Frankly in Love

by David Yoon

  “Are you drunk?” I say, even though I already know he’s not. Mostly I ask out of sheer confusion.

  I look at Mom, but she doesn’t answer. Neither does Dad. He simply shuts the door.

  “I am okay,” says Dad. “Going home now, Frankie.”

  We arrive at our house. It abuts a cinder-block wall separating it from the nearby freeway. I park in our oil-stained driveway flanked by brown stubble lawn. They say immigrants bring their aesthetic with them wherever they go, and now I know it’s true. Our house would probably look like a mansion to Korean country kids from the eighties.

  I step out of the car and help Mom lead Dad into the house.

  “Did you eat something funny?” I say.

  “I am okay,” is all Dad will say.

  I want to punch him, but he suddenly looks like a single punch would kill him.

  We make it into the house.

  “I go lying down,” says Dad, and slowly vanishes upstairs.

  I hear him settle into bed, and the house becomes silent. It’s just me and Mom, standing among all the shoes in our foyer.

  “Mom, what’s going on?” I say. It’s almost a whisper.

  “He is okay,” says Mom. She blinks. A tear hangs from her eyelash.

  “Mom, is Dad okay?”

  “Go sleep,” says Mom. “We talking later.”

  “Mom.”

  “Don’t worry about anything,” says Mom. “We talking later. We are okay.”

  “What is this we?”

  “Go sleep, Frankie,” is all Mom will say. She ascends the stairs, leaving me alone.

  * * *

  • • •

  When I finally begin to drift off in bed, I dream a cool hand is on my forehead. Is it Joy’s? I open my eyes.

  It’s not a dream. There is indeed a cool hand on my forehead. It belongs to Mom.

  Mom’s sitting on my bed in the dark in her sweatsuit pajamas, touching my forehead. Not checking for fever or anything. Just resting it there.

  My heart surges with sudden tenderness. Countless times has she come in to touch my forehead while I was half asleep. Me, her boy, busily evolving while I slumbered to gradually grow taller, stronger, to grow up and away from her no matter what she thought or wanted.

  Two bright lines flash in the dark. They are the twin streaks of her tears.

  “Mom,” I say without moving.

  “Daddy feel so sad,” says Mom.

  “I’m sorry I lost it,” I murmur. “I shouldn’t have yelled like that.”

  “It’s okay. Daddy love you so much.”

  The tenderness inside me contracts into fear. We never say these kinds of words.

  “Is Dad okay?”

  “They checking bullet injury, they scanning whole Daddy’s chest with CT scan, PET scan, something like that.”

  I can only watch as Mom blinks fresh wet tracks down her cheeks. I’ve seen Mom cry only a few times. She has the scariest way of crying. No sobbing or sniffling. Just silent tears, like her eyes have a leak that will not stop.

  “Doctor say lung is okay, bullet injury is okay, but whole of torso, little bump they finding,” says Mom. “So many little bump. He say like Christmas tree. Doctor like you, he Korean yisei, second generation, speak only English.”

  “What are you talking about, Mom?” I say it so quiet, so scared.

  “I asking him, what is so many tiny-tiny bump everywhere? Doctor say is small-cell carcinoma. I asking him, what it is, carcinoma?”

  I can’t say the word.

  “Doctor say Daddy better start the chemo right away, so Daddy start right away.”

  Cancer.

  “At the first time, Daddy doing okay, no symptom at all.”

  Cancer.

  “But second time, Daddy getting sicker, sicker, sicker. Lose appetite.”

  Cancer.

  “I making vegetable juice and Chinese medicine, hanyak. Maybe it’s helping, I hope so. I hope so.”

  And Mom just runs out of things to say.

  The heat from my forehead has made her hand hot and moist, so she switches to the other one.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I say.

  “He didn’t want you have to worry,” says Mom.

  “What do you mean? Mom, I need to know these things.”

  “If you worry, causing stress.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “If you worry, hurt the SAT score.”

  “You found out that long ago? Jesus, Mom.”

  “Frankie. We protecting your future. You understand me, right?”

  I do and don’t at the same time. It confounds me how they managed to hide all this. They’ve been faking it for weeks.

  “Does anyone at the Gathering know?” I say.

  “Oh no,” says Mom gravely. “If we say something, everybody so worry. Too much talking-talking, too much stress. We waiting first Daddy get better, then we telling everybody. I hope so. I hope so.”

  Mom’s voice shrinks until it’s nothing. I just stare at her for a long while. She’s looking at something in my room. It’s my night-light, which I’ve had since I was little. It’s twin baby star angels snuggled up to sleep upon a cloud in the heavens. I always assumed they were me and Hanna. But now I think they could be Mom-n-Dad.

  “Is he gonna be okay?” I say finally.

  “Doctor say six month,” says Mom. She nods to herself absently in the dark. “Six, maybe twelve month, yeah. Six to twelve month.”

  My mind goes blank.

  I can see Mom’s teeth flash as she bares them. “Why he get cancer? He eating so good. No smoking, no drug. No too much drinking. Maybe he working too much. But he sleep good. Why he get cancer?”

  Now it’s my turn to cry. Mom squeezes the tears out of my eyes with her thumbs and wipes them up on the shoulders of her sleeves.

  “You praying God every day,” says Mom. “I praying every day.”

  “Okay,” I say, even though I’m undecided on prayer. I just say okay to say okay for Mom’s sake. Okay is my prayer.

  Dad’s freak-out at the party now makes a kind of sense. There is no more room for any kind of crap from anyone anymore in Dad’s life. All the room has been taken up by the one big thing. There is no bigger thing anywhere.

  Mom leaves.

  I lie still in bed. I feel the air drift in to fill the space created by her absence. I sink down. Something is pushing me from above. It’s panic.

  There’s an end coming.

  Once upon a time, Dad was born. A bunch of shit happened as he grew up and grew older. I know none of those details. He married Mom, moved here, started The Store. He worked every day without a single break.

  And now there’s an end coming.

  How much of my dad do I know? He never tells me about his childhood, or his adulthood for that matter. I know some basic facts: his date and place of birth, what kinds of foods he likes, his favorite English poets, and so on. But now I realize it’s not much. Then again, how much is there to really know about a person? Dad settled into his role as breadwinner, expected me to settle into my role as disciplined academic, and we both put our noses to the grindstone and never looked back up.

  There is jeong, though: that time spent wordlessly bonding. So I begin to calculate our time spent together. A few minutes each evening. Sundays at The Store for the last couple summers. I do some rough numbers.

  It adds up to about three hundred hours. A baker’s dozen of days.

  Who is this man who was my dad?

  Is, Frank. He’s not dead yet.

  But he will be.

  Panic seizes me again. I breathe faster and faster. I press into the pillow to muffle the sound of my cries, and wonder at the cold mystery of it all: cold as a statue ruin in the moonlight whose meaning has long be
en lost. Dad—this man whose house I live in—contains clues about myself. There are things I do and say and like and excel at that might have their origins in him somewhere, but I’ll never know now.

  I am panicking because I realize I’ve been desperate to know Dad my whole life. I learned a long time ago that such a hope was impossible with an impenetrable statue ruin like him. So I gave up. Moreover, I pretended I didn’t care if I never knew him. I pretended I was okay living as a Limbo, belonging nowhere, a son without even the most basic connection to the man who fathered him.

  But it turns out I care very much. I cared this whole time.

  And now that there’s an end coming, I now know that the eternal mystery of Dad will forever remain precisely that: an eternal mystery.

  Should I have worked at The Store with him more?

  Should I have learned Korean better?

  Should I have tried harder?

  And finally:

  Did I make Dad happy?

  It takes me hours to sleep.

  When I do, I have a vivid, insane dream.

  I am in a vast pulsating forest of moist black trees. They are all strung up with red pinlights. It must be a new moon, because I can’t find any white disk in the sky, 0.22 inches in diameter or otherwise, sun or moon. The ground is spongy. It rises and falls slowly.

  This forest is not contained by the finite boundaries of Dad’s lungs. This forest is endless, and I wander for hours and days and weeks searching for an exit. I try my best to not touch the trees. They will stain me with their wet black. After hours and days and weeks of searching, I am marked here and there with dark lines of their muck, and still remain trapped as ever.

  I am alone this time. There’s no Brit in a futuristic yellow dress. There’s no Joy peering at me through a hole far above. Just me.

  Finally I realize something. This forest is the way it is because there is no love here. Who would accept such a revolting place? This lack of love is the key. I’m sure of it. As a test, I approach a tree, take a deep breath, and wrap my arms around the trunk.

  The bark is lukewarm and slimy and acrid like medicine. I close my eyes and hug harder. I feel branches begin to move around me. From all sides they come, increasing their embrace as I tighten mine. Soon, I’m covered in black limbs. They smother me with their awful warmth.

  All at once, the trees pull away. I can’t lift my feet. I’m rooted in the spongy ground. I am covered head to toe with tarry goo. My chest begins to glow with a point of red light. It’s my heart, and it’s the brightest red pinlight in this whole place. I am now a black tree in the exact center of the black forest.

  I blink. Suddenly the muck has evaporated to leave the trees dry and gray and clean. I look down: I am now clean, too.

  I blink again, and a sun has begun to rise.

  Blink: The trees have color now and are laden with brilliant green leaves.

  Blink: They’ve parted to form a tunnel of foliage leading to an exit. The forest is letting me go. I walk out onto a rolling meadow full of people and picnics and kids running games on warmed earth that beats with each spirited step.

  Blink, and it’s morning in my bedroom.

  I am awake.

  you

  own-your-way

  you must

  be going

  chapter 28

  hi irony

  I am awake.

  The stupid sun is dancing its beams through the tree outside my bedroom window, all chipper and shit. It feels late. How long have I been sleeping? I check my alarm clock—a vintage analog folding compact model, no bedside fartphones for me—and see it’s almost eleven thirty.

  I am a teenager. We are supposed to sleep the crap out of our beds. But eleven thirty seems excessive, even to me.

  I get up. I shower until I’m red. I need a haircut. When I comb out my wet hair, it’s long enough to tie together with one of Hanna’s old hair bands. I leave it that way—why not—and change into my summer outfit: cargo shorts, Front 242 tank, wrist elastics, all in a rainbow of blacks of different hues.

  Summer outfit.

  Summer is almost here.

  It’s 85 degrees, and this being Southern California it’ll stay that way until it’s time for school to start again. But when school starts again, I won’t be here anymore. None of us will. We’ll all be somewhere else, depending on the will of the admissions gods.

  Buzz-buzz.

  You okay? says Joy.

  Just woke up, I say. Rough night.

  What the hell happened? says Joy. Do our families suddenly hate each other or something?

  It’s that, but it’s also not that.

  Yubs? says Joy.

  I sit up. It’s simplicated, I say. I’ll tell you all about it in person.

  They said they don’t want me to see you anymore, says Joy. I don’t understand what’s going on

  They said the same thing to me, I say. We should talk.

  Sorry one sec, says Joy. Shopping for dorm stuff right now

  Dorm stuff. College.

  Huh.

  Little early, don’t you think? I say.

  The only thing I hate more than shopping, says Joy, is long checkout lines

  I wait for her to text back some more, but I guess she’s busy. I head downstairs to find a pink box and some money sitting on the counter. Open the box, and behold: donuts, and a note.

  You don’t working at Store today OK Frankie don’t worry Daddy he will be fine. I helping him you relax maybe go to Q house and play game together OK? Don’t worry anything I love you.

  —Mommy

  I stare at the words I love you.

  “I love you too, Mom,” I say, mostly to see how saying those words would feel. It feels funny and a little embarrassing, like a phrase in a foreign language—Je t’aime, Maman—but I don’t care.

  I can’t believe Dad still went to The Store knowing he has a terminal illness. But then again, he’s been going to The Store for weeks. He’s known for weeks. If it were me? If I had learned I had six to twelve months? I would drop everything and go skydiving, race cars, go to music festivals, do anything besides stand around at The Store.

  But that’s because I don’t know anything about life, and am therefore an asshole.

  Dad worked The Store with his two bare hands, right alongside Mom. He knows everyone who passes through its doors. Every day Mom-n-Dad work, and every night they stack up the bills on the coffee table and do the accounting.

  To Dad, The Store must provide a kind of comfort I could never imagine.

  Skydiving doesn’t provide comfort. Neither do race cars or music festivals or blablabla.

  If I found out right now that I had six to twelve, where would I go for comfort?

  I look at my phone again.

  I want to see you, I say.

  I want to see you, says Joy, at the same time.

  Jinx, I say.

  Where? says Joy.

  I don’t care, to be honest, I say. You decide.

  Cafe Adagio? says Joy.

  Eh. Can’t deal with people today.

  The beach? A hike?

  How about this, I say. You just come over here.

  After what happened last night? Isn’t your mom gonna be there?

  She’s at The Store until 3 today.

  Why?

  Unforeseen circumstances.

  You sure, yubs?

  Just come over.

  I put the phone in my pocket, and the house falls silent but for the white waves of freeway traffic coming over the high backyard wall. I realize I’ve never recorded that sound before. I should. But I can’t bother right now.

  I head upstairs into Hanna’s room.

  The place looks like she left without much thought. Everything’s the same—movie posters on the walls, shelves s
pilling with old compact discs and vinyl and books, all waiting for her to return and tidy things up. I wonder if Mom-n-Dad are hoping she will return someday, somehow. Maybe that’s why they left her room untouched.

  I lie on her bed. I can feel the weight of my phone in my pocket.

  Does she already somehow know about Dad?

  I can imagine Hanna learning about Dad via one of Mom’s crazy mom-emails, and the mixture of terror and frustration and anger such a message would produce. I wonder if Hanna’s supposed to learn something like this through an email from Mom—they don’t talk on the phone anymore—or if I should tell her.

  I call Hanna.

  Hey, it’s Hanna, leave a message.

  I kill the call.

  I like Hanna’s room. Hanna’s room feels cool. I don’t care if she’s probably long over it and everything it contains.

  I miss my big sister.

  I’m in your room looking through all your crap, I say.

  Hanna doesn’t text back.

  I wander to the guest room, which we call the storage room since we almost never have guests. In the far back of the crawl-in closet—there, in the far, far back—is an old black spy suitcase made by Legionite, some defunct company from the 1970s.

  I spin the brass combo lock wheels with my thumbs: 7-7-7 for the left latch, 9-9-9 for the right.

  Inside the suitcase are artifacts from another time. Among them:

  A name tag from an extinct restaurant named Cup-N-Saucer etched with the gaily dancing eponymous cartoon characters and the word DIANE. Diane is Mom’s English name, D+I+A+N+E+L+I making seven letters.

  A still-new ten-pack of ballpoint pens printed with the address of EAT MY KRUST SANDWICHES, one of the first businesses Mom-n-Dad tried out. The pens are so old the phone numbers on them don’t even have area codes.

  A little wooden abacus

  A flaking book in Korean about Victorian literature filled with underlined passages. The inside cover has PROPERTY OF FRANK LI in Dad’s panicked handwriting. Frank is Dad’s English name. It is also mine.