Tick Tock

mortified him, as did her habit of walking one deferential step behind his father. Mom, this is the United States, he had told her. Everyone's equal, no one better than anyone else, women the same as men. You don't have to walk in anyone's shadow here. She had smiled at him as though he was a much-loved but dim-witted son, and she'd said, I not walk in shadow because have to, Tuong. Walk in shadow because want to. Exasperated, Tommy had said, But that's wrong. Still favouring him with that infuriating, gentle smile, she'd said, In this United States, is wrong to show respect? Is wrong to show love? Tommy was never able to win one of these debates, but he kept trying:
    No, but there are better ways to show it. She gave him a sly look and ended the discussion with one line: How better — with Hallmark greeting card? Now, driving the long-desired Corvette with no more pleasure than if it had been a second-hand rattletrap pickup truck, Tommy was cold and grey inside even as his face flushed hot with shame at his ungrateful inability to accept his mother on her own terms.
    Sharper than a serpent's tooth is a thankless child.
    Tommy Phan, bad son. Slithering through the California night. Low and vile and unloving.
    He glanced at the rear-view mirror, half expecting to see a pair of glittery snake eyes in his own face.
    He knew, of course, that wallowing in guilt was irrational. Sometimes he had unrealistic expectations of his parents, but he was far more reasonable than his mother. When she wore an ao dais, one of those flowing silk tunic-and-pants ensembles that seemed as out of place in this country as a Scotsman's kilts, she looked so diminutive, like a little girl in her mother's clothes, but there was nothing vulnerable about her. Strong-minded, iron-willed, she could be a tiny tyrant when she wished, and she knew how to make a look of disapproval sting worse than the lash of a whip.
    Those uncharitable thoughts appalled Tommy even as he indulged in them, and his face grew yet hotter with shame. Taking frightful risks, at tremendous cost, she and Tommy's father had brought him—and his brothers and sister—out of the Land of Seagull and Fox, from under the fist of the communists, to this land of opportunity, and for that, he should honour and cherish them.
    “I am such a selfish creep,” he said aloud. “A real piece of shit, that's what I am.”
    As he braked to a full stop at an intersection on the border of Corona Del Mar and Newport Beach, he settled deeper in a sea of gloom and remorse.
    Would it have killed him to accept her invitation to dinner? She had made shrimp and watercress soup, com toy cam, and stir-fried vegetables with Nuoc Mom sauce—three of his favourite dishes when he was a child. Clearly, she had worked hard in the kitchen, hoping to lure him home, and he had rejected her, disappointed her. There was no excuse for turning her down, especially since he hadn't seen her and his father for weeks.
    No. Wrong. That was her line: Tuong, haven't seen you in weeks. On the phone, he had reminded her that this was Thursday and that they had spent Sunday together. But now here he was, minutes later, buying into her fantasy of abandonment!
    Suddenly his mother seemed to be all of the stereotypical Asian villains from old movies and books rolled into one: as manipulative as Ming the Merciless, as wily as Fu Manchu.
    He blinked at the red traffic light, shocked to have had such a mean-spirited thought about his own mother. This confirmed it: He was a swine.
    More than anything, Tommy Phan wanted to be an American, not a Vietnamese-American, just an American, with no hyphen. But surely he didn't have to reject his family, didn't have to be rude and mean to his beloved mother, to achieve that much-desired state of complete Americanisation.
    Ming the Merciless. Fu Manchu, the Yellow Peril. Dear God, he had become a raging bigot. He seemed to have deceived himself into believing he was a white person.
    He looked at his hands on the steering wheel. They were the colour of burnished bronze. In the rear-view mirror, he studied the epicanthic folds of his dark Asian eyes, wondering if he was in danger of trading his true identity for one that was a lie.
    Fu Manchu.
    If he could think such unkind things about his mother, he might slip up eventually and say them to her face. She would be crushed. The prospect of it left him breathless with anticipatory fear, and his mouth went as dry as powder, and his throat swelled so