The Meagre Tarmac Read Online Free PDF

time, they just sit and complain, drink some wine and play their bridge. After half a glass, my mother will say, “What was the bid? I’m feeling so light-headed!” Al and my father were in grad school together and started out at PacBell together, and my father’s still there. Al decided to go entrepreneur, and bought a computer franchise. He sold that at just the right time and bought and sold a few more things at their peak, and then he bought a hotel in Napa. He built it up with spas and a gourmet restaurant and hiking trails, and then he opened a winery: AW Estates. The hotel is where young Bay-Area Chinese professionals want to get married, or at least honeymoon or go on weekend getaways. He says there are so many young Bay-Area Asians at his hotel that it’s like a second Google campus. AW Estates pinot is what young Chinese professionals drink. He’s even got a line of plum wine for the older folks, a girl like me. Every thing he touches turns to gold.
    I don’t know how it started, but tonight there’s an edge, an identifiable complaint, coming from my father. “I’ve been thinking,” he starts, and he leans forward, perhaps aware that I’m sitting ten feet away. “I’m thinking my children disrespect me.”
    That’s the news? Al says, “Mitzi and I never wanted children.” Once they made that decision, she went to law school and now she’s a major litigator.
    â€œI blame this country,” says my father.
    â€œIt’s in the culture,” says Al. He came from Hong Kong. “We can’t live their lives.”
    â€œI believe my son is dating a person without my permission. I believe he is involved with a most inappropriate young lady.”
    That’s when Al says, maybe to break up the seriousness, “By the way, guess who’s back from the East? Now she’s an accountant. I’ve hired her to do my books.”
    And then, just from His Lordship’s grimace, it all makes sense. There was someone in those days of hot action in Palo Alto. Tiffy Hu smelled it out, and I’ve spent thirteen years in a fog. It’s so exciting, so unexpected, I want to jump up and pump my fist.
    â€œI think ...” my father says, then pauses, “I think that we must leave this country.”
    If furniture could speak, it would shout, “What?!”
    â€œHey, man, that’s an extreme reaction,” says Al. “I’m not talking of that one. I have been a bad father. Things have been going on under my nose, outside my control. Asian children should never be allowed to stay in this country past their childhood. I may have already lost my son, but I can still protect my daughter. If I can save one from shame and humiliation I will at least have done half my job.”
    I clear my throat. “May I speak?”
    His Lordship stares across the living room, as though an alarm clock he’d set and forgotten about had just gone off. Truly, I am invisible to him. “Pardon me, but that train has left the station.”
    â€œWe’re not talking of trains,” he snaps.
    â€œOkay. That horse has left the barn.”
    I never thought I would, under any circumstance, defend my brother. His Lordship, says, “Kindly keep your opinions to yourself. You are not part of this conversation. This is about your brother.”
    I’m up against something that is irrational. I can’t argue against it. “No, it’s not! It’s not about him. That genie is out of the bottle. It’s about me, isn’t it?”
    Al Wong passes his hand between my father’s frozen gaze, and me. “Vivek,” he says, “she has a point.”
    Some day I want to ask Al Wong, what was it that happened in that house in Palo Alto? What caused my father to cast a lifelong shadow on this family?
    â€œGo to your mother,” my father says. I don’t go directly to my mother. My fate in this family