Like Wind Against Rock: A Novel

by Nancy Kim

  Victor puts his bowl in the sink and sits down at the kitchen table. He watches me as I crack eggs into a bowl and fry bacon in the cast-iron skillet. The bacon sizzles and spits, and it fills the air with a delicious smell that justifies the mess. When I set his plate before him, he waits until I have seated myself. He eats with a hearty appetite, even though it is his second breakfast of the day.

  Afterward, I head for my study. Despite myself, I am anxious to find the notebook that I left on my desk. I do not yet know what I will tell Alice. Maybe I can tell her that I lost it? That it was in my backpack and somebody stole it?

  The notebook is not on my desk, nor in my file drawers.

  “Victor?”

  He is putting away our breakfast dishes, drying them carefully with a towel and stacking them in the cabinets. He turns expectantly.

  “Did you move anything from my office?”

  “Just that yellow envelope with the notebook in it. A woman from your office said it was hers and needed it urgently for some reason.” He turns away and continues drying the dishes. “I hope that was okay. It sounded important, and I wasn’t sure how long you would be gone . . .”

  I sense his discomfort and understand that he does not want to upset me during my recovery period. “It’s fine. It was hers anyway. Alice, right?”

  “Yes. We talked for a while. She seemed nice.”

  I have an unsettling feeling. “Did she stay long?”

  “It was dark by the time she left, so I guess she must have.”

  “She doesn’t talk much at work.”

  “Maybe she’s different at work,” Victor says.

  Work. I put on the kettle to boil water for tea. I have decided to take a few weeks off work as personal leave. I have never done that before. Not even when my wife died.

  “Dad?”

  Dad. There is the possibility, isn’t there, that he is really mine? Yet I know that I am only further deluding myself.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes,” I say without turning around.

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  I don’t answer him. The kettle whistles. I pour the water over the green tea leaves and breathe the fragrant rising steam.

  “I don’t have to go to Nicaragua. I can stay here, with you.”

  I turn and look at Victor. My son. Is he any less my son because we share none of the same genetic material?

  The scent of green tea reminds me of the first time Victor tasted sushi. It was the first time Crystal River disappeared, and he was about twelve years old. I had a fierce craving for sushi and sake but was afraid to leave the house in case she called. I made a quick trip to the supermarket and bought a package of fish. A gleaming crimson salmon with white marbled fat. I had never made sushi before, although I had of course eaten it numerous times. I sliced the salmon into thin pieces, then strapped each piece with a band of nori to a mound of rice that I had splashed with rice vinegar. I made fourteen pieces of sushi that I arranged on a platter and carried triumphantly to the dinner table. Victor eyed my offering suspiciously. I poured sake into my coffee mug and green tea into a teacup for my son.

  “Do I have to eat this?” he asked, looking at the sushi as though it might scuttle off the table.

  “No. You can make yourself a peanut butter sandwich if you want.”

  He watched me take a piece of homemade sushi and dip it into soy sauce. I smacked my lips. Out of solidarity, he took a piece of sushi himself. He nibbled at one end and gagged.

  “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want,” I said, taking another piece.

  He watched me eat and drink and then, as if unable to watch his abandoned father eat dinner alone, he stuffed the rest of his piece of sushi into his mouth. He chewed quickly and then swallowed. Then he took another piece, and another, not even bothering to disguise the fishy taste with soy sauce.

  That night, my stomach and my intestines rebelled. I spent half the time throwing up my dinner into the toilet and the other half spilling it out of my bunghole. The worst part was, I could hear my son having the same good time in the bathroom down the hall and I was too weak to help him.

  The next morning, I stumbled into the kitchen to see him sitting at the table with his head in his hands. In front of him was a glass of fizzy liquid.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  He snorted and pushed the glass toward me. “It’s for you. I already had some,” he said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  I gulped down the liquid, which made me want to throw up again but eventually succeeded in settling my stomach.

  “Dad?” Victor asks, bringing me back to the present. He is looking at me curiously, concern knitting his dark eyebrows together.

  “Do you remember when I made sushi for you? When your mother disappeared the first time?”

  Victor groans. “How could I forget? That was the worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever had.”

  “You didn’t want to eat it. Why didn’t you blame me?”

  “What good would that have done?” He clutches his stomach in recalled agony. “That was not a good time.”

  “I think it was the chicken I had cut up for dinner the previous night. I used the same knife.”

  “It might have been the fish. It smelled . . . fishy.” He wrinkles his nose, and I see him again at twelve, tall and bushy haired with gangly arms and legs. He is the same boy now, only filled out and serious. He seemed to grow up that night, as though he had thrown up his dinner and his childhood and flushed them both down the toilet. He never caused us any trouble. It was the other way around. He spent his youth watching over his parents.

  “I didn’t know that I was supposed to buy special sushi fish.” I smile at him, and he grins back at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago,” he says. “My insides have recovered.”

  “No,” I said. “Not only for that.”

  He looks out the window as tears fill his eyes. He wants to do good with his life, and I am so proud of him for that, for trying to make a difference, for continuing to have hope that what he does matters. I wonder when I stopped trying, when I stopped believing that I had the ability to change the world, or at least improve my small corner of it.

  “It’s okay, Dad.”

  “No. Not okay.” How much more can I expect from him? I could cling to him and hope that he could save us both, but I would only drag him under with me. No, it’s his turn now, and even though it hurts me to say it, I tell him, “Go. I want you to go. You will do much good there. I will be fine.”

  He nods. “You sure?”

  I walk over to him and embrace him tightly. “I am fine, my son.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I pull open the glass doors to the Restin Public Library and brace myself for the blast of air-conditioning. The end of August is always the hottest time of the year. I make my way past the circulation desk and to the administrative offices in the back of the high-ceilinged room. Even though it is still morning, groups of kids are sprawled on bean bags or on their stomachs, reading books as though they share one big living room. I remember the library as one of my favorite summer retreats, flipping through back issues of Seventeen and Teen magazines, reading Beverly Cleary, and, later, skimming the racy scenes of Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon books.

  When I get back to my desk, Elaine is grinning.

  “Sam’s back,” she says. I already know this because Victor and I have been texting each other. Mr. Park’s been on leave for over a month, but I am not supposed to know the reason why.

  Bertha smiles and takes a big bite of a blueberry muffin. “He looks great,” she says. Her red lipstick is peppered with crumbs.

  “Does he . . . feel okay?”

  “Yeah. We didn’t ask. Sarah said to act normal. She didn’t get into details.”

  “Oh.”

  “She said that he’s a little depressed. Nothing criminal,” Elaine says.

  “Not that we really thought that,”
Bertha adds hastily.

  “Of course not,” I say.

  When I get back to my desk, I check my phone. I have two messages. The first one is a voice mail from Rick. He is back in Portugal this week for work.

  “Hi, beautiful. Wish you were here with me in Lisbon.”

  The second is a text from Victor, from Nicaragua. Just checking in.

  I’ve been at my desk for only a few minutes when Mr. Park stops by our cubicles.

  “Anybody need a sugar lift?” he asks. He is holding a bag of cookies.

  “Sam, what did we ever do to deserve you?” Elaine asks, reaching for a snickerdoodle.

  “For holding down the fort when I was out,” he says matter-of-factly.

  “Everything okay?” Bertha asks, taking a chocolate chip cookie.

  “Yes,” he says with such conviction that we all believe him. Then he turns to me. “I need to talk to you about payroll.”

  Elaine and Bertha are playful, glad to have Mr. Park back.

  “Better go!” Elaine says, making a shooing motion with one hand and holding a cookie in the other.

  “And make sure that he gives us juicy raises!” Bertha mock whispers.

  I follow Mr. Park, feeling as though I have just been called into the principal’s office.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Mr. Park says, gesturing to the chair across from his desk. I sit in the stiff chair with the scratchy fabric that looks like old carpeting. He sits behind his desk and pulls up a file on his computer. We review the payroll from the previous month, and he types in a few corrections.

  “That way, IRS doesn’t come after us,” he says with a wink. I get up to leave.

  “So I guess you met my son, Victor.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think he’s quite fond of you.”

  “He’s a very sweet . . .” I am about to say kid but then catch myself and say, “Person.”

  “He told me that you asked for the notebook back.” He looks at me carefully. “I’m sorry I did not translate it.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. I know you’ve . . . had other things to deal with. I didn’t want you to have to read it when you were so . . . busy.”

  “Actually, I read all of it. But I did not wish to translate it.”

  He read it, but he did not wish to translate it?

  “Why not?”

  He frowns slightly and looks away.

  “What does it say?”

  He sighs heavily and then says, “It is a work in progress. Your father’s private thoughts . . .”

  His voice drifts off like smoke dissipating, and he suddenly seems very tired. His shoulders slump, and the skin on his face sags heavily. Although I am confused and upset by his behavior, I don’t want to push, given what he’s just been through.

  “I should let you get some rest, um, get back to work,” I say, and then slip out the door.

  The exchange with Mr. Park has left me feeling off balance. He seemed cagey, or maybe he was just exhausted. What possessed me to give him my dad’s notebook, anyway?

  But I know. I did it out of desperation. And hope. Hope that I would gain some insight into who my father really was. Hope that it would reveal how much he loved me, that he loved me, despite his detachment.

  Then a thought occurs to me. Could Mr. Park be trying to protect me? This would explain his strange behavior. Is there something in my father’s notebook that he doesn’t want me to know?

  “Want a cookie?” Bertha asks, offering me the bag. I shake my head. She shrugs and takes another for herself. I want to grab the cookie out of her hand and tell her, “You can’t keep eating these if you want to lose weight!” But then it occurs to me that maybe Bertha doesn’t really want to lose weight. Maybe what she really wants is another cookie. Maybe what she really wants is for everyone else to accept her the way she is so that she can stop pretending to want to diet.

  “I like your skirt,” I say, gesturing with my chin. She looks down, as though she needed to be reminded of what she is wearing.

  “Thanks. I got it at the mall. It’s a size fourteen, but it’s still a little tight . . .”

  “It looks really nice on you.”

  The setting sun glows triumphantly across the sky, reflecting off my windshield and making it hard to see clearly, so it’s not until I am at the house that I notice Janine’s car across the street. I pull into the driveway and park. I get out of the car as she walks over to me.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hi,” I say, slamming the door shut. I am glad to see her, even though I try to hide it. It’s as if we are in junior high school again.

  “I thought I’d see if I could catch you. I know you’re really mad at me, and I just wanted to apologize in person before you totally cut me out. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

  I don’t say anything. It makes me uncomfortable to see Janine so sincere and serious. We walk over to the front stoop and sit down, even though clouds of gnats are swirling around our heads in the twilight.

  “I would invite you in, but my mom’s home,” I say.

  “That’s okay.”

  The brilliant tangerine sky softens to a pink mist.

  “Remember Robbie Colt?” she asks suddenly.

  “I still can’t believe you slow danced with him.”

  Robbie Colt was the love of my life in the seventh grade, only nobody knew that except Janine. I made her swear up and down a hundred times that she would never tell anyone about my crush—literally a hundred. I made a scratch mark each time Janine recited, “I swear I won’t tell another soul about Alice’s crush on Robbie Colt,” and I made a horizontal line across four marks every fifth recitation. As luck would have it, Robbie asked Janine to dance at the seventh-grade dance. She glanced apologetically at me and then took his hand and pressed up against him to a duet by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie.

  “It seemed rude to refuse.”

  “And to ‘Endless Love,’ too. The most romantic song of the eighties.”

  We laugh. Remembering that time makes me feel forgiving.

  “Boy, were you mad,” she says.

  “Yeah, I was.” I gave Janine a tongue-lashing about loyalty and betrayal and then didn’t speak to her for two weeks, an eternity when you are twelve years old. That’s when we came up with our Rules of Friendship.

  “He had wings,” I say, remembering how his hair was layered around his face. “Plus, he could skateboard really well.”

  “I ran into him when I was in Seattle last year. He’s the CEO of some lumber company up there.”

  “You should have held on to him. It might have worked.”

  Janine is silent. I look at her, and she is wiping her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  “I really don’t care about Jim.”

  She nods. “I know. He was an ass.”

  “I wonder what he’s up to?”

  “Nothing. He peaked early, and now he works as a bank teller or something.”

  “Figures.”

  “Are you still mad at me?”

  “I think so,” I say. “I don’t really trust you.”

  “You never did,” she says. We’re both talking in a slightly joking tone, but we are both dead serious.

  “Sure I did.”

  “I trusted you, too,” she says.

  “I’m sorry, too,” I say. “I should have told him no. I didn’t even want to go to the Homecoming Dance.”

  “But he was so cute.”

  “I never thought he was,” I say. “But he was popular. I thought dating him would catapult us onto the A-list at Green Hills High School.”

  “So you were taking one for the team.” She is smiling, and I know that she is no longer angry with me and I am no longer angry with her. Instead, I am overwhelmed with love for Janine, my oldest and dearest friend, who loves and forgives so easily and is willing to keep putting herself out there again and again. We know each other’s weaknesses and flaws, and despite our acts of betrayal, we�
��ve always been there for each other.

  “I should have asked you first,” I say. “We should have had a conversation and decided together. We could have schemed our way to the popular clique.”

  “But we never did, and even now, we don’t really talk about the big stuff. The really important stuff. Like why didn’t you tell me that you were having problems with Louis? That’s what best friends talk about. Marriage problems. Boy problems. When you don’t share something that’s so huge, it’s almost like a betrayal.”

  I shrug. “I didn’t realize we were having marital problems.”

  “But you must have. It’s hard to believe that things are going great and then, one day out of the blue, he decides to ask for a divorce. That just sounds strange.”

  “We never fought.”

  “I just got frustrated. I’m sorry that I lost it with you.”

  “But you really believe it, don’t you? The things that you said? That I’m dishonest and emotionally closed off.”

  “No. Yes. No.”

  I look at her, and she shakes her head. “No, I don’t believe it. But yes, I do think you are not fully honest with yourself. Maybe I watched too much of that Oprah show growing up, but I think you are afraid of being emotionally vulnerable.”

  She looks tortured, her face blotchy and confused, and I think, You are such a pain in the ass, and I’m grateful for it. I’m glad I have someone in my life who expects more from me and who wants me to expect more for myself. I tell her then what I haven’t admitted to anyone, even myself.

  “I wanted to have kids and Louis didn’t. I wanted to have them for a long time, and then everyone around us started to have them . . .”

  “Except me.”

  “Except you, and I told him that I wanted to start trying. And you know what? He went and got a vasectomy. Without telling me. He said that he told me when we met that he never wanted to have kids, and he meant it.”

  “That’s why you guys are divorcing?”

  “No.” I shook my head slowly. “That’s why we got married.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “I know. It was weird, tortured, guilt-ridden logic on my part. I tried to convince myself that it didn’t really matter that I’d never have kids. Because he was right. When we met, neither of us wanted to have kids, and now I was changing the deal. And after he had the operation, I felt like I had to marry him because it was my fault, you know? He did it because he had me. I couldn’t throw him back out into the dating world. Who would want him now? I mean, I know there are women out there who don’t want kids, but it just reduces the pool.”