“What happened to your driver?” The push at the doorstep. The smell of fresh-cut grass with that undercurrent of something foul—manure or compost. The taste of metal in her mouth.
“I had to get rid of him.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s all very unfortunate.” She breathed into the phone. “He was...stealing from me. You can never trust a man who looks like that, I guess.” She coughed again. “He was trying to get all these ideas into my head. I found him snooping around my computer, looking through bank accounts and stuff. It’s been... I’ve had a really hard time lately.” Her voice broke. “I guess we all have, right? Nothing seems right these days. It’s hard to even get out of bed.”
“Yes. Yes, I understand,” Margot said.
“Maybe you could call the investigator?” Mrs. Kim asked. “I don’t know what you’ve found at your mother’s house. But I bet he could share what he already knows. Maybe that could help you fill in some of what you’re missing. Have you tried asking him? Your father gave him a lot of business. He was very good at his work.”
The next day, Margot called David and asked if he could contact the investigator, who most likely only spoke Korean. The investigator revealed that her mother had been married in her twenties and had a daughter in Korea, who was killed with her father by a car speeding in the road. They had been walking to the grocery store. Her mother had been at home.
Her half sister had only been eight years old. Her mother had only been four when she had lost her parents. These children had been lost to their parents through recklessness and war.
Perhaps, despite the distances between them, the differences in their experiences as a mother and a daughter, as individuals, as women of a certain time and place, what had made them a family was not simply blood but never fully giving up on each other. Forgiveness was always a possibility. One day, you could dive into the dark water and float because of a lightness in your life now that you had taken off your clothes, abandoned all those stones. You were free from every net. You relaxed like you had never been able to before.
She had so much information now. She had so much to create. What would her grandmother want to know? She would be the only audience who mattered at this point.
And now Margot inched the car down the pier, nervous about hitting one of the pedestrians in the crowd that funneled down to the end. The Ferris wheel flashed hot—red and white. She cracked open her windows to the cacophony of voices, of different languages and laughter. The wind seemed to attack her as she climbed out of the car, shivering, zipping her jacket closed.
Through the smell of carnival foods—cheeseburgers, nachos, funnel cake, hot chocolate—and the bodies, jostling, walking, and lingering, hands outstretched for selfies, she walked on the wooden boards of the pier, carrying her mother’s ashes and a plastic grocery bag with a single Honeycrisp apple and a bottle of soju like an old Korean man—all sadness and yearning, dark humor fermented inside.
At the very end, she sat on a bench with her mother beside her. Maybe one day she would spread her ashes here. It was probably illegal, but who cared? For now, she inhaled the salt air, stared into the most distant water, with the moon waxing ripe and bright, and bit into the apple.
She picked up her phone, and within one ring, a woman answered, voice gravelly and worn: “여보세요?”
Tears streamed down Margot’s face as she wondered: How much weight can I bear? She was not her mother. She was weak, spoiled, American. The whistle of a bomb dropping, an explosion blasted in her head. She clung to that rope—now inside of her, too—the braid they had made was the apple that she squeezed in her hand.
“여보세요?” the woman repeated.
Margot could hear the woman’s breath on the other end, its warmth like the sun on her face, a bed full of seeds.
“I’m Mina’s daughter. 미나. 딸,” Margot said, but the shaking of her voice implored, Please, please understand.
* * *
Acknowledgments
MY EDITOR, NATALIE HALLAK, supported this novel with her keen intellect, imagination, and warmth. She has been an exceptional partner and it has been a dream to work with Park Row Books. My agent, Amy Elizabeth Bishop, is not only incisive but hilarious and kind in every way. She has been a tremendous advocate, and by believing in my words, she changed my life.
Teachers and mentors David Wong Louie, who passed away in 2018, Russell Leong, King-Kok Cheung, Maya Sonenberg, Colleen J. McElroy, Shawn Wong, Alexander Chee, and Randa Jarrar created pathways for my work through their generosity and dedication to storytelling and craft. The UCLA Asian American Studies Center provided me with a sense of place and history; Amerasia Journal published the first short story I wrote.
Editors and literary journals sustained me by sharing my words: Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, Apogee Journal, The Rumpus, Electric Literature and The Offing.
Family and friends nourished me through the years of writing this book: in particular, Eva Larrauri de Leon, Talia Shalev, the Lee and Kim families, the Goodman and Robin families, Corinne Manning, Ever Jones, Keiko and Naomi Namekata, Gabrielle Bellot, Anca Szilágyi, and Paula Shields. My writing group shared wisdom and magic: Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Yalitza Ferreras, Meron Hadero, Amber Butts, Angie Chau, Tanya Rey, and Melissa Valentine.
I am indebted to my mother as a model for how infinitely complex and wondrous a single life can be. She taught me to define success through how I feel about myself and the world. I would have been lost without her and her courage, her storytelling, and the exceptional meals that she makes.
My husband, Paul, stood by me through every draft and lived with me and my characters, which required endless faith, resilience, and a sense of humor, for years under one roof. Each time I experienced a setback, he reminded me of where I was and how far I’d gone. This novel wouldn’t have been without him (and our dogs).
Thank you all for making this possible.
ISBN-13: 9781488069086
The Last Story of Mina Lee
Copyright © 2020 by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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