“My daughter and I love food,” he said. “We are what you call foodies.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the boat ride we’d just taken or my father’s usage of the word foodies and the care he took in pronouncing it FOO-DEES that was making me feel queasy, but suddenly the seafood mango salad I had ordered was not so appealing. There are few things I detest more in this world than an adult man proclaiming himself to be a foodie, much less my own father dragging me in to share the title when only moments before he had asked me if I’d ever heard of a ceviche.

“Oh, really?” the waitress said with an enthusiasm that managed to feel genuine. She was really an exceptional waitress. In her shoes I would have pretended to be occupied polishing spoons thirty minutes ago.

I wasn’t necessarily proud of my work as a waitress, but I did feel a sense of honor in it. I loved the camaraderie, the shared disdain for the customer—the Groupon users, the picky eaters, the people who asked for steaks well-done and if the fish was “fishy.” There was some joy in exchanging your time for cash, blowing it all on the hour before last call, basking in the glory of ordering drinks after serving them all day. The downside was that the experience had metamorphosed me into a neurotic diner. I developed a compulsory need to stack all my dishes neatly after finishing, tip 25 percent even if the service was horrendous, and never, unless it was royally fucked, send a dish back just because it wasn’t to my taste. So when my father asked why I hadn’t eaten my salad, I would have preferred stuffing it into my napkin rather than cause a fuss.

“I think I’m feeling a little nauseous from the boat,” I said. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Excuse me,” my father called to the waitress from across the room. “She doesn’t like,” my father said, pointing to the seafood salad. He pinched his nose and then wafted the air, pantomiming, I suppose, the smell of a pungent harbor. “It’s too fishy.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” I said. “Really, please, it’s fine. Jesus Christ, Dad, I told you it was fine.”

“Michelle, if you don’t like something, you should say so.”

The salad was fishy. After all, it was a seafood salad doused in n??c m?m, in a country where fish sauce is a staple. But the fact that I wound up not eating it wasn’t the waitress’s fault. On top of it all, my father had to go and use the dreaded f-word, parading us around as some type of know-it-all food critics and then disparaging the local fare.

“I have no problem returning food on my own,” I said, shifting in my seat. “I’m an adult. I don’t need someone to put words in my fucking mouth.”

“You don’t have to say it that way,” he said, glancing back at the waitress. “Keep your voice down.”

“Would you like me to take it away?” the waitress asked.

“Yes, please,” he said. She seemed generally unfazed, but I couldn’t help but envision her having to explain to her manager that it wasn’t her fault two American “foo-dees” were surprised to find their seafood salad did indeed taste like fish as she reenacted my father’s hand gesture. I wondered what the Vietnamese words were for stupid tourists.

“Jesus, I can’t believe you,” I said. “Now she feels really bad. What if she has to pay for it out of her tips or something?”

“I don’t appreciate being scolded by my own daughter in front of strangers,” he said. He spoke slowly, pacing himself as he stared at his wineglass. He was holding its stem with a fist. “No one speaks to me the way you do.”

“This whole trip you’ve been bartering with everyone. The taxi drivers, the guides—now it just feels like you’re trying to get food for free. It’s embarrassing.”

“Your mother warned me not to let you take advantage of me.”

And there it was. He had committed the unspeakable. He’d put words into the mouth of a dead woman and used them against me. I could feel the blood rushing to my face.

“Oh well, there’s plenty of things Mom said about you, too, believe me,” I said. “There’s a lot of things I could say right now that I’m choosing not to.”

She didn’t even like you, I wanted to say. She compared you to a broken plate. When could my mother have told him this and what could it have possibly been in reference to? The words kept circling my head. Sure, I had taken my upbringing for granted, I had lashed out at the ones who loved me the most, allowed myself to flounder in a depression I perhaps had no real right to. I had been awful then—but now? I had worked so hard the past six months to try to be the perfect daughter, to make up for the trouble I’d caused as a teenager. But the way he said it made it seem like it was the last piece of wisdom she’d imparted before shuffling off the mortal coil: Watch out for that kid; she’s out to take advantage of you. Didn’t she know I was the one who slept on the hospital couch for three weeks while Dad stayed in a bed at the apartment? Didn’t she know I changed the bedpan because he couldn’t do it without gagging? Didn’t she know I was the one swallowing my feelings while he blubbered on?

“God, you were so difficult,” he said. “We always talked about it. How you could treat us so cruelly.”

“I wish I never came here!” I said. And because there was nothing left to say, I pushed my chair out and took off before he could stop me.

I could hear my father’s frantic call fade from behind as I charged forward, leaving him to hastily pay the bill for our tense, uneaten meal. I turned the corner alone and stormed full speed into the dark. Our proximity to the citadel made it easier to navigate the city. I vaguely remembered which direction we’d come from and was able to follow the Perfume River back toward the hotel. It was a ways away but I wasn’t sure I had enough currency to cover a cab ride back.

I figured it was for the best to walk it off anyway, and spent the time plotting a way back to Hanoi on my own. I could take a train and stay in a cheap room and avoid him for the rest of the week instead of flying to Ho Chi Minh City like we’d planned. But then I’d still have to see him on the plane ride back to America. I wondered how much an early flight back to Philadelphia could cost, how much I’d pay to never have to speak to him again.

By the time I’d managed to find my way back to the hotel, my father was already waiting at the top of the wide staircase that led to the hotel lobby. I expected him to look angry—pacing back and forth waiting to really lay into me about walking off like I did, but I was surprised to see how somber he looked. He was leaning his chin on his hand, resting his elbows on the marble railing, and gazing into the humid night with a look that can only belong to someone who is thinking, How did I get here?

I ducked behind a building so he wouldn’t see me. I watched him push back his thinning black hair, and instead of feeling angry or victorious, I felt really, really bad. My father had been the last of his brothers to cling to his hair. Now it had thinned to nearly a third of what it had been before my mother got sick. It felt like just another thing he’d been cheated out of, and I got to thinking he really had been cheated his whole life in a way I had never experienced and could maybe never comprehend. Cheated out of a childhood, out of a father, and now he’d been cheated again, robbed of the woman he loved just a few years shy of their final chapter.