Rental House

Keru, a bilingual Chinese American woman who immigrated from China as a child, and her husband Nate, a white assistant professor who studies fruit flies, rent a cottage in Chatham, on Cape Cod, for a month-long summer stay. Married five years, they plan staggered visits from both sets of parents. Their four-year-old sheepdog, Mantou, named after a Chinese steamed bun, accompanies them. The first week alone is easy: They binge real estate shows, cook simple meals, and enjoy casual intimacy. Anxiety builds, however, as each debates whose parents are more difficult.

Keru's parents visit first because they are obsessively concerned with cleanliness and would refuse to sleep in a bed used by another couple. Keru scrubs grout, re-washes dishes on high heat, and launders every textile before they arrive. She instructs Nate never to mention the dishwasher, recalling how her father once lectured him that using one was admitting defeat. Her parents inspect the property for hazards and wash Mantou's paws digit by digit before allowing the dog inside. Nate's presence goes mostly unacknowledged.

The week unfolds indoors, around meals. Her father presses Keru on career milestones, homeownership, and grandchildren; her mother insists she supports Keru's choices but will not relocate to provide childcare. Nate, who has been taking Mandarin lessons, can follow little of the conversation; his Beijing-born teacher speaks a standardized dialect far removed from the family's southwestern speech. When Keru's mother recounts a violent anti-Asian attack in New York, emphasizing the attacker's race, Nate attempts to respond in Chinese, but his tonal mistakes undermine him. He switches to English, hating himself for weaponizing fluency.

Backstories map the distance between the families. Nate grew up in a small Appalachian town where his father managed struggling grocery stores. Yale accepted him on full financial aid, surprising everyone since no one knew he had applied. His older brother Ethan stole cars as a teenager, spent time in juvenile detention, then drifted west. Nate lost belief in God gradually; his parents never supported his choice of science, suggesting law school each semester. Keru and Nate met at a Yale Halloween party: she arrived in mismatched clothes she called "indecision," and he wore a homemade shark fin. She laughed at his "great white" costume, reading it as a pun on privileged whiteness he had not intended. She declared her intention to unapologetically make money, and when he asked to see her again, she said "Maybe."

On their last evening together, Keru's family watches a French real estate show. Her mother insists that suffering is required and complacency leads to death; the narrative draws a parallel between this philosophy and Nate's familiarity with religious guilt. Keru later reflects that being around her parents is like having her core excavated by two metal claws, a hole that gradually fills when she lives her own life but reopens each visit. For many years, her parents were her only home in America. After they leave, she lies on the beach like a starfish. A woman in an embellished white shawl scolds them for having Mantou off leash. Keru picks up a large rock and flings it at the woman's feet, scattering sand. The woman shrieks and retreats.

Nate's parents arrive with firewood, foldable Adirondack chairs, their own coffeemaker, and liters of Diet Coke. His mother wears a lime-green Lilly Pulitzer dress won on eBay and charms every stranger she meets. At an oyster restaurant in Wellfleet, Keru observes the family's constant pleasantries and wonders if all white families act like affable birds. At the beach, the woman from the earlier incident reappears, calls Keru a psychopath, and whispers, "Leave, you shouldn't be here, go." Nate's mother charges out of the water, positions herself between them, calls Keru "my daughter," and threatens to photograph the woman, holding the phone upside down with the screen locked. Keru declines to repeat what was whispered.

Tensions peak around a bonfire. Nate's mother tells him he should have been a lawyer and that certain groups in his lab are "better at science and math" and "like to work themselves to death." Nate tells her to shut up. His mother pivots to a statement about coexistence, insisting she is not saying what Keru thinks. Keru deliberately uses the slur "chink," shocking the table; Nate's father insists they have never used that word. When Nate's father places a log with faded stars-and-stripes paint into the fire, Keru decides something like that should not be burned. She picks up a hatchet, digs it into the flaming log, and hurls both log and hatchet through the screen door into the kitchen, setting off a fire alarm. The security deposit is lost. She sits by the fire and beckons her "chosen family" to join her.

An interlude jumps five years forward. Nate receives tenure; his father dies of a third heart attack. Keru's mother receives a cancer diagnosis that proves to be a misdiagnosis, then fractures her ankle. Keru makes partner and her income doubles. An eight-month post in Chicago sends her closer to her parents but apart from Nate. He proposes a two-week getaway to reconnect. The interlude closes with a meditation on Rubin's vase, an optical illusion that shows either a vase or two facing profiles, as a metaphor for marriage: Is the vase empty or full?

Part Two opens at a luxury bungalow compound in the Catskills. Nate, who envisioned a simple cabin, is unsettled by the gated grounds. Their sheepdog, now nine, is on multiple medications for anxiety and nausea. Mircea, a Romanian economist on a two-year post at the Federal Reserve, and his wife Elena, an artist and stay-at-home mother, rent the adjacent bungalow with their six-year-old son, Lucian. The couples' differences sharpen over shared meals and an outing to an alpaca farm. Elena calls Keru and Nate a textbook DINK couple (double income, no kids) and observes that marrying within one's group produces children who are "more cohesive," a word Keru challenges. Mircea recommends raising children in Europe, where he claims "there are no issues with race."

At a café afterward, Keru asks Nate if they lead stupid, dinky lives. Nate launches into a monologue comparing parenthood to hazing, cocaine, and cutting off one's ear. From the bungalow, Keru pays bills and transfers a monthly allowance to Nate's mother, covering what Social Security does not. Money is Keru's shield, but she senses Nate resents her for earning more. Nate, post-tenure, has been diagnosed with anxiety; he lies awake thinking about death and feels he is hurtling toward disaster.

Their solitude breaks when Ethan arrives unannounced with his girlfriend Morgan, who works in administration at the prep school where Ethan does landscaping. Their mother gave him the address. Over dinner, Ethan catalogues the tragedies of their hometown, then pitches a community gym there that would also fund local parks, asking Nate to invest up to $99,000. When Nate asks whether the numbers have been worked out, Ethan says logistics come later. Nate refuses. Ethan reveals their mother suggested the visit. Nate laughs maniacally.

The following morning, Keru attempts to match Morgan's daily run but rolls her ankle badly on the road and cannot walk back; Nate drives out to collect her. She spends the rest of the day with ice and Advil, ankle swollen and throbbing.

The next morning, Morgan leaves abruptly. Nate calls Ethan an opportunist and the worst kind of family; Ethan calls Nate the golden child. The brothers swing at each other, neither landing a proper hit, while Mantou circles the table barking. Keru pounds her fist on the table and demands they sit. Both comply. She lays out a possible future of lies, contempt, ruined holidays, and years of blame, then asks if this is the family any of them wants. She insists on mutual respect. Nate agrees; Ethan, grudgingly, says respect is possible. Keru mentions her upcoming fortieth birthday; Ethan says he will consider attending.

After Ethan leaves, Keru and Nate sit together, taking turns petting Mantou's head. Nate asks about Keru's ankle. She has forgotten about it and finds it less tender. He asks if they should go to the hospital. She replies, "Not yet."