Shelter (3 page)

“Ten-sixteen,” he says. “Call it in.”

The driver nods and picks up his radio.

Mae tries to say something, but it's muffled by the seal of her oxygen mask. Kyung leans down beside her ear. “Everything's going to be fine.”

He's told this lie so many times in the past, but something about it feels different now. He's no longer a small child or a sullen teenager, lifting himself up to play a part. He's a thirty-six-year-old man with a promise to keep. Kyung was a freshman in college when he threatened to kill his father if he ever raised a hand to Mae again. Even though his voice cracked as he said the words out loud, even though he fully expected to become the object of the beating instead of the observer, the threat was surprisingly effective. Jin started going to counseling once a week. He became a regular at prayer group and Bible study. For eighteen years, he lived like a changed man—not a loving or caring man, but the absence of rage was change enough. Still, Kyung couldn't rule out the possibility that a day like this would come, and now, of course, it has. Why it started again, why it happened with such a different, demented kind of violence—he can't even begin to understand. His father was always a hitter. Open hand or closed fist. An occasional kick to the ribs or back. But the patches of pubic hair ripped out by their roots—this is something new. He shakes his head, trying to rid himself of the image. He can't imagine what his mother did to deserve such a beating, but that was always the point. She didn't deserve any of them.

Mae falls asleep during their last few minutes in the ambulance, despite a stretch of potholed road that jolts Kyung's spine. As he sees the hospital approaching in the window, he's tempted to ask the driver to circle the block. That's what he used to do with Ethan, who had colic as a baby. The car was one of the few places where he could sleep, so Kyung often drove around the neighborhood, over and over again, to soothe Ethan's frayed nerves and his. It always felt like a shame to wake him at the end of the ride. Despite everything that's happened, Mae appears peaceful for the first time since he saw her in the field, a peace that ends as soon as the ambulance stops and the paramedics fling open the doors.

Suddenly, people are coming at them like locusts. Everyone is talking over each other—the doctors, the nurses, the paramedics. Mae is screaming again, banging her head against the gurney with such force, a nurse has to hold her down. Kyung assumes he'll be allowed to go into the exam room with her, but a doctor waves him off.

“Check in over there,” he says.

Kyung watches as they wheel Mae away, struggling against her restraints like a psych patient. He should be with her, he thinks. He feels terrible for being so impatient in the field, barking questions in her ear while she was asking for help.

At the front desk, a dough-faced woman hands him some forms to fill out and asks for Mae's insurance card.

“Insurance?”

“Yes, does she have any?”

He isn't sure what bothers him more—the fact that she's asking now, or the fact that he doesn't know.

“I think so.”

“Any idea who she's covered by?”

“No.”

“Fine,” she sighs. “Just do the best you can.”

Kyung fills out the top section of the cover sheet—Mae's name, address, telephone number, and birth date. He's not sure about the answers to anything else, so he slides the clipboard across the counter.

The woman scans the form and tries to slide it back. “You missed a bunch.”

“I can't fill out the rest.”

“You don't know if your mother has any preexisting conditions?”

“No … we're not really that close.”

The woman lifts and lowers her eyebrows. “Okay, then. The police are waiting to talk to you. I think they're around the corner.”

“They're here already?”

“The paramedics called ahead.”

Of the three men standing beside the soda machine, Kyung recognizes two of them: Connie, Gillian's father. And Tim, her brother. Both appear to be off duty, dressed in T-shirts and jeans as if they were interrupted mid-barbecue. Their faces are angled toward a small television set hanging from the ceiling that's tuned to a Red Sox game. Kyung approaches slowly, then slower still until he comes to a stop and takes a deep breath. He didn't ask Gillian to call her family. He wishes she hadn't.

“Connie,” he finally says.

His father-in-law turns around. “What's going on? Is she all right?”

Kyung nods, but he's not convinced.

“This is Officer Lentz. He's here to take your statement.”

He looks at the third man's face, alarmed by the roundness of it, the absence of stubble or wear. “How old are you?” he asks. He blurts out the question before he realizes what an insult it levies.

“Twenty-nine.”

Lentz emphasizes the word “nine,” which Kyung assumes people mistake for “five.”

“Matt's a good guy. He knows what he's doing.” Tim rests a protective hand on Lentz's shoulder.

“So what happened?” Connie asks. “Gilly called in a fit about your mom getting beaten up.”

Kyung nods again, staring at the checkered tile floor. This is too much to say in front of his in-laws, too much history that he's guarded from people like them.

Connie seems to sense this because he steps toward him, lowering his head to look Kyung in the eye. “She said you mentioned something about your father before the ambulance arrived? He's done this kind of thing before?”

Connie's eyes are blue, blue like Gillian's. For the first time, Kyung sees something resembling kindness in them. Not suspicion, like the day she brought him home to meet the family. Or apathy, like every other Christmas and Thanksgiving since. Being married to his daughter wasn't enough to earn this man's affection, but being a victim somehow is.

“It used to be pretty regular. A long time ago.” Kyung pauses. “My mother told me he did this to her—when she came to the house today, she said so.”

Lentz is taking notes with a small blue pencil, the stubby kind used by golfers. Kyung watches the lead leave a neat trail across the page. Every letter is perfectly slanted and looped; it looks like a woman's handwriting, or a young girl's. He wonders if Lentz has ever been assigned to anything more serious than a bike theft.

“That seems like enough to go talk to him, don't you think?” Connie asks. “Mind if we come along?”

Although he phrased it in the form of a question, it's obvious that Connie expects the younger man to defer to him, which he does.

“I want to go too.”

The three men look at Kyung, then at each other.

“That's probably not such a good idea,” Tim says. “Maybe you should wait—”

Connie swings his arm in front of Tim's chest like a barricade. “It's okay if he wants to come. Someone does this to a guy's mother, he has the right.” He doesn't bother to consult Lentz about this. He simply starts walking toward the exit. “Just promise me you'll stay out of the way.”

What he promises to do and what he thinks he'll do are two different things. Kyung is convinced that when he sees Jin, he'll go straight for the old man's throat, pressing his thumbs into the hollow until someone pries him off. Connie and Tim might respect him more for the effort, although the McFaddens are the kind of men who always seem ready to fight, which ensures that they never have to. Kyung doesn't feel comfortable around them, making their presence today even odder. He reminds himself that Gillian couldn't have known any of this was going to happen when she called. It's not her fault that he's sitting in the back of Connie's Suburban, following Lentz's squad car up the hill toward Marlboro Heights.

“I keep forgetting,” Tim says. “What's your dad teach again?”

“Engineering. Mechanical engineering.”

“College professor ought to know better than to hit a woman, don't you think?”

Tim turns around in the passenger seat, his expression a cross between menacing and sly. He's a hulk of a man, even taller and thicker than Connie. The question was probably his dumb idea of a trick. Kyung is a college professor too. Tim wants to hear him say the right thing.

“Everyone,” he answers.

“Everyone what?”

“I think everyone should know better.”

The main road into Marlboro Heights is a wide, neatly landscaped street. The houses along this stretch are the cheapest in the neighborhood because of their proximity to traffic. Still, Tim whistles at the sprawling Victorians with their chemical-green lawns and tall, leafy shade trees. It occurs to Kyung that his in-laws have never visited his parents' house before. They were invited once, shortly after he and Gillian eloped, but they declined the invitation, which was never extended again. Under different circumstances, he would have been proud to bring them here. Mae and Jin live near the top of the hill in a stunning Queen Anne, built in the 1860s and restored to ornate, expensive perfection.

When they pull into the horseshoe driveway, Tim leans out his open window, taking it all in. “This doesn't look like a college professor's house.”

“My father still earns money from his patents.”

“His what?”

“He invents things.”

“Never mind all that.” Connie turns around in his seat. “Remember what you promised. You're going to keep your head in there, right?”

Kyung feels like a bullet sitting in a chamber. Compressed and powerful, ready to inflict damage. Sending his father to jail isn't the same thing as killing him, but it's close. Close enough.

“I'll be fine.”

Lentz is waiting for them on the doorstep. As they walk up the flagstone path, Kyung notices that all the drapes have been pulled shut. Lentz picks up the brass knocker and raps the handle against the door. When no one answers, Connie pounds on it with his fist.

“I guess he took off,” Lentz says. “No cars in the driveway.”

Kyung lifts a flowerpot filled with marigolds and removes a spare key from the draining dish. His father is smart, smart enough to park the Lincoln a few blocks away to give the appearance that no one is home. That would explain the drapes. He tries to offer the key to Lentz, who steps away as if it's a grenade.

“We can't use that. We'll have to come back later.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Connie says. “You ever let yourself in with that key before?”

“A couple of times. Why?”

“And your parents didn't mind, did they? Didn't complain?”

“No. They told me where to find it.”

Connie turns to Lentz. “It's not illegal entry if he had prior consent. I say we go in.”

“Come on, Connie. That's a stretch. You know how much trouble we'd get into—how much trouble
I'd
get into if I had to explain this to someone?”

Their conversation is beginning to frustrate him. Kyung doesn't care about illegal entry or prior consent. All he knows is that his father is hiding somewhere inside, and he wants to see Jin's face when he realizes the police have come for him, that his own son brought them here for him. This is reason enough to go in. He turns the knob clockwise, surprised to find no resistance. Before Lentz can tell him not to, he pushes the door open, and the conversation behind him stops midsentence. In the entryway, the antique console that usually holds flowers and mail has been tipped over onto its side. One of its legs is broken, lying a few feet away like a junky dowel. There's paper everywhere, loose sheets that look like bills, and pages from books that have been torn out of their bindings.

“Je-sus,” Tim says under his breath.

“Mr. Cho?” Connie shouts. “Police.”

The three of them push past Kyung, their need for a reason to enter apparently satisfied by the damage now in plain sight. He follows them in, careful to walk around the broken houseplants and figurines in the entryway, if only to examine how methodically his father destroyed all of the things his mother loved. Above the staircase is a long stretch of wall where the family photographs used to hang. Most of the frames have been thrown to the floor and stepped on. There's glass everywhere; the photos have been torn into pieces like old receipts. Kyung stares at the ruined faces, the fragments of eyes and ears and lips pursed tight. The photos were originals, the only evidence left to document his childhood or birth. Gillian occasionally nagged him to get reprints, but he always assumed they'd be his to inherit one day. He can't imagine a more intentional insult from his father than the black-and-white scraps scattered across the stairs, tossed like makeshift confetti.

When he joins the others in the living room, the air smells thick with stale smoke. Connie is standing next to the bookcases, studying the damage as if searching for clues about the kind of family his daughter married into. A half-dozen empty liquor bottles are strewn around the room, and the paintings above the fireplace—paintings that Jin took such pride in collecting—are lying in the corner. The canvases have been kicked in, their peaceful seascapes damaged beyond repair.

“Classy,” Tim says, picking up a crystal decanter filled with tobacco-colored liquid and floating stubs of cigars. “Your dad likes to drink, I'm guessing.”

“No, not anymore. Not like he used to. The bar is just for guests.”

“Looks to me like he went on a bender.” He puts the decanter down and motions toward an empty bottle of cognac on the end table.

Tim's explanation should make sense, but it doesn't. Nothing in this room makes sense. The volume of chaos is too much for one person, especially a man pushing sixty.

“Does it always get this crazy?” Lentz asks.

“Never,” Kyung says, and this is the part that's beginning to worry him. He knows his father is capable of hitting a woman. And taking a bat or a broom to his mother's antiques, he can imagine this too. But what bothers Kyung is that his father isn't the type of person to destroy his own things. The painting of Nauset Beach on Cape Cod—the one torn out of its frame and lying on the floor—it was one of Jin's most prized possessions. He shakes his head, unable to sort through the mismatch between what he knows and what he sees.