Shelter

by Jung Yun

  “License and registration.”

  Kyung’s head is spinning; he thinks the man might be wearing a uniform, but the light is too bright. He rolls down his window an inch. “Officer?”

  “License and registration, please.”

  “Why? I wasn’t driving. I was just sitting here.”

  “I’m not going to ask you again.”

  Without the flashlight shining in his face, Kyung can clearly make out a uniform and badge, a gun in a holster. He slides his documents through the cracked window, being careful not to drop them.

  The policeman examines the license, squinting at it as if it’s a fake. “You know this is expired, right? It expired in December.”

  “No, that can’t be right.” As soon as Kyung says it, he remembers the notices that came in the mail. The first was printed on plain white paper, the second on urgent pink. He had a choice between paying the water bill that month or paying for his renewal. It wasn’t hard to decide which one to ignore.

  “I still don’t understand what I did wrong. I wasn’t driving. My car was in park.”

  “Step out of your vehicle, sir.”

  “For what?”

  “If you haven’t been drinking, then you won’t mind taking a field test.”

  Kyung sits up straight, trying his best to look sober, although he knows his breath stinks of alcohol. His whole car does. This can’t be happening, he thinks. This can’t happen.

  “Officer McFadden,” he says. “Will you call Officer McFadden? I’m married to his daughter.”

  The policeman shines the light on Kyung’s face again. “You’re Connie’s son-in-law? The one whose parents were involved in that thing up in the Heights?”

  That thing. So this is what they’re calling it now.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Stay put,” he says.

  Ten minutes later, as a second cruiser pulls up behind the first, Kyung braces himself to say everything that he rehearsed during the wait. I’m sorry for bothering you. I wasn’t actually driving. I know better than that. He repeats these words over and over again, reminding himself to speak slowly and clearly so he doesn’t sound drunk. He looks in his side-view mirror as the car door opens and out steps Tim, not Connie. Somehow, things have just gone from bad to worse. His brother-in-law is an idiot, an asshole. He’s always turning Kyung into the butt of a joke. His favorite is the one about teachers, how they teach because they can’t do anything else, harharhar. Gillian tells Kyung to ignore him, to be the bigger man. She says her brother is insecure around educated people because the kids at school used to call him “retard” when he was little.

  Tim circles around to the passenger side and stands with his hands on his hips, surveying the neighborhood. Kyung already knows what he’s thinking. The topless bars are hard to miss—both of them have blinking neon silhouettes of women hanging in their windows. He unlocks the doors and waits for Tim to climb into the passenger seat.

  “So who’d you manage to piss off tonight?”

  It’s not the first question he expected to hear. “No one. Why?”

  “You must have. Someone called in a possible DUI. People don’t normally do that in this neighborhood unless they’re pissed about something.”

  Kyung thinks of Dee, having a laugh inside MacLarens at his expense. He wonders if this is what she meant when she told him to have a good night. “I wasn’t driving—did the other guy tell you that? I was just sitting here, trying to sleep it off before I went home.”

  “You don’t have to be driving. You started your car—that’s all it takes to get a DUI in this state.”

  In his mirror, Kyung notices the first officer turn on his headlights and drive away. He’s relieved—a little. At the very least, he won’t be arrested. Now all he has to do is listen to his brother-in-law gloat.

  “So which one did you go to?” Tim wags his finger from left to right, pointing at the topless bars.

  “No, it’s not like that. I went to the Irish one, the pub. You can ask the lady inside if you don’t believe me.”

  “Oh, I don’t care if you went to a titty bar. But if you want to see girls, you can find better places than these shitholes. Next time, you should hit up that big one on Route 5, next to the old airport.”

  Kyung’s head is pounding. He needs a bathroom and a glass of water; he needs to stop thinking about Tim sitting in a strip club, slipping dollar bills into a woman’s G-string. Drunk or not, he’s still sober enough to understand that topics like this are off-limits with his brother-in-law. He and Tim aren’t friends. They certainly aren’t buddies. Even if Tim wanted that kind of relationship, Kyung isn’t the type. Being an acquaintance, a roommate, a colleague—all of that was easy enough, but real friendships always seemed like too much work to him, too primed for disappointment.

  “I don’t go to strip clubs.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “It’s true. I’m married.”

  “I was married once too. I know how it is.”

  A car drives toward them, shining its headlights on their faces. Kyung crouches down in his seat to avoid being seen.

  “I told the other officer to call Connie.”

  “He’s not on duty tonight. He’s on a date.” Tim chuckles, as if the thought of his father taking a woman to dinner or a movie amuses him. It’s odd, at the very least. Connie’s been a widower for almost twenty years. This is the first Kyung has ever heard of his dating.

  “So he doesn’t know what happened yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “And Gillian?”

  “Nope.”

  Arnie staggers out of MacLarens, held upright by his friend. They weave along the sidewalk together, going who knows where. When they turn the corner and there’s no more sideshow left to watch, Kyung realizes he has to do it. He has to ask, even though he already knows the answer.

  “Are you planning to tell them?”

  “What do you think?”

  He thinks Tim is Connie’s son, and Connie has never liked him, not even a little, so there’s no use asking him to keep quiet. Everything about this experience has been humiliating enough. He doesn’t need to add begging to the list.

  “I’m fine to drive now, if you’re willing to let me go.”

  Tim nods slowly, stretching out the moment for everything it’s worth. “I’ll follow you,” he says. “Just to make sure you get home safe.”

  * * *

  Gillian has a temper that flares from time to time, but rarely, and never without good reason. Since Kyung is almost always the reason, he’s learned how to defuse an argument by simply apologizing before it starts. Because she doesn’t like conflict any more than he does, this is usually enough to move on. Tonight, however, he thinks it might help to acknowledge that some of his choices this evening—most of them, actually—were neither considerate nor smart. Never mind that his stomach was empty when he started drinking or that he was sleeping it off in the car when the cop woke him up. Never mind the circumstances of the past few days or anything else that might sound like an excuse. Gillian is quick to confuse explanations for defensiveness, which is the oxygen that keeps everything burning.

  He expects to find her waiting up for him, but when he turns into his driveway, the house is completely dark. It’s late, he realizes—too late for a man with a wife and child to come home like this, reeking of alcohol as if he’s been dunked in a barrel. Tim doesn’t pull in behind him, but Kyung feels no sense of reprieve as the cruiser disappears down the street. By morning, Gillian will know everything.

  At the side door, he takes off his shoes and creeps through the house, seeking out what he needs in the order he needs it most: bathroom, water, aspirin, food. Every door and floorboard seems to creak louder than usual. The flush of the toilet sounds like a hurricane. In the kitchen, he finds a crusty pot and some dirty bowls in the dishwasher. It looks like they had spaghetti while he was out. He confirms that they left none for him, so he raids the cabinets for his dinner,
starting with an expensive-looking box of crackers that he eats by the handful. Then he moves on to the fridge, cutting off oversized chunks of cheese and pâté with a knife. These pricey foods aren’t meant for him, and he knows it, but he continues eating to settle his stomach.

  Half a box of crackers and a block of cheese later, Kyung hears footsteps on the staircase and a flick of a light switch down the hall. Gillian walks into the kitchen, pulling on a furry yellow bathrobe over her nightgown. Her hair is lopsided, as if she’s been sleeping—bees’ nest on the right, flat and matted on the left—but she doesn’t look surprised to see him hovering over the island, demolishing a sixteen-dollar wedge of pâté.

  “I just got off the phone with Tim.”

  “He called you from his car?” Kyung should have known. Tim was probably excited to tell her, like it was the best thing to happen to him all year.

  “So you ran off to drink tonight.”

  She says this in the form of a statement, not a question, so he doesn’t respond. Instead, he leans against a cabinet—head down, eyes to the floor, ready. Gillian circles the island and brushes the crumbs off his shirt.

  “Look at you. You’re a mess.”

  Bits of cheese and pâté and crackers fall to the floor, snowing against the redbrick tile. He brings his fist to his mouth, trying to hold back a burp, but it’s too late. The air smells like meat and milk, laced with something bitter.

  “Damn it, Kyung.” She covers her nose.

  “Sorry…” He’s about to continue so she understands the apology wasn’t for the burp alone, but then he burps again.

  She moves to the other side of the room, arms crossed, eyes hooded over with a frown. There are times when sorry alone won’t save him, when his behavior has to be dissected and discussed before anything resembling forgiveness can occur. It’s always the wait that he finds unsettling, that moment right before she opens her mouth when he can see it all building up inside. Gillian doesn’t hide anything from him; she says she shouldn’t have to.

  “There are so many things I want to say to you right now—”

  He raises his hand in the air to stop her. “Can I make a request?”

  It was a bad impulse—they both know he’s lost the right to ask for anything.

  “What?”

  “Can you please not yell? I don’t want my father to wake up and hear us fighting.” He doesn’t bother to explain that his head feels like it’s being crushed, trapped between the metal plates of a vise. This is probably the least of her concerns.

  Gillian crosses her arms tighter, holding herself in. “You know what? I’m not going to say anything right now. I’m just going to let you do the talking.”

  He hates it when she does this. It’s the same as asking, What do you have to say for yourself? but without the motherly tone. He thinks for a second, making a careful list of everything she might be upset about.

  “I’m sorry for leaving without an explanation and not answering my phone.… I’m sorry for going out for a drink … and I’m sorry for getting pulled over by that cop and asking him to call your dad.”

  Her expression doesn’t change after his string of apologies. It probably sounded too much like a recitation. Gillian believes that people can say sorry but not sound sorry. The difference matters to her.

  “And?”

  “And…” He realizes that Tim must have mentioned the topless bars. His brother-in-law is truly a shit. “And I swear I didn’t go to a strip club tonight. I was at the pub across the street. I even told Tim to go over there and talk to the bartender if he didn’t believe me.”

  Gillian looks confused. She didn’t know about this part, and she clearly doesn’t want to. “Listen, if this arrangement with your parents is going to work, you can’t just leave me here anytime you feel like it. You can’t make all of this my responsibility.”

  “Did my dad do something to upset you while I was gone?”

  “No. All he did was watch TV with Ethan. That’s not the point. The point is that you have to be here—I mean really be here. Your mother’s coming home on Thursday and now we have to take in Marina too, and you can’t just disappear like you did tonight. You’re not the only one having a hard time dealing with all of this.”

  Her volume keeps rising, but Kyung doesn’t try to stop her. He’s still a few sentences behind. “What do you mean, take in Marina? Who said we have to do that?”

  “Me.”

  He waits for something else, something more to follow, but this is all she’s willing to give. “I don’t understand—we barely have room for my parents. How do you suppose we’re going to take in their maid?”

  “We’ll have to figure it out. And stop saying ‘maid’ like that. She’s a person; she deserves our help as much as anyone.”

  Kyung burps again. His stomach feels worse now with all of the rich food floating inside. “I’m not suggesting that she doesn’t need help or deserve it. I feel bad for her too, but there’s no room here.… I bet if she asked my parents, they’d pay to send her back home to her family.”

  Suddenly, Gillian is almost on top of him, jabbing her finger at his face. “Do you hear yourself? Pay to send her back home? To Bosnia? Do you even understand why she left that country in the first place?”

  He doesn’t, not really. He’s vaguely aware that the Bosnians and Serbians fought a war, but he can’t remember who the aggressors were, which side won or lost. Either way, none of this makes Marina his responsibility. He has enough of his own without taking a refugee under his roof. He wraps up the rest of the pâté and puts it back in the fridge, trying to figure out how to say no without actually saying it.

  “I’m sure there’s another option we haven’t—”

  “Do you know what they operated on her for?”

  “No. Why? Did my dad actually tell you?”

  She flinches, as if the word she’s about to say is a blade sitting on her tongue. “A perforated rectum. That’s why she was bleeding internally. Can you imagine what kind of hell those men put her through? And now you want to send her back on the first flight to Bosnia with a colostomy bag and God knows what kind of nightmares for the rest of her life?” Her voice is getting louder again. She takes a breath, her pale skin flushed red. “This happened to Marina because she worked for your parents, because she was at the wrong place at the wrong time, just like they were, so now we have to help her. Do you understand that, Kyung? Do you understand why a good, decent person would want to step up like that?”

  Kyung feels genuinely sorry for Marina, but she’s a stranger to him, a girl who cleans his parents’ house twice a week. The list of people who need him is long enough already, and he hardly knows what to do about the names that are already there. Marina’s immediate problem—the fact that she has no one to care for her—seems like the easiest to solve. If she doesn’t want to go back to her family in Bosnia, then why not let Jin hire a nurse to help her? Or put her up in one of those assisted-living facilities downtown? To suggest these things out loud would probably seem cruel, and of course, he has no money of his own to make this problem go away. If he did, he’s certain that none of them would ever see Marina again.

  “Well?”

  Kyung leans forward and stretches his upper half over the countertop, resting his cheek on the cold Formica. He’s exhausted—he wants to sleep. He wants his parents back in their house and Marina back in hers. He wants to rewind all of their lives to the point just before everything started to go wrong.

  “Are you thinking or taking a nap over there?”

  “Okay,” he says. “She can stay with us. Are we done now?”

  Although his eyes are closed, he doesn’t have to see her reaction to realize he made a mistake. Suggesting they should be done already will only prolong the conversation.

  “I’m going to ask you something, and I need you to be completely honest with me when you answer.”

  He opens his eyes, trying not to glare at Gillian, who doesn’t seem to under
stand when enough is enough. She won the argument; she got what she wanted—now what?

  “Will Ethan be safe here?”

  “How should I know? You’re the one who wants to invite a stranger to come live with us.”

  “No, it’s not Marina I’m worried about. It’s your mother. You said in the hospital that Jin never hit you when you were little, so I’ll take your word for it, but you never said anything about Mae.”

  “What about her?”

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m asking.”

  Kyung switches cheeks. “Ethan will be fine.”

  “But that’s not an answer. I need you to say it one way or the other. She either hit you or she didn’t.”

  He’s in no condition to explain that his childhood wasn’t simple like this, with the fault lines so straight or clearly drawn. Mae was a teenager when she married Jin and barely in her twenties when they moved to the States. She had no friends, no job, no control over anything in her life except for Kyung. If Gillian took the time to think about it, she’d know the answer to her question already. His father hit Mae. Mae hit him. That was the order of succession in their family. He just can’t bring himself to say so out loud.

  “You’re not talking anymore. Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “My mother’s not going to do anything to Ethan.”

  “But how can you be so sure?”

  “I just am.”

  Gillian raises her empty palms to him as if to say, That’s all?

  He doesn’t know how to convince her without steering the conversation to a bad place, but he owes her this much. She has the right to feel that Ethan is safe in their own home. “It stopped a long time ago, okay? I’m talking decades now.”