Re Jane

by Patricia Park

  Even the aromas were different; this home smelled of plaster and—I sniffed the air again—roasting meat. It was delicious.

  “Let me go check on dinner,” Ed said. “Keep me company?” I followed him into the kitchen, expecting it to look as plain and devoid of character as the living room. But I was surprised to find that it looked newly renovated. The appliances were all a sleek stainless steel. One wall was covered in pots and pans, hanging like elaborate pieces of art. His spice rack was as expansive as his bookshelves; his cooking equipment rivaled his toolbox. I ran my hand along the counter. “Is this granite?” I asked.

  Ed nodded. “You don’t want to know what I had to do to get the landlord to splurge on those.”

  “Drop trou?”

  And he laughed—a hearty laugh, a genuine laugh, the laugh I remembered so well. I felt a little embarrassed—my joke wasn’t that funny. “I forgot that about you, Jane,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I haven’t laughed like that in a long time.” He looked at me.

  We again stared at each other; I don’t know for how long.

  “So . . . what’s for dinner?” I finally asked, taking in the various pots and pans simmering on the stove and peeking at the roasting pan in the oven.

  “A cassoulet,” he said. “Have you had it before?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t even know what’s in it.”

  “It’s like pork ’n’ beans,” he explained, “and duck.”

  “Sounds fancy,” I said. “And here I was expecting heroes.” As soon as I said it, I chastised myself. It was presumptuous of me to bring up memories of those late nights.

  But Ed just shrugged. “I enjoy cooking,” he said. There was something so luxurious and appealing about the way he moved in the kitchen. I watched as he popped open and poured the wine, as he chopped vegetables with slow, steady strokes (Hannah was always so haphazardly hurry-hurry with the knife) and added them to the pot. He was deliberate and relaxed; I was suddenly struck with an awful thought: How many other women did Ed entertain in his beautiful kitchen by cooking an elaborate dinner? How many others had stood here sipping wine, watching him work?

  Ed caught me staring at his hands; he held up his bare left one. “As you can probably guess”—now he was sweeping his arm across the room, as if to gesture how all this was his—“Beth and I got a divorce.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “It’s a relief. And you and I both know that a divorce was long overdue.”

  I cradled my wineglass. “You look happy. I’m so . . .” Happy you’re happy? It was almost too corny to utter. Also, it was and was not true. I wanted to be the source of his happiness.

  “I could be happier,” he said. “It’s genuinely good to see you, Jane. I’m glad you came over.”

  “I’m glad you invited me,” I said. I took a sip of my wine. “And what about Devon?”

  Ed looked away. “Devon lives with her mom. But, you know, I still get to see her. Whenever it’s convenient for Beth.”

  His smile changed, from genuine to rueful. I got the sense he didn’t feel like elaborating, so I changed the subject. I told him about my new job with that real-estate developer—they’d hired me on the spot at my interview. I told him Nina and I were thinking of looking for a place together in the city.

  When he asked about Korea, I told him about my first day of teaching. “I don’t know how you do it every morning, standing in front of all those students,” I said. “I couldn’t stop my legs from shaking the whole first week.”

  “Actually, I’m not teaching at the prep school anymore,” he said. “I’m at Queens College now. Hence the move to Queens.” Ed explained how shortly after “all that had happened” (here I looked away), there had been an opening to teach at SUNY Rochester for a semester, to fill in for someone on sabbatical. He’d applied for the job on a whim. “I guess I was the only chump they could find willing to brave it up in Rochester,” he said. He quit the prep school and moved upstate. After that, he was—“by some miracle, or fluke, or both”—hired by Queens College.

  “Ed, that’s fantastic! So your dissertation’s all done? You must be thrilled. And relieved.”

  Ed took a drink of his wine. “Not exactly. They hired me as an ABD,” he said. “I’m adjuncting part of the time, dissertating the other part.”

  “But still,” I said, “that’s really prestigious. You’re a professor.” But he didn’t look as pleased as I was for him. “Ed, you should let yourself enjoy your success. It’s huge! This is—”

  I was interrupted by that buzzer—err! Ed held up his finger as if to say, Hold that thought, and ran to the door. “Devon!” I heard him cry. “What are you doing here?”

  I froze. I heard the door close, and they were advancing down the hall. What would Devon think, seeing me here like this with her dad?

  “You didn’t get Mom’s message?” There was an edge—distinctly the tone of a teenager—in her voice. “I had some stupid group project out here. Mom didn’t want me taking the subway by myself this late, so she told me to come here and then you could drive me home.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Because. I didn’t even want to come, but Mom—” Devon reached the kitchen, and I froze again. “What’s she doing here? Dad, what’s going on?”

  “We’re just— Jane just got back from Korea, and we’re catching up—”

  As Ed fumbled for words, I took in this new Devon. How tall she’d grown! Her once-tiny frame was now all limbs. Gone were her usual casual jeans and soft pastel T-shirts. Now she was wearing all black. But not in a Goth sort of way—she wore a tight-fitting shirt that revealed the flatness of her chest. Her black flare pants let out a synthetic rustle. Her hair was different, too; it grew free from its bowl cut and hung past her shoulders. There were highlighted streaks in her formerly jet-black hair, as if she’d sprayed it with Sun-In. The Korean girls used to use that stuff back when I was in high school. The product was meant to bring out the natural golden highlights in white girls’ hair. When Asian girls used Sun-In, their hair turned a cheap brassy color. Her chubby cheeks had thinned out; the skin stretched taut across her face. Devon looked so uncomfortable standing there in her new body, with her new hair and new clothes. When her eyes alighted on me, her scowl deepened.

  “Is that for all of us?” she said, jutting her chin at the bottle of wine in her father’s hands.

  “Nice try,” Ed said. “Maybe in ten years. Now, go greet Jane. Properly. We haven’t seen her in ages.”

  Ed pushed his daughter toward me. She did not charge forward with one hand sticking out to shake mine, the way she’d done once before. “Devon, I’m . . .” I struggled for words. I’m so sorry. I know you’re angry. There’s so much I want to say to you. “. . . so happy to see you.”

  I held my arms open to embrace her. But Devon just stood there, her own arms crossed over her chest. Mine dropped back down to my sides.

  “Just like old times,” Ed said with a forced lightness.

  Devon looked from her father to me to the bottle of wine. Then she rolled her eyes and walked out of the kitchen.

  Devon had caught a whiff of whatever was stirring between her father and me. But how much did she know? I kept trying to catch her father’s eye, so he could give me some hint. But he was engrossed in his cassoulet.

  Ed urged Devon to stay for dinner. As he cooked, Devon and I were alone in the living room. I tried to make small talk with her. We were on such fraught ground; I knew it would be presumptuous to assume too much intimacy, as if we’d picked up right where we left off. Small talk was our only option for now. I congratulated her on Hunter—I’d heard about Devon’s acceptance through Nina, who’d mentioned that Alla had applied and gotten in as well. Devon met my compliment with a wordless shrug. “That must be nice, to have a familiar face at a new school,” I said.
“You guys must take the train together.”

  Devon didn’t answer. I felt myself rambling to fill the silence. “Nina was saying how Alla really likes it there. And she thinks—”

  “Do you guys just, like, have nothing better to do than talk about us behind our backs?” she said.

  I faltered. Devon slumped in her seat and scowled.

  I tried once more with Devon during dinner. I thought back to those early days at Gino’s, when she’d look up at me not with anger but with an open friendliness. Except that was before. “I was thinking. What if you, me, Nina, and Alla went on one of our double dates? Maybe back to Gino’s?”

  Devon chewed and swallowed slowly, as if she were digesting my words along with the cassoulet. She took a big sip from her glass of milk. She wiped her mouth. She seemed to relish how uncomfortable her silence was making me. Finally she spoke.

  “Could you please pass the pepper?” Those were the last words Devon said to me for the rest of the night.

  * * *

  When dinner was finally over, Ed offered to give us both rides home. We piled into the car. “But, Dad, why are you dropping me off first?” she asked. “You should be dropping Jane, in Flushing.”

  “Oh . . .” Ed said. I was sitting beside him in the passenger seat, sensing that familiar blush bloom over his face and neck. He mumbled something about westbound traffic not being so bad on the BQE, then drowned out his own words by turning up the volume on the radio.

  “But, Dad, it doesn’t make sense,” Devon called out from the backseat.

  Suddenly Ed’s tone grew stern. “You really want to have this conversation right now?” It was the same tone he had used on me when I’d first started working for him. Devon mumbled no. We drove the rest of the way in silence, the slow chatter of WNYC in the background.

  As we traveled westbound on the BQE, the downtown skyline rose before us. It looked nothing like the skyline I’d stared out at with Ed on the promenade. The negative space of the night sky looked so bare without the Twin Towers.

  We pulled up to 646 Thorn Street. Devon had been in such a sour mood during dinner that I expected her to fly out of the car and into her house. But she trudged up the stairs slowly, as if she dreaded what awaited her there. There was a rustling in the bay window. And there Beth stood, the light streaming out from behind her. Her eyes fell on me, and I instantly shrank into my seat. Did she know? They shifted from me to her ex-husband, before falling back on me. Then she lifted her arm, as if to wave, but instead yanked the curtains, closing them firmly shut. Darkness resumed.

  We drove on, to Flushing. Whatever static had been tingling between us earlier that evening had dissipated after Devon’s arrival. I directed Ed to Gates Street, but with much reluctance. When we pulled up to the house, I did not want the evening to end like this. Not on this note.

  “I’m really sorry about Devon,” Ed said. “She’s just going through a phase.”

  “She’s right to be upset, after what I did. Then I pulled a runner on her”—I bit my lip—“and on you.” A wave of emotion threatened to overtake me, and I bit my lip again to quiet the flood. “I’m so sorry.”

  Ed’s hand waved through the air, dismissing the matter. “You shouldn’t be. I put you in an awkward position. I should be the one apologizing.”

  “Please don’t think”—my voice caught—“that it didn’t mean anything to me. That wasn’t why I left. It actually meant . . . a lot to me. It still means a lot to me.” My words felt clumsy, but I couldn’t leave the car without telling Ed how I felt.

  The streetlights cast a shadow across his face, but it remained unreadable. It was presumptuous to assume that Ed felt the same way. I took his silence as his answer; my fingers fumbled for the door handle.

  Suddenly Ed’s hand shot out, pulling mine from the door. “Jane. Don’t you ever leave,” he said with feeling. “I couldn’t bear it again.”

  His grasp was so warm!—it pulsed with life. I did not dare let go.

  Chapter 25

  Astoria

  When Nina called to say she knew of a great two-bedroom for us, I didn’t think she’d meant in Queens. Nina was at best ambivalent about the borough, just as I’d once been ambivalent about Brooklyn. When we agreed to find a place together, we’d both initially hoped to live in Manhattan—only to find that our collective rental power priced us out of the city entirely.

  “It’s a ginormous floor-through unit. The rent’s way below market value,” Nina said, giving me her Realtor’s pitch. “Super-safe neighborhood. Laundry in the basement. Grocery store down the block. A short walk to the N. Minutes to the East Side.” I worked in the East Fifties, and Nina’s office was on the Upper East Side. “Oh, and my great-uncle owns the building,” she added. “My cousin Rosie’s been living there the last ten years, but she just up and left for Sicily to ‘find herself’ or whatever.”

  Queens. The very borough I’d been plotting to escape my whole life. I thought about the path I was supposed to take, the one I’d charted out with decision trees and spreadsheets. Wall Street seemed a far cry away, like a whisper from someone else’s dream.

  Nina took my silence for reluctance. “Look, I’m not sold on Astoria either. It’s just a bunch of Greek joints. But it’s supposedly up-and-coming. Some craft-beer bar’s opening up on Thirtieth Avenue. Or was it Thirtieth Street? I don’t know—the neighborhood doesn’t make sense to me yet.” Somewhere along the way, Nina had turned into a beer snob. “Maybe it’s only a matter of time before Astoria becomes the shit-show going on over here.”

  She had regaled me with stories of the changes to Carroll Gardens. For one, our beloved Gino’s was now a fair-trade coffee shop with free Wi-Fi. New tenants were renting the ground-floor apartment of her family’s brownstone. Nina described them as “Beth types. Enough said.”

  With our starting salaries, neither of us was in a position to be choosy. And that was how we came to live in Astoria—a short ride from Flushing, and Food, and Sang.

  * * *

  The building at 917 Helen Street was a wood-and-brick three-family house on a residential stretch between Thirtieth and Thirty-first Avenues, sitting in a row of other three-family houses, all attached. You could hear the rumble of the N train overhead from a few streets away. It had a little porch out front and a Tudor roof whose sharp peak stretched to the sky. This was quintessential western Queens architecture.

  What came with our cheap rent were caretaking duties: Collecting the trash and putting it out on the curb (we would have had to sort the recycling, too, but the city had temporarily put the kibosh on that). Vacuuming the staircases and sweeping the front porch. Shoveling the snow from the sidewalk and putting down salt. The tenants filtered their problems through us before we passed them on to Nina’s great-uncle, who had retired a few years ago to Florida.

  After Nina and I moved in, we became aware of the apartment’s many . . . idiosyncrasies. Every now and again, the plumbing would gurgle and the hot water would suddenly run cold. Sometimes there’d be a blockage in the drainpipe. We’d call a plumber, and Nina would insist on shadowing him, the two of them crouched on their haunches, as plumbers are wont to do. I could sense Nina trying not to bother him with questions, yet she watched intently all the same. It helped that she was cute; the plumbers never seemed to mind Nina’s hovering. “This is such a racket,” she’d say after she paid the bill and forwarded it to her great-uncle. “All he did was stick a snake down the pipe and yank a few times. Pulling up your hair balls, Jane.” (“Sorry,” I’d mutter. Nina was always on my case about monitoring the shower strainer.)

  Suddenly how-to manuals from Home Depot littered our hand-me-down kitchen table—a raw slab of wood set atop sawhorse legs, from Nina’s father’s basement workshop. Nina’s reading materials were starting to resemble the contents of Eunice Oh’s Manhattan Portage messenger bag.

  One night that winter, it s
nowed, followed by thick sheets of rain. The snow became heavy and slushy, having absorbed the full weight of the rain. Nina and I had to keep taking breaks as we shoveled the front walk. The roof above us creaked from the accumulated snow, and at some point in the middle of the night it buckled.

  That was the last straw. The house hardly seemed salvageable. As Nina and I spent the next morning calling around to get estimates from contractors, I asked her why her great-uncle didn’t just sell the house or do a complete demo and build anew, Seoul-style. Weren’t all these “little” expenditures like throwing good money after bad? “It’s got good bones,” Nina insisted. “It just needs some TLC.”

  We ended up going with a guy I knew through work, whose rates were higher but who seemed more trustworthy than his competitors. The other contractors would patch things up in a quick fix, only to leave behind a host of other damage in the process. There was no accountability in these one-off interactions.

  And so my new life with Nina was beginning to take shape. When we weren’t tinkering with the apartment, we did all the things people in their mid-twenties do in New York: we went to cheap happy hours in midtown, open bars downtown (where one-or-another liquor company was cross-promoting with one-or-another luxury-branding company), birthday parties at dive bars in the East Village, or housewarmings in carved-up apartments in Stuy Town or the far eastern stretch of the Upper East Side—which, at that time, seemed to be the only Manhattan neighborhoods people our age could afford. The invitations usually came through our co-workers or Nina’s clients. Our social network was growing; we’d connect with people in that glib way that happens when you’re shouting over loud music in a crowded bar, over the rising yeast stench of beer, as you’re shouldering a heavy bag full of work files and balancing a drink in your hands. Those evenings would culminate in the ceremonious exchange of business cards with cell-phone numbers scribbled on the back and promises to connect on Friendster. (I took it to be the American equivalent of Cyworld.) Then, in your work in-box the next day, there’d be a follow-up e-mail with an invite to another party or open bar, and it would start all over again.