At times during the trip to Los Angeles, Moon Orchid grows momentarily confident in her ability to confront her husband, but as she approaches Los Angeles, she becomes more terrified than ever. However, Brave Orchid orders her son to continue the journey, and they track Moon Orchid's husband's address to a downtown skyscraper. There, Brave Orchid makes a reconnaissance visit to determine how best to surprise Moon Orchid's husband. She discovers that he is a brain surgeon, and that his Chinese-American wife, whom Brave Orchid describes as a "modern, heartless girl," works with him as a nurse. She also notes how poorly this second wife speaks Chinese. To get the husband alone, Brave Orchid devises a plan to trick him into leaving his office so that he can meet the sisters in their car on the street.
When the husband arrives at the car, Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid are taken aback by how commanding, young, and American he looks: "The two old ladies saw a man, authoritative in his dark western suit, start to fill the front of the car. He had black hair and no wrinkles. He looked and smelled like an American." Initially, he unknowingly addresses Moon Orchid and her sister as "Grandmothers," but when he finally recognizes who they are, he is angry at Moon Orchid. Demanding to know why she has come to Los Angeles and what she wants, he tells her that she is mistaken if she thinks that she can fit into his new American life. Although he does not want her to return to China ("I wouldn't wish that on anyone"), he also does not want her to visit him again. His second wife does not know that he has a Chinese family, and in America he could be arrested for having two wives. While he is prepared to continue supporting Moon Orchid financially, he will not acknowledge her in his home.
This episode, in which Moon Orchid unsuccessfully confronts her husband, emphasizes how important language is to personal identity. As Moon Orchid sits in the car outside her husband's office building, her confidence wanes in direct relation to her losing her ability to talk: "I won't be able to talk," she tells her sister. "And sure enough, her voice was fading into a whisper. She was shivering and small in the corner of the seat." When she finally sees her husband for the first time in thirty years, his presence reduces her to silence. He directly asks her why she has tracked him down, but all she can do is "open and shut her mouth without any words coming out," like a puppet. Only once in the entire exchange between her husband, her sister, and herself does she manage to say anything, and even then it is only the whispered, sorrowfully pliant question, "What about me?" Ironically, her loss of language is the deciding factor in her husband's decision that she cannot fit into his American life. Speaking of the many guests he regularly entertains in his home, he says to Moon Orchid, "You can't talk to them. You can barely talk to me."
