Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  Sabine turned to Jay. “Casey said you were wait-listed at Columbia.”

  Jay smiled. “Yes.”

  Sabine raised an eyebrow at Isaac, and he nodded as a matter of course. He would make a call. As a trustee, he might be able to arrange for another interview. His son-in-law had needed calls, too. It would be easier to help Jay than his own son-in-law, which had seemed a bit pushy at the time.

  They raised their glasses. Sabine drank hers quickly. She adored champagne. With her left hand, she brushed the hair away from her face. The gesture looked seductive. “Jay, have you met Casey’s parents?”

  Sabine’s face was flushed from the alcohol. She appeared cheerful, but her gaze was unyielding. Jay had met her several times before at the apartment for dinners: Up until last year, Sabine had been Casey’s boss, but now she had power over his life as the trustee’s wife.

  “Yes. I’ve met her mother,” he replied, half smiling.

  “Leah Han,” Sabine said aloud in a kind of dreamy voice. “I went to school with her, you know.”

  “Yes.” Jay nodded. “She looked very young.”

  “She is young,” Sabine insisted, rapping the table softly with her fist. Leah was three years her junior. She, too, had married an older man. But Leah had married a Korean, and Sabine sensed that Joseph looked down on her for having married an American. “And so am I,” she said, giggling.

  “Yes, of course. But her hair was gray,” Jay said.

  Sabine laughed out loud, then caught herself by covering her mouth. Her hand grazed over her raven hair, cut and tinted by a celebrated stylist with a hidden shop on Charles Street.

  “Leah grayed early,” Sabine said, her voice filling with sympathy. “Stress.”

  Casey’s neck reddened. Jay was complimenting Sabine at her mother’s expense. A few days before, Casey had stopped by the store to have a cigarette with Sabine. There, she’d mentioned the engagement and Jay’s wait-list status at Columbia. Sabine had then asked her and Jay to come to dinner. She hated Jay suddenly. He had every right to feel hurt by her parents’ refusal to meet him, but it didn’t seem fair for him to display his resentment at the Gottesmans’ coral-lacquered dining room with its heavy silverware, the white ranunculus and lysianthus arranged in crystal globes. The fineness of the linen napkin on her lap brushed beneath her fingertips. Casey felt like a serf at the queen’s table.

  Isaac saw Casey tuck her lower lip into her mouth. This was the face his children made before he went on a business trip when they were small. Disappointment looked exactly like that, he thought.

  “Whenever I pass by your parents’ shop,” Isaac said, “I see your mother working on the sewing machine, and if she sees me, she waves hello.” He mimicked a shy wave. “Your mom is a very beautiful woman.”

  Casey smiled at him, grateful for his kindness. “Everybody says that. My younger sister looks just like her. You’ve never met Tina. She’s studying to be a doctor.” She said this last part proudly.

  Sabine reached across and touched Casey’s bare forearm. Her fingernails were oval shaped and buffed to a high sheen today.

  “You could have the wedding here in the winter or spring or sooner in Nantucket if you want a summer wedding. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  “But,” Casey replied, taking a breath. “That’s very generous of you.. . .” This was classic Sabine. Her gifts were legendary. Sabine did nothing that was less than triple-mint (Isaac’s term), but Casey could not imagine incurring that kind of debt.

  “I don’t have a daughter of my own, Casey,” Sabine said, her pretty fingers still holding on to Casey’s forearm. Jay glanced over at Isaac, but the comment did not seem to affect him in the least. No one mentioned Isaac’s children.

  “How smart of you to marry young. I got lucky with Isaac. To have found him when I was thirty. But the people back home are right. Girls should marry early. You’re more flexible when you’re young.” She drank the last of her second glass of champagne and tried to pour another, but the bottle was empty.

  Isaac spoke up. “It’d be wonderful for us to have your wedding at our house. It’d be fun for us to do it. I’m an old man with half a job. I could be your wedding planner.” He laughed.

  Jay looked jubilant, but Casey only smiled politely.

  “If it would be all right with your parents,” Isaac said. Sabine had already told him that Casey’s parents would not attend, but he didn’t want to disregard them for Casey’s sake.

  Jay couldn’t believe such an offer. The idea of such a wedding thrilled him. He’d been invited to many beautiful homes in his life, but the Gottesman residences—Park Avenue, Nantucket, and Aspen—took the cake. Casey told him there was also a large flat on the Place Vendôme.

  “Would it be okay with your mother? To have it here or in Nantucket?” Isaac asked Jay.

  “She’d love it,” he replied automatically. “Are you sure?”

  Sabine and Isaac said in unison, “Of course.”

  “Really?” Jay asked like a child at the prospect of getting a much wanted gift.

  “We can have up to two hundred people,” Sabine said, recalling their last trustees’ dinner. The new caterer had done a very nice job, she thought. If it was a winter wedding in a large church, Casey could get a cathedral-length veil because she was tall enough. “And we can clear the room for dancing. Or we can have it at the club.” She felt cheery at the idea of a party with lots of young people. Then she yawned, sleepy and happy at once.

  “If it’s a summer wedding, you can serve lobster.” Sabine put her left elbow on the table and rested her cheek on her hand.

  It wasn’t that Casey was ungrateful. Sabine was offering her something she’d never had. Sabine and Isaac had married in Maui with no one in their respective families to witness the ceremony. Her parents had disowned her for marrying someone who wasn’t Korean. They had called Isaac garbage because he was the leftover of two women. Her mother and father returned every letter and gift Sabine sent them. Then her mother died, and less than a year later, her father died. They never saw Sabine’s exclusive department store in Chelsea or any of her beautiful homes. Sabine had told Casey once, “I made that store for them. No one loved clothes like my mother. And my father was handsome like a movie star. He wore the most beautiful neckties.”

  Sabine fluttered her eyelids. “We had two hundred people here. Right, sweetie?” Isaac nodded at her indulgently, like a father.

  “I don’t know two hundred people,” Casey replied, and Jay shot her a look.

  She ignored him and drank the coffee served in the paper-thin porcelain demitasse cup. Sabine was falling asleep. Every morning she woke up at four-thirty, and at ten in the evening it was already an hour past her bedtime.

  “You must be tired,” Casey said, covering Sabine’s soft, pretty hands with her own large, mannish one.

  “I’m okay,” Sabine said. Her mouth made a small O even as she suppressed her yawn.

  “I better put my wife to bed,” Isaac said. “You kids think about the wedding. The offer is good,” he said. He laughed at himself because it had sounded like deal talk.

  Everyone said good-bye in the foyer. Sabine leaned in on Isaac, and he wrapped his heavy arm around her small shoulders. She was melancholy about them leaving, and Isaac hoped Casey would let them give her the wedding. A project would cheer up his wife. Sabine loved to give big parties.

  The night had been warm, so there were no coats to retrieve from the closet. Casey put on the spring hat that she’d blocked herself. She’d trimmed it with pale pink silk peonies, but no one remarked on it. Sabine was standing up but snoring quietly. Casey and Jay thanked them for the dinner. And the offer. For everything. She kissed Isaac on both cheeks. The penthouse elevator that opened into their apartment came right away, and Casey and Jay stepped in. She caught Isaac’s wink good-bye. He looked older than she remembered—and kindly, like someone’s virile grandfather.

  They were alone, and Jay slid his large hands under her l
inen tunic and held her waist. She let him do this, feeling nothing warm in his touch. “Can you believe they’d throw us a wedding? In that palace?” His voice was rich with pleasure and excitement. “Wow,” he remarked to himself. “They’re so nice.”

  “Yes, they’re incredible,” Casey said. “So generous.” She pulled herself away from him as the polished brass doors opened to the lobby.

  “And Isaac might help me,” Jay said. Again, sounding happy and lucky.

  In the street, he kept chatting, and Casey nodded, looking straight ahead. She didn’t want to ruin his good feelings. But the thought that had persisted throughout the evening was: I have parents of my own.

  15 DEFAULT

  CASEY AND ELLA WAITED IN THE ROCOCO-STYLE bridal suite at the Coliseum, an upscale Korean wedding hall in Flushing. The photographer had just left them to find Ted for his before-the-ceremony shots, but the divorcée makeup lady had decided to stay for the ceremony and reception—after all, the bride’s doctor father had asked so nicely. She was changing into her guest clothes from her work clothes in the attached bathroom. Ella sat very still on a gilded bench, her full profile resembling a fine marble carving—oval head veiled, lush silk skirts draped over her slim legs. On bended knee, Casey smoothed out the back of Ella’s gown. She alone made up the whole of Ella’s bridal party, leaving her to wonder again how a girl who went to an all-girls’ high school and college could care so little about her own wedding and have only one girlfriend to call upon for her important day. The rationale Casey had come up with was that Ted’s fierce monopoly and control over Ella’s time in combination with the girl’s unwavering shyness had built a kind of fortress around her.

  In half an hour, Ella would marry Ted. Yet up through today, Casey often forgot that she herself was engaged. The date was not yet set. Jay had wanted to accept the Gottesmans’ offer to give them a wedding in Manhattan almost immediately, but Casey continued to temporize. He didn’t know this, but she was waiting for a sign.

  Ever since she was twelve or thirteen, Casey had gotten, for lack of a better word, pictures in her head. They came every day. Some mornings it was like a slide show; on others, an allusive out-of-focus shot. They were more like clues for a scavenger hunt than previews for a feature film, because Casey rarely knew what they meant or how to interpret them. For example, the year before she took her specialized public high school entrance exams, she received a clear series of images of the interior of a school building. It wasn’t until the second day of her freshman year at Stuyvesant High School that she realized she already knew the entire layout of the dilapidated building on the Lower East Side, because she’d seen it in her mind. Casey never told anyone about this, because it was crazy and spooky. Once in college when she was stoned, she’d almost told Virginia but decided against it. This weird picture thing also affected insignificant aspects of her life—a pair of dark green lace-up boots with stacked heels would bubble up from nowhere, then a few months later, she’d see them in a shop. Had she conjured them up? she had to wonder. Her pictures often actualized themselves, so Casey anticipated them privately, even though she nearly always just threw up her hands at them, baffled as ever. As of yet, a picture of law school had not popped forth. It wasn’t as though Casey were hoping for an icon of the scales of justice—a stack of casebooks would’ve sufficed. And now, as she straightened out Ella’s train, Casey had no picture of herself in a white gown or image of Jay in formal dress standing beside her. As irrational as this was, she planned to set a date and speak to Sabine about the wedding when some image ultimately presented itself. There was time. Thankfully, this was Ella’s day.

  Ella was a beautiful girl. Who would dispute this? But as a bride, she stopped your heart. Beneath the long gossamer veil, her white skin shimmered like the inside of an abalone shell. Earlier, the photographer hadn’t been able to stop snapping his camera. He left only after shooting three rolls, when one was customary. The fit of Ella’s dress—sleeveless, modern U-collar, hand-sewn out of six long panels of heavy ivory silk with no suggestion of ornament or lace—was devastating. Even the irritated saleswoman at Bayard’s had ultimately conceded on the winner. Casey had chosen a simple gown with the finest sewing precisely because the spare, almost severe design would not detract attention from Ella’s ideal face and frame. Regardless of her own abundant feelings of inadequacy, it never failed to please Casey to see a woman at the height of her beauty. The sublime, Casey felt, deserved its due.

  There was a knock, and the girls heard Dr. Shim’s voice. “Honey, it’s Daddy.”

  “It’s kinda early.” Casey glanced at the wall clock. She’d removed her Timex at the apartment because it clashed with her flame-colored bridesmaid dress.

  “Come in, Daddy,” Ella shouted, her voice happy and singsongy.

  The door opened slowly. Douglas stood at the threshold, unable to speak at the sight of his daughter. Today, it was his job to give her away. Could any man be worthy of such a good child? After Soyeon died, Ella had made his life sustainable. His infant daughter’s requirements: warming her bottles, changing her diapers, putting her down for the night—these had made him rise from his bed each morning. And each day he’d been able to go to work with the thought of her face and smile to return home to. Every year thereafter, his daughter had grown even lovelier than her appealing mother, who’d never lost her hold on his heart. Douglas looked away.

  “Oh, Daddy, please don’t make me cry.” Ella’s eyes filled with concern. She had never loved her father more than now. “We just finished with makeup.” She pointed to the bathroom.

  Douglas shook his head rapidly, like a wet dog shaking water off his fur. He had to snap out of it, to shed his sadness. Ella was marrying the man she loved. He was supposed to feel happy for her. It wasn’t a loss, he chided himself. It was her gain—what she wanted. He creased his brow, pretending to look stern—this used to make Ella giggle as a girl.

  Ella crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue.

  They laughed together. Douglas felt his chin quiver again and closed his eyes.

  Casey gave Ella’s skirts a final brush and rose to her full height. They looked so comfortable in each other’s company. She wanted the father and daughter to have a moment, but she had to march before the bride and couldn’t leave the room. Besides, Ella and Douglas wouldn’t have let her go anyway.

  Douglas touched the edge of Ella’s veil, then let go.

  “Should. . . uhm?” Casey asked.

  “No. It’s not time yet. How are you, girls?”

  The girls smiled at the kind doctor, whose heart was obviously grieving. Like a set of twins, they shrugged their bare shoulders and pretty arms helplessly, unable to say much of anything because if they did, they too might burst into tears.

  Douglas looked down at the carpet to give himself and the girls a second to collect themselves. He tried to chuckle, remembering to feel joy at just being Ella’s father. He turned to Casey.

  “Well, Miss Casey Han, you look like Miss Korea. And how are you feeling today?”

  “Excellent. I am excellent, Dr. Shim. And how are you?” she said brightly. “May I get you something? To drink or eat?” She pointed to the platters of sushi and fresh fruit on the other side of the room that could’ve easily fed ten people. On the bridal refreshment table, there were bottles of soda for as many.

  He shook his head no. Dr. Shim clearly wanted to say something to his daughter, but Casey didn’t know how to give them their privacy. The makeup lady was still fussing in the bathroom.

  “You know, I think I’m hungry,” Casey said, moving toward the refreshment table and away from them.

  Douglas moved closer to Ella. “Waaaa. . . ,” he uttered in astonishment.

  “Daddy, I told you, don’t you make me cry.”

  “Oh-kay,” he said in English. “You look good,” he said, his hand on his hip, as if he were complimenting a nurse who’d just had her hair done at the beauty shop.

  “Thank you,”
Ella replied quietly.

  On the other side of the room, Casey placed a few pieces of sushi on a plate and poured herself a glass of seltzer. Someone had left a British Vogue on the windowsill, and she sat on the Louis XIV–style sofa to flip through it.

  “You don’t have to marry him,” Douglas blurted out. He hadn’t meant to say this. The words had left him without his permission.

  “Daddy!”

  “You can change your mind. Or take more time. You can wait. If he loves you—”

  Ella realized he wasn’t kidding. “Why are you saying this?”

  Casey turned the page: She stopped herself from glancing up.

  “Your father doesn’t want to give you away.”

  “Oh, Daddy.”

  Douglas whistled the “Wedding March,” messing up the first bar immediately. He felt crazy. “I think I got the last-minute jitters that you were supposed to get. I’m sorry, Ella.”

  “Nothing is changing.” Ella looked afraid.

  Douglas shook his head, dismissing her assurances. “You love him, right?”

  Ella nodded and glanced in Casey’s direction. Her friend was reading a magazine and eating sushi. “Everybody must be waiting,” she said tentatively.

  “That’s oh-kay. You can still change your mind,” Douglas persisted, wanting to offer her an out, guessing that she was worried about the guests or what they might say. But it didn’t matter anymore what anyone said.

  “That’s not what I meant, Daddy. Why are you saying this now? Why?”

  Douglas made a face because he had no clear reason except that Ted was not as nice as his daughter. He’d imagined a kinder man, a less ambitious man. Someone who’d make Ella his priority.

  “Oh, my Ella. I wish you so much happiness. What can I do to guarantee that he will make you happy? What wouldn’t I do to guarantee such a thing?” Douglas was not a violent man, but he thought if Ted ever diminished Ella in any way, he’d want to hurt him.