Page 60 of This Time It's Real
Caz claps his hands together. Raises his voice. “How about we start preparing for dinner, hmm?”
But Caz’s mother goes on like he hasn’t spoken. “You know what, I think he’s grown evenmoreimage-conscious in recent months. All that styling with his hair and the expensive skin cream—my god, I swear he uses more than I do—”
“Mom,”Caz says, louder, clearly trying and failing to keep his cool. “Mom, that’s really not—you’re exaggerating—”
“Well, this is very interesting to me,” I tell her, ignoring him too. “Skin cream, you say?”
She nods. “And face masks. I’ve never seen a boy his age care so much about his appearance; did you know, just last Tuesday, he insisted on missing a whole day of classes because he had a tiny blemish on his forehead.”
My eyebrows shoot up as I process this, then glance over at Caz’s flushed face. He had told me he was busy shooting that day. “Did hereally.”
“So ridiculous, right? Sometimes I worry people at school tease him for it.”
“Oh, I don’t think anyone at school knows this side of him,” I say, marveling at how quickly Caz Song’s carefree actor image is unraveling right before my eyes—and how panicked he looks because of it. It’s so rare forhimto be the one discomposed, self-conscious, that I can’t help enjoying myself a little. Or a lot.
“Look, I’m starving,” Caz tries again, making a sharp turn toward the living room. “Can we start now?Please?”
I bite back a smile and walk after him. “Your house is really tidy,” I muse aloud as we pass the hall.
“It’s always like this,” Caz says hastily, at the same time that his mother says:
“Oh, yes, Caz spentagescleaning up before you arrived. Wanted to make sure everything was nice and spotless. He’s so thoughtful, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I say despite myself, an unwanted rush of warmth filling my chest. “He is.” Caz doesn’t look at me, but I notice the color creeping up the back of his neck, all the way to his ears. And I realize I’m in far greater trouble than I’d prepared myself for.
We enter the next room together, where Caz’s mother has single-handedly set out a restaurant-standard feast. There are two plates of fish—pan-fried and braised—and shredded pork and crisp lotus and sweet yams dipped in melted sugar, and it’s allso muchthat I offer to help right away.
Still, while I set down the plates, I can’t stop sneaking curious glances at Caz, watching him as he straightens the chairs, grabs a few spoons to share the main dishes, and wipes his hands fastidiously on a clean kitchen towel.
By the time I’m seated, I’ve noted a dozen tiny new details, like how Caz helps his mother lift the heavier pots and pans, or how he’s the only one in the household with his own designated mug, or how he tries to sneak all the vegetable dishes to the opposite end of the table, as far away from him as possible.
The dinner goes far more smoothly than I expected. In my desperation, I’d prepared a few inoffensive conversation starters to help pass the hours, but Caz’s mother ends up doing most of the talking—bragging and complaining about her son in turns, or bragging in the tones of making a complaint.
The latter is a very refined, subtle art, one that most Asian parents seem to perfect by the time their children enter kindergarten.
“It’s just so difficult for me,” she laments as she sucks the meat off the fish tail. “All these parents keep asking me,How is your son so brilliant? What’s your secret?And I honestly don’t know what to tell them, you know? He’s always busy doing his own thing, and he just happens to be very good at it. How do I explain that?”
“That does sound quite difficult,” I say cooperatively, while Caz avoids my gaze, his shoulders stiff.
“It’s a shame, though,” she continues, jabbing her chopsticks at Caz. “It’d be even better if he had the same talent in actually important subjects, like math or English, no? I always tell him—I always say,Erzi ya, you can’t expect to make a living off your looks and acting forever. You should prioritize your studies instead.But he never listens.”
Caz rubs his neck with ill-concealed agitation, the color in his cheeks spreading. Everything about him is unusually tense, though I seem to be the only one who notices.
“Well, he works very hard,” I say slowly, unable to press down the surge of defensiveness inside me. “And there are a lot of people who expect different things from him. I mean, I’m just impressed he’s managed to juggle everything in the first place.”
Caz’s mother looks at me with surprise. But just when she’s about to say something, Caz leans forward hurriedly.“Mom, were you going to eat the fish head? Because I think we should throw it away—”
“What?”In a flash, Caz’s mother has scraped all the remains of the braised fish onto her plate, guarding it protectively with both chopsticks. “Has water gotten into your brain? You baijiazi,” she says. I recognize the term only because it’s one of my mother’s favorite insults too whenever she catches me wasting food or spending money on anything she deems unnecessary. “The fish head is where the good stuff is—it is theessence.”
Caz breathes a small sigh of relief, and his diversion tactic does seem to work for a good ten minutes. But when his mother has finished spitting out the fish bones, all of which are scarily clean, she dives right back into the topic.
“Erzi, how are those college essays coming along, by the way? Youknowhow important they are. Have you finished them all? I could ask a colleague to read—”
“They’re good,” he says, his expression working too hard to remain neutral. He’s fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “They’re done, actually.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I managed to find . . . help.”
