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When Alex got home from the gym on Saturday morning, planning to hop in the shower and then make something for lunch, he heard some strange noises in his apartment. His first thought was a burglar, but he quickly pushed that thought aside. It was likely just his father with another box of food.
Sure enough, he walked into the kitchen to find his father pulling out a bag of snow peas.
Dammit. Why had he given Dad a key to his apartment?
“Ah, there you are.” Dad deposited the snow peas in the crisper. “Where were you?”
Alex gestured to his sweaty shirt. “At the gym.”
“You sure seem to spend a lot of time at the gym these days.”
Yes, he’d had a strong need for physical activity in the past several months, but he didn’t mention that now.
Dad pulled out a package of frozen wontons and opened the freezer. “Your freezer is full.”
“Because you keep bringing me food I don’t need.”
Dad somehow managed to shove the wontons into the freezer, then took a package of Rainbow Chips Ahoy! cookies out of a box on the table. “These are your favorite, aren’t they?”
What the...
“They were my favorite when I was, like, six. You’re almost thirty years behind the times.” Alex was thirty-three now.
“Ah. Perhaps I should listen to Madonna on cassette tape.”
Was that...a joke?
Alex didn’t know how to respond to his father cracking jokes.
“You don’t need to keep bringing me food,” he said.
“You work out all the time.” His father gestured at him. “You must need to eat a lot.”
“Most of the things you bring me, which I assume you buy because they’re on sale, aren’t the sort of things I eat on a regular basis. Like pomelos, for example.”
“They’re good for you. They have lots of vitamin C, don’t they?”
“So does orange juice.”
Dad frowned. “Are you saying I should buy you orange juice rather than pomelos?”
“No, I’m saying you don’t need to buy me any food. I can do my own grocery shopping.”
Some of the things his father gave him would just end up in the garbage. Some he’d give to the foodbank, but he couldn’t do that with the perishable stuff.
Dad nodded. “Okay. I understand.”
They were silent for a minute, and Alex felt guilty. His father was just trying to be nice, but he really didn’t need a dozen packages of wontons in his freezer.
It was all so awkward between them now, but maybe it always had been. He just hadn’t noticed because whenever he saw his father, his mother was always there, too. They were rarely alone together, and they hadn’t talked much on the phone, either.
“I meant to ask you something,” Dad said. “You had a friend...his name starts with J. I can’t remember it now. I met him once or twice.”
“Jamie,” Alex said.
“Yes. Jamie. I meant to ask you how he was doing.”
This was a very odd conversation.
“Jamie is fine. Actually, he’s engaged, and they’re planning to get married next summer.”
“Ah,” Dad said. “That’s good. Very good. Actually, that reminds me of the other thing I mean to ask you. Do you remember the Moks?”
“Um, yes.” Alex hadn’t seen them in a decade, but they’d been friends of his parents.
Actually, now that he thought of it, they’d been at the funeral. That was a bit of a blur to him, though.
“Do you remember Rose, their youngest daughter? She’s five years younger than you.”
“Sure. I remember Rose.”
“I was wondering...” Dad ran a hand through his hair, then adjusted his glasses. “Well, we were talking, and we were thinking, maybe we could set you up with her. Would you like that?”
Alex looked at his father like he’d grown three heads.
“You’re trying your hand at matchmaking,” Alex said faintly. “I can’t believe it.”
“Well, it wasn’t my idea. It was Jan’s.” Jan was Rose’s mother. “But I said I’d ask you. Rose is a pharmacist—did you know that? She had a boyfriend for a few years, but Jan says he wasn’t a very good guy. They were living together, and one night, he just...left. Wrote a note saying he’d found someone else, and Rose found it in the morning.”
“Right. I see.”
“So, what do you think?”
“I think,” Alex said slowly, still not quite able to wrap his head around this weird conversation, “that I do not need my father interfering in my love life.”
Dad nodded and didn’t try to change his mind, which was a relief.
“Do you have one?” Dad asked.
“Have what?”
“A love life.”
“Sure. I go on dates on occasion.” Alex hoped that answer would be the quickest way out of the conversation. Saying he had no love life might cause his father some concern.
He felt like he was in the Wild West, and there were no rules anymore.
At least, the rules that governed how he and his father interacted seemed to have gone out the window. He had no idea how to predict what was coming.
“I was just wondering,” Dad said, “if maybe dating had been tough for you since...”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He never did. Never mentioned Alex’s dead mother, even though she was a looming presence in every conversation. It was like Dad thought he would upset Alex by mentioning her, but Alex didn’t see how that would be any worse than the way it was now.
It wasn’t like either of them would forget her.
The only time Dad had actually said her name was when they went to the cemetery for the Ching Ming Festival—Tomb Sweeping Day—in April. Otherwise, he just ended his sentences with “since” or “before,” and Alex knew what he meant.
“I forgot,” Dad said. “I didn’t actually tell you anything about Rose Mok other than what happened with her ex-boyfriend. She’s a pharmacist—wait, I already told you that. She likes traveling, badminton, and fine dining, and Jan said something about her being interested in cosplay, but Jan also said I shouldn’t tell you that.” He ran his hand through his hair again. “Anyway. Too late. Do you know what cosplay is? I had to look it up.”
Alex shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he said, “Rose sounds very nice, but I’m not interested.”
“Why not?”
“Like I said, I don’t need you interfering in my love life.”
“Has another girl already caught your eye?”
Alex immediately thought of Iris and how they’d frantically ripped off each other’s clothes.
“No,” he said.
His mother would have detected the lie and pushed him for the truth, but that wasn’t what his father did.
“Okay,” Dad said. “Are you sure you’re not interested in Rose? Is the cosplay thing a little weird? When I was looking it up on Google, I saw some pictures of...”
Alex was tired of telling his father “no,” so he let him babble on about cosplay for five minutes while he looked through his cupboards and fridge to see what other food Dad had brought with him, other than wontons and snow peas and cookies.
Iris popped into his head again when he saw the packages of rice crackers. She popped into his mind often these days. He wondered what she was doing this weekend—perhaps drinking more alcoholic juice while wearing a stunning midnight-blue dress?
* * *
When Iris woke up on Saturday morning, Ngin Ngin wasn’t home. She often went shopping in Chinatown on Saturday mornings and met Mrs. Yee at the bakery. In fact, Ngin Ngin’s social life was about as busy as Iris’s.
Iris had breakfast, then cut the grass—Jonathan wasn’t here to do it today.
Thank God.
She’d lived here for several weeks, and it wasn’t going too badly, now that Ngin Ngin had stopped forcing young men to parade around shirtless in her backyard. Iris got delicious home-cooked dinners, and she ate them with her grandmother, rather than with the company of the TV. She felt like she was getting to know a different side of her grandmother, which was nice. Plus, Ngin Ngin was always in bed by nine-thirty, so Iris had peace and quiet for a couple of hours every night.
After cutting the grass, Iris went up to her room and set up the Kindle she’d bought for her grandmother. Her grandmother complained about the small font in the books she got at the pharmacy, so Iris had bought her an e-reader, which would allow her to use any font size she wanted. Ngin Ngin had eventually learned how to use Netflix on Iris’s smart TV, so hopefully she would be able to master the Kindle soon enough, although many things that Iris found intuitive were not intuitive at all for Ngin Ngin, since she hadn’t grown up with technology.
Iris bought a few books to get her grandmother started, and when she heard the door open, she headed downstairs with the Kindle.
Her grandmother wasn’t alone. She was talking to someone.
“Wait here,” Ngin Ngin said. “Will go upstairs to get Iris, then we can have tea.”
Oh, no.
Iris hurried down the stairs and found her grandmother, who was putting on her slippers, as well as another elderly Chinese woman and a young Chinese man.
After several weeks without any shirtless young men appearing in the backyard, Iris had been lulled into a false sense of security. She’d thought Ngin Ngin’s matchmaking days were over, but clearly she’d been mistaken.
Why else would there be a young man in the front hall?
“Iris!” Ngin Ngin beamed. “Just in time. This is my friend, Mrs. Yee, and this is the grandson I told you about. His name is Roger.”
Right. The proctologist.
Roger had a large head and a skinny frame. He wasn’t as attractive as Jonathan, and he didn’t hold a candle to Alex. She had no interest in watching him cut the grass shirtless. With any luck, he’d be just as unenthusiastic at the prospect of this meeting as she was.
He bowed and kissed her hand. “I’m charmed.”
Charmed? What an odd thing to say. He was wearing a tweed jacket in July, which also struck her as odd, as well as oversized glasses. He seemed rather bug-like. Actually, there was something about him that reminded her of a grasshopper, but she couldn’t quite explain it.
“Um, hello.”
“You look as lovely as a peony.”
Iris didn’t respond. That was the first time she’d ever been compared to a peony, and although she liked peonies, she found the comparison strange.
She didn’t want to be rude, but she really wanted to get out of this situation.
Also, Roger smelled like licorice, and she’d always hated licorice.
“Iris is just shy,” Ngin Ngin said. “Don’t worry, she talks.”
Iris couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called her shy. She’d just lost her voice because she was horrified by the situation.
“Iris!” Mrs. Yee said. “Long time, no see. I met you once when you were a small child. You stuck a soybean up your nose. I never forget.”
“Aiyah,” Ngin Ngin said. “Don’t tell stories like that in front of Roger! We want him to like Iris. Also, my grandson tried to stick salted egg yolk up his nose. Much worse. Soybean not so bad.”
Roger just smiled as though this was all perfectly normal, and Iris was struck with the horrifying thought that maybe the Yee family was much weirder than her own family.
Not that she’d ever become a member of that family, but still.
“We brought many things from the bakery,” Ngin Ngin said. “Go, Iris! Make us tea, and then we will eat, and you and Roger will get to know each other. It will be fun, yes?”
Iris went to the kitchen, where she started the kettle and put some tea leaves in the bottom of a teapot. They would have tea and pastries, and then she’d try to shoo Roger and Mrs. Yee out the door.
“Iris,” Ngin Ngin hissed as she approached from behind. “Not that teapot. Use nice one.”
Iris sighed and took out the other teapot. “I told you. No matchmaking.”
“You’re being silly. Cannot tell your grandmother not to matchmake! It’s like telling fish not to swim or kitten not to be cute. Or dragon not to be dragon-like.”
Soon they were all sitting around the dining room table with small cups of tea. Iris had put the pineapple buns, coconut buns, and egg tarts on a glass platter.
“This is delicious tea, Iris,” Roger said. “I must confess, I was led to believe you were completely useless in the kitchen.”
“See, this is why Roger is perfect for you,” Ngin Ngin said. “He likes cooking.”
“I’m not so useless that I can’t make tea,” Iris muttered. “So, Roger, what do you like to cook?”
“Oh, a little of this, a little of that,” he said. “My deconstructed dumplings are a thing of beauty.”
Deconstructed dumplings? Did that mean the filling was outside the wrapper? And if so, didn’t that defeat the entire purpose of dumplings?
“He’s very talented,” Mrs. Yee said.
“When you get married,” Ngin Ngin continued, “Roger can do cooking and Iris, you can do dishes and vacuuming. Like we do now.”
Iris choked on her tea. Her grandma was already talking about her getting married to this guy?
“I have no problem with that,” Roger said, smiling.
He wasn’t disturbed by this conversation about marriage. How odd.
There was a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it!” Iris jumped up, happy for the interruption. She wouldn’t mind listening to someone try to sell her duct cleaning for ten minutes.
But when she opened the front door, she was faced with something much, much worse.
Her mother, Mrs. Yip, and a man whom she assumed was Mrs. Yip’s neurosurgeon son.
Iris rolled her eyes.
“Iris!” Mom hissed. “Don’t roll your eyes. It’s not attractive, and I’ve brought a very nice young man who wants to get to know you. This is Phillip Yip.”
Phillip gave her a curt nod. He did not look like he wanted to get to know her at all, judging by the scowl on his face. A scowl that was nowhere near as nice as Alex’s.
Iris sympathized. She decided she didn’t mind Phillip, although she had no intention of going out with him, of course.
“Come in and meet the others,” Iris said, gesturing them inside.
“The others?” Mom squeaked.
“Ngin Ngin brought Mrs. Yee’s grandson, Roger, over as well. He’s a proctologist.”
Mrs. Yip made a face. “A neurosurgeon is better than a proctologist.”
“I agree,” Mom said. “I don’t know what Ngin Ngin was thinking. I can’t believe it. Why is she inviting men over for you to meet? Everyone knows matchmaking is a mother’s job.”
Laughter floated down the hall from the dining room. Roger had an ugly laugh. Not that Iris cared, because she had no interest in him anyway.
“I quite agree, Mom,” she said. “I don’t know why my female relatives insist on setting me up with young men. It’s a pain, isn’t it?” She nodded at Phillip, who grunted his assent, before leading the new arrivals into the dining room.
Mrs. Yee turned to Ngin Ngin. “You told me it was just us! You didn’t say my grandson would need to compete, like on The Bachelorette.”
Ngin Ngin frowned. “What is The Bachelorette? And I had no idea anybody else was coming. Not my fault. Why are you here, Carolyn? You’re cramping my style.”
Iris suppressed a laugh.
Mom leveled Ngin Ngin with a glare. “It’s the mother’s job to do matchmaking.”
“You only think that because grandmother is often dead and not available, but I’m healthy as an ox. Ninety-one years old and still alive!”
“It’s nobody’s job to do matchmaking on my behalf,” Iris said. “I would appreciate if you all stayed out of my personal life. I know in the old days, things were sometimes done a bit differently, but...”
Mom looked affronted. “I am not old. And I met your father through friends.”
“See? You didn’t need your mother’s help. Plus, there’s something called the internet now. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”
“I heard about this thing called Tinder,” Ngin Ngin said. “How does it work?”
Iris sighed. “We are not going to talk about dating apps. Now, everyone, I’ll make some more tea, and you can enjoy the food, then get out of here as quickly as possible.”
She made some tea in the teapot that her grandmother had deemed unworthy of company and brought it to the dining room, then went back to the kitchen to get another three cups.
“So,” Mom said, “who do you prefer, Iris? You like Phillip, don’t you? He’s a neurosurgeon.”
“As you’ve already told me. More than once.”
“Roger is a doctor, too,” Mrs. Yee said. “He can cook, and he doesn’t scowl all the time.”
“Stop scowling, Phillip!” Mrs. Yip hissed. “You’re much more handsome when you don’t scowl!”
“But I don’t want Iris to like me.” He turned to Iris. “No offense. I’m sure you’re perfectly nice, but I already have a girlfriend.”
“What?” screeched Mom. She turned to Mrs. Yip. “You told me he’s available. Why are you wasting my time?”
Mrs. Yip sniffed. “It’s a passing phase. He’ll be over her soon.”
“No,” Phillip said. “I already bought a ring. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
“What?” Mrs. Yip jumped to her feet. “You can’t do that.”
“I’m an adult. Of course I can.”
“But she... she...”
Phillip turned to Iris. “My girlfriend is white, and my mom would prefer I marry a Chinese girl. Paula is also an activist who cares about a whole bunch of causes that my mother does not approve of. Then there’s the atheism thing...”
Ngin Ngin frowned at Mrs. Yip. “My son married a white woman many years ago. I didn’t approve, didn’t go to wedding. But I was wrong. You should support your son, if he loves this woman.”
“You don’t understand,” Mrs. Yip said, wringing her hands. “Paula is one of those social justice warrior types. And an atheist!”
“Am confused. What is atheist? What is social justice warrior? I assume Phillip is smart enough to pick a good woman, though. He’s a neurosurgeon, after all.”
Mrs. Yip shook her head. “Being a neurosurgeon doesn’t mean he knows how to pick a woman, and you’re just saying all this because you want your guy to win.”
“No, that’s not true!” Ngin Ngin said. “I support interracial marriage. Now, leave my house so Iris can continue talking to Roger. Unless you have a girlfriend, too, Roger?”
Roger shook his head.
“Good.” Ngin Ngin turned to Mom. “My choice better is than yours! Take that!”
Mom ignored her and looked at Mrs. Yip. “Is it so bad if his girlfriend is an atheist? Better an atheist than someone who claims to be a Christian but has no compassion for others.”
Mrs. Yip merely sniffed.
“Why did you come if you already have a girlfriend?” Iris asked Phillip.
Phillip reached for an egg tart. “I thought if I met a bunch of women like my mother wanted and proved that I wasn’t interested in anyone else, maybe she’d—grudgingly, of course—come to accept Paula. But it’s hopeless. Do you have a boyfriend your family doesn’t approve of?”
“No, I’m single, and that is what my family doesn’t approve of.”
“I approve of almost anyone,” Ngin Ngin said. “As long as he treats Iris well. Even woman—that would be okay. Already have gay grandson. But Iris is getting old, and she’s never had a serious boyfriend. Or girlfriend.”
“I’m not old. I’m twenty-seven. You called Robert Redford a spring chicken, and he’s more than half a century older than me. Plus I’m happy being single! Why can’t you understand that?”
Mom just shook her head like Iris was a pitiful creature. It didn’t make sense to Iris. Her parents’ marriage was hardly happy and loving. Why was her mother so bent on her joining the institution of marriage?
Phillip and his mother were now arguing about his plan to marry Paula, and Mrs. Yee and Roger were looking smug. Mom broke off a piece of her coconut bun, then picked up the Kindle that Iris had left on the table.
“Is this your e-reader, Iris?” Mom asked.
“Actually, it’s a gift for Ngin Ngin. She can adjust the font size. It’ll make reading easier for her.”
“You bought your grandmother porn?”
“What? There’s no porn. It’s just...”
Romance novels, since her grandmother had talked about reading Harlequins. One of the covers had a half-naked man on the cover.
Dear God. And Iris had thought this day couldn’t get any worse.
“It’s just a shirtless man,” Iris said feebly.
“Let me see!” Ngin Ngin said.
“Me, too!” Mrs. Yee said.
Mom didn’t hand over the Kindle. “This is inappropriate. I’m disappointed in you. You’re supposed to be helping your grandmother around the house.”
“She is helping,” Ngin Ngin said. “Now give me the book.” Somehow, she managed to grab it out of Mom’s hands. “Yes, this is a very nice cover, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Yee nodded her approval.
“But I don’t understand how to read on this.” Ngin Ngin shook the Kindle up and down. “You can show me later, Iris. I will read all the sex scenes first!”
Mom glared at Iris, then stood up. “Come on.” She looked at Mrs. Yip. “Let’s go, since this house has turned into a den of filth, and you failed to tell me that your son already has a girlfriend.”
Five minutes later, Mom, Mrs. Yip, and Phillip had left. Mrs. Yee and Ngin Ngin had their eyes glued to the picture of the shirtless man on the screen, and Roger was trying to talk to Iris.
“It appears I’ve won The Bachelorette,” he said.
“I’m not a trophy to win, and I’m not interested in you.”
“You should at least let me tell you about where I’d take you on our first date.”
“I’m sure this is going to be fabulous,” Iris muttered. “Tell me.”
“I would treat you to a romantic home-cooked meal at my condo. For the appetizer, we would have my famous deconstructed dumplings.”
“What makes them famous? Who have you cooked them for?”
“Um. Just myself. But they’re delicious. You’ll see.” He then described, in excessive detail, the rest of the meal. “For dessert, we would go to the new café on College Street that was inspired by the poop emoji.”
Had she heard that right? “A café inspired by the poop emoji?”
“Correct.” He smiled. “I bet you no man has ever taken you there before.”
“How, exactly, does this place work? Does everything look like a turd?”
“It does, but it’s all very delicious. So, what do you think?” He smiled with the confidence of a man who usually got what he wanted.
Iris still thought he looked like a grasshopper. Plus, the thought of going to a poop-themed dessert café with a proctologist was particularly disturbing.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t want to go on a date with you.”
“But our grandmothers—”
“I said no.”
“Iris,” Ngin Ngin said. “What are you talking about? What is poo-moji?”
She felt like this day would never end.