Like Wind Against Rock: A Novel

by Nancy Kim

  “Can I help you?”

  A man’s voice startles me. I turn my head and look up. He has dark-brown hair, dark eyes, and an angry expression. If I hadn’t already been rendered speechless at being caught snooping, he would have taken my breath away. Even through the fog created by fear, I can see that he is gorgeous.

  “I . . . I was . . . I was looking for something. Who are you?”

  “I’m Victor. Mr. Park’s son. Who are you?”

  “Alice. I work with your father.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A notebook. I gave it to him to translate.”

  His eyes narrow, but his expression softens. He no longer looks so angry, even though he still looks gorgeous. “Notebook?”

  “It was in a yellow envelope.”

  His entire handsome face seems to dilate with comprehension. “It’s not here. But I know where it is.”

  Victor has carefully written the directions on a sheet of paper, along with his phone number in case I get lost, but I manage to keep his green Subaru in sight as we weave through the quaint streets of Restin. I see him check for me in his rearview mirror, and he pulls over a couple of times when another car comes between us. We drive through the four blocks of downtown Restin, past the Cape Cod–style cottages, and up a steep hill to where the style of the houses changes to California Craftsman. Mr. Park’s house is one of the cozy ones, with a river rock chimney and a big wooden porch. Brightly colored perennials line the walkway. I feel a stab of longing for the life that I could be living if I were the type of person who got what she wanted. I turn off the engine and walk over to where Victor waits for me, on the flagstone walkway leading to my dream house.

  The house is just as inviting inside as it is from the outside, with a pot rack and wooden floors, built-in cabinets, and original molding from the thirties.

  “Did you grow up here?” I ask. He nods. He probably has no idea how envious I am. There is nothing flashy about the house. It is small by Orange County standards, and kind of dark, with no trendy upgrades or expensive furnishings. But it is exactly how I imagine my dream house. There is a red brick fireplace, which is not strictly necessary in Southern California, and the kitchen window overlooks the hills. I can see myself charmingly dusted with flour, taking a break from kneading bread dough to gaze out the window at the sunrise.

  “Do you bake bread?” I ask.

  He looks at me with an expression that is either puzzled or amused. “Usually it’s Dad who does that, not me.”

  I nod.

  “Do you live here, too?”

  “Just this summer.” He turns away from me and heads down a hallway. “I’ll get your notebook.”

  I sit on the couch and gaze around the room. A comfortable-looking cracked leather chair is to my right. Books fill the built-in shelving. A stack of books is neatly placed on either side of the couch. Mr. Park apparently reads everything—I see biographies of celebrities and war heroes, short story collections, scholarly monographs. Framed photographs are scattered on the fireplace mantel. I get off the couch to take a closer look. There is a picture of Victor as a boy, about four or five. He had the same round brown eyes and thick brown hair that he has now, but as a boy, he looked like a different type of woodland creature, a bunny or a fawn, instead of the fox he is now. There is another picture, of a young Mr. Park with an arm around the waist of a woman with wild, feathered blonde hair. He is wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, and she is wearing a denim miniskirt and a striped tube top. Judging from their clothes and hairstyles, the picture was taken in the late seventies or early eighties, the time when groovy was shifting into bitchin’.

  Victor returns, holding the large yellow envelope containing my father’s notebook.

  “Is this your mom?” I ask.

  He nods.

  “She’s beautiful.” She is, in a footloose, free-spirited way. “Your parents look very happy together.” I remember too late that Mr. Park’s wife recently died.

  Victor eyes me carefully, as though he can’t figure out whether I’m well meaning and just an idiot, or an insensitive busybody. I’m usually more respectful of other people’s privacy, but I feel very comfortable with Victor, even though we’ve just met. Usually people this good looking make me nervous. But other than the first few minutes when he caught me snooping around his father’s desk, he feels familiar, as though somehow we already know each other.

  “Here you go,” he says, handing me the envelope. This is my signal to leave, but I don’t want to. I feel happy here, in Mr. Park’s house, in my dream house. I want to know everything about the people who live here. I picture myself sitting in the leather chair, reading the Sunday New York Times. I can smell the baking bread.

  “What does this house look like in the mornings when the sun comes up?”

  He gives me a funny look, which I certainly deserve. Strangely, I have no qualms about asking Victor questions. “I don’t know. I’m usually asleep.”

  “I bet it’s beautiful. I bet the morning sun’s rays make the room all orange.” Victor just stands and stares at me, waiting for me to leave. But how can I leave when I want to live here?

  “Can I have a glass of water? Then I’ll have to hit the road.”

  No loud protestations from Victor at that. He practically runs to the kitchen, fills my glass from the tap, and hustles it back to me.

  “The water is delicious,” I say. “Is it filtered?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The water probably just tastes better here.” I take another long sip and look around. “You must do a lot of cooking,” I say, glancing at the pot rack. This is exactly how my kitchen would look. In the mornings, orange light would stream in through the windows. I would putter around in fuzzy slippers with a cup of strong coffee, relishing the quiet before my family, including a friendly yellow Lab, awoke.

  “I’ll take your glass,” Victor says.

  I reluctantly hand it to him. I open the envelope and peek inside. “Was there anything else, besides this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Other papers? Your dad was going to translate this for me.”

  He shakes his head. “Just that, on his desk.”

  “I guess he didn’t have time to get to it.”

  “What is that, anyway? My dad was always so absorbed when he was reading it . . .”

  I look at the notebook in my hand. This old thing? “Something that your dad was supposed to translate. It’s in Korean, and I don’t read Korean . . .”

  “Yeah, but what is it?”

  “I don’t know—that’s why I wanted your father to translate it, so I could find out what it was.”

  He sighs, very slightly, but I hear it. I am being coy, and neither of us likes that. “Okay, I think it’s my dad’s diary. I dug it out of the garbage after he died.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “I don’t know what made me do it. I just couldn’t stand the thought of it being thrown away. It’s all that I have left of him.” To my horror, I am suddenly crying. Victor puts one hand on my shoulder and helps me sit on the couch as though I am a very old, very fragile creature.

  “I didn’t even know that he kept a diary. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him write anything other than a check. My mom threw all his stuff away . . .” I ramble this between hiccupping sobs, feeling relieved and unhinged at the same time. The sunlight warms the room, casting a glow on the mahogany walls and the wood floor. This is where I belong.

  “Maybe that’s better than hanging on to his things forever.”

  “Now you sound like my friend Janine,” I say, although Janine is no longer my friend. “She always tells me to move on, get on with my life . . .”

  “She sounds like me, talking to Dad about Mom. She died in January, but they had been separated for years. Dad just couldn’t let go.” He shakes his head. “I mean, just look at this place. It’s like she’s still here. Her pictures are everywhere. Her clothes are still in the closet
s.”

  “He must have really loved her.”

  “He still does. Unfortunately.”

  Then he tells me that his father is in the hospital because he tried to commit suicide. “I knew that he was depressed, but he’s always been a little depressed, ever since Mom left him when I was in college. When I came home, I saw him lying on the couch with an empty bottle of wine next to him. I thought that was strange, since Dad doesn’t drink much. He drank a lot after Mom died, and then he stopped. He’ll have a glass with me sometimes . . .” His voice drifts, and he looks off into the distance. Sitting so close to him on the couch, I can see that his eyes are brown, but lighter than mine, almost golden in the center. “He wouldn’t wake up. He had taken a bunch of sleeping pills.”

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “They want to keep him for a while, just to be sure.” His eyes fill with tears. “I can’t help worrying about how Dad will be when I’m in Nicaragua.”

  “Do you have to go?”

  He shrugs. “A buddy of mine from college is counting on me. He made a fortune in software, and now he wants to pay it forward. He’s starting these schools all over the world for kids who live in rural places. The kids are counting on me. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Not this, necessarily, but something useful. It’s why I trained to be an EMT. It’s why I went to law school. I didn’t want to feel like that anymore.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I was wasting my life. Like I wasn’t contributing to anything. Every day that passed . . . I didn’t want my life to be that. A bunch of days that had gone by too quickly, that just passed. I want to make something of them. I want them to count.”

  The blood rushes to my cheeks. His words are a rebuke to my very existence. What do I have to show for all my days? A failed marriage. No real career. No savings. No family of my own. I think of my aging ovaries, the precious egg that falls away every month.

  “I keep trying to tell Dad. He’s been walking around in a daze since Mom left—wasting the time he has.”

  “For how long will you be gone?”

  “I’m not sure. A year at least. But now I’m not sure I should go at all.”

  He looks off into the distance again, and I know that he is thinking the same thing that I am. His mother . . . and now his father?

  “How did your dad die?” he asks. For some reason, the question doesn’t seem intrusive. I think he could ask me anything, and I’d be fine with it.

  “They said it was stress-induced cardiomyopathy. Not sure what caused the stress. It was kind of sudden.”

  “Some people call it broken heart syndrome,” he says, which I guess he knows from being an EMT. “It happens with old married couples. When one of them dies, the other one dies, too. Of a broken heart.”

  “My mom’s still alive. She seems pretty happy, too.”

  He smiles. “Good for her.”

  We sit in silence until the light from the setting sun beams golden throughout the house, until it turns into the dusky rose of twilight. I guess it should feel awkward, but it doesn’t. The thought crosses my mind that maybe I should leave, that maybe Victor wants to be alone. But somehow, I know that he doesn’t, that he wants me to just sit with him, that my presence comforts him.

  His phone beeps, startling us both. We must have fallen asleep on the couch.

  “It’s the clinic,” he says. “I have to go.”

  “Let me know how he is,” I say. We exchange numbers, and he promises to give me an update.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Victor is waiting for me in the lobby of the clinic where I was checked in after my hospital stay. I have been away from home for eleven days. My head aches, and I feel groggy. A weight presses against me from all directions, as though even gravity is working against me. I feel that soon I will be compressed into nothing, a mere cube the size of a gambling die. Victor stands when he sees me and walks over to take my hospital goodie bag, filled with my old gown, a small bottle of shampoo, and some sticky, overly fragrant lotion.

  He gives me a hug in the middle of the waiting room, and I can only close my eyes with relief. He has not changed, it is only me. He reaches for my elbow, as though he fears that I might collapse before we make it to the car, and together we make our way to the parking garage.

  When you are young, there are things that you do that will be blamed on youth. Indiscretions and impulsive behavior are expected. A failure to take risks can even be viewed as a character flaw. I know, because I was one of those children who was labeled as overly cautious, fearful, and—perhaps the worst of all—unadventurous. While my brothers learned to surf and dive off the cliffs of Maui, I stuck to the earth and cerebral pursuits. I spent sunny days on the floor of our modest childhood home, reading books too dull and dense for my siblings. They ran around the island shirtless and barefoot, kicking up dirt as children and, as teenagers, trailing broken hearts in their reckless wake. Perhaps it was their very wildness that calmed me, being the youngest of the three boys. I was not the baby of the family—that was my sister, Miki. Although we were only eighteen months apart, I anointed myself her caretaker and watched over her, ensuring that she didn’t get trampled by her older brothers. My mother would shake her head at the latest recounting of her sons’ misadventures and then say, “If it weren’t for Sammy, I would think it’s living on the island that makes the boys so wild!” I was proof that she made the right choice by staying put while so many of her friends married and moved to the mainland, to places like New York and Boston and Los Angeles, to high-paying, stressful jobs and what my father referred to as the “rat race.” Whenever he said that, I imagined a bunch of rats underneath skyscrapers, wearing numbered jerseys and racing toward a finish line marked by cheddar cheese slices. The irony, of course, was that my brothers eventually settled down, having sowed their wild oats in their youth. They moved to the same neighborhood, married Korean Hawaiian women, and had beautiful children.

  But not me. I married Crystal River and, in doing so, defied convention and parental expectation for the first time in my life. My reward was a lifetime of deceit and betrayal. Even the beautiful child I thought was mine belonged to another. Crystal River and I were cursed from the beginning, and our love—such as it was—was never meant to be in the form of flesh and blood. I should have known that there could be no living, breathing proof of a union that was based upon illusion and deception.

  We had tried for many years, and I had resigned myself to a childless marriage. Why did I not find it strange that the miracle should happen after so many years? But our—their—baby did look like a combination of both of us. It had never occurred to me that she would take a lover who resembled me. Even later, when she stayed out all night and didn’t explain, I never guessed that the men would look anything like me, and I suspect even now that they did not. Her other lovers were men she met at art fairs and bars, not at libraries. I pictured them with graying ponytails and tattoos, not broad Asian faces and hairless chests. But then, they were not substitutes for her true love. She already had me for that.

  In the aftermath of reading something so painful, one does not think as clearly as one might. Instead, there are questions that need answers. The urgency to know overtakes rationality. It was in this state that I opened the medicine cabinet in search of the sleeping pills that I’d been prescribed several years ago when I suffered sleepless nights after Crystal River moved out. I swallowed seven without water, masochistically savoring the bitter taste on my tongue. Then three more with a dry white wine that I’d opened many weeks earlier and saved to use for cooking. The fruity notes had dissipated into the refrigerated air, leaving behind a stark medicinal flavor. I carried the bottle with me as I lay on the couch in our living room, lifting it to my lips and liking the out-of-control feeling that it gave me. I gazed at the picture of my wife and me in happier times. I could see so clearly the hunger in her eyes that I then mistook for vitality. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep. I was
n’t trying to kill myself, as the doctor put it when she asked, “Were you trying to kill yourself?” No, I wasn’t even thinking of myself, or death, or anything other than trying to reach Crystal River. I wanted to sleep, to dream of her, as her lover had done, and if that meant that my slumber needed to be eternal, so be it. It was one more sacrifice that I was willing to make. The mind is not rational in moments of great anguish, and I hadn’t thought my actions through very clearly. I wanted to see her, if only for the last time. I wanted her to call to me as she had called to her lover.

  But Crystal River never came.

  “Are you awake?”

  I lift my head and open my eyes. I realize that we are home, even though I have no recollection of being on the freeway or stopping at any traffic lights. My son—can I still call him my son, even if we share not a single drop of blood? Even though he could exist even if I had never lived?—wears dark sunglasses that hide his eyes. His profile is dramatic, like a movie star’s. There are many girls who would follow him to his village in Central America. It is a miracle that he aspires to something greater than fulfillment of his physical and material needs.

  I wait until Victor comes around to open my car door. He offers me his arm and grabs my hand with his own. I stumble on the gravel in the driveway, and his grip tightens around my hand so I do not fall. Like this, we head up the flagstone walkway together.

  I sleep for two days. On the morning of the third day, I wake up ravenous. I walk into the kitchen, where Victor is eating cereal at the kitchen sink.

  “Sit down,” I say. “I’m going to make breakfast.”