by Min Jin Lee
7 DERIVATIVE
MARY ELLEN CURRIE FOUND HER BY ACCIDENT. She’d taken the day off to work on her manuscript at the big library on Forty-second Street. Mary Ellen could never write in her house or at the Trenton Public Library, where she’d served faithfully as head librarian for nine years and staff librarian for an even dozen. At one o’clock, she’d strolled across the street—dreamy in her thoughts of Emily Dickinson, whom she referred to as “ED”—to the sandwich shop on Fifth, and there, seated on a stool reading the want ads, was Casey, her younger son’s girlfriend of three years. Her face appeared more drawn than usual, her shoulders thinner.
“Casey! Hullo, hullo, hullo!” Mary Ellen cried. She raised her arms and rushed toward the girl. “My sweetie, I haven’t seen you in months.”
Casey looked up and let herself be folded into Mary Ellen’s embrace.
“Where have you been?” She squeezed her again, then kissed Casey on the brow. “Never mind that. I wanted to go to your graduation, but Jay said he couldn’t go, either.” Mary Ellen chuckled. “I thought I’d hang back, wave from a safe distance.” She felt happy to see Casey so unexpectedly, and she kissed her again; her hands held on to Casey’s upper arms.
Casey burst into tears. It had been several weeks since anyone had actually touched her. The touch of a person she loved was almost too much to bear.
“What? What’s the matter? Oh, I’m so dumb.” Mary Ellen slapped her own forehead as if she’d forgotten something. “I know you wanted me to come. It’s not your fault. I understand. Truly. I do. Your family—it was their day.” Mary Ellen hoisted her knapsack from her sloping shoulders. She lifted Casey’s chin toward her own face with her square hands. She used to do this when she talked to her sons when they were young. They’d never let her do this now.
Casey pulled away as gently as she could. It was so good to see Mary Ellen’s floury face with its soft creases, her pretty hazel eyes beneath the pale, intelligent eyebrows. This face had welcomed her from the very beginning of her relationship with Jay, and his loss had been made worse because Casey had lost Mary Ellen as well.
Mary Ellen stroked Casey’s hair, not paying attention to the customers in the sandwich shop who were straying from their lunches to take peeks at the sobbing girl. She rested her hand on Casey’s back—so bony under her fingers. Her height was oddly diminished by her thinness. Casey seemed small. “It’s all right, little one. It’s all right.” She’d already sensed that there was something amiss between her son and Casey, but she’d been uncertain as to what exactly. Jay was a very good son; by that, she meant, unlike her older son, Ethan, Jay had done well in school, gotten an excellent job, effectively made her proud through his achievements. He was the son who’d justified her labor and sacrifices as a mother. But Jay did not confide in her. Neither did Ethan. Mary Ellen envied mothers with daughters. With girls, it seemed possible to remain involved in their lives. Even when her boys were little, she’d ask them how school was, and they’d reply, “Good,” and in their simple expressions, she saw shut doors. One of the lovely by-products of Jay’s dating Casey was that she’d gotten to know her child better because Casey talked to her. As a mother of two grown men, she was still gleaning scraps. After her boys were out of school, she’d missed parent-teacher conferences and report cards, because news of her boys had become even less periodic, shrinking down to nil.
“Take a breath,” Mary Ellen said, taking a dramatic one herself, as if she were reading the part of the Big Bad Wolf for the neighborhood children during story hour.
Casey did as she was told, breathing in a vast gulp of air. She swallowed the last of her cold, milky coffee, the same cup she’d been nursing for the past hour—her meager rent for occupying the stool.
“Are you all right? I asked Jay how you were last week, and he had to get off the phone because of work. So he said. And I haven’t been able to reach him since then.”
Casey nodded, knowing how Jay could use work as a way to avoid talking. Wasn’t there always another fire to put out at the office? His job was a career, not like her temporary stint at Sabine’s, where she could walk out the door at closing hour and be done until the next day.
Casey looked around the shop. No one was looking at them now.
“Are you at home with your parents this summer?”
She shook her head no.
“Where are you staying, then?”
“At a friend’s on the Upper East.”
“Why aren’t you staying at Jay’s?” Mary Ellen looked carefully at Casey. “Are you two fighting?”
Casey held up the want ads, not wanting to talk about Jay. “I’m looking for a job, Mary Ellen.”
The woman who’d finished her soup and crackers got up from the stool next to Casey’s. Mary Ellen sat in her spot.
“Okay. How is that going?”
“I have an interview tomorrow.” Casey did not mention that it was at Kearn Davis where Jay worked. She’d yet to get a call from any of her cover letters. In her wallet, she had eight dollars, and her credit limit was tapped. That morning, she’d considered calling her sister to ask for more money.
“You look a little tired, honey,” Mary Ellen said. That morning, Casey hadn’t bothered with concealer. “Are you all right?”
Casey stared into her empty cup—a thin ring of coffee remained lodged in the bottom seam of the paper cup.
“Oh, Casey, what can I do? What won’t you children tell me?”
“We broke up. There isn’t much to say,” Casey said, feeling the tears spring up again.
“What?” Mary Ellen was stunned. “Why? He loves you so much. I’m so certain of that.”
Casey blew her nose on a milk-stained napkin.
Mary Ellen made a face, then she knew. “What did he do?”
Casey remained silent. Knowing Mary Ellen, she’d feel responsible. “I can’t say.”
“You are still talking to each other, right?”
Casey shook her head no.
Mary Ellen sighed. She’d never seen Casey like this before. The girl was utterly bereft.
“It’s like someone cut off my limbs. Like I’m an ugly stump.” Casey said this without intending to, then felt bad right away. It didn’t seem right to say this to Jay’s mother.
Mary Ellen’s lower lip quivered the tiniest bit. That was precisely how she’d felt after Carl left.
“But we’re still friends, Casey.” Mary Ellen peered into the girl’s eyes, making sure that she was being understood. “You’re better than a daughter to me,” she said. “We’ll always be in each other’s lives. We have our own bond.” She pulled out a pad from her knapsack. “Tell me where you’re staying.”
Casey felt ashamed—by her crying, by talking to Mary Ellen about the breakup before Jay had told his own mother, for being so inarticulate. And she looped back again to that night. How could she have stopped that? Was there a way to keep a lover from ever wanting someone else? All the smart answers she had didn’t seem to make that question go away.
“You’re heartbroken.” Mary Ellen felt angry at Jay. He’d given her no grief over the years, but she knew Casey was protecting him out of some stupid sense of loyalty or propriety. If it had been Casey’s fault, she would’ve just confessed it. “You look so thin. Did you eat today? I hope you’re not dieting again.”
“I’m not dieting.” She laughed at the thought of it now. Casey wiped her eyes. “I’m always hungry lately.” She was starving, actually.
“Can I get you something?” Mary Ellen asked. She had no appetite herself.
“No, it’s all right. I ate, actually,” Casey stammered, lying poorly. The moment before Mary Ellen had walked into the shop, Casey had been debating whether or not she should spend the last of her money on a roast beef sandwich and a bag of kettle-fried chips. The sight of these things behind the glass case had made her mouth water.
“I have to go,” Casey said. She wrote down Ella’s number on the pad. “Promise me you won’t give
it to Jay.” Mary Ellen nodded, then put her hand lightly on Casey’s forearm.
Casey stood there, looking at the tiled floor.
“I’m just trying to understand,” Mary Ellen said. The worry made her appear older than her age of fifty-one. “I know you’re the one who should be upset. I should be comforting you.” She blurted this out, not knowing the full story. But it was the not knowing that was making her so nuts. What could be worth this? she thought. What Jay and Casey did not know was that love was this rare thing. A connection between two people like them—Mary Ellen had marveled at the way they laughed, talked, and saved stories for each other—wasn’t something to take lightly. Can’t you work this out? she wanted to say. Looking at Casey’s suffering, Mary Ellen thought, the loss was real because the love was real. She wanted to shake Jay. And Casey, too. “I’d somehow imagined us growing up together,” she said. “Do you know that? I love you very much, Casey.”
Casey swallowed, unable to speak. Her parents had never said anything like that in her entire life. Korean people like her mother and father didn’t talk about love, about feelings—at least this was how Casey and Tina had explained it to themselves for not getting these words they wanted to hear.
“Would you take him back?” asked Mary Ellen. The heart is so full of hope, she thought.
Casey looked over Mary Ellen’s shoulder and read the labeled thermoses of milk set out on the counter near the door: cream, half and half, whole, 2%, skim. Why were there so many choices? It didn’t seem to make life any richer, she thought. All these things made you feel less grateful. Casey couldn’t imagine talking to him ever again, yet all she yearned for was to be near him, to be held by him, to listen to the pulse of his heart—it was as pathetic as that. Why would she want the person who had carelessly humiliated her to hold her? That made no fucking sense. She wanted things to be the same—to love someone like that again, with a kind of endless trust. Then she saw that she had loved him fully. But judging from how awful she felt now, she decided that she couldn’t let herself love like that again, not even him. Especially not him.
“Did he cheat?” Mary Ellen asked.
Casey found herself nodding yes.
Mary Ellen nodded sadly herself. There wasn’t a day when she didn’t think about Carl, about her marriage, and how on the day he left, it seemed her life was over, with no money, no job, and two little boys who had no understanding; yet in a way, there was relief, for it had been awful to live with a man who made you feel so lacking in femininity. “Mary Ellen, I just don’t want to anymore,” Carl had said to her one night after five years of marriage. “I don’t need to,” he’d said. Then a few weeks later, he took the car and left them. Nine hundred dollars in the bank account. Through Carl’s parents, she’d heard that he’d moved to Oregon and that he was living with a male cousin whom he had loved since he was a child.
Her husband’s departure had made her older boy, Ethan, give himself over to whatever cause angry boys took up. Jay had been different. He had worked so hard to please everyone, including her, and she had let that happen, because it had made her life so much easier.
“I’m so sorry, Casey,” Mary Ellen said, her pale cheeks wet.
“I know,” Casey said.
They walked out of the shop together. Mary Ellen lit a cigarette on the street, and Casey couldn’t refrain from asking her for one, too, even though she had never before smoked in Mary Ellen’s presence, following some Korean notion to not smoke in front of your elders. Mary Ellen handed her the pack, and Casey lit hers. The first drag was euphoric; the miasma in her head parted instantly, and Casey felt a kind of clarity she’d been missing for quite some time.
They hugged each other good-bye. Mary Ellen watched Casey walk uptown, then turned and went back to the library. At her empty space at the long wooden table in the Great Reading Room, Mary Ellen remembered that she’d forgotten to eat, and when she fumbled through her skirt pocket, she realized that Casey still had her packet of smokes. She gathered her papers for ED’s biography that she’d been working on for eight years. Another day would hardly matter. She was a biographer who did not understand her own children’s lives. Life was just guesswork even if you were an eyewitness. Mary Ellen searched for her cigarettes again, then planned to buy some on her way to Penn Station. She put her bare arms through the straps of her knapsack and left the library.
8 COST
IT WAS THE FINAL WEEK OF JULY, but still cool enough in the morning for Casey to wear her brown suit with Ella’s brown pumps. Casey rationalized to herself that she was amortizing the cost of the suit with each use—avoiding altogether the issue of the credit card minimum payment she couldn’t make. She was also calculating the odds of running into Jay. Four thousand employees worked at the Kearn Davis building on Fiftieth and Park. Jay and Ted worked on six at investment banking, and Casey would be interviewing on two with sales and trading.
From the lobby phone, she called Ted. His assistant told her that Ted wanted her to come up to six. In a huff, she marched into the empty elevator. Well, at least she was alone to hear the rumble in her stomach.
Casey was ravenous. That morning, Ella rushed off before finishing her breakfast, so Casey had eaten the discarded half of the toasted bagel with some butter. But eating that bit of bread had only made her hungrier. In the five weeks since she’d left her parents’ house, Casey had lost eleven pounds according to Ella’s bathroom scale. Her suit skirt spun around her waist, and for first time in her life, she was not happy about losing weight—it felt like a human rights violation to be this hungry all the time. And now that she couldn’t afford to buy cigarettes (she’d already smoked two of Mary Ellen’s packet and was rationing out the remainder for emergencies), her hunger was unbearable. The less she smoked, the more she wanted to eat, and food had never tasted better.
Every day, she went to the Mid-Manhattan Library to conduct her job search, and she couldn’t stop thinking about bread, spaghetti, and hamburgers. Each night before Ella got home, she cooked one of her three-for-a-dollar ramen noodles bought from Odd-Job (occasionally filching an egg from Ella’s refrigerator) with as much water as possible. The salty broth kept her going for a couple of hours. Sleeping when hungry was difficult. Once in a while, she broke her resolve not to take from Ella’s larder and ate anyway. One night, she consumed a whole jar of Bonne Maman strawberry jam with a teaspoon. When Ella ordered Chinese food, Casey never asked for anything, but she ate the free egg roll or hot-and-sour soup and fried noodles in the waxed paper bag that Ella never touched. When Ella prepared dinner for Ted, Casey pretended to have other engagements. But having nowhere else to go, since meeting anyone in the city required cash and carfare—even hooking up with a college friend for a beer and pizza meant fifty bucks—Casey walked to the Metropolitan Museum, where you paid what you wanted, on the nights it closed late or lingered in bookstores that were still open, and when it was time for bed, she walked back to Ella’s.
The sharp chime of the elevator pierced the hush of the sixth floor. Right away, Casey recognized the thick blue carpets and the dark wooden trim on the window jambs and door frames. The rest of the company was styled as a marble temple of finance. But investment banking on six resembled a private English men’s club—mahogany paneling, silver-leaf-framed black-and-white photographs of New York’s first skyscrapers, and buttoned leather wing chairs. The pert receptionist directed her toward Ted’s office—only shouting distance from the larger shared office where Jay worked as a junior analyst with nineteen other Ivy grads chained to their rolltop desks.
The door to Ted’s office was flung open. He was on the phone wearing a headset, his back facing her. While he was talking, his hand brushed across his black hair. Ted wore a French-cuffed shirt the color of a pale blue hydrangea, a darker blue woven silk necktie, navy silk braces, and gold love-knot cuff links that Ella had given him for Christmas.
Ted was aware that Casey was standing at his door. He could see her reflection on the gla
ss covering the elongated engraving of the Brooklyn Bridge. Not bothering to turn around, he motioned for her to come in. Then he drew his pointer finger across his neck to indicate that the call was soon ending.
Casey kept a respectable distance from his desk. Only after he glanced at one of the pair of empty chairs did she sit. Ted liked obedience, and she would not deny him this pleasure.
Ted pressed a button, turning off his phone.
“So, you made it.” In her suit, she looked like anyone he’d gone to college or B school with. Her bruises had healed nicely, or she’d covered them up well. She wore lipstick—a shade between cinnamon and claret. He liked it. There was an expression the cannery boys used for girls with talent you didn’t marry: worth fucking for practice.
Casey ignored his once-over and asked him demurely, “Shall we go now?”
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Thanks, but I thought we should get to the interview.”
“It’s actually in fifteen minutes. I only said ten o’clock because I didn’t know if you were an on-time kind of person. Can’t have you making me look bad.” He smiled. His teeth were straight and even, but the lower half was stained lightly with nicotine.
“Thanks. Truly.”
“Want to look up your friend?”
She acted as though she didn’t understand.
Ted stuck out his left hand. “His office is just down the hall.”
“Hmm.” She nodded. There was a gorgeous color photograph of Ella tucked in a round silver frame. Her expression was wise and maternal, even though she couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty at the time. Beside it was a black picture frame and, beneath the glass, a white envelope with “Teddy” scrawled on it in thick pencil like the writing of a child. When Ted caught her looking at the mounted envelope from his father, he turned it away from her sight.
“Just say a quick hello.” Ted raised his left hand in a seemingly careless gesture. “Go on. I don’t mind.”