The Loved Ones

by Sonya Chung

  Charles followed the Nova to an office park in Upper Marlboro. It was one of the new townhouse developments, where black doctors and accountants were setting up offices. What could they be doing here? Charles wondered. No way this is their doctor. They probably didn’t even have a family doctor. Alice had told him that most Koreans didn’t have insurance; they paid other Koreans under the table for all their services, medical and otherwise.

  Charles drove past, then made a U-turn and parked at the gas station across the street. He got out of his car, walked to the edge of the road, and read the sign posted for drive-by traffic. One of the names on the sign read Suk-joon Rhee, Certified Public Accountant.

  He did not understand. Hannah had stayed home from school two days. She looked sick, unhappy. She was being forced to make this visitation. To an accountant? It angered him—this incomprehension, this wall between him and … between him and the solace. Of their understanding. He was not going to be able to figure this out, without her help. She wanted him to know, Charles was sure; Hannah would want him to know.

  At home that night his problem was solved. Half of it, anyway. It was Alice who bridged the gap. “I gave notice,” she said. “I’m sorry. We’ll just spend less.” That was all. But she said it in a way that made Charles suspect she’d done this some time ago, and was just now telling him. He knew then what had happened.

  Alice’s resignation, and the reason for it, would have reached Hannah’s mother by now. She would have learned about Benny, about Hannah’s lies, whatever she may have told them about why she was no longer working for Alice Lee’s family. Maybe now, too, the mother knew about Charles, that Hannah went to the house of a black man every day for four months, had gone on a beach trip with him. Hannah’s parents would be shocked, they would be angry, surely. But what would they do? Which part would be most punishable in their eyes? And who was Suk-joon Rhee, CPA?

  Good-bye, Mr. Lee.

  Charles did not want her to be right about that; about them not knowing each other anymore. But she was no longer free, no longer his to watch. Someone else was watching Hannah now. They were watching her in the wrong way, though; not looking out for her, but accusing her. Why were they doing that? Couldn’t they see that she was just a young girl? Hadn’t they seen her swim, her body so free and strong?

  On the fourth day, Hannah was back to school. She came off the bus but didn’t look Charles’s way. When Charles went to the rec center, Hannah didn’t look up from the bleachers. Charles was there, at the school, and at the pool, alone. She’d left him. He was angry, but not at Hannah. It wasn’t her fault. They’d gotten to her somehow, he could see that. He could see that she was completely alone, too.

  He stopped going to the school and to the rec center. He stayed longer at work, threw himself into reports, jump-started a new protocol for night-watch accountability that Terrence had been keen on. He started running again—mornings, along the canal, in the cold weather. He met Dennis at the gym, and they both got into better shape, while they talked even less. Charles put his head down. He cooked three-course dinners, read spy novels late into the night. He knew how to do this; it was remarkable, really, how he could soldier on, as they say. Unthinking.

  Alice did not remark on these shifts; she barely noticed. In addition to the support group, Alice now went to the Episcopal church on Wednesday evenings for prayer service. She seemed to Charles either more peaceful or more numb, he couldn’t tell which, but there was color back in her face, and he was glad to see it. He smelled cigarette smoke on her clothes, though he never saw cigarettes in the house. Charles considered buying a pack and a lighter and leaving them out for Alice on the table, though he never did.

  A week before Christmas, Alice and Charles were sitting at the dinner table. Veda sat up on her knees and reached over to stab a piece of chicken off the platter. She focused on her fork as she brought it back to her plate, watching the precariously hanging chicken with cross-eyes. She was clowning, and Charles smiled; Veda seemed to be doing all right. Alice spooned steamed carrots onto everyone’s plates, serving herself last. Veda sat back down, her mission accomplished. Then she said, “Guess who walked me home today.”

  “Didn’t you come home with Karen and Amy, hon?” Alice unfolded her napkin into her lap.

  “I would have, but when I came out from school, Hannah was there.”

  Alice paused before putting carrots in her mouth, then chewed slowly. A piece of chicken threatened to lodge in Charles’s throat.

  “What was she doing there?” Alice’s eyebrows moved independently of each other. She reached for her wine glass but didn’t lift it.

  Veda shrugged. “She just came to see me. She said she missed us.”

  “And what did you guys talk about?” Charles asked. Alice flashed Charles a look. They were both attempting to extract information, but Alice’s glare conveyed skepticism of an alliance.

  Veda shrugged again. “I just told her about my new teacher, and ballet class, and other stuff. She didn’t want to come in, she just left when we got to the gate.” Charles paid very close attention as Veda spoke. She didn’t seem anxious or careful. She was simply reporting. “It was nice to see her again,” Veda said. “But, it’s okay with me that we don’t see her all the time. I like that it’s just us now.”

  Charles began to breathe more evenly, and Alice exhaled slowly, as if through a narrow tube. There was a pregnant, fraught feeling that either of them might burst into tears, or a violent rage. Veda cut into her chicken thigh, concentrating her eyes on her plate.

  Alice breathed in, tucked her hair behind her ear. “V, honey, what have we always said about going with strangers?” A spooky sweetness in her voice.

  Veda made a face, somewhere between confused and annoyed. “But she’s not a stranger.”

  “Well, that’s true. But she doesn’t work for us anymore. So no matter what, come home with who you’re supposed to come with, okay? Unless me or Dad tells you different. No matter what.”

  “Okay.” Veda continued to eat, calmly. Too calmly, Charles thought. She was aware of her movements in a way that made Charles sad.

  “Good girl,” Alice said. She sat back and dropped her shoulders. Her relief had nothing to do with Veda, and it pricked Charles.

  “You know, this can’t have been easy for her,” Charles ventured. Alice knew exactly whom Charles meant by “her.” “Don’t you think maybe we should …” Charles did not finish his sentence; he did not know how to finish it.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Alice said. “Let’s please close the subject.” She stood and cleared the plates Charles and Veda were still eating from.

  At the sink, Alice froze, looking out the window. She made a strange sound—an airy gasp, thwarted in a cavernous throat.

  Veda and Charles both looked up and saw what Alice saw, what had delighted her instinctively but fell short of expression. Veda was up out of her chair, standing at the back door. “Look how big they are!” Snow was falling, lots of it, and in giant flakes. The white puffs seemed to Charles to both float weightlessly and rain down with force. How did they do that, he wondered. How could the snowflakes be so gentle and so hard.

  Veda cracked open the screen door, put her hand out. “It’s so warm!” she said, looking first to her mother, who was putting on yellow rubber gloves, then to her father, with a look of desperate eagerness.

  “All right,” Charles said. “Put on your coat and boots. Why don’t we all go.” He said this for Veda’s sake.

  “You two go ahead,” Alice said, turning the faucet. “I’ll clean up here.”

  Charles was disappointed, if not surprised. He didn’t really expect Alice to come out with them, but the snow had sparked something, that gasp—an instant of delight she couldn’t contain. He was about to coax her; but he’d missed her: she was gone, fully committed to her task, as if scrubbing away the residue of the preceding moment. He watched her briefly. What might happen if he went and stood behind her? S
he might stop her scrubbing; they might watch the snowflakes together.

  Alice finished the dishes and began scouring the inside of the basin. Charles stood and left the kitchen.

  He would recognize later how easily he’d let it happen. Maybe he could have stopped it, could have encouraged Veda to fight for her mother’s presence. Instead, they silently allied; they allowed Alice to pull away, to drift. They would learn what to expect, how it would be from now on.

  And when Veda came flying down the stairs in her snowsuit, Charles knew he did not really want Alice to come along. Veda had been with her—with Hannah. They’d walked together, and spoken. Maybe Veda had hugged her.

  Outside, in the front yard, Veda stuck out her tongue and held out her mittened hands. Then she lay down. She spread her arms and legs and moved them up and down, jumping-jack-style. Instead of opening her arms and legs and closing them in sync, she opened her arms over her head while closing her legs together, then vice versa. Charles had never noticed that before. He tried to remember last winter, when Veda and Benny made angels in that same spot in the yard. They’d made them side by side, but had they moved their arms and legs in the same way? Charles lay down next to Veda and began working on his own angel; but he was too conscious of the motions, too noticing. He couldn’t figure out which motion was instinctual, which came more naturally.

  He stopped thinking about the motions and just swung his limbs, up and down, up and down. He thought about making an angel. And he thought about Hannah—that she had come back to them, to him. She wanted Charles to know that she was okay. They had not gotten to her. She had not been erased.

  6.

  The snow did not let up for four days straight. It piled to nearly three feet. Cars were buried, the Metro and buses shut down. School was cancelled across the district and counties. Charles called in and told Terrence he was coming, he could dig out his car, but Terrence told him Stay put, it’s a mess out there. Charles knew he would say this, but he had cabin fever.

  He shoveled every day during the storm, and every day the snow piled up again. He shoveled in front of Mrs. Lang’s house, two doors down; she was elderly, her grandsons were unreliable.

  The plows roared down the street, twice a day, but everyone else was on foot. Karen and Amy Mitchell came by, flying saucer in tow; they were heading to Rock Creek Park.

  “C’mon, Alice,” Karen said, gently. “It’ll be fun.” Both Karen and Amy waited patiently, eagerly but not too eagerly, for Alice’s answer. Alice was in a sweatshirt and scrubs, her hair, now down to her shoulders, was tied back in a ponytail. Veda had already darted upstairs to put on her snowsuit.

  Charles pretended to read a magazine. He knew better than to encourage Alice to go. He heard the silence, then soft voices, then suddenly, “Yay!” from Amy.

  Alice came into the kitchen. “They want us all to go. Rick, too. His office is closed. If you come, he’ll come.”

  “Make him an offer he can’t refuse?”

  Alice laughed. The laugh escaped her; she would have held it back if she’d felt it coming. She loved The Godfather, they both did; they’d seen it together for the first time in Korea, dubbed, which was awful, but still they loved it. “Something like that. We’ll swing by their place on the way.”

  It was the first time she’d needed Charles for something in months. Charles didn’t particularly like Rick Mitchell—he was loud and laughed at his own jokes. He’d participated in sit-ins back in college and mentioned it too often. Charles laid down his magazine. He needed to get out of the house, one way or another. “Let’s go,” he said.

  It was a long walk, but they didn’t mind. Families were out everywhere. The snow fell in flurries now. Veda and Amy hopped like jackrabbits into powdery snowdrifts, buried almost to their waists. The snow was too soft, too fresh, to pack into snowballs. Instead, they squealed and splashed fluffy powder at each other like kids at the lake in summer.

  “Easy does it, Ames,” Rick said.

  “Darn, I forgot the camera,” Karen said.

  Alice said nothing, she looked away. She did that—looked away— whenever Veda laughed.

  Alice and Karen walked ahead together, and Rick and Charles followed, dragging sled and saucer. Rick tried to talk football, but in fact he didn’t follow the sport too closely. The two men had nothing in common, except for their daughters, and that they were both fatherless at a young age. Karen had confided to Alice that Rick’s father had drunk himself to death.

  A plow drove by, spraying snow up onto the sidewalk. The girls screamed with delight. Charles admired their joy, while blocking out Rick Mitchell’s too-loud laugh.

  At the entrance to the park, Karen asked, “Which way?” To the east was an open field. To the west were woods and hills. The most popular area for sledding was farther north. But the girls were getting impatient, and they’d walked a long way already.

  “If we go to the fields, it’ll be you and me pulling like mules, buddy,” Rick said. Charles didn’t mind the idea of getting his blood pumping. “You girls want to fly like those Olympic tobogganers, right?”

  “Yeah!” both girls shouted, though Veda had never watched tobogganing. Charles flashed her a look of mock irritation, and Veda pushed out her lips.

  They turned up the west path and climbed the uphill road. Ahead, Charles saw two figures huddled together on a bench beneath a canopy of snow-laden oaks. The figures were familiar. One man wore a black knit hat and puffy jacket, the other a baker boy cap and gray overcoat. The man in the baker boy had his hand on the other man’s shoulder. Their heads were bowed; they were praying.

  It was Reverend Haywood and Dennis. As they drew closer, Alice saw them, too. She looked over her shoulder at Charles. Alice and Charles read each other’s faces. Hers said, Let’s not do this now. Let’s just keep walking. Alice had never liked Dennis. Charles’s face replied, All right. Fine.

  They passed the bench and ascended the hill. When they reached the near top, Charles said suddenly, “I think I dropped something. Go on ahead. I’ll meet you all there.” He turned and jogged back down the hill before anyone could question or protest. Before he could catch Alice’s glare.

  The path had been plowed but was covered in two inches of snow, and beneath that was a sheet of ice. Charles jogged and skated, jogged and skated. He held his arms out, like the wings of an airplane. He’d done this as a boy—he and Dennis, on this very same path. When Dennis and Joe Haywood came into sight, Charles stopped. The two dark heads were still bowed. Charles had warmed up from both the climb and the jog; those two must be freezing, he thought. The reverend was not a young man anymore, and though he was “strong as an ox,” by his own estimation, Charles didn’t like seeing his dark cap turned to white under an inch of snow. What could be so important that they didn’t go inside and sit somewhere warm? It was foolish, and it wasn’t like Dennis; he hated the cold.

  Charles assumed Dennis had come to the reverend about Sherisse. She’d taken up with a man five years younger, who made better money as a mechanic than Dennis did as manager of a Houlihan’s. Their son, Lawrence, was staying with Dennis’s mother. Dennis had been sinking to rock bottom, shakier and lower every day.

  Finally they raised their heads. Rev. Haywood squeezed Dennis’s shoulder with a large gloved hand. Charles continued down the hill toward them.

  Dennis saw Charles first. He waved enthusiastically. It struck Charles as an odd gesture; Charles had gotten used to the bar-sitting, morose Dennis. In truth, his friend had always been a jokester type. But the gesture now was different; it was discomfitingly earnest.

  “Yo, fancy meeting you here.” They grabbed fists in their customary way. Charles eyed Dennis, who looked away.

  “Reverend,” Charles said, reaching out with both hands. Their greeting formed a brawny mass of leather and fleece.

  Rev. Haywood stood and tipped his cap. Snow spilled to the ground like confetti. “Well,” he said, spreading his arms, “it’s just like the old days.” H
e meant those Saturday afternoons when Dennis’s and Charles’s mothers had sent them to church to help clean out storage closets and pick up crumpled offering envelopes from the pews. In the springtime, Rev. Haywood had had them pull weeds around the hydrangeas and weeping cherry. This was when they were ten, or eleven, when they still listened to their mothers. “You were good boys then,” he said. “And I believe you are good men now.” It was the sort of sly admonishment—a subtle tough love—that church elders perfected. “How are you, son? And how is your wife?”

  “We’re just fine,” Charles said.

  “Well I suppose there’s more to it—if I know anything about this life—but I’m glad to see you out here enjoying God’s good earth.”

  Charles blew into his hands and shifted his weight from right leg to left. It was too cold to stand still, yet he was the only one fidgeting. “Alice and Veda are up the hill with some friends. They’re sledding.”

  “That’s wonderful to hear. The small joys. That’s the road to healing.”

  Charles smiled weakly. He was waiting for Haywood to leave them, so he could ask Dennis what this was all about.

  “The small joys,” Rev. Haywood said again.

  “Ain’t y’all freezing?” Charles asked. It was always natural for him to talk like a thug when he was around Dennis; even more so with Dennis and the reverend.

  “Warm-blooded,” the reverend said. “Always have been. But I do need to get on back to the church. We’ve got coats to distribute. God bless you boys.” He gave Charles an arm pat and Dennis a nod, then turned and walked briskly toward the park exit. Dennis and Charles both watched him until he was out of sight.

  Charles rubbed his hands together and waited for Dennis to explain himself. It had been years since either of them had been to church—since before they enlisted. They’d never talked about it; Charles assumed they’d both outgrown it. Church was for the weak, for people so lost that all they needed in life was kindness and nothing else. Religion was for the older generation, like spats, and castor oil.