Page 48 of The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties

“Dajie, don’t just stand there,” Ma says, patting Big Aunt’s arm.

Big Aunt starts. “Oh, yes.” Still, her gaze roams the kitchen with lascivious admiration as she puts down her boxes. “Look, they got all the best equipment.” She shakes her head slowly, her eyes wide. “Wah, La Cornue’s Château Line oven. You know, this one cost as much as Mercedes. And look, they even have wood burning oven.”

Sure enough, there’s a round pizza oven covered with emerald-green mosaic tiles in one corner of the kitchen. There are also two massive refrigerators, which Big Aunt tells us are “smarty fridges,” a cooker with eight stoves, and a humongous, gorgeous kitchen island with beautiful brass lamps hanging over it. Big Aunt rubs her hands together, her eyes glinting, a small smile playing on her lips. She looks like the oldest grandson on Chinese New Year morning, knowing he is going to get the biggest red packets from all the relatives. The tip ofher tongue darts out, moistening her lips. I suddenly feel as though I’m intruding on a private moment.

“Okay.” Big Aunt claps once, with renewed authority. “Open the boxes.”

We all hurry to do as she says, and box after box is opened to reveal all sorts of delicacies. There are sea cucumbers, golden abalones as big as my fist, scallops in their shells (cleaned, thank goodness), tiger shrimp, lobsters, Kobe beef steaks, all of them pristinely packaged.

“Wah,” Big Aunt says with each reveal. “Wah. Wuuaaaahhh!” Her excitement increases as she studies the ingredients, the rest of us forgotten in the moment. Indeed, I wonder if she even remembers why we’re here in the first place.

“Hokkaido scallops!” she practically shouts. “Ooh, you know how long I have wish to cook these? They say they taste so sweet, almost like lychee.”

“Um, that’s great, Big Aunt. So uh, should we start looking for Second Aunt?”

Big Aunt’s mouth drops open, and for a split second, she looks as though she’s torn, like,Hmm, Second Aunt or Hokkaido scallops?Then she slowly, with great reluctance, lowers the bag of scallops, muttering, “Yes, yes, we should.”

“Actually,” Nathan says, “you should stay here and cook, Big Aunt.”

“I should?” Big Aunt says with naked hope.

Nathan nods. “Yeah. If we all went to look for Second Aunt, who would do the cooking? If the food isn’t ready on time, they’ll know something is wrong.”

Big Aunt’s head bobs forward and back so fast that it’s practically a blur. “Yes. Exactly. Good boy. Yes, very true!” She turns to the rest of us, not even bothering to hide her hugegrin, and claps once. “Right. So, you all spread out and looking around—wait, you take this.” She bustles through the kitchen, opening cupboards. “Aha. Yes, here we going.” She takes out a whole stack of silver trays, places them on the kitchen island, then locates champagne glasses. “Champagen,” she says to us.

Nathan quickly locates a crate that we brought with us and opens it. Inside are dozens of bottles of champagne and wine.

“Ooh!” Fourth Aunt wiggles her eyebrows and pounces on a champagne bottle, but Ma snatches it out of her hands.

“No time for you to be drunk,” Ma scolds.

Fourth Aunt levels a flat gaze at her. “Really? You’re going to judge me for drinking alcohol? What was in that stuff you gave to the caterers, hmm?”

Ma’s mouth drops open in shock-horror. “I give that to you because I trusting you. Now you throw it back in my face?”

“I’m just saying, you’re not one to judge.”

They glare at each other until I pluck the champagne bottle out of Ma’s hands. “Cut it out, you guys.” We get a few of the champagne bottles open and pour them out into flutes and place them on the trays. Now we each have a tray of precariously balanced, fragile, priceless flutes of champagne. Great.

“Don’t carry like that,” Big Aunt scolds, tapping my right hand with a wooden spoon. “Not both hands like that, that not how server carry tray. You have to carry like this, see.” In one smooth motion, she takes the tray out of my hands and places it on her palm, as confident as though the tray were empty.

“Uh, yeah, unlike you, Big Aunt, I don’t have over forty years’ experience as a chef, so I don’t know if I can manage that.”

The others nod in agreement. “Yeah, and I don’t think this is something that will make or break our disguise, Dajie,” Fourth Aunt says.

Big Aunt tuts. “Everything worth doing is worth doing the Asian way—that is, with high accuracy.”

“That’s not how the saying goes,” I pipe up.

Big Aunt plops the tray back in my hands with a huff. “I tell you how to do things right, you all don’t want to follow, is fine. Don’t later come to me, cry-cry because your cover is blown away.”

“We’ll do our best, Big Aunt,” Nathan says. Of course, he’s somehow managed to carry his tray exactly the way Big Aunt has shown us. Big Aunt nods with apparent fondness at Nathan. I’ve never even seen her look at her own son with such affection before. How is Nathan so effortlessly, infuriatingly good at everything? If Second Aunt weren’t in danger right now, I would’ve been tempted to stick out my foot and trip him. Big Aunt waves us away, already turning her attention to her beloved scallops.

Nathan, Ma, Fourth Aunt, and I nod at one another and then file out of the kitchen together, walking super slowly to avoid the flutes from falling off our trays. It’s a lot harder than it looks, balancing these trays. My respect for servers has skyrocketed in the last few minutes. They’re not only heavy, they’re also fiendishly hard to balance. Every step I take, the champagne in the flutes sloshes around like a turbulent sea. A glance at Fourth Aunt’s tray confirms my fears; Fourth Aunt never just walks, she sashays. And all that hip-swaying has caused a third of her champagne to spill out onto her tray. God, I hope she doesn’t run into anyone who might take notice of her sloppy tray.

We all pause when we get to the living room. It’s stupidly huge, and calling it a “living room” feels ridiculous. It’s more like a ballroom, and it is so large that it doesn’t just have one chandelier but ten.Tenchandeliers. I’ve been in proper hotel ballrooms that can fit easily into this “living room.” The floors are made of patterned gray marble so shiny that they reflect the lights like a pristine lake, and hung up on the walls are oil paintings, no doubt priceless. The room is filled with people bustling about, carrying floral structures and vases, putting up exquisite draperies here and there, and red Chinese lanterns all around. Cherry blossom trees have been shipped in, eight of them placed throughout the room. They’re in full bloom, their branches covered in clouds of delicate pink flowers. Even though the decorating team isn’t done, the room already looks stunning.

As we stand there hesitating, a woman who’s unpacking a box of Chinese lanterns glances up and barks in Indonesian, “What’re you standing around for? These drinks for us?”

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