Shelter (28 page)

“Some of you may even find yourselves blaming the Lord for her absence.” The reverend lowers his head, shuffling through pages and pages of notes that everyone can hear through the microphone. When he looks up again, he pauses much longer than he should, flustered in a way that Kyung has never seen before.

“We'll now have a reading from Sister Han.”

A small Korean woman stands up across the aisle. She watches the reverend for a signal, confused perhaps by the brevity of his remarks. When he doesn't give one, she approaches the altar, nervously folding and unfolding a slip of paper. Kyung thinks he recognizes her. She and her husband used to run a copy shop somewhere. Her round face is more withered now, and her hair has turned gray, but her footsteps sound the same, the way they clunk in thick black orthopedic shoes that correct the uneven lengths of her legs. Despite the shoes, Mrs. Han's face barely clears the podium.

“From Thessalonians…” She adjusts the microphone, cranking it down near her mouth with a screech that rings through the sanctuary. “‘For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.…'”

Kyung turns to look down the pew at his family. Everyone is listening intently to Mrs. Han as she struggles through the reading, her accent too thick to fully enunciate the words. No one is crying except for Vivi, who dabs at her face with a handkerchief, consumed by a fit of grief that seems out of place beside the others. Gillian squeezes his leg—not affectionately, but forcefully, as if to snap him back to attention. He scans through his program, a long list of readings and remembrances by people he barely knows. When he looks through the names more closely, he notices that Jin isn't scheduled to speak on Mae's behalf, and of course, no one trusted Kyung enough to ask. He's never attended a funeral in which a family member didn't say at least a few words about the deceased, but their omission seems entirely appropriate. He and his father lost their rights to Mae long before the Perrys entered their lives. It's better that people who treated her kindly have a chance to say their good-byes.

“‘… And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.'”

The reverend thanks Mrs. Han for her reading and assumes his place behind the podium again. Kyung expects him to begin his eulogy in earnest, but he introduces the chorus and retreats to a corner as an army of people take to the stage. They arrange themselves in two long rows, dressed in royal blue robes with their hands clasped in front of their chests, the same way Kyung was taught to sing in public as a child. Behind them, a man begins to play the pipe organ, which lights up the sanctuary with noise—too much noise, almost. It drowns out the solo of the woman in the center, whose reedlike voice drifts aimlessly toward the ceiling. The rest of the choir eventually joins in, singing something about Jesus being a redeemer, but what the actual lyrics are, Kyung can't hazard a guess. There's a muddy quality to their performance. The song feels unpracticed or unplanned. He looks at his program again, confirming that what they meant to sing was “Amazing Grace,” which this certainly isn't.

After the music concludes, an older woman approaches the podium with a stack of index cards. She raises the mike, filling the sanctuary with the same unfortunate screech as Mrs. Han. The woman's face glows white and oily under the spotlights as she introduces herself as Elinor Hamel, Mae's decorator. Kyung has never seen her before. For years, Elinor was nothing more than a voice on the phone or a name in a story. She was the person Mae spent the most time with, and probably spent the most money on as well. At first, Elinor doesn't seem like much of a speaker. She clears her throat too much and fumbles through her prepared remarks until she eventually puts her note cards down.

“I wasn't sure if I should bring this up today, but it's difficult to talk about Mae's life without at least referencing the things that happened to her recently.”

All the ambient noise in the room—the coughing, the fanning, the shifting in pews—suddenly stops and the sanctuary is quiet. Kyung sits up straight, wondering if he'll finally hear something uncomfortable and true.

“I'm sure there are people out there, people who didn't know Mae like we did, who thought of her as nothing more than a victim. But Mae was just the opposite. She was strong and smart. She survived something terrible, something that would have broken an ordinary soul. And I have to believe that God had his reasons for testing her as he did and then taking her away so soon afterwards. Maybe he had a special place for her.…”

Several people raise their Bibles. A ripple of amens makes its way to the back of the room. Kyung feels like he's sitting on the bottom of a swimming pool, looking up at a distorted view of a world in which no one understands what really happened. And his father and Gillian, people who should understand, refuse to believe.

Elinor concludes with a passage from John 14. “‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.'” She pauses and puts her note cards down again. “Mae is with our Father now, making his home more beautiful for him and for us, which was always her way. I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to be her friend in this lifetime, and I know we'll meet again in the next.”

There are other remembrances and readings after Elinor's, brief ones that are hard to listen to nonetheless. Everyone talks about Mae in generalities, confirming his fear that she never let anyone truly see her, not once in fifty-six years. Kyung tips his head back and stares at the huge stained-glass panels in the ceiling—bright red, blue, and gold crosses surrounded by bursts of color as if he's viewing them through a kaleidoscope.

“Pay attention,” Gillian whispers.

Kyung looks at her, not certain if she's speaking to him or to Ethan. Then he feels the sharp point of her elbow in his ribs.

Ethan leans forward in his seat as an elderly woman climbs the steps to the altar. She's dressed in a traditional Korean gown, floor length and white, with a long-sleeved jacket that ties in the front with a bow.

“Is she a bride?” he asks Gillian, who responds with a gentle “shhh.”

Kyung studies Ethan's profile, quiet and focused as he tries to make sense of what the woman is wearing. It's embarrassing to see his four-year-old behaving better than he is, so he defaults to an old trick, counting everything in his line of sight. There are 73 gardenias in the planter in front of him, 214 words in the program, 48 fake bulbs in the candelabra on the altar. As a child, he often counted to pass the time, distracting himself until the beatings ended and the house was quiet again. Whatever comfort he took from this activity—it fails to soothe him anymore.

By the time the service concludes, the heat outside is brutal. Kyung and his family form a receiving line on the front steps of the church. The reverend is noticeably absent. Embarrassed, probably, by his strange showing inside. An hour-long service and he barely managed to utter five complete sentences in a row. As the guests file out of the church, Kyung feels moist, rough hands press against his, one after another. Women he doesn't know embrace him, pushing their warm breasts against his body. Several have helped themselves to the floral arrangements, toting them out like gift bags, which strikes him as rude.

Before he has a chance to fully form this thought, Lentz appears with his hand outstretched. “I'm so sorry for your loss, Mr. Cho.”

Beside him is another man dressed in a cheap brown suit with the disposition of an old marine.

“This is Detective—”

Kyung cuts him off. If this is the detective he never heard from, he doesn't want to meet him now. “Thank you both for joining us,” he says.

He turns to face the onslaught of mourners coming at him, squeezing through the doors of the church. Lentz and the detective take their cue and move on, replaced by more people, more handshakes, more sweaty hugs and stolen flowers. Kyung hears himself saying what he knows he should—“Hello.” “Thank you.” “I appreciate that you came.”—and the irony of this isn't lost on him. He told everyone at the Cape that he didn't want to pretend anymore, and now here he is, just getting through the script, waiting for the line to thin. When it finally does and the last of the elderly stragglers have left the building, he walks to a small patch of shade near the side of the church. His father is still standing by the door, trying to remove the boutonniere from his lapel. Jin frees the gardenia and spins it by the stem, clockwise and counterclockwise, over and over again. He seems hypnotized by it, staring at the pinwheel of white until he's the last person left on the steps. Suddenly, he rears his arm back and hurls the flower into the bushes, startling a pair of birds that flap and flutter their way to the roof. It happens so quickly, no one notices except for Kyung.

*   *   *

The reception is at the parsonage, a detail he didn't overhear until it was too late. He assumed everyone would come to his house to pay their respects, but the actual location is much worse. He has no desire to enter the reverend's home, to be anywhere near Molly again. During the two-block walk from the church to the parsonage, Kyung brings up the rear, cycling through every possible reason to leave. Illness, anxiety, fatigue. Nothing seems important enough to excuse himself from his parents' friends, a fact that Gillian confirms as they near the front door.

“Don't go disappearing on us,” she whispers. “Everyone will want to see you.”

Kyung reaches for her hand, a nervous instinct that she mistakes for affection. She pulls away before he can touch her.

“When is this going to end?” he asks.

The question could refer to so many things. Even he's not entirely sure what he meant.

“You're incredible,” she says.

This is the longest she's ever been angry with him, the longest she's ever gone without wanting to talk things through. Whenever he tries to start a conversation, she's quick to interrupt, filtering everything he says through the worst possible lens. It's not like her to be so closed off to him, but there's nothing he can do to fix this right now. His only goal is to get through the day.

Despite the church's carefully maintained appearance, the parsonage hasn't received the same kind of attention over the years. The crooked little house looks the same as it did when the elder Reverend Sung lived there. Although everything is immaculate, scrubbed clean and pine fresh, there's no hiding the peeling linoleum in the entryway or the trampled shag carpet in the living room—carpet that Kyung still remembers staring at whenever his parents dragged him to Bible study. Even the furniture looks the same, just older and more abused. The sofa cushions sag. The tables and bookcases are all marred and mismatched. Kyung can't imagine living in the house he grew up in, much less leaving everything as it was before. The thought of this is so strange to him, but he reminds himself that not everyone had a childhood like his. Maybe the memories here are happier; the sameness, a source of comfort.

Without any prior discussion, Kyung and his family branch off into different areas of the house. Gillian and Ethan gather with the women and children in the kitchen. Jin deposits himself on the living room sofa while Connie and Vivi head toward the buffet line in the dining room. Kyung continues down the hall, looking for a place where they're not. He shakes hands and says hello to people as he passes by, but never stops long enough to exchange more than a polite sentence or two. At the end of the hall, he finds a bathroom behind one door and a study directly across from it behind another. He doesn't think Gillian can accuse him of disappearing if he leaves the door open, so he slips into the cramped study, surprised by the volume of furniture and clutter inside. The reverend's desk is the length of a dining table, with loose sheets of paper covering every square inch. Stacked on top is an oversized hutch lined with boxes of ancient software and seemingly broken printers. Kyung sits down in the chair, studying the books on the shelves. About half of them are religious, with titles that seem like self-help:
Your Relationship with God. Spirituality in Troubled Times. Lifting Your Soul with Prayer.
Curiously, the other half is science fiction, the cheap paperback kind with aliens and spaceships landing on their covers. Kyung picks one up at random and flips through the yellowed pages. The writing is neither terrible nor inspired—just pulp that he wouldn't think to associate with the reverend.

Across the hall, someone closes the bathroom door, scraping a metal chain to lock it from inside. Kyung puts the book back on the shelf and turns to the desk, scanning the papers in front of him. He notices his mother's name on one page, and then another. The closer he looks, the more he sees Mae's name scattered everywhere. The reverend must have been working on his eulogy here, printing and reprinting the text at least a dozen times. He reads a random paragraph about Mae's devotion to God, and then another about her generosity toward the less fortunate. Like the sci-fi book, the writing isn't terrible. But it's not special either. The eulogy reminds him of a horoscope, something so general that it could apply to almost anyone, which he doesn't necessarily fault the reverend for. What else is a minister supposed to do at a funeral besides say comforting things about the dead? What he doesn't understand is why the reverend never said any of it at all.