by Min Jin Lee
The residents who’d shared a light at some point said “hey” when they saw Casey. She wore a white dress shirt, her gray knife-pleated skirt, and no stockings, and in her rope-soled shoes, she stood out against the Sunday morning crowd with their bed hair and sleepy looks. The brightness of the day, the young singles relaxing, reminded her of school in the spring when at the first sight of the warm sun, everyone skipped classes to laze in the open greenery. Casey wanted to stay there, smoke the rest of the pack, read the paper, and plan out her life after her first paycheck.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like church. She enjoyed a good sermon as much as she adored a stirring lecture. Ella had spotted the issue accurately. Ted’s teasing felt aggressive and mean-spirited. Just last night, when Ella went downstairs to get her mail, he’d said to Casey, “Maybe I should tell Jay that his girlfriend works on two.” Casey had wondered if this unrelenting behavior was equivalent to a sixth-grade boy snapping the bra strap of a girl he liked, but it wasn’t that kind of retarded flirtation. Besides, Casey couldn’t imagine anyone preferring her over Ella. What Casey understood was that Ted was jealous. He thought they were competing for Ella, and consequently, he treated her as a rival, and from never having fought with a boy, Casey was astonished by the nature of his attacks, so unlike a girl’s—naked, persistent, and lethal. As nice was she was, Ella wasn’t worth this.
Also, Casey didn’t want to meet Ella’s cousin. She was still preoccupied with Jay. Her sister had told her that he’d tried to reach her several times. In the past week, Casey hadn’t bumped into him in the elevator or the cafeteria. The second and sixth floors remained separate, as if they were in different buildings.
As for her new job as a sales assistant, since Casey was by nature an organized person—adept at deadlines and details—except for learning some new software and eating both breakfast and lunch at her desk among several men, the nature of her work was not difficult. After her day ended, she walked home and reread Middlemarch or began another volume of Trollope borrowed from the neighborhood library. She studied an old millinery pattern book bought for a quarter from a homeless guy who sold magazines and outdated textbooks on First Avenue. In her spare time, she worried mostly about money and her future. Her salary minus a discretionary bonus and possible overtime (how much she’d get was hard to figure out at this point—though Delia said she might be able to get as much as half her base) was thirty-five thousand dollars per annum on a pretax basis. With her pay, she’d have to meet her credit card minimums, save up her rent deposit (nearly fifteen hundred dollars for two months’ rent for a cramped studio) with the possibility of having to fork over 15 percent of the annual rent for the broker’s fee, and furnish a new place, since she did not own even a buck-fifty drinking glass. Ella wouldn’t hear of taking money from her for rent or groceries despite Casey’s offers to pay her when she got her check.
Casey moved toward the edge of the roof. On its perimeter, there were boxes of white impatiens well tended to by the building’s gardening committee. Although it was the first week of August, she felt a mild breeze in the air. The view—its grid of unshaded windows wasn’t much different from the one in Elmhurst—was of small kitchens, dimpled glass obscuring bathrooms, L-shaped living rooms, and unmade beds in darkened chambers. It was peaceful to smoke here, leaning against the waist-high parapet. Jay used to joke that she liked roofs because that’s where she parked her Wonder Woman glass plane. Casey allowed herself another cigarette. She tried to light it, but the wind blew north; she cupped the flame of her paper match, and when she glanced up, she saw an Asian man at a window studying her.
He was thin, around her height, wearing a dark two-button suit, a white shirt, and a medium-width purple necktie. She could make out his face: rounded nose, high cheekbones, black eyes tapered sharply at the ends, and softly arched eyebrows. She stared back at him and he smiled at her; then, suddenly feeling shy, she turned to take another drag of smoke. When she looked for him again, he was gone. After the tobacco was spent, she stubbed out the light and went downstairs.
Casey told Ella she’d go to church after all.
“Are you sure?” Ella asked, not knowing what she should do now. Ted had just called her. It turned out that the night before, Jay Currie had been staffed on a deal Ted was working on, and when they were finally introduced, Ted had blurted out that he knew Casey Han. “Is she all right?” Jay had asked him anxiously. Ted had ended up telling him where she was staying. Just like that. Ella had scolded him, saying, “How could you?” But he’d replied, “At least I didn’t tell him that she works on two.” He’d laughed out loud—in her mind, she could still hear his chortle—and she’d had to resist the impulse to hang up on him. She’d never done that before, but at that moment, it had seemed more than appropriate.
Ted was now on his way to pick her up for church. Flustered, Ella put on her shoes.
“Maybe you’re tired after your first week of work. Would you prefer to go next Sunday?” Ella said.
“Nope. I’m all yours,” Casey replied. “Let’s go worship in the house of the Lord.” She laughed, then shouted, “Hallelujah!” She felt cheery all of a sudden.
Ella smiled perfunctorily, feeling guilty, as if somehow this were all her fault.
“You think Ted will buy me an expensive brunch?” Casey put her hands on her hips.
“Yes.” Ella nodded, head bobbing like a doll’s. “Anything you want.”
The doorman buzzed. Ted Kim was in the lobby.
When they got downstairs and met him, Ted kissed Ella’s stiffening cheeks and returned Casey’s surface pleasantries. They walked to church, not five blocks away, and Ella chattered about Unu to Casey. At the church entrance, Ted put his hand on Ella’s back and she moved away from his hand.
Ushers directed them upstairs to balcony seating because the main auditorium was full. The church leased a college hall for worship because it couldn’t handle the growing number of attendees. Ted was unimpressed by the shabby city college building. There were no pew hymnals or Bibles, and the service was printed on a flimsy staple-bound pamphlet. He would’ve preferred Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, which looked like a real church, but Ella was devoted to Dr. Benjamin, and even he, as a person who had hated Sunday school in Anchorage, had to admit that he paid attention to Benjamin’s intelligent sermons and on occasion found himself reflecting on them. Ted believed that church was a good idea for a well-governed society, and he didn’t trust anyone who didn’t believe in God.
Casey coming to church had surprised him. He’d pegged her as a textbook atheist—one of those know-it-alls who had the blind faith to explain the world according to scientific theories that were disproved every day yet were unable to believe in the things they weren’t smart enough to rationalize. Ted, who had no great faith in God or Jesus, could not believe in the randomness of chance, and he was arrogant enough to refuse fish or ape ancestors. If creationism sounded absurd, evolutionism insulted his intelligence, too. As much as Ted believed in hard work and self-determination, he also believed in a kind of guided order outside of man—an Adam Smith invisible hand kind of fate. But in general, he avoided discussions about religion. There was no way to win them anyway, he thought, why bother. Whichever side you fell on, you had to conclude with the statement “I believe. . .” rather than “I know.” The minister called them to say the prayer that Christ had taught them to say, and Ted heard Casey recite it from memory, and he could hear some feeling.
Casey meant it when she said, “Forgive us for our debts as we forgive our debtors,” because they were for her the hardest words to live by, and by saying them, she hoped they’d become possible.
Like Ted, Casey would never discuss her ambivalent views on religion. She was honest enough to admit that her privacy cloaked a fear: the fear of being found out as a hypocrite. Casey was keenly aware of her Christian failings: Routinely, she mumbled, “Jesus Christ,” when she stubbed her toe; for a young woman, she had slept with enough men she�
��d had no love for or intentions of marrying; she’d had an abortion without regret; she’d tried drugs (liked some very much and feared that she had an addictive personality, and for that reason alone, she did not seek them out); she enjoyed getting drunk and acting on her passionate impulses; she loved acquiring nice things, and it was an explicit goal for her to have them; every day, she envied someone else’s life; she adored gossip in any form; she’d stolen clothes from the return bin at Sabine’s; she disliked many Christians—finding them dull and intolerant; and nearly two months prior, she’d told her own parents to fuck off. Her commandment violations were numerous and sustaining. She would not win any white-leather Bibles at Sunday school camp. Her awareness of a God, quotidian Bible reading, and obscure verse scribbling made no sense to her. Nevertheless, Casey could not commit to no God, either.
Ella had no doubts. In plain sight, she rummaged through her leather satchel, pulling out a black leather zip-up Bible and a fabric-bound sketchbook. She held a Waterman pen with a gold nib at the ready. She flipped open her sketchbook, its pages packed with blue-black-inked script, to find a clean sheet. Cross-referencing the program, she quickly found the Scripture on which the sermon was based. She wrote down the verse citation beneath the sermon title, “What sustains you?” with the precision of a student taking notes for chemistry lab. Ella looked fierce in her attentiveness.
She looked adoringly at Dr. Benjamin, which Casey found sort of amusing. The minister was middle-aged, no wrinkles—anywhere between forty-five and fifty-five. He kept his curly dark hair short and tidy. Silver-rimmed glasses covered his mink brown eyes. He wore a modest accountant-style suit with a crisp white shirt and mid-level banker’s red necktie. No black robes. His look was more shrewd than sober. Ella had mentioned before that it was impossible to be married by him because Dr. Benjamin was booked solid. Like everything else in New York, a good minister’s services required reservations and waiting. So Ella was going to be married by her father’s Korean minister in Queens—a very nice man who yelled a lot about hell.
Dr. Benjamin read the gospel verse from the book of Matthew: “Jesus answered, ‘It is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
It was a curious consequence that from Casey’s years of private reading and Sunday school, she knew the Bible cold. In that selection, the devil tempts Jesus, hungry after forty days of fasting, by saying that if he is in fact the Son of God, he could command the stones to become bread. Jesus replies by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3: “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” The Bible was endlessly referring to itself, and in college, this peculiar knowledge—peculiar, since no one she knew at Princeton read the Bible—had been helpful academically, since most of Western writings referred to it, too.
Ella nodded incessantly at Dr. Benjamin as she took meticulous notes on the sermon. Casey found Ella’s devotion grating. When the sermon ended, the offering was collected by the ushers. A basket lined with gray sponge passed through. Casey opened her wallet and spotted two twenties—money Ella had loaned her to cover her till payday on Friday. Her Sunday school teacher Mrs. Novak used to say, “Test providence, give sacrificially.” She dropped one of the twenties into the basket. Ted dropped in a folded check for fifty dollars that he’d prepared earlier. Ella dropped in a folded check for two hundred dollars—this amount representing twenty-five percent of her weekly salary.
Dr. Benjamin gave the benediction and dismissed them. Ella put away her Bible and notebook. Then she leaned over the balcony railing in search of her cousin. Casey had been observing the crowds, and Ella said assuringly, “He’s supposed to meet us outside anyway.”
Once they were on the street, opposite the college building, Ted and Ella discussed the brunch options: dim sum or Sarabeth’s. Casey, who’d been half listening, shifted when she felt the light pressure of a hand on her upper arm. Ted’s expression changed to surprise, and Casey spotted the hand first with its short blond hairs across its knuckles, then recognized Jay. With her right fist, she swung. Ella covered her mouth with her hands to stifle herself, and Ted burst out laughing, saying, “Ooooh.”
Unu Shim gasped along with everyone else milling about who’d witnessed this. Then he realized it was Ella standing next to the woman who’d just hit the tall white guy so hard that blood trickled toward his lips.
11 COVENANT
I DESERVED THAT,” Jay said, tasting the blood on his upper lip. In his entire life, he had never once been hit; somehow, he’d managed to avoid having a fistfight even as he attended an all-boys’ school, and at home, he had wisely refused to tangle with his older brother, Ethan, who had an unforgettable temper. Casey had clocked him. Even as Jay swept blood from the patch of skin beneath his nose, he couldn’t believe it.
Feeling somewhat responsible, Ted moved closer to Casey, ready to pull her back in case she started swinging—nevertheless, he was amused by the possibility. Unu Shim had by this point managed to break through the crowd to get to his cousin Ella, who was herself so visibly stunned by this that she couldn’t speak.
“Ella? Are you okay?” Unu asked. They hadn’t seen each other since his wedding in Seoul three years before.
“Unu. . .” Ella stared at him in disbelief. “Hi. I’m so glad to see you.”
Unu folded his arm around Ella’s shoulders and patted her back gently, the way his father greeted people.
Ella rested her fingers lightly on Unu’s forearm, then reflexively she thought to grab a Kleenex from her makeup bag and she offered it to Jay.
Casey watched this interaction as if she were seeing it on TV. What was Ella doing handing Jay tissues? Then Jay took the tissue from Ella, mumbling a shy “Thank you.” He stopped up his nose with it. Casey put her hands behind her back, suddenly appreciating what she had done. She was the one who’d made Jay bleed. It was as if her hand had been angry for her, formed a fist, and couldn’t resist the act. Casey had never intended to hit him.
She looked upward at the cloudless sky. It was a perfect August morning without a trace of humidity; it could have been a clear day in May. In her life, she’d never struck another person, and she didn’t think she’d ever do so again. Having been hit herself, she knew what that felt like: You felt dumb, ugly, and unlovable. Now that she’d hit Jay, she saw that she had diminished him. And herself. He had gotten bigger than life to her, and she’d had to punish him. Her body was shaky with feeling. The people leaving the church kept looking her way.
“Casey, can’t I talk to you?” Jay asked. The woman who’d given him the tissue tapped her chin, telling him to lean his head back. She must have been Ted’s fiancée, Ella.
Ted interjected, “Hey, man,” and Jay nodded, smiling weakly. Ted Kim was in charge of his most recent deal and had a say in his bonus.
Casey ignored this. She looked at Jay. “I want my things.” Each morning when she dressed at Ella’s, she remembered something else at his apartment—a tube of expensive mascara, hosiery, her favorite lace brassieres, even drugstore-brand deodorant—items she couldn’t afford to replace.
“You have things that are mine. I need them back.” Casey started to cry.
Ella’s eyes stung, and she could not look away.
Unu felt hot in the noon sun. The guy standing beside Ella, who was probably Ted, wore a black polo shirt and chinos. Certain no one cared now, Unu unwound his grape-colored print necktie, folded it, and socked it into his jacket pocket. Then he removed his suit jacket.
“Ella, you okay?” Unu asked. Ella nodded. “Maybe brunch is not such a good idea. Do you want me to call you later?”
“No, no, don’t go.” Ella grabbed his arm. “I am so sorry. This. . . this is Ted,” she said, her head turning left to right as though she were watching a tennis match. Ted shook Unu’s hand.
Ella didn’t know if and how she should introduce Casey to Unu. Casey couldn’t seem to stop sobbing. Ella felt livid. Ted had made this happen. She moved closer to Casey, drew her arm around her friend’s torso like a protective wing. “Are you all right? Should we ask Jay to go?”
Jay looked at Ella, more surprised that the woman knew his name than at her suggestion that he should leave.
Casey sniffled and leveled her gaze at Jay. They stood a few paces from each other. “You disappointed me,” she said calmly.
Jay exhaled, unable to respond. He reached over to take her hand.
“Don’t touch me, you son of a bitch.” As she said this, Casey realized that Mary Ellen had told him how to find her. “You prick.”
Casey’s harsh words were thrown like quiet punches, and Ella found herself wincing.
Ted smiled at Unu and all the while felt sorry for Jay for this dressing-down. Ted grabbed Ella’s hand, thinking that she shouldn’t be listening to this kind of speech, and he patted Unu on the arm, motioning for them to leave. Unu agreed, feeling like an intruder. Ella refused to budge from Casey’s side.
Unu peered at the lingering crowd. Using the voice of a college fraternity president—a position he’d once held at Dartmouth—he dismissed the onlookers: “Come on, folks, show’s over. Go on home, now. Go on.” He pulled up the Texas lilt in his voice, aware how a twang could soften a hard word.
Yes, Ella thought. That was kind. She then asked Casey, “Do you want us to go?”
Ella waited for Casey’s word.
“I’ll be okay. You should go to brunch.” Casey wanted everyone to go. She herself wanted to disappear, to vanish.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
At this, Ella nodded to Ted and Unu, and the three of them walked away. Every few steps, Ella turned to check on Casey. After two blocks, she lost sight of her friend.