What is it exactly you like about this man you’re about to marry?
I like a man who feeds his wife tiny morsels with wooden chopsticks, who wipes away the sauce on her chin, and tastes the food on her lips with gentle kisses.
CHOP SUEY BY KATHLEEN J STOWE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 003
'“I like the color of your hat,” I said. “It matches the pattern in your scarf—and your eyes, too.”
My sister adjusted the bright blue cloche she wore, tugging it down over her ears. “Yours fits much better,” she said.
“Not really. And it’s such a dark ugly shade. I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I bought it.”
We sat at a table next to the window, in the long gray shadows of a January afternoon. Too early to light the small lamp with a chartreuse green shade that sat in the center of the table. And probably too early for dinner, but we weren’t the only ones in the restaurant. My sister moved the lamp to the windowsill. Her hands were restless and she repositioned the ashtray as well.
It might have been that she was simply hungry—we’d already ordered egg foo yung for her and shrimp lo mein for me and the service was usually fast even with the crowd for the early bird specials—but I thought her hands twitched and fluttered for another reason.
We’d agreed to meet to discuss last minute wedding plans. Mine not hers. I mentioned the problems with the bridesmaids’ corsages. And we laughed over our mother’s dress.
“Is she still calling it mauve?” my sister asked.
“Oh, yes. No one’s going to convince her it’s periwinkle.”
“And what about the catering?”
I smiled. “Oh, the catering is just fine.”
A Chinese girl delivered two plates of steaming food. With a bright smile, she asked, “Chopsticks? Soy sauce?”
I unwrapped my chopsticks, while my sister used a fork to scrape away the brown gravy that coated her egg foo yung. “You could send it back if you don’t like the gravy. They’ll do it over for you.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “And anyway I wouldn’t think of imposing.”
“No, really.”
“Actually, I love the gravy.” She lifted a limp bean sprout into the air and dangled it in the space between our two plates. “But what exactly is this?”
I laughed. “You didn’t have to come here to eat. We could have gone somewhere else. I didn’t know you didn’t like Chinese food.”
My sister let the bean sprout drop to her plate, then picked up her knife and began to cut her food into bitesize pieces. She stopped her careful micro-surgery to look across the table at me. “Speaking of likes and dislikes, what is it exactly you like about this man you’re about to marry?”