Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

  The phone rang, and she rose to get it.

  “Hello,” she said in Korean, and speaking out loud, for she had been alone most of the day, made her cough again.

  “Are you alone?” Charles asked.

  “Uh-muh,” Leah said in shock. It was his voice.

  “I can come get you now.”

  Leah shook her head no. What was he talking about?

  “Leah, can you leave? Live with me.”

  She coughed and coughed.

  “You would make me happy.”

  “I made a mistake. It is my fault. Please pardon my offense. I made a terrible mistake.. . .” Leah began to sob.

  “Are you coming next week?” he asked. “Leah?”

  “I don’t know.” She stopped coughing. Tears trickled down her long face. Her nose was runny.

  Charles exhaled. He had to return to the choir room. He’d left the choir alone. If he hadn’t called now, then her husband might’ve been there. He was calling from the empty church office. On the wall, there hung a free calendar with tear-away pages from some Bible dealer. The month of June had a quotation from Psalm 23 in Korean. Where is my comfort? Charles wondered. How had he landed up in a church basement reeking of kimchi asking a white-haired woman to leave her husband?

  “Please forgive me.” She couldn’t bear the thought of him being angry with her.

  “Maybe it was a mistake,” Charles muttered.

  Her heart lurched. He had wanted her to come live with him. That was what he had said that night, and he had called to come get her today. Now it was a mistake. Uh-muh. A man like this could change his mind so fast. They could never be together—that much she had always understood, and she deserved to die for her sin of wanting him—but a part of her had thought that maybe this was what all the soh-sul books and terebi programs were about, a kind of pure, impossible love, and she had thought this had been her experience of it. But, no, it couldn’t be that if his heart could reverse itself. Was he a jeh bi—a smart girl was supposed to guard her soul against a man who’d appear swiftly like the fork-tailed swallow, full of charming songs. A man like that swept into your life, stole the jewels of your faith, then flew away, leaving you blinded and empty.

  Leah held the phone close to her ear as she stared at the front door in case her husband walked in. With their lunch. He had been so considerate while she was sick. What would she do if her daughters rang the bell? Did the girls still have their keys? Leah wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her jersey housedress.

  “I better go,” Charles said. He felt absurd for having called. This past month, he had been preparing himself for her to come to him. He had imagined that she would knock on his door and ask to stay. And of course, he would let her come in. He would marry her. Maybe even take her to Korea. His father would have liked her. He had not liked his two previous wives. The notion seemed childish to him now, no different from his boyhood wish for his dead grandmother to come back to life or how he had yearned for months when he was eight years old for his nanny, who had married a farmer, to return to him—tell him that she’d gone to her village for only a short trip to bring back his favorite yut candy. Charles missed his home suddenly, the home of his youth that didn’t exist anymore, where his mother was still alive and young, his grandmother was in the drawing room reading her novels, and his favorite nanny, who’d slept at the foot of his bed and brought him yogurt drinks when he did his homework, still lived with them and when his piano playing had pleased these women.

  But courtship was a mutual delusion, and once love was captured, things tended to go awry. The divas he had married could never be pleased. It was a mean curse to be married to a woman who refused to be happy. He’d had affairs and stayed away from the house. A wife’s pernicious anger gradually amounted to a killing. Extricating himself legally from the divas had been such an enormous waste of time. It was better to be alone. He would never have children.

  Leah was still on the phone. “I thought you cared for me,” she heard herself saying quietly. “That you wanted me to come and live with you.”

  Now it was Charles’s turn to be silent. He recognized that voice—it was the voice of a hurt woman. Somehow it made him less merciful.

  “You have a beautiful voice, Leah. The most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.” He said this and believed it was true. He had heard Callas, Price, Te Kanawa, and Battle. But this white-haired, middle-aged tailor outshone the divas. If there was a God, Charles thought, his distribution of gifts made no sense. Or was it that God kept the greatest for Himself, for His private pleasure? Just a few moments ago, he had thought of giving her everything he had.

  Leah began to cough and couldn’t stop.

  “You should rest. Your husband was here this morning—”

  “He spoke to you?” It felt like a slap to have him mention her husband.

  “Yes. He was worried about you.”

  And you? she wanted to ask but didn’t. He did not love her. It was not the love that lasted. There was worry in love, there was sacrifice. There was constancy. In four weeks, he had never tried to contact her. He was someone who could not be counted on, and it embarrassed her that she had even considered Charles as someone to love.

  “I should let you go. You must be busy. Thank you for calling.” Leah waited for Charles to hang up. She always waited for the other person to hang up before putting down the receiver. That was just her way. But as she waited, she heard no click, only his quiet and measured breath. She remembered the lemony detergent scent of his white undershirts, how she had held it up close to her nose when she had folded his laundry.

  Leah put down the receiver. Maybe this was all right. He had let go of her first.

  Approaching Van Kleeck Street, Casey fidgeted with the bows of the baby gift. Clothes for Timothy from Baby Gap. She was grateful that Unu had agreed to come with her. On the N train, he had even read out loud passages of Middlemarch that she had underlined, speaking in a mock English accent to make her laugh. His being so nice to her made it easier not to return Hugh’s charming calls. Casey was excited to see Tina’s baby in person but anxious about going back home, her first visit in four years. The photographs of baby Timothy showed a marshmallowy face with a shock of black hair. Unu had called him Don King. Timothy and Tina were reason enough to have boarded the train heading toward Grand Avenue.

  The apartment building appeared shorter than she remembered it. She didn’t know what Unu would make of the bulletproof glass, the tacky framed posters in the lobby, the roach spray odor in the halls. There was no doorman. “Are you kidding?” she’d replied when he’d asked about one. When she was a kid, she and her sister were afraid to throw out the garbage because a man who lived in the apartment next to the incinerator used to leave his door open while he walked around in his undershirt and shorts. The man was probably harmless, but as girls, they used to run when he’d say hello to them. Unu emphasized that the building was nice, and she laughed at his politeness. The building was a dump; it would never get better, and her parents would never leave it.

  Joseph let them in, and to Casey’s relief, Unu spoke Korean with her parents, putting them at ease.

  She felt awkward standing there in the living room while her father was pouring a Scotch for her boyfriend as well as one for himself. They were sitting on the burgundy sectional from Seaman’s, but she didn’t feel that she could join them.

  “How are your parents?” Joseph asked Unu. He watched the boy curiously.

  “They’re well,” Unu answered. This was true enough. He hadn’t heard any bad news, so it was safe to infer that everything was okay in Texas. His siblings were incapable of messing up. When he’d told his mother that he wasn’t working, she had said nothing about it. His father had said, “You know what you’re doing. I guess.” Unu picked up his glass after Casey’s father had taken a sip.

  Joseph was wondering if the boy would marry his daughter. Unu was divorced, and that fact alone might have at one time dismisse
d him as a marriage candidate, but with Casey, he wouldn’t have raised an objection necessarily. He knew by now that if he said red, she would say blue. So he would say nothing. He asked more questions about the boy’s family.

  Unu patiently answered Joseph’s questions about his parents, two brothers, and a sister. Two Dallas lawyers and a pediatrician. He was the only one in finance and the only one to have left Dallas. Joseph asked a few more things, then told him a little about his own family in Wonsan, details Casey had never mentioned beyond the fact that her father was a war refugee from the North. There was something regal about Casey’s father, a kind of courtliness in the way he spoke Korean. He was masculine in his restraint. You couldn’t help but be curious about him. He was so evidently proud, and you had to wonder where all that came from. His own father, the owner of a highly successful insurance firm, was someone who made jokes with everyone, tried hard to put people at ease. He used the word sir often and insisted on good manners for his children. These seemed to be things Casey’s father had little interest in doing. He also had nothing to say to Casey, who had by this time left the living room where the men sat. After seeing to it that he was okay with her dad, she’d gone into the kitchen, where her mother was putting out the food in dishes.

  “You’re coughing like crazy. What is that?” Casey asked. The walls of the kitchen appeared to have moved in somehow, but that was impossible. They weren’t bright white as they had been before. Her mother had been religious about using Fantastik on them. But it wasn’t reasonable to expect things to stay the same. “You okay?”

  Leah nodded, unable to speak. She took a small sip of the ginseng tea that she had poured out earlier. Then immediately she spat it out in the sink. So bitter. Her stomach felt sour, too.

  Casey heard the television go on in the living room. The men would be watching some nature program. Her father could watch those things forever. They weren’t talking anymore.

  “Is he nice to you?” Leah asked quietly in Korean.

  “He’s a kind person. Much nicer than me.”

  “That’s good. A man should love more than the woman.”

  It was such a typical thing for her mother to say.

  “Can you bring out some ahn-ju for your father?” Leah handed her a wooden bowl filled with dried cuttlefish, and Casey brought it to the men. They were watching a show on PBS on lions. Unu said thanks, and Joseph said nothing. He pushed the bowl toward Unu, who grabbed a handful; then Joseph took some for himself. Both their glasses were full of whiskey.

  “More ice,” Joseph said, and Casey went to get some.

  Her mother sat as she put the prepared food into platters and bowls.

  “You don’t look right,” Casey said to her mother after filling a white Corning bowl with ice cubes. They didn’t have a proper ice bucket in the house.

  “Umma is okay. Don’t worry,” Leah said, but actually she wanted to die. It would be easier if she were dead—this pain, unbearable. She was ruined forever, soiled. Had he been serious about coming to get her? And what would it be like to live in that house in Brooklyn? Who would take care of her husband, who was no longer young, who had worked all of his life to take such good care of her and their daughters? What would Casey and Tina think?

  “How is school?”

  “Fine,” Casey said. “I have terrific grades, but this summer job is tough as—” She stopped herself from cursing. The word shit or damn might have knocked her mother over. She looked so frail. Besides, what was the point of explaining her need to get an offer? Her parents didn’t understand these things. It was her job to bring home success or not to come home at all. The mechanics of success were her problem. “Maybe you should see a doctor. About the cough.”

  “Umma is okay.” Leah folded up the brown paper bags that the food had come in. “How is Unu’s work? Is he doing okay?”

  “He’s not working right now.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s taking some time off. He’s trying to figure out what he wants to do.”

  Wasn’t that what her daughter had said after graduation?

  “How old is he?”

  “Older than me.”

  Her mother looked at her exhausted.

  “He’s thirty. Thirty-one in August.”

  Leah nodded. He was not young anymore.

  Casey resented the quiet judgment. She’d always assumed that Unu would get the same job elsewhere. It hadn’t dawned on her that it might take him this long to find work. It had been four months. Hardly an eternity, but the way he was looking for a job, or not looking for a job, was disturbing. There were money problems, naturally. That was obvious, but it was mostly from the gambling, not merely the job loss. Hugh had said Unu’s problem was serious, distinguishing a kind of gentlemanly betting from a moral failure.

  Ted Kim had made it plain on a number of occasions that the way you got a job on Wall Street was through contacts. If you were good, you were contacted. If you were hot shit, everyone in your field monitored your happiness. If things looked a little glum for you, a rival company would swoop into your life, make you an offer impossible to refuse. Get a better life, an upgrade, a bigger piece of the pie. Was this true? Ted was a big talker, but his landing was cushy after what had been his moment of public disgrace. Unu wouldn’t have disagreed entirely with Ted’s assessment. For Unu’s kind of job and at his level, you wouldn’t be reading the classifieds. And as for headhunters, the aphorism they followed was: The hired were hired away, the fired would stay that way. If what Hugh said about Unu’s gambling was true, did others on the Street think this as well? Could Hugh have discussed it with Walter? What were the chances that Unu might get hired for a senior position? She’d never before considered what people in the industry thought about her boyfriend. They weren’t even married. Her future wasn’t tied up with his, she told herself. He would get something. Of course he would.

  The baby was here. Swaddled in his yellow-and-blue blanket, Timothy was drowsy from his last feeding, his tiny features peaceful. Joseph was visibly gleeful holding his grandson in his arms. Leah cried from happiness, and Tina held her. Her coughing dissipated some. Leah couldn’t hold the baby for fear of getting him sick.

  Casey was glad to see Tina and Chul, too. The apartment felt happier with them in it. Her younger sister looked exhausted, but nevertheless pleased to be home. The flight was long, Chul admitted, but the baby had been good. Slept most of the way and was peaceful when awake. Only a little crying at takeoff and landing.

  Tina looked older—it might have been the weight gain from the pregnancy, shorter hair, the dark-rimmed eyeglasses she wore for the plane ride. She joked about how large her bosom was: 34DD in her nursing bra. The last time they had all been together was the wedding, but the look of the bride was completely erased. The baby had come so soon, and Tina looked shocked herself that she had a child. “I have a son,” she exclaimed.

  “It’s kinda nutty,” Casey said, grinning.

  The men went to the living room. Chul chatted with Unu; they were comfortable with each other. Joseph went to the kitchen to get Chul a glass. Soon, they were all drinking whiskey and nibbling on o-jing-uh. The nature program was still on, the volume lowered—a lion tore into a hapless wildebeest. From the kitchen, the women could hear the clink of glasses and the calm male voices. Leah was less jumpy with Tina here. For a second, Casey thought, family happiness was completed: the immigrant family with two daughters in graduate school and two Korean boys from nice families, a grandson in tow.

  At the dinner table, Chul said grace, and Leah smiled at him. Tina couldn’t have brought home a finer husband. Unu came from a better family, but Chul was sincere, still smitten with Tina. Leah tried to put the professor out of her thoughts.

  The baby woke up only once to eat and have his diaper changed. Tina nursed her son in her childhood bedroom. Casey sat with her quietly as she did this. The baby drank greedily, then in a blink fell asleep again.

  Tina and Chul gave Unu and
Casey a lift to the city. They were going to stay at the Hilton in midtown for the night, even though Leah and Joseph wanted them to stay with them. Chul had to meet some colleagues very early in the morning at Roosevelt Hospital. The men sat in the front seat of the car and talked about the Baltimore Orioles—Chul’s hometown team and one of Unu’s favorites.

  In the car ride, Casey noticed how little Tina spoke. She was utterly absorbed with Timothy. Casey admired the baby. How could you not? The infant was perfect.

  “You are so lucky,” Casey said wistfully, wanting Tina to notice her. “Hey, Tina, I’m sorry about the baby shower. The finals kicked my ass. And I was freaked out about the school loans and the interviews. The tuition loans are huge. You have them, too, I know.” Tina didn’t seem worried about her loans, however.

  “Oh, showers are stupid. And you sent that crib, Casey. It must have cost—”

  “I figured a crib was better for everyone in the long run than the cost of my plane ticket, or flunking out of school. I would’ve liked to go.”

  “Look at you. A year of business school and you’ve gotten all practical.” Tina laughed.