by Steph Cha
Grace almost covered her mouth—she never swore in front of her mother, let alone at her, and she saw that it made Yvonne flinch. But she let it stay said. It was undeniably true.
Yvonne stopped resisting, and Grace did her best washing her hair, then her body.
“You used to love when I washed your back,” said Yvonne, subdued, as Grace sponged her shoulder blades with soapy water. “Do you remember?”
Grace nodded, then realized her mother couldn’t see and made a sound of agreement.
“You liked when I drew shapes. We used to practice the alphabet during bath time.”
Grace could feel the gliding touch of her mother’s fingers. The tickly zags of M, W, Z. The long straight lines of Hangul vowels.
“I have to clean the wounds,” she said.
She peeled the dressing free and sucked in her gasp as she stared at the bullet hole. It was a hideous thing, dark and gory, meat colored. The exposed inside of the body, never meant to see the light of day.
She dabbed at it uncertainly, and Yvonne groaned; her back clenched under Grace’s hands. Grace could not imagine this kind of pain.
Yvonne’s breath was heavy. She hugged her knees as Grace redressed the exit wound.
“Someone told you, didn’t they?” She spoke into her knees, so softly Grace wasn’t sure she heard right.
“Umma?”
“Appa told me.”
Grace was silent. She’d been waiting to have this conversation, but now that it was here, she wanted to punt it to a future Grace, one who was better and wiser and not staring at her mother’s naked gunshot back.
“You can barely stand to look at me—you think I haven’t noticed? Because of something I did before you were born.”
Grace couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“You don’t know what it was like back then. Koreans were dying, did you know that? We were getting robbed at gunpoint, murdered for cash and beer. These gangsters, they were like animals. I didn’t even want to be there. I begged your father to sell the store. Miriam was only a baby. I was scared something would happen to us.”
“But she was just a teenage girl,” said Grace. She couldn’t bring herself to say the name out loud and hear it hang in the air.
There was silence, and then a sob. “It was a mistake. I wish every day I could undo what happened. But I can’t. How much do I have to pay for it? For that one mistake? Do I have to lose my daughters? Will that make it right?”
“You’re not losing your daughters, Umma.” Grace started to cry, overwhelmed with pity and rage and love and disgust. “For one thing, we’re both alive.”
She went back to the task at hand, the one that was defined and doable, and Yvonne grew still and quiet under Grace’s clumsy touch. This was all wrong. Grace rarely fought with her mother. She was the peacekeeper, the easy child, the one who held steady while Miriam claimed the spotlight. But maybe this wasn’t a fight at all—because what was negotiable? Where was the resolution? Grace could never accept what her mother had done. It would always be between them.
“Grace, stop crying,” said Yvonne, in the stern voice she’d used to shush her when Grace acted petulant as a child.
It had the same effect as when Grace was younger—she cried harder.
“Grace, stop it.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help it.” She sniffed, inhaling a thick glob of snot. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She felt herself turn red. It was a ridiculous thing to say, she knew, when a girl had died, when her friends and family had lived through her murder. Yet it was clear, too, that Yvonne felt victimized by her history, as if the girl’s death were something that had happened to her. And didn’t Grace have the stronger grievance? She was an innocent. Her mother had sinned and had failed to protect her from the fallout.
Yvonne turned her head to face her and smiled an exhausted, heartbroken smile. “Good. Then I can’t have been such a bad mom.” She stretched her arms back and rested them on the floor of the tub, exposing her naked front. She nodded at the bandages there with her chin. “Help me with this.”
Grace opened the dressing and gazed at the startling wound, the hole blown open beneath her mother’s slack, emptied breasts.
Ava Matthews stared out at Grace from her computer screen, and for the first time, Grace forced herself to stare back. The portrait was grainy, black and white, printed in the first pages of Farewell Waltz: The Life and Death of Ava Matthews. It looked like a school photo, with nothing but gray haze in the background. The girl wore a fussy dress with puffed sleeves, and her hair was carefully ironed, bangs molded into a thick round fringe that made her look maybe eight years old. She had soft eyes and a full mouth cocked into a wry smile. A face full of humor and innocence. A face Grace hadn’t let herself look at before.
It was hard enough to know that her mother had killed. There was a part of her that didn’t want to know any more, didn’t want to think of this girl as a person, as precious and human as anyone else. But there she was, and Grace found herself wondering about the sound of her voice, her likes and dislikes, her dreams. She scrolled to the next page and started reading.
Ava Matthews had never known her father, and she’d lost her mother when she was eight years old, to a drunk driver. Grace felt this like a fist around her heart. She was twenty-seven, and losing Yvonne still seemed like an insuperable tragedy. She couldn’t imagine how her life might have been if she’d lost her as a child. According to the girl’s aunt, who took her in along with her little brother, Ava went blank the year her mom died. She wouldn’t talk to her aunt and uncle; she ignored her teachers, got in trouble at school.
It was music that drew her back out. She’d always had a good ear on her. She sang in the children’s choir at Trueway Baptist, and because her aunt never let her stop going to church, she kept going to practice, even in her grief. The choir director had a soft spot for her, and she started giving her free piano lessons on the church’s old baby grand. Ava had talent, and she played with beauty and passion. Starting her last year of junior high, she participated in a string of youth competitions around L.A., going up against kids who had formal training with professional teachers. Ava didn’t even have her own piano, but she won a Chopin competition with a $100 prize, moving the judges with her rendition of the Farewell Waltz.
It was the kind of victory that ended Disney movies, the story of a disadvantaged girl beating the odds and delivering the performance of a lifetime. Grace played piano until college, and she remembered those competitions. The hours of practice that went into them, her mother cheering and spurring her on. The cold rooms, the steely judges, the reverberation after the end of each song. Grace never won, though she came close once, with a Bach partita. For an irrational split second, she wondered if she’d ever competed with Ava Matthews, both of them teenagers with froofy hairstyles in modest, uncomfortable dresses, sitting up straight and spreading their fingers. Their nerves as responsive as the singing strings.
But Ava was dead before Grace was even born. The brutal truth crashed over her brief, benevolent fantasy. This wasn’t the story of a girl. It was the story of her death.
Grace stopped reading and searched for more information on Ava Matthews. She wanted to know all there was to know, even if it hurt. But there wasn’t much more out there, just articles she’d already read and references to Farewell Waltz. She saw now that Searcey had even written some of the initial L.A. Times coverage—he seemed to be the main authority on the girl’s life.
She stared at his picture online. There was, she thought, a gleam of righteous conviction in his eyes. This man had wielded his pen to take her mother to task, but Grace couldn’t say he’d been dishonest or even mean. He showed such obvious sorrow over Ava Matthews’s death, and Grace felt it with him. Maybe this man wasn’t her enemy. Maybe he could help her.
She searched her inbox for his emails—he’d sent seven of them, all of them polite but firm and urge
nt. He’d given her his phone number.
“Hello?” It was past ten o’clock now, but he picked up after one ring, before she had any real idea of what she might say. “Hello?”
“Hi.” She swallowed, hearing the dry sound of her mouth. “I’d like to speak with Jules Searcey.”
“This is he.”
“This is Grace Park,” she said.
“Grace, of course, hi.” There was a rush of sound on the other end of the line. Whatever he was doing, he’d dropped it to give her his full attention. “It’s good to hear from you. How is your family doing?”
Yvonne was asleep. Grace had bathed and clothed and fed her, and now Paul was home, a warm body to lie next to his wife and call for backup, from Grace or the hospital, should anything go wrong. He was, at least, uncharacteristically tender with Yvonne. Nothing crazy—Grace wasn’t sure she’d ever even seen her parents kiss—but his voice was softer, and he touched her shoulders, held her hands, offered to have Grace bring her food and water.
“They’re fine,” she said, absurdly.
“And how are you?”
The question took her by surprise. The gentleness in his voice. “It’s been a hard week.”
“I want you to know I was appalled by the behavior of Action Now,” he said. “They have a reputation for harvesting outrage for page views, but I thought this was beyond the pale, even for them. I hope you understand that they don’t represent all journalists.”
“Thank you.” She had to bite her lip to keep from crying.
“Listen, I’d love to talk in person sometime. Do you think you can meet me? Maybe this week? It might be good for you, with everything that’s happening. I know it must be overwhelming, to be at the center of this storm. But you should take the chance to tell your side of the story.”
There was that line again. Her side of the story. What did that even look like? What part of this story belonged to her? “I don’t know if I can,” she said.
“I understand. But please think about it, okay? You have my number.” There was a smile in his voice. If he was disappointed, he hid it well. “Was there something else I could do for you?”
“I started your book,” she said, still trying to work out why she had called.
“Thank you. That’s—I’m happy to hear that.”
“The cousin they arrested—is he the one she lived with? The one whose mom helped raise her?”
He hesitated briefly. “Yes.”
She paused. Put as much persuasion into her voice as she could manage. “I want to talk to him.”
“That’s gonna be tough. I can’t even reach him. Only his lawyer.”
She chewed on her lip. She was a little relieved, now that she stopped to think about it, that circumstances prevented her from facing her mother’s shooter.
But she needed to do something. Ava Matthews might be gone, but she had left family, who carried and cherished her pieces. “She had a brother,” she said. “I want to see him.”
“What’s this all about?”
“I just want to talk to him.”
Searcey sighed. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Grace.”
She felt the emotion rise in her throat, and she let it creep into her voice. “This is all just so new to me. I didn’t know about any of it until someone tried to kill my mom.”
“You didn’t know about the other shooting?” He sounded surprised.
“Not until last week.”
Grace held her breath through another long pause.
“Listen. I’d love to help you, but I can’t just give you contact information. It would be unethical.”
Grace kept silent. She could hear the wavering in his voice—he wanted to help her, or at least get on her good side. He was gearing up to tell her what he could do.
“If you really want to get in touch, you should talk to your sister.”
She held the phone tighter, unsure she’d heard him correctly. “I’m sorry. Who?”
“Your sister. Miriam. She should know how to find them.”
Sixteen
Saturday, August 31, 2019
She’d shown up that evening on Aunt Sheila’s doorstep—like a Jehovah’s Witness, his aunt said. Shawn could picture her knocking, supplicant and demanding. Nisha was gone, visiting Ray again. Duncan had gone in with his alibi, but it hadn’t been a get-out-of-jail-free card after all, not when Ray had already told a few contradicting stories. Ray was still at Men’s Central, his wife, none the wiser, standing strong behind him. Had either of them been home, they might have shut the door in Grace Park’s face. Aunt Sheila invited her in for tea.
They were sitting at the table, speaking softly, eyes gleaming, when Shawn came by after work, his arms full of takeout. He’d left Jazz and Monique at home, expecting a solemn night checking in with the kids, conferring quietly with his aunt. And here she’d gone and dropped this bomb on him, in the name of Christian hospitality.
Shawn recognized her immediately. He hadn’t watched the video, but it had been sent to him enough times that he’d seen the stills. The Korean girl with the cut lip, sprawled on a sidewalk, shouting. He might’ve recognized her anyway. She had her mother’s round face, the high soft cheekbones and narrow chin that made her look young and unthreatening. The face of an untouchable killer.
Her eyes widened as she took him in. Was there fear there? Did she dare insert herself into his life and then act afraid?
She snapped to standing, as if suddenly aware of her own rudeness.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Grace.” Her hand jerked at her side, indecisive, and then she extended it, unsure of whether he’d take it.
He stood there staring at her until she put her hand down, blushing terribly.
“Shawn, honey,” said Aunt Sheila. “Do you know who this is?” As if she were a welcome and honored guest, a saint or a marvel.
He set the bags down on the table but remained standing. He was half a head taller than the girl, who looked downward, at a spot on the carpet somewhere around his feet.
“Yeah,” he said, looking past her at Aunt Sheila. “You didn’t see the video, did you?”
Grace Park closed her eyes and narrowed her shoulders. Like she was powering through this unpleasantness. Wincing and cringing, but ultimately undeterred.
“Video?” asked Aunt Sheila.
“Her face is all over the internet. What’s she doing here?”
Grace opened her eyes and looked at him again. “I swear I’m not here to cause trouble. I just want to talk,” she said. “I know they arrested your cousin.”
“She just found out what happened to Ava.” Aunt Sheila spoke softly, tenderly, as if some of that grief might belong to this girl. “She only just heard what her own mama did because somebody tried to kill her.”
“Somebody.” Shawn almost laughed and addressed Grace for the first time. “You think my cousin shot your mom.”
“I—I don’t know anything. But I understand he must have been—that you all must have been—very angry with her. I’m not here to like cast—”
“She thinks she can help us, Shawn,” Aunt Sheila cut in. She never did have much patience for stuttering nonsense. “She can talk to her parents. Who knows? If they don’t press things with the cops, that could take some of the heat off the case.”
“My mom is recovering. It’s not like anyone died this time.” She swallowed the last two words and turned red all over again. “I’ve already met the detective. He might listen to me. I want to help.”
“She was at the Alfonso Curiel rally,” said Aunt Sheila, putting an encouraging hand on Grace’s arm.
“My sister and I—we’re aware that there’s a lot of injustice, particularly when it comes to police and like black victims of—of violent crime. If there’s anything we can do to make things easier for your family, I want to . . .” She trailed off looking for words and then just nodded. “I want to.”
There was a long silence as she waited, throat rolling, for Sh
awn to say something. His family was in crisis. He needed to talk to his niece and nephew, his aunt. He did not need to deal with this mess of an overgrown child who was nothing and nobody to him.
“He didn’t do it,” he said firmly. “I know that for a fact.”
“Then all the more reason to save him from prison.” The words came out fast and barely formed, and she opened her mouth to spill more of them.
He held up a hand to stop her. “Why are you here?”
Her mouth fell slack. She had the wounded look of an eager student cut off by a teacher. “What?”
“I said, why did you come here?”
“Shawn,” said Aunt Sheila.
“Don’t ‘Shawn’ me, Auntie. I want to know why she came. Because it wasn’t to save Ray from prison.”
Grace looked down at her hands, but he could see that her face had changed. There was no pride in it. Her jaw quivered; her nose threatened to run.
“I came to tell you how sorry I am,” she said, bowing her head so deep he feared she would get on her knees. “I’m sorry about what I said in the video. It was all brand new to me, and that reporter backed me into a corner. But more than that, I am so sorry that my family caused your family so much pain. I’ve been reading about your sister, and it sounds like she was such a sweet, talented, smart girl. I keep thinking, she probably wasn’t that different from me. I played piano, too. I can’t even stand it, thinking about how she’d be alive if it weren’t for us.”
She was in tears now, and she sat down at the table, where Aunt Sheila patted her gently on the shoulder. Shawn wanted to yank his aunt’s hand away. How could she sit there encouraging this bullshit? This girl was nothing like Ava. It didn’t matter if they both played piano and loved their families and went to church on Sundays. They could have a thousand things in common, but that didn’t make them alike. If Ava were like Grace Park, she would never have been killed.
“I’m not defending her, okay?” the girl went on. “I know what she did. But my mom isn’t a monster. She told me yesterday how much she wishes she could take it back. I know she’s sorry.”