Re Jane (28 page)

Then Emo wrapped a fierce, fleshy arm around my shoulders. With her other hand, she held her phone out at arm's length, aiming its lens at us.
“Say ‘watermelon'!”
she commanded.
Soobak!
We opened our mouths wide. Emo snapped a photo of the two of us: she lifting herself on her tippy-toes, me crouching down. Each of us going a little out of our way to meet the other in the middle.

I touched down in New York at the very same hour of the very same day as my departure from Korea. It was, as Eunice might have said, very Narnian. It was, as Beth might have said, like “time regained.”

Homeward bound

I wish I was.

—Simon & Garfunkel, “Homeward Bound” (music and lyrics by Paul Simon)

J
ane. Jane! JANE!”

The cry cut through the general din of JFK—of rumbling suitcases and passengers rushing into the arms of loved ones and security-checkpoint bleeps.

Rushing toward me, wearing his standard work clothes—wrinkleproof cotton-poly blend shirt, breast pocket crammed, I knew, with its usual worn-out Bic pens and receipt slips used for scrap paper—was a familiar face, a face I had not seen in more than a year.

My uncle, Sang.
Not
Ed Farley.

I struggled to mask my disappointment. Not because I wasn't grateful. Only because I'd spent the entire flight picturing Ed instead.

There was no rational reason for me to have expected Ed to come. And yet, with his last cry of an e-mail, I was buoyed with the hope that, just maybe, he'd be waiting for me on the other side of the gate.

Nor had I expected my uncle to come. He knew that the engagement had been called off—thankfully, Emo had been the one to break the news. He also knew I had a place to stay lined up in the city; Eunice had a friend from MIT who rented out a second bedroom like an ad hoc B&B. “
Uncle! How did you know I was—”
I corrected myself.
“What an inconvenience for you come getting me here.”

He harrumphed. “Your Korean getting better. At least you not waste time over there.” It took me a moment to realize we were each speaking in our weaker language. It took another moment to realize that my uncle had just offered a rare compliment. “Aunt making
maeuntang,
” he continued. It was a spicy fish stew, one of Hannah's specialties. “You come home dinner first.”

In the crowds I caught a glimpse of a blond head—Ed?

“What you looking for?” Sang barked.

I'd been mistaken; it wasn't him. “Nothing,” I said, my tongue settling into English.
No one.

My uncle gave me a stern look. “Why you bring so much suitcase? Hurry-hurry.” Much of what I'd brought back home were the things Sang had sent me in the mail. Taking the luggage from me, he turned on his heel and strode off toward the exit.

I took a last glance through the crowds—still no Ed—before hurry-hurrying after my uncle.

* * *

We pulled up to 718 Gates Street. It's funny how you think you've known a place your whole life but when you return after an absence, you move tentatively through a now-unfamiliar space. The air, redolent of toasted barley and drying slivers of ginger and warm blankets. The utter quiet, interspersed with the occasional
putt-putts
and groans of the buses floating down Northern Boulevard. The stickiness of the linoleum tiles under the soles of your feet. This house had once felt so cramped, so
tap-tap-hae.
And now it did and did not feel like home.

I stood in the doorway of the kitchen, where Hannah and Mary bustled about.
“Where's your
nunchi
?”
I heard Hannah say sharply. But she was addressing Mary and not me. When she looked at me, she said,
“You came.”
But her words did not sound unkind.
“Now go tell your uncle and George that dinner's ready.”

We took our seats around the card table. The water glass felt thick and tall in my hand. The glasses at Emo's had always been thin and squat. I sat back in my chair—its metal legs scratching against the linoleum—and listened to the waves of conversation that flowed across the table. My ears kept anticipating the back-and-forths of Emo and Big Uncle's speech. Emo, with her girlish, joking tone, and mostly “Seoul standard” cadence, a good counterpoint to Big Uncle's forceful words and unwavering Busan accent. But I was now realizing how differently Sang and Hannah spoke—their Korean tainted by decades of “overseas” life. Their cadences rose and fell in the same rhythms as American New York English, their language a pastiche of all of their adopted homes.

Even our conversational fodder that night felt different from those earlier dinners. It had always seemed as if the picking and prodding was directed at me. But tonight Hannah was scolding George, who was already on his second bowl of rice, to slow down for goodness' sake. When Mary snickered, Hannah immediately snapped that she was hardly one to talk—Mary just swallowed without chewing. I noticed then that the air was no longer punctuated with Mary's
chyap-chyap-
ing. I was filled with an inexplicable wistfulness. I had once been at the center of those conversations—conversations that at the time had felt like attacks. But sometimes you only see what you want to see.

Then Sang turned to me. “So now you decide you not living there no more.”

I readied myself for the ensuing barrage of criticism.
Why you not follow through your engagement? Why you giving up so easy?
How could I explain to him that Changhoon and I did not speak the same language after all? That Seoul, much as I'd wanted it to, had never felt like home? I braced myself for a fight.

Mary picked up where her father had left the conversation dangling. “So . . . I guess things didn't work out with you and that FOB you were supposed to marry,” she said.

“They're not FOBs if they're still in Korea,” I said. “
We're
the FOBs.”

“You know what I mean.”

I could feel Hannah's eyes reading my face. I tensed up anew. But she said,
“You know what everyone says about
gyopos
like you? They're too
sunjinhae
for their own good when they show up in Korea. You know that word, Jane-ah? It means being naïve, like an innocent
babo.
Those Koreans from Korea”—
she shook her head—“
we're a completely different breed from them.”

I had fully expected my aunt to rail at me for my irresponsibility. But she hadn't. Hannah had had the
nunchi
to spare my feelings.

* * *

After the meal the phone rang. My heart jumped—Ed Farley. I just
knew.
Mary rushed to answer it. She handed the receiver to me. “It's for
you.
”

I took the receiver from her, bracing myself for the boom of Ed's voice. Would he sound the same as he had the first time, when I'd answered his
Village Voice
ad—a little clipped, a little gravelly? Or would the soft, gentle tones he came to use with me over time wind their way back to me like a familiar refrain?

“Way to pull a runaway bride, Jane Re.”

“Nina?”

I immediately cringed. Whatever disappointment I'd felt by finding it was not Ed was replaced by
embarrassment,
thinking about that e-mail I'd sent her from Seoul. In which I'd rambled unabashedly about everything: Changhoon.
Ed.
With that letter I had ignored everything they'd taught us in Career Services:
Never leave a paper trail.
But at the time it had felt liberating, like a delicious release. Now I just felt like a
babo.

“Your e-mail was very . . . dramatic,” Nina went on. “I swear there's, like, a movie or something about your life.” She let out a laugh, a booming laugh. But it wasn't one of judgment; it was a good-natured one.

I couldn't stop myself from laughing, too. “There totally
is.”

“Before we call it water under the bridge, I just want to say . . .” She paused, started again. “Look, I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't have backed you into a corner like that, when I was there. I just couldn't stand to see you keep it all bottled up. It felt so . . .”

Tap-tap-hae.
I mentally filled in the word for her.

“Anyway, if I knew, I wouldn't have acted like such an asshole.”

“I acted like an asshole, too.”

Nina and I quickly resumed our natural rapport. The familiarity of our bond came rushing back to me, just like the smells and sounds of 718 Gates Street wove their way into my consciousness. She told me about her job as a real-estate broker, handling mostly rentals on the Upper East Side. I told her about my upcoming second interview at a real-estate developer's office, to which she said, “Look at that. We're both kinda in the same industry.” She asked whether I was disappointed not to be working on Wall Street, as I'd once planned.

“Maybe two years ago I would've been,” I said. “But sometimes plans change.”

“Yeah, I guess there's no guarantee you would've gotten one of those finance jobs anyway,” she said. “The economy's total crap. It wasn't anything like when we started college. You kind of feel lucky to have a job at all.”

Just before we were about to hang up, Nina said, “So . . . what are you going to do about Ed Farley?”

The swell of disappointment returned. “Hunt him down. Profess my undying love. Face rejection, maybe.”

“Well, according to the Peterses, they definitely got divorced,” Nina said. “If you say you're still in love with him, you better get cracking.”

* * *

It was quite late, after the dishes, the fruit, the
yujacha
tea. When my uncle suggested I just stay home instead of venturing into the city to Eunice's friend's place, I secretly felt relieved. Back in our old bedroom, I asked Mary if I could borrow her laptop. I didn't want to check my e-mail on the family computer in the living room, in case anyone peered over my shoulder.
“Fine,”
she said, handing it to me. Sitting up in my old twin-size bed, my back against the wall, I flipped open the computer. But when I logged into my e-mail, there was no word from Ed.

I returned the laptop to Mary and got ready for bed. I lay there under the covers, until the sounds of traffic from Northern died away, Mary's snores tapered off, the floorboards beneath the linoleum tiles settled down, and finally I was lulled to sleep.

N
ina was not the only one with whom I made, or attempted to make, peace. I worked up the courage to call the Mazer-Farleys—now, I supposed, just the Mazers. Beth answered the phone.

“Hi, Beth. It's Jane Re.”

“Hello, Jane.” I could hear the shift in her voice, from friendly to guarded.

“. . .” That was as far as I had rehearsed. I knew that this wasn't some situation you could right by sending over a box of fruit. And yet some small part of me had hoped that Beth's old self would take over the conversation, flooding it with her usual ebullience. Of course it didn't.

“How is your . . . work?” I asked.

“It's fine.” Beth's response was clipped.

“I feel like I have a lot of explaining to do.” The words came out in flustered heaps, like the books and papers piled up every which way in Beth's office. “I don't know if you got my— I'm sorry for sending such an overwhelming e-mail. But I'd love to take you out for coff—I mean, tea. Could we talk things over? In person?”

It felt so insincere to blurt out an “I'm sorry” over the phone.

“There's really nothing to talk about,” she said. I recognized her tone of voice—it was light, airy; the one she used when she was faking it. It was the same voice Emo would sometimes put on. “I do appreciate your message. Good-bye, Ja—”

“Wait!” I cried. “Is . . . Devon there?”

Instantly she took up her guarded tone of voice again. “Devon is not available to talk. Have a good day, Jane.” And with that, she hung up.

As I stared at the phone, I saw how much I had relied on Beth's friendliness as a given. Only in its absence did I realize I'd taken it for granted.

* * *

The next time I tried calling, I picked a time when I was sure Beth would be at school and not home. When Devon came on the line, she said, “Didn't you get the message? From my mom? I'm not available to talk.”

“Devon, I'm sorry—” I started, but the line was already dead.

* * *

Ed had been away at a conference. When he returned, he apologized for the delay in responding, and invited me over for dinner at his apartment in Rego Park. Because all our communication happened via e-mail, I could not pick up on either tone or intention. He made no reference to the message I'd sent in Korea. Was he open to reconciliation, or did he merely feel obligated to get together? For all I knew, he wanted to chew me out in the privacy of his own home.
You think you can just come waltzing back into my life? After what you put me through?

“Dinner at his place? You know what
that
means. Don't forget to shave your legs,” Nina had said when I told her. And while I wasn't a complete
babo
—yes, of course I had hoped the invitation meant Ed wanted to rekindle
something
—still, a lot could have changed in the course of a year and a season.

It's a little hard to dress for something when you don't know whether or not it's a date. I decided on jeans and a nice top instead of a skirt. I debated hair up or hair down, then decided on down. I did not wear makeup. Since my return home, I saved makeup for special occasions only, and most days I went out with a bare face. And I wanted Ed to remember me as I had been.

* * *

Ed lived in one of those large, nondescript apartment complexes just off the hustle-bustle of Queens Boulevard. The reddish-brown brick exterior matched the reddish-brown of the thick paint on the walls of the sunken lobby. The elevator, inconvenienced, groaned on the way up to his floor. The bottle of wine in my hands was slick with nervous sweat.

I pressed the black buzzer of his apartment door. My ears expected the honeyed electronic chimes of its Seoul counterparts; instead it let out an unwelcome
err!
The door swung open, and there was Ed.

There was a slight blip between the picture of Ed Farley I had carried in my mind for more than a year and the Ed Farley before me now. Gone were the boyish flops of dark blond hair; now he wore his hair short, which made his whole head shine blonder. His broad shoulders, his lean muscles were the same, but instead of his usual plain white T-shirt he was wearing a button-down. His once-baggy light-rinse jeans were fitted and dark-rinse, a style favored by all the twenty-something guys on the subways. I traced the once-familiar contours of his face—high cheekbones, strong jaw. When my eyes met his, I realized that Ed had also been taking me in, figuring out what had changed, and what had not. I don't think I imagined the cloud lifting from his eyes as they turned a brilliant blue.

We stood like that in the doorway—for seconds, for minutes, I couldn't say for sure. Finally I held out the bottle of wine. “I brought . . . this.”

Those
were my first words to Ed after more than a year's absence? Nina would tell me I had no game.

“You shouldn't have.” Ed took the bottle from me, his fingertips gently brushing mine. His same soft touch.

I was overcome with a familiar sensation, as Ed led me in and I followed him down a dark, narrow hallway. It opened to a square living room with carpeted floors. The walls were plain and white and bare, whereas the walls in Brooklyn had been covered in artwork and pictures. None of Ed's handmade furniture had made it to his new home—the living room had a black leather couch and a glass coffee table, opposite a large flat-screen television. (The Mazer-Farley home had an old model relegated to the laundry room.) I don't know what I was expecting—but my heart sank a bit, noting how little resemblance Ed's new home bore to the Thorn Street brownstone.

Even the aromas were different; this home smelled of plaster and—I sniffed the air again—roasting meat. It was delicious.

“Let me go check on dinner,” Ed said. “Keep me company?” I followed him into the kitchen, expecting it to look as plain and devoid of character as the living room. But I was surprised to find that it looked newly renovated. The appliances were all a sleek stainless steel. One wall was covered in pots and pans, hanging like elaborate pieces of art. His spice rack was as expansive as his bookshelves; his cooking equipment rivaled his toolbox. I ran my hand along the counter. “Is this granite?” I asked.

Ed nodded. “You don't want to know what I had to do to get the landlord to splurge on those.”

“Drop trou?”

And he laughed—a hearty laugh, a genuine laugh, the laugh I remembered so well. I felt a little embarrassed—my joke wasn't
that
funny. “I forgot that about you, Jane,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I haven't laughed like that in a long time.” He looked at me.

We again stared at each other; I don't know for how long.

“So . . . what's for dinner?” I finally asked, taking in the various pots and pans simmering on the stove and peeking at the roasting pan in the oven.

“A cassoulet,” he said. “Have you had it before?”

I shook my head. “I don't even know what's in it.”

“It's like pork 'n' beans,” he explained, “and duck.”

“Sounds fancy,” I said. “And here I was expecting heroes.” As soon as I said it, I chastised myself. It was presumptuous of me to bring up memories of those late nights.

But Ed just shrugged. “I enjoy cooking,” he said. There was something so luxurious and appealing about the way he moved in the kitchen. I watched as he popped open and poured the wine, as he chopped vegetables with slow, steady strokes (Hannah was always so haphazardly hurry-hurry with the knife) and added them to the pot. He was deliberate and relaxed; I was suddenly struck with an awful thought: How many other women did Ed entertain in his beautiful kitchen by cooking an elaborate dinner? How many others had stood here sipping wine, watching him work?

Ed caught me staring at his hands; he held up his bare left one. “As you can probably guess”—now he was sweeping his arm across the room, as if to gesture how all this was his—“Beth and I got a divorce.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“Don't be,” he said. “It's a relief. And you and I both know that a divorce was long overdue.”

I cradled my wineglass. “You look happy. I'm so . . .”
Happy you're happy?
It was almost too corny to utter. Also, it was and was not true.
I
wanted to be the source of his happiness.

“I could be happier,” he said. “It's genuinely good to see you, Jane. I'm glad you came over.”

“I'm glad you invited me,” I said. I took a sip of my wine. “And what about Devon?”

Ed looked away. “Devon lives with her mom. But, you know, I still get to see her. Whenever it's convenient for Beth.”

His smile changed, from genuine to rueful. I got the sense he didn't feel like elaborating, so I changed the subject. I told him about my new job with that real-estate developer—they'd hired me on the spot at my interview. I told him Nina and I were thinking of looking for a place together in the city.

When he asked about Korea, I told him about my first day of teaching. “I don't know how you do it every morning, standing in front of all those students,” I said. “I couldn't stop my legs from shaking the whole first week.”

“Actually, I'm not teaching at the prep school anymore,” he said. “I'm at Queens College now. Hence the move to Queens.” Ed explained how shortly after “all that had happened” (here
I
looked away), there had been an opening to teach at SUNY Rochester for a semester, to fill in for someone on sabbatical. He'd applied for the job on a whim. “I guess I was the only chump they could find willing to brave it up in Rochester,” he said. He quit the prep school and moved upstate. After that, he was—“by some miracle, or fluke, or both”—hired by Queens College.

“Ed, that's fantastic! So your dissertation's all done? You must be thrilled. And relieved.”

Ed took a drink of his wine. “Not exactly. They hired me as an ABD,” he said. “I'm adjuncting part of the time, dissertating the other part.”

“But still,” I said, “that's really prestigious. You're a
professor.
” But he didn't look as pleased as I was for him. “Ed, you should let yourself enjoy your success. It's huge! This is—”

I was interrupted by that buzzer—
err!
Ed held up his finger as if to say,
Hold that thought,
and ran to the door. “Devon!” I heard him cry. “What are you doing here?”

I froze. I heard the door close, and they were advancing down the hall. What would Devon think, seeing me here like this with her dad?

“You didn't get Mom's message?” There was an edge—distinctly the tone of a teenager—in her voice. “I had some
stupid
group project out here. Mom didn't want me taking the subway by myself this late, so she told me to come here and then you could drive me home.”

“Why didn't
you
call me?”

“
Because.
I didn't even
want
to come, but Mom—” Devon reached the kitchen, and I froze again. “What's
she
doing here? Dad, what's going on?”

“We're just— Jane just got back from Korea, and we're catching up—”

As Ed fumbled for words, I took in this new Devon. How tall she'd grown! Her once-tiny frame was now all limbs. Gone were her usual casual jeans and soft pastel T-shirts. Now she was wearing all black. But not in a Goth sort of way—she wore a tight-fitting shirt that revealed the flatness of her chest. Her black flare pants let out a synthetic rustle. Her hair was different, too; it grew free from its bowl cut and hung past her shoulders. There were highlighted streaks in her formerly jet-black hair, as if she'd sprayed it with Sun-In. The Korean girls used to use that stuff back when I was in high school. The product was meant to bring out the natural golden highlights in white girls' hair. When Asian girls used Sun-In, their hair turned a cheap brassy color. Her chubby cheeks had thinned out; the skin stretched taut across her face. Devon looked so uncomfortable standing there in her new body, with her new hair and new clothes. When her eyes alighted on me, her scowl deepened.

“Is that for
all
of us?” she said, jutting her chin at the bottle of wine in her father's hands.

“Nice try,” Ed said. “Maybe in ten years. Now, go greet Jane.
Properly.
We haven't seen her in ages.”

Ed pushed his daughter toward me. She did not charge forward with one hand sticking out to shake mine, the way she'd done once before. “Devon, I'm . . .” I struggled for words.
I'm so sorry. I know you're angry. There's so much I want to say to you.
“. . .
so happy to see you.”

I held my arms open to embrace her. But Devon just stood there, her own arms crossed over her chest. Mine dropped back down to my sides.

“Just like old times,” Ed said with a forced lightness.

Devon looked from her father to me to the bottle of wine. Then she rolled her eyes and walked out of the kitchen.

Devon had caught a whiff of whatever was stirring between her father and me. But how much did she know? I kept trying to catch her father's eye, so he could give me some hint. But he was engrossed in his cassoulet.

Ed urged Devon to stay for dinner. As he cooked, Devon and I were alone in the living room. I tried to make small talk with her. We were on such fraught ground; I knew it would be presumptuous to assume too much intimacy, as if we'd picked up right where we left off. Small talk was our only option for now. I congratulated her on Hunter—I'd heard about Devon's acceptance through Nina, who'd mentioned that Alla had applied and gotten in as well. Devon met my compliment with a wordless shrug. “That must be nice, to have a familiar face at a new school,” I said. “You guys must take the train together.”

Devon didn't answer. I felt myself rambling to fill the silence. “Nina was saying how Alla really likes it there. And she thinks—”