“I pay your salary,” their father continues. “I let you eat for free and live over the restaurant. But I can’t support a partner.”
“Now, Leo,” says Ken Fan affably. “That can’t be true.”
“I’ll prove it to you. Show you my tax return.”
“Of course your tax return makes you seem broke,” Dagou fumes. “Of course on paper you’re barely breaking even. You never report cash!”
Everyone suspects that Leo siphons off the cash. But everyone also knows it’s stupid of Dagou to bring it out in the open.
“Look at my son,” Leo says. “When he was little, he thought his father could make it rain. Now he thinks I’m a rainmaker. Thinks I’m sitting on a big pile of cash.”
“You promised me!” Dagou yells back.
There’s an almost imperceptible rumble from their father, a flicker in his jaw. Ming holds his breath. Beneath the table, Alf sits upright, pushing his butt more securely into Ming’s loafers.
“In fact, you owe me,” their father is saying. He surveys the table. “Yes, he owes me rent for all these years he lived here for free!”
Dagou’s wide neck flames red. “You offered me the apartment! You—”
“I say nothing all these years. But since you bring it up, every year you are a bigger liability. One thousand per month in rent I could be making for a nice two-bedroom apartment over the restaurant. A nice, spacious two-bedroom home—the place where our own family lived until you were eight years old. I could be renting to another family! Making more than seventy thousand dollars! Not counting interest! You’re living there for free! And since you mention, there’s the extra food. You are not a small guy. I give you room and board. Compounded over six years, that comes out to over one hundred thousand dollars.”
Dagou squirms. Ming’s lips twitch. Here is the irregularity in Dagou’s model of filial piety: if Dagou is truly a filial son, an obedient, selfless son, as he so clearly thinks he is, then he shouldn’t assume anything more in return for his labor.
“And now the dog wants a bigger house!” Leo continues. Ming wonders what his father is talking about. “You finally want to settle in Haven like your father! You were too good for it before. Now that you’re a failure—”
“That’s not true! He’s not a failure!” James pipes up, challenging Leo.
Genially, Leo waves him off. It was stupid for Dagou to think their brother’s help would make a difference. With his skinny face and his college hoodie, not to mention his God-knows-why affection for every one of them, James is not a serious adversary.
“You think I’m a loser!” Dagou yells. “Am I a loser for keeping us alive when all the decent places are moving to the strip? I keep your business going. You pay me almost nothing. My salary is a joke. I want an equal share of the profits.”
“Big man,” sneers Leo.
Ming knows Dagou will turn to Winnie a second before he does it. He always runs to their mother.
“He grown up now,” Winnie says. “Let him have his share.”
“You stay out of this! You gave up the business when you left it for this menstruation hut!”
The table erupts. “Lay off it.” “Don’t talk to her like that!” “This is a Spiritual House.”
Leo pushes back his chair.
Standing, he has the look of a beast on its hind legs: hairy, primitive, his long arms hanging almost to his knees. It isn’t just the dark, unshaven hair sprouting in patches on his cheeks. There is something hungry yet remote in his close-set eyes. Everyone can see it. Some of them shrink back and turn away. Ming knows this eerie quality well. It has been there in his father for as long as he can remember. Long ago, he learned to escape its worst, to allow other members of the family to confront it. Now he climbs up into a place of refuge in his mind. A kind of hunting blind, where he can watch and wait.
From above, Ming watches his brother. Dagou has the blank expression of someone who is only just becoming aware of what he’s done.
“‘Don’t talk to her like that,’” their father jeers. “Mama’s boy! And you …”
He grins wickedly at Winnie. Despite her vow of tranquility, she appears ready to bolt from her chair. The nuns seated on either side hold on to her arms.
“You think he’s still your diaper-filling lamb. You have no idea what a dog he is. Ask him why he needs money now. Ask him. Ask him.”
Dagou looks around the table. “It’s true, I’ve fallen in love,” he announces. “My whole life is changing.” He pauses importantly. People stare at their plates.
“Christ,” says their father. “All this fuss over a decent fuck.”
The nuns gasp. Now Dagou’s chair creaks, and he also rises to his feet. He is enormous and he swells with rage. His shoulders tense. He points at his father and his finger is shaking. It could be that he has decided, once and for all, to take down Big Chao. As the Sons of Liberty rose against King George. As the sons turned on Chronos, as he himself turned upon Uranus. So it will be in the family Chao.
Dagou opens his mouth to speak. Closes it. Opens it again. No sound comes out of him. His cheeks are trembling. He stands at the long table, opening and shutting his mouth.
James turns imploringly to Ming.
From his position above the fray, Ming shrugs.
After half a minute, Dagou produces a noise: a kind of squeal, the yelp of a dog that has been struck.
“What are you saying?” teases their father. “Speak up, I can’t hear you!”
Dagou inhales one more time, but what comes out of his mouth is just above a whisper. “Don’t you talk about her like that,” he manages to squeak out, and then, more deliberately, “you asshole!”
Their father laughs. It’s a big sound of pleasure, amused and sensual, a man’s laugh, a timbre of laugh that has possibly never been heard in the Spiritual House. The two novices across the table stiffen as the laugh releases itself, ringing out, then settling down gradually, followed by a long intake of breath.
“Apologize!”
“Never!” Dagou screams back in a voice that cracks as shrill and high as a small boy’s.
“Apologize before the Christmas party, or else you’re fired!”
Dagou balls his hands into fists. Lines of fury are drawn across his face. His jaw works, his chest heaves. Spittle flies from his mouth. For a moment, even from his safe distance, Ming is afraid.
“William.”
Gu Ling Zhu Chi is struggling to stand. An grabs the old woman’s elbow, helping her raise herself, gradually, over her end of the table. When she speaks again, her dry voice holds absolute authority.
“William. I told you. Go back to your apartment.”
A silence follows. Everyone waits.
Dagou pivots almost frantically from their mother to the old nun and back to their mother again. But Winnie will be no help. Ming knows this about their mother. Her inability to stand up to their father has always shamed him.
Winnie, her face so enragingly heartsick that Ming can hardly watch, gestures toward the door.