by Amanda Tru
No use making small-talk. This was the kind of conversation you had to jump right into. No looking back. “I went to a bar tonight.” He cleared his throat, hopeful that the worst part of the confession was over. “I didn’t drink. I mean, I wanted to. I ordered a beer, and the waitress brought it to me. But then …”
“Did you drink?” Chuck cut him off.
“No.” Joseph cleared his throat once more. “No, I mean, I took a small sip, but I spit it out. First of all, the stuff tasted rancid.” He let out a nervous chuckle, a chuckle his sponsor didn’t share. He toned down the jocularity. Stopped trying to diffuse his shame with humor. “I spit it out and left right after that.”
“Good.” Chuck spoke the word in a monotone. He may as well have been a jury declaring Joseph guilty.
“I’m not drunk now.”
“I can hear that.”
Joseph felt his body relax ever so slightly. It was good to have someone believe him for a change. He sat waiting for his sponsor to say something. Anything. Joseph didn’t know what was supposed to happen next.
“Was it seeing Jolene that brought you so close to the edge?” Chuck asked the question so pointedly, there was no use trying to deflect or avoid the topic.
“I don’t know. Probably. She was … I saw her again. She was outside with that man’s flowers. Don’t know what she was doing with them.” He could shut his eyes and picture her so easily, mud mask and all. “And then after I left the bar, I went back. I walked by her door and saw that she’d left the keys in, and I didn’t want her spending the whole night that way where anyone could let themselves in.”
So he stretched the truth a little. Didn’t it count that he was being so painfully honest about everything else?
“Did the two of you talk much?”
“No. I wanted to. You know, I thought I should say something. It’s been five years to the month since Chelsea … I thought maybe I could try to cheer her up a little …” He was floundering. He knew it, and he was sure Chuck on the other end of the line knew it, too.
“Let me guess,” Chuck butted in. “She wasn’t very engaging.”
“No. That’s the thing. When I went back to return the key, she thought I’d been drinking. I swear that woman can smell beer a mile away.” He’d meant it as a joke but realized it was entirely his fault his wife had gained such a discerning sense. “She never trusted me in the past …” he began and stopped.
“From what I understand, you didn’t give her much reason to,” Chuck observed. From any other man, the comment would make Joseph jump to the defensive, but his sponsor was right, and the love Chuck had shown Joseph when he was at his lowest earned him the right to speak these truths into his life, painful as they were.
“Maybe not, but I’ve changed.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
“That’s why I tried telling her.”
“You can’t force these things, son.” There was no way biologically speaking that Chuck was old enough to be Joseph’s father, but he accepted the gentle rebuke without bristling.
“Where are you now?” Chuck asked.
“At my hotel. I moved to a different one, where Jolene …” With as incoherent as he was, Chuck might soon start doubting the part of the story where Joseph said he spit out the beer. “I’m in a different part of town.” Knowing exactly what question his sponsor was going to ask next, he added, “I’m not planning to go out again. I don’t even want to drink. Not right now.”
“Why’s that?” There was no judgment in Chuck’s tone. Just a gentle invitation for Joseph to bare his soul.
“Because the small sip I spit out tasted terrible. Because something in my body reacted so strongly I felt like I wanted to puke.” He paused, wondering if he should say everything that was on his heart. Would it just make matters worse once he admitted the truth out loud? “And because I don’t want to be proven a liar. Not with Jolene somewhere in this city.”
Chuck was quiet for a moment. What was he thinking? About how pathetic it was for Joseph to still act like he had anything to prove to his ex-wife? About how a grown man like him shouldn’t hold onto such babyish hopes that one day she might realize he’d changed and take him back?
The next words out of Chuck’s mouth weren’t wise, sagacious observations about life or sobriety or lost love. No more pointed questions either. Instead, he began to pray, thanking God for helping Joseph stay sober, asking for continued strength to stand up against temptation.
Chuck was a godly man, with a spiritual strength and maturity Joseph would give up all four of his limbs to achieve.
Then Jolene would see how much I’ve changed.
In the back of his head was the nagging suspicion that pursuing godliness to win back your divorced wife’s trust might not be the most righteous of motivations, but he was where he was, and at least he could admit to his own shortcomings.
He joined Chuck in prayer, asking God to mold him into the man he was supposed to be, the kind of man Jolene could trust and rely on, the kind of man she’d be proud to call her own.
Mena showed up at Jolene’s front door a few minutes after nine.
“Good morning!” She was dressed in a bright pink blouse with a violet and teal scarf draped around her neck. Jolene still couldn’t figure out how her daughter’s fairly awkward best friend from junior high had developed into this capable, sophisticated young woman. “Sorry if I woke you up.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Jolene shut the door behind her. “I’ve been awake for a few hours anyway.” All the stress of running into her ex-husband made it impossible to fall asleep until after midnight, but by five in the morning, her body woke her up, convinced it was time to start her day.
Stupid jet lag.
Mena set a bag of groceries on the counter. “I brought some breakfast over. Have you ever tried an Asian pear? And this is banana milk. It’s really popular here.”
Jolene studied the unfamiliar items, imagining how good a nice pancake breakfast with a generous portion of syrup sounded instead. “This was really sweet of you.”
“Don’t worry about it. Jin-Sun’s tied up all morning getting ready for a fundraising luncheon. And I’ve got the pre-wedding jitters, I guess. I thought it might be good to have something to focus on besides the ceremony for a change.” She rummaged through the grocery bag. “Oh, I don’t know if you like sweets this early, but these shaved ice drinks are delicious. And after we eat, I thought we’d take a walk. Check out that spa I was telling you about.”
Jolene wasn’t about to argue. A short time later, after about a mile-long walk that made her grateful the rain from last night had let up, they were sitting together in a sauna. It was early enough in the day that they were the only two there.
“This is great.” Jolene hadn’t realized how tight her muscles were. That’s what you get when you sit cramped on an airplane for twelve hours then go to sleep on a floor mat. That and running into your ex-husband in a foreign country just a few days after breaking up with your boyfriend.
Good times.
“The masseuses here are great,” Mena told her. Jolene’s body was already aching for a massage.
She shut her eyes, wondering what it would be like to tell Mena about last night. It’s the kind of conversation she might have had with Garcia. After a year of dating him exclusively, she realized how many of her female friendships she’d failed to maintain. Was there anyone back home she’d be comfortable inviting out for a spa day? Or calling to vent after running into her ex-husband in the same foreign city where their daughter had been killed?
Even her church attendance had slipped recently. It wasn’t that she was trying to distance herself from God. She just stopped getting as much out of the sermons as she used to. It didn’t make her a bad Christian. She just had other obligations.
Like what?
Usually, she spent her weekends with Garcia. Maybe that explained things. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to go to church, but
it wasn’t as much of a priority for him. Maybe he’d rubbed off on her more than she intended.
But she still prayed. Still trusted God with her future. She wasn’t reading the Bible as much as she sometimes did, but for her entire Christian life, she’d gone through seasons of deeper devotion than others.
None of that meant she was a second-rate Christian or a backslidden believer.
So why did she feel guilty now?
Maybe it was just loneliness, and her recent breakup with Garcia could explain that part. Why she was sitting here in Seoul wishing she had the courage to pour out her heart to a young woman who wasn’t even born when Jolene first fell in love with Joseph. Those happy, chaotic, blissful years …
“You know, you’ve hardly told me anything about your fiancé. What’s his name again?” Why couldn’t she ever remember?
“Jin-Sun.”
“Yeah. Jin-Sun. Tell me about him. How did you meet?”
Mena smiled. The smile of a carefree bride-to-be who was just as much in love with her groom as Jolene had been on her own wedding day so many years ago. “Through work. He’s actually from North Korea.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He came to Seoul a few years ago. He was part of the first wave of refugees we brought here with Freedom Korea International.”
“Wow. So you brought him over here, helped him resettle, and fell in love?” Why did the story make Jolene’s heart feel so heavy?
“Kind of. He’s working for Freedom Korea now too. He was hired about a year and a half ago. That’s when we started growing close.”
“That’s really sweet.” Jolene meant what she said but hated the way she had to swallow down that unwelcome dose of envy. Why should she be sitting here half-naked in a sauna feeling jealous of a girl she’d known since she was a somewhat chubby, pimply-faced adolescent? Jolene was the adult here, the one who was supposed to have her life together. A mother figure that Mena could look up to and respect. But what’s so impressive about a middle-aged divorcée with a second failed relationship to her credit and hardly anything to show for her life?
Decades. She’d invested decades into her family, into her daughter, into her marriage. And for what? For an alcoholic husband who cheated on her within a month of their daughter’s death. Eighteen years being nothing but a stay-at-home mom. Not that she regretted the time she had with Chelsea, but what was all that for? So her daughter could travel to this God-forsaken corner of the globe and die here in a freak accident?
And where had God been when that cable snapped? Out of the forty-nine people on board, only three were killed. Why Chelsea?
Mena had been there that night. Jolene couldn’t remember the details, but there’d been something about a broken leg. Maybe a surgery … So much about that time remained a haze in her memory. And for good reason. Why would she want to relive those horrific months of not only grieving her daughter but watching her husband bury himself into his shell of anger and bitterness …
Jolene had promised herself never to become bitter. A promise that Joseph made very difficult to keep when the details of his affair burst into the open.
A text. How clichéd and trite could you get? A text he’d meant for his mistress but sent to his wife instead.
His wife whom he’d been hiding from, avoiding intimacy with. At the time, she’d thought the grief was to blame.
Still so naïve …
While Jolene shed rivers of sweat, Mena prattled on about Ji-Hun or Jin-Bun or whatever her fiancé’s name was. Talking about their hopes for the non-profit they worked for. Their plans for the future.
“He said he wants five or six or seven kids, but he’s just going to have to learn to get used to disappointment.” Mena laughed at her own words. Jolene longed for the time when the sum of her and Joseph’s worries was how many children they might conceive.
Before the miscarriage, before Chelsea, before the drinking and the grieving and the affair.
Jolene shut her eyes, not necessarily because she was tired—which she was—but because it was too painful to see that much happiness on Mena’s face while she talked about her future.
Joseph hated this part of his job. The charity cases, the fancy fundraising luncheons spent listening to emotionally manipulative speakers with their sob stories and sales-pitchy appeals.
But until he was the one calling all the shots in the Seoul office as well as in Seattle, he had no choice.
At least the weather was more cooperative today. This business suit hadn’t gotten soaked in the rain.
Let’s just get this over with.
His conversation with Chuck last night had convinced him of one thing and one thing only. He had to get out of Seoul. He’d been here dozens of times since losing Chelsea, but it was different now. Maybe because it was the five-year anniversary. Maybe because of Jolene.
He couldn’t believe she’d traveled so far just to watch Chelsea’s best friend get married. He still remembered Mena when she was pimple-faced wearing braces. And now she was working for some non-profit, probably getting paid a pittance, and about to get married. When did she get old enough to find a husband? He didn’t want to think about it. He’d never get the chance to walk his own daughter down the aisle, and that’s just the way it was. Why waste energy focusing on hypothetical impossibilities?
Why waste energy wondering what Jolene was doing, if she was enjoying her time in Seoul or if she patched things up with the boyfriend who sent that hideous bouquet?
The problem was that as soon as lunch was over, Joseph would have nothing to do but pretend to be interested in some refugee’s plea for his company’s investment. It wasn’t that Joseph begrudged him the funds the firm would donate. He just wished he could sign a check and be done with it. None of these dragged out charity spiels. It was like having to watch a TV commercial about starving African orphans for an hour straight.
Yeah, he was definitely ready to be done with Seoul. He’d already been brainstorming new procedures to implement back in Seattle. Get Misty to stop wasting so much blasted time on flower arrangements and actually work on client relationships, the part of her job she’d been hired for.
And how much money was the firm leaking with these overseas trips, anyway? It had been worth it a couple years ago when they were still building relationships here in Seoul, but now the return on investment was dwindling at best. Hemorrhaging money at worst.
Some accused Joseph of being an alarmist, but that’s what made him good at his job. Cut out any unnecessary expenditures. Hadn’t that been his policy since he started? And not just in the work field, at home too.
Unnecessary expenditures.
Like that stupid vacation he and Jolene had taken to the Oregon Coast when the weather hadn’t cooperated with their plans and his wife thought Chelsea was too young to be outside in the rain. Nine hundred dollars later, all they’d gotten out of their trip was three days binging on Disney movies.
The problem was every time they talked about money, Jolene would get all self-righteous about how they should be tithing a full ten percent—ten whole percent! As if Joseph worked as hard as he did just so their church could buy new carpet.
What was wrong with the old stuff, anyway?
Even now that he’d gotten more serious about his faith, now that he was attending church regularly and waking up early for that Thursday morning men’s breakfast and prayer time, he still bristled at the thought of any man telling him what he should do with his hard-earned money.
The last thing God converts is a man’s pocketbook. Who was it who said that? Joseph couldn’t remember, but his pastor had used the quote more than once. Which is why if Joseph got a hint that a certain sermon would touch on the area of financial giving, he often tried to come up with some convenient excuse to be sick or traveling or golfing that particular Sunday.
The Seoul VP was up on stage now, thanking everyone for coming, blah, blah, blah. Which meant that he was about to introduce the speaker, which mea
nt that Joseph would have to spend the next hour pretending to pay attention while someone else—this time someone he didn’t even know—tried to tell him what to do with his finances. At least now they were talking about the firm’s money and not his own.
Joseph leaned back in his chair, adjusting his waistband to make room for all the Korean barbecue he’d eaten. Too bad he didn’t have those tinted glasses so he could fall asleep without anyone noticing.
Oh, well. This was just as much a part of his job as laying off workers or paying taxes. No way to get out of it.
Adopting an expression that hopefully made him appear more interested than he felt, he took a deep breath and told himself to get comfortable. This would take a while.
Jolene struggled to keep up as she hurried across the street.
“We’re almost there,” Mena called over her shoulder.
Jolene told herself that it was the smoggy air that made her short of breath. It shouldn’t be this hard to keep up with a woman half her age.
A woman who was rushing to some big conference hall to hear her fiancé speak.
When Jolene had agreed to attend the meeting with Mena, she hadn’t realized it would mean jumping on three different subs and then sprinting down crowded sidewalks to make it there on time. Jolene had no idea how anyone would keep all those different subway lines straight, but apparently there was an app Mena raved about that helped her navigate the crowded city.
It still didn’t get them to her fiancé’s lunch on time.
Yet another common trait Mena and Chelsea shared. They were both chronically late.
How many times had Jolene had to call her daughter in college so Chelsea wouldn’t miss an important lecture or test? Joseph hated it. Said that Chelsea would never learn to manage her own time if Jolene kept babysitting her schedule. Yet another reason for the near-constant strife between them.
Maybe it was this city. In Orchard Grove, Jolene stayed busy enough she didn’t think about her ex that often. She’d always think of Chelsea—she’d resigned herself to that years ago. But at least back home she could think about her daughter without constant reminders of what a terrible dad Joseph had been.
