The Future Memoir of Ann Jones

by Alex Bailey

But Gloria wouldn’t let it go, she asked again more firmly, “Jasmine! Mexico is far away. It isn’t as if you can simply go on an overnight trip. How long does he expect you to go away with him?”

  Ann couldn’t understand the hostility coming from Gloria. First Ann and Ben, and now Jasmine and her new guy friend. She wondered if Gloria was jealous of her and Jasmine having new relationships. But that didn’t make sense, because Gloria could very easily have a relationship with Daniel, if she chose.

  “Oh, you know, two or three weeks, as long as it takes for him to get his business done in Mexico and then get back up here,” Jasmine said casually.

  Practically yelling now, Gloria confronted her, “Jasmine! You can’t do that! You know it’s against the rules!”

  Freda’s number one rule, never miss Knitting Club.

  Jasmine stood to leave. “Well, you may allow that damn knitting club to rule your life, but I refuse! I am going to live my own life. My rules!” Jasmine stomped off to her bench.

  Ann was stunned; she didn’t know what to say. It was just a silly rule for a silly club. She opened her mouth to protest, but Gloria raised her palm to hush her and said, “We can’t talk about it. We’ve already said more than we should!”

  Chapter 20

  When Ann walked into the knitting club meeting, she was practically run down by Gloria. “Where have you been!”

  Ann leaned back to observe Gloria’s face. “What do you mean? I was at work this morning and then I was at home baking these cookies all afternoon. What’s the problem?”

  “Daniel phoned me this morning, said he couldn’t get you at work, then he rang me again this afternoon while I was out showing a client the dance studio building that has been vacant for almost a year!” Gloria was speaking so fast, Ann found it difficult to understand her.

  But then it dawned on her, Daniel wasn’t trying to track her down; he was just using that excuse to talk to Gloria. “Gloria, I think Daniel had an ulterior motive for calling you twice in one day, don’t you think?” she laughed as she set the platters of cookies down.

  “No, Ann, this is serious, he needs to speak with you straight away,” Gloria seemed irritated at Ann’s suggestion.

  “Okay, tell you what. I’ll call him first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Before you leave for work?” Gloria asked.

  Wanting to put her friend’s mind at ease, she said, “Sure, before I leave for work. Now, are you satisfied? Although I still think he was just trying to talk to you.”

  “Hmpf.” Gloria grabbed a cookie and took her place in the circle. “You’ll see, my love. It wasn’t me at all. Just make sure you make that call, just as you’ve said.”

  Ann dismissed Gloria’s concern and sat down with her knitting bag. She wasn’t in a knitting mood, she’d had a particularly juicy staff meeting with Ben in the supply room before she’d left work and it was lingering on her mind. But her thoughts would soon be disrupted for another testimonial.

  “Who’s next?” Freda asked. When no one volunteered, she announced, “Amanda, tag, you’re it.”

  Amanda Kim was a pretty woman of Korean descent with long flow-y silky black hair. She had two grown kids but didn’t look old enough to have had them unless she had given birth when she was twelve. She had aged well.

  She fidgeted with her brown cotton skirt and smoothed it out on her lap before beginning her tale. Her skirt flowed to her ankles, showing just her brown leather clogs, which were stuck to the floor. Phil, her sugar glider, was curled up around the back of her neck in his usual spot. But when she started to speak, his head poked out from behind her hair. His large eyes peered about the room. He then moved back to his regular spot and hid. “I was born in Korea and when I was ten, we moved to San Francisco. I was an only child and my parents were very strict in raising me. You’ve heard of Tiger Parents? Well, my parents made tiger parents look like kittens.

  “Growing up, I was home-schooled, wasn’t allowed to have friends, or watch TV. My father used to say my friends were my text books and my musical instruments. The good thing about being raised by these types of parents is they don’t believe in children doing chores. While other children had to make their beds and polish their shoes, I got to study.”

  Polish their shoes? Since when did kids polish shoes? Amanda has no clue what American kids were like.

  Amanda smoothed her already perfectly-smooth skirt again. “Sorry, I need my thing-ama-jig, my pill…first.” She reached into her bag and grabbed a pill bottle, shook a single pill into her palm, and swallowed it. Then she chugged some water to help it slide down. Phil stayed put through the whole pill-popping episode. “The secret I kept hidden from my parents all those years was that I loved to study and always felt so much luckier than my counterparts because I did not have chores to do. Many children looked at me in a way that they pitied me. But I was the one doing the pitying. I’d rather do geometry any day than fold clothes.

  “I was content until I went to college. That seemed to open my eyes to many things. When my father said I could not date, nor have friends until I graduated from college, I started to question my parents’ upbringing methods. It dawned on me that I did not even know how to get along with a roommate. Luckily for me, I had a Korean roommate and she grew up in a similar fashion, except she was allowed to watch some TV. We had this great channel called TV Land and she showed me a lot of old shows. I never knew what I’d been missing. My favorite was ‘Me and the Chimp’. I never could figure out why there was only one season.” She reached up behind her neck and gave Phil a pat. He peeked out from behind her hair and then withdrew again.

  Amanda fidgeted in her seat, and then smoothed out the wrinkles she’d just created. “But in my discussion classes, I began to observe how others were interacting, and I was sitting there with things to say but no understanding of how to jump in and join the conversation. I started to see the value of friendships outside of my books and musical instruments. I wanted this now and did not know how to achieve it.

  “The college experience for me was one of a strange new world. One day in the dining hall, instead of sitting alone by myself with a text book, I sat with a group of lively students, jibber-jabbering. I must admit, I did sit there among them awkwardly and opened my book. But I did not read it! Instead, I listened to their conversations.

  “What do they call that nowadays, a stalker?” Amanda chuckled a nervous little laugh. “But I wanted to experience joining a group and thought I had joined in. There was a very boisterous boy at the table, sitting cattywampus to me, named Hyo Kim who was in my biology class. When the instructor had called his name, I thought we must be related since we had the same last name. Boy, was I ignorant of so many things in this world!

  “Hyo was strong and could keep up his end of the argument against all the other students. He had an accent, much like my parents’ accent. So, I thought he must have come from Korea. On that point, I was correct. But he never noticed me sitting there with my textbook. So, each time I ate, I tried to sit amongst a different group of students, the louder the better for me.

  “I learned a lot that first semester, just by observation. I learned how to make friends by watching others do it. I learned how to speak in a crowd, by watching how the loudest of the group got everyone’s attention. And so, during the second semester, I was ready to test my wings. I joined the debate club. Yes, that’s right, I jumped in with both feet. A sort of trial by fire, if you will. But, I discovered I really didn’t like debating people. I preferred to share my views in a more non-confrontational manner. However, it was good experience, and I met some people who have become life-long companions.

  “Once during a difficult debate about the Korean War, I was placed on the side I truly did not believe in, and I had to debate the side opposite my views. That’s when I realized the debate club was not for me. I joined the math team instead. Ah, I felt right at home with calculus and differential equations. I found my niche.

  “I also found
my new best friend, Hyo. We were partnered on the team by the instructor in charge, whom we also both happened to have class with. At first it was difficult, he was loud and brash and I was quiet and quick with the answers. He seemed to want to debate the instructor on every problem. He would have done well on the debate team. I won more points for our team than he did and he had a problem with that. You see, in our culture, the man is the authority. When I showed him up lickety-split during a fierce competition with our rival school, I think he was very angry, but also, he respected me for my intelligence.

  “That’s when he asked me to go to chow time with him after one of the competitions. Of course, I turned him down. My father’s voice was in my ear, whispering that I could have no friends until I graduated from college.”

  Ann wondered how anyone could get along in life with no friends. There was no way she could have survived through everything she’d been through without her great group of supportive friends, especially Alex, her dearest and oldest friend.

  “This went on for an entire semester. I would see Hyo with his group of friends at dinner engaging in tomfoolery, even when I sat at another table entirely. I never joined in with any group, but I paid attention and learned everything I could by observing.

  “The next semester I had two classes with Hyo, I found out we were both majoring in computer engineering and that we would end up having many of the same classes for the next several years.

  “I don’t know what changed my mind, but I decided one day to go back and sit at his table during dinner. There were not a lot of students sitting there, maybe that is what gave me the courage to approach. They were babbling on, all willy-nilly. But once I sat there that day, they all stared at me and went silent. I opened my book as usual and began to read. But they didn’t say anything. When I looked up, they had all left but Hyo. I do not know if he asked them to leave, if they picked up some vibes from us, or what, but I was shocked and somewhat discombobulated.

  “He asked me if this was my way of asking him to chow time. That made me laugh and my laughter made him laugh. I totally disregarded my father’s voice and threw it out the window, well, not a real window. Just the window of my mind. We were together ever since that moment. No more book openings for me. Nosiree. That book never found its way back to the doohickey, whatchamacallit,” Amanda tapped her right temple, “oh yes, the dining hall. Hyo and I scheduled classes together and signed up for the same clubs, which meant we could also eat our meals together. He introduced me to his wacky social circle. I introduced him to restraint. We were good for each other.

  “When we graduated from college, he met my parents and they approved of him. We both were offered jobs in the city where my parents lived, and so Hyo proposed marriage to me with the blessings of my father. I knew it would not be a problem with my parents, since they had drilled in me since I was born that I would grow up and marry a Korean man with a good job and be happy forever. Soon after we married, my father died.

  “We moved to a small apartment near my mother and saw her frequently. Then Soo Yun was born. We called her Soo. I took very little time off, only six weeks. After that, my mother stayed with Soo during the day. Halmoni, that’s grandmother in Korean, loved her very much. She was so good to Soo and they had a very close bond. Soo was such a little ragamuffin. Then came David a few years later. He was so big when he was born, Halmoni called him Little Bear.

  “Hyo loved his children and they adored it when he would pick them up and twirl them around in his arms. He was a very attentive father. He was also building a great career. He ascended the ladder. When David was three, we were able to move out of our small apartment into a nice three-bedroom home.

  “Halmoni was even closer when we bought the house. She lived in the same neighborhood, but a few streets away. Everything was perfect for our young family. We were both working as computer engineers in our companies and had a very nice life.

  “Halmoni supported our decision to take a long trip to Korea to visit relatives that we had not seen in quite a while. She would stay home with our children and keep them very safe. That’s what she would say over and over, ‘Go ahead, Amanda, I will keep the children very safe’.

  “I was not so sure about leaving my children for so long, but Hyo was excited to go. We went for four weeks and visited all of his relatives and mine too. It was good seeing the relatives who have never visited the US. But the trip was not so good for Hyo. He reconnected with his childhood friends and something changed inside him. He did not want to leave. He became very depressed when we returned to our home.

  “Hyo worked very hard but obsessed over returning to Korea. We had both used up all of our vacation time on the trip, so we were not able to travel there again for a while. After the children went to bed at night, he would email and talk to his Korean friends for hours. He spent a lot of time on his computer, even though he was a computer engineer and worked with computers all day, he never got tired of it. First thing in the morning, he would wake and go straight to his computer. The last thing before bed, he was at his computer.

  “I became worried when I mentioned to him that he was a little bit obsessed. He got angry and shouted at me to mind my own business. He was very secretive of what he was saying to his friends. With the children though, he was still a very good father, and they loved him. I did not want to make a big deal out of it or upset him. I did not bring it up again.

  “One day, Hyo came home very excited. He picked up Soo and twirled her around and then gave David a big bear hug in his arms. He was very happy. He put his arms around me for the first time in a long time, and he smiled.

  “When I asked him what made him so happy, he said his company was transferring him to Korea. At that moment, my heart stopped beating. I was not happy like he was. I did not want to fly the coop and move my family to another country. We were happy where we were. The children were happy and we lived near Halmoni. What was she supposed to do without us?”

  Amanda teared up. She blotted her cheek with her index finger before any tears had a chance to fall. Phil peeked out from behind her neck; his large round eyes made him look like a house elf in Harry Potter. He then returned to his hiding place. Amanda sat with her hands in her lap for a moment; and then began again, “Hyo would not hear me when I said I did not want to move to Korea. He acted as though I had not spoken and went swiftly into his computer room and began typing. I knew he was writing to his friends in Korea the news that he was soon coming to them.

  “I then overheard him on the phone. He told someone he would soon be there. But only with his children. This worried me. I did not know what to make of what he had said.

  “I know it was wrong, and I had never done anything like this before, but when Hyo left the computer that night, I hacked into his email account. I was very knowledgeable about how to do such things.

  “It had to be done. But I was not proud of it. When I read the emails to his friends, he told them he was coming soon. With the children only. He told them that I could not get away from my job that quickly. That I would follow shortly. He then had a correspondence from someone I did not know which frightened me. He told the person a lie. That I was an unfit mother and that he needed to protect his children. Whoever this person was, told Hyo to take the children to the Korean embassy. He would be allowed to take my children out of the country without me. What kind of outlandish lie was that?”

  Amanda trembled. She wrapped her arms around herself and Phil scampered down her shoulders onto her arm. She stroked his fur and calmed down. “I did not know where to turn or what to do. I knew he had contacts that would assist him in escaping with our children and I could not stop him. This was not the kind and funny Hyo that I had come to know and love. He was a changed man. And I was terribly frightened. I went to sleep that night, still not knowing what to do.

  “The next morning, I awoke early and took the children on an outing. I needed to clear my head for thinking. I decided I would plead with him, try to g
et him to see things as I did, so we returned home a few hours later.”

  Ann wondered if this story would be the one to finally have the happy ending, but didn’t hold her breath.

  “When I went into his computer room, Hyo was hunched over his keyboard. When I touched his shoulder, he fell all loosey-goosey out of his chair and onto the floor. I called the ambulance right away, but it was too late. He was gone. The coroner prepared the autopsy and said that there must have been a faulty wire in his computer, because he had died of an electric shock. When I checked the keyboard, I found a wire sticking up through letter ‘k’ and a paperclip had fallen down in between the letters ‘k’ and ‘l’. The only explanation was that some type of spark occurred between that wire and the paper clip.

  “With a tragedy such as losing a husband, my children’s father, it was necessary to flee the memories. A short while later I moved the children and Halmoni here to this small town, where we were welcomed into this community.”

  Amanda raised her gaze to the circle, along with everyone else.

  Freda made her usual announcement, “Okay that’s a rap. See you all next week,” with an emphasis on all.

  Chapter 21

  Ann arrived at the tavern early Saturday morning, just like Daniel had requested when she had returned his call. There was evidence that he had already been busy in the kitchen, but was nowhere in sight. Ingredients were strewn about, none of which she recognized. Pulling out bowls and cookie sheets, she got to her task at hand, since she figured he must need the kitchen earlier than normal.

  The back door flew open. “Ann!”

  She jumped out of her skin and turned to see Daniel staring at her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, trying to slow her heart rate.

  “Nothing. I just need you to come see this,” he held the door open while she scooted out the back.

  She followed him next door to a very large open room that looked like it hadn’t been used in a while. There was a large floor-to-ceiling window on the opposite wall that had been boarded shut. He pulled the chain of a naked light bulb and it dully illuminated the dusty boxes scattered over the oak floor.