Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  “It smells wonderful. The choir director will get better right away after he eats your food,” Douglas said. He was humming as he shifted the gear from park to drive. “Do your daughters cook?”

  “Not really. I wanted them to study for school,” she said. “Ella cooks wonderfully. I remember her cookies. The ones she baked for the older parishioners. They were delicious.”

  “Ella is a gourmet cook. But she doesn’t make much Korean food. Says the cookbooks aren’t very good. But she knows how to make kimchi. She found a recipe in The New York Times. Isn’t that funny?”

  Leah nodded, feeling sorry that there had been no one to teach his daughter.

  “I’ll let her know. What you said about the cookies. Maybe she’ll send you a batch.”

  “Oh no, no. I mean, I’m sure she’s so busy. With. . . with all the work and her baby—”

  She didn’t know if it was okay to talk about Ella. With the divorce and all.

  “Ted is a fool. An absolute fool,” Douglas muttered. He looked ahead at the road. The thought of his son-in-law upset him, but he was a cautious driver, and he kept his foot light on the accelerator. He hadn’t spoken to anyone at church about the divorce, not even when the minister had asked him about it. But somehow it felt all right to talk to the deaconess—perhaps it was being alone with her in the car or the fact that she, too, had a daughter Ella’s age. Douglas missed his wife most when he had concerns about Ella.

  “Is everything okay with your granddaughter?” She said the word okay in English. Her Korean words felt too specific.

  “Irene is perfect. Just like my Ella.” His granddaughter was a smiley baby, full of laughs and easy to please. She didn’t cry except for when she needed a diaper change, was tired, or was hungry. His office desk was covered with framed photographs of her and Ella together.

  “And how is Ella?” Leah finally ventured to ask.

  “She’s doing very well.” Douglas wanted to correct the last image that the deaconess might have had of his daughter: when the ambulance had to take her away to the hospital from Tina’s wedding. “She went back to work at that school, and there’s a very nice nanny and housekeeper still working for her.” Douglas grew quiet, having had to say out loud that his daughter was raising her child in the same way he’d had to after his wife had died—as a single working parent. “She’ll be twenty-six in November.”

  Leah watched his face as he drove, how it softened with grief.

  “She will marry again,” Leah said. “Ella is the most beautiful girl and so very kind.”

  “Ted is a fool,” he repeated.

  “Then”—Leah paused before continuing—“it’s good that she got rid of him sooner than later.” Her sister-in-law had once told her that a woman’s life was completely determined by the man she married. And in her experience, this was true. All the women she knew who were happy had made good marriages to nice, hardworking men. “Ella will find someone better. Because now she has. . .” Leah thought about it a bit. “Life experience.”

  Her words surprised Douglas, but he could tell she meant them.

  “Whatever she wants to do is fine with me,” he said, his tone confident. Yet that wasn’t entirely true. He still regretted not having pushed her to wait to marry Ted. He could’ve said no. His daughter was a mild child with a gentle disposition. Even in this day and age, she would have listened to him; he felt certain of this. But things like infidelity usually didn’t show up until the marriage was well under way. Douglas tried to imagine Irene’s face, her pretty eyelashes and gurgly laughs—how she lit up when she heard Ella’s voice. She was a year and five months, but already she was stringing words together. Irene called him ba-buh, short for hal-ah-buh-jee. If it weren’t for Ted, there would be no Irene. He would focus on the good, Douglas told himself—to possess joy and peace in Yesu Christo.

  Douglas rang the doorbell—a low, quiet chime. Almost pleasant. But no one answered. He pulled out the scrap paper with the map and address. They were at the right place, standing on the limestone stoop, six tall steps above street level. There was another entrance at the street below the staircase. The facade of the Federalist house was imposing. Douglas rang again.

  Leah shifted her food package from one hand to the other. Would he like her cooking? she wondered. There were houses similar to this in Sutton Place, but she’d never been to Brooklyn before. She was impressed by the size of the home and understood from rumors that he came from a prominent boojah family, but it was oddly disappointing to see him live so prosperously. She had pictured him in a small, unheated apartment, suffering for his music. He was supposed to be a composer, and she’d imagined him sitting on a hard stool, despite his illness, writing sacred music on a makeshift desk. There were a few customers at the store who were artists—one painter who worked as a waiter had given her and Joseph a small watercolor of a golden carp because he couldn’t pay to have his uniform cleaned one week. That wasn’t allowed, but Joseph put money in the register from his own wallet to pay for the cleaning.

  “One more time,” Douglas said, pressing the bell. “Maybe he’s okay after all and stepped out.”

  But they heard footsteps approaching. The old brass knob turned from inside. The immense wooden door opened.

  Charles appeared shocked, almost as if he didn’t recognize them. He was wearing a blue sweater, gray sweatpants, and no socks. His face and neck were spotted with red blisters. The living room behind him, however, was filled with the brilliant sunlight of the early Sunday afternoon. He invited them in, shaking his head.

  “There was no need for you to come all this way.” Charles spoke to them in Korean. He felt embarrassed to be seen like this. He tried not to look at Leah.

  The door shut behind him. The piano and the stereo that the insurance broker had mentioned the day Charles had first started the job were beside the Palladian windows facing the street. The tall windows were unshaded and looked grimy. Since the broker’s visit, Douglas’s father had come to New York and bought him two Le Corbusier sofas and a Noguchi coffee table now piled high with books and sheet music. Dustballs collected in the living room corners like miniature tumbleweeds.

  “I brought the soloist. Maybe Deaconess Cho will sing for you. That might make you well,” Douglas said with a straight face.

  The elder couldn’t be serious, Leah thought.

  Charles glanced at Douglas, then Leah. “The doctor is undoubtedly right. Do you think you can give us a song?” He smiled at her.

  Leah flushed from her neck to her forehead. Without removing her shoes, she rushed to the nearest chair and sat down to pray. Even in his condition, the choir director was handsome to her, and she felt guilty. Douglas smiled genially at Charles, then went to sit on the sofa. Silently, he gave thanks that he was able to serve God in this capacity, also for their safe arrival.

  When Leah finished her prayers, she opened her eyes.

  “May I put the food in the kitchen?” she asked.

  Charles hesitated, knowing the condition it was in. But there was nothing he could do but comply. He pointed in the direction of the kitchen.

  Leah picked up the food she’d brought and followed him. The kitchen smelled of cigarettes and tuna fish. The sink was full of dishes and frying pans and the counter littered with empty Vienna sausage tins and opened cereal boxes. It was a kitchen that was used every day but hadn’t been properly cleaned in what might have been weeks, perhaps months. The space was enormous, however, nearly the size of her apartment minus a bedroom. The old cabinets had been painted so many times over, they looked as if there were a layer of cake frosting over them. Leah admired the expanse of the old marble counters. It would be easy to put up a dozen bottles of kimchi in a kitchen this size, she thought. The fact that the kitchen was dirty and cluttered didn’t bother her—in fact, the amount of work needing to be done made her feel better, and oddly, standing there, she felt comfortable. Leah rested her package on the kitchen table and removed her coat, laying it over
a chair. She started to drop the empty sausage cans and bottles on the counter into the waste bin.

  The men didn’t know what to say as she began to clean. It didn’t seem possible to stop her, and even Douglas, who was in a better position to relieve her from this, knew better than to keep her from it. The work had to be done—that was clear enough—and growing up in Korea, men like them had had women to do it. For both of them, it had been some time since a Korean woman had been in either of their kitchens in this kind of intimate way, and in their wonder and surprise at being cared for by someone else’s wife and mother, who reminded them of other women in their past lives, Douglas and Charles found that they could hardly say anything, hoping not to diminish the moment. For this was love, wasn’t it? To have someone clean up after you, to think about you when you were sick, to not walk away when there was nothing to be gained for the labor required. Yet the task was also enormous; it would take a person all day to clean up this kitchen. Douglas thought he should try to help her. He took off his coat and put it over hers.

  Charles spoke up finally.

  “Deaconess Cho,” he said quietly.

  Leah was now running the water in the sink, her arms deep in the dishes. She did not answer.

  “Leah,” Charles said. Douglas was taken aback to hear someone call the deaconess by her American name.

  “Leah,” Charles said again, “you don’t need to do this.”

  Leah turned around.

  “I should be offering you tea or something. I’m sorry about the mess.”

  “No. You should be resting,” Douglas said firmly. He’d had no idea what to expect upon visiting the bachelor choir director. He himself was a widower, but his life looked very different from this man’s. Douglas was a tidy man who’d hardly tolerate such disorder. His housekeeper, Mrs. Jonas, had taken care of him and Ella proficiently for over twenty years, and when she retired, she had trained Cecilia to take over her work. “I will help Deaconess Cho clean up before we go. Why don’t you lie down?”

  It was hard to resist the doctor’s suggestion. Charles felt itchy and hot all over. Last night, he’d barely slept. He trudged toward the living room to lie down on the sofa.

  “Deaconess Cho,” Douglas said loudly, trying not to shout over the running faucet. “Here, let me help you.”

  Leah brushed him off, smiling. “Elder Shim, you should check on the director. I’m fine right here. This I know how to do.” She air-swept her hand across the dirty things on the counter as if to display her province of expertise. “I’ll work better alone.” She nodded pertly, tipping her head toward the living room. She looked adorable to him, but Douglas stared at her soberly to see if she was okay doing this. Ignoring his discomfort, she went to the table and pulled out two cans of mandarin orange juice from one of the six-packs that the doctor had brought in and handed them to him. She couldn’t imagine finding two clean glasses and a tray nearby. Douglas went to find Charles.

  Finally alone, Leah squeezed the water from the dishwashing sponge and dabbed some detergent onto it. Thankfully, there was soap for the dishes. It was better to work than to talk, she thought. What would she have said to the choir director, anyway? Typically in these visits, Elder Shim would lead the small group in prayer and ask his series of questions that he tended to ask the bedridden parishioner. Then they’d conduct a brief worship service, drink a glass of juice or eat a doughnut, then leave. In the book of James, Jesus’s brother wrote about how you had to take care of your neighbor’s practical needs as well as spiritual needs. Her father’s favorite passage in the Bible had been “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” If she could locate some teabags, she would boil water in a cooking pot—there being no kettle on the stove—to serve the men something warm to drink. She glanced about and noticed the rice cooker behind the large chrome coffee machine that she didn’t know how to use. At home, she and Joseph drank Taster’s Choice. In her mind, Leah ordered up a list of tasks she could try to accomplish in an hour.

  In the living room, Douglas found Charles sleeping on the sofa, his body curled like an S, his face reddened by the pox. The doctor crept up the stairs quietly. Charles’s bedroom was the first large open chamber near the landing. The room itself was beautiful, with two enormous windows that opened like doors, shellacked hardwood floors, and a carved stone fireplace. The wide-planked floors were covered with dirty clothes and piles of newspapers. On the lone armchair, there were stacks of music scores. Douglas shook out the blanket rumpled over the bed and folded it over his arm. The bedsheets felt hardened to the touch from lack of wash. He put down the blanket to strip the beds and took the dirty sheets downstairs.

  First, he went to cover Charles with the blanket. Then he snooped around the house and discovered the laundry room beside the kitchen and put the sheets into the washing machine. The stainless-steel machines were from Germany, a manufacturer Douglas had never heard of. He pressed a red button to start the load, and it was so quiet that he opened the top to see if there was water running at all. From the looks of it, the choir director didn’t possess many things, but the items he owned were costly and well chosen, and yet none of it was cared for—as if the owner wished the things themselves to fall apart from neglect or disrepair.

  When he stepped out of the laundry room, he saw that Leah had swept the kitchen floor and was now on her knees mopping the tiles, the way the maids of his childhood home would clean the maru in smooth, concentric motions. When he was growing up, Douglas’s mother would chide the cleaning girls if she spotted one hair on the floor, and all the common-room floors of their enormous estate had to be cleaned twice daily. Leah was singing quietly, and he could not make out the words of the hymn. Douglas went to her. Leah, her knees tucked under her, a rag in her hand, looked up at him.

  “I thought maybe I would ask Cecilia, my housekeeper, to come by tomorrow.” She also lived in Brooklyn, but Douglas didn’t know where exactly. He hesitated from telling the deaconess how bad the conditions of the upstairs room were. “I put his bedsheets in the wash.” He gestured to the shuttered laundry room door. Leah opened her eyes wide in surprise. It was hard to imagine the doctor doing a load of wash. “Maybe you could stop now,” he said. “The kitchen looks much better.” Leah smiled at the recognition. “Deaconess, it’s your only day of rest. Maybe we should leave after the director has woken up and we could pray for him.” He bent his head forward slightly her way. Her face shone like a happy child’s, and his heart fluttered a little, and he had to look away from her.

  “I don’t mind. Maybe I can find sheets for the bedding and make up the bed while the wash is going on.” Leah tried to stand, and Douglas gave her a hand up. She took it, and when she rose, she let go of his hand quickly, never having been touched by him before.

  “There’s no one at home anyway, and I feel useful doing this—” Then Leah said nothing more, because she remembered that the doctor had no one at home, too. Was that why each week he served the sick and bedridden of the church? He didn’t want to face an empty house on Sunday afternoons? That seemed like an unfair rationale for his dedicated service to the Lord. Leah had never had cause to think of it this way before. But this was the first time she herself had ever spent any time apart from her husband.

  Douglas smiled at her. In her company, he felt almost dumb with pleasure. It reminded him of the way he felt in the presence of his older sister, who used to take him to school and who had died before Ella’s high school graduation. The deaconess had the same gentleness in her expression that his sister did.

  Leah bent to pick up the dustpan and went to the garbage can, filled to its capacity. She began to pull at the edges of the black garbage bag. A new one would have to be put in. Douglas moved swiftly to her side to relieve her from this.

&nbs
p; “He’s sleeping very well,” Douglas said. He grabbed the two corners of the bag and knotted them to make bunny ears. Ella had liked this when she was a child.

  “It must be very uncomfortable.” Leah wiped her brow; a strand of hair had come loose from its bun. “I remember when Casey got chicken pox. I put Tina in the room with her right away so they would get it together. So it would be over faster.”

  Douglas understood. Working parents had to do these kinds of things to save time. He wouldn’t have known what to do if he’d had two children.

  “The choir director doesn’t have any food at home. Maybe we could go to the store to pick up some things for him to eat. There’s no fresh fruit or vegetables here.”

  “Yes, of course.” Douglas tucked his hand into his trouser pocket for the car keys. His beeper vibrated. “Oh. What’s this?” He studied the beeper screen, the size of a stick of gum. “The phone?” he said, wanting to make a call, and looked around.

  Leah pointed to the wall beside the refrigerator. She couldn’t help noticing the thick layer of dust above the freezer.

  Douglas dialed the hospital. The resident had paged him because an elderly patient recovering from surgery had a very high fever and was having convulsions. The neurologist on call had advised the resident to contact him. Douglas got off the phone.

  Leah stood waiting, not knowing what he’d say.

  “We better go back now,” he said, sucking air through his teeth.

  “Oh.” There was still so much left to do. “We didn’t have our worship service. And he’s sleeping.”

  Douglas opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. “You’re right,” he said. “And the laundry.” He looked down. “I know.” He raised his index finger. “I’ll go to the hospital and come right back. I don’t think it will take long.”

  “And I can stay here and clean up while you go.”

  “Do you mind?” he asked. “No.” He shook his head as if he were disagreeing with himself. “I mean, you should come with me, and we can both come back when I’m done.” Douglas felt confused. It was hard to say how long it would take. The hospital was half an hour away without much traffic, and if the medicine worked, he’d talk to the attending physicians and return in no time. “I think we could be back in two hours at most.”