảo. “We… we haven’t seen each other in a while. And I’m not sure if we will again.”

“Okay,” he answers simply. Perhaps remembering that it is Mẹ I would talk to more often than Ba, he merely returns to his meal. A part of me wonders if he’s realized that he’s never showed me this much emotion, so he may be reaching his limit in one night.

As mean as I was to him, as hurtful as my words were—even if I didn’t mean it—he still wrote that article defending us, our community, including my family.

Linh, you really messed things up.

Things at home are not much better, but not worse. A plan came just at dawn, at breakfast, watching my mom cut coupons and my dad read the crime section of the paper. Ba has been trying to cool Mẹ down, smooth things over between us, but my mom’s stubborn.

Every cold shoulder, every glance past me, hurts me more than I realize. Maybe I can’t fix that right away. I did lie to her. But there’s something else I can try fixing now, and maybe some good will come out of it.

I stop just before the front facade of Bảo’s restaurant. Suddenly the alley door opens; a mop of black hair appears—and it’s Việt. I freeze in my steps, and he does the same. Unsure of his reaction—if he’ll just ignore me—I feel relief coursing through me when Việt speaks to me.

“You saw the article?”

“I did. It was great. I’m really proud of him.”

“Does he know that?”

Both of us know that we haven’t spoken since that day in the art room.

“I’m gonna be blunt, Linh. You’re a friend now, you know.” How matter-of-factly he says this, and I almost start crying. Unbelievably, Bảo’s weird best friend has also become someone I can trust, too. And he’s still speaking to me. “So I’m saying this as a friend to a friend. If you don’t really like Bảo anymore and you don’t want to date him, I’m okay with what you did.” Every bit of me wants to scream NO. “But if you did it because you’re scared or something… don’t you think Bảo’s feeling the same way? I mean, he knows that everything is stacked against you two.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You know he did all of this for you.” In typical Việt fashion, he only shrugs. “Ultimately, it’s between you and him. If you choose to end the relationship, just do it the right way.”

He expects me to agree, to let him go.

“Is that what you want?”

I don’t move. That’s the last thing I want to do, but I don’t say that. Instead, I ask, “Is Bảo’s mom inside?”

Something lets up in his eyes. And he nods, as if saying, Good choice.

Her reaction is strange, like she’s seeing something I can’t. Maybe there was something else there, but it disappears in a moment and she’s emerging from behind the front desk. Will she make me leave?

“You’re one of their daughters. You’re a Mai.”

“Dạ, chào cô. Tên con làLinh.” I figure answering in Vietnamese might be polite. I suppose it works, since she just nods. Waits for me to take the lead.

I switch to English. “I saw what Bảo wrote in the paper.” I point to the frame on the wall. “It was really nice of him to defend our community.”

“It was good, yes.”

“He’s so good at writing. I’m sure you’re proud of him.”

“And you know he writes?”

“We’re friends. We’d never spoken to each other before until this year and we’ve become… close.”

“Friends.” Her eyes widen like someone learning what it means for the first time.

“Yes.” There, that’s out in the open.

“Anyway, what he did meant a lot. That he’d write something nice about our family. I don’t… pretend to know what happened. To make you hate us”—I rush through my words when I see her open her mouth—“and I know I’m not a part of it, and that’s fine and all. I don’t think my parents would even want me here.”

I breathe out. “But they were glad to have someone defend them. It meant a lot. So… thank you.” I take a step forward, but Bảo’s mother doesn’t back away or anything. I unroll the paper I’d worked on, slowly. I feel her gaze on me, taking stock of me, unsure why I’m even here. “It was so nice of Bảo, especially since…” I gulp—no need to give her another reason to kick me out.

It feels like a weird dream being here. It’s just me and her. Like me and Bảo, we’ve existed in the same place, a few feet away, and now we’re here in front of each other.

I glance at the wall that Bảo had brought up in some of our conversations. “I want to do something for you. You see, I’m a painter.”

“An artist?” she asks numbly.

I tilt my head, not expecting that reaction. It sounds like she’s in disbelief. “Yes, that’s kind of how me and Bảo first started working together. And I had a vision for this wall. It’s beautiful as it is, with all the photos, but I wonder—” I bite my lip before unfurling the paper fully.

Essentially it’s a mural I’m proposing. One of Nha Trang from a bird’s-eye view. The waters, the streets crowded with motorcycles. An ode to where they’d come from. They’d keep the picture frames, but it’d be like the faces in the landscape. A nice reminder of the past—even though it wasn’t all that nice. As I gesture to different parts of the mural, I’m hyperaware of her hands, slightly pink like they were just washed under warm water.

“I’d like to do it for you one day.”

“Why?” she asks, incredulous.

“Bảo told me the next thing you wanted for the restaurant was a new wall.” My voice trembles. “He really loves you. You’re his mom.” Now I’m just babbling, so I summon my remaining courage. “I want to apologize to Bảo, but I don’t know how. He’s the most honest person out there, more honest than me. Because he cares. Because he’s special. He means a lot to me.” I break off before I start to get too emotional. I put on a brave face, starting to back away. “Anyway, thank you for your time. And please let me know if I can help in the future.”

“Why don’t you tell him all of this yourself?”

I smile sadly. “Because he was right: I’m still scared.”