by Min Jin Lee
“I help plenty of people.”
Ted sent money to his parents each month, and last year, with his enormous bonus, he bought his brother and sister their condos in Anchorage.
“I didn’t mean that you don’t help anyone.”
“Casey and her family are not my problems, Ella. And they’re not yours, either. Her sister can’t take out loans for med school?” With his right hand, he pointed to his heart. He had just paid off the last of his education loans and was now putting aside money for his nephews.
“Not everyone is like you.”
She gathered the cookbooks, stacking them alphabetically, and returned them to the shelf. She had no desire now to make the lamb dish. They would just go out for his birthday.
Casey entered the living room, dressed in a narrow black skirt and an ironed white shirt. Her bruises were no longer visible, and she looked pretty with her wet hair combed back sleekly, a fresh coat of red lipstick on her mouth. She hadn’t put on her shoes yet, and Ted glanced at her bare feet. For a thin girl, her calves and ankles were a little thick. Moo-dari, he thought, legs shaped like daikon radishes.
Naturally, Casey noticed his glance and immediately crossed her ankles.
“Good evening,” she said with a kind of mock cheer. She’d heard enough of the conversation and decided to pretend otherwise. Ted Kim was not the helping kind. Why couldn’t poor Ella see that?
“Hey, Casey,” Ted said, not caring in the least if she’d heard anything. He turned to Ella, gesturing that they should head out. “We can get tickets at the theater. I don’t think everyone in town is running to see this.” He pointed to the obscure ad for Farewell My Concubine in the Times.
“It’s very good, Ted.” Casey smiled at him. Ted was a triple-A, self-made jerk, but he was good-looking. He was five eleven and built like a runner—wiry, with long legs. His black hair was cut short, and the gel he dabbed on top made his hair look damp. The top button of his dress shirt was open, and the tendons of his neck framed a hard Adam’s apple. She liked the imperiousness of his expressions. If she were interested in dating assholes, he would be an ideal candidate.
“You might even enjoy it,” Casey said. “A bright guy like you—I would think you’d like cultural enrichment now and then. A good yuppie should know more than wines and resorts. Not that you need any help in the arts or leisure department,” she said, grinning. “Or in any department, for that matter.” She smiled, having managed to sound facetious and generous at once. Casey pursed her lips shut, waiting for Ted’s riposte.
He harrumphed, and Ella laughed.
“And how’s the job search going, Casey?” he said. Now he was smiling.
“Sabine said I could work accessories on Sundays starting next month, but she’s got nothing for me during the week. She replaced me when I quit after graduation. And things are slow in the accessories world,” Casey said. “You know, Ted. The economy.”
Ted smiled and lifted his chin.
“Ella’s been so good to let me stay here, but this can’t last forever. I will get a job. I hope I get a job.”
Before Ella could say anything to assure Casey that she could stay as long as she liked, Ted jumped in. “The economy will pick up. Cycles,” he said, speaking as one economics major to another, knowing she would understand his meaning.
He picked up the paper, then dropped it on his chair. He glanced at Ella, and on cue, she rose from her seat and got her purse. She paid careful attention to him—that was what he wanted from her, and it was not hard to do.
Later, after the movie and dinner, she and Ted didn’t talk about Casey, but early Monday morning, Ted phoned the Asian sales desk, where his friend Walter Chin had said they were looking for an assistant. He didn’t think Ted should send in a friend for the gig. “Low pay, high abuse,” Walter said. And the head of the desk had anger management issues.
Ted answered, “Not to worry; she’s not a close friend.”
Casey’s interview was set for the following week. He had only to bring her by.
Virginia’s father came by the club to sign for the night’s tab. He and Jane stayed for a glass of champagne and were now heading out for a grown-up dinner, leaving behind the two dozen or so recent graduates at the Tiger Bar.
“You guys don’t need chaperones anymore,” Fritzy said to Chuck Raines, a lacrosse player who was working as a corporate paralegal at Skadden, Arps. Fritzy tapped the boy on the shoulder genially with his fist, wanting to feel young again. There had been a time in college when Fritzy felt like he was of the crowd. He had been a member of the eating club Ivy, as was his father, who’d died when Fritzy was twelve, though everyone agreed that he was really nothing like his father—a handsome and chatty senator from Delaware. Fritzy and Jane Craft stood side by side next to their daughter: He wearing his J.Press blazer to conceal his perpetual shoulder stoop, and Jane, six feet tall, an inch shy of her husband, in her size twelve Belle France dress with its high lace collar. The tiny lavender floral print on the black background obscured her thickening middle. Jane’s build was more solid than Fritzy’s—his frame being slight, like that of his mother, Eugenie. The Crafts, married twenty-six years, shared the same coloring—light hair, sky blue eyes, skim-milk complexion with cheeks that flushed easily—in bold contrast to Virginia, with her black curls and olive skin. The first thing you’d notice about Virginia’s face was what she called her Mexican lashes—their remarkable length and dark color. Alone, Virginia passed for a striking white girl of the exotic variety, but beside her parents, she was markedly foreign. She’d been called Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and, once in London, black Irish. Early on, she’d learned to spit out the race of her biological parents—half Mexican, half white—then let the unlucky guesser squirm with the facts of her adoption.
Before leaving the club, Fritzy kissed Virginia on the crown of her head, saying to the bartender, “Feel free to dilute their drinks.” Chuck, on his third beer, laughed and raised his glass to Virginia’s dad. The kids clustered in groups of threes or fours around the perimeter of the bar—its walls covered with class photographs and Princeton memorabilia—drinking and catching up on any news since June. Some ate the burgers and chicken Mrs. Craft had ordered beforehand. Casey knew everyone except for a couple of the girls from Brearley who’d come by to say hello. They were much like the girls from Ivy—cool legacy types with a casual manner and Ivory girl complexions. Expensive haircuts that didn’t look fussy. All terrific at cocktail prattle. It was impossible to imagine them mixing with their fellow Brearley alumna Ella.
After the Crafts left, Virginia and Casey went off by themselves to a secluded table below the photograph of an ancient crew team. This was Casey’s first vodka gimlet for the night, and it was delicious.
“How is it living with Ella Shim?” Virginia pulled her lips to the left corner of her mouth. She did this when peeved.
“It’s tolerable.” Casey frowned, feeling a little disloyal to Ella. “She’s nice.”
“And has Jay called?” Virginia, who’d always liked him, was not yet willing to give up on him as Casey’s beau. Jay Currie was a dick for what he did, but it was unquestionable in Virginia’s mind that he loved her best friend. It wouldn’t have surprised Virginia if they got back together. “Or should I ask, how many times has he called?”
“He’s called Tina, but she’s not allowed to tell him where I am. Nor are you.”
“Understood,” Virginia said, still not getting Casey’s decision to live with Ella. “You could have stayed with me. At Newport.”
“You were visiting your grandmother—”
“Lady Eugenie would’ve been happy to have you.”
“Thank you,” Casey said graciously, having told Virginia about the fight but not the hitting.
“And if you want to be in the city, you could stay with Jane and Fritzy. They love you, too. But Ella Shim?” Virginia couldn’t remember Ella uttering a word out loud in the six years she’d known her at Brearley.
Did the girl even speak?
“She’s not so bad.” Casey could hear Ella’s voice in her head from only a few hours ago, how she’d pleaded with Ted to get her a job. “I’ve known her from Sunday school. And she has an extra room. C’mon, I can’t stay with your parents.” Casey made a face. “They’re super, but—”
“Yeah, neither can I,” Virginia said. Jane and Fritzy were a particular drink of water. They were also not young parents, both in their early sixties. Their excessive politeness could be construed as detachment or, worse, a social frigidity. They didn’t mean to be that way; they just didn’t know how to be intimate or talk like regular people. What also polarized their household was that they’d sent Virginia to a shrink ever since she could talk almost, so they’d raised this girl to have all these feelings when they appeared to have none. “They’re very sweet,” Virginia said of her parents, “but tough to live with. I’m sure my biological parents were deeply troubled individuals, highly emotional. And verbal. I bet my biological mother was a screamer.” She smiled with some satisfaction.
“Hmm. . .” Casey fiddled with the ice in her drink. Over the years, Virginia had imagined her biological mother as everything between a hooker and a nun.
“And how are you?” Virginia asked.
“Fine. I just have to get a job,” Casey replied.
“You’ll get one,” Virginia said, wanting to figure out what else was going on in that tough nut of hers. She’d never met anyone so proud in her life. “I mean, do you like living with Ella?”
“She’s not you,” Casey said. There was always a pecking order among girlfriends. “Once I get my cash flow in order, I’m moving out. Find an affordable place in Manhattan. No problem.” She said all this confidently, as though it were just a matter of time.
“You can come to Italy.” Virginia raised her hands enthusiastically. “How cool would that be?”
“I can go to the moon, too, but NASA won’t return my calls.”
Virginia smirked. “You can live with me.”
“Not in the cards for this girl.”
“Why not? They let Koreans into Italy the last time I checked.”
“Mexicans, too?”
“Ha.” This was the thing Virginia liked about Casey—she could fire back instantly.
“You should at least visit me. I’m not coming back for a long time. The degree can take two years or more. Fritzy and Jane will come to see me. You know how I hate flying.”
“And phones.”
Virginia sighed. “But I write all the time.”
“Yes. You do.” Casey loved her friend’s letters. It was like receiving the pages of a genius’s diary, and because of her flowery style, the letters read as if from another era. Virginia wrote in her unfiltered prose about her observations and desires, never holding back her failures or doubts. In her writing, she directed her thinking like a woman walking out of a maze, turning the corners of events and ideas. Casey admired Virginia’s mind and hadn’t known just how brilliant her friend was until she’d started to receive her letters. And Virginia didn’t hide anything—this was the thing Casey prized most about her.
If Casey felt wild and angry compared with Tina, she was even-tempered and discreet around Virginia, who thrummed with vitality and curiosity. Even as Virginia got drunk, slept with too many men, and lost her house keys on a regular basis, Casey couldn’t help but admire her friend, who didn’t feel deterred by shame or failure. Virginia was not afraid of criticism—that, Casey thought, was an extraordinary thing.
“You will come visit me. Yes?”
Virginia smiled pleasantly, yet what Casey felt was the pang of being left behind. Their lives had always looked different, but after graduation, a divide had risen between them like a drawbridge sealing up a castle. From the other side of the moat, Casey had to make her own way.
“You’re the one who’s leaving. So why should I visit?” Casey said coldly.
Virginia looked hurt by this, and Casey felt sorry. She was Casey’s closest friend from school—buddies since the second week of freshman year. Virginia was leaving for Italy the next day. It wasn’t as though Casey didn’t know her friend’s sorrows—how she’d searched for her birth mother since she was eleven, all leads going nowhere. This was Virginia, the girl who’d written prizewinning papers at school and was getting a master’s degree in Bologna because her spoken and written Italian was that good. Her French was native quality. The Romance language she couldn’t learn, however, was Spanish—the language her biological mother would have spoken. Every time Virginia had tried to take lessons, she’d ended up dissolving into tears.
Virginia reached across the table to take Casey’s hand. “I will miss you.”
“Oh, stop. You’ll be so busy chasing boys that you’ll hardly have time to pick up a pen.” Casey felt like crying.
“My record disputes such unfair charges.”
Casey could say nothing to this. There were eight or nine ribbon-tied bundles of Virginia’s letters at her parents’ from previous summers.
“Come visit, Casey. There are Italian men in Italy.”
Casey laughed.
“And gelato. Oh, the marron glacé gelato. You can’t believe that ice cream can taste—” Virginia swooned, her face lighting up in rapture; Chuck came by to bring her a beer.
Casey waved at him, letting him cut in. Chuck and Virginia had had a semester-long thing during sophomore year. Virginia said they were good friends—reliable for annual strip poker nights and the occasional movie. Besides, Casey thought, it wasn’t fair to monopolize the guest of honor. Though she had been on the verge of telling Virginia about the fight with her father and how she hadn’t gone to Newport because of her face. But how would that have changed anything? The past couldn’t be corrected by explanations. Virginia yearned for a rationale from her biological mother—Why did you give me up?—and Casey wondered how that would really fix anything. Would it satisfy? The Crafts seemed like perfectly good parents. Casey’s biological parents were a mess. And what good would it do to talk about all of it? It was just as well that Chuck Raines had come by. He had a square head and a thin neck. He still had a crush on Virginia.
“Have you had gelato, Chuck?” Virginia asked him.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Italians make damn good ice cream. You gonna hook me up?”
“Naturellemente.” Virginia closed her eyes and shrugged like her Milanese aunt Patrizia, who’d married her mother’s younger brother, the art dealer.
Casey smiled at their happiness, the mutual recognition of something enjoyed. She’d never tried marron glacé gelato. Marron was French for chestnut? Glacé was glazed? That much she got. How did you say “chestnut” in Italian? The world was so vast, and there was so much she didn’t know.
6 PROXY
ELLA HEADED TOWARD THE BANK OF ELEVATORS at Bayard’s, bypassing the glass cases of exquisite jewelry as well as the premier fragrance counters of New York. She was oblivious to the sparkle and scent of the shop, still thinking about the funny face David Greene had made when she’d explained that she had to leave the annual fund meeting fifteen minutes early because of the dress. He rarely looked displeased with her. Yet whenever her wedding was brought up, David tended to change the topic or remember that he had to finish up something. His navy blue eyes, so full of mirth and curiosity, would darken soberly when she’d talk about Ted.
Naturally, Ted teased her about him, saying that her dorky white boss had a fetish for Asian girls. But David wasn’t like that, she’d argued as best she could. He respected everyone, wouldn’t reduce a person to a stereotype. Yet the more she’d defend David, the worse Ted got. So she certainly didn’t tell her fiancé that each morning she walked to work eagerly, looking forward to listening to David’s thoughts about the alumni or the parent body, the progress of the class fund. On Fridays, they ate sandwiches together in the park if it was mild outside or in the office if the weather wasn’t agreeable. He’d tell her stories about the inmates f
rom the men’s prison where he taught writing on the weekends as a volunteer. Sometimes he’d bring along his students’ misspelled rap lyrics and read them aloud to her with as much gravity and delight as if he were reading from his favorite poet, Philip Larkin. Two weeks ago, with shyness and pride, he’d shown her two poems he’d had published in The Kenyon Review. One was about a boy who sits patiently in his father’s waiting room, and for days after, she couldn’t stop thinking about his description of the heavy stack of National Geographics the boy in the poem ends up reading as his father sees one client after another—the curling yellow page corners, photographs of sharp-nosed ladies wearing orange scarves on their heads, the white-capped mountain of Japan.
Casey was there, waiting for her as promised—by the four elevators located in the back of the store. Once inside the car, Casey pushed six for bridal. There was no one else besides them.
“So, tell me. What does the dress look like again?”
Ella couldn’t answer the question. She frowned.
“Ella?” Casey said firmly. “The dress?”
“It’s long.” With her hands, Ella made an awkward sweeping gesture from her shoulders to her hips. “Off white?” She could hardly distinguish all the whites she’d seen that day. “You know, a regular wedding dress, like, what you’d expect. You know.”
“Is that how they teach you to talk at Wellesley? ‘Like’ and ‘you know’?” Casey feigned a look of disapproval.
Her teasing pleased Ella. At home, especially when Ted came around, Casey increasingly made herself disappear behind a kind of decorum, her formal manners creating an inviolable barrier. But at Bayard’s, she seemed to revert to the plucky girl Ella had known at church—intimate and amused by whatever she saw or heard. Even the way she strolled with a kind of flair and bounce had come back.
Casey now raised her eyebrows, waiting for an answer, a little peeved with Ella for the absence of details. She wanted to know what Ella wanted. It was her wedding dress, after all.