The Family Chao

by Lan Samantha Chang

Genres: General Fiction; Asian American; Literary Fiction; Thrillers

Synopsis

A REMARKABLE FAMILY NOVEL ABOUT RACISM, COMMUNITY AND JUDGEMENT, FOR LISTENERS OF CELESTE NG, C PAM ZHANG, BRIT BENNETT AND JEFFREY EUGENIDES
‘An insightful comedy of the American immigrant experience, and of a small town's inner workings' JOHN IRVING
‘One of the finest and most ambitious novels about America I've read' YIYUN LI
‘A gorgeous and gripping literary mystery. . . reflecting themes of family, betrayal, passion, race, culture and the American Dream. . . A masterpiece' JEAN KWOK
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For years, the residents of Lake Haven, Wisconsin ignored the whispered troubles about the Chao family, if only to keep eating at the best restaurant in town. But when tyrannical patriarch Big Chao is found frozen to death in the family's meat freezer, scandalous events force the community to turn its attention to the three Chao sons.
Dagou – presupposed heir to the business.
Ming – accomplished city lawyer, determined to sever ties with Haven's Asian community once and for all.
James – naive college student, who is only just learning of his family's past.
When the family's dog mysteriously disappears, and Dagou ‘Dog Eater' Chao is held on trial for his father's murder, the Chaos' turbulent history spills into the public eye, while a small town looks on in disbelief. . .
AN INVENTIVE COMIC MYSTERY ABOUT THE UNDERCURRENTS OF AN UNFORTUNATE DEATH AND A TIMELESS TALE ABOUT DISTRUST, JUDEGEMENT AND CONDEMNATION
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MORE PRAISE FOR THE FAMILY CHAO
‘With nuance and slyness, wit and empathy, Chang turns the desires and deceits of one unhappy family into a moving and compelling saga of that classic American illness: ambition' VIET THANH NGUYEN
‘At once a brilliant reimagining of Dostoevsky and a wholly original and gripping story about the passions, rivalries and searing pressures that roil a singular immigrant family' JESS WALTER
‘The Family Chao is the ultimate family saga. Love, mystery, courtroom drama and lots of sibling rivalry. . . at every turn there's something new and surprising. I absolutely loved it. It's a masterclass' LUAN GOLDIE
‘A gripping story of three brothers, their tyrannical father and the family restaurant set in the American Midwest. . . Chang writes brilliantly about love, hate, food, dogs, race, sex, morality and money. . . marvellous and wonderfully entertaining' MARGOT LIVESEY
‘An intricate look at the so-called American Dream and one small-town American family trying and failing to save itself. . . An up-to-the-minute look at what it means to be accused and visible in America' ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN

Release date: February 1, 2022

Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.

Sample

 

DECEMBER 21

Fa—mi—lee

“PLEASE HELP, YOUNG MAN.”

Through the crowd at Union Station, slipping in and out among the travelers, the frail voice reaches James Chao’s inner ear. A first-year college student, James has lost his Mandarin, forgotten the language as a toddler with two older brothers teaching, loving, and tormenting him exclusively in English. Only from time to time, when he’s not expecting it, will a spoken phrase of Mandarin filter to this innermost chamber of his ear and steal into his consciousness.

“Please help.”

James turns. He’s looking into the face of an old man. The stranger might be in his seventies, close to his father’s age, but he is altogether more frail than Big Leo: he clutches an ancient blue traveling bag in one hand, stooping with the weight of it, and his eyes are milky with time. He’s seen through the cataracts, can see beyond James’s generic jeans and hoodie to recognize another Chinese man. Can the familiarity be also in their movements, something in the way they look at one another? Is it in the stranger’s way of gripping his luggage, mirroring James’s grasp on the greasy paper bag of vegetable jia li jiao he’s bringing home for his mother?

“I’m sorry,” James says. “I don’t speak Mandarin.” Here’s a liability of his: he always wants to help, but his ignorance makes him useless to his own kind. Not just to this man, but to every lost Mandarin-speaking traveler fumbling in mid-transfer who mistakes him for a helpful guide.

James can’t tell if the man has understood his English. He shakes his head, then retreats a few steps. But the old man holds up a finger to say, “One minute!” and reaches into his coat pocket.

“I can’t help you,” James says. “I—” He’s interrupted by an announcement for the California Zephyr. The crowd streams around them, everyone hurrying to make the train.

Standing stubbornly in place, the old man pulls out a U.S. airmail envelope addressed in Chinese characters, from which he extracts a photograph. He and James lean in and study it together.

It’s a posed color snapshot of a solemn-faced middle-aged man and woman seated with a young girl of about ten, her black hair cut into heavy bangs across her forehead. She grasps a small, muscular beagle on her lap, and the animal gazes balefully, red-eyed, into the flash. James doesn’t know why he’s being shown this, but as he studies the photo shaking in the man’s hand, he senses that he knows these strangers. He’s never met them, but he can tell that they are recently arrived to the U.S. He can recognize the feelings in their mute, level eyes: defended, skeptical, yet somehow filled with hope.

“Fa—mi—lee,” the old man says. “Fa-mi-lee Zhang.” The crowd has trampled through; he and James are alone now. He points at the photo, then to himself. “Zhang Fujian.”

“Family Chao,” James says, putting a finger to his chest. “Chao—” He could never pronounce his given name, Li Huan, correctly.

The old man flips the photo. On the back is written, in slightly smeared blue ballpoint, an Illinois address. James feels the lightening of relief. The town is near a stop along the same Amtrak line as his own stop, Lake Haven. The track is on the upper level.

He points across the station to the metal stairs. “Follow me,” he says.

The man’s wrinkled face splits into a brilliant smile of fake teeth.

James adjusts his backpack and duffel. He can do it, he will lead the stranger up out of this dark abyss of bending tunnels to the next step of his journey. He’s singularly moved by the idea of the old man traveling from afar—from the other side of the world, perhaps—to be united with his family, as James himself is traveling to his own family, coming home from college a thousand miles away, for Christmas.

James makes his way at an intentional pace toward the platform, glancing back at the man who shuffles along several steps behind. They reach the metal staircase. James can see a single light above the uncovered tracks, and beyond this light, the violet-gray underside of the evening sky heavy with snow. He nods, gestures toward the stairs, and takes the steps slowly, listening through the noise of the station, the low grumble of an approaching train. There are the old man’s footsteps, tentative but determined. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Near the top, he senses a slight reverberation on the steps under his feet. There’s no cry, no thud, but he can tell by the sudden absence of the tapping that something is wrong. He turns.

The man is lying at the foot of the stairs. It’s as if someone picked him off the steps and flung him down at an unnatural angle. James sees a spreading stain of urine darkening the concrete floor, spreading past his bag, which has flown, or been bumped, to the side.

James hurries back down the stairs. He drops his duffel and bag of jia li jiao, strips off his backpack.

Through his mind runs the drill of CPR class. The first step: Call for help. He pulls out his phone, dials 911, and shoves it back into his pocket. The paramedics will track the call. He kneels beside the man.

James opens the withered mouth and looks past the gate of dentures, checking the tongue. He unbuttons the rough coat and puts his ear to the man’s chest, pressing his cheek against the shirt. No heartbeat. He examines the face. Wrinkles gone now; the bluish skin melted back against the bones.

He lays his ear against the man’s chest. No pulse.

It’s absurd that he of all people is the one to try to save this man. But no, not absurd. He’s not a random stranger. He’s a premed, he’s taken two CPR classes. Though his arms feel weak and rubbery, though he’s terrified, he knows what he’s supposed to do. He positions his hands as he has learned, locks his elbows, closes his eyes, says a silent prayer, and makes the initial push, almost a punch, into the frail rib cage. One, two, three, four, five. At thirty, he checks for pulse, for breathing. Nothing.

He’ll try the rescue breaths, make sure to do it right. He gulps air and puts his lips over the old man’s mouth. A sour-sweet taste, like cranberries, spreads over his tongue. He struggles for another lungful of air. He’s already sweating. He listens for the heartbeat: nothing.

Will the paramedics come? James looks up. The station is empty now. There’s only one person within earshot, a plump man sprinting to catch the train.

James resumes CPR and puts his back into it. Hears, senses exquisitely, an agonizing crack. He’s learned about this, reminds himself that such a crack is not always a bone breaking, but simply grinding, loosening the chest.

Minutes pass, with James alternating breathing and pumping. He’s tiring, slowing down. His shoulders ache, his arms are rigid. The man is a shapeless bag of bones and cartilage, as lifeless as the plastic-and-fabric practice mannequin, but more uncanny than the mannequin, more remote.

Someone’s tapping his shoulder. He clutches at the body, but strong hands pull him away.

“Thank you,” someone says. “We’ll take over now.”

A team of EMTs moves in with a stretcher. James huddles to the side on hands and knees. He can hear the EMTs conversing in quick, confident terms he should remember from his classes, but he can’t focus enough to understand. He’s unneeded. Someone else is pumping at the body and he knows that, by now, they’re also probably unneeded. Cold with sweat, sore all over, he stumbles to his feet. The scene, the train station, seems unfamiliar. Snowflakes drift over the stairs, sparkling in the light from the lamp above.

An EMT is next to him.

“Are you a relative? A grandchild?”

“I—no,” says James. “His name is Zhang Fujian. My family name is Chao. We were just—fellow travelers. How is he?”

“I can’t give information to unrelated—”

“Please.”

She looks at him for a moment. “He’s unresponsive,” she says. “We can’t pronounce him dead, it’s done at the hospital. We’ll continue CPR until we get him there.”

“Should I come along?”

“There’s no need.” Her voice is sympathetic. “You did the best you could. But the chance of bringing someone back with CPR is very small.”

He recalls the photograph. “Check in his pocket. There’s an address.”

“All right, thanks.”

Without knowing why, James grabs his greasy paper bag and hands it to her. “For his family.”

The medic takes the food and walks back to the stretcher, where the others are still pumping. In seconds, the body is gone.

James is alone. Gradually, he becomes aware of his own heartbeat, his thoughts. They assumed he was related. It was too complicated to explain. For half an hour, he was related.

He reaches down for his backpack and duffel, and that’s when he sees the old man’s ancient traveling bag. He hurries in the direction of the EMTs, but they are gone.

James hears the low whistle and squeak of his approaching train.

What else is there to do but pick up the traveling bag and bring it with him? When he gets home, he’ll look inside for ID; if he can’t find any, he’ll try to find the man’s family, the Zhangs. He tries to visualize the address on the back of the photograph, the smeared Illinois. He’ll mail the bag to them. Boarding the train, he puts the bag with his own luggage onto the rack above and sinks into his seat.

He remembers the old man, frail and light, like a hollow-boned human bird, falling back as silently as a feather falls, but a mortal being, not at all light, so consuming to pummel and to hold, solid, stubbornly organic. Why did he give the jia li jiao to the EMT? The jia li jiao was going to be a present for his mother. Instead, he handed it off, as if a gift of food would make up for a human life. He’ll go home and tell Dagou. Dagou will understand. He pulls his hood over his face. The train rocks slightly, bearing him deeper into the country, toward Dagou and the city of Haven.

Be on My Side

“They don’t eat seafood at the Spiritual House,” Ming Chao says.

His connecting flight brought him to an airport closer to Haven. There he rented a car and picked up James from the train station. He’s now taking his brother the final thirty miles to their father’s restaurant. Ming Chao, Ming the Merciless, middle child and most successful of Leo’s sons. Math whiz and track star, he left home for good to work in Manhattan.

Years ago, Ming swore to everyone that he would never again spend Christmas in Wisconsin. He would never again deplane into a white tarmac of nothingness; never again slog knee-deep without boots across the airport rental lot under the frigid sky. Never again lay eyes upon his childhood street in winter, with its modest houses feebly outlined in strings of colored lights. He told everyone he would rather spend the holiday in New York, alone in his apartment, than return to this godforsaken heartland of deprivation.

So he wouldn’t normally be here this late in December, but for his mother’s personal request that he attend the luncheon tomorrow at the temple. Because she’s asked him to pick up James and make sure his brother gets something to eat, he’s now embroiled in the kind of family conversation he hates: charged and futile. James has blurted everything that happened at Union Station. He’s described a photograph: a man and woman, a girl with bangs, a beagle. He’s described the exhausting, terrifying process of performing CPR. Ming has no desire to dwell on his brother’s trauma of having a man die under his hands. He can’t stand to hear James describe his sense of piercing solitude, his shame. He steers the conversation toward the jia li jiao.

“There might be fish oil in the curry,” he says. He skirts the south end of the lake, turns off the freeway, and steers past the big box stores and then the office buildings, toward the local businesses. It’s all even more insignificant than he remembered. “Ma quit seafood this fall, when she moved in with the nuns. So it doesn’t matter you gave away her present.”

“I wanted to do something for his family,” James persists.

“They don’t eat anything with eyes. Even their dogs are vegetarians.” Tiny flakes whirl down; Ming switches on the wipers. “You shouldn’t involve yourself in other peoples’ private lives,” he says. “Not even out of the best intentions. You’ve never performed CPR. That family could track you down and file a lawsuit.”

Ming steers the rental into an alley. This is also the kind of route his father and older brother take—circuitous and perverse, pointlessly sneaky. And Ming has inherited the Chaos’ intense physicality, with his greyhound leanness and the aerodynamic way he carries himself, putting the tip of his nose forward over the wheel.

“You don’t have to stop at the restaurant,” James says.

Ming thinks of his mother’s instructions. “You haven’t had dinner.”

“You can just drop me—” James’s pocket buzzes as if something is trapped inside.

“Who’s that?” Ming asks.

But he knows it’s Dagou. Thrilled that James is coming home, Dagou must be pelting him with texts. Not that Ming is being left out. James, the sad-sack poker player, is holding the phone so anyone can see it. Ming peers over, and indeed, the text is from their older brother.

O, James! My heart is a fucking rose in bloom!

Now their phones buzz together. It’s a group text, also from Dagou. Each looks at his phone, then at the other’s.

Tomorrow, at the Spiritual House. Please be on my side.

“On his side about what?” James asks.

“He’s on the warpath.” How could Ming explain? How could anyone describe the chaos that had descended on the Chao household as soon as James left home for college? Four months later, their mother was living with Buddhist nuns and Dagou had bulked up by thirty pounds. “And he’s crazy,” he tells James, unable to stop himself from adding, “How he manages to stay engaged to Katherine is beyond me.”

Ming can’t figure out how Dagou has attracted the devotion of a woman like Katherine Corcoran. Too smart for him, too attractive, too accomplished, and too good. Too much of a good thing, and Dagou unable to avoid fucking it up. Dagou, falling in thrall all over again with Brenda Wozicek, that pansexual demon of his high school days. Brenda Wozicek, who in her junior year slept with every boy and girl on the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar. (She had been chosen, inevitably, to play Mary Magdalene.)

“What do you mean?” James asks.

Where to start? Way back in high school, when she’d inflicted lasting damage on their brother by not giving him the time of day? “I think it started to go bad last year when Dad hired Brenda as the new server.”

“No.” James defends their brother’s long-term relationship, and no wonder: Dagou and Katherine are like parents to him. They’ve been dating since college, when James was in the third grade. “Brenda was just a high school crush. He told me about it. She was always, um, with other people. And white guys. Like that football player, Eric somebody.”

“Eric Braun. Her stock has dropped since high school. Now she’s a denizen of Haven, a waitress, a hopeless villager. She has tattoos. She has blue hair,” Ming says. But Dagou has never gotten over those six months, in high school, when Brenda was a blonde. In Dagou’s mind, she’s still on prom court.

“Dagou loves Katherine,” James insists. Of course, James, who’s obviously still a virgin, believes it’s Katherine who has made Dagou’s heart into a rose in bloom.

“Like father, like son,” Ming says. He turns back to the wheel, avoiding James’s expression of confused naïveté. How is it possible he and his brother were born of the same parents, grew up in the same house, witnessed the same fights? The tumultuous conflicts over food and women, from which Ming recoiled, have turned James into an obedient son, a good little premed, close to Dagou and their mother, even to their father. James is a sap. This is a tragedy, but Ming prefers to see it as a comedy.

“Ma asked me to fly home for this special luncheon at the Spiritual House tomorrow,” he says. “So I called Dagou, made him tell me what’s been going on. It turns out the place is a madhouse. Dagou’s sleeping with Brenda Wozicek, and he’s raving like a nut. All of a sudden he’s saying Dad owes him. I tell him, ‘If you wanted Dad to give you a cent, you should have gotten it in writing.’ He doesn’t listen. Instead, he’s sponsoring this community luncheon tomorrow. He has a showdown planned, with Dad, in front of Ma and everyone they know. He asked Gu Ling Zhu Chi to adjudicate.”

“What good will that do?”

It will do no good—no good at all. “He has this crazy hope that Dad will obey Gu Ling Zhu Chi because she’s the head nun,” Ming says, “or abbess, whatever. If he thinks she’s going to take his side, he’s in for disappointment. These Buddhist types live on handouts. Ten-to-one they support whoever has more money.”

This Ming has believed ever since he gave the grateful nuns the dowry for his mother’s living expenses. He supported Winnie’s sudden decision to leave his father and take refuge at the Spiritual House. But the thought of her absence from home makes him uneasy. This is the real reason he’s staying in a hotel.

James says, “Isn’t Ma still a Christian? Won’t she want Ba to be charitable to Dagou? To enter the Kingdom of God?”

“Ba would more easily go through the eye of a needle than enter the Kingdom of God.” Ming squints at the windshield. The air is chill, the sky is moonless: gray, thick level clouds lower to meet the earth. What’s that feeling in the air? Both quiet and disquiet. It’s going to snow a lot more.

“Your problem is that you love everyone too much,” he says. “But things have taken a steep downhill around here since you left in August. Stay out of it. Don’t get involved, and go back to school right after Christmas. You’re young, James, there’s still hope for you. You stay away from Dad and Dagou. You listening?”

“Is Alf all right?” James asks, reaching for the one remaining source of comfort.

“Alf is fine. You need to bring him to the luncheon tomorrow. Ma wants Gu Ling Zhu Chi to pray for him with all the other dogs.”

“Holy Alf.”

“We’re here.” Ming turns into the parking lot. It’s ten-thirty and the restaurant is closed. Upstairs, in his bachelor apartment, Dagou’s lights are out. Downstairs, the small, shabby dining room is deserted. Only the red neon sign is still lit: fine chao.

“Get something to eat; Dad is here. He’ll bring you home.” He pulls his rental into a space next to their father’s Ford Taurus. Leo has kept their mother’s car, the Honda, which she renounced along with the rest of her material goods. Now Leo has two cars. But Ming has rented his own vehicle. It is an ignominy to return to Haven, the site of shame, torment. He won’t add to it by borrowing a family car, eating at the restaurant, or sleeping in his childhood room. He wants to be beholden to their father as little as possible. “I’ll meet you and Alf tomorrow, at the Spiritual House, around eleven. Ma will be happy to see you.” He pops the trunk. “Don’t forget your luggage.”

James gets out and moves his things into their father’s much larger, fuller, messier trunk, where they’ll be lost among the packages, the dumbbells, and the snow shovel. Sitting behind the wheel, Ming checks his phone. He reads his brother’s reply to the group text: I’m on your side. Love, James.

DECEMBER 21

Fa—mi—lee

“PLEASE HELP, YOUNG MAN.”

Through the crowd at Union Station, slipping in and out among the travelers, the frail voice reaches James Chao’s inner ear. A first-year college student, James has lost his Mandarin, forgotten the language as a toddler with two older brothers teaching, loving, and tormenting him exclusively in English. Only from time to time, when he’s not expecting it, will a spoken phrase of Mandarin filter to this innermost chamber of his ear and steal into his consciousness.

“Please help.”

James turns. He’s looking into the face of an old man. The stranger might be in his seventies, close to his father’s age, but he is altogether more frail than Big Leo: he clutches an ancient blue traveling bag in one hand, stooping with the weight of it, and his eyes are milky with time. He’s seen through the cataracts, can see beyond James’s generic jeans and hoodie to recognize another Chinese man. Can the familiarity be also in their movements, something in the way they look at one another? Is it in the stranger’s way of gripping his luggage, mirroring James’s grasp on the greasy paper bag of vegetable jia li jiao he’s bringing home for his mother?

“I’m sorry,” James says. “I don’t speak Mandarin.” Here’s a liability of his: he always wants to help, but his ignorance makes him useless to his own kind. Not just to this man, but to every lost Mandarin-speaking traveler fumbling in mid-transfer who mistakes him for a helpful guide.

James can’t tell if the man has understood his English. He shakes his head, then retreats a few steps. But the old man holds up a finger to say, “One minute!” and reaches into his coat pocket.

“I can’t help you,” James says. “I—” He’s interrupted by an announcement for the California Zephyr. The crowd streams around them, everyone hurrying to make the train.

Standing stubbornly in place, the old man pulls out a U.S. airmail envelope addressed in Chinese characters, from which he extracts a photograph. He and James lean in and study it together.

It’s a posed color snapshot of a solemn-faced middle-aged man and woman seated with a young girl of about ten, her black hair cut into heavy bangs across her forehead. She grasps a small, muscular beagle on her lap, and the animal gazes balefully, red-eyed, into the flash. James doesn’t know why he’s being shown this, but as he studies the photo shaking in the man’s hand, he senses that he knows these strangers. He’s never met them, but he can tell that they are recently arrived to the U.S. He can recognize the feelings in their mute, level eyes: defended, skeptical, yet somehow filled with hope.

“Fa—mi—lee,” the old man says. “Fa-mi-lee Zhang.” The crowd has trampled through; he and James are alone now. He points at the photo, then to himself. “Zhang Fujian.”

“Family Chao,” James says, putting a finger to his chest. “Chao—” He could never pronounce his given name, Li Huan, correctly.

The old man flips the photo. On the back is written, in slightly smeared blue ballpoint, an Illinois address. James feels the lightening of relief. The town is near a stop along the same Amtrak line as his own stop, Lake Haven. The track is on the upper level.

He points across the station to the metal stairs. “Follow me,” he says.

The man’s wrinkled face splits into a brilliant smile of fake teeth.

James adjusts his backpack and duffel. He can do it, he will lead the stranger up out of this dark abyss of bending tunnels to the next step of his journey. He’s singularly moved by the idea of the old man traveling from afar—from the other side of the world, perhaps—to be united with his family, as James himself is traveling to his own family, coming home from college a thousand miles away, for Christmas.

James makes his way at an intentional pace toward the platform, glancing back at the man who shuffles along several steps behind. They reach the metal staircase. James can see a single light above the uncovered tracks, and beyond this light, the violet-gray underside of the evening sky heavy with snow. He nods, gestures toward the stairs, and takes the steps slowly, listening through the noise of the station, the low grumble of an approaching train. There are the old man’s footsteps, tentative but determined. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Near the top, he senses a slight reverberation on the steps under his feet. There’s no cry, no thud, but he can tell by the sudden absence of the tapping that something is wrong. He turns.

The man is lying at the foot of the stairs. It’s as if someone picked him off the steps and flung him down at an unnatural angle. James sees a spreading stain of urine darkening the concrete floor, spreading past his bag, which has flown, or been bumped, to the side.

James hurries back down the stairs. He drops his duffel and bag of jia li jiao, strips off his backpack.

Through his mind runs the drill of CPR class. The first step: Call for help. He pulls out his phone, dials 911, and shoves it back into his pocket. The paramedics will track the call. He kneels beside the man.

James opens the withered mouth and looks past the gate of dentures, checking the tongue. He unbuttons the rough coat and puts his ear to the man’s chest, pressing his cheek against the shirt. No heartbeat. He examines the face. Wrinkles gone now; the bluish skin melted back against the bones.

He lays his ear against the man’s chest. No pulse.

It’s absurd that he of all people is the one to try to save this man. But no, not absurd. He’s not a random stranger. He’s a premed, he’s taken two CPR classes. Though his arms feel weak and rubbery, though he’s terrified, he knows what he’s supposed to do. He positions his hands as he has learned, locks his elbows, closes his eyes, says a silent prayer, and makes the initial push, almost a punch, into the frail rib cage. One, two, three, four, five. At thirty, he checks for pulse, for breathing. Nothing.

He’ll try the rescue breaths, make sure to do it right. He gulps air and puts his lips over the old man’s mouth. A sour-sweet taste, like cranberries, spreads over his tongue. He struggles for another lungful of air. He’s already sweating. He listens for the heartbeat: nothing.

Will the paramedics come? James looks up. The station is empty now. There’s only one person within earshot, a plump man sprinting to catch the train.

James resumes CPR and puts his back into it. Hears, senses exquisitely, an agonizing crack. He’s learned about this, reminds himself that such a crack is not always a bone breaking, but simply grinding, loosening the chest.

Minutes pass, with James alternating breathing and pumping. He’s tiring, slowing down. His shoulders ache, his arms are rigid. The man is a shapeless bag of bones and cartilage, as lifeless as the plastic-and-fabric practice mannequin, but more uncanny than the mannequin, more remote.

Someone’s tapping his shoulder. He clutches at the body, but strong hands pull him away.

“Thank you,” someone says. “We’ll take over now.”

A team of EMTs moves in with a stretcher. James huddles to the side on hands and knees. He can hear the EMTs conversing in quick, confident terms he should remember from his classes, but he can’t focus enough to understand. He’s unneeded. Someone else is pumping at the body and he knows that, by now, they’re also probably unneeded. Cold with sweat, sore all over, he stumbles to his feet. The scene, the train station, seems unfamiliar. Snowflakes drift over the stairs, sparkling in the light from the lamp above.

An EMT is next to him.

“Are you a relative? A grandchild?”

“I—no,” says James. “His name is Zhang Fujian. My family name is Chao. We were just—fellow travelers. How is he?”

“I can’t give information to unrelated—”

“Please.”

She looks at him for a moment. “He’s unresponsive,” she says. “We can’t pronounce him dead, it’s done at the hospital. We’ll continue CPR until we get him there.”

“Should I come along?”

“There’s no need.” Her voice is sympathetic. “You did the best you could. But the chance of bringing someone back with CPR is very small.”

He recalls the photograph. “Check in his pocket. There’s an address.”

“All right, thanks.”

Without knowing why, James grabs his greasy paper bag and hands it to her. “For his family.”

The medic takes the food and walks back to the stretcher, where the others are still pumping. In seconds, the body is gone.

James is alone. Gradually, he becomes aware of his own heartbeat, his thoughts. They assumed he was related. It was too complicated to explain. For half an hour, he was related.

He reaches down for his backpack and duffel, and that’s when he sees the old man’s ancient traveling bag. He hurries in the direction of the EMTs, but they are gone.

James hears the low whistle and squeak of his approaching train.

What else is there to do but pick up the traveling bag and bring it with him? When he gets home, he’ll look inside for ID; if he can’t find any, he’ll try to find the man’s family, the Zhangs. He tries to visualize the address on the back of the photograph, the smeared Illinois. He’ll mail the bag to them. Boarding the train, he puts the bag with his own luggage onto the rack above and sinks into his seat.

He remembers the old man, frail and light, like a hollow-boned human bird, falling back as silently as a feather falls, but a mortal being, not at all light, so consuming to pummel and to hold, solid, stubbornly organic. Why did he give the jia li jiao to the EMT? The jia li jiao was going to be a present for his mother. Instead, he handed it off, as if a gift of food would make up for a human life. He’ll go home and tell Dagou. Dagou will understand. He pulls his hood over his face. The train rocks slightly, bearing him deeper into the country, toward Dagou and the city of Haven.

Be on My Side

“They don’t eat seafood at the Spiritual House,” Ming Chao says.

His connecting flight brought him to an airport closer to Haven. There he rented a car and picked up James from the train station. He’s now taking his brother the final thirty miles to their father’s restaurant. Ming Chao, Ming the Merciless, middle child and most successful of Leo’s sons. Math whiz and track star, he left home for good to work in Manhattan.

Years ago, Ming swore to everyone that he would never again spend Christmas in Wisconsin. He would never again deplane into a white tarmac of nothingness; never again slog knee-deep without boots across the airport rental lot under the frigid sky. Never again lay eyes upon his childhood street in winter, with its modest houses feebly outlined in strings of colored lights. He told everyone he would rather spend the holiday in New York, alone in his apartment, than return to this godforsaken heartland of deprivation.

So he wouldn’t normally be here this late in December, but for his mother’s personal request that he attend the luncheon tomorrow at the temple. Because she’s asked him to pick up James and make sure his brother gets something to eat, he’s now embroiled in the kind of family conversation he hates: charged and futile. James has blurted everything that happened at Union Station. He’s described a photograph: a man and woman, a girl with bangs, a beagle. He’s described the exhausting, terrifying process of performing CPR. Ming has no desire to dwell on his brother’s trauma of having a man die under his hands. He can’t stand to hear James describe his sense of piercing solitude, his shame. He steers the conversation toward the jia li jiao.

“There might be fish oil in the curry,” he says. He skirts the south end of the lake, turns off the freeway, and steers past the big box stores and then the office buildings, toward the local businesses. It’s all even more insignificant than he remembered. “Ma quit seafood this fall, when she moved in with the nuns. So it doesn’t matter you gave away her present.”

“I wanted to do something for his family,” James persists.

“They don’t eat anything with eyes. Even their dogs are vegetarians.” Tiny flakes whirl down; Ming switches on the wipers. “You shouldn’t involve yourself in other peoples’ private lives,” he says. “Not even out of the best intentions. You’ve never performed CPR. That family could track you down and file a lawsuit.”

Ming steers the rental into an alley. This is also the kind of route his father and older brother take—circuitous and perverse, pointlessly sneaky. And Ming has inherited the Chaos’ intense physicality, with his greyhound leanness and the aerodynamic way he carries himself, putting the tip of his nose forward over the wheel.

“You don’t have to stop at the restaurant,” James says.

Ming thinks of his mother’s instructions. “You haven’t had dinner.”

“You can just drop me—” James’s pocket buzzes as if something is trapped inside.

“Who’s that?” Ming asks.

But he knows it’s Dagou. Thrilled that James is coming home, Dagou must be pelting him with texts. Not that Ming is being left out. James, the sad-sack poker player, is holding the phone so anyone can see it. Ming peers over, and indeed, the text is from their older brother.

O, James! My heart is a fucking rose in bloom!

Now their phones buzz together. It’s a group text, also from Dagou. Each looks at his phone, then at the other’s.

Tomorrow, at the Spiritual House. Please be on my side.

“On his side about what?” James asks.

“He’s on the warpath.” How could Ming explain? How could anyone describe the chaos that had descended on the Chao household as soon as James left home for college? Four months later, their mother was living with Buddhist nuns and Dagou had bulked up by thirty pounds. “And he’s crazy,” he tells James, unable to stop himself from adding, “How he manages to stay engaged to Katherine is beyond me.”

Ming can’t figure out how Dagou has attracted the devotion of a woman like Katherine Corcoran. Too smart for him, too attractive, too accomplished, and too good. Too much of a good thing, and Dagou unable to avoid fucking it up. Dagou, falling in thrall all over again with Brenda Wozicek, that pansexual demon of his high school days. Brenda Wozicek, who in her junior year slept with every boy and girl on the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar. (She had been chosen, inevitably, to play Mary Magdalene.)

“What do you mean?” James asks.

Where to start? Way back in high school, when she’d inflicted lasting damage on their brother by not giving him the time of day? “I think it started to go bad last year when Dad hired Brenda as the new server.”

“No.” James defends their brother’s long-term relationship, and no wonder: Dagou and Katherine are like parents to him. They’ve been dating since college, when James was in the third grade. “Brenda was just a high school crush. He told me about it. She was always, um, with other people. And white guys. Like that football player, Eric somebody.”

“Eric Braun. Her stock has dropped since high school. Now she’s a denizen of Haven, a waitress, a hopeless villager. She has tattoos. She has blue hair,” Ming says. But Dagou has never gotten over those six months, in high school, when Brenda was a blonde. In Dagou’s mind, she’s still on prom court.

“Dagou loves Katherine,” James insists. Of course, James, who’s obviously still a virgin, believes it’s Katherine who has made Dagou’s heart into a rose in bloom.

“Like father, like son,” Ming says. He turns back to the wheel, avoiding James’s expression of confused naïveté. How is it possible he and his brother were born of the same parents, grew up in the same house, witnessed the same fights? The tumultuous conflicts over food and women, from which Ming recoiled, have turned James into an obedient son, a good little premed, close to Dagou and their mother, even to their father. James is a sap. This is a tragedy, but Ming prefers to see it as a comedy.

“Ma asked me to fly home for this special luncheon at the Spiritual House tomorrow,” he says. “So I called Dagou, made him tell me what’s been going on. It turns out the place is a madhouse. Dagou’s sleeping with Brenda Wozicek, and he’s raving like a nut. All of a sudden he’s saying Dad owes him. I tell him, ‘If you wanted Dad to give you a cent, you should have gotten it in writing.’ He doesn’t listen. Instead, he’s sponsoring this community luncheon tomorrow. He has a showdown planned, with Dad, in front of Ma and everyone they know. He asked Gu Ling Zhu Chi to adjudicate.”

“What good will that do?”

It will do no good—no good at all. “He has this crazy hope that Dad will obey Gu Ling Zhu Chi because she’s the head nun,” Ming says, “or abbess, whatever. If he thinks she’s going to take his side, he’s in for disappointment. These Buddhist types live on handouts. Ten-to-one they support whoever has more money.”

This Ming has believed ever since he gave the grateful nuns the dowry for his mother’s living expenses. He supported Winnie’s sudden decision to leave his father and take refuge at the Spiritual House. But the thought of her absence from home makes him uneasy. This is the real reason he’s staying in a hotel.

James says, “Isn’t Ma still a Christian? Won’t she want Ba to be charitable to Dagou? To enter the Kingdom of God?”

“Ba would more easily go through the eye of a needle than enter the Kingdom of God.” Ming squints at the windshield. The air is chill, the sky is moonless: gray, thick level clouds lower to meet the earth. What’s that feeling in the air? Both quiet and disquiet. It’s going to snow a lot more.

“Your problem is that you love everyone too much,” he says. “But things have taken a steep downhill around here since you left in August. Stay out of it. Don’t get involved, and go back to school right after Christmas. You’re young, James, there’s still hope for you. You stay away from Dad and Dagou. You listening?”

“Is Alf all right?” James asks, reaching for the one remaining source of comfort.

“Alf is fine. You need to bring him to the luncheon tomorrow. Ma wants Gu Ling Zhu Chi to pray for him with all the other dogs.”

“Holy Alf.”

“We’re here.” Ming turns into the parking lot. It’s ten-thirty and the restaurant is closed. Upstairs, in his bachelor apartment, Dagou’s lights are out. Downstairs, the small, shabby dining room is deserted. Only the red neon sign is still lit: fine chao.

“Get something to eat; Dad is here. He’ll bring you home.” He pulls his rental into a space next to their father’s Ford Taurus. Leo has kept their mother’s car, the Honda, which she renounced along with the rest of her material goods. Now Leo has two cars. But Ming has rented his own vehicle. It is an ignominy to return to Haven, the site of shame, torment. He won’t add to it by borrowing a family car, eating at the restaurant, or sleeping in his childhood room. He wants to be beholden to their father as little as possible. “I’ll meet you and Alf tomorrow, at the Spiritual House, around eleven. Ma will be happy to see you.” He pops the trunk. “Don’t forget your luggage.”

James gets out and moves his things into their father’s much larger, fuller, messier trunk, where they’ll be lost among the packages, the dumbbells, and the snow shovel. Sitting behind the wheel, Ming checks his phone. He reads his brother’s reply to the group text: I’m on your side. Love, James.

The Dog Father

Entering the Fine Chao Restaurant through the back door, James passes, on his left, the stairs to the basement, and on his right, the restaurant office with its old television murmuring. Next is the kitchen, where nothing has changed in fifteen years. There’s the bulletin board covered with scraps of paper, yellowing with age. These are notes Leo and Winnie Chao wrote to each other over the decades. When they fought, these missives were a primary method of communication. (The other was to use the children as messengers.) The notes are written sometimes in Chinese and sometimes in English in order to confuse the workers. There’s also a schedule, now eighteen years old, of Dagou’s high school orchestra rehearsals. From a time even before then, from before James was born, there’s a list of frequently requested items in English and Chinese:

Egg rolls

Wontons

Pot stickers

Crab rangoons (What are these? Winnie, their mother, annotated in Chinese. Their father wrote underneath, Wontons filled with cream cheese.)

Beef with broccoli

Following a scattershot statistical analysis, Winnie also compiled a list of things Americans liked:

Large chunks of meat

Wontons and noodles together in the same soup

Pea pods and green beans, carrots, broccoli, baby corn (no other vegetables)

Ribs or chicken wings

Beef with broccoli

Chicken with peanuts

Peanuts in everything

Chop suey (What is this? Leo wrote. I don’t know, Winnie wrote.)

Anything with shrimp (The rest of them can’t eat shrimp, she annotated. Be careful.)

Anything from the deep fryer

Anything with sweet and sour sauce

Anything with a thick, brown sauce

And there is, of course, the list of things the Americans didn’t like:

Meat on the bone (except ribs or chicken wings)

Rice porridge

Fermented soybeans

In a small fridge for employees, there are containers of stir-fried vegetables kept separate by O-Lan, the woman from Guangzhou who is one of three outside kitchen employees, and who doesn’t eat meat; beers for JJ, the second chef, and for Lulu, the other server (who after years of silent courtship have unexpectedly gone to San Francisco together over the holidays); and Dagou’s personal stash of pork with jiu cai and noodles. James heats a pile of pork and noodles on the stove. He’s starving.

As he transfers the food into a bowl, a pounding noise comes from below. It’s the sound of his father, Leo, Big Chao, coming up the stairs—footsteps that reverberate and thump with the authority of a man larger than he actually is. To these footsteps is added deep and resonant grumbling, profanity growing more audible until, when he reaches the top of the stairs, a full question detaches itself and sings into the kitchen in a ringing baritone:

“Who the fuck is coming to clean up half an hour after close?”

James abandons his dinner, edges into the hallway. “Baba, it’s me.”

He’s the only son who still calls Leo “Baba,” which Dagou shortened to “Ba,” and Ming changed to “Dad.” Sometimes his brothers refer to Leo as “Aw, Gee, Pops”—this is one of the only jokes they share.

“Oh, it’s you!” Leo yells, emerging into the hall. “I smelled those disgusting jiu cai noodles and thought it was your worthless brother. But it’s you.”

He grins, delighted, and claps James on the shoulder.

He’s a sturdy, vigorous man with tadpole eyes and a dark, strong-featured face thickened by food and living. James catches a whiff of cooking grease, pipe tobacco, and stale clothes.

“Your hands are cold,” he says, pushing away an image of the man in Union Station.

“I was in the basement, freezer room! Picking out something for tomorrow.” Over Leo’s shoulder is slung a restaurant delivery bag.

“You shouldn’t go down there when no one else is in the building.” The freezer door locks automatically. “It’s not up to code, Baba.”

“It’s fine,” his father says. “Jerry Stern worked his magic with the city inspector. I told your big brother, study law, but he doesn’t listen, majors in music. Now Baby Mozart’s paying off his loans cooking for Americans.” Like the rest of the community, Leo uses the term “American” to describe any outsider. The term is half ironic, half utilitarian.

James is disappointed Dagou isn’t here to welcome him home. He doesn’t dare ask his father where Dagou is, doesn’t want to provoke him.

But Leo, guessing his thoughts, says, “Your worthless brother’s making out with his new girlfriend. Or getting ready for his big showdown at the nunnery tomorrow.” He gestures to the hall. “Come to my office! I got something strong for you.”

The office is crammed with detritus from thirty-five years of business, including an ancient adding machine and a naked fake Christmas tree. James sits in his mother’s old chair, his father in the recliner. Leo catches James’s eye, shoots him a flare of approval. Despite all Ming has just said, James feels a metabolic, answering spark of happiness, kinship, recognition.

“Try this.” Leo Chao holds out a tumbler to James.

“Did you get this from those guys you know in Chicago?” James asks, eyeing the unmarked bottle on Leo’s desk.

“Yeah, this is real thing.”

As James lifts the glass, a hideous, pungent odor of fruity, rotten socks pervades his sinuses. He squeezes his eyes shut, sips, and lets the awful taste spread over his tongue.

“Ha, look at that!” His father gestures at the television.

There’s nothing on the screen except a fenced patio with an open gate. Then an animal lumbers onto the patio, sniffing at the fence. It’s a yearling bear, burnished brown—there’s no mistaking its thick, furry body, the bulk of its rear end, its heavy yet clownish, rolling walk.

A small, stocky black creature torpedoes down a staircase. The creature barks wildly, growling and snapping at the bear, which, after a moment’s stunned confrontation, rises up on its hind legs in dismay. Like a black streak, the dog chases the bear up and down the patio, lunging and nipping at its heels. Panicking, the bear clambers over the fence. The dog, tail up, ...