by Jung Yun
“We all say or do things we regret from time to time. God made us imperfect so that he could—”
“Please,” Kyung says, raising his hand in the air. “Can you please not talk to me like that right now? I can’t—I just can’t listen to that.”
The reverend nods. “I think I understand. You’ve always had a difficult relationship with your parents, and now that Mae’s gone, things will never improve with her. Is that what’s bothering you?”
Kyung doesn’t think it boils down to something so simple. The “it,” in fact, feels like an ever-thickening mass, the threads too twisted and tangled to find their beginnings or ends. The reverend isn’t entirely wrong, but he’s not completely right.
“I was the reason she drove off that morning.”
“But it’s not your fault she gave up, Kyung. Mae chose to take her own life. And what she did to herself and that girl—I know you don’t want to hear it in these terms, but it was a sin. It was as much a sin as what those men did to them, hard as that might be to hear.”
The awkwardness of the service—the things that were said and the things that weren’t—begins to makes sense to him now. The reverend wasn’t nervous. He simply wouldn’t lie.
“Who told you?”
“Your father called me this morning, right before I left for church.” The reverend kicks the trash can again. “I accept the fact you don’t have faith at this particular moment in your life, so the idea of sin probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but I just couldn’t stand there and read what I’d written about her, not after I knew.”
The inventory should have left no doubt that the accident was intentional. But for days, Jin refused to look at it, refused to accept the truth of what Mae had done. Kyung understands this impulse more clearly now. To hear the reverend describe her death as a sin is terrifying, not because of his own beliefs, but because of his parents’. Mae knew what she was doing when she got in that car and asked Marina to join her. How miserable her life must have been to choose hell instead.
“I know you and your father have never been close, but if you could have heard his voice this morning, you might think differently of him. He was distraught, Kyung. He is distraught.”
“He hasn’t spoken to me for days. Neither has Gillian.”
“So I’ll tell you the same thing I told him. They’re wrong to blame you. It doesn’t matter what you said to Mae or how you said it. You can’t be held responsible for her actions. Are you listening, Kyung? You’re not to blame for what happened.”
Of all the people in the world, he never expected Reverend Sung to be a source of comfort, the first real sense of comfort he’s felt in so long. He’s thrown by it, stunned silent by the possibility that he isn’t so undeserving of kindness as he believes himself to be. Kyung sits down and takes the reverend’s hand, squeezing it to convey the volume of things he can’t, and the reverend, in another act of kindness, simply stands there and lets him, saying nothing in return.
EIGHT
Gillian sends Ethan and Jin away the next morning. She suggests a trip to the zoo, the park, the library, anywhere. Kyung is standing in front of the window, watching dark gray clouds streak across the sky as the wind bends thin treetops like bows. He thinks of the roof in Gillian’s car, how it leaks on the driver’s side when it rains, but he keeps this to himself. He wants them out of the house as much as she does. Kyung can’t remember the last time he and Gillian were alone together, when they could say what needed to be said without worrying who would overhear. As soon as the car pulls out of the garage, he braces himself for an argument, but Gillian goes upstairs to their bedroom and shuts the door behind her. She’s trained him over the years—a closed door means don’t bother me—but an hour passes and nothing happens. Then another hour passes and nothing still. He wonders if the rules are different now, if the very thing she’s told him not to do is the thing she actually wants.
Kyung continues to wait, circling the living room and kitchen in long, idle loops. He doesn’t know how to start the conversation they need to have. All his previous attempts have ended badly. No amount of apologizing has been able to soften Gillian. Apologies, in fact, only seem to upset her more. He’s not sure how many times he can say it, or how to say it differently. He’s sorry for what he did at the Cape; he’ll always be sorry. The fact that she doesn’t believe him feels like another kind of loss.
He lifts the edge of a curtain and looks at the rain, which is coming down in sheets now. It cascades from the gutters and pelts the windows with pea-sized hail. There was no mention of a storm in the forecast today. If it keeps up, Jin and Ethan will probably come back from their outing soon, and nothing with Gillian will have changed. Kyung doesn’t know how much longer he can live like this, exiled and ignored in his own home. He goes upstairs and presses his ear against the door, listening to her walk back and forth in the bedroom.
“Can I talk to you?” he asks.
The door doesn’t open, not that he expected it to. He leans against the wall and glances at one of the night-lights in the hallway, a fluorescent green palm tree they bought in South Carolina. Five feet away, there’s a seahorse-shaped night-light from Florida. And down the stairs are two more from Bermuda and Saint Croix. Night-lights were the only things they allowed themselves to buy when they went on vacation. Whatever guilt they felt about maxing out another credit card was mitigated by coming home with light bags.
“Remember when we drove down to Charleston after I defended my dissertation?”
This isn’t what he intended to say when he went upstairs, but it feels better than offering another apology that she won’t accept.
“Maybe we should go back there again and spend a little time by ourselves, stay at a bed-and-breakfast or something.…”
He has no idea why he’s saying this, or how to pay for such a trip, although money—or the lack thereof—never stopped them before. Their sense of want was always more powerful than their sense of reason. Gillian was the first to pull back when they couldn’t keep up with their bills. She drew up a budget and limited their purchases to the basics. She devised a plan to sell their house. “Retrenching,” she called it, a term that made him think of men digging holes in the dirt. Because his idea of being a husband meant giving her the things that made her happy, it was harder for Kyung to adapt. Even now, in the midst of so much chaos, getting away with Gillian feels like a necessity to him, as important as food or water or shelter.
“It wouldn’t have to be a very long trip, and I bet your dad would be willing to look after Ethan while we’re gone. What do you think? We can go to the beach for a few days, get some sun.…”
He realizes that mentioning the beach was a bad idea. He doesn’t want to remind her about the time they spent on the Cape.
“What was the name of that area you liked? The one with the big historic mansions? The Batten?” He pauses, studying a knot in the door. “No, the Battery. The Battery, right? We can go there again if you want.”
The trip to Charleston still stands out as a happier and more hopeful time in their lives. It was Gillian’s first trip south of D.C., and he enjoyed showing her around the city, introducing her to new architecture, new restaurants, new experiences that she’d never imagined before. She looked at him with admiration then, as if her life were opening up because he was in it, but he understands how differently he must appear to her now.
“Gillian? Are you listening to me?”
He lifts his hand to knock, but quickly decides against it. If she doesn’t tell him to come in, he’ll be no better off than he was before. He takes a deep breath and turns the knob, opening the swollen wood door with a shove. The first thing he notices is the suitcase on the bed. Gillian is standing beside it with a shirt tucked under her chin, holding the hem in place as she folds in the sleeves.
“I should have suggested a trip sooner,” he says. “You deserve something nice.”
Instead of acknowledging his presence, she folds anoth
er shirt, which doesn’t feel right to him. Also not right is the suitcase. It’s too big.
“You’re not packing for Charleston, are you?”
He asks even though the answer is obvious. But when he looks in the suitcase, he realizes that the clothes arranged so neatly inside are his, not hers. The left half of the closet has been emptied of his things, and the floor is littered with a sad array of mismatched hangers—wire and plastic and wood.
“Could we talk about this, please?”
Gillian walks to the other side of the bed, turning her back to him. He walks to the same side to face her, but then she moves again. It’s not like her to be the quiet one during an argument; it’s usually the other way around. The role reversal disorients him, shifting what little ground he thought he stood on.
“Don’t you think you’re taking this too far?”
She places the shirt in the suitcase and starts on his dresser drawers.
Years ago, Kyung learned that when he asked a question in class and his students didn’t respond, he had to resist the urge to answer for them or fill the dead air with more questions. If the wait became unbearable enough, someone would eventually blink. Gillian, however, isn’t one of his students. She seems to tolerate the silence, to prefer it over the sound of his voice.
“Could you please stop what you’re doing for a minute?”
She empties one of his drawers on the comforter, wincing at the pile of loose socks that tumbles out. Kyung doesn’t know what to do except sit on the edge of the bed and watch as she sorts, matching black with black, brown with brown.
“I really wish you’d say something.”
She glares at him as she twists a pair of socks into a ball, her expression similar to the one he saw on the Cape. But her frustration has evolved into something different now. It looks and feels like loathing. He glances at the door, tempted to walk out, but he doesn’t dare take a step. Absence was always his best weapon against Gillian. Whenever he left in the middle of an argument, he usually returned to find her in a more reasonable state than she was before. His absence, however, is exactly what she wants now, and he worries that if he leaves, she won’t let him come back.
“One day after my mother’s funeral and you’re throwing me out? Where do you expect me to go? Under a bridge somewhere?”
She continues putting his things into the suitcase, not bothering to ball or fold anything now.
“I’m not kidding, Gillian. Tell me—where do you want me to go?”
“Away.”
Her voice isn’t as sharp as it was at the funeral. It’s quiet and tired, the same way she used to sound when Ethan was a baby. The lack of volume surprises him. He sees it as an opening.
“I’m asking you to just listen now, to really listen, okay?” He waits for her to turn around, but she keeps her back to him. “I’m sorry for what I did at the Cape. I had no business yelling in front of everyone like that. There were other ways I could have handled myself, but I was drunk and stupid—not that I’m using that as an excuse. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I’d kept too many things bottled up inside and they came out badly, but it’s not like I don’t know that. I’ll be thinking about what I said and how I said it for the rest—”
He’s not even finished when he hears the metallic sound of the zipper making its way around the edge of the suitcase. When it’s closed, Gillian drags it off the bed and pulls the handle out.
“Were you not listening to any of that?”
“You have a strange way of making peace with people.”
He reminds himself not to shout, which won’t get him anywhere. Shouting is how she thinks all of this began. “Please, I’m asking you to believe me. What my mother did … I feel bad enough without—”
“That’s not what this is about.”
His mother, his father, Marina—that’s all they’ve been about for weeks. He doesn’t know what else there is to them anymore.
“I don’t understand what’s happening, then.”
She flips the suitcase around, turning the handle toward him as if she expects him to take it. When he doesn’t, she walks to her dresser and opens the top drawer, rummaging through layers of nightgowns and T-shirts.
“Who do these belong to?” she asks.
She throws something at him. A handkerchief? Another sock? It hits him in the chest and falls on the floor next to his feet. When he looks down, he sees a pair of underwear. Pale beige satin with white ribbon trim.
“Who do they belong to?”
He didn’t notice that Molly’s underwear was beige that day in the kitchen. He also didn’t notice that she left them on the floor when she ran out. Kyung remains seated, staring at the shiny fabric, a small island of color against the blue carpet.
“Who was it?”
He doesn’t know if it’s wise or even safe to say what he really thinks. The “who” isn’t the point. It’s the “what” she won’t forgive. His relationship with Gillian was never based on a romantic or even demonstrative form of love. Neither of them was built for that kind of outpouring. At its best, their marriage was practical and utilitarian—the sort of thing that people of a certain age entered into with a vague notion of improving their lives. Although Gillian asked very little of him from the start, fidelity was a basic assumption. Fidelity, security, honesty, decency—all the things he’s proved himself incapable of over time.
Kyung knows why he did it, why he married her despite believing that he probably shouldn’t marry anyone. On some level, he was grateful that a woman like Gillian would choose to be with him. Her goodness was redeeming; it made him want to be worthy of her. But whatever impulse he has to fight for them is checked by the knowledge that this person he loves—and he does love her, more than he ever imagined possible—would be better off without him, a thought he’s had so many times before. Kyung looks up at Gillian, at the way she’s standing with her arms crossed loosely over her chest. She seems resigned, as resigned as he is to let this be how it ends.
“I can’t keep asking you the same question, Kyung. Who was it?”
“You don’t know her,” he says. “She was just some girl.”
Gillian nods slowly, struggling to take it all in. “You can’t get out of your own way,” she says. “Do you even understand that about yourself? No one’s holding you back. No one’s trying to make you unhappy—not me or Ethan or even your parents. You can blame us as much as you want, but at a certain point, maybe you just have to accept the fact that it’s you. It’s all the things you can’t let go of.”
“But how can I—?”
“No, Kyung. Just stop. I know you had a hard life before we met. I understand that now, I really do. But your parents were responsible for that. Not me or Ethan. All we did was love you, so you owed it to us to be a better man. I can’t just stand here and watch you disappoint us anymore.”
She hasn’t raised her voice at him, not once, which is actually worse than being yelled at. It’s taken him five years to realize that Gillian only shouts when she’s invested in what happens afterwards. What happens to him from this point on, she clearly doesn’t care.
“Use your credit card,” she says. “For the hotel, or wherever you decide to go.”
“Which credit card?”
“It doesn’t matter. Your father paid them all off.”
He pauses. He knows he didn’t mishear her, but he still doesn’t understand. “What do you mean, ‘paid them all off’? How could he do that?”
“I asked him to. Begged him, actually.”
“Gillian!”
She startles at the sound of his voice, biting her lip as she lifts and lowers the handle of the suitcase. “He was happy to do it,” she continues. “A little shocked that I asked, maybe. But it wasn’t like we hid things all that well. He could tell we were in trouble.”
“Of course he was happy to do it. Don’t you realize that he just bought you? That he bought me too?”
“He’s not like that.”
“How could you do this to us?” he asks.
“I didn’t do it to us. I did it because I had to. I was tired, Kyung. Tired of waking up in the middle of the night, feeling like something was sitting on my chest. It was getting too hard to breathe.”
She looks at him as if she expects him to agree, but Kyung is still holding himself down, fighting the urge to scream at her.
“I think you felt the same way, but you could never bring yourself to admit it, to do anything about it. All those books I gave you, the Web sites and articles … I couldn’t just wait for you to fix it anymore. And your father was actually so understanding. He kept saying I shouldn’t be embarrassed. The amount didn’t even seem to faze him.”
Kyung has no idea what the amount even is. Forty? Fifty thousand? Probably more. He lost track of the total years ago, ignoring the telltale envelopes and phone calls at all hours of the night. Occasionally, he allowed himself to imagine what it would feel like to pay off their debts in one fell swoop, but his father never entered into any of these daydreams.
“Tell him to cancel the check, or however he paid it.”
“No. It’s already done.”
“Then tell him to call someone and get the money back.”
“I just said no.”
“Fine, then. I’ll tell him.”
“It won’t matter. He’s not doing this for you. He’s probably not even doing it for me. This is for Ethan.”
“I take care of you and Ethan just fine.”
He has to look away as he finishes the sentence. His voice, his expression—he can feel how ugly they are—and he doesn’t need her to confirm what he already knows. He hasn’t been taking care of either of them, not for a long time, not in any of the ways that matter. Gillian chooses to let this go, and it occurs to him, as it’s occurred to him in the past—she deserved much better than he gave her. She’d always been a good wife; she wasn’t capable of being anything less. Even now, as she’s casting him out of her life, she’s packed his things for him, making sure he has what he needs.