He stares out the window all the same, and once more leaves his apple fritter untouched.
Why does the man keep ordering an apple fritter and not touching it? Does the apple fritter mean something to him? Also, why does he keep staring out the window? What is he staring at?
The three women of Chuck’s Donuts have a variation of the same thought. This man, they realize, didn’t mean much at all to them, lent no greater significance to their pain. They can hardly believe they’ve wasted so much time wondering about him. Yes, they think, we know this man. We’ve carried him our whole lives. ♦
I feel this is the strongest scene from the whole short story. I believe the man they are comparing to the unconscious man is their father. Throughout the whole story they mentioned flashbacks of times they had with their dad, whether they were good ones or bad. After seeing the fight and all the pain the mystery man caused the women, they realize they need to forget about their own dad and move on. They cannot waste anymore time thinking about him.
She thinks about her father. She wants to know whether he ever hit her mother, and, if so, whether her mother ever hit him back, and whether that’s the reason her mother so naturally came to the woman’s defense.
After the whole scene with the mystery man and women fighting each other in the middle of the donut shop, Kayley wonders if the same happened with her parents. She knew they had many fights before because her father cheated and lied.
Her ex-husband’s youth taunts her with its boyish charm. She cannot imagine the young man in this image—decked out in his tight polo and acid-washed jeans, high on his newfound citizenship—becoming the father who has infected her daughters with so much anxious energy, and who has abandoned her, middle-aged, with obligations she can barely fulfill alone.
Sothy is thinking about the past times she had with her ex husband. She can not believe the man he turned out to be. She is struggling to provide for her family now because he left them.
Being Khmer, as far as Tevy can tell, can’t be reduced to the brown skin, black hair, and prominent cheekbones that she shares with her mother and sister. Khmer-ness can manifest as anything, from the color of your cuticles to the particular way your butt goes numb when you sit in a chair too long, and, even so, Tevy has recognized nothing she has ever done as being notably Khmer.
Usually, I read the whole short story first before making annotations, but the whole time I was reading I was wondering what Race Tevy and her family are. They briefly mentioned Khmer a few times but I was unsure of what that was. Now based off this description I understand what they meant by calling their shop after an American name (Chuck). This also leads us to believe the reason the 12 and 16 year olds are working is because they need to support their struggling family.
Kayley decides that the man is the spitting image of her father. It’s unreal, she argues. “Just look at him,” she mutters, changing the coffee filters in the industrial brewers. “They have the same chin. Same hair. Same everything.”
This comment left me confused on why she is always thinking about her father. She goes back and forth saying how he was a bad man then she remembers him and what he looks like. Kayley needs to move on and understand her father is never coming back.