by Nicola Yoon
He’s silent for a long time.
Finally I can’t take any more. “It’s okay,” I say. “I know I’m out of options. I don’t even know why I came here.”
I make a move to get up, but he waves me back down. He steeples his fingers again and looks around the office. I follow his eyes to the unpacked boxes lining the wall just to his right. Behind him, a folding ladder rests against an empty bookshelf.
“We’re just moving in,” he says. “The construction guys were supposed to be done weeks ago, but you know what they say about plans.” He smiles and touches the bandage on his forehead.
“Are you okay, Mr. Fitz—”
“I’m fine,” he says, rubbing at the bandage.
He picks up a framed picture from his desk and looks at it. “This is the only thing I’ve unpacked so far.” He turns the picture so I can see it. It’s him with his wife and two children. They seem happy.
I smile politely.
He puts it back down and looks at me. “You’re never out of options, Ms. Kingsley.”
It takes me a second to realize that he’s back to talking about my case. I lean forward in my seat. “Are you saying you can fix this?”
“I’m one of the best immigration lawyers in this city,” he says.
“But how?” I ask. I lay my hands on his desk, press my fingers against the wood.
“Let me go see a judge friend of mine. He’ll be able to get the Voluntary Removal reversed so at least you don’t have to leave tonight. After that we can file an appeal with the BIA—the Board of Immigration Appeals.”
He checks his watch. “Just give me a couple of hours.”
I open my mouth to ask for more facts and specifics. I find them reassuring. The poem comes back to me. “Hope” is the thing with feathers. I close my mouth. For the second time today I’m letting go of the details. Maybe I don’t need them. It would be so nice to let someone else take over this burden for a little while.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers. I feel it fluttering in my heart.
MY DAD LOOKS AT ME from head to toe, and I feel like the second-rate slacker he’s always taken me for. I will always be Second Son to him, no matter what Charlie does. I must look even worse than when I first came in. The top button of my shirt is missing from where Charlie grabbed me. There’s even a bloodstain on it from my busted lip. I’m sweaty, and my hair is sticking to the side of my face. Premium Yale material right here.
He gives me an order. “Get some ice for your lip and come back out here.”
Charlie’s next. “You hit your little brother? That what you learn from America? To hit your family?”
I almost want to stay and hear where this goes, but my fat lip is getting fatter. I go into the back room and grab a can of Coke and press it against my lip.
I’ve never liked this room. It’s too small and always clogged with half-opened boxes of product. There are no chairs, so I sit on the floor with my back against the door so no one can get in. I need five minutes before dealing with my life again.
My lip throbs in time to my heartbeat. I wonder if I need stitches. I press the can closer and wait to feel (or not feel) the numbness.
This is what I get for letting the Fates guide me—beat up, girlfriend-less, future-less. Why did I postpone my interview? Worse, why did I let Natasha walk away?
Maybe she was right. I’m just looking for someone to save me. I’m looking for someone to take me off the track my life is on, because I don’t know how to do it myself. I’m looking to get overwhelmed by love and meant-to-be and destiny so that the decisions about my future will be out of my hands. It won’t be me defying my parents. It will be Fate.
The Coke can does the trick. I can’t feel my lip anymore. Good thing Natasha’s not here, because my kissing days are over, at least for today. And with her, there’s no tomorrow.
Not that she’d ever let me kiss her again.
From the other side of the door, my dad orders me to come out. I put the can back in the fridge and tuck my shirt in.
I open the door to find him standing there alone. He leans in close to me. “I have a question for you,” he says. “Why do you think it matters what you want?”
The way he asks, it’s like he’s genuinely confused by the emotion. What is this desire and wanting that you speak of? He’s confused by why they matter at all.
“Who cares what you want? The only thing that matters is what is good for you. Your mother and I only care about what is good for you. You go to school, you become a doctor, you be successful. Then you never have to work in a store like this. Then you have money and respect, and all the things you want will come. You find a nice girl and have children and you have the American Dream. Why would you throw your future away for temporary things that you only want right now?”
It’s the most my father has ever said to me at once. He’s not even angry as he says it. He talks like he’s trying to teach me something basic. One plus one equals two, son.
Ever since he bought the oil paints for omma, I’ve wanted to have a conversation like this with him. I’ve wanted to know why he wants the things he wants for us. Why it’s so important to him. I want to ask him if he thinks omma’s life would’ve been better if she’d kept painting. I want to know if he’s sad that she gave it up for him and for us.
Maybe this moment right now between my dad and me is the meaning of today. Maybe I can begin to understand him. Maybe he can begin to understand me.
“Appa—” I begin, but he holds his hand up to silence me and keeps it there. The air around us is still and metallic. He looks at me and through me and past me to some other time.
“No,” he says. “You let me finish. Maybe I make it too easy for you boys. Maybe this is my fault. You don’t know your history. You don’t know what poor can do. I don’t tell you because I think things are better that way. Better not to know. Maybe I am wrong.”
I’m so close. I’m at the edge of knowing him. We’re at the edge of knowing each other.
I’m going to tell him that I don’t want the things for myself that he wants for me. I’m going to tell him that I’ll be okay anyway.
“Appa—” I begin again, but again his hand goes through the air. Again I am silenced. He knows what I’m going to say, and he doesn’t want to hear it.
My father is shaped by the memory of things I will never know.
“Enough. You don’t go to Yale and become a doctor, then you find a job and pay for college yourself.”
He walks back to the front of the store.
I’ll admit that there’s something refreshing about having it all laid out for me like this. Future or No Future.
My suit jacket is still crumpled by the door. I grab it and put it on. The lapel almost covers the bloodstain.
I look around for Charlie, but he’s nowhere to be found.
I walk to the door. My dad’s behind the cash register, staring off at nothing. I’m about to leave when he says the final thing, the thing he’s been waiting to say.
“I saw the way you look at that girl,” he says. “But that can never be.”
“I think you’re wrong,” I tell him.
“Doesn’t matter what you think. You do the right thing.”
We make and hold eye contact. It’s the holding of eye contact that tells me he’s not sure what I’m going to do.
Neither am I.
DAE HYUN BAE OPENS AND CLOSES the cash register. Opens and closes it again. Maybe it really is his fault that his sons are the way they are. He’s told them nothing about his past. He does it because he’s a father who loves his sons fiercely, and it’s his way of protecting them. He thinks of poverty as a kind of contagion, and he doesn’t want them to hear about it lest they catch it.
He opens the register and packs the large bills into the deposit pouch. Charlie and Daniel think money and happiness are not related. They don’t know what poor is. They don’t know that poverty is a sharp knife carving away at you. They don’t
know what it does to a body. To a mind.
When Dae Hyun was thirteen and still living in South Korea, his father began grooming him to take over the family’s meager crab fishing business. The business barely made any money. Every season was a fight for survival. And every season they survived, but just barely. For most of his childhood, there was never any doubt in Dae Hyun’s mind that he would eventually take over the business. He was the eldest of three sons. It was his place. Family is destiny.
He can still remember the day that sparked a small rebellion in his mind. For the first time, his father had taken him out on the fishing boat. Dae Hyun hated it. Trapped in the cold mesh-metal baskets, the crabs formed a furious, writhing column of desperation. They scrabbled and clawed their way over each other, trying to get to the top and to escape.
Even now, the memory of that first day still crops up at unexpected times. Dae Hyun wishes he could forget it. He’d imagined that coming to America would wipe it clean. But the memory always comes back. Those crabs never gave up. They fought until they died. They would’ve done anything to escape.
IT’S HARD TO KNOW HOW to feel now. I don’t really trust what’s happened, or maybe I just haven’t had enough time to process it.
I check my phone. Bev’s finally texted. She loves, loves, loves Berkeley. She says she thinks she’s destined to go there. Also, California boys are cute in a different way from New York boys. The last text asks how I am, with a string of broken heart emojis. I decide to call and tell her what Attorney Fitzgerald said, but she doesn’t pick up.
call me, I text.
I push my way through the revolving doors and out into the courtyard, and then I just stop moving. A handful of people are having lunch on the benches next to the fountain. Separate groups of fast walkers in suits go in and out of the building. A line of black town cars idles at the curb while their drivers smoke and chat with each other.
How can this be the same day? How can all these people be going about their lives totally oblivious to what’s been happening to mine? Sometimes your world shakes so hard, it’s difficult to imagine that everyone else isn’t feeling it too. That’s how I felt when we first got the deportation notice. It’s also how I felt when I figured out that Rob was cheating on me.
I take out my phone again and look up Rob’s number before remembering I deleted it. My brain holds on to numbers, though, and I dial his from memory. I don’t realize why I’m calling until I’m actually on the phone with him.
“Heyyyyyyyy, Nat,” he drawls. He doesn’t even have the grace to sound surprised.
“My name’s not Nat,” I say. Now that I have him on the phone, I’m not sure I want him on the phone.
“Not cool what you and your new dude did today.” His voice is deep and slow and lazy, like it’s always been. Funny how things that once seemed so charming can become dull and annoying. We think we want all the time in the world with the people we love, but maybe what we need is the opposite. Just a finite amount of time, so we still think the other person is interesting. Maybe we don’t need acts two and three. Maybe love is best in act one.
I ignore his scolding, and the urge to point out that he was the one shoplifting, and therefore he was the uncool one. “I have a question,” I say.
“Go for it,” he says.
“Why did you cheat on me?”
Something falls to the floor on his end and he stammers the beginning of three different answers.
“Calm down,” I say. “I’m not calling to fight with you and I definitely don’t want to get back together. I just want to know. Why didn’t you just break up with me? Why cheat?”
“I don’t know,” he says, managing to stumble over three simple words.
“Come on,” I urge. “There’s gotta be a reason.”
He’s quiet, thinking. “I really don’t know.”
I stay silent.
“You’re great,” he says. “And Kelly’s great. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.” He sounds sincere, and I don’t know what to do with that.
“But you must’ve liked her better to cheat, right?”
“No. I just wanted both of you.”
“That’s it?” I ask. “You didn’t want to choose?”
“That’s it,” he says, as if that’s enough.
This answer is so wholly lame, so unbelievably unsatisfying, that I almost hang up. Daniel would never feel this way. His heart chooses.
“One more question. Do you believe in true love and all that stuff?”
“No. You know me better than that. You don’t believe in it either,” he reminds me.
Don’t I? “Okay. Thanks.” I’m about to hang up, but he stops me.
“Can I at least tell you that I’m sorry?” he asks.
“Go ahead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” I say. “Don’t cheat on Kelly.”
“I won’t,” he says. I think he means it while he’s saying it.
I should call my parents and tell them about Attorney Fitzgerald, but they’re not who I want to tell right now. Daniel. I need to find him and tell him.
Rob says I don’t believe in true love. And he’s right. I don’t.
But I might want to.
I LEAVE THE STORE. A violinist is standing on a milk crate in front of the pawnshop right next door. She’s pale and scrawny and bedraggled in a poetic sort of way, like something out of David Copperfield. Unlike her, the violin is pristine. I listen for a few seconds but don’t know if she’s any good. I know there’s an objective way to judge these things. Is she playing all the right notes in the right order and in tune?
But there’s another way to judge too: does this music being played right here, right now, matter to someone?
I decide it matters to me. I jog back to where she is and drop a dollar into her hat. There’s a sign next to the hat that I don’t read. I don’t really want to know her story. I just want the music and the moment.
My dad said Natasha and I can never work out. And maybe he’s right, but not for the reasons he thinks. What an idiot I’ve been. I should be with her right now, even if today is all we have. Especially if today is all we have.
We live in the Age of the Cell Phone, but I do not have her cell phone number. I don’t even know her last name. Like an idiot, I Google “Natasha Facebook New York City” and get 5,780,000 hits. I click through maybe a hundred links, and while the Natashas are all quite lovely, none of them is my Natasha. Who knew that her name was so flipping popular?
It’s 4:15 p.m. and the streets are starting to fill up again with evening commuters heading for the subways. Like me, they look worse for wear. I jog on the curb to prevent pedestrians on the sidewalk from slowing me down.
I don’t have a plan except to find her again. The only thing to do is to go to her Last Known Location—the lawyer’s office on Fifty-Second—and hope that Fate is on my side and she’s still there.
A COUPLE, BOTH WITH BRIGHT blue Mohawks, is arguing in front of the Fifty-Second Street subway entrance. They’re doing that weird whisper-hiss thing that couples do when they fight in public. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but their gestures say it all. She’s outraged at him. He’s exasperated with her. They’re definitely not at the beginning of their relationship. They both look too weary for that. You can see their long history just in the way they lean toward each other. Is this the last fight they’ll ever have? Is this the one that ends it all?
I look back at them after I pass. Once upon a time I’m sure they were in love. Maybe they still are, but you can’t tell from looking.
I DESCEND INTO THE SUBWAY and say a prayer to the subway gods (yes, multiple gods) that the train ride will be free of electrical issues and religiously challenged conductors.
What if I’m too late? What if she’s already gone? What if stopping to give a dollar to that violinist started a chain of events that causes me to miss her?
We pull into the station. Di
rectly across the platform, the downtown train pulls in at the same time. Our doors close, but the train doesn’t move.
On the platform, a group of about twenty people in brightly colored skintight bodysuits materializes. They look like tropical birds against the dark gray of the subway. They line up and then freeze in place, waiting for something to set them off.
It’s a flash mob. The train across the platform doesn’t move either. One of the dancers, a guy in electric blue with an enormous package, presses play on a boom box.
At first it just seems like chaos, each person dancing to their own tune, but then I realize they’re just offset by a few seconds. It’s like singing in a round except they’re dancing. They start out with ballet and move on to disco, and then break-dancing, before the subway cops catch on. The dancers scatter and my fellow passengers applaud wildly.
We pull away, but now the atmosphere in the train is completely changed. People are smiling at each other and saying how cool that was. It’s at least thirty seconds before everyone puts back on his or her protective I’m-on-a-train-filled-with-strangers face. I wonder if that was the dancers’ intention—to get us all to connect just for a moment.
I’M SITTING WITH MY BACK to the platform, so I don’t really see how it starts. The only way I know something unusual is happening is that the entire train car seems to be looking at something behind me. I turn around and find that there’s a flash mob dancing on the platform. They’re all wearing very bright clothing and disco dancing.
Only in New York City, I think, and take out my phone to snap a few pictures. My fellow passengers cheer and clap. One guy even starts doing his own moves.
The dance doesn’t last long, because three subway cops break it up. A few boos go up before everyone resumes being impatient about the train not moving.
Normally I would’ve wondered what the point of those people was. Don’t they have jobs or something better to do? If Daniel were here, he’d say that maybe this is the thing they’re supposed to be doing. Maybe the whole point of the dancers is just to bring a little wonder into our lives. And isn’t that just as valid a purpose as any?