by Mark Sampson
The truth is, Mom was unstable even before my father died; his death was merely the green light that her deepest-held insecurities had been waiting for. I will give Mom her due: I believe she was touched by genius. She could recite entire passages of Robert Browning from memory; she knew, down to the minutest physiological detail, the difference between a gecko and a salamander; she followed Ronald Reagan’s atrocities in Nicaragua with rabid condemnation. But she couldn’t find a way to channel all this undigested knowledge into the stability that our family needed so badly. And when, in 1984, seventeen-year-old Heidi fled our house after a marathon screaming session with her, never to return, my mother went off the rails completely. After that, the beer bottles disappeared. After that, she drank exclusively hard liquor. She drank it every day. And she drank it straight.
And Heidi? Oh, what can I tell you about Heidi. She has remained her mother’s daughter, only more so. In the last nineteen years, my big sister has left a half-dozen half-finished university degrees in her wake. She has slept on streets. She has hitchhiked across Canada. She has been a Wiccan, a vegan, a skinhead, a tattoo artist, an eco-terrorist, and through most of it, a single mother herself. As far as I know, she lives somewhere in British Columbia with her teenaged daughter, where she makes a not-very-good living selling her unimaginative folk art at farmers’ markets on the weekend. I have not seen Heidi since Mom’s funeral.
My mother died while I was in the middle of my journalism degree; I had not yet turned twenty-one. Funny, how hard it is to stop resenting somebody when you assume they’ll always be there. Thinking of her death reminds me of a line from Nora Zeale Hurston, something about what a waste it is when our mourning outlives our grief — and I think it doubly shameful that my mom failed to outlive either of hers. When she was gone, I refused to put the label of orphan on myself, even though that’s what I was. I think Cora’s presence in my life, then my girlfriend, soon to be my fiancée, had a lot to do with that. As long as she was by my side, I knew I was not alone. It took burying my mother for me to realize what it feels like to be in love.
And for a few years there, we got on with it. Graduated with good grades, got J-jobs right away, got engaged. You could find Cora traipsing the streets of Halifax on the hunt for the perfect sound bite, her jet-black hair pulled tight against her scalp. Meanwhile, I worked at the Daily News offices on the outskirts of town — researching topics, crafting sentences, interviewing people by phone when I had to. The Lifestyles section suited me because I could get away without asking tough questions if I didn’t want to. In the evenings, we’d reconvene in our small apartment on Shirley Street where we’d drink red wine and listen to Miles Davis, and Cora would lightly chide me about whatever risks I chose not to take that day. I believed, like a fool, that she not only tolerated my pathological shyness, but celebrated it as a part of who I was. Life was good. I felt like I had broken through a wall.
But then Denis-never-Dennis arrived in our lives and shut the whole show down. What a vertiginous feeling it is to watch the woman you love fall in love with somebody else. Denis-never-Dennis started out as just The New Guy at Work, described one night to me while we were doing the dishes. Soon Cora began referring to him as My Friend Denis. I wasn’t all that suspicious at first: the fact that he was ten years her senior provided me with a false sense of security, rather than a harbinger of the Nick Hornby-esque angst that I would experience later. Then came days when she’d mention that the two of them had spent a sunny lunch hour eating French fries together from Bud the Spud on the ledge outside the public library. She’d do so in passing, a peripheral detail to whatever she was talking about — as if I wouldn’t notice her subliminal subterfuge and call her on it. Then came the Friday nights where I’d come home and wait several hours alone in the apartment until Cora eventually arrived, obviously tipsy, and she’d say “Oh sorry, Denis and I just grabbed a glass of wine or two after work at the Argyle.”
Even when she started spending less and less time at home, she denied it. Even when the sex dried up, she denied it. I figure my relationship with Cora ended a full two months before I realized it. When she was ready to move out, she taped the small, pathetic engagement ring I had given her, all that I could afford, to a note left for me on the kitchen table. It read simply: I’m sorry, Michael. I truly am. But there is something in you that lacks.
And then sent her girlfriends over to get her stuff.
Was I enraged? Of course. Did that rage express itself through some vehicular vandalism in the CBC parking lot? Possibly. But more to the point: I was now ready to accept the labels I had been denying myself for years: orphan, rudderless, alone in the world.
In fact, with Cora gone I was free to descend into the charlatanism that I knew rested at the heart of my character. It began manifesting itself through my job, with me growing less fastidious about capturing accurate quotes from the people I interviewed. It sounds close enough to what they said, I would tell myself. Then I was making up entire quotes from interviews: they still came off like something my sources should have said, and I convinced myself that it was okay, that I could get away with such behaviour, because after all this was the Lifestyle section, with so little at stake.
I knew my negligence had taken a sharp turn when I found myself creating entire sources out of thin air. The topics of the stories were (at that point) still genuine, but when I couldn’t bother finding someone to say what I wanted, I made them up. By this point, I was addicted to the rush of not getting caught, day after day. And soon enough, I was in for a pound: I eventually fabricated entire stories — topic, news angle, sources, quotes, even the occasional post-publication letter to the editor from a fictitious interviewee.
I consider it a scathing indictment on modern journalism that my dalliances could go on for four years before I got busted. Like a serial killer or corporate criminal, I grew arrogant and reckless. The “story” that did me in involved a book club comprised of immigrant housewives from the Palestinian territories who read novels exclusively by Jewish writers as an act of cultural understanding. It wasn’t the story’s questionable premise that sent the red flags unfurling. It wasn’t even a single sentence within the story. It was a passing clause within a sentence, sandwiched between em-dashes and mentioning an organization that did not and could not exist — The Jewish Consortium for the Annihilation of Arab History — that finally raised the eyebrow of my managing editor and sent her digging. And digging. And digging.
The unearthing of (most of) my ruses took no time at all. Needless to say, the Daily News’s competition had a field day when they became public. The Herald ran several days’ worth of articles about my misdeeds and subsequent termination, column inches that went on and on, needlessly. (They even mentioned my father, his noble reputation and work with the province, a tsk-tsk sort of reference.) The Canadian Press picked up the story and ran it nationwide. I know the girl who wrote it — we had a one-night stand my first year at J-school before I started dating Cora.
I was, of course, done for. Let me remind you that this was the spring of 2002 and Google was just achieving critical mass. Plug “Michael Barrett” in a search engine and you’ll need to click through several pages of results before you find a link that doesn’t include the words “disgraced journalist.” So I took some time off to recalibrate. But before I knew it, “some” turned to “a lot”: spring became summer and summer became fall. Meanwhile I had student loans I was still paying off from ten years earlier; the banks would not give me relief. I was now taking cash out on my MasterCard to pay for essentials like rent and vodka. It was almost fun to be in this kind of free fall into hopelessness. Nobody would give me a job. The few friends I had weren’t speaking to me. I was drinking all day long. And watching month after month as I spiralled toward personal and financial Armageddon.
Cut to a foggy afternoon: I was on the waterfront drinking alone in the Nautical Pub when I ran into an acquaintance from my university days. Over dinner, he told me h
ow he had gone on to do an expensive MFA and then paid off the student debt he incurred by teaching in South Korea. Had arrived in Seoul $35,000 in the red, but after three years of teaching returned to Canada $15,000 in the black. Said I could do the same. “But I don’t have a teaching degree,” I told him.
“Neither do I,” he replied. “You don’t need one. I wouldn’t even call what you do over there teaching. You just stand up in front of a bunch of Asian kids for eight hours a day and Be White, Be Western.” We parted company with him giving me the address for an online job board.
So I checked it out. And I applied for something. And I got a job offer right away. During the brief, perfunctory phone interview, Ms. Kim didn’t even question why my seven-year tenure at The Daily News had come to an abrupt end. Nor did she ask what I’d been doing with myself in the eight months since. All she needed was for me to Fed-Ex a package containing my valid passport, notarized confirmation of my university degree, and a photograph, a headshot of myself — which, I later learned, was to confirm that I was in fact white. It would take her a couple of weeks to process my E-1 visa. After she did, she confirmed my salary — 1.9 million won a month, virtually tax-free — and that upon my arrival I would move into a free apartment, albeit with a roommate. “His name is Justin,” she informed me. “He is from Nova Scotia, like you.” She could have added He is also emotionally damaged, like you, if she had known.
As my departure grew imminent, I gave notice on my apartment, sold off whatever shabby furniture I hadn’t hawked yet, cancelled my phone. But it didn’t feel like a new beginning, a chance for a fresh start. Not at all. Even before I stepped on Korean soil, I knew the truth about what I was doing. People don’t go to Asia to find themselves. They go there, for better or for worse, to run away from whatever they have been. And all I could hope for was to butt up against something, anything, to fill in the craters that resided within me.
It’s the photos of Justin’s kid that always get me. He has a collage of them tacked to the wooden headboard in his bedroom; I see them every time I go in there. This is what Justin has been — a father to a son who died in 2000. His name was Cody. Nearly six years old when he was killed in a freak accident while the family was vacationing in Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland. The photos on the headboard show the little guy in various states of little-guy animation. They overlook Justin as he sleeps.
It’s early on a Saturday afternoon and I’m just getting mobile. Freshly showered, I towel down the remnants of my hair and try to shake off my soju hangover from the night before. A crew of us had gone out after work for kalbi, Korean-style barbecue, and the liquor had been flowing; Justin and I didn’t get home until nearly dawn. Let me describe what I mean by home, this shoebox that ABC English Planet has provided. Imagine the smallest apartment you’ve ever seen and cut in half. It has the Korean-style floor heating, called ondol, a plastic simulacrum of hardwood that you never walk on with your shoes; you must leave your footwear in the small, sunken entryway by the door. Our kitchen is just a countertop with propane hotplate sitting below a row of cupboards, and with a small fridge to the right. We have no kitchen table. The living room is a leather couch parked in the centre of the apartment facing a tiny TV in the corner. We get a few English channels — CNN International and the Armed Forces Network. There are two bedrooms to this apartment. Justin’s is much bigger than mine. The benefits of seniority.
After I’ve dried off and dressed, I knock on Justin’s door and enter when he calls me. I find him on his bed reading a paperback. The photos of Cody hover all around his head.
“What did you say we should do today?” I ask him. “You mentioned it last night but I can’t remember.”
He laughs his deep laugh. “Wow, you really were drunk.” He sets his book aside. “Scrabble at the COEX.”
“Right. Scrabble at the COEX.” This had been our plan, to take Justin’s Scrabble board and play a game in the food court of the COEX shopping mall. He and Rob Cruise had done this once before, with humorous results — it had caused a growing and enthusiastic crowd of Korean passersby to stop and watch them. Koreans are generally fascinated by English, even if they don’t speak it; most know that access to English means access to power. Scrabble is especially captivating, since there can be no equivalent of it with their own alphabet. My students are always begging to play the game in class, but Ms. Kim frowns upon it.
Justin gets up and digs the Scrabble board out from under a pile of clothes. It’s an early version of the game — the maroon box is sagging and held together with an elastic band. “We’ll probably only have time for one game,” he says. “I have my private at four o’clock.”
“Fair enough,” I reply. By private, he means a private tutoring session, not exactly the most legal of activities in this country. In theory, you can be deported if you’re caught teaching English outside of the regular channels. But of course we all do it — the extra money is too good to pass up.
He stuffs the board and a dictionary into his backpack and then we head out the door. The COEX is a twenty-minute walk from our apartment, and by the time we get there, our hangovers have turned to hunger. We order a couple of bibimbap in the food court. As we set up the Scrabble board, I notice a few curious stares from other patrons, but that’s all.
While we eat and play, Justin tells me more about the private he’ll be teaching later in the afternoon. She’s a twelve-year-old named (of course!) “Jenny,” a former student at ABC English Planet whose parents pulled her out after they realized how preposterous the curriculum was. But Jenny loved Justin’s demeanour and teaching style, and so her mother approached him discreetly to ask if he could teach her privately on weekends at their home near Dogok Station. The family is loaded — Justin makes 160,000 won for four hours of work. Jenny’s dad is an executive with a big Korean company, putting in ninety hours a week, and Justin hardly ever sees him during the tutoring sessions. (“Hell, Jenny’s mom hardly ever sees him.”) Still, Justin has found kinship with both parents — they’re only in their mid-thirties, just a couple years older than he is.
“It’s like they’ve adopted me,” he says, putting DIAL on the board. “They feed me; they buy me gifts; they help me with my Korean. And of the dozen sessions I’ve done, only about five have taken place in their apartment. The rest of time, Jenny’s Mom —”
“What’s her name?”
“Sunkyoung — she doesn’t have an English name. The rest of the time Sunkyoung says ‘Let’s take Jenny to a museum today’ or ‘let’s take Jenny to an English movie.’ She’s so adamant that we get out and do things together. The three of us.”
“And you go?” I say, adding ET to TOIL for a triple word score.
“Of course I go,” he replies. “It doesn’t feel like work at all. It feels,” and he lowers his eyes, ostensibly to add my score, “it feels like being part of a family.”
As our game progresses a few passing Koreans throw us a glance. One nosy woman stops to inspect our board and points at the word RASCAL. “What means?” she asks. “A very bad man,” Justin deadpans. She covers her mouth as she titters and walks off. A few minutes later, an older gentleman approaches our table with an awkward smile. Does he attempt his own comment about the Scrabble board? No. Instead he points at my face, then points at his own and rubs his chin jealously.
“I like-uh your beard-uh,” he blurts out, but then scurries off, embarrassed.
I turn to Justin. “He liked my beard.”
He nods. “It’s an enviable beard. Korean men can’t grow one like that. They just get the Fu Man Chu thing going on.”
“I like your beard, too,” I hear someone say over my left shoulder. I turn in the swivel chair and am surprised to see the girl I met at Jokers Red a few weeks ago. Jin. The girl in the long coat and cashmere. Jin. Rob Cruise’s clandestine conquest. She stands holding a tray of food and wearing a black business suit, smart and well-tailored. It takes me a second to believe it’s her. Justin clears his
throat.
Before I can even shove out a hello, she marches over to our table. “Why are you playing this silly game in a food court?”
Justin and I look at each other as if we’ve forgotten. “I guess it’s our way of offering free English lessons,” he jokes. “Do you want one?”
“My English is fine, thank you very much.” She seats herself next to me.
“Funny we’ve run into you here,” I say.
“I work in COEX Tower. I’m on my lunch break, finally.”
“You work Saturdays?”
“Of course. Most Koreans do. You ESL teachers have it easy — most of you get Saturdays off.” She hasn’t taken her eyes off the board. “So can you explain how this game works?”
We talk her through it as we play, elucidating on what the coloured areas mean and how to place the high-point letters on them strategically. She nods with growing comprehension and restrained delight. I’m very aware of her proximity to me, the way she leans across my arm to cast her curiosity over the board. I want to ensure that I win this game in front of her. I clinch the deal when I place my last letter, an X, on a triple-letter score with it buttressed by an A and an E for a total of fifty points.