by Jung Yun
* * *
He can count the number of times he let his anger get away from him. What he lost track of years ago is how often he had to walk himself back from that cliff. Control is the only thing that separates his anger from his father’s; he’s known this for years. But as he stares at the red Buick parked in his driveway again, his insides blister with rage, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it, nothing he wants to do anymore. Kyung slams his palm against the horn and leaves it there, drawing neighbors out of their homes as the seconds multiply into minutes. They stare at him, confused and startled by the unbroken sound, wondering why he won’t make it stop. He throws his head back, hitting it against the headrest until everything around him becomes a blur. In the corner of his eye, there’s a flash of pink, and then a loud click as the door flings open and a hand reaches over to grab his.
“What are you doing?” a woman shouts.
His eyes slowly focus on Molly, not the reverend as he assumed.
“Why are you here?” he shouts back.
“I, I came to pick up yesterday’s containers. And I brought you more food.”
“I don’t need it.” He gets out of his car and walks toward the house, ignoring the neighbors still gathered outside. “Everyone’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
He hears Molly’s voice trailing after him. Don’t follow me, he thinks. Don’t.
“Well, where did they all go?”
The key to the side door sticks. He shakes it harder than he should, not caring if the thin glass window crashes to the ground.
“Here, here. Let me.” She takes the key from him and unlocks the door.
Kyung brushes past her, through the hall and into the kitchen, which still smells like bacon. The sink is filled with dirty dishes smeared with egg yolks and bluish streaks of jam. Perched on top is an oily frying pan, slick with grease. He doesn’t know whether Gillian forgot to clean up her mess or if she was just in a hurry to leave. Both explanations are equally plausible. Neither does anything to improve his mood.
“So where did everyone go?” she repeats.
“Could you please just leave me alone?”
“But there’s no one here to help you.”
He can’t explain the relief he felt as he watched his family pile into Connie’s car and drive away. It was like a gift, especially his mother’s last-minute decision to take Marina along with them. The house was quiet for once, quiet until now.
“Help me do what? What exactly do you think I need help with?”
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem like you should be on your own.”
He turns his back to her, staring at his reflection in the window. His face is strangely bloated; the bags under his eyes are more swollen than usual. He looks old all of a sudden, like the bell curve of his life is in permanent decline. To admit this to Molly would only invite her cheerful, biblical brand of consolation, and he’s not in the mood to hear it right now.
“I’m worried about you, Kyung. I’ve never seen you like this.”
“I asked you to leave.”
“But maybe—maybe you need someone to talk to?”
He doesn’t know why she thinks this is her responsibility. They’ve never been anything more than casual acquaintances, distantly positioned on each other’s periphery. He hooks his fingers through a handle, opening and closing a drawer because it’s there. The inside is stuffed full with windowed envelopes—bills, he assumes, that Gillian wanted somewhere out of sight. The thick, haphazard stack makes him nervous. He wonders how long they’ve been there and how many of them have actually been paid.
“Penny for your thoughts?” she offers brightly.
“God, you’re awful.”
He says these words with none of the anxious planning that usually precedes his attempts to talk to her. And although her face registers a sort of wounded surprise, he recognizes something familiar just below the surface. He looks her up and down, not making any effort to be discreet this time. The flash of pink he saw in the car was her dress, a bright pink sundress with a sweater tied around her shoulders. For modesty, he assumes. The neckline is lower than usual, inches below the pendant that he rarely sees her without. He reaches for the flash of diamonds, brushing her bare skin as he lifts the crucifix to examine it.
“What happened to you?” he asks.
She swats him away and the pendant falls to her chest. “What happened to me? What happened to you? Why are you acting like this?”
There, he thinks. There’s the girl he remembers from so long ago. Insolent, angry. Not afraid to raise her voice. This is the girl who threw a chalkboard eraser at their English teacher for picking on her, the one who always smelled like smoke and patchouli and sex.
“I liked you better in high school,” he says. “You were more honest back then.”
“Honest? What am I not being honest about?”
“About who you really are.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”
“It means I think you’re a fake. You and everyone else from that church, but you in particular.”
Molly’s mouth is open, but she doesn’t make a sound. She just backs away and braces herself against the edge of the sink. She looks like she’s about to cry, which would disappoint him. The old Molly would never cry.
“Maybe that’s your opinion,” she says. “But you haven’t spent enough time with us to really know.”
He opens the refrigerator and rummages through its contents until he finds a six-pack of beer, hidden behind the gallon jugs of milk and juice.
“You’re having beer now? It’s not even ten o’clock yet.”
He stares at her over the rim as he downs half a can. “It’s been a long day.”
Molly looks away, embarrassed or uncomfortable—probably both. “So where did everyone go?”
“To the Cape.”
“And they just left you here?”
“Maybe I wanted to be left.”
She nods. “I’ll get going too, then. There’s food in the cooler if you want it, but it has to be refrigerated soon.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
She blinks at him. “What are you talking about?”
“What happened to you? What brought on your … conversion?” He makes no effort to soften his ridicule as the word slides from his tongue. He wants to see the old Molly, the real one. He wants the truth that only she can tell.
“You’re too closed off to God to hear anything I say.”
“Try me.”
He stares at Molly in profile, at the way her long black hair falls over her shoulders, appearing almost red in the sun. He’s tempted to push a strand away from her face, but her expression is too pretty to disturb. She’s looking out the window into the backyard, her eyes framed by a thick sweep of lashes. There’s a pale brown mole on her cheek—he’s never stood close enough to notice it before—and another at the base of her collarbone.
“I wasn’t a good person when I was younger. I think everyone in school probably knew that. I had problems, lots of them, and after a certain point, it was hard to forgive myself for some of the things I’d done. But I was lucky—the people I met at college, my friends, they helped me realize that it wasn’t my forgiveness I needed to seek.”
“That sounds like your husband talking, not you.”
“It’s the truth.”
“But what good is that? It’s not like you had a conversation with God. It’s not like you said ‘I’m sorry’ and heard him accept.”
“No, but I have faith that he heard me.”
“That kind of forgiveness is all up in here.” He taps the side of his head too hard. “It’s what my son does with stuffed animals. It’s make-believe.”
Molly takes a sponge from the sink and wipes a puddle of juice off the counter. She goes over the area again and again, long after it’s dry. “Maybe it’d be better if you talked with my husband about this. I
don’t think I’m expressing myself very clearly.”
“It’s not about being clear or unclear. I just don’t buy this devout little wife act. You’re either fooling yourself or the rest of us—I can never tell.”
Molly throws the sponge down and squares her shoulders, appearing much taller than she did before. “You don’t have the right to talk about me like that, like you actually know me. You never tried to befriend me—not back in school and not as adults either. You have no idea who I am.”
Her tone is barely civil now, and he likes the unguarded spike of hostility, returning like a memory she long ago blocked out. All these years, he had it wrong. Being kind to Molly, being a gentleman—that wasn’t what she wanted. Some part of her still responds to being abused.
“I didn’t try to befriend you because I felt sorry for you. Everyone knew how easy you were, how you’d go off during lunch with anyone who asked. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who just used you in the back of his car and then never gave you the time of day.”
“Ha,” she shouts, thrusting her face just inches in front of his. “I saw the way you always looked at me. You still do it now. You were just too shy to do anything about it when you had the chance.”
Her expression is angry and defiant, a break in her carefully composed veneer. Kyung sees the victory in this, the dare. One second, his arms are crossed over his chest. The next, he’s clutching the back of Molly’s head, pushing his tongue into her mouth. The effect is ugly and sloppy, more probing than kissing until a switch goes off somewhere, wired deep in the back channels of her brain. Gone is the woman so prim and eager to please. In her purest state, Molly is all instinct and aggression. She wraps her arms around his neck, snakes her leg around his leg, kissing him so furiously that her teeth knock and scrape against his. They stumble against the sink, and a pitcher falls off the counter and shatters on the floor. He can feel bits of glass crunching under his shoes, but the strangeness of this sensation quickly gives way to another—her hand on his pants, tracing and retracing him through the fabric.
This is what being with a woman is supposed to feel like. Dangerous and unfamiliar, on the edge of something because it’s both. By now, he knows every pale curve and freckled hollow of his wife’s body. He knows exactly how Gillian will respond if he touches her in one place versus another, if she wants him to be gentle or rough. The sex is never bad so much as predictable—rushed, usually—as if both of them would rather be doing something else. With Molly, it’s different. He’s not accustomed to her reactions, to the sounds she makes as he lowers a strap of her dress to kiss her bare breast. Her back arches as if it might break; her hips press tightly against his. He wants to take his time, to enjoy her while he can, but nothing about this feels patient. Kyung lifts her onto the countertop, centering himself between her legs. He yanks her underwear to her knees and slips his fingers inside her, higher and higher until she almost loses breath.
“Wait,” she says.
Kyung reaches for his belt, but the metal buckle won’t release. He fumbles with it, trying not to let his clumsiness become a distraction. He closes his eyes and kisses her again, imagining Molly on all fours while he takes her from behind. She wouldn’t mind this position, he thinks. But by the time he undoes his belt, something has started to change. Her body goes limp. Her right hand leaves his neck, and then the other soon follows. Kyung opens his eyes, startled to see that Molly’s are open too, but not open as they should be. Up close, they’re wide open, unblinking, the whites latticed with red. Her pupils are dilated; the blacks are all he can see. He backs away slowly, still joined by a long string of saliva connecting her mouth to his. It stretches and stretches, thinning to a hairlike strand that finally breaks.
Molly slides off the counter, hugging the cabinets as she slowly moves to the other side of the room. She looks disoriented, or maybe even sick.
“Are you all right?”
She stares at him, her lower lip in full tremor.
“Molly? What’s going on?”
“Why did we do that?” she asks. “Why?”
He doesn’t know what she expects him to say. He can’t answer for her; he can hardly answer for himself. “Because we wanted to, I guess.”
She continues staring at him, clutching the ends of the sweater still tied around her neck. Whatever confusion she may have felt is gone now, replaced by something that begins to resemble fear.
“Maybe you should sit.”
When he takes a step toward her, she jumps away, nearly tripping on the underwear around her ankles. He reaches out to break her fall, but this only seems to frighten her more. She picks up the frying pan in the sink, raising it at him like a weapon.
“Why are you acting like this?”
“Don’t touch me,” she says. She takes a small step to her left, then another, and another, still holding the pan as she nears the door.
“What do you mean, ‘Don’t touch me’? What were we just doing?”
The trembling in her lower lip returns, and suddenly, she’s sliding down the wall, knees splayed as she falls to the floor, all limbs and noise and tears. The thick, perfect lashes he admired only minutes ago streak down her face in watery black stripes. A bubble of mucus expands and contracts from her nostril with each breath. Kyung stands perfectly still, too stunned by her reaction to respond, but the sound of her voice—that awful, hiccupped wail—he can’t listen to it much longer.
“Molly,” he says quietly. “What happened? What just changed?”
She shakes her head.
“Did I hurt you somehow?” He reaches for her again, but she leans away to avoid being touched. “Look, I don’t understand what’s going on right now, but I’m not sorry we did that.”
The statement doesn’t quiet her, but it reassures him to hear the words out loud. He has nothing to apologize for. He didn’t do anything that Molly didn’t want, that she didn’t respond to eagerly. Regret is the only reason she’s sitting on the floor.
“Could you please—please stop crying?”
This only makes her cry louder, so much so that he begins to worry the neighbors will overhear. He shuts an open window and fills a glass with water from the sink. When he offers it to her, she knocks it away, sending the plastic cup spinning like a top. It skitters across the tile, spraying water on the cabinets and floor. When the cup stops moving, he sits down beside it, folding his hands in his lap where she can see them. He tells himself to be patient; eventually, she’ll wear herself out. But minutes pass, and she continues to wail.
“Do you remember when you lived in that house on Larkin Street?” he asks.
She stops crying just long enough to gasp for air.
“That big one with the white fence?”
“Why—why are you asking me that now?”
Kyung still sees the house clearly, with its brick face and orange shutters and matching orange mailbox. In junior high, he walked past it every day after school, slowing down as he neared the fence to listen and wait. Sometimes he heard nothing. Sometimes he heard Molly’s parents fighting inside. He knew what a punch and a slap sounded like. He was all too familiar with the sound of a woman crying. He listened as long as he could, stopping to tie his shoe or search his book bag for something he didn’t need. The next day, he’d watch Molly in the cafeteria or in the halls, acting out as if the world owed her something. Secretly, he admired her for this. She’d earned the chip on her shoulder and she wasn’t afraid to show people it was there. She did what she wanted, got in trouble, and made her parents as miserable as they made her, which was exactly what they deserved. He looked up to her for this until she decided not to be that person anymore, which always felt like a betrayal.
“I wish we could have been friends back then,” he says. “I think we would have understood each other. Helped each other, maybe.”
She’s no longer crying so much as fighting the urge to cry, choking off the sound as it reaches her throat. “It’s too late.”
“I know.” He stands up and offers his hand, trying to get Molly on her feet. “Come on.”
She looks at him, her face still smeared and striped with black, her hair as disheveled as he’s ever seen it. He smiles at her anyway, wondering how she’ll explain her appearance when she gets home. The thought is nothing more than that at first. A thought, a flicker. But suddenly, it combusts.
“You’re not—we’re not going to tell anyone about this, are we?”
Molly closes her eyes and wipes her face with her dress, leaving a stain on the fabric that looks like an inkblot. Then she exhales and slowly reaches for his hand, staring at him until her fingertips are almost touching his. Kyung is so relieved to see her accepting his help, he doesn’t notice the flash at first, another bright blur of pink as something sharp and painful rips across his cheek.
“Molly!” he shouts. But she’s already running for it, her sweater flapping behind her like a cape.
Kyung stands in the open doorway, watching the Buick back out and tear down the street. Half a block away, and she’s still gunning the engine, as if she expects him to follow. Molly doesn’t yield, much less stop at the intersection before turning, causing another driver to slam on his brakes. When her car disappears, he reaches up to touch his stinging cheek. There’s blood on his fingertips. There’s blood everywhere, actually. Fresh red drops of it on his hands and shirt and pants. He walks back inside and closes the door, scanning the kitchen, which is even messier than it was before. The pitcher that fell off the counter is lying in big, jagged shards beneath the sink. A fine powder of crushed glass dusts the area where they were standing. He looks himself over again, hopeful that the blood is all his, when he notices his feet, clad in thin, flimsy sandals. His bare skin is cut in so many places, it looks like he kicked in a window.
Kyung cleans up the glass and carefully deposits the broken pieces into an empty plastic bag. Then he ties the handles and pushes the bag deep into the trash where Gillian won’t find it. But covering his tracks is useless, he thinks. Molly is going to tell everyone. Her husband, his wife, maybe even his parents. Isn’t that what devout people do? Sin and repent; sin and repent again. He returns to his beer on the counter, emptying the rest of the can and immediately opening another before he can convince himself not to. Drinking is a choice, he thinks. His choice. Molly was too, and now he has to live with the consequences, however bad they might be. He’s fucked—he knows that—but for the first time, he’s fucked by something he chose to do, not something that was done to him, or something he had to do out of guilt or obligation or fear. He laughs even though his heart is pounding. This one belongs entirely to him.