Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  But she couldn’t miss Tina’s rehearsal dinner or the wedding. Her sister had asked her to come, and Casey would control herself, no matter what her father might say. And this time, she’d have Unu by her side on both nights. He swore he got along with all Korean parents. “Just watch,” he’d said.

  Casey knocked on the door, and Tina let her in. Leah looked startled. Joseph glanced at her briefly, then returned to unfolding his newspaper.

  Leah smiled at Casey. She’d grown thinner in the face, and the weight loss had made her small facial features more pronounced. She looked older than twenty-five. In January, her first child would be twenty-six years old. When Leah was a girl, it would have been unheard of to let the younger daughter marry before the elder, but everyone at church said America was different. So it was.

  “Hi there,” Casey said, trying to sound buoyant. She approached Tina and remained there. Leah kept smiling at Casey, wanting to say something but not knowing what exactly.

  “Doesn’t Tina look like a television star?” Leah asked.

  Casey nodded yes, admiring her younger sister’s prettiness. The beautician had put too much mascara on her sister, but the suit was perfect. The luster of the raw silk fabric made Tina look like a girl raised in a prosperous yangban family. This had been Casey’s intention when she’d selected it—her sister’s dress and shoe sizes in hand. Sabine had gotten the image instantly and accompanied Casey to the shoe department to help pick Tina’s shoes, too. Sabine’s parents had been merchants, and she knew what it was like to have yangban people think you were less somehow because you touched money. Chul’s father was a physics professor and his mother a doctor—all three sisters were lawyers, and Chul was pursuing his medical degree. The Baeks had come from the yangban class and had stayed that way. Joseph was born into the yangban class, but he’d fallen off, and Leah was born poor. Rather unkindly, the townspeople would have called Leah’s father—a poor man from the country—a ssangnom.

  Joseph was looking at the newspaper, but he was listening to Leah talk to the girls. She had missed them. And Casey had come after all. He was relieved. She’d aged in just two years. Being on your own in the world can do that, he thought. He himself looked older than most men his age. Taking care of yourself came with a strain. And in life, there were many disappointments for which you couldn’t prepare.

  “You know, you look even nicer than a movie star. You could win the Miss Korea contest. The smartest Miss Korea in the world,” Leah exclaimed.

  “Oh, c’mon.” Tina shook her head, slightly pleased but uncomfortable with everyone staring at her.

  “But you look amazing, Tina. Absolutely beautiful,” Casey said.

  “This is all useless, stupid talk. What does it matter what Tina looks like?” Joseph said this, facing Leah. “She’s going to be a surgeon. It doesn’t matter how she looks or what she wears. That stuff is garbage. A surgeon has to—”

  “Daddy, I’m pretty sure I’m going into endocrinology. Not surgery,” Tina said quietly, afraid to look up. She hadn’t meant to talk about this now, but it just came out.

  Joseph opened his mouth, dumbstruck.

  “My adviser thinks it’s the most natural fit for me. I’ve no talent for something like surgery, and I’m more interested in research than clinical practice, and—”

  “I thought you were going to be a surgeon. A heart surgeon or brain surgeon—”

  “Well—that’s when I was in junior high school and watching TV shows. I didn’t know what I was saying—”

  “My daughter’s supposed to be a surgeon. That’s what I told everybody. That’s what they think you’re going to be. That’s what you said.” Joseph was stunned by this change. Did he not understand her English? What was endocrinology? He felt as though she’d lied to him. “What do you mean?” he asked, his throat choking up.

  “I, I—Daddy, I—” Tina had never seen her father like this with her.

  Casey felt sorry for Tina. Their mother was already wringing her hands.

  “Maybe we can talk about this later,” Casey said, trying to sound as polite as possible. They had to be at the restaurant in five minutes.

  Still in shock, Joseph looked at Casey; then, disgusted, he looked away. If only she hadn’t changed her mind about law school, working in a stupid job on Wall Street as an assistant after graduating from Princeton and now going to NYU’s business school, just throwing away a Columbia Law School acceptance—he couldn’t stop shaking his head. Who’d go to business school when you could’ve been a lawyer? And now Tina was talking about research? Not working with patients? Was that what she meant? For years, he’d pictured Tina’s medical office where she’d see her patients and her working in an operating room. Saving lives. These pictures had puffed him up with pride and happiness. It was as Tina had said, like on television, but his daughter had been the star. What was she talking about? This was her life—how could the girl be so careless about it?

  Leah checked her watch. There was no time left. She got up quietly and picked up the shopping bags. Casey took the heavier one from her mother’s hand. She wanted to do something, move her body somehow, to run. Outside the plate-glass window, the streets were strewn with the well-heeled residents of Sutton Place—good-looking older women with ash blond hair and men wearing polo shirts and khaki trousers being led by terriers on ribbonlike leashes. The August evening was still bright, and Casey yearned to bolt out the door and hail a taxi. She had thirty dollars in her wallet. It wasn’t too late. She could be back at the apartment in five minutes, order a pizza. But then she remembered: Unu was expecting her at Mr. Chan’s.

  Tina edged closer to her older sister as if to block her exit.

  Leah closed her eyes as if she were praying. She opened her eyes, blowing the stray hair from her forehead. “Yobo, we can’t be late,” she said, her voice cracking.

  Joseph then got up from his seat and opened the door. Once outside, he leaped almost a foot off the pavement to catch the metal gate handles with his right hand, and he pulled them down with all his might. The metal gears made a churning noise, and European Cleaners I was finally closed. The Hans walked up the street to Mr. Chan’s.

  “Welcome, Joseph.” Howie shook his hand, then patted his back. “Leah, hullo, hullo,” he said, shaking her hand with both of his. A Hong Kong Chinese, Howie spoke with a heavy British accent. “My, my, my, are these your daughters?” He’d never met them before. “Could they be any more beautiful than they are?” He smiled, thinking that the girls were quite pretty, especially the younger one—remarkably so. “Then again, why should that surprise me when the mother is such a famous beauty,” he said, winking at Joseph. “Forgive me. I am flirting with your wife.”

  Leah turned red and looked away. Howie spoke more dramatically inside his restaurant than when he stopped by now and then to chat with Joseph at the store. He was a tall, slender man with a straight carriage. She’d never seen him wearing his custom-made English suits before. Of course, she’d seen his clothes when they were brought to be cleaned or pressed. She’d sewn back all the dangling sleeve buttons on his shirts. His wife wore Chanel and Valentino almost exclusively, and she was a French size thirty-six. Leah had never met his wife but figured out that he also had a beloved mistress from Joseph’s oblique comments about his friend.

  After Howie greeted everyone, he turned to the alcove where guests normally waited to be seated. “There’s one person here already from your party,” he said.

  Unu smiled at them from where he was sitting. He hadn’t wanted to interrupt the greetings. Seated on the brown velvet bench, he’d been reading the Post, following the races that day. He dropped the paper on the bench, rose, and stepped forward.

  “This is Unu Shim,” Casey said.

  Unu bowed deeply and greeted them in Korean. He had a slight American accent, but his pronunciation and diction were fantastic.

  Joseph shook his hand and smiled politely as if he were meeting a new attendee at church. Leah bowed
but didn’t touch him. She’d been reared never to touch men outside her family, and the only reason she’d touched Howie’s hand was he wasn’t Korean. Americans were always touching. Howie was a Chinese man, but to her he was more Western than many whites.

  Leah smiled at the boy warmly; he was Dr. Shim’s nephew. There was some resemblance to Ella around the eyes. Dr. Shim had said Unu was a very nice boy. “It’s too bad about the divorce, but—at least, no kids,” he’d said.

  Tina raised her eyebrows at Casey. She approved.

  Leah looked straight at the young man. He had a nice face, full of warmth. A good forehead—open and generous—and handsome ears with thick lobes. And he spoke Korean, pleasing her greatly.

  “You’re Shim jang-no’s nephew. Ella’s cousin,” Leah said.

  “Yes, I am. Uncle Douglas is my favorite uncle, and Ella’s the cousin I am closest to.”

  Leah nodded, and Joseph gave a small smile. He’d noticed Unu’s ears, too—indicating good fortune.

  Joseph spotted the corner of a piece of paper peeping out from his pocket.

  Unu casually tucked the racing form out of sight.

  “Where do you work?” Joseph asked him.

  Unu mentioned the name of the fund where he worked as a buy-side analyst.

  “Do you know Chuck Shilbotz?” Joseph asked.

  Tina and Casey looked at their father in surprise.

  “He’s my boss,” Unu said. “I mean, he’s the boss. Of everybody.”

  Joseph nodded, not explaining, and he turned back to Howie, who was finishing up with a waiter. Leah then recalled who Shilbotz was—a customer. He was a fastidious bachelor whose hobby was to buy historic town houses in New York and to restore them with period details and furnishings. He lived in only one of them, a block from Mr. Walton’s town house, while owning three others. The bills for his draperies alone cost thousands, and his meticulous cleaning job required Joseph to contact both Roy, a specialist, and Kenny, the foreman at the Brooklyn plant, to make sure that nothing ever went wrong. When Mr. Shilbotz called for his curtains to be cleaned, Joseph had to accompany the delivery boy himself because the fourteen-foot draperies couldn’t be lifted just by one person. Consequently, Joseph had been to all of Chuck Shilbotz’s homes.

  Unu remained silent, waiting for Joseph to indicate that the conversation had ended. Casey resembled her father around the mouth. She looked miserable right now. He wanted to put his arm around her, stroke her hair, but that wouldn’t fly with this crowd.

  The front door of Mr. Chan’s burst open; a large party came in. Tina smiled at the young man, a head taller than his family. Chul was here.

  In the foyer, everyone bowed uncomfortably. Casey and Leah were still holding the shopping bags. Mr. Chan ushered them to their private banquet room.

  Once they had been seated, the senior waiters brought out the cold appetizers in an instant. Chul stared at Tina silently, his nervous expression barely concealed. He wanted her to rescue him, but Tina was lost herself. Though the couple was seated at opposite ends of the table, their eyes formed a straight path toward each other. Chul stared at Tina with both awe and need. He wanted to make love to her all the time. Tina felt his pull keenly and tried not to think about them being together.

  His sisters were chattering loudly. They were smart looking, Casey thought, trying to recall everyone’s names. The introductions had been made so quickly near the door—Heidi, Kathryn, Rose, and their respective husbands, Jun-hi, Clark, and Dean. Casey couldn’t keep straight the children’s names: Max or Alex—names with x’s in them. The boys were the eldest daughter’s sons—neither very well behaved.

  “Game Boy in a minute,” Heidi promised them.

  Tina felt sorry for her mother, who appeared terrified by Chul’s mother, Anna, who kept trying to hold Leah’s hand.

  “Leah, you must. You must call me Anna. Please,” Chul’s mother insisted in English. She had a tendency to touch you when she spoke, and Leah was confused by Anna Baek’s overly familiar gestures. She even touched Joseph when she talked to him, holding on to his forearm when she complimented his necktie. He was repulsed by her. The unkind word he thought of was yuh-oo—a fox.

  “And I’ll call you Leah. Such a pretty name,” Anna said. She brushed a speck of lint from Leah’s shoulder.

  Leah nodded at the handsome woman with the knobby cheekbones. Anna Baek’s complexion was uneven, but her makeup was applied well. Leah had put on light pink lipstick herself, but much of it had already faded.

  When everyone at the table had been served, Joseph and Leah bent their heads in prayer. Tina, Chul, and Casey bowed their heads. So did Unu. Except for Chul and Heidi, the Baek family weren’t Christians. After the amens, the guests ate with great concentration.

  Chul was adorable, Casey thought—a foot taller than Tina, thick black hair, nut brown eyes, and an open smile. He had his mother’s best features, but with a great deal more kindness in his face. Chul looked like someone who’d have four or five kids and wear his simple navy suits for a dozen years, never losing his focus or good temperament.

  Kathryn, the second born, a former gymnast with a fireplug body and shoulder-length hair, acted like the leader of the pack. She’d been the one who’d introduced everyone in the foyer.

  “So how long have you and Unu been dating?” she asked Casey.

  Unu glanced up from his plate.

  “A while,” Casey answered. It wasn’t the question so much as the way she’d asked it that felt aggressive. Casey sat straighter.

  “How long?” Heidi asked, smiling. She thought it was safe to ask this but felt a little self-conscious that everyone was waiting for Casey’s answer to her question.

  “Four happy months,” Unu piped up. He beamed at Casey. “She’s just terrific.” It wasn’t the Korean way to be so expressive, but it was obvious that the Baeks preferred the American ways.

  Leah smiled at him.

  “And will you two be getting married soon?” Kathryn asked. She’d gotten engaged after meeting her husband, Clark, in about that time.

  The little boys giggled, making faces. “Like Uncle Chul!” the older one shouted.

  Casey shouldn’t have been surprised. Koreans could sometimes ask the most personal things, but she hadn’t expected it from someone not far from her generation. Kathryn was maybe ten years older than her.

  Tina smiled at Casey, hoping Kathryn hadn’t upset her. Chul said even his parents were a little afraid of Kathryn, who was unconscious of her bullying ways. In the few times Tina had met them, all three lawyer sisters had been relentless in their lines of questioning.

  “Will that be the next wedding? Hmm?” Kathryn raised her eyebrows as though she had amused herself.

  This time Unu didn’t look up. Casey knew where he stood on this and said nothing. No one there would understand that Unu didn’t believe in marriage or that Casey didn’t understand love lately. Only the innocent would rush to marry.

  Anna read the answer in Casey’s face and in Unu’s silence. Joseph squinted at Unu and exhaled audibly.

  “Kathryn,” Anna said, her voice tinged lightly with chiding, “that’s personal—”

  Somehow, Chul’s mother’s sympathy made Casey feel worse. Tina bit her lip.

  Joseph looked at Unu again. He seemed like a kindhearted child. The divorce was a strike against him, but he wanted to know too if Unu had any intention of marrying Casey. A divorced Korean boy from a nice family was still better than an American boy from Princeton who had too much arrogance. Unu and Casey were living together and no doubt sharing a bed. How could he take possession of her body and not want to care for her? It was a man’s duty to protect the woman he loved. Those were the old ways, but they were the right ones. It occurred to him that if Casey were dating a man who wasn’t going to marry her, then she was even crazier than he thought.

  Kathryn had put down her chopsticks, unfazed by her mother’s comment. She stared at the bride’s older sister, but Casey merely pi
cked up her red porcelain teacup and took a sip. Virginia, who’d done some media training, had once told Casey, “You don’t have to answer every question.”

  “The presents,” Tina said spontaneously. “We should give out the presents.”

  Leah nodded and fetched the parcels beside her chair. Glad to get up from her seat, Casey put a wrapped present in front of everyone in Chul’s family.

  “Oh, this was so unnecessary,” Anna said. Then she pulled out her set of presents and Chul passed those out. Everyone opened their boxes.

  Anna received a gold-and-diamond necklace-and-bracelet set, and the sisters each received gold-and-diamond earrings. The father was given a Burberry raincoat, and Chul got his Cartier watch. The brothers-in-law got V-neck cashmere sweaters from Scotland and scarves. The little boys received two-hundred-fifty-dollar savings bonds. Leah had spent six thousand dollars on the gifts. She’d given Joseph the receipts, and he’d never said anything about the expense. This money had come out of their retirement savings. Engagements could be broken off if inferior presents were given, and there were instances where daughters-in-law were beaten or resented from the memory of a bad gift. This was what Leah had wanted to avoid. For months, she’d worried herself about what to give Chul’s family—how to give the most precious, luxurious thing that would make them welcome Tina.

  Chul’s family had given Joseph a black-and-white YSL logo necktie and a pair of electroplated silver cuff links. Leah received a red wool muffler, and so did Casey. Tina received an old-fashioned jade brooch in a gold frame. Casey couldn’t help but tote up the cost in her head. Five hundred dollars? The gifts had all come from Macy’s.

  “It’s beautiful,” Casey exclaimed. She folded the oblong scarf in half, then draped it across her neck, pushing the ends through the folded loop she’d made to create what Sabine called the aviator knot.

  “That color looks great on you,” Anna said, trying to sound happy.

  The difference in the gifts was too severe to ignore. Either the Hans had overdone it or the Baeks had done too little. It was too late. Rose, the youngest, tried to be nice about it, removing the pearls from her ears to put on the eighteen-karat-gold earrings in the shape of dogwood flowers that Leah had chosen so carefully. The earrings had cost seven hundred dollars at wholesale price. The lady who’d sold them to Leah was a jeweler in her geh, and she’d said those earrings were made in the same workshop in Florence that made jewelry for Tiffany’s. They weren’t knockoffs, she’d said; they were Tiffany earrings without the hallmarks or blue boxes. Leah had never given her own daughters such costly presents.