“We’re going to start her on Russian when she turns three,” Bernard said, coming up to greet the ladies.

“Bernard, my goodness, it’s been much too long!” Corinna said, trying not to appear too shocked as she studied his new face. The man she had seen at so many galas was transformed in a way she could never have possibly imagined. His roundish Cantonese features had been replaced with an angular jawline, but it was incongruously paired with the tiniest birdlike nose. His cheekbones were newly chiseled, but his eyes were strangely elfin and upturned at the corners. He looks like the love child of Jay Leno and that Hermione girl from the Harry Potter movies, Corinna thought, unable to stop staring at his face.

“Come now, it’s time for Gisele’s cranial-sacral session, and then we can have lunch,” Bernard said as he shepherded the girl indoors.

Corinna was already quite shocked that Bernard Tai, who grew up in huge mansions and on the biggest superyachts, would be living in such modest surroundings, but nothing prepared her for what she saw upon entering the house. The living room had been turned into a kind of clinic, with all sorts of unusual therapeutic contraptions everywhere, and Gisele lay quietly on a professional massage table as her cranial-sacral specialist gently stroked her scalp. Next to this was an alcove room that resembled a Scandinavian classroom, with simple blond-wood stools and little tables, hemp fabric cushions on the floor, and a corkboard wall where dozens of children’s drawings and finger paintings were pinned up.

“This used to be the dining room, but since we always have mealtime in the kitchen, we’ve turned it into a learning space. Gisele’s coding class meets here three times a week now. Come, let me show you to your guest room, where you can freshen up before lunch,” Bernard said to Corinna.

Corinna tried to do a bit of unpacking in her cramped bedroom. She took out the tin of Almond Roca candies that she had splurged on and went downstairs, where she found the family was already seated around a wooden farm table on the small patio deck.

“I brought you a little present, Gisele,” Corinna said. She handed her the shiny pink tin with the plastic lid, and the two-and-a-half-year-old stared at it in absolute puzzlement.

“Wah lao! Plastic! Put that down now, Gisele!” Bernard gasped in horror.

“Oh I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you—there’s no plastic in this house,” Kitty whispered to Corinna.

“Not a problem. I’ll just take the candies out for her and you’ll never see the container again,” Corinna said calmly.

Bernard gave Corinna a withering look. “Gisele is on a sugar-free, gluten-free organic farm-to-table Paleo diet.”

“I am terribly sorry—I had no idea.”

Seeing the look on Corinna’s face, Bernard softened a little. “I’m sorry. I don’t think guests, especially those visiting from Asia, are prepared for our lifestyle. But I hope you will appreciate the conscious, nourishing food we consume in this house. We have our own farm up in Topanga where we grow all our produce. Here, try some of this fennel-stuffed acorn squash. We just harvested it yesterday. Gisele plucked the fennel with her own hands, didn’t you, Gisele?”

“Sólo comemos lo que cultivamos,”*2 Gisele chirped, as she began chewing carefully on her tiny slices of medium-rare grass-fed-and-finished filet mignon.

“I guess you probably won’t be drinking the Johnnie Walker Black Label I brought for you,” Corinna remarked.

“I honor your gesture, but I only drink reverse-osmosis water these days,” Bernard said.

“I honor your gesture?” My God, look what happens to Hong Kong men when they move to California, Corinna thought in horror.

After Corinna had politely swallowed down the blandest meal of her entire life, she stood in the foyer watching as Bernard helped Gisele put on her TOMS sneakers and her little hemp sun hat.

Kitty pleaded with Bernard. “We just arrived. Can’t Gisele skip one session today and be with us? I want to take her to buy some cute clothes at Fred Segal.”

“You’re not buying her any more clothes from that temple of materialism. The last time you got her those frilly pink princess dresses, we ended up donating all of it to Union Rescue Mission. I really don’t want her to be wearing clothes that reinforce gender stereotypes and fairytale narratives.”

“Okay, then, can we just take her to the beach or something? The beach is still allowed, right? Isn’t sand gluten-free or whatever?”

Bernard took Kitty around the corner and said in a hushed tone, “I don’t think you really understand how much Gisele needs these biweekly mindfulness sessions in the sensory deprivation float tank. Her Reiki practitioner tells me that she still struggles with retained trauma and anxiety related to her passage through the birth canal.”

“Are you kidding me? In case you don’t remember, I was there when she was born, Bernard. The real trauma was how she murdered my birth canal because you wouldn’t let me have an epidural!”

“Shhh! Do you want to add to her repressed guilt?” Bernard said in hushed whisper. “Anyway, we’ll be back by six. Her float session in Venice Beach only lasts forty-five minutes, and then she has an hour of undirected play with her real-world-immersion friends in Compton.”

“So why would that take five hours?”

Bernard gave Kitty an exasperated look. “Traffic, of course. Do you know how many times I have to get on the 405?”

After saying adiós to Gisele as she was being carefully strapped into the custom-designed car seat in Bernard’s Tesla, Kitty and Corinna sat down to talk.

“I understand now why you said I had to see this with my own eyes. When did things get this bad?” Corinna asked.

Kitty looked at Corinna sadly. “The problem began when Bernard started getting his corrective surgeries in LA. He would spend a great deal of time at Dr. Goldberg’s clinic, and he became friends with some of the patients in the waiting room—mainly these super-competitive young Westside mothers. One of them invited him to a weekend retreat in Sedona, and that was all it took. He came back to Singapore a changed person, declaring that he wanted to stop all the surgeries and embrace his new face. He talked about his terrible childhood and how he had a father who ignored him and just threw money in his direction and a mother who was too obsessed with her church to care. He wanted to undo all the generations of damage by becoming an enlightened, conscious parent. The first year after Gisele was born was the worst. Bernard moved us to Los Angeles when Gisele was just two months old—claiming that Singapore was toxic for her, that his parents were toxic for her. Here, I was totally isolated, with Bernard hovering over us every second of the day, policing every single thing I did. Nothing I ever did was right—I was always exposing the baby to something. I mean, the only thing I was exposing her to were my tits! We went to about fifty different specialists a week for every little problem. The last straw was when he redesigned the master bedroom to suit Gisele’s sleep patterns. I couldn’t sleep in there with all those strange glowing LED lights, the over-purified air, and the Mozart playing in her crib throughout the night. That’s when I started coming back to Hong Kong every month. I couldn’t take it anymore. I mean, just look at how we live!”

“I was very surprised when we pulled up to this house,” Corinna said.

“We moved out of our mansion in Bel Air because Bernard wants Gisele to experience ‘real-world preparedness.’ And he thinks that by living in this lower-income zip code, she’ll have a better chance of getting into Harvard.”

“Does Bernard ever ask you what you want for your daughter?”

“I have no say in any of this, because apparently I’m too stupid to understand anything. You know, I actually think Bernard prefers it when I’m in Asia. I think he’s afraid I will somehow make this child more stupid. He doesn’t even care if I exist anymore. It’s all about his precious daughter, twenty-four hours a day.”

Corinna looked at Kitty sympathetically. “Take it from me, speaking not as your social consultant but from one mother to another, if you really want your daughter to grow up normal, if you ever want her to take her rightful place in Asian society, you have to put a stop to all this.”

“I know. I have been working on a plan,” Kitty said softly.

“I’m glad to hear that. Because if Dato’ Tai Toh Lui could see how his only granddaughter was being raised, he would be spinning in his grave! This little girl should have a bedroom in Queen Astrid Park or Deep Water Bay that’s bigger than this whole house, not sleeping with her parents every night!” Corinna declared, her voice quivering with conviction.

“Amen.”

“This little girl needs to be raised properly—by a team of sensible Cantonese nannies, not interfering parents!” Corinna pounded on the table.

“You got that right!”

“This little girl should be dressed in the prettiest clothes from Marie-Chantal and taken to the Mandarin for afternoon tea and bright pink macarons every week!”

“Fuck yeah!” Kitty roared.