If You Lived Here Read Online Free PDF

don’t know the Bee Gees. But I know O. “The Bee Gees are so uncool, they’re cool. Like Perry Como. ‘How
    Deep Is Your Love’ is very cool.”
    Marcy and O. know what they’re talking about, even if they don’t agree with each other. You have to have grown up in this country to know, and Gladys and I grew up in Vietnam. Gladys doesn’t care that she doesn’t know, which is its own kind of cool, actually.
    “You could get kidnap!” Gladys says to Marcy, circling back to the subject she does care about—Marcy’s threat to get a job at the Gap.
    “You can’t get kidnapped from the Gap, Ma!” Marcy grabs a broom and marches back toward the coolers. Her mother follows.
    I pick my lunch, a bowl of ph d , off the counter and balance it on my knees. Turning the rice noodles gently with my chopsticks, I examine the strands of scallion, flecks of chili and mint, the few tender pieces of chicken caught like fish in a net. The scent of the broth forms a warm, rich cloud around my face. I can smell cinnamon, lemon, the slightest bite of salt. The ingredients of a ph d would seem so obvious to someone who doesn’t cook: noodles, shredded meat, broth, and herbs. But that simple word “broth” contains a whole universe of flavors. Really, it only looks simple.
    Even on the other side of the store, Marcy and Gladys make so much noise arguing with each other that I lose my appetite. Marcy opens a crate
    and starts to shove packages of frozen fish into one of my freezers. Gladys stands next to her, miserable, her arms knotted across her chest. Marcy works hard, which explains why I keep her around, but I get tired of hearing them fight all the time.
    “You’re invading my space,” Marcy says, flicking her hand into the air as if her mother were an insect.
    “You going to have problem,” Gladys whines in her onion-paper voice. Gladys is hardly fifty, but she already stoops like an old lady and has begun to lose her hair. She grew up in the central highlands, near Kon Tum, I think, and she speaks Vietnamese with such a thick central accent that I can barely understand her. Her English is even worse, but her daughter refuses to communicate in Vietnamese, so she has no choice but to use English. “Gap no good,” Gladys says. “Not good people.” The final word sounds like a shriek: Peeeeeeeeee-pul. Hearing her accent makes me feel better about mine.
    Marcy slides the last package of fish into the freezer, then stops for a moment, pulling at her cold fingers. She looks at her mother. Sometimes she pretends that she doesn’t understand what Gladys is saying. Now she says, “Just give me a break.”
    Gladys yells across the store in Vietnamese. “Mai, you tell Marcy.”
    I don’t get involved. Marcy’s worked for me for three years already and tells me, when Gladys isn’t around, that she won’t leave. She just likes to taunt her mother.
    Gladys glares at Marcy. “Honestly!” It’s her favorite word. She will insert it, in English, into even the most monolingual Vietnamese conversations. Out of her mouth, in fact, it sounds Vietnamese: On ech ly! Then she stomps out of the store, her maneuver of last resort.
    Finally, some quiet. I touch the tip of my pinkie to the broth, but it’s lukewarm now. Somehow, I force down a few bites. I often feel like a par-ent, coaxing myself to eat. After all these years, you can see it in my face, which has become pasty and loose, like the skin of a grape that’s sat too long in the sun. Everyone used to say I looked like my mother, but up until the year she died my mother still had smooth, healthy skin. Even during the war, when we had nothing to eat but potatoes, my mother’s
    cheeks were full and rosy. And here I am, in America, and rich, looking older than she looked during the worst years of the war.
    The front door jingles and I look up just as the funeral director pushes her way inside. You recognize her first by the hair, wild and red, thick with curls, as unusual as a