| |
Sunday afternoon, Grandma and Dad walk into Ginger Scoops.
“Grandma, you were just here on Tuesday!” I say.
She waves this away. “What’s the point in living to eighty if you don’t get to do whatever you want? If I want to go out for ice cream twice in a week, then I will.” She turns to my father. “You have to try the durian.”
My father dutifully takes the sample I offer him. “This smells revolting.” He tastes it. “No, not for me.”
“Try the green tea,” Grandma says.
“I had it last time. I don’t think tea belongs in ice cream.”
Grandma rolls her eyes. “I will have the durian, green tea, and Vietnamese coffee in a medium cup.”
“And I will have chocolate-raspberry and ginger,” Dad says.
“Come sit with us when you have a minute, Chloe,” Grandma says as I scoop out her ice cream. “I have a question for you.”
I serve the next family in line, then leave Valerie to deal with the customers while I sit with my family.
“What’s your question?” I ask my grandmother.
“I want to try durian. The fruit, not the ice cream. Where can I get one?”
“It’s, uh, rather expensive, and very smelly,”
“I know how it smells.”
“You shouldn’t bring it into your house. Maybe you could start by trying the frozen stuff in a package. You can get it at T&T, I think.”
“What’s T&T?”
“It’s an Asian supermarket,” Dad says. “I can take you, if you like.”
I sit there as my white father and grandmother make plans to go to an Asian grocery store in the suburbs, which isn’t something I’d ever expected to see.
My grandmother reaches into her purse. “I have something for you,” she says to me, then pulls out a copy of Embrace Your Inner Ice Cream Sandwich.
I stifle a laugh.
“I read it last week,” she says. “We’re going to discuss it at our next book club meeting. It’s actually quite good.”
“It sounds like a bunch of baloney,” Dad says.
She continues on. “I think my inner ice cream sandwich is chocolate chip cookies with durian and green tea ice cream inside.”
“Are you allowed to pick two flavors or is that against the rules?” Dad mutters.
“There are no rules.”
“Your inner ice cream sandwich stinks, quite literally.”
“John!” She proceeds to lecture him as though he’s a schoolboy.
When they’re ready to leave, Dad turns to me and says, “You’re still coming over for dinner tomorrow, right?”
“I’ll be there.”
* * *
Monday night, I’m at my father’s, and rather than barbecuing, he’s heating up a frozen lasagna and making a salad, which reminds me of the dinner Drew cooked for me. I suppress a smile as he sets a plate in front of me.
I haven’t seen Drew in a few days. I texted him yesterday and asked if I could come over after work. It took him a while to respond, and then he said something vague about having plans.
Hopefully I can see him tonight. I miss him.
Dad and I chat about work. I ask about his cases and half-listen as he drones on about stuff that doesn’t interest me. But I don’t mind, because that means he isn’t badgering me about my career choices.
You know what? I’m going to have it out with him once and for all. It wasn’t the right time when Anita visited, but it is now.
“Dad.” I put down my fork. “I need you to stop nagging me to finish university and apply to dental school. Every time I see you, I worry you’re going to bring it up again, and I try to distract you with other topics in the hopes you’ll forget about it. But I’m tired of this. I want to see you without having to worry you’ll criticize my career choice.”
He looks at me for a moment, then down at his plate, then back up at me. “You could do better than what you’re doing now. I just want you to do the best you can. It’s like you don’t believe in yourself anymore.”
Is he serious? “That’s not true. In fact, going against what was expected of me? Taking a leap of faith and opening my own business? That required me to have a lot of faith in myself.” I don’t voice my fear that maybe that faith was misplaced, maybe my business will fail because we aren’t getting enough customers. I’m worried, yes, but I’m determined to do everything I can to make it succeed. “I realized what I wanted to do with my life, and I made it happen.”
“But what you wanted was to go to dental school.”
“Dreams change.”
He shakes his head. He can’t accept that my dream has changed from something he approved of to something he doesn’t approve of at all.
“This is my choice,” I say. “Stop trying to get me to do something else. Don’t you want me to be happy?”
“You won’t be happy like this, not in the long run. You think it’s all fun and games to run an ice cream shop—”
“I don’t think it’s all fun and games! It’s a lot of work, and I spent years preparing for this. Learning about the business, taking courses. I only have one day off a week now.”
“Still. It’s frivolous.”
I’ve said that about myself before, but it’s different when it comes from my father.
It hurts.
“Stop it.” I look down at my lasagna and stab it with my fork.
“Stop acting like a child,” he shoots back. “You work in an ice cream shop. You painted it pink, for God’s sake. Pink with unicorns, like you’re six.”
“Because it makes me happy! And it’s an ice cream parlor. It’s supposed to appeal to kids. Besides, what’s wrong with the color pink? Are feminine things inherently bad?”
“You think you’re so different because you have flavors like green tea and durian.”
Ugh.
“No, I don’t. There are other places like that, and people like them—even Grandma does, and you know how she’s all about Jell-O salad and butterscotch.” I swallow. “It’s for Mom, you know. She used to take me out for ice cream, and she loved the ginger ice cream at that place in The Beaches, hence the name.”
He stares at me.
“You told me...” My voice wobbles. “You told me that you never thought of Mom as Chinese, and it’s haunted me ever since. You act like she was white, but she wasn’t. You’re denying her family history. You’re denying how people treated her differently because of how she looked.”
“We should all be treated equally,” he says gruffly.
“But we’re not. There are racist assholes, even in a diverse city like Toronto. And you want to deny where her family came from? That was a part of her, Dad, and it’s a part of me.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Sometimes, I don’t know what to do about it because my mother is dead and I don’t speak the language and I can’t even really cook the food. I am Chinese Canadian, but I feel like a fraud when I call myself that. So, okay, maybe some of those ice cream flavors are a frivolous—as you say—way of expressing my heritage, of reconciling my Chinese-Canadian identity when I’m not first or second generation, but you don’t understand that I have to deal with any of this.”
I take a deep breath. I’m finally getting it all out, these words I’ve thought of saying to my father for so long.
“You think we should just deny that race exists,” I say, “but I can’t. That’s a luxury only white people have, and you can’t seem to get it through your head that I’m not white. I don’t look just like you.”
“But you’re my daughter, and nothing changes that. Why are you bringing this up?”
“You don’t have to understand all of it, but can’t you accept that this affects me? Like, people regularly ask me where I’m from, and when I say ‘Canada,’ they get annoyed.” I glance at the lasagna on my plate. I have no appetite. “I’m not unhappy with who I am, even if it’s difficult at times and I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. But you’re unhappy with who I am—”
“I never said that.”
“—and I don’t feel like I belong when I’m with you, either. My career choice isn’t good enough for you, and I’m not white like you seem to think. You want me to force myself in a box, and I don’t fit into it.”
“Chloe...”
My dad is looking at me as though I’m a deranged alien. Like he has no idea who I am.
And he doesn’t.
It hurts so much that he feels that way, because he’s the only parent I have left, because I love him, despite feeling misunderstood whenever I’m around him.
I often felt misunderstood by my mother when I was a teenager, but I think, when it came to the big things, she understood me.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve edited my memories of her without realizing it.
“You think you’re progressive because you married my mother,” I say, “but it’s still easy for you to be ignorant of so many things. You don’t understand me at all, like I’m an outsider in my own family.” Tears well up in my eyes, but I hold them back because he probably thinks tears are childish, like unicorns.
He sighs. “I love you. You know that.”
“Then why haven’t you tried to understand me?”
“You’re being unfair.”
I want him to tell me he’ll do better in the future. Maybe ask me to clarify one of the many things I said to him. Something like that.
But it’s clear he’s not going to say anything close to what I need him to say.
I get up from the table. “I’m leaving.”
He sighs again, exasperated. “You don’t need to leave.”
But I do.
* * *
I get off the streetcar and start walking home, but then I change my mind.
I want to see Drew. He’ll listen. He’ll understand. He’ll make me feel like I belong.
When he opens the door to his unit, he smiles, but that smile quickly fades and his eyes fill with concern. “Darling, what’s wrong?”
I was crying silently on the streetcar. I must look awful right now.
He folds me in his arms, and we stand there for a long time. I feel a tiny bit better with each passing moment. There’s something wonderful about his hugs. I feel safe enough to shed a few more tears, and then he leads me to the couch.
“You were having dinner with your dad tonight, right? What happened?” He pulls me into his lap.
I tell him about my fight with my father.
“Is it stupid?” I ask him. “That my ice cream store is, in a way, me trying to connect with my heritage? Me trying to find some kind of third-generation Chinese-Canadian identity?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing about you is stupid.”
Just that simple reassurance is nice. When I’m with him, I feel accepted for who I am. I don’t feel too white, or too Asian, or too frivolous. Drew is, in many ways, the opposite of me, yet I think he sees me for who I really am, and he loves me for it.
Yes, I think he loves me.
And I love him.
I didn’t know it until this moment, but I do.
I squeeze him against me and kiss his mouth desperately.
“Chloe,” he groans as I run my hand over his abs. “I...”
“What?”
“Never mind,” he mutters, and then he’s pulling my shirt over my head and unhooking my bra.
I pull off his shirt, too, and we both groan as his skin meets mine. His hands roam all over me, up and down my back, over my breasts. When he grazes my nipple, it’s enough to make me gasp. He pulls my nipple into his mouth and scrapes his teeth over it, and God, he feels so good. I thrust my hands through his hair and rock against his erection.
I need to feel him inside me. So badly.
I fumble with his button and zipper and wrap my hand around his cock. He’s satiny and hard, so hard for me.
“Drew. Please.”
He slides his hand inside my jeans and panties and runs his finger over my slit.
Fuck. It’s good, but it makes me crave him even more.
Thankfully, he shoves down my pants and underwear, then picks me up and sets me on my feet beside the couch.
“Bend over the arm of the couch,” he says roughly. “I’ll be right back. Going to get a condom.”
The air is cool against my bare skin, against the moisture between my legs. My nipples tighten as I wait for him to return and make me feel complete.
There’s the crinkle of a foil wrapper, and then he’s rubbing the tip of his cock over me.
“Please,” I beg. I don’t care how desperate I sound. I need him.
Instead of entering me, he toys with my clit as he bends down and licks between my legs. He pleasures me with his tongue, and my whole body tenses before I cry out for him.
“Drew!”
“Yes, darling, it’s me.”
He stands up and holds me through my orgasm, then rubs himself against my entrance again before thrusting inside.
It feels so good. It feels so right.
He grasps my ass as he pumps into me, over and over, and it’s so intense, but I love every second. We’re together. Joined.
It’s rough but intimate. Not only does he have me naked, but he sees me. Really sees me.
He leans over and grabs one of my breasts while his other hand dips between my legs. He touches my clit, and that’s enough for me to come apart again in his arms. He thrusts into me a few more times before he stiffens and comes with a growl.
I smile; I love doing this to him.
Afterward, we lie tangled together on the couch. We put on our underwear, but we’re otherwise naked.
Though my life isn’t perfect, I feel like I can handle anything right now. Normally, I shy away from expressing difficult emotions. But with Drew in my life, I know everything’s going to be okay. It was silly to think I’d lose my focus because of him, which is what I told Sarah about Josh; there’s no reason to avoid a relationship right now.
I need to listen to my own advice.
Josh is perfect for Sarah, and Drew...
I hug him close and whisper, “You’re perfect for me.”