Forgotten Country

by Catherine Chung

  In her bedroom, the blankets and sheets were mussed up, the pillows scattered. I gathered everything into a pile: her jeans in the bedroom and living room, her bra, her socks, her sheets, and put them in the hamper. I was exhausted and jet-lagged, but I walked to the laundromat and sat with my chin propped up on my hand and waited. When I returned, I made the bed and folded the laundry. I straightened her papers and washed her dishes, and felt satisfied, cleaning up this other person’s mess, fixing up this other person’s home.

  The next day I met my advisor. He looked at me as if he’d forgotten what I looked like, and then he reached out and gave me a hug.

  “Welcome back,” he said, his fingers pressing into my back. I was surprised and touched by the gesture. Then he closed his office door, and took my notebook, and I tried to explain the results I’d achieved so far. I waited while he looked over my work.

  “Ah yes,” he said, holding up his hand and leafing through the pages. He read for a while. “I’ll be frank,” he said after some time, closing my notebook and looking up at me. “You have real talent. You’re an original thinker. I’ve had my eye on you.”

  I swallowed. My mouth was dry.

  “Listen,” he said. “I understand where you’ve been and why, and yes, your family is important. But you know how hard it is to get back into the swing of things: you can’t expect to neglect your work and then find it waiting for you.”

  “I know.”

  “You have momentum now,” he said. “It’s best to strike while the iron is hot.”

  I thought of my aunt telling my father when we were children that he needed to think of his career first. I thought of the tumor in his brain, how it had changed the chemistry and made him seize, how it had slowed him down. “Of course.”

  “So you have to stay focused,” he said. “How long will you be here?”

  “Two weeks,” I said. “And then I’ll come back next semester.”

  He nodded approvingly. “I want you to go to the secretary and get your paperwork under way, and to make a schedule to complete your requirements in time. And then I want to see you every day this week.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Whatever it takes.”

  As I was leaving, he reached out and hugged me again. “It’s good to have you back,” he said before letting me go.

  “Thanks,” I said, a little awkwardly. He’d never hugged me before, and I wondered as I pulled away if it was my progress on my thesis or sympathy for my father’s situation that had brought on this sudden affection.

  The next day I tried to work, but I thought of my parents all day long. I thought of my father saying, “This is great!” when he read my notebook, and then I remembered him falling, and the way he smiled at me when I left, and our neglected garden in the countryside. I thought of my mother and Hannah and our individual lives, and how I did not know what was going to happen, and how whatever it was, I was not prepared.

  When I called them that night, my father said he was doing better. He sounded cheerful on the phone, but when he talked, his words were slurred. He didn’t stay on for long. I hadn’t told anyone in Chicago that I was coming back, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone about my life when there was nothing good going on. So I called no one else. I sat in my empty apartment and Googled miracles instead.

  One woman had been given three months to live and went on a ski vacation and returned with no detectable cancer. One man had been cured of his terminal illness after eating only grapes for a whole month. One guy had laughed away a tumor at a comedy show. A woman’s dead dog had come to her in her dream and licked her breast: the next day her cancer was gone. Miracles, Wikipedia said, were interruptions of the laws of nature that could only be explained by divine intervention.

  My mother had told me a story when I was growing up about a man who had been sentenced to death for some reason I never remembered. Just before the day of the execution, a monk came to see the doomed man. He told him if he said the Buddha’s name ten thousand times between then and the time of the execution, the man would be spared. So the man chanted the Buddha’s name ten thousand times, and everything the monk said came to pass. I remembered this, and tried to chant in my mind, all the time. I tried to pray. Let my father be well, Buddha, let my father be well. Whoever can hear my thoughts, let my father be well.

  For the next week, I met with my advisor nearly every day. He told me about what my classmates had been working on, and tipped me off to several new papers he thought I should read. He was encouraging, and kind, and I found myself relaxing and opening up in response to his enthusiasm. I told myself I’d made the right decision, that I was doing the right thing. I sent my family glowing updates about everything I was accomplishing: I wanted them to know. I wanted my father to know I was doing well.

  One evening I went to my advisor’s house for a meeting, and when I arrived he was wearing an apron. I would never have imagined that he owned an apron. “Come in.” He smiled. He led me into his dining room. “Sit down,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”

  There were unlit candles on the table. The silverware had been laid out. There were place mats.

  I eased my bag off my back. “I’m sorry, did you have other plans?” I asked. “Should I come another time?”

  “Oh, I thought we’d eat together tonight,” my advisor said. “You’ve been working so hard, and I know it’s been a difficult time for you. I thought maybe you deserved a break.”

  I was immediately grateful. I hadn’t shared a meal with anyone since returning to the States. I followed him into the kitchen, and set out the water in the glasses he gave me. I helped him toss the salad and take out the pasta.

  “Thank you for doing this,” I said.

  He shrugged. “It’s been just me in this house now,” he said. “I thought of my own daughter going through something like this, God forbid.” He reached out and patted my shoulder. “I know I’ve been driving you pretty hard, but I wanted you to know that I understand.”

  I looked down and nodded, surprised and touched. “Thank you,” I said.

  Then he lit the candles on the table, and while they flickered at each other, he poured us each a glass of wine. He raised his glass, but didn’t say anything, so I was quiet, too. We touched glasses and drank. We began to eat. When I looked up, he was looking at me and smiling.

  “Janie,” he said, “it’s been good to have you here.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s been a relief to be here, and to get back to work.”

  He leaned forward, carefully reaching around the candle and the plates and putting his hand on my hand. He did this very slowly. His hand on mine was very light. “I’m not talking about work,” he said.

  I looked at his face, at the way his wrinkles pulled down the sides of his eyes. I looked down. “I thought we were going to talk about the next part of my proof,” I said. I pulled my hand away.

  My advisor shook his head. “Not tonight.”

  “That’s what I’m here for though,” I said. “Not that dinner isn’t very nice.”

  “I just wanted to say that I’ve sensed a change between us lately,” he said. “You’ve been more open to me. You smile more.” He smiled as he said this. “You’re a beautiful young woman, Janie.” He leaned forward, and took my hand again.

  I pulled away, and put both my hands in my lap. “You’re my advisor,” I said.

  “We’re two adults.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said.

  “I think our minds are compatible,” he said, leaning forward, his hand inching closer. I pushed my chair back so that I was out of reach. He sighed, and leaned back.

  I fiddled with my silverware. After a pause, I said, “I was hoping to show you something I figured out last night.”

  “That’s fine.” He didn’t say more. He shoved a forkful of pasta into his mouth. I watched him chew, I watched him swallow, and I sat there and waited for him to be done.

  “Let me see the thing,” he said wh
en he was finally finished with his meal.

  I went to my backpack and fetched my work, and handed it to him. “These are the new sketches,” I said.

  He nodded at me curtly, and got up to go to the next room, where he sat down in an overstuffed armchair.

  “I’ll clean up,” I said, following him in and standing awkwardly between rooms.

  “Go ahead,” he said curtly.

  So I went back to the dining room and blew out the candles. I took the dishes into the kitchen and washed them. I looked at the mess of food everywhere in his beautiful house, and wondered how long it had taken him to prepare our meal. Instead of gratitude or guilt, I felt anger. How long had he planned this?

  I crossed the rooms to where he sat, leaning over my notebook. A dripping plate was still in my hand. “Listen,” I said. “I need you to tell me if there’s something there.”

  He looked up. “Yes, of course there is. But as you know, you also need to bring better results than you’ve been getting. What you have won’t necessarily be enough.”

  “What?” I looked down. I’d been so excited by his enthusiasm this past week. “My dissertation topic was your suggestion. I’ve been making progress, and you know it,” I said, my voice rising. “You’ve done nothing but encourage me.”

  He held up his hands, and smiled. “What can I say?” he said. “It’s my job to tell you these things honestly.”

  “I came all the way from Korea because you said I should come.”

  “It’s hard to tell sometimes when you sense promise if that potential will be fulfilled.”

  “You seemed able to tell yesterday,” I said. I thought of how far I’d traveled to be here, and the silence on the other end of the phone when I called my parents these days. “You seemed to know two weeks ago when you told me to come.”

  “Janie, come on,” my advisor said. “Let’s both be grown-ups here.”

  “Grown-ups?” I said. “Give me my notebook.”

  “You’re overreacting.” He was laughing now.

  “No,” I said, lifting his plate over my head. “This would be overreacting.” I dropped the plate. It shattered on impact. “I want my notebook, please.”

  “Settle down,” he said, and now he was irritated. “There’s really no need to be so agitated.” He stood up and sighed. “There’s no problem here.” His voice was so smooth that I realized suddenly he had done this before. “Janie,” he said, stepping around the shards of plate and coming toward me, arms outstretched, my notebook in hand. “You need to learn to loosen up. There’s no need for property damage.”

  “Stop it,” I said, as he came closer. I stepped backward onto a piece of plate. Pain shot up the ball of my foot. “Shit,” I said. Blood seeped through my sock.

  “Careful now.” His hand was gripping my shoulder.

  I shook him off and snatched my notebook away. “You’re a good advisor, okay?” I said. “So don’t be gross.”

  “What?”

  “I mean it, just don’t be gross.” I was so tired suddenly, and my foot was bleeding, and I realized I didn’t care. I didn’t want to fight with him. I limped back, surveyed the mess on his floor. “You’re standing right on the line,” I said. “But you haven’t crossed it. I’m asking you not to so that I can continue to work with you.”

  He stepped back, too, then. “All right,” he said, suddenly brisk and businesslike. “I was just joking with you. I was trying to be fatherly. Since I know you’ve been having a rough time.”

  “Did you just say ‘fatherly’?” I said. I pushed my throbbing foot into the ground to feel the concreteness of the pain. “Are you serious? You’re a dad,” I said. “Jesus Christ.” I stomped my foot on the ground. I’d left one responsibility to chase another, but I’d chosen wrong. I had been a coward. Everything that mattered, everyone who cared about me, was elsewhere.

  I limped home that evening, each step shooting a stabbing pulse up my foot. I washed it and wrapped it in gauze before bed, and slept in the next day until noon. When I woke, I watched a romantic comedy from the DVDs in the apartment. I was all alone here, I realized: I didn’t have any close friends to speak of after my absence.

  I called my airline and changed my flight to leave the next day. I called my parents and told my mother I was coming back.

  “Good,” she said, but she sounded distracted. “It’s about time.”

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “We’re just busy,” she said. Her voice was impatient; it sounded on the edge of panic. “I’ll call your uncle and let him know when to pick you up. What time are you arriving?” She took the details and hung up quickly. I sat in the empty apartment and looked at the walls.

  From my bed, I Googled the address of my father’s hospital. On satellite, it took up several city blocks. I hit zoom. I hit zoom again. I was so close I could see the ripple of light off its windows, a flock of birds gathered on the roof.

  If there was a God, I wondered, what did he see? This wide expanse of roof, the birds scuttling on the top? All concrete and glass surfaces. The manicured lawn and the garden to the side, a miniature fountain blowing its wisp of water up in a tiny arc. Was this what he saw? Or did he know that somewhere, on the seventeenth floor, my father lay in a bed with rails, growing smaller. Would he know about something like that?

  21.

  When I returned to Korea, I’d only been gone for a little over a week. But it had already been too long. My father had had another seizure, and on the day I returned, he could no longer get up or speak. The doctors said he might not talk again. His eyes were enormous. “Hi, Daddy,” I said. He smiled then, and it was still his smile. He squeezed my hand. I pressed my fear down: there was no time for it, no room.

  That evening, we took turns eating the dinner that was delivered to our door. My father no longer ate on his own, but was hooked up to an IV that fed something into him the color and consistency of glue. I sat in the chair next to my father’s bed and looked at him. He looked at me. A couple times, I thought he tried to speak, but his mouth opened and closed, he swallowed, and nothing came out. I gave him water, and he drank it with both hands, but I had to hold the glass steady with mine. His mouth worked. When he was finished, he pointed to a book on the lamp stand next to his bed. It was The Little Prince.

  “Do you want me to read it?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Where’d you get it?” I asked.

  “I bought it from the bookstore in the basement,” Hannah said from her corner. “It was my favorite book when I was a kid. Dad used to read it to me.”

  “Yeah, he used to read it to both of us,” I said.

  My father patted the bed next to him. I looked over my shoulder at my mother and Hannah. “Does he want me to get into bed with him?” I asked.

  “Ask him,” Hannah said.

  “Do you want me to get into bed?” I said.

  He smiled. I lowered the safety rail between us. I climbed halfway into the narrow hospital bed, still sitting up. It had been so long since I had been in bed with him. When was the last time? I wondered. How old had I been? Seven? Eight?

  I opened the book. My father’s body was so light beside mine: there was hardly any warmth coming from his arm. The cloth of his hospital gown was very flimsy. Everything about him seemed as if it could float away, even the fine hairs that were left on his head. Only his eyes were large and burning, as if everything about my father was diminishing, everything nonessential falling away.

  I opened the book and began. I read the introduction to Leon Werth when he was a little boy. I read the part that made fun of grown-ups, and then I showed my father the drawings of the boa constrictor that had eaten an elephant. I remembered as I read that my father had wanted to be a cartoonist when he was a boy. How he still said if he could have done anything, that is what he’d have done.

  I kept reading. We had taken weeks to finish this book when I was a child, but it went so much faster without his laughter interrup
ting us. As I read, my mother came and sat in the chair next to me. Hannah lay down on the cot. They had told me my father could not sleep at night anymore, so they took turns sitting next to him, and slept whenever they could. Hannah turned over so she had her back to us. I read on.

  I read about the lamplighter, the tippler, and the conceited man. I looked at my father, who nodded and did not wish me to stop. Next to us, my mother dozed. I was struck by how sweet it was to read to my father. I could not explain it, but I felt how precious this was, this painful reversal.

  I got to the story of the fox, of the water that saves the pilot, of the prince’s meeting with the snake.

  “Everything that is essential is invisible to the eye.” I could not go on.

  I looked at my father and could not read any more. My mother stirred. “Go on,” she said.

  My father nodded. He looked like a child, I thought, with his large, hopeful eyes. Still, I couldn’t continue. I knew what happened next. I did not want to read about the falling prince, or the narrator’s uncertainty about whether the sheep he had drawn would eat the prince’s rose. I did not want to read about the stars that either laughed or cried. I shut the book.

  My father rested his paper-light hand on my knee. I kissed his cheek. His skin was dry and thin, not like skin at all. I crawled out of his bed. I put the rail back up.

  “I’ll read the rest later,” I said.

  I pulled out the extra cot, began to lie down on it, and changed my mind. My mother was leaning forward, her hand on my father’s shoulder, murmuring.

  “Actually, I’ll stay up,” I said. “You should sleep.”

  “We can take turns,” my mother said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “With the time difference, I’m not tired.”

  “Okay.” She nodded, leaning forward and kissing my father’s head, releasing his shoulder slowly. “Rub his legs,” she said. “And make sure you change his position every couple hours. It’s important.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I will.”