Shelter (37 page)

“So are you done with your questions now?”

“No, not yet. Tell me about Mom's cousin. The one you actually wanted to marry.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know if things would have been different with her.”

Jin stirs his drink with his finger. “She died young. In her forties, I think. Cancer.”

“I'm not asking what would have been different. I'm asking if
you
would have been different.”

“You have a Ph.D.,” Jin says, lobbing the first grenade. “Act like you earned it. Say what you really want to say.”

Kyung nods. “Fine, then. If you'd married this other woman, do you think you would have hit her too?”

The expression on Jin's face is smug at first. Then it settles into something that almost resembles a smile. “I probably would have hit her more.”

It's not the response Kyung expected. He wanted Jin to say that things would have turned out differently, that the absence of love in their present was caused by an absence of love from the start. To hear him admit that nothing would have changed erases any last trace of doubt. There's no alternate version of history in which he and his family live happily, untouched by violence. They were always going to end up this way because of Jin. Until now, Kyung was able to sit calmly in his seat and just listen, but Jin's expression continues to taunt him.

“You're proud of hitting women?” he asks, drawing his hands into fists. “You think this is funny?”

“No. I'm not proud at all. I'm just being honest. You asked me a question, so I answered it. Your mother's cousin was a beautiful girl, but the people she came from … they were farmers. Look how much trouble your mother gave me, and she supposedly came from a good family.” He tries to make quotation marks with his fingers as he says “good,” spilling some of his drink on the sofa. “Your mother couldn't even read a book for the first three years we lived here. She was always trying to steal your schoolbooks to look at the pictures, as if reading and looking were the same thing. Do you know what it was like, taking my illiterate wife to dinner at my dean's house, praying that no one would notice how stupid she was?”

The second grenade. Something isn't right here. It hasn't felt right for a while. Jin rarely talks this much, and now it seems like he's saying the most hateful things he can, whether he means them or not. Kyung feels like he's being baited, forced to react before he's ready.

“I was hard on your mother. Too hard in the beginning. I understand that. And then you turned on me and told the reverend our secrets. You took her side.”

“I took the right side.”

“You took her side,” he repeats. “So I tried to make it up to her. I did exactly what Reverend Sung told me to do. I put my wife on a pedestal. I worked day and night to give her this house and the kind of life we came to this country for. Anything she laid her eyes on, I gave it to her. Art, jewelry, a house at the beach. If she wanted to remodel the bathroom a year after she'd just remodeled it, I kept my mouth shut and opened my wallet. I let her spend entire paychecks on those antiques of hers. And you know what she finally said to me after thirty-six years of marriage, after I'd spent nearly half of them trying to make up for what I did? She said she was leaving. She was going to work—ha!—she was going to work for that friend of hers. She was planning to give up this house to live in a storeroom, a
storeroom,
somewhere in Connecticut, and she never wanted to see me again.”

Jin looks increasingly bewildered as he tells this story, as if he still doesn't understand why Mae would want to leave.

“I made my mistakes a long time ago. Almost twenty years ago. And I did everything I could to be a better husband after that. I even went to church, and she sat right next to me every damn week, nodding while the reverend talked about forgiveness and compassion, as if she even understood what those things were.” Jin waves his glass in the air, dousing the rug with his drink. “You know what she actually said to me that day? She said she never forgave me for any of it. Never.”

“So you heard that and just went back to doing the exact same thing she couldn't forgive in the first place? Do you even understand what happened because of you?”

Jin exhales, and his face collapses like an old jack-o'-lantern. Tears squeeze out from his eyes as he shakes his head. “I never meant … those men…”

He's only seen his father cry once before, on the night that Reverend Sung came to their house. He felt no more pity for him then than he does now. Kyung's hands are about to break, clenched purple at the thought of what's missing from all of this.

“What about me?” he asks. “You never tried to make it up to me. Not once did you ever try. All this time, I've been watching you with Ethan, wondering why you seem like a completely different person with him.”

“You know what it's like spending your entire life trying to make up for something you can't take back?”

“That's not an answer.”

“I was different with Ethan because he let me be.”

“
I
would have let you.”

“You.” Jin swats the air with his hand. “You were a lost cause. I saw the way you looked at me. You were never going to forgive me for any of it. You had hate in your eyes when you were a boy, and you still have hate in your eyes now.” He slams his glass on the table and gets down on his knees, stretching his arms out to the sides. “So just do it already. Do what you came here to do. Hit me. Kill me. I don't care anymore.” He strikes himself on the side of the head. “Make this go away.” He strikes himself again, harder this time. “Make me stop seeing it. Make me stop seeing what they did to her.”

Kyung gets out of his chair as Jin reaches for his leg. He stands in front of the fireplace, his hands shaking as he scans the objects on the mantel. There was once a globe on the left, a heavy marble globe attached to an iron pedestal. He studied it so often as a teenager that he eventually forgot to look for it, assuming his weapon of choice would be there when the time finally came. He didn't notice it was gone until now, replaced by an antique clock.

“Please make it stop.”

In the mirror above the mantel, he sees Jin kneeling on the rug behind him, still begging to be hit. Kyung sizes up the clock, estimating the weight of its metal guts and case. As he reaches for it, he imagines what it would feel like to release all of his rage at once. It would only take one swing, one perfect swing, to end this. He inches his fingers closer, steeling himself to do what he came here to do, what his father keeps screaming at him to do. But as he touches the edge of the clock, he hears it again. The crack of the jar as it lands on the back of Connie's head. He flinches at the sound of it, like the sharp thwack of a bat connecting with a ball. The act of raising a hand to someone, it's the worst thing Kyung has ever done, the worst thing he's ever felt. And the power that surged through him in that moment—it made him feel like he had some semblance of control, but it lasted no longer than an instant before he lost it again. What if he hits his father and the rage inside him doesn't go away? Or what if it does go, only to be replaced by something else he can't live with?

“Why are you just standing there?” Jin shouts, hitting himself again. “This is what you want to do, so just do it already.”

He came here because of a promise, a choice to make good on a promise that altered the entire trajectory of his life. But not once did Kyung stop to think about his life in the seconds and hours, the days and years afterward. All of that comes rushing at him now. With both of his parents gone, he knows he'll inherit their hopelessness, the same hopelessness that sent his mother headfirst into a tree, that has his father kneeling on the floor, begging for his own life to end. He'll never experience another moment in which change seems possible. He'll never have a reason to believe in his capacity to be better than what he is. Kyung looks at the mantel again, and he understands there's a different choice to be made. Pick up the clock, and he'll never escape this darkness. Leave it, and he still has a chance.

“Stop standing there. Do something.”

Jin's reflection in the mirror is tortured. His skin is crimson; his expression, pitiful. It's all lines and creases and pain, such pain, the volume of which Kyung never saw until now. Jin held on to it for so long, hiding it under his wealth, feeding it with success and status and possessions, all the things Kyung wanted for himself. Kyung assumed they'd make him happy; he assumed they made Jin happy. But the happiest he ever saw his father was when he was with Ethan, someone who never knew him as he was before, who simply accepted the person he was trying to be. Jin wasn't acting then, he thinks. He was just being kind to Ethan, returning the very thing that everyone else had denied him. Kyung steps back from the mantel, aware that inflicting more pain won't lessen his own. It didn't work for his father. It won't work for him.

“I'm not going to hit you.”

He sits down on the edge of the rug and brings his knees to his chest. He's tired again, so incredibly tired. The exhaustion catches up with him, settling deep into the hollows of his bones. He turns his head from side to side, listening to the gristly crack and pop of his neck. Jin studies him carefully, confused perhaps by his posture. He remains on his knees, hesitant and watchful, as if he expects Kyung to change his mind. When he doesn't, Jin lowers himself to the floor. They sit across from each other without speaking, their hands idle and limp.

“I see it too,” Kyung finally says.

“What?”

“I see what they did to her. And then I see what you did to her, and what she did to me.” He pauses. “I don't know how to make it stop either.”

Jin stares at him, his eyes clouding over and filling with tears. He seems wounded, unable to stay upright. When he lies on his side, curled up like a ball on the rug, the tears slide down his face in long, diagonal streaks.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

Kyung stares back, startled by the words despite how quietly they were spoken.

“I'm sorry,” he says again.

He doesn't say what he's sorry for, but Kyung can tell from the look on Jin's face, from the way he keeps repeating himself, that the apology is an accumulation for all the things they haven't been able to forget. On and on, he goes. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—so many times that it's impossible not to hear. Kyung considers telling him that everything will be all right as Connie did, but instead, he simply listens, trying to accept the unfamiliar for what it is. Minutes pass, and Jin begins to slur his words, softer and slower until he lets out a faint whistle, drifting off into a steady rhythm of sleep.

Kyung watches him, desperate to rest as he does, to be peaceful for the first time in so long. He crawls toward the center of the rug and lies down on his side, carefully fitting his body against the inner curve of his father's. He adjusts himself until they fit like puzzle pieces, pressed together with his head in the crook of Jin's arm. Slowly, he releases his weight, letting all of his muscles go slack. Outside, the sun is starting to rise above the trees, casting a single warm strip of light on the floor beneath the window. Every time Kyung looks at it, he thinks it's getting closer. If they wait here long enough, morning will finally reach them.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

After years of writing this work of fiction, it seems only fitting to end it with a few pages of truth. And the truth is, I've been incredibly fortunate, and I didn't get here alone.

The M.F.A. program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst reoriented my life in ways that I couldn't fully imagine when I first decided to apply. I'm grateful to my former classmates and the dedicated faculty—Noy Holland, Valerie Martin, Sam Michel, and Sabina Murray—whose many lessons continue to serve me well.

Brian Baldi, Chip Brantley, Deborah Carlin, Laura Dickerman, Elizabeth Hughey, Cecily Iddings, Valerie Martin, and Boomer Pinches took time out of their busy lives to read earlier versions of this manuscript and provide much-needed feedback. They were the best possible readers anyone could ever ask for—generous, clear-eyed, and unflinchingly honest.

Paul LeClerc and Marshall Rose hired me at the New York Public Library, the place where my childhood love of writing reignited. Mary Deane Sorcinelli created the rare kind of work–life balance that allowed me to pursue other passions outside of the office. Mira Bartók served as a constant source of encouragement. And the Massachusetts Cultural Council provided the gift of financial support and recognition at a time when I needed it most.

My devoted agent, Jennifer Gates, and her colleagues at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth, particularly Lane Zachary and Esmond Harmsworth, believed in the story I wanted to tell. I will forever be grateful to Jen for opening the door, and to Elizabeth Bruce, my wonderful editor at Picador, for ushering me in. The thoughtfulness and care that Elizabeth, Jen, and their colleagues invested in my work far surpassed every reasonable hope or expectation, and this book has safely reached your hands because of their collective efforts.

Last, but not least, thank you to the Yuns, the Andersons, and my extended family of friends for the constancy of their love and support over the years. I am especially thankful to my husband, Joel Anderson, to whom this book is dedicated. In addition to being the very first reader of these pages, Joel believed when I didn't, pushed when I couldn't, and never let me forget that this was a story that deserved to be told.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR