Re Jane

by Patricia Park

  Though it looks like she’s on her way to becoming an official Queensite: her great-uncle is putting our house on the market. She floated the idea of our going in on the house together. We’d stay on the top floor and continue to rent out the other two units. Eventually, when Nina and I start our own families, we could each take a floor and still have one income-producing unit. We’ve turned a tidy profit on our business—enough to cover the down payment but not enough for construction. Even though it’d probably be cheaper to do a demo and throw up one of those prefab aluminum-siding houses, Nina wants to keep the integrity of her great-uncle’s home. Some things are just worth salvaging. Meanwhile, the inheritance my grandfather left me has been sitting untouched in a bank in Seoul, slowly accruing interest. I’ve talked it over with Uncle Sang. We ran the numbers, and he thinks I should go for it. It might make a good investment yet.

  He is, I think, proud that I’ve started my own business (I know this because when I showed him our first paycheck, he offered a stiff pat on the back), but I also know he still wishes I were a larger part of Food.

  As for my uncle—it turned out he used his inheritance to purchase Food’s commercial property as well as the building next to it. George, of all people, has taken an interest in the family business. He keeps urging my uncle to tear down the property next door—currently rented to a jjajangmyun noodle restaurant—and expand Food. He’s become something of a health nut—most recently he’s been on a kale-juice kick—and he thinks the store should tap into the organic market. But Uncle Sang likes the predictability of his small-but-manageable margins. “Maybe I’m younger, I be more risky,” he says. “But I’m too old now.” It’s an ongoing debate between the two of them. In truth, business at Food could be better. It’s a tight grocery market, with a growing number of larger, fancier supermarkets cropping up all over. But the property value of Food has shot up. Uncle Sang has, however, fared far better than Daedong Fish Market, Kumgang Mountain Dry Cleaning, Chosun Dynasty Auto Body. None of his friends owned their own buildings. Their landlords did not renew their leases, and they’ve been forced farther up Northern. The Chinese, according to my uncle, have taken over Flushing.

  My uncle has afforded the family a little indulgence, to the surprise of us all: the purchase of a second home. It’s a small cottage on the North Fork of Long Island. My aunt and uncle drive out there after they close up shop, and wake to the sunrise. Uncle Sang doesn’t say this, but I know it reminds him of that first home, the one he and my mother had abandoned long ago in the North. The house that smelled of wild rice and the Donghae Sea. The house on Long Island smells like wild wheat and the Sound.

  And what, dear reader, of Ed Farley? According to Beth, he’s still adjuncting at Queens College. She worries about his financial state—he only recently got health insurance, and she suspects he is still living off his “buyout” of the brownstone. Then, tentatively, she’ll add, “He still asks about you, Jane.” Sometimes I think about what would have happened if Ed and I were still together. But how can I move forward if I’m consumed with memories of the past? I can only march on.

  Devon also sees a lot of us. She comes over to watch Korean dramas with Nina. Those two are obsessed with them. They watch everything, from the fluffy soap operas to historical romances to the recent wave of dark indie thrillers. I walked in on a scene where a guy was holding a pair of bloodstained scissors to his tongue, and I had to walk right out. It’s probably for the best that Beth’s in the dark about this particular habit.

  This summer Beth is taking Devon to China. Beth’s had posters made to tape up in the village square where Devon was abandoned. The posters have pictures of Devon as a little girl and text in both English and Chinese: “Dear China Mom, I just want you to know your little girl is okay. You must have worried all these years about your little one. We are so blessed. Love, America Mom.” She’d gotten the idea from one of her adoptive-parenting listserves. Last week Beth proposed something to me: Would I consider coming along on their trip? “Devon would really appreciate the emotional support. And I just know it’ll make the transition for her so much easier.”

  “But I don’t speak Chinese,” I said. What I really meant was, But I have no idea what it’ll feel like for Devon. Beth squeezed my hand and said, “You’d know a little better than I would.” All week, while mulling over this trip to China, I’ve been thinking I should also pay my respects to Emo and Big Uncle in Korea. Emo, who wrote to tell me she’s getting married. Married! “What business does an ‘Old Miss’ like me have getting married?” she said. Her fiancé is an older man, one of her father’s former business associates. He’s a divorcé with two grown-up kids. I think of Emo bustling about with wedding plans, cooking chicken ginseng stew. I hope her fiancé makes her happy. I hope he knows how grateful he should be.

  Mary, too, lives in Seoul now. She works at my old language school. After graduation she landed a job in the subprime-mortgage market with J.P. Morgan. When things went bust, it threw all kinds of questions up in the air for her. A month after being laid off, she was on a plane to Korea. She tells me she can’t quite keep pace with the hurry-hurry nature of things; the second she blinks, “at least three trends have gone by.” Which means all references I had from the time I was there are now hopelessly outdated. She also adds, “Honhyol celebrities like you are all the rage now. Daewon Hedley, Jason Oh-Smith, Tanya Reese . . . well, maybe Tanya Reese’s already on her way out.” (It’s something Nina keeps telling me, too: “You half-Asian girls are the new California blonds.”) “But anyway. You should come back for a visit. You probably wouldn’t recognize the place.”

  Speaking of Korea, I’ve reconnected with someone else from my time abroad. Not Changhoon, not Monica, but Rachel. She’s here getting her M.B.A. at Columbia. Once a month we meet on Thirty-second Street for barbecue and soju. Rachel’s much more relaxed out of the context of Seoul; she’s even been known to leave the house barefaced and wearing sneakers. When she first reached out, she brought me news from Korea: Changhoon was married. To Monica. “She’s thrilled, of course,” Rachel said, leaning across the sizzling plate of fatty pork. “But between you and me, I think he kind of thought, well, she’s there, so why not?” She’d attended their wedding right before she moved to New York, but she hasn’t spoken to either of them since. “It was a little tap-tap-hae being Monica’s friend,” Rachel said. “That girl’s content to be discontent.”

  Speaking of weddings, I end this story with one. No, no, not mine. Three months ago Eunice’s invitation came in the mail. Eunice Eunhae Oh and Timothy Gould Mann request your presence in celebrating their matrimony on the twenty-fifth of May. . . .

  And that was when I finally learned Threepio’s real name.

  Her father, however, will not be walking her down the aisle. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because Eunice insists that a host of Stormtroopers escort her instead. I imagined the sadness with which Dr. Oh processed the news, his gentle eyes growing soft and cloudy.

  I’m on my way to that wedding now—the ceremony will be at church, the reception in the basement. Eunice asked me to be one of her bridesmaids, which is why I’m wearing this ridiculous dress. (Threepio was pushing for gold bridesmaid bikinis, but that idea was quickly shot down. By me.) Eunice is seating me next to Threepio’s best man and frat brother from MIT. “Much in common you and Artoo have,” she said. Apparently he, too, runs his own business—a housing Web site where people list their vacant apartments that rent by the day or the week, like an ad hoc B&B. “Hit it off you will.” Then Eunice fluttered her fingers at me. Artoo: I pictured a dorky Indian guy, most probably a Course VI like Eunice, and shrugged. “Sure, why not,” I said. I try to keep an open mind.

  The 7 is doing its usual rickety-racket routine. I’ll ride this train to its final destination, where Uncle Sang and Aunt Hannah will be waiting for me. My aunt will go tsk-tsk-tsk at me for wearing my dress on the train—a nunchi-less move,
no doubt. My uncle will be double-parked on the wrong corner of Roosevelt and Main, or I will be standing on the wrong corner of Roosevelt and Main, and we’ll fight about it the whole ride over to church. It’s high time that the MTA invested in some new train cars. But then I’d have to get to know a new train, and I’m certain some part of me would mourn the loss of the old, for all its flaws. After years of riding the 7, I’ve grown familiar with its herky-jerkiness, learning to accept its particular rhythms instead of fighting against them—or running away. And to realize, despite it all, that it has good intentions. I’ve begun to feel a comfort in its clumsy rocking. We’ve weathered so much together these past two-plus decades. You might even say we’ve developed a kind of jung.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Writing a novel is lonely work; I am indebted to so many people whose help and support along the way made this even remotely possible. To Umma and Abba, for teaching me the word jung (and for never forcing me to become a doctor, lawyer, and/or concert pianist). To Unnie and Oppa, for the kind of tough love and torment only older siblings can provide. To Richard, Clara, and Gage: your endless giggles and innocence are an inspiration.

  To my thesis advisor Xuefei Jin, for guiding this novel through its early drafts, informing so much of its structure, and urging me to “put everything” into this one. To the ever-generous writers Lisa Borders and Michelle Hoover, for whipping this manuscript into shape and taking a ruthless red pen to cliché-ridden (riddled?) sentences like these. To my agents Esmond Harmsworth and Lane Zachary: thank you for your literary counsel and beyond invaluable edits—and for fighting for Eunice (as well as “Poo, Rushing”).

  To my editor Pam Dorman: I swear you know these characters better than I do!—thank you for pushing them to be fuller, rounder, and subtler in ways I didn’t know how. To Seema Mahanian, Clare Ferraro, Kathryn Court, Patrick Nolan, Carolyn Coleburn, Louise Braverman, Kristin Matzen, Andrea Lam, Roseanne Serra, Francesca Belanger, Nancy Sheppard, Sarah Janet, Winnie De Moya, John Fagan, Hal Fessenden, Leigh Butler, Tricia Conley, Kate Griggs, and everyone on the hardcover and paperback sales teams at Penguin Random House: thank you so much for welcoming Jane home.

  My gratitude to Fulbright, the Korean-American Educational Commission, and Professor Sung Kyungjun for supporting my novel research in Seoul. I am so grateful for fellowship support from the Center for Fiction in New York, the Jerome Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. To Grub Street in Boston and to all the Novel Incubees, for their careful reads—you guys rock.

  A huge thanks to Diana Ahn, for giving this manuscript multiple reads, sharing her real estate and construction expertise, and making a lifetime of slogging on the 7 train all the more bearable. To my Kun-Gomo and my late Kun-Gomobu, for taking such good care of me in Seoul. To Hyemin Yu, for fielding all my stupid questions about modern Korean culture and for her indispensable research skills. To Peter Dimock and Ariana X. Dimock, for their generous reads and insight. To Brett Taylor, for his tireless energy, cartographic prowess, and help fine-tuning the final drafts of this novel. To all my friends and family in New York, Boston, and Korea who have lent their eyes, ears, and patience to this effort.

  I am beholden to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

  And to my two great loves: New York City, for inspiring me to become a writer; and Boston, for teaching me how.

  APPENDIX: KOREAN FAMILY TERMS

  Korean family relations are extremely intricate; below are some commonly used family terms. While it is acceptable to call younger relations by their first name, older relations must be addressed using titles marking that specific relationship. These titles are based not only on your gender and age, but also on the gender and age of the relation you are addressing, as well as whether that relation is on your mother’s or father’s side. (This is by no means an exhaustive list; e.g., when a Korean marries, he or she will be faced with a whole new set of terms for each in-law member.) Unless otherwise stated, all of these terms are direct addresses.

  The Republic of Korea officially uses the Revised Romanization system to romanize Korean words. However, I have departed from the system where I feel other phonetic spellings better represent the pronunciation of the word.

  NUCLEAR-FAMILY TERMS

  Abuji: Father

  Abba: Dad

  Umuni: Mother

  Umma: Mom

  Hyung: Big Brother; what a younger male calls his older brother (or cousin, friend, etc.)

  Oppa: Big Brother; what a younger female calls her older brother (or cousin, boyfriend, or older intimate male in her life)

  Nuna: Big Sister; what a younger male calls his older sister (or cousin, friend, etc.)

  Unnie: Big Sister; what a younger female calls her older sister (or cousin, friend, etc.)

  TERMS FOR GRANDPARENTS

  Harabuji: Grandfather (general term)

  Chin-Harabuji: your father’s father

  Wae-Harabuji: your mother’s father

  Halmuni: Grandmother (general term)

  Chin-Halmuni: your father’s mother

  Wae-Halmuni: your mother’s mother

  TERMS FOR UNCLE

  Kun-Abba: your father’s older brother

  Jageun-Abba: your father’s younger brother

  Gomobu: your father’s sister’s husband

  Wae-samchon: your mother’s brother (older specified by the prefix Kun; younger by the prefix Jageun; multiple uncles are often given ordinal numbers in the order of their birth)

  Samchon: traditionally your father’s bachelor and/or younger brother, but sometimes used as a general term for uncle

  Emobu: your mother’s sister’s husband

  TERMS FOR AUNT

  Emo: your mother’s sister (older specified by the prefix Kun; younger by the prefix Jageun; multiple aunts are given ordinal numbers)

  Gomo: your father’s sister (older specified by the prefix Kun; younger by the prefix Jageun; multiple aunts are given ordinal numbers)

  Wae-sugmo: your mother’s brother’s wife

  Kun-Umma: your father’s eldest brother’s wife

  Jageun-Umma: your father’s younger brother’s wife

  Sugmo: another term for your father’s younger brother’s wife, or the wife of a younger distant male relation of your father

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