“Where’s the bathroom?” Austin asked. His face was dripping with sweat; when Ivy hugged him, she smelled a musky, sour odor, like clothes left in a suitcase for too long.

“There are gangsters over there,” said Shen, pointing across the street to where the usual pair of tattooed men stood in front of parked SUVs, chewing tobacco and spitting loogies onto the pavement. “Why do you live here? Why? If you need money—”

Meifeng tapped Ivy’s leg with her cane. “You should put more effort into your looks. Even your father wears better-quality pants than these. The crotch hangs down to your knees!”

Ivy ignored the rabble and glanced at the fifth guest, a stocky Chinese man in a bomber-style coat, standing on her doormat, untying the shoelaces of his duck boots.

“Who’s that?” she hissed at her grandmother.

“Come in, Kevin!” Meifeng called. “Sit. Sit. Don’t mind the mess.” From one corner of her mouth, she muttered to Ivy that Kevin Zhao was Ping’s friend’s son. He went to medical school in New Jersey. His parents lived in China and had asked the Lins to look after him on the weekends. “We told him we were coming to see you in Boston. He’s never been to Boston. He’s only been in the US five years.”

“You guys invited a stranger here?” said Ivy.

“Don’t be a child.” Meifeng sniffed the air. “I thought Shen hadn’t smoked in the car.”

Kevin took off his coat. Underneath he was wearing a black sweatshirt that said COUTURE in blocky white letters. He introduced himself to Ivy as “KZ” in a strong Chinese accent. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Your mother says you’re a great writer. She showed me your room. So many books! You must have been a child prodigy. Are those notebooks all full? May I read one of your stories?”

Ivy said she didn’t write stories.

“Articles?”

“No.”

“My friend is applying to business school,” said Kevin. “If you have time, can you look over his essay?”

* * *

FOR DINNER, IVY took Kevin Zhao and the Lins to Shangri-La, a Chinese restaurant in Belmont. During her family’s prior visit, she’d made the mistake of taking them to a fancy Italian restaurant in the North End. Carbonara is a pasta made with raw eggs, she’d explained to a horrified Nan. Meifeng ate too much beef braciole and moaned over an upset stomach. Austin, the one person she’d thought would appreciate the food, had sat slumped in his chair, refusing to even order an entrée because he didn’t have an appetite. This had launched Shen into a diatribe about Austin’s petulant stubbornness that’d lasted the rest of the trip.

From that visit, Ivy had seen firsthand just how wrong things had gotten with Austin. He’d been an energetic and eager—sometimes too eager—boy, and the sullenness that had seized him in high school had been attributed to teenage hormones and a bad attitude. But instead of improving in college, he’d become positively unresponsive. He gained an enormous amount of weight, stayed up all night playing computer games, switched from one major to the next, often having to retake classes because of poor attendance, until he finally dropped out last summer (“he’s resting for a year,” Nan excused). Nan took him to their family doctor, a Chinese woman from Suzhou, who diagnosed him with vitamin deficiency and wrote a flurry of prescriptions for nutritional supplements. “I had the same health issues at his age,” Nan told the family. “Anemia. I slept all the time. I couldn’t even finish my gaokao exams because I fainted. Not enough to eat. My son’s inherited my weak constitution.” No one pointed out to her that Austin was not anemic and had plenty to eat. It was easier to believe that good grades, enthusiasm, intelligence, and motivation could all be solved with vitamin D pills.

“At least I don’t have to worry about you anymore,” Nan would sigh to Ivy after these long rants. Irked by this hypocrisy, Ivy said, “Weren’t you the one who threatened to commit suicide if I came to Boston?” To Ivy’s surprise, Nan said Ivy had been right, her daughter was strong and wise, wiser than Nan herself, who was only a stupid, uneducated country woman. This flagrant display of humility had only made Ivy more cautious. Her mother’s approval might be even harder to bear than her disappointment.

* * *

IVY KNEW NOW why her parents were so chummy toward Kevin Zhao: they were trying to set her up.

This should have been obvious to her from the get-go but it hadn’t been. She’d let her guard down, thinking that Austin’s problems were enough fodder for her parents’ meddling, and that her own life would be spared.

She sat, humiliated, through the free peanuts and spicy pickles, through the twelve dishes Shen had ordered, which the waitress had to push another table to hold, through the dessert course of boiling-hot pumpkin pastries, which, in her rush to end the meal, she’d eaten too quickly and burned the roof of her mouth. The conversation was all but a farce. Nan would ask Kevin a question like: “How often do you call your mother?” To which Kevin would glance at Ivy, then downplay his filiality: “Once a week.” Nan would correct him: “Ping says you call home every day. She says you save up all your money to visit them in China. Ivy only lives a few hours away and never visits us.” Occasionally, Meifeng would chime in comments like: “Ivy’s not a ting hua child like you are.”

The cycle would start again: “Ping says you exercise every day?” “I play basketball sometimes.” “And you swim, too, I heard! Healthy habits… Ivy likes to swim, too, don’t you?… You don’t? Well, you like the outdoors! You go on those camping trips. I think it’s so dirty sleeping outside, but our Ivy’s tough…”

And again: “Kevin, what do you do when you’re not studying?” “I like to travel. I was in Berlin visiting a friend over spring break.” “Berlin! Where’s that?… Germany! Ivy’s never even been to Europe… Ivy, I hope you learn from Kevin. You can’t get through life just from reading books… Kevin, did I tell you Ivy’s a great writer? Her mind is so busy with new ideas… she is very independent, our Ivy…”

It was a bizarre form of matchmaking. Nan couldn’t seem to decide whether she was trying to talk Ivy up to Kevin, or shame Ivy into being a better person. Perhaps love and shame always went hand in hand, even in romance.

Shen finally asked for the check. Kevin went to use the restroom. All five Lins watched him go.

Nan said, “What do you think of Kevin?”

“Mama—no.”

“He’s in medical school—you can be good friends—”

“No.” Ivy looked at Meifeng accusingly. Meifeng picked her teeth with a toothpick.

“How are you going to meet a man surrounded by women teachers all day long?” Nan flared, abandoning her innocent act. “Listen to me. Kevin’s father is a wealthy businessman back in Hangzhou. They’re da fang people. Not stuck-up or stingy like the Shanghainese. I already asked him if he thought you were pretty—”

“When?”

“Your aunt Ping says he doesn’t have a girlfriend. This is your chance.”

“I have a boyfriend,” said Ivy.

“You said his parents were divorced.”

“This is a different boyfriend.”

Nan looked at her suspiciously. “Chinese?”

“American.”

“Then it won’t last. Haven’t you learned by now?”

Ivy slammed her teacup on the table.

Kevin returned to the table. He said he had a few friends in Boston who were going to meet him in front of the restaurant. Nan insisted that they wait with him at the curb until his friends came. Ivy knew her mother wanted to see if these “friends” were female. Ten minutes later, a matte black Acura greeted them at the curb. When Kevin opened the door, a blast of hip-hop music—shake, shake, shake your money maker—reverberated into the quiet night. “Bye, KZ.” Ivy waved. “Happy birthday, Ivy,” Kevin said cheerfully before sliding into the front seat. The Lins blinked in surprise. They’d all but forgotten it was her birthday.

Her family left the next morning. Nan had a dentist appointment—she’d just bought dental insurance—and Shen said he was meeting with someone who would be helping out part-time with the packaging and inventory. Ivy cut him off before he could go into details. She despised hearing anything about the family business. She associated all that with those dark years when they’d first moved to New Jersey. Andrea’s therapist would probably tell her it was PTSD.

During their goodbyes, Ivy gave Austin a stiff hug. “Be cool,” she said. He looked down at his shoes.

“Your brother really wanted to be here for your birthday,” Nan said, something strangled about her tone that made Ivy turn away.

Shen was overly hearty as he patted Austin on the back. “Soon, you’ll be living on your own in some city and we’ll drive up to see you like we do with your sister.”