At this point, they arrived at a small two-story English cottage–style house in Mar Vista where a little girl and a man were doing yoga in the front yard with a tall blond instructor.
“Oh my goodness—is that cute little girl your daughter?” Corinna asked, staring at the girl with the long braided hair executing a perfect downward-facing dog.
“Yes, that’s Gisele. Here, put on some of this organic hand sanitizer before you meet her.”
As soon as the car came to a stop, Gisele broke from her yoga pose and came running toward them.
“Did you put on the Dr. Bronner’s?” Bernard yelled urgently at Kitty.
“Of course,” Kitty yelled back, as she hugged her daughter tightly. “My darling! I’ve missed you so much!”
“You’re not supposed to say that! We don’t want to implant attachment issues,” Bernard chastised. “And you’re supposed to speak to her in Mandarin only. I get English and Cantonese, remember?”
“Hoy es el día de español, no?”*1 the little Chinese girl said, furrowing her brow.
“My goodness, she can speak Spanish so well already! How many languages is she learning?” Corinna inquired.
“Just five right now—she has a part-time Colombian nanny who only speaks to her in Spanish, and our live-in chef is French,” Kitty replied. “Gisele, this is Auntie Corinna. Can you say hello to Auntie Corinna?”
“Buenos días, Tía Corinna,” Gisele said sweetly.
“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 ap
preciate 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.