Quan looked heavenward. “He listens to me because I’m reasonable. This isn’t.”
“You’re just like that stinky father of yours. You both let me down when I need you,” their mom said. “Your brother is always reliable.”
Quan made a huffing sound and scrubbed his hands over his face and buzzed head before he took three more fruit boxes from the trunk. When he saw Khai, he halted midstep. “Brace yourself.” Then he carried the boxes inside.
Well, that was ominous. In Khai’s head, the hypothetical jungle monkey morphed into a giant male gorilla. This fruit would probably feed such a creature for one day. On the positive side, he wouldn’t need to pay to get his house bulldozed, and he might even be able to file a claim on his homeowner’s insurance. Reason for damage: rogue gorilla in a mango rage.
“Grab the jackfruit and come inside. I need to talk to you,” his mom said.
He hefted up the spiky jackfruit—holy fuck, it weighed like thirty pounds—and followed her into his kitchen, where Quan had set the new boxes next to the mangoes and seated himself at the kitchen table with his Coke. Worrying about the sturdiness of his counter, Khai carefully eased the jackfruit next to the other fruit. When the counter didn’t immediately collapse to the floor, he sighed in relief.
His mom considered his seventies kitchen with a frown. That look on her face was textbook dissatisfaction. If he lined up his old facial expression flash cards with her face right now, they’d match perfectly.
“You need to get a new house,” she said. “This one is too old. And you need to move all those exercise machines out of the living room. Only bachelors live like this.”
Khai happened to be a bachelor, so he didn’t see what the problem was. “This location is convenient for work, and I like exercising where I can watch TV.”
She waved his comments away, muttering, “This boy.”
A long silence ensued, broken only by the occasional slurping of Coke—Khai’s Coke, goddammit. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he looked from his brother to his mom and said, “So . . . who is M??” As far as he knew, m? meant beautiful, but it was also how you said America in Vietnamese. Whichever way he looked at it, it seemed an odd name for a gorilla, but what did he know?
His mom squared her shoulders. “She’s the girl you need to pick up from the airport Saturday night.”
“Oh, okay.” That wasn’t horrible. He didn’t like the idea of ferrying around someone he didn’t know and changing his schedule, but he was glad he didn’t need a rabies shot or an FDA permit. “Just send me her flight schedule. Where do I drop her off?”
“She’s staying here with you,” she said.
“What? Why?” Khai’s entire body stiffened at the idea. It was an invasion, clear and simple.
“Don’t sound so upset,” she said in a cajoling tone. “She’s young and very pretty.”
He looked to Quan. “Why can’t she stay with you? You like women.”
Quan choked in the middle of drinking Coke and pounded his chest with a fist as he coughed.
Their mom aimed her dissatisfied look at Quan before she focused on Khai and straightened to her full height of four feet ten inches. “She can’t stay with Quan because she’s your future wife.”
“What?” He laughed a little. This had to be a joke, but he didn’t understand the humor.
“I chose her for you when I went to Vi?t Nam. You’ll like her. She’s perfect for you,” she said.
“I don’t—You can’t—I—” He shook his head. “What?”
“Yeah,” Quan said. “That was my reaction, too. She got you a mail-order bride from
Vietnam, Khai.”
Their mom glowered at Quan. “Why do you say it so it sounds so bad? She’s not a ‘mail-order bride.’ I met her in person. This is how they used to do it in the olden days. If I followed tradition, I would already have found you a wife the same way, but you don’t need my help. Your brother does.”
Khai didn’t even try to talk then. His brain had shorted and refused to compute.
“I bought her all sorts of fruit.” She moved the boxes on the counter around. “Lychees, rambutans . . .”
As she continued to list off tropical fruits, his mind finally caught up with him. “Mom, no.” The words came out with unintentional strength and volume, but it was justified. He ignored the instinct that told him he was committing sacrilege by saying no to his mom. “I’m not getting married, and she’s not staying here, and you can’t do things like this.” This was the twenty-first century, for fuck’s sake. People didn’t run around purchasing wives for their sons anymore.
She pursed her lips and propped her hands on her hips, looking like an aerobics instructor from the eighties in her hot-pink sweat suit and short hair with a flattening perm. “I already booked the banquet hall for the wedding. The deposit was a thousand dollars.”
“Mom.”