by Nancy Kim
Maybe if Alice had been born ugly, she would be happier. Instead, she has a pleasant smile, fair complexion, long legs, a trim figure. She is smart, but what has she done with her intelligence? She got married—and what does she have to show for that sacrifice? No children, no house, no money. At least they should have love, but I don’t see it. In fact, I have never seen it. So why did she marry?
I don’t worry that they are experiencing marital troubles, like my wife does. In fact, I would be pleased if that were the case. Maybe then, she would wake up out of her mediocrity. She might then be spared the kind of passionless life that so many of us end up leading.
I close the notebook. I was wrong. This man is not a kindred spirit. He is nothing like me. I would never speak so cruelly about my child. His harsh words would crush Alice if she read them.
This man has everything, and yet he is dissatisfied. His wife is loving. His daughter beautiful and kind. Yet, he has nothing but sour words to say about them. He cannot appreciate what is right in front of him. He is a fool. A fool with memories that refuse to be buried, that can do much damage to those he left behind.
I have a bad feeling, a premonition. It tells me that I should stop, that I should read no farther. But if I stopped reading now and returned the diary to Alice Markson, I would always wonder about the rest of the story. My mind has already started to imagine. It has the ability to concoct the most improbable scenarios. I would not be able to erase the questions that have arisen in my mind, that are becoming harder to ignore.
His voice beckons me. Although I want to put it away, I open the notebook and continue reading, if only to disprove my imagination, if only to prove myself wrong.
February 26, 2010
Shirley and I had made plans to meet again, in the woods, in three days’ time. We always made sure to set an irregular schedule—different days, different times, and different meeting spots. Sometimes she was to arrive first, other times I was. We were never to be seen walking together. If we passed each other on the street, we ignored each other, although I couldn’t help myself from looking at her out of the corners of my eyes.
It was late autumn, and the air was crisp that day. Orange maple leaves drifted down and landed in my hair. I crunched them underfoot as I paced anxiously. I glanced around, wondering whether Shirley had gotten lost or held up by her parents. I waited until the wind turned mean and chilly and the light had faded from the sky. I hurried home, already thinking of some lie to tell my mother for why I was late. I wondered whether I had gotten the date wrong, or the time. I hoped Shirley wouldn’t be mad at me. I went back to the same place the next day, at the same time, thinking that maybe I had misremembered the day. But she did not show. I wandered by the missionary center where her parents were assigned. I was surprised to see new faces passing out tins of Spam and chocolate bars and cotton T-shirts. I learned that the Smiths had gone back to America so that their daughter would be properly educated. I wondered whether Shirley had known this when we last met. I wondered why they had left so suddenly. Shirley had become friendly with some of the local girls. Wouldn’t her parents have given her a chance to say goodbye to them? Wouldn’t they have wanted to let us know that they were leaving?
In the end, I guess we didn’t warrant anything. They had done enough, they probably figured. The Lord’s work was done. Perhaps they knew that many of our neighbors did not really believe in Christ. They took the free handouts but continued their ancestor worship on holidays, their visits to fortune-tellers and shamans. Maybe the Smiths were fed up with the deception, the hungry mouths, the grasping hands. Or maybe they were just tired of the lack of friends, and missed their home tongues and the smell and taste of familiar food and the sight of faces that looked like their own. Those are longings that I understand and for which I cannot fault them.
But even then, I knew what had really happened. Even though I invent other reasons, other explanations, I cannot alter the truth. Because what Shirley told me during our last visit is something that I wish with all my heart had never happened, but it was the obvious consequence of our love. I can still see her eyes filling with tears as she searches my face, for . . . what?
“What would you do if I had a baby?”
My heart stops now as I remember, as it did then.
“Why?”
“Just what if? What if I got pregnant? It could happen, you know. Because of what we’ve been doing. It could happen.”
She is watching me closely. I don’t speak. I only stare back at her in terror. Then she smiles.
“I scared you, didn’t I?”
I smile with relief. It was only a test.
“But what would you do?”
I shrug. I am only a boy, after all. Only fifteen years old. What can she expect from me? I reach for her and pull her to me. Her kiss is a little colder than before, her lips pressed hard against her teeth.
March 1, 2010
Last night, Shirley returned to me. She caressed my cheek and my hair.
She placed a finger to my lips and whispered, “Sssshhhh.” I woke with a start. My lips felt cold, and then the feeling spread to the rest of my body. My wife continued to sleep soundly beside me.
It was then that I realized the reason for Shirley’s visits. She was dead, and she wanted me to join her.
SECRETS AND LIES
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My teacup is empty. The house is dark. I have been reading for longer than I intended. I hear my son’s footsteps in the hallway.
“Appa?”
I start to hide the notebook and then remember that he cannot read hangul. For once, I am grateful for that. I am ashamed of what I have done, that I have read so much. This is not something that I should be reading. It is full of secrets. Secrets and lies.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“Saving electricity. Fossil fuel. Greenhouse gases. Global warming.”
He smiles. “Did you eat?”
“Not yet,” I say. “And you?”
He lifts a paper bag into the air. “Macho’s Tacos burritos. With hot carrots.”
“And jalapeños?”
“Of course.” He flips on the switch, and light fills the room. My son is wearing faded blue jeans and a well-worn T-shirt with a large blue square across one shoulder. The square means nothing; it’s merely a design. My son tends to wear T-shirts with graphics that don’t mean anything but look interesting. It’s just one more thing about him I don’t fully understand. His hair is ruffled from running around all day. If I didn’t know any better, I would think he had spent all morning trying to look artfully disheveled. His skin is clear, as it has always been, even in adolescence. My son got only the best genes from his mother and me. He inherited his mother’s smooth complexion, his height and strength from her side of the family, all large Midwesterners of Norwegian ancestry. Her family had some professional athletes in the bloodline somewhere, at least one football player and a distance runner. From me, he got the thick head of hair, so black that it sometimes looks blue. The straight white teeth, the high cheekbones—those are also my genetic contributions. Only his eyes reflect the combination of us. Dark as mine but wider, with her thick lashes. They are double folded, sankapoohl, but they are still Asian. Sometimes when I look at him, I can see his mother. Other times, it is my own gaze staring back at me.
He gets plates from the cupboard, even though he would do without them if he were alone.
“Traffic was terrible on the freeway.”
“It always is.”
“My arm still hurts from the shot.”
He rubs his arm. His departure date hangs over my head like the sword of Damocles. I take a bite of the burrito. Victor is finished with his burrito before I am even done with my second bite.
“You must remember to swallow.”
He laughs. “I’m storing it away, like a camel. No Macho’s Tacos in Nicaragua.”
“Yes, but surely tacos.”
“Nobody makes them like
Manny,” he says.
“No, probably safe to say that’s true.”
“Too bad I can’t bring along a secret stash.”
“Wouldn’t last the plane ride. Anyway, those tacos are a national treasure. Security wouldn’t let them out of the country.”
“It looks like I’m going to have to check luggage for the first time in my life.”
“What, did they issue a ban on backpacks?”
“Naw, but I should bring a stash of toothpaste and sunscreen.”
I wonder why he feels the need to save the world. His idealism is understandable, expected. I remember feeling the same way once, believing that I could change the world. But he has a restlessness that puzzles me. I wonder whether it is because his mother left us. But then again, I believe that everything is a consequence of her leaving. It’s been more than six months since her death, and in my mind she is still the agitator.
“Your mother would worry about you being down there.”
Victor gives me a sidelong glance, head tilted downward. “Yeah, maybe. But she’s dead.” His voice is gentle, a caress that he won’t give me, constrained as we are by the boundaries of being male. He gathers up the remains of his dinner. He doesn’t look at me. He still feels guilty although I’m not quite sure why. Maybe because he has recovered, at least by comparison. He throws his trash away and heads upstairs.
“I’m going out later tonight with some friends from law school.”
“Another going-away party?”
He smiles. Victor has many friends who will miss him, but not as much as I will. He has been living with me since his law school graduation in late May. At first, it was awkward having someone else in the house. I had lived alone for so many years. Victor had moved out of the house when he went away to college. I think he wanted to escape the drama at home, his mother’s constant disappearances and reappearances. She paid him too much attention, and me too little. She cherished him, but the way she treated me pained him. Victor is like that, empathetic and caring. I think he did not want to choose sides, although he couldn’t help it. He has always been my ally. During the summers, he found jobs and rented an apartment instead of coming home. It was easier, he explained, he didn’t need a car in Boston like he did in Orange County. It was easier for him to find work. He made enough during the summers to pay for a significant part of his tuition, cobbling together money from grants, loans, and other sources to make up the rest, asking me to cover only what he absolutely couldn’t manage. I was proud of him, even though I missed him. And I was grateful that he didn’t come home, especially the first couple of summers after Crystal River left me. She had gone before, but only for a night or a couple of days. But the last time she left, she took some of her things, and I knew she wouldn’t be coming back. I needed time alone then, to fall apart. I could fake it at work, for a few hours. I could distract myself with meetings and personnel matters, order forms and reports. But by the end of the workday when I was home again, my heart grew heavy, my spirit diminished. I could no longer ignore the questions that repeated themselves in my brain. What should I do? What should I have done? Alone in my empty house, I opened a bottle of wine and drank. I fell asleep in front of the television. I slept in dirty sheets and left the curtains unopened. In the morning, I showered, dressed in clean clothes, shaved, and brushed my teeth. I was careful to present to the world an unfractured self. Was there anything more pathetic than an abandoned husband? I didn’t need to inspire any more pity than I already received.
It was worse to work with women during that time. They sensed my hurt and gathered around me protectively, not saying anything but giving me searching looks to see whether I was okay, not suicidal or depressed, wanting to help somehow. Their pity made me feel even more pathetic. They tried to help by doing my work for me, not realizing that I welcomed the distraction. I occupied myself so that I wouldn’t have to go to lunch with anyone and endure sympathetic, pitying, well-intentioned looks. Then I rushed home to escape the stifling atmosphere, only to remember that I had nothing to rush home to. The closer I got to home, the lighter my foot became on the pedal, until I was coasting the last block. I always sat in the car for a while, sometimes an hour, before getting out. Time was my enemy then. “Time heals all wounds,” everyone said. But time was my tormentor. It created its own hell.
How did I recover?
I didn’t. But I got tired of being sad and dirty and drunk. The whole ritual of mourning became tedious. I was bored out of my depression.
But recovery? I did not recover. When I think of what happened, my whole body turns gelatinous. The betrayal of abandonment turns my stomach like eating raw chicken. It clouds my mind like sleep. How could I have been so wrong? Did she deceive me, or did I deceive myself?
I think of Alice’s father’s notebook. I realize now what draws me to his voice. It is not because he reminds me of myself. It is because he reminds me of my ex-wife.
March 7, 2010
Sometimes when Shirley visits me, she comes in various disguises, yet I always know that it is her. Sometimes she has a parrot’s face or roars like a lioness. Other times, she shines as though she were made of gold like a television angel. But I still know that underneath the disguise, it is her.
These visits have left me tired and distracted during the day. Today, I poked the lip of one of my longtime patients without even realizing it until I noticed the blood. She was furious and stormed out of my office with the napkin still clipped around her neck like a baby’s bib. The patients in the waiting room were quite alarmed. I called my receptionist Rachel, even though her name is Rose. I caught her whispering to Maria, my hygienist, the two of them furtively casting concerned glances in my direction. Perhaps they suspect the onset of Alzheimer’s. But what I have is the opposite, because it will not let me forget.
I know that Shirley’s visit last night is the reason for my annoyance with my wife this evening. I realize that my wife is not to blame for my disinterest, but it doesn’t make me ashamed or less annoyed. In fact, it only compounds my irritation toward her, which has become something resembling anger. Maybe even hate. I want to provoke her, but she remains calm. She doesn’t even raise her voice at me, as though she knows that this is what I want. I am waiting for a justification, anything to exonerate my guilty thoughts. But she is patient and kind. Dinner is ready every night. She does not expect me to help her. The only sign that she harbors ill feelings toward me is in the cup of coffee that she handed me this morning. There were tiny bubbles on the surface of the black liquid. When I mentioned them to her, she feigned concern. “It must be the dishwashing detergent, darling. I will be certain to use less next time.” But I knew it was not detergent. I watched her carefully, but my wife is as deceptive as a crocodile lying motionless on a riverbank. She looked back at me without blinking. I took a sip of coffee. When she smiled, I knew for certain that the bitterness that I tasted was not ground Colombian beans but the foamy saliva of a resentful Korean wife. It was my penance, what I deserved. I noisily slurped the rest of my coffee. Good to the last drop.
Tonight, I will make love to my wife with a ferocity that she will not expect. I know that when I close my eyes, she will disappear and it will be Shirley who lies beneath me. I will not open my eyes until the morning.
March 8, 2010
My coffee was without foam or bitterness this morning. My wife sang softly to herself in the kitchen, happy for the loving she received last night. Why can’t I be satisfied with this? But I can’t.
I felt the tightening in my chest again today. I was at the breakfast table. My wife looked at me. Her face was pale with fright. But then the feeling went away, and I pushed aside her concerns and went to work.
I felt tired all day, so I came home early. My wife was watching a show on television. It was a home-improvement show where strangers fix up each other’s houses. She scribbled down notes on a pad of paper.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” She put dow
n the pad of paper. I walked over and lifted it up. She had scribbled the words quartz counter and French vanilla paint.
“What’s this?”
“Ideas. Audience can give suggestions on how to improve the house. My suggestions usually match the experts! My ideas could raise the value of the house by many thousands!”
I threw the pad of paper onto the table at an angle so that it skidded and fell to the floor.
“This is how you waste your day.” I turned and went upstairs.
A few minutes later, I returned downstairs to get a glass of water, as I was feeling rather warm and my face was flushed. My wife was still sitting in front of the television, her hands on her knees, staring with sad resignation at the pad of paper that she had not yet retrieved. When she heard me walk into the kitchen, she looked up and her expression changed. She smiled and rose and rushed over to get the glass out of the cabinet for me, suppressing the melancholy that had marred her features only moments earlier.