The white Volkswagen Jetta veered onto a pebbled road. It snaked through a dense forest and in the darkness Jon couldn’t make out any street signs or markers. Only when the car had already turned into the driveway did the headlights illuminate a stone pillar that read Abbott, and he was thankful that Margot was the one who had insisted on driving to her family lake house. The light and frequent crunching of the pebbles on the main road gave way to softer ground and he could hear the car engine humming quietly alongside the erratic buzzing of cicadas. Jon looked for the house, hoping to catch a peek through the shrubbery, but before he could find a bedroom or living room light to guide him in the correct direction, Margot made another turn onto a smaller road on the property.
“We’re staying in the carriage house since we’re getting in so late,” she said, meandering up an incline. When the house came into view, Jon first noticed three oversized garage doors featured prominently in the front like watchful guards. They were set below white-shuttered windows and inserted into a mosaic of ashy bricks with ivy plaits that weaved across each other and stretched towards the darkness above.
It reminded him of his parents’ house in Paramus – they had picked it because the colonial architecture looked quintessentially American – and he pictured the next evening’s Mid-Autumn Festival dinner his family must have already started preparing for in that very moment.
His mother and sisters would have been marinating a whole duck and simmering soup that would fill their home with the warm scent of ginger and star anise; his father would have been sent to the grocery store for moon cakes and baijiu. Jon was supposed to be there, as he was every year, to inundate the kitchen with the swift thuds of his rhythmic chopping. But when Margot invited him to Lake George for her father’s birthday, he had been eager to nestle further into her life and thankful he didn’t have to explain going home for an obscure holiday of which he didn’t even understand the origin and that no one else celebrated.
With her invitation, he called his parents and told them his current project was requiring him to work over the weekend. He had felt a dull guilt when the lie first tumbled from his lips, not because of the lie itself, but because his individual desires betrayed his loyalty to his family.
His mother, however, responded sympathetically. “Come after work is done. We wait for you.”
“I won’t be done until after ten, Ma.”
“That’s OK. Family should be together. Purpose of this holiday is tuanyuan. Reunite,” she said in broken English.
“I’m sorry, but I really can’t.” He sighed into the phone.
“OK, I pack for you and bring to you Sunday.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m going to be too busy to eat anyway.”
“You have to eat for energy to work,” she insisted.
The guilt slid out from underneath him, replaced by sharp pricks of annoyance. “Ma, stop. Just have fun and tell Dad I’m sorry, okay?” He hadn’t waited for an answer before hanging up the phone.
In front of the first garage door, Margot turned off the engine. They unloaded their bags, heavy with wine and treats from Manhattan that Margot picked out and would later say were from Jon. When they entered the house, Margot fumbled around for the light. She turned it on with a soft click and the chandelier overhead sprung to life, bathing the room with a softness mimicking candle glow. Although the outside of the house reminded him of his home, the inside was nothing like it. There was a modern thoughtfulness placed into every feature – black wooden floors were coated with anti-scratch varnish, kitchen appliances kept contents at precise temperatures, and hinges could swing open and close with a push of a button. On the walls, lush oil landscapes hung above elegantly crafted tables. The curves on the chair legs and whimsical floral carvings elevated the furniture above the banality of practicality and into artistry. It was like a museum taken up one or two gradients in comfort, as there were also woolen blankets draped over the chesterfield sofa and framed pictures of the family displayed atop end tables.
In the morning, Jon and Margot woke up naturally to bright rays streaming in through the curtainless windows. They decided to put on bathing suits underneath T-shirts and jeans and walked over to the main house. They skipped down a cobblestone path set upon a lush lawn sparkling from the morning mist. Through the gnarled trees, it took a few minutes for the house to come into view. When it did, Jon first saw the wraparound porch hugging the belly of the house and then white-bricked chimneys standing erect. A glittering silver-blue lake was only a few yards beyond the garden.
“Hello!” Margot called out, waving her arms as two figures stood from the Adirondack chairs on the back porch facing the water. Jon recognized them from the photos in Margot’s Chelsea apartment.
“Hi, darling! This must be Jon,” Margot’s mother said, embracing both of them in tan, freckled arms. “I’m Camille, and this is my husband, Christopher.” A middle-aged man strolled over to them with a laissez-faire sureness, slowly yet deliberately.
“Nice to meet you both,” Jon said, shaking both of their hands. “Thanks so much for having me.”
“Of course! You’re welcome anytime. Breakfast is in the kitchen, if you guys want to eat.” Camille gestured towards the door behind her, which had been propped open.
With Margot leading the way, she and Jon went inside the house and began to rummage around the fridge and pantry for food. Jon opened glass cabinets and mahogany drawers, their contents clinking around delicately like bells announcing his presence. He felt unsure and invasive, opening strangers’ hidden spaces, but Margot insisted that all their guests wandered in and out of the house, helping themselves to whatever they needed.
Over the weekend he would learn that although Christopher and Camille were hospitable, they were withdrawn and aloof. It was foreign to him, but refreshing compared to the forcefully abundant way his mother hosted guests – always making too much food, orbiting around people to refill their plates when they were already full, and scurrying back and forth between kitchen and dining room as if she were a servant in her own home. The Abbotts kept a cool distance, so when Margot and Jon headed to the lake after breakfast, Camille and Christopher had already disappeared from the porch.
“They probably went into town to get some groceries for Dad’s birthday tonight,” Margot said, as she and Jon dragged the family kayaks onto the water.
The lake was bigger than Jon expected, the other side completely lost into the horizon. But they paddled quickly like duck feet dancing in the water. Within thirty minutes, the Abbotts’ house was just the size of a quarter in the distance. The weather was unusually warm for mid-September and as the hour approached noon, the sun reached its crescendo. Jon could feel the darkness of his black hair absorbing much more heat than Margot’s blonde.
“Do you want to take a break?” he called out to her, kneading his forearms as he balanced the oar in his lap. The paddling had called upon muscles he never used day-to-day.
“Yeah! I wanted to point out my pop-pop’s house.” She waited for his kayak to drift lazily over to her. A few yards away on the shore was a lake house a little smaller than Christopher and Camille’s, but similar in design. There were September roses in full bloom creating a blurry pink and white patchwork in the foreground. “Growing up, my cousins and I would only come here by kayak. Sometimes Grandma would give us food to take to Mom and I’d always end up getting it soaked while paddling back,” she chirped brightly.
Jon observed her as she pulled her hair into a ponytail, dainty fingers twisting the band in acrobatics. Her eyes trailed over the shoreline as she told him about her summers at Lake George – how every weekend from June through August her family would vacate their West Village brownstone in favor of the warm waters upstate. They would pack colorful weekender bags and canvas totes stuffed with wine and gourmet snacks from Citarella. Without any siblings, Margot’s cousins from New Hampshire were like her brothers and often stayed with them at the lake house. It was here that Margot learned water sports, where she got her first period in the second-floor bathroom next to the stairs, and where she buried her rabbit, Mrs. White, underneath a hydrangea bush that now grew larger than all the others on the property.
Drifting closer to her grandfather’s house, Margot pointed out a tired tamarack tree on the shore where she had her first kiss at age fourteen in the middle of a Fourth of July party. “His name was Jack and I’m pretty sure he lived on the Upper West Side. But we never saw each other outside of the lake.”
Jon pictured Margot as a gangly fourteen-year-old, jumping off the docks and kissing boys while bursts of fireworks grabbed her father’s attention – the crackle as they lit up the night sky, the acrid smell of fire mingling with barbecue sauce and grilled corn. He could vividly picture her life on this lake: the boys who must have come and gone after Jack, and the one who will eventually remain. That man would settle into the scene with their children and the rest of the Abbotts surrounding them in an intimate web. Jon fantasized about being that man, grilling on the deck and hosting elaborate dinner parties for their family and friends, and felt a self-satisfied pleasure at the idea of being absorbed into the Abbotts’ lives.
But he couldn’t imagine his own parents attending. Most of the vacations they took were exhausting voyages to visit extended families in remote Chinese cities unidentifiable on Western maps. They didn’t “summer” anywhere and hardly spent time near bodies of water, as his mother complained of achy bones in humid weather.
The only trip outside of China that he could remember was to Washington, D.C. fifteen years ago. Over one hundred hurried Chinese tourists darted on and off the tour bus, flooding the streets and shocking Washingtonians, to take pictures at national monuments of which they didn’t even understand the history.
“They don’t care. They just want to be able to prove to other people in their villages that they’ve been to America,” his older sister had explained nonchalantly.
Jon had peered out of the bus window into a sea of the same red T-shirts with the tour company’s logo scrawled in white Chinese characters. The guide was yelling nonsensical Mandarin into his megaphone while commuters glared at the group and shuffled to the other side of the street. Scanning the crowd, Jon saw his parents holding up peace signs in front of the White House as another couple took their picture. They looked small and comical, like the punchline of a joke they weren’t in on. At the time, Jon had swiftly drawn the curtains and shoved his headphones into his ears, bitterly enraged and ashamed of their vapid poses. Thinking of bringing them to the lake, Jon felt the same frustration as he had that day in D.C.
After showering off the lake and sun, Jon and Margot returned to the main house, where the sweet and tangy smell of tomato sauce wafted through open kitchen windows and spilled out of the patio door. Camille stood at the counter, slicing zucchini and onions while all four stovetops and two ovens hissed and crackled with life. Piles of steak marinated in specks of green and orange lay on oversized platters and freshly-washed mushrooms shined like treasures in a separate ceramic bowl. Camille greeted them warmly, asking how their afternoon was, but she never stopped her work.
“Do you need some help?” Jon asked, while Margot poured two glasses of wine from an open bottle next to her mother.
Camille looked up from the counter as she wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “Actually, it’d be great if you two could set the table on the patio.” She danced around the stove, tasting the simmering sauces. “Would you mind? Margot knows where everything is.”
Margot sashayed into the formal dining room on the other side of the hall, beckoning Jon to follow her. They removed pristine china plates with gold rims from their display and gathered crystal wine and water glasses. With the dishware’s quality of craftsmanship emanating through their weight, Jon and Margot made several trips back and forth between the patio and the dining room to set the table. Margot laid the plates on top of woven place-settings, while Jon followed behind with the cutlery.
Halfway through the table, Margot paused and looked back at their work. She furrowed her brows. “Jon, the knives go on the right and the forks go on the left. And serrated edges should face towards the plates.”
He looked back at the half-naked table setting. Margot’s comment suddenly shined a light on his mishaps. Embarrassed, he hurried back to fix his error. “Sorry, I knew that,” he muttered. “I don’t know how I messed that up.”
“It’s okay. People get it wrong all the time.”
Jon didn’t believe her, and a tender self-pity rose in his chest when she rubbed his back sympathetically as if he were a small child.
A few minutes later, she finished setting up the plates and left to find pitchers for the water. He kept an eye on her, the back of her dress trailing behind her in a sweeping motion. When she turned the corner into the dining room, he furtively pulled out his phone and Googled where to place the water and wine glasses. When Margot returned, he had finished setting the rest of the dishware. She made no other comments and he accepted it as a success.
By that time, the sun had painted the horizon in saffron and vermillion and guests had started to arrive for Christopher’s birthday celebration. Neighbors walked over with champagne and cigars, casually entering the house without knocking or ringing the doorbell. Camille didn’t seem surprised to see people appear at various entrances, but Jon wondered what sort of secret paths weaved through the trees that led the Abbotts and their friends from one house to the other.
When an elderly couple walked in through the garden, Margot led Jon towards them. As he approached, he saw that despite the faded gray roots on the woman’s hair, some of the ends were still honey-colored, and he wasn’t surprised when Margot introduced them as her grandparents.
“This is my boyfriend, Jon Chang.” She smiled brightly, one arm wrapped around him.
They chatted politely about the unseasonably warm weather, how Jon was enjoying the weekend, and the older couple’s trip to Greece just a few weeks ago. They spoke like that for several minutes – in forceful pivots of inoffensive topics followed by questions that never probed too deep.
When they parted to take their seats at the dinner table, Jon whispered to Margot, “Hey, it’s not a big deal, but… it’s actually Cheng.” He said this last part hurriedly, as if getting it faster out of his mouth would make the moment go by quicker.
She looked at him and squinted her eyes. “Isn’t that what I said?” she asked, frowning.
Jon realized that after nearly one year together, he couldn’t recall a time Margot had said his last name aloud. There had never been a time to do so, but he also wondered if she had avoided it because she was unsure of the pronunciation. Although disappointed, he was not completely surprised nor deeply saddened by this revelation. There were countless professors, colleagues, and even friends who also said his name incorrectly. “Not exactly, but it’s fine,” he replied, but Margot’s attention had already pivoted as Camille brought out the dishes to the table.
The guests’ attention was unbroken on the food. The tomato sauce had made its way out of the kitchen in an oversized cerulean bowl. Rich chunks of fleshy red clung onto pale tubes of rigatoni that were as large as Jon’s own wrist. On a separate wooden board, strips of steak dripped in their own crimson juices, alongside mushrooms and rosemary garnishes. And even the grilled zucchini and arugula looked luscious on the table aglow with candles and adorned with vases of leafy hydrangeas.
The guests chattered attentively, lubricating their conversation with glasses of wine and laughter. Voices atop one another, they shared stories of Christopher and the family. Jon observed Margot as she commented fondly of her father – the way he had taught her sports as he would have had she been a boy and the protectiveness he lavished upon her.
“Dad, do you remember what happened with Yiyi?” Margot asked from across the table.
“Oh my God, I haven’t heard that name in years!” Camille chimed in. Her hand clutched her chest instinctively.
“How could I forget? She was the first person to break my daughter’s heart,” Christopher said with mock solemnity. He took a sip of wine. “Just for the record, though, we loved Yiyi. Isn’t that right, Camille?”
He looked over at his wife, her blonde head bobbing up and down in agreement. “She was a part of the family.”
“And she was lucky for it!” Christopher exclaimed. “A friend of ours – the Hummels – had a housekeeper who was Yiyi’s cousin or something. But you know how it is, they’re all ‘cousins’.” He held up his fingers, miming air quotes around the word. “Anyway, Frank Hummel called my office one day saying his housekeeper’s ‘cousin’ had just run away from an abusive husband in Shanghai and needed some work. Margot was – what – a few months old at the time? Maybe four? Camille definitely needed the help.”
Margot’s mother rolled her eyes as if she were annoyed, but out of the corner of his eye, Jon saw her reach for her husband’s hand, squeezing it affectionately.
“We gave Yiyi Sundays off. She was religious – Catholic, I think. And she always left in the morning for Mass and returned after supper to read Margot a story and put her to bed. She did this every week for four years. But one Sunday, Yiyi left in the morning and by Margot’s bedtime she still wasn’t back. I remember Margot had gone from room to room searching for Yiyi, but I told her Yiyi was probably at a friend’s place for the night and would be back tomorrow. Then tomorrow came and I still hadn’t heard from her! So Camille called the Hummels – and literally any other person she knew who had any connection to Asian help – but no one knew where she was. Margot cried for two weeks non-stop and I nearly lost my goddamn mind.”
At this, Margot looked sheepishly to her father’s guests, her eyelashes flitting coyly.
“Weeks passed, months passed… we never found her. But years later, a woman in San Francisco called the house asking about a nanny who used to work for us. She said that she was hiring help for her two boys and received a decent resume, interviewed the woman… but she was unsure because this nanny had gotten pregnant out of wedlock and moved in with her cousin in San Francisco. I asked her who this woman was, and she said Yiyi Zhang.”
At this revelation, several women gasped. At the other end of the table, Jon heard someone say, “That’s just like a telenovela!”
“Apparently Yiyi got knocked up by some church guy and just left. I get she comes from a conservative culture, but I was furious. She was like a part of the family and she just abandoned us.”
“So what did you end up telling the San Francisco woman?” one of the neighbors asked.
Christopher took another sip of his drink, relishing the dramatic moment. “I told her that despite being an illegal, Yiyi was great with my daughter up until she disappeared along with my wife’s Van Cleef necklace.”
“She didn’t! You just can’t trust anyone these days!” a woman exclaimed. Jon turned towards her. She looked like a fish, with her fat lips splayed apart and her tiny eyes bulging out of their sockets in shock. There were additional clamors around the table, as the guests debated whether Yiyi had actually taken the necklace. All Christopher did was shrug.
Jon felt a sudden heat on his cheeks, disoriented by the loudness of the clinking cutlery and voices layered on top of one another. He felt the urgency to say something – anything – to show that despite looking like Yiyi, he was more like the Abbotts in his core. He needed to mark that distinction, to assert where he really belonged.
“The relationship between domestic help and the family just isn’t as strong as it is here,” he blurted, not sure where this information was coming from, not sure if it was even true. Still, he hoped it would help him relate to the Abbotts. “You don’t expect people here to just take off or steal, but when I visit family in China, they lock up their valuables when the maid comes because she’ll steal things on Monday and come back to clean again on Tuesday.”
The group looked attentively at him when he spoke. A few people nodded in agreement and murmured “wow.” But when Jon finished he couldn’t bear to meet their eyes. He felt a certain shame swirling inside of him as a result of offering something false in desperation to show he was Chinese-American. He wasn’t like the ones who came fresh off the boat, untrusting and untrustworthy, unable to assimilate, protecting their old way of life in a fragile case – people like his parents and Yiyi, who only celebrated Chinese holidays and went on vacations to go to China. For the rest of the meal, Jon was silent. He could feel his own shame blending into hostility towards Christopher for bringing up the story.
Eventually, the party moved onto other topics, one side of the table debating the Democratic candidates and the other talking about the latest movie. No one seemed to remember Yiyi had ever existed. A few minutes later, Camille and Margot brought out a red velvet birthday cake, dripping with cream cheese frosting and Happy Birthday Christopher scrawled in piped icing. The group sang cheerfully, and by the time the party ended, the candles had dwindled into little stubs.
When Jon and Margot returned to the carriage house that evening, he could feel her sleeping deeply next to him, the rhythmic movement of her body vibrating up and down. But he stayed awake, thinking about the evening. Hours later, he was still unable to reconcile the Abbotts’ hospitality towards him and the carelessness with which they had treated Yiyi. He wondered if his position in their lives was just as transient. He kept replaying his own comment in his head, wondering if it had made a difference – whether it had changed or solidified Margot’s acceptance of him, or if it was something she had already forgotten.
The next morning, Jon woke up early. He looked over at Margot. She was still exhibiting signs of sleep – slow, deep breaths and the faint trail of saliva at the edge of her lips. He slipped out of bed and into the hallway, closing the door gently behind him. He dialed his father’s phone, knowing it would go to voicemail, but nevertheless leaving a message. “Hey, Dad… Sorry I didn’t call yesterday. Hope you guys had a good Mid-Autumn Festival. I probably still can’t make it out to Jersey today, but I’ll come by next weekend if you guys aren’t busy. Maybe we can do a belated Mid-Autumn dinner. I know you’ll have leftovers for weeks.” He chuckled. “Let me know. Bye.”
When Margot awoke, they packed their bags methodically, checking every crevice for missing items and leaving nothing behind. They reloaded the car, their goods lighter from dispensing out the food and wine they had brought for Camille and Christopher. Margot’s parents didn’t visit the carriage house to say goodbye, and Jon thought of his own mother, who would have been waving to them on the driveway in slippers and pajamas until the car disappeared from sight.
As they drove back down the road from which they came, Jon watched the sunlight dance through silent trees and shoot through the windowpane in shards of rainbow refractions. Several yards away, the lake lay still and the house glowed in fiery hues as the sun warmed the backdrop on the horizon. He drank in this view of the Abbotts’ majestic property, hoping to remember it as it stood in the morning light.
