Who’s Rich
Saturday April 11 2026, Rusty
My brother Alec and I don’t talk to each other these days. We haven’t communicated at all since Mom passed a year and half ago. Before that he only texted me when it concerned Mom, mostly her healthcare. She lived in Houston for a few years and each time I received a text from him there were pictures of Mom in the hospital, readings on the screen or charts. He never asked me if I’d be there, never offered to come visit Mom when she moved back to bay area, never asked me where I was, never offered any information about himself.
After decades of life in America, one thing we never talk about is money.
As new immigrants we both struggled to survive. Alec didn’t speak much English and took much longer to learn to drive than I did, so the only jobs he could get were with Chinese restaurants in the Palo Alto area neighborhoods. He had a group of foodie friends when he worked for Bank of China in Beijing and took culinary classes, so working in a restaurant was not too difficult. He climbed the ladders and eventually became a chef. But restaurant work was hard, and considered low class for a banker from a well educated family.
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I was working for a Chinese OEM PC shop so when another shop had an opening for a warehouse worker I asked a friend to get Alec into the door. Alec got the job and met his wife there. She was from a small town in one of the provinces close to Shanghai. Her family was the big shot in town so she had the attitude of being the biggest fish in a small pond.
After Alec got married they lived together with Mom in an apartment in Mountain View. I was already married for couple of years and living in a duplex in Santa Clara. Bill had been working for well over a decade and had a decent job with a large tech company in Cupertino. The five of us got together from time to time, and we’d split the bills if we went out, but Alec would usually host if he was in the mood to cook.
One day I saw some nice looking cooked dungeness crabs in the grocery store, and thought they’d be perfect for our dinner at Alec’s on Friday night. So I got the crabs, and we just needed some lighter fare to go with them for a nice meal for five. Next day I called Alec to report the good findings, and asked him if he could prepare some rice and vegetables to go with the crabs.
Friday morning, first Mom called me after Alec and his wife left for work, said that she (the wife) talked nonstop the previous night, about how Bill and I were rich and why Alec always had to host, and why couldn't we just take them all out for a crab feast, instead of being so cheap and buy precooked crab from the supermarket and they had to prepare the side dishes. Ultimately Mom told me not to come, it wouldn’t be a fun dinner.
Then my friend who got Alec the job called me and informed me that Alec’s wife had been announcing to everyone within earshot how Alec’s little sister and her rich husband made them do all the work for family gatherings, “What are they going to do with all that money when they die? They don’t had kids!” Ultimately my friend advised me, be careful, don’t say the wrong thing.
We didn’t have family dinner together for sometime, then Alec and his wife moved away from Bay Area so they could afford a house.
