Re Jane

by Patricia Park

  “For one, he hollers at you—although that’s not news to you, the way you hold the damn phone away from your ear. He wasn’t even on speaker. But then he expects you to come at his every beck and call. And guess what? You come running.”

  “He’s family.”

  “Does he even pay you to work?”

  I wasn’t officially on the books—that wasn’t the way we did things at Food—but Sang would always send me home with groceries when I left, and he’d give me the periodic handout. In fact, Ed had just eaten one of Sang’s apples that morning.

  “Well, does he?”

  “Do you clock in and out to watch Devon?”

  Maybe it was a cheap shot, but his question felt that preposterous. You don’t keep a tally of expenses with family.

  Ed let out an exasperated sigh, the way he sometimes did with his daughter. “I just hate watching the way he treats you. And don’t even get me started on everything with your late mother. You know he’s still holding all that against you.”

  I hadn’t actually broached the topic of my mother—and father—with my uncle since I’d returned from Seoul. I continually debated whether to bring it up, but things had been going so well between us (okay, as well as they were probably ever going to go) that I’d held off. I didn’t want to rock the boat.

  “He’s a man of his generation,” I snapped. “You try working fourteen hours on your feet all day. You try operating in a language that’s not your native—”

  “Stop defending him!” Ed interrupted. His tone was so sharp that I shrank back. He must have seen my stricken look, because he softened his voice. “He should love you for you. Not in spite of. But that man talks to you like he doesn’t have an ounce of respect for you.”

  Ed’s words stung me into silence.

  * * *

  “You late,” Sang said when I arrived at Food.

  Do you hear the way he talks to you? I tried to shut Ed out. “There was traffic coming from the city.”

  “Now because you late, I late.”

  I’m the one doing you a favor, I thought.

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “And why you driving from city? Who drive you?”

  “I told you. I had to review some paperw—”

  “Hurry up, you change your clothes,” he interrupted, waving at my dress shirt and slacks.

  We could have been back in the old days at Food.

  Dinner that night, too, seemed to regress to the patterns of the past. Hannah picked and prodded at my “salty, bloated face,” pointing to my “bad American diet” as the culprit. Mary, who was also home that night (she was hardly ever at her Barnard dorm; it seemed like an expensive dumping ground for her books between classes) chimed in, saying it looked as if I had eaten “like, a huge bowl of instant ramen right before going to bed.” Sang jumped in about my job—“Who this company? How much business they bring in?”—as all the while George grunted. And round and round and round they went.

  Maybe it was what Ed had said earlier that was making me see everything with a different slant. Or maybe the family had really directed a heightened criticism at me that particular evening. To this day I’m still not sure which is the truth—for all I knew, that dinner could have been just like any ordinary one. But it didn’t feel ordinary to me.

  “Why you waste time on going-nowhere company?” Sang was saying. “Better you just work at Food!”

  That man talks to you like he doesn’t have an ounce of respect for you. Ed’s voice railed against the rising chaos of the family. I dropped my chopsticks against my bowl with a loud, deliberate clatter. Everyone looked up.

  “You think I came all the way here just to get lectured by you people?”

  Sang looked at me with darkened eyes. “‘You people’?”

  This would have been my cue to lower my eyes and murmur, Nothing, Uncle. Sorry, Uncle. Instead I said, “Whatever, Uncle.” I could’ve been Devon.

  “Where you learn talk like that?” Sang said. “You picking up bad habits from outside. Like you getting a bad family education.” He waited a beat, as if he were giving me another chance to come to my senses and apologize.

  I said, “It’s always from the ‘outside,’ isn’t it? Like ‘outside’ is full of contagious diseases.”

  Sang shook his head. “Ever since you coming back home from Korea, you acting funny. You know that? Like you some kind of big shot.”

  “You act like a big shot,” I said. “But you know what? You don’t know anything. Everything you taught me about Korea was wrong.”

  I had hit a nerve. Sang’s eyes went completely black. “Everybody, naga!” he shouted. The rest of the family scrambled out of the kitchen, but not before George rushed a chopstickload of rice into his mouth first.

  Then it was just Sang and me sitting opposite each other at that rickety fold-up card table.

  “Who you think you are?” he said. It was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer it. “You go over there—to hof, to karaoke, you buy fancy hand phone and fancy handbag”—he pointed through the doorway to the living-room couch, where I’d left my Sinnara purse, a gift from Emo—“and now you knowing everything. But you don’t know nothing about Korean. Only fifty percent, if you lucky!”

  Fifty percent. Half. “That’s real rich,” I said, echoing Ed’s words from earlier. “You know what else you were wrong about? My mother. She was never thrown away and left behind by some GI.”

  “What you talking about?” His eyes didn’t even flicker.

  I told. How my mother had not been some foolish GI lover. How my father had not been a GI at all, but a volunteer in the Peace Corps. And—here was the real clincher—that my father hadn’t up and left her, but they’d actually fallen in love and stayed together. As I spoke, Sang just listened, neither confirming nor denying.

  “Do you have any idea how this changes everything for me?” I said. I thought of the schoolyard torments. The sinking feeling overwhelming me each night as I lay in bed at Gates Street—that ineffable longing that tugged inside my heart. The rise of shame whenever Flushing cast its collective eye on me. “And yet you kept this from me my whole life. I could’ve been proud of my mother. Of myself. Instead all I felt was ashamed.”

  Then, finally, Sang had words of his own. “GI Corps, Peace Corps, What Corps, why I care? Still she disobeying when Father say no!”

  There was something about how he uttered that line—perhaps it was the slip into “Father” instead of “your grandfather”—that made me think of that old photo of Sang: even as a child he’d been forced to play the responsible role. Perhaps he felt that my mother had rebelled where he could not. I started to give way.

  But just like that, Sang added, “Why you so proud your mother? She have no nunchi.”

  My mother had no nunchi. Same as he thought I had no nunchi and Emo thought my father had none.

  I swallowed. Hard. “I feel like you can’t”—I tried to steady my warbling voice—“just love me for—”

  It was no use. I was losing control. I pressed my hand to my heart, but still it went pwah! I could not stop myself from splitting in two.

  My uncle flinched from the deluge. He hated tears.

  When at last my cries tapered off, Sang said, in a flat, unfeeling voice, “How I’m suppose to control what you feeling? Your feelings your feelings.”

  “Ed said you’d say that!”

  Shit, shit, shit.

  “Ed?” I could see the name slowly registering in his head. “Ed . . . you talking about your old lady boss husband? That stupid babo?” he said. “That kind of man, he only want easy thing, like fruit about to falling off tree.”

  “Are you calling me low-hanging fruit?”

  Sang did not answer.

  “Ever think you’re the reason I am?”

  Then Sang went chuh! and shook his head. “So
that man teach you nothing but putting the blame on other people?” He stabbed his temple. “You like bearbrain. Nothing going through! What kind of relation you are?”

  I didn’t answer. His eyes flashed black, like oil spills. “You move back home right now. From now on, you not gonna see him, you not gonna talk to him. You stop everything. Now!”

  How stupid I’d been to defend Sang in front of Ed. Stupid! Ed was right. He’d been right all along.

  “You can’t just order me around however you want and expect me to come running home. Why? So I can be your errand boy at Food?”

  “What’s wrong Food? You hating coming home that much?” Sang muttered.

  “I’m not your daughter!” I shouted. “I wish you’d just leave me alone!”

  It was a petulant thing to say; the kind of words that slip out in the heat of an argument. I waited for him to shout back, So ungrateful! You know how lucky you are?

  But instead Sang’s voice grew soft. Almost gentle. “You right, Jane-ah. Uncle not your father,” he said. “That what you want, I leave you alone.”

  There was a dullness to the words, a dullness that matched his eyes, whose angry sheen was quickly fading into a flat, matte brown.

  In my heart I knew it: This fight felt different from all our other fights. The dismissiveness reflecting back in Sang’s eyes told me he was done with me, that I was no longer his concern. It was what I wanted. And yet I still felt a hollow thud deep in the cavity of my chest.

  My uncle and I had broken apart once before, but in the midst of 9/11, Korea, and my grandfather’s death we found a way to patch things up again.

  If not broke, why you gotta fix? But maybe it was the other way around: What’s fixed will always remain broken. Like the door to the walk-in box, the floor tiles at Food. And there were only so many cracks—cracks swelling to fissures, fissures buckling into rifts—that our relationship could endure.

  It would take a natural disaster to put us back together again.

  Chapter 27

  Boeuf Bourguignon

  Winter was shedding the last of its chill, and soon it was spring. Ed and I had just finished another of his epic dinners: roasted lamb chops with braised leeks and merguez sausage. Over coffee and slices of a chocolate pecorino torte, Ed said, “I’ve been doing some thinking. And I think . . . we should have The Talk.”

  I sat up in my chair. The Talk. Was Ed going to ask me to marry him? We’d only been together—this time around—for a few months. But we loved each other. Maybe it wasn’t too soon. Was it?

  “Jane, I’d love for you to move in,” he said. He looked up at me, gauging my response. When I didn’t answer immediately, he went on. “Do you really want to keep shuttling between two apartments? And you have to admit, Jane—my place is a lot nicer than yours.” Not that much nicer, I thought. It was still Queens.

  “What’s Devon think about it?” I said. “I’m sure she’ll just love that.”

  “Devon’s not a child anymore,” Ed said. “She’s going to have to accept that you’re part of my life now.”

  “And what about Nina?”

  “What about Nina?” Ed said. “She can find another roommate.”

  “I feel like I’d be ditching her.”

  “Not if you give her enough notice,” he said impatiently. “Look, if you’re worried about rent, you wouldn’t have to—”

  “It’s not about that.”

  I think Ed expected me to jump at his invitation. But I honestly didn’t know what to think. Whatever swells of gratitude I felt at his generosity were tamped down by an unexpected ambivalence. Shouldn’t he have proposed to me first? I couldn’t shake Sang’s comment about the easy, low-hanging fruit.

  “Don’t you want to be together?” Ed speared his torte with a fork.

  I, too, lifted my fork, then lowered it. As usual, I’d stuffed myself at dinner—it was hard not to indulge in such good food. “Of course. I love you, Ed.”

  “Then what’s this really about?” His tone was a little testy. “I’m offering you my home.”

  “I know that, Ed. It’s a very generous offer.”

  On paper it seemed to make sense. I was over at Ed’s apartment all the time. And people my age were starting to do that—couple off and move in together. But the thing was, I was just starting out on my new life. Was I ready to put an end to that? I already felt I wasn’t seeing much of Nina anymore. When I told Ed that, he relented. There was a shift in his tone, and his voice grew gentle. “Sometimes friends drift apart, sometimes they drift back. You can’t fight the course of these things. It just is what it is.”

  “I don’t want us to drift apart.” Even as I said it, I knew I sounded childish.

  “It’s not a good or a bad thing, Jane. I’ve seen it at least a thousand times. I’m sure one day it’ll all make sense.”

  I mulled over Ed’s words. “Yeah, but I should still see what she’s up to this weekend,” I said. “Maybe we should do a girls’ night out and catch up.”

  “Here’s what we’ll do.” Ed began ticking things off on his fingers. “We’ll invite her over for dinner here on Saturday. Eat some good food, drink some wine. It’ll be a nice and relaxing evening. You guys can catch up. I like Nina—she’s a good kid.”

  I almost said, We’re, like, the same age, but stopped myself. Sometimes the contrast in the way Ed and I spoke caught me by surprise. I wondered if it sounded as apparent to him as well. But instead of asking, I took a forkful of the torte. A silkiness coated my tongue. His dessert was indeed an unexpected combination—the sharpness of the cheese, the bittersweetness of the chocolate. Ed had been right: The contrasts were what made it all the more delicious.

  “Maybe I’ll make a boeuf bourguignon,” Ed said, taking another bite.

  “I’ve never had it,” I admitted. Actually, I’d never even heard of it.

  Ed took a deep breath, as if he were about to launch into an explanation. But then he squared his shoulders and said, “It’s, like, a drunken beef stew.”

  * * *

  But when I invited Nina over for dinner at Ed’s on Saturday, she said she had “a thing.”

  “What thing?” I asked her. One of her clients was having a housewarming on Saturday. “You mean that guy you have the hots for?” I said. “What’s-his-name, Mikhail Gorbachev?”

  Nina rolled her eyes. “Mikhail Gorokhov.”

  Mikhail whose last name I could never keep straight worked for a small hedge fund in midtown. Last month Nina had found him a one-bedroom in an elevator doorman building in Murray Hill. She was first struck by (her words) his Superman-ish features—black hair, blue eyes, and “high-rise cheekbones.” But it was his organizational skills, and his love of spreadsheets, that had been the real clincher for her. Nina hadn’t been this excited about any of the guys she’d dated since Joey Cammareri.

  “Why didn’t you ask me to go?” I said.

  She shrugged. “I figured . . . you know, you and Ed were doing your own thing.”

  “Please. We’re not sutured at the hip.” Nina loved when I bumbled idiomatic expressions. Sometimes I conflated a Korean proverb with an English one. I did it half on purpose, hamming it up for her to get a laugh.

  “But what about dinner?”

  “We could do both. The party’s not going to start till late, right? And it’d be good for Ed and me to get out of the house for a change.”

  Nina wrinkled her nose. “You think this is Ed’s sort of thing?”

  “I’m sure he’d love it.”

  I actually didn’t know if that was the truth, but in that moment I didn’t feel like admitting it to her.

  “Yeah, no. I’m sure it’ll be cool,” she said. “But we need to get there no later than eleven.” Nina had elaborate theories on prime arrival times.

  “Totally.”

  * * *

 
“Go to one of Nina’s parties? In Murray Hill? Forget it,” Ed said over the phone that afternoon. “We invited her to dinner. If she wants to bail, fine. But she’s not going to hijack our plans.”

  “So, um . . . I kind of already said we’d go.”

  “Jane.”

  “I’m sorry! I just . . . got caught up in the moment. I thought it’d be fun. Go out, meet new people for once.”

  “I’ll tell you exactly what to expect,” Ed said. “A bunch of i-banker kids fresh off their year-end bonuses, bragging about steak houses and strip clubs. They’re all drinking Maker’s Mark from red Solo cups and getting totally hammered.” He uttered that last bit in a mocking tone I didn’t appreciate. “You’re telling me that sounds like a good time, when we could just relax at home, enjoy a fantastic meal, and save ourselves the bother?”

  Sometimes when Ed spoke like this—I’d once jokingly referred to it as “being teacherly”—I didn’t know what to make of it. It was one of Ed’s qualities that first drew me in over those late-night heroes. This is not to say that it was condescending; instead he spoke with the weight of personal experience. More often than not, I was able to free-ride on the shorthand of his authority. From an efficiency standpoint alone, it was a good thing; there was no need to reinvent the wheel.

  But at times I wondered whether I relied too heavily on Ed’s account of things, rather than seeing for myself.

  I explained about Nina and Mikhail. “I can’t just let her go alone,” I said. “Why don’t the three of us do dinner? Then after that I’ll just go with Nina to her thing.” And you can save yourself the bother.

  I could sense a note of suspicion in his tone. “Is that what you’d rather do?”

  “I’d rather we all go together. But I’m not going to force you.”

  Ed was silent on the other end of the line. I wondered where his thoughts traveled to—back to his own mid-twenties life? To house parties in Murray Hill, or their equivalent?

  Finally he spoke. “Fine, we’ll go. But if a single Jell-O shot makes an appearance, you and I are out of there.”