The Secrets She Keeps

by Jolie Moore

  She licked her full lips in what I could only hope was anticipation. I didn’t wait one second longer. Pressing my lips to hers wasn’t enough. Brushing against hers wasn’t enough. Only the mating of tongues—hers silken and reminiscent of melon—satisfied the craving she’d ignited last year, last week, in the last minute. Only that would prove enough.

  Nari relaxed into the kiss. I had all of her—for a moment. One of my hands had slipped down her back and cupped her ass without her protest. I hadn’t come here for sex but was ready to follow up on this impromptu make-out session. While I was mentally counting the condoms in my wallet, she pulled away.

  “I got it. We’re sexually compatible,” she said, unaffected by our kiss.

  I took a deep breath. Half of me, the semi-hard bottom half, wanted to stay and fight. The other sane, brain-heavy half wanted to walk out.

  Maybe this was too hard. Maybe Nari wasn’t ready. Now that I knew I wanted a relationship, maybe it was time to find it with someone else who was willing and able. I didn’t hold fast to the soul mate theory. Or the fated theory. There were, I figured, hundreds if not thousands of people with whom I could be compatible. It was only a matter of meeting one of them—outside this apartment’s door.

  “Why are you pushing me away?” I asked instead of opening her front door and getting into my car. I should have been leaving, but something kept me rooted to this apartment and this woman.

  Instead of turning just her head toward the kitchen window, Nari turned her whole body away. She stood that way for a long time. Clouds passed over, casting the room in shadow, then moved away, letting in light again. Her shoulders shook slightly. Was she laughing? I put a hand on either shoulder and turned her around.

  Tears coursed down her cheeks.

  I brushed one, then another away, but my thumbs could not keep up with the deluge. I could withstand lots of things, missing limbs, a blood-soaked emergency room floor, even death. But Nari’s silent tears nearly did me in. No scalpel or suture could fix what was broken.

  I put my ego aside before I asked the next. “Do we have any chance?”

  After an interminable pause, she nodded.

  “Then let’s take this one step at a time,” I said. I kissed away every single salty tear before I took myself home.

  Chapter 15

  Nari

  “Why are you shaking?” Andrew had asked.

  I looked around the small airport, already missing the little cocoon of Olde Haven that buffered us from the real world outside. Sometimes I thought I could live in that ivory tower forever as long as Andrew was with me. “This is going to be dicey.”

  “You told them I’m coming, right?”

  “Of course I told them you’re coming. I’m not springing you on them. It’s that they haven’t said a single thing. Not about sleeping arrangements. Not about what’s for Thanksgiving dinner. Nothing. When Daisy first came, they asked about every possible preference from pillows to banchan.”

  “Those are the little dishes of food right?”

  I nodded. He was learning, if slowly.

  “Have you ever had a boy over?”

  I cut him a look. He knew the answer to that. Dating and my parents’ expectations did not mix. Any boys I’d “dated” in high school were a secret I’d held more closely than the Secretary of Defense kept hidden the location of America’s nuclear stockpile.

  “You’re not just any boy. You’re my fiancé and the father of my soon-to-be-born child.” Not that my parents knew any of that. Not that those facts had gotten the chance to make any difference.

  “Do they celebrate a traditional Thanksgiving?”

  The way he asked, I knew he was pretty relieved to be away from all the turkey, trimmings, and relatives that usually bombarded his holidays. I’d enjoyed it when I’d gone with him last year, but it had been a novelty. I could see how all that eating, the flag football, not to mention the endless social niceties could be tiring. The holiday at his house hadn’t been so much of a family event, but coordinated chaos. “Kind of. But there won’t be a turkey or anything. Just a lot of Korean food.”

  “I can always eat rice.” He bumped his hip against mine as we shuffled in line toward the airline agent. “You think they’ll let us sleep together?”

  “Never.” I laughed and curled my hand into his. “A girl could get pregnant doing that.”

  He was instantly sober. “Are you going to tell them?”

  “About which?”

  “Either. Both. The baby. Us getting married.”

  I looked down at my engagement ring. The ticket agent called us. While Andrew plopped down the e-tickets, confirmed our seats, and checked our luggage, I slipped off the ring and wrapped it in a small rose printed handkerchief my mother had brought back from one of her Korea trips. I tucked it into the interior pocket of the Vernis bag my mother had bought as an early graduation gift.

  Andrew gave me the window seat on our short propeller plane ride. He hated take off and grabbed my left hand in his as the metal machine defied gravity and lifted from the ground.

  “Where’s the ring?” he asked, mild panic in his voice. I hadn’t removed it in the two months since he’d presented it to me. Not for a single second.

  “It’s in my purse.” I said. “One thing at a time.” He’d had to tell his parents as they’re the ones that had pulled the family heirloom from the safe deposit box. As soon as we got engaged, his mom had called to congratulate me. I hadn’t heard anything from his dad yet. I knew he was still sore about Andrew’s decision to forego Wharton in favor of school in California.

  Seven hours and two “formatted to fit this screen” movies later, we landed at LAX. Compared to the blustery cold of late November in Connecticut, Los Angeles was breezy and balmy. I pulled off my down jacket and reveled in the temperate air. Sometimes I really missed this. I’d follow Andrew anywhere, but I’m glad we’d agreed to start our lives in California.

  I couldn’t wait to be with Andrew and our baby in the land of perpetual summer. I didn’t have the slightest idea how people wrapped babies up in winter. Did they have tiny little down coats? How did you get on little boots? It was hard enough getting my own snow boots on—after a lifetime of zero practice.

  Glad I wouldn’t have to figure it out, I shed my sweater and let the car, bus and plane exhaust caress my shoulders. When we got to my parents’ house, it would be even warmer. Summers may have been miserable in the Inland Empire, but winters were divine.

  “Doesn’t seem like a holiday with palm trees and seventy-five degree weather,” Andrew said, reluctantly unwrapping his blue and white striped scarf.

  My toes in these leather boots were craving sandals. “You get used to it. Thirty-five million people can’t be wrong.”

  Our bags finally came down the carousel. Andrew hefted both without me having to ask. I pulled sunglasses from my bag and took a deep breath.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  He nodded and we headed out to the pickup lane. Not ten minutes later, my dad pulled up in his big old Audi sedan. Apa loved that car as much as I hated it. I’d liked the Mercedes he’d had, but this car had been bigger. He could ferry around Mom and her friends or their fellow parishioners in comfort. Noncomplaining Koreans were more important than status, I guessed. When I got out of school, I promised myself I’d get the best car I could—as a reward.

  “Mr. Yoon,” Andrew said, dropping one bag and extending his hand. My dad picked up the dropped bag instead, and pulled the other out of Andrew’s hand.

  “Apa,” I whined in four syllables. It was the voice I’d used all of my life to get what I want. “Chin-jol-hag-ge al-as s-ji.” Be nice, I begged. I wanted the two men I loved most in the world to get along. Ahead of us all was a long life—together.

  Though I sat in the front, I couldn’t get more than a few words from my dad. Usually a taciturn man, he wasn’t exactly effusive. But I counted on these rides back from the airport to hear how my mother was doing, pry
something from my father about his various businesses.

  Today, I wasn’t going to get a single thing. I couldn’t see Andrew in the back, but heard him shifting, the chafe of denim against leather. We changed from one freeway to another, the rubber of the tires on the road, the only other sound in the car for the two-hour drive home. Andrew and I hadn’t lived in each other’s pockets, but this propriety forced distance was already starting to wear on me. Four days of not being able to touch my fiancé would be an eternity. I wanted nothing more than to recapture that closeness we always shared.

  I knew my mother had to have been watching from the window because she was almost at the curb the minute we pulled up to the little cul-de-sac where my parents’ house sat among two acres of grass in a thirsty desert.

  “Andrew.” My mother shook his hand and bastardized his name in a single movement. I tried not to be embarrassed. Immigrants had built this country, and they’d all come from somewhere else. My parents had gotten here a lot more recently and it showed. Andrew’s family had gotten here on those first boats. World of difference, that was.

  “Mrs. Yoo—, I mean Ahn,” he said, looking at me, guilt pursing his lips.

  My mother didn’t even blink, used to the American idea of a wife taking a husband’s last name by now. She’d been called Mrs. Yoon more times than I could count outside our little insular Korean community. She took his hand, but stood mute. I knew she was mortified by her English. They’d been here nearly twenty-five years. I thought it was good enough.

  “I have lunch,” my mother finally mumbled. I grabbed my purse and followed her in. After taking off my shoes, I looked around the house I’d grown up in. Nothing had changed. The smell of pickled cabbage and lemon Pledge hung thick in the air.

  Finally, my father and Andrew came through the door. My dad had my two bags and Andrew’s weighing him down.

  “He wouldn’t let me carry anything,” Andrew whispered.

  “Come help me with lunch.” My mother grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the kitchen. Bewildered, I stood at the threshold between the hall and kitchen, keeping an eye over my shoulder. I didn’t know how to cook. My mother had always thought school was more important than any domestic task. I wondered what she really wanted from me.

  Andrew looked bewildered at the prospect of being alone with my dad. Part of me wanted to leave him to figure it out on his own. This was only the first of many days we’d all spend together over the next twenty years. As my soon-to-be husband and the grandfather of our unborn child stood awkwardly, I threw them a bone. “You guys could put the bags in my room.” Men bonded over tasks, not talking. Maybe the hairy topic of who was sleeping where could be sorted out as well.

  Entering my mother’s domestic lair, I realized the longer I’d been away at college, the less this felt like home. I sat on a stool at the white tile counter, waiting for the impending interrogation.

  Afternoons and evenings of doing homework from public and Korean school blurred into a solitary memory of my life in this house. I’d struggle through English and math, and Oma would help me with both while wearing plastic gloves and sorting rotten vegetables from fresh. Korean, though, I didn’t get much help with. They were adamant that I struggle through those word endings on my own.

  “Are you going to keep the baby?” My mother asked in Korean, not once making eye contact. Swish, plop went the sound of my mother’s plastic gloves mixing the noodles and vegetables of the chapchae.

  My head swam. I nearly fell off the stool. I wanted to blame morning sickness, but it was the feeling that I’d disappointed my parents that turned my stomach. I didn’t know how I thought I would put this one past my mother. I was her only child and I’d always suspected she could read my mind.

  “I’m not showing,” stumbled off my lips.

  “I’m your mother,” she said in Korean. No further explanation was necessary.

  “Please don’t tell Apa,” I said. One thing at a time. Andrew. Marriage. The baby. My daddy had big plans for his little girl and I’d be putting a wrench in the works. If I wanted their support, I needed to spoon-feed them my plans. It’s how I’d gotten them to allow me to go to Owen. Other stuff they’d never approve, I learned to hide. But a baby wasn’t something I could keep at a friend’s house or hide between the mattress and box spring.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” my mother said, stripping off her glove and pulling plastic wrapped bowls from the refrigerator. Walking to the other side of the kitchen, she stirred soup which smelled like maeuntang.

  “I’m keeping it.”

  Even with her back to me, I could feel her disappointment radiating across the room.

  “And I suppose that boy you brought home is the father.”

  “We’ve been together nearly three years, Oma. I introduced you to him during parents’ weekend our freshman year.”

  “Is he giving up business school?”

  “I’m not giving up medical school.”

  “Tell me how you’re going to navigate medical school with a newborn.”

  “Daycare,” I said. I had hoped my parents would be a big help but if not, I’d assumed that I could find childcare. I couldn’t be the first mother to go to graduate school and raise a child.

  “Naïve is what you are, Nari. I had a baby. For two years it was nearly twenty-four hours a day.”

  “But Apa was working. You were alone in New Jersey.”

  “That boy will be working. You’ll be alone in Los Angeles.”

  “Anything I can help with?” Andrew said, bustling into the kitchen, my father bringing up the rear. They stood in stark contrast, the tall, thin boy just out of adolescence. His feet clad in sport socks and spare slippers. My father, shorter, stockier, had his hands shoved deep into his dark brown trousers. Apa’s navy blue sweater vest stretched over the small belly he was developing. Probably from too many desserts. The local Korean bakery was a novelty of red bean cakes and green tea boba. It pulled my parents in after every church event like a magnet.

  My mother’s mouth closed tighter than a clam. Her permed curls didn’t move as she set one serving bowl after another on a tray. She’d be skipping the low-to-the-ground kitchen table where I’d eaten nearly every meal in this house for the formality of the big western dining room she used to impress guests.

  Andrew wandered to the dining room and sat on one of the armchairs. I rushed in and shooed him away from my dad’s place, and seated him next to my own chair. Then I helped my mother bring in tray after tray of banchan, soup, and rice.

  I hadn’t believed in God after my first few months at Owen. Nevertheless, I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that two weeks of dining hall chopstick lessons made Andrew competent. We had forks and knives for guests. But I wanted them to treat Andrew like the family he’d soon become.

  Only the sound of steel chopsticks filled the cavernous room. This was nothing like Andrew’s house. His brother Simon would have been doing something inappropriate at the table while everyone tried not to laugh. His mother would be chastising the boys. When his father finally emerged from his study, halfway through the meal or right before dessert, the boys would quiet down and he’d lecture them on the importance of one aspect of business or another.

  Kind of like Daisy’s house with a tenth of the alcohol.

  Andrew lay down his chopsticks exactly like I’d taught him then cleared his throat.

  “Mr. Yoon, sir. I’d like to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.” Even though he’d already asked me, my heart melted a little bit more. Like his proposal to me, it was clearly rehearsed.

  My parents had to be moved by his earnestness. But as I looked from one stony face to another, my heart froze a little bit at a time, until it felt like a block of dry ice in my chest. My body would freeze and shatter in a moment if they didn’t at least thaw a little.

  “Oma? Apa?”

  For a long moment there was no sound in the room at all. The faint buzz of a distant lawnmower then
the hum of a leaf blower filled the air.

  My father’s fist hit the table so hard it set the bowls to rattling. “I appreciate your manners, son. But my daughter is too young and uneducated to get married.”

  Three and a half years at Owen and he thought I was uneducated.

  I said, “Apa, I love him.” I hated the adolescent pleading note in my voice. But he had to understand I’d chosen Andrew. He was my future.

  My father wouldn’t even look at me. Instead, he turned to my mother, speaking in rapid Korean. I was too young, he said. What about me being a doctor, not some housewife? I saw my mother shrink a little. Why hadn’t she raised me better? She’d only had one child and had been home all day, and look what I’d turned into. A woman willing to chase a man.

  Deliberately, I stood and walked from the room. I grabbed my purse from the table and pulled the ring from the pocket where I shoved it. I pushed it onto my finger where it had been for the past two months and walked back with greater resolve. I thrust my hand in the middle of the table above the soup and steam. It caught the sunlight radiating through the patio door.

  “Oma, Apa, I’m twenty-two years old, not twelve. I love him. We’re going to get married after graduation. I’d love for you to be there. But I’ll do it either way.” I swayed a little after the speech. I’d never defied my parents on anything—big or small. I’d worn the clothes they’d picked, went to the schools they had approved, only chose my few friends from the preapproved church crowd.

  But I’d learned a lot about myself, stretched my wings while in Olde Haven. Which is maybe why they’d wanted to me to go to college near home. Maybe they were afraid of just this thing happening. But it had happened. I’d fallen in love, found my soul mate, was going to have his baby. It could not be erased with silence or dark guilt-laden stares.

  “No daughter of mine is going to throw her life away,” Apa said, standing. His face was flushed like he’d drank a six-pack of soju. But a half empty pitcher of bori cha was the only beverage on the table.