Love Love

by Sung J. Woo

  She smiled. “You already know all there is to know about me.”

  A few curves of the road later, gray tombstones rose from the green grass behind a black wrought iron fence, carefully aligned into stately rows on the hill. Four stone pillars stood sentry at the entrance, the gate wide open for them to drive through. They parked in a lot next to the main building, which looked large enough to hold services indoors. A soldier directed them to a path, and they walked up a slope, the tip of the Golden Gate Bridge becoming visible. The cemetery seemed endless, one end fading into the horizon.

  “I don’t like funerals,” Kevin said.

  “I find them invigorating,” Claudia said. “Makes me want to do more with my life while I’m still alive.”

  “You sound like someone who hasn’t lost anyone close.”

  Claudia considered his words. “It’s true, everybody in my family is alive, even my grandparents. It must’ve been tough to lose your mother.”

  Even now, he could recall only slivers of that horrible day. They were like fractured bits of a movie: the heavy coat of lipstick around his dead mother’s lips in the open casket, his sister’s tears streaking down her cheeks, and worst of all, Judy and him at the crematorium after the service, huddled around the window that displayed the view into the basement facility where they incinerated the bodies. The director twice asked if they were sure they wanted to witness this, that while it was the last time they would see their mother, it was ultimately their choice. His father and their spouses had declined, but they were the children, and they didn’t want to abandon their mother as she left the world for good. Yet in retrospect, he wished he’d stayed with his father because what he saw was a mechanical procession of human death. Because his father opted for the cheaper plan, where the show casket was a rental used only for the service, the actual coffin was just a beige pine box, lying on a conveyor belt. A short distance away was a silver door. A large man wearing an orange hazard vest stood by a control panel.

  “If you’re ready,” the director said.

  Kevin and Judy nodded.

  He pressed on the intercom and gave the man below the go-ahead, and the bright green light above the silver door turned red. The door slid open, and flames danced against the coffin, which slowly, inexorably headed for its fiery destination, like a medieval sacrifice to appease an angry god.

  Judy held his hand and clasped it tight, a tiny, involuntary sound like a chirp escaping from her clenched mouth, and just like that, they were motherless.

  Except not for him, because apparently he now had a spare mother, like a tire in the trunk of a car. He had accepted the fact that the people who raised him had lied to him for all these years, but then he would imagine the moment of the transaction, his birth mother handing over a tiny, swaddled version of him, putting her baby into the arms of a stranger and then walking away. He hoped it had been a difficult moment for her.

  Up ahead, people sat in white folding chairs, while seven armed soldiers stood by the oversized American flag draped over the casket. Kevin and Claudia were in black like everyone else, he in a suit, she in a dress, the uniform of the mourning.

  At the ceremony, an army general in military regalia praised Vincent DeGuardi for his valor in the Korean Conflict. He held up a silver star with a sky-blue strap, the medal received for saving the lives of his platoon. After his speech, a woman introduced herself as Marilyn, a short, gray-haired lady in horn-rimmed glasses who looked nothing like what Kevin had envisioned on the telephone. From the way she’d given him directions to the cemetery, he’d expected a female drill sergeant who stood six feet tall. In fact, her immediate authority had prevented him from asking her about her father’s photos, but now that he put the voice to the face, she seemed more approachable.

  The soldiers shot their rifles three times, the burnt smell of gunsmoke spicing the air, and after the casket was lowered into the plot, the ceremony was over.

  “I’ll hang back while you do your thing,” Claudia said. “Unless you want me to go with you.”

  “You’ve fed and chauffeured me,” Kevin said. “You’ve done more than enough.”

  “Good. Then I’ll go say hi to General Atchison.”

  “You know him?”

  “He bought a painting of mine, years ago, when nobody wanted my paintings.”

  As she walked away, the pleats of her dress swayed with each step. With her loose, silver-streaked dark curls cascading down her back, everything about her flowed. Like Alexa, she moved like silk, as if she were gliding on skates instead of walking.

  People surrounded Marilyn to offer her their condolences, and he waited until the crowd dispersed.

  “I’m Kevin Lee,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m sorry about your father.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Were you friendly with him?”

  “I spoke to him a week before his death. He took a photograph of my mother.”

  She brightened. “He loved taking pictures, especially of families. When was it?”

  “A long while ago. 1973.”

  It was as if her smile were a flame that had just extinguished.

  Kevin continued, “He told me he had his old photos in storage and that I could look through them.”

  “Yes, well,” she said, hitching up the strap of her purse high on her shoulder, “I don’t think so.”

  It seemed so desperate, confessing to yet another stranger about his recent discovery of his origins, but maybe this was something he would have to get used to if he wanted to arrive at the truth. He had to at least try after hauling his ass all the way over here to California. “I’m forty years old and I just found out I was adopted. Your father took a photo of my mother, the only picture I have of her.”

  “So you want to get more naked shots of her? What would that accomplish?”

  “Maybe there’s information there in his files, I don’t know, an address or something.”

  Marilyn cleared her throat. “Do you really think the purveyors of smut would’ve kept copies of driver’s licenses and birth certificates? Do you have any idea the kind of people my father consorted with?”

  “Look,” Kevin said, trying to keep his composure. “What is the harm in having me check through boxes of his old photos? Why are you giving me such a hard time?”

  “Is everything all right here?”

  It was one of the soldiers who’d shot the volleys.

  “I’m fine,” Marilyn said. “Wait for me at the car.”

  The soldier left, but not before giving Kevin a lingering stare.

  “He’s my son,” Marilyn said.

  “I am a son, too. Trying to find my mother.”

  A heavy pocket of clouds muted the lush landscape of the cemetery. A field of headstones away, a red-tailed hawk floated down, its wings spread wide, the end feathers splayed out like fingers, landing on a white obelisk that resembled a miniature Washington Monument. Once again in the San Francisco shade, Kevin shivered. More than ever, it felt like weather fit for a funeral. Marilyn hugged herself as she spoke.

  “Mr. Lee, you have no idea what that part of my father’s life did to his family. So please don’t lecture me about hard times. In any case, I don’t mean to argue with you. My father does have an archive in storage, but none of those photographs are there because I got rid of them a long time ago. Everything from that time period, I burned. He trusted me to take care of his prized possessions, so I guess that makes me a bad daughter. I don’t know. But I do know that I have nothing for you to see. I’m sorry.”

  As he watched her go, Kevin wondered if she was lying. But why would she? Besides, even if the photos had survived, she was probably right. They wouldn’t have yielded much more than another embarrassing glimpse of his mother.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Didn’t go well, I take it,” Claudia said.

  “Nope.”

  In another part of the cemetery, far away from them, a tour was being conducted, a woman walking
slowly backward while a crowd followed her at a short distance, their heads swiveling in unison as she pointed out the famous graves. Claudia hooked her arm into his as they followed the path back to her car.

  “I can introduce you to a PI,” she said.

  “Magnum?”

  “I wish. No, this guy looks like an accountant, but he’s as good as they come.”

  Kevin got into Claudia’s Mercedes. He was about to strap on the seat belt when he caught a glimpse of something through his passenger-side window. A man had just gotten into the car parked next to Claudia’s, a man whose hair was gray, whose wrinkles were carved deeper than his—

  “Hold on,” Kevin said.

  This can’t be happening. This is not who I think it is.

  He stepped out. The man’s car reversed, was about to pull away. Kevin ran in front of it and held up both hands.

  The man met Kevin’s eyes. It was like looking into a magic mirror that added twenty years to his face.

  17

  A day after Judy was discharged from the hospital, she got a phone call from Kevin, who prattled on about his San Francisco trip. She pushed the speakerphone button on the cordless and stood it up on the coffee table, then carefully lowered herself onto the couch, an involuntary yelp escaping from her lips when her bitten ankle nudged the arm of the sofa.

  “Hey, you all right?” he’d asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “Everything’s good.”

  He’d seen his birth father at a funeral of all places. Just amazing luck, as his father was paying tribute to the man who’d brought him and his future wife together, Kevin’s mother. Judy told him how happy she was for him, and it wasn’t a lie. Kevin had found his dad, and this was without a doubt just the beginning, the rest of his blood family waiting to love him.

  “I’m gonna be out here longer than I thought, so I hope you can house-sit for another week or so?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked again. “You sound exhausted.”

  She almost told him, but she held back. He had enough going on, and she didn’t want to burden him with her problems, too.

  Now, she was sitting at the breakfast table in the kitchen of Kevin’s house with a calculator, a legal pad, and a pen. She stared at the numbers again.

  $109,125.47.

  Her left ankle was propped up on the chair next to her, the throbbing now mostly gone, though maybe the low-level ache had relocated itself to her brain. On her calculator, she divided the number by 4 and got back 27,281.3675. Twenty-seven thousand dollars. That was better, a number she could deal with. It was the cost of a nice, new, semifancy car, though she’d never spent any more than ten thousand on any of her used clunkers. That time she got promoted at the ad agency before getting fired a year later, she’d made thirty-five thousand a year, and that was before taxes and rent and food and everything else in the world that conspired to make her poor. This debt would take a decade, if not more, to pay back, and from the way the finance woman at the hospital had sounded, they weren’t willing to wait that long. That meant collection calls, repossession of her assets, all leading up to the empty shame of bankruptcy. Judy wiped away her tears and blew her nose. Snaps puttered up to her and laid her head on Judy’s thigh.

  “Your aunt is headed for the poorhouse,” she said, raking fingernails over Snaps’s furry dome. The dog’s eyes glazed over, but as soon as Snaps heard the slam of a car door, she ran to the back entrance and emitted her customary low growl.

  That was Roger, who’d called her twice a day since she was discharged and was bringing dinner. Should she feel happier than she actually did? She was grateful he’d taken care of Snaps while she’d been hospitalized, for bringing flowers and visiting her. He’d done all the right things, and maybe that was the problem. Not that Judy was a fan of mind games or unkindness, but a little play was welcome, a little resistance to let her know that he was a person with his own specific set of wants and desires. Sparks flew when metal struck metal; if she was iron, Roger was a bowl of cotton balls, a memory foam mattress.

  Snaps gave one bark, then two. Her tail wagged, which meant Roger was about to enter.

  She imagined what he’d look like: his mop of black hair in a state of low dishevelment, the red knit scarf wrapped around his neck, brown leather bomber jacket zipped up halfway. He would be holding sagging yellow plastic bags from ShopRite or the twine handles of the Chinese takeout place. Dependably predictable, predictably dependable. And yet on his back was that crazy tattoo, which she’d found out on the Internet could be a sign of the yakuza, the Japanese mafia. It just didn’t seem possible that he could be a gangster. What did he do to his enemies, bore them into submission?

  “Hey,” Roger said. The only thing she hadn’t guessed correctly was the color of the plastic bags. Instead of ShopRite yellow, it was Wegmans white.

  He had no reason to do anything for her, and yet he fed her, kept her company, smiled sweetly. Was it because he loved her? But love wasn’t forever. In fact, it should come with an expiration date, because then she’d know when it would spoil.

  Roger placed the bags on the kitchen island and leaned over for a kiss. His lips were chapped, so she rubbed her lips over his side to side in an effort to transfer her lip gloss. It made him laugh, which delighted Snaps, who pranced around him in a tight circle.

  It was the only way she could get Brian to take care of his lips, and now she was doing it to Roger, and somehow it felt wrong to hand down this particular move to another. Like an aging comedy bit, it needed to be retired. Or maybe it was she who needed to be retired from men. If only she could, but the fact was, she’d been lonely. Before Brian, there had been a steady diet of live-in boyfriends; this was the longest she’d ever been by herself, and as much as she found a relationship taxing, it trumped being alone.

  “What are you up to?” he asked, looking at the calculator. She clicked on the red C button before he could get a look.

  “Just squaring away some financial stuff.”

  “Oh,” he said. His eyes lingered over the statement. The total was folded underneath, but the hospital logo remained visible. “You’re set with everything? Insurance and stuff?”

  He’d reduced her predicament into the simplest of all answers, a yes or a no. Tell the truth or continue to lie.

  “Fine,” she said, “everything’s good.” The same exact words she’d told her brother. Maybe later she’d have the courage, but right now, she just wanted to have a nice meal.

  When she tried to help set up, Roger made her stay put, so she watched him assemble their dinner.

  “I got spinach lasagna,” he said, taking the rectangular plastic containers out of the shopping bags and opening them up one by one. There was broccoli sautéed with garlic, steamed artichoke hearts, a loaf of cheese bread. Roger offered each dish over to her like a sommelier showing a bottle of wine. Everything smelled divine, and despite the cloud of financial doom hanging over her, she was glad to feel hunger, something she could satisfy.

  She told him it was delicious, and it was true. The lasagna was a delightful combination of chopped tomatoes and spinach and ricotta, a touch of nutmeg, a medley of earthy flavors. Did she tell Roger at some point that Italian was her favorite cuisine? She didn’t think so. He was a thoughtful guy. Maybe she just wasn’t trying hard enough to like him, though that made her feel even worse, that even her inability to fall in love with this man was somehow her fault.

  Halfway through the meal, the phone rang. Roger rose to get it, but Judy told him not to bother and let the answering machine pick up.

  “Ms. Lee, this is Warren Hospital, accounts receivables department, Connie speaking. This is the third time we’ve tried to reach you regarding the forms for payment . . .”

  Judy ignored Roger’s protestations and limped her way to the living room to grab the phone. So it was starting already. It was almost seven o’clock—these people never went home.

  “It�
�s in the mail,” Judy barked into the receiver. “I signed and sent the forms this afternoon, okay?”

  “Thank you, Ms. Lee,” Connie answered. “I apologize for calling at this hour, but because this is a priority account, we need to keep all the steps moving along.”

  There was a pause, and Judy could almost feel the question that Connie wanted to ask: When can we expect you to pay? But she didn’t, because she knew as well as Judy that they were headed for something ugly down the road.

  “Well, you have a good night,” Connie said.

  When she doddered back to the kitchen table, Roger was reading the bill.

  “That’s my stuff,” she said.

  He placed it back on the table.

  “That’s a lot of money,” he said.

  She sat down and took another bite of the lasagna, but it’d gone cold, the texture turned glue-like, sticking to the roof of her mouth. She chased it down quickly with a slug of red wine, and then another. If she’d been so concerned with Roger finding out, she could’ve taken the bill with her. The truth was, she was in a terrible place, and there was no one else she could get mad at. She was the living definition of a bad person, somebody who took out her ills on a bystander.

  “Was that them on the phone? This Connie Peterson?”

  “I don’t need your help,” she said, and even as she was saying it, she knew it was ridiculous. That’s all Roger had done since her snake bite, help her. Had she even bothered to thank him?

  Roger moved to her side, and she sank her face into his belly as he stood by and rubbed her back. It felt good to give herself wholly to her predicament, and when her tears tapered down to sniffles, Roger said something she thought she’d misheard.

  “What did you say?” She blinked hard to clear away her blurry vision.

  “I’ll take care of this.”

  “You have a hundred grand just sitting around. That’s why you work at your shitty job answering customer-service calls.”

  “I can get the money,” he said, and then he dialed down his voice to almost a whisper. “I can take care of you, Judy. If you’ll let me.”