Family Trust Read online

  “Well no,” Erika said. “Everyone knows the iPhone is very top.”

  “How can you say all that then, about Made in China being cheap, when your whole family worships Apple products? Which are made in China? Don’t you see how stupid, how uneducated, it makes you seem?”

  “Let’s not say such things.” Erika placed a soft hand on his shoulder, ignoring the salvo, unusual for her. “Besides, the only thing that matters is you and me. And you are mine. My successful venture capitalist, for whom I am so grateful.”

  That evening Fred lay in bed, blinking the slow acknowledgment of late-night wakefulness. Insomnia had been descending often lately, a worrisome development as he thought it possibly a symptom of low testosterone. Was he having a midlife crisis? He considered a rededication to one of his interests, before realizing he no longer had any. He used to be passionate about so many things—photography, basketball, traveling. Now the ardor was gone. The disturbing thought flickered that perhaps this was the natural course of life events, that at some point vigor and vitality were supposed to be replaced by marriage and children.

  “Erika,” he whispered. He cleared his throat, first softly, and then louder. “Erika.” He nudged her with his foot, enough to shift her leg. She lay still, prettily snoring.

  Fuck it—he was going to watch porn. Fred tiptoed to the laptop on his desk. Dare he bring it back to bed? No, she might wake, and then he’d be in for it; Erika was surprisingly puritanical about such matters. He decided to stay in the chair.

  When he opened the browser, he discovered that Erika had started a Twitter account. Why hadn’t she told him? Though Fred himself didn’t use Twitter, had never bothered to even register a username. The stars of his industry tweeted habitually, racking up audiences ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions; he knew whatever paltry following he’d manage to attract would only serve as a humiliating comparison.

  He examined the page. A quick scroll revealed Erika was largely sharing articles with mentions of Lion Capital, and reposting general Silicon Valley news: “Tech IPOs Predicted to Surge in 2016,” one announced. “The Bubble That Wasn’t a Bubble!” Innocuous enough, until he unearthed several alarming interactions between Erika and what looked to be complete strangers.

  “Untrue,” she’d tweeted, at some random pundit who had commented that a certain managing partner at Sequoia dressed too casually for industry standards. “My VC fiancé wears jeans everyday. He is too busy to be bothered with fussy dress. He thinks big picture, only.”

  Fred moaned and slammed shut the lid, as waves of secondhand embarrassment gathered and pooled. How many more of his thoughts were out there, being parroted into written evidence? Privately claiming to a girlfriend—over a second bottle of Opus One at Bistro Jeanty—that one was a so-called rainmaker in Silicon Valley was very different from having the same convictions bullhorned for the general public. What else had she been writing? And more important, where? The whole incident reminded him of when he’d told his mother he was the most popular freshman at Claremont High, only to overhear her boasting of it verbatim on the phone to friends with children the year above him at the same school weeks later. “My Fred is so well liked,” she’d crowed. “So many birthday invitations! And he goes to all the dances!”

  When he woke again it was late morning. Erika was already awake and out of bed preparing breakfast, the routine she always reverted to when she knew she’d annoyed him. The unnerving sensation he’d felt late in the night still lurked, and he was struck by an acute desire to reread Jack’s email. As soon as he reconfirmed its existence, Fred thought, he’d feel better. Reagan Kwon. A few billion. He repeated it like a mantra. Beneath the blanket, there began the early rumblings of an erection. As he reached for his phone, to bring himself to climax, the screen lit with a call from his father.

  Chapter 3

  Linda

  “Ma? Are you listening? Dad has cancer.”

  Linda Liang sat with her eyes closed, noisily breathing to drown out the dramatics of her only daughter. She was on one of her favorite pieces of furniture, a shimmered lavender chaise purchased a decade earlier during the Gump’s after-Christmas sale for 80 percent off (already on clearance, she had finagled an extra 10 percent due to a small chip on one of the back legs). The chair had been worth it; it was still in excellent condition. She massaged her temples and swung up her feet, kicking her shearling slippers onto the floor.

  “Are you there?”

  Asking obvious questions was one of Kate’s annoying habits. Linda didn’t feel like answering just yet, and let the silence hang. What was one supposed to say, when one’s now-ex–husband of thirty-four years was struck with such a diagnosis? A man whose sole medical emergency until that point had been a minor knee operation, a half-hour outpatient surgery where upon discharge he had grown increasingly unbearable, barking orders to be fetched another glass of water, the TV remote, the latest Barron’s—each issue of which he’d halfheartedly peruse for mere minutes before setting it aside for yet another demand? A month-long ordeal cut short only when Linda happened across newspaper classifieds he’d saved, advertisements for escort services in places like Oakland and Berkeley, the top contenders ostentatiously circled in garish red marker? Divorce meant no longer being obligated to feel the pit in her stomach upon hearing such news of cancer, of looking over to the other side of the bed at night and crying out in fear for the other person. Linda allowed herself a brief naked pause to let any tender sentiments bloom and wash through, but found herself devoid. A blessed relief.

  “What kind of cancer?”

  “I’m not sure,” Kate said, in the reverential tones she assumed when speaking about anything medically related. “Something serious.” In a small voice: “Do you think he might die?”

  “Oh, please don’t cry,” Linda said softly. When confronted with her children’s emotions, she always lapsed back into Mandarin and the protections of its language barrier. “You don’t know what kind of can—ah, illness, it is, do you? Did your dad tell you any details?”

  “No.” Kate let out a theatrical sniff. “I haven’t even spoken to him. He isn’t picking up his phone. I don’t know if he tried to reach me and I somehow missed the call, but Fred’s the one who actually told me the news.”

  “Oh? How did he take it?” Linda knew that as with most grown men, there existed within her son a small, desperate flame that cast about for some heroic light he could shine on his father. Given that it was Stanley, however, he might have to settle for martyrdom. “What did Fred say?”

  “He was worried, of course. Though, honestly, he was so weird about it. He barely knew any details, and then he started going on about how he was going to be so busy at work the next few months. As if work were the important thing now!”

  “If Fred didn’t know, it’s probably fine. He would have heard otherwise. Your father, he’s always been so healthy. And there are so many minor sorts of cancer these days. Half my friends probably have had some kind. Especially the men; prostate is very popular. You just go to the bathroom a lot, after you are cured.”

  “You think?” Kate’s voice had cleared somewhat.

  “Of course. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Even as she said it, Linda knew she was lying. Stanley was seventy-five now, a dangerous age, and the last time she’d seen him—nearly four months earlier, at Jackson Ho’s own seventy-fifth birthday party, hosted by his wife and children at China Garden—even she had taken note of the weight loss. Stanley had been proud of it at the time, as he strutted back and forth between tables in a ridiculous fitted leather coat, making his greetings. His dementedly placid wife by his side, the flatterer who had no doubt advised on the fashion abomination. Ten years earlier Mary had been pushing dim sum carts at that very same restaurant while moonlighting as a massage therapist on the weekends, a category of employment that was a source of never-ending speculation for Linda, whose questions both Fred and Kate refused to indulge. Children
always punished you for being petty, all while conveniently forgetting you had washed their stained sheets and underwear for the first eighteen years of their lives.

  Stanley wouldn’t be the first older man in their group felled by an indulgent diet and a habit of overexertion—both by-products, Linda thought, of a younger second wife. She had seen how Mary pushed the desserts at Jackson’s banquet, ostentatiously refilling Stanley’s bowl with serving upon serving of tapioca coconut pudding, joking that every day was his birthday in their household. Linda would have never done such a thing when they were married: it was demeaning, of course, but everyone also knew that such dishes contained spectacularly high amounts of sugar and sometimes lard, both toxins! Though who was to say that Mary hadn’t been trying to kill Stanley, at some unconscious or perhaps even conscious level? Marriage with Stanley was difficult, Linda knew, and undoubtedly Mary had at some point entertained the thought of what it would be like to live alone but with her husband’s resources. She certainly had little incentive to extol clean eating and exercise. Linda wondered how Mary had taken the news and whether she had yet begun to panic. Stanley likely didn’t even have a will; he was loath to consider any topic related to his mortality.

  “You talk to your dad’s wife yet?”

  “Mary? No, I didn’t think to contact her. You think she knows anything?”

  Linda felt a weight settle, the disappointment of her children’s continued ignorance in presuming themselves the center of their father’s universe. Mary cooked Stanley’s meals, stuffed him full of the Costco cream puffs he adored; she slept with him, massaged his feet, made him feel like a man. What had Kate or Fred done lately to compete? “If you don’t hear anything by the end of the week, you should call.”

  “All right. Maybe I’ll talk to Fred tonight too, after I’ve put the kids to bed. I’ve got them alone for the rest of the day, so it’s going to be a handful.”

  “Where’s Denny?”

  “He’s at a meeting.”

  “What kind of meeting? This for his business?” With just the slightest emphasis on business, as if the word weren’t quite adequate to capture the activities of Linda’s son-in-law, who as far as she could observe had craftily engineered himself a situation where he spent the majority of his daylight hours unaccounted for, lazing about in a cozily furnished attic while his wife assumed the entirety of the household income.

  Kate released a loud sigh. “Yes, for his business. He’s meeting with a group of investors for his start-up and then eating dinner afterward.”

  “Investors? So they gave him money already?”

  “The stage Denny’s at with his company, there’s a lot of emphasis on networking,” Kate said, ignoring the question. “The right connection could make CircleShop.”

  “Okay, okay.” Linda had tired of the conversation. It was already late afternoon, and she wanted to start her tasks for the evening. “Anything else you want to discuss?” she asked. Gently, so as to not arouse suspicion.

  “Why?” Kate said, suspicious anyway. “Are you going somewhere?”

  As if her leaving the house were an event, one that required advance clearance! Ever since they’d left home and begun their own adult journeys, Kate and Fred seemed to regard her existence as a sort of grandfather clock, to be set in the corner and forgotten but always there when they looked for it, chiming with daily regularity. The two generally viewed her reluctance to try new things or venture to foreign territories with snobbish pity: oh poor Ma, too frightened to expand her mind with crucial new skills such as sous vide cooking or hatha yoga stretches! In Linda’s opinion, the failure of imagination went both ways. Neither Kate nor Fred had ever considered, for example, the reason behind her never having visited Vietnam being not an absence of adventure or daring but simply a complete lack of interest. She and Stanley had both immigrated to America from poor (at the time) Asian countries—why would she ever pay good money to visit another?

  After the divorce, they became even more callous. Now Fred and Kate considered her to be something preserved, static . . . as if she were in a tomb! They’d grown accustomed to the idea of her alone, she knew, her eternal gratefulness for their sparse phone calls and opportunities to dispense free babysitting, her home exactly as they had last left it, its hospitality and contents welcome to them anytime. Of course there were the normal exhortations, that she should get out there and date—find a new partner, as if it were so easy (though it certainly had seemed that way for Stanley, hadn’t it?). But these were just vague pleasantries, the sort tossed out by young girls to their unattractive friends. Were a boyfriend actually to materialize, Linda knew Kate and Fred would go into near shock, disguising their unease until they could return home and call each other, ripping the suitor to shreds.

  “Ma? Did you hear me? I asked, why do you have to hang up now? What’s going on with you today? You don’t seem like you’re fully there.”

  “It’s nothing,” Linda said, adjusting her voice back to its normal brusque tones. “It’s just you’re always saying how busy you are. I don’t want to take up your time.”

  “Oh,” Kate said. “I suppose you’re right.” From her background there cut in the faint noise of crying—little Ella, probably, while the other one banged on something that sounded like it was shattering. “I should go.”

  After she hung up, Linda realized they hadn’t discussed Stanley again. Kate would call her soon with an update anyway; until then there was nothing more for her to consider.

  * * *

  The first time Linda saw Tigerlily, she’d been disgusted.

  She’d been at Shirley Chang’s house (show-off, who was always insisting that everyone “drop in” at her palatial estate in Atherton before setting off to their ultimate destination), and the women there were gathered around phones, comparing photos of grandchildren and favorite tai chi videos before they migrated to Golden Dynasty for lunch. It was Friday, which meant $20 lobster noodles, though even if it had been another day of the week Linda still would have come. Life alone in retirement meant filling up her calendar with events like these, outings that lasted more than an hour but no more than three or four, where she woke up the following morning and felt rested but thankful again to be alone. It’d been a particularly trying few weeks, filled with anxious calls from Kate and Fred following the additional revelations of Stanley’s cancer diagnosis; she was eager to reenter the orderly world of her female peers, where the gossip was vicious and the ailments kept mild.

  Even though she’d been to Shirley’s house dozens of times—usually after she’d picked up a friend or two along the way, since half the women were terrified to drive on the freeway—Linda didn’t really like her. She was loud and too braggy. Someone in Shirley’s position shouldn’t need to describe in intricate detail how she was able to sustain her plush lifestyle entirely off dividends, especially since everyone knew that Cindy Yi, who was there that day, had recently lost half her retirement savings in an ill-advised franchise scheme in Shenzhen. But since Shirley and Linda had attended the same high school in Taipei, the #1 Girls’ School (so named as it was, without dispute, number one), and then the same college (Taiwan University, also number one), and now were both in the Bay Area, they were forever part of the same circle.

  Shirley motioned to Linda and patted the marled champagne tweed on the love seat beside her. She’d undertaken a thorough redecoration of both herself and the house after her husband, Alfred, had passed, and each now reflected the Versailles-lite sensibilities of a provincial Chinese government official. The sofa featured long, oversize tassels of braided gold foil and silk, as did the matching pillow; next to them, carefully positioned on the floor, was a five-foot statue in mottled green porcelain of a rearing horse. Its sibling, an even more gargantuan monstrosity in bronze, towered over the pathway of sculpted bonsai in the garden.

  “How are you?” Shirley asked. “Your health doing okay? Children good?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

 
; “How about Stanley? He’s sick, I hear?” Shirley wore an expectant look, like a fat cat about to be presented with an animal part.

  Linda wasn’t surprised Shirley knew about Stanley. Ever since his diagnosis had been confirmed he’d been on a tear, dialing up all their mutual friends to tell them the news. He was almost celebratory about it, as he reveled in the intense interest and sympathy the words pancreatic cancer instantly elicited. Typical delusional behavior, and now he’d gone and infected the children with his madness! Roping Kate and Fred into weekly lunches and dinners, for what he called “powwow” sessions, to discuss his illness. Only positive thoughts allowed, naturally, which the children were happy to indulge: Kate with her printed internet articles promoting miracle recoveries and alkaline diets, Fred and his research into medical trials and some “super cancer center” in Utah. Stanley encouraging of all of it, more more more, me me me!

  He’d been bothering Linda too, of course. Three times so far! Pestering her about doing a group meal with what he was irritatingly calling “the family,” each time making crude reference to his dwindling mortality. So far, Linda had resisted. What did Stanley’s illness have to do with her having to endure a lunch with his bovine second wife? Just because he was suffering, so should she? Though that was precisely the sort of sentiment someone like Shirley would agree with. Shirley, who had always favored Stanley. The two of them puffing each other up with their elementary chatter, hollow blowfish with nothing inside.

  “Stanley is okay.” Linda noted with satisfaction Shirley’s look of disappointment that she hadn’t inquired into how she knew of Stanley’s diagnosis. “We do not speak much.”