The King of Kohlrabi

It was a summer of disasters. I was sixteen and just starting to relax fully into my vacation when my father took my mother and me out to dinner at the New Chinatown and told us over the Kung Pao chicken that he’d fallen in love with his law partner, Margaret, and the two of them were “going away for a while” to “sort things out.” While he was talking, he twisted a corner of the tablecloth into a ring in his right hand. My mother, leaning back in the corner of the booth, said, “Oh, for crying out loud.” She sounded annoyed. She was drinking a Mai Tai, as usual, and had given me the umbrella, also as usual. Tonight’s was blue and I twirled it between my fingers. I was always pleasantly surprised that it really opened and closed, just like a real umbrella. I stuck it into a piece of my chicken and moved some baby carrots and water chestnuts into an arrangement around it, like small, edible patio furniture. No one said anything. I stared at the couple at the table next to us, who were sharing a Volcano, holding hands over the blue flame in the center of it. They saw me looking and loosed their hands as if they were embarrassed.

“You know how much I love you both,” said my dad. My mother and I didn’t say anything to this. Margaret had been at our house for Christmas that year. She was a quiet, large-boned woman with a wide, dark mouth and I’d always thought she was a lesbian.

“I thought she was a lesbian,” I said.

“Well, she’s not,” said my dad.

I drove home from the New Chinatown. I had just gotten my driver’s license but my parents wouldn...