by Min Jin Lee
“That’s a scary thought.”
Tina stroked her baby’s lovely dark hair. At the baby shower that her girlfriend from school had thrown her, everyone had asked where her mother and sister were. Tina had explained that they were busy with work. Except for her father, who had always made her believe that she could do anything, her mother and sister could not be counted on. They could hardly take care of themselves.
Casey lowered her voice. “I wanted to give you back the money. To pay you back for your loans. This job I have this summer pays really well. If I get hired by them after I graduate, I probably will never have to worry about money again.”
Tina shook her head gently. “Forget it, Casey.”
“I’ll send you a check. I should have brought it.”
Timothy stirred, and both held their breath. He was still asleep. The men in front weren’t paying any attention to them, either. Tina tucked his blanket into the car seat. Her husband didn’t know about Casey’s abortion or that she had loaned Casey the money to leave home after graduation. All that seemed minor. Like childhood scrapes from a long time ago. They were supposed to be women now. Tina wanted to think about the future. She’d taken some time off from school, but she’d return in the fall of 1998.
Tina smiled and pointed. “Look at that. You still wear your Wonder Woman cuffs. I love them.”
Casey crossed her chest with her forearms, and they laughed. She glanced at the cuffs she’d worn since freshman year in college, one of the first presents Sabine had ever given her. She pulled one off her wrist.
“Here,” Casey said. “You take one.” She clasped it on her sister’s wrist.
“No. I couldn’t. They’re part of a set. And they’re yours. Wonder Woman needs two. You can’t break up the pair.”
“Then take both,” Casey said. “I never give you anything.” She removed the other one and put it also on Tina’s wrist. “They look great on you.”
Tina crossed her chest and giggled. “I couldn’t. Sabine gave these to you. And you love them.”
Casey touched her bare forearms. “She would understand. I want you to have them.”
“Really?” Tina stared at the silver glinting on her wrists.
“You’re the real Wonder Woman anyway,” Casey said. It was bittersweet to say it, but she did not mind so much.
Tina didn’t know how to respond. It was as if Casey were admitting defeat to a rivalry Tina had never felt for her older sister. She had just wanted Casey’s love, her attention. There was no contest. Was there? But if she didn’t accept the gift, her sister would be hurt.
“You give me lots of things, Casey. The crib from the shower, and just today, the clothes for Timothy.”
“I want you to have these.” Casey checked the edges of the cuffs, and they were rounded. They wouldn’t hurt the baby when Tina was holding him. “Really. I mean it.”
“Thank you, Casey.”
Casey felt better suddenly. Her wrists were pale where the cuffs had been, the tan lines stark against the white bands of skin stretching over her thin wrist bones.
“I hope Timothy is like you,” Tina said.
“Why would you wish such a rotten thing on your beautiful child?” Casey kissed Timothy’s forehead.
“Because you’re a true person, Casey. You are your own. That’s important.” Tina’s voice was assured. All her life, she had wanted to make decisions not informed by others’ needs, wants, and expectations. “No one is like you,” Tina said. “In the end, that matters most, I think. And being truthful.”
Casey swallowed her breath, trying to contain the good Tina was trying to give her. But it wasn’t possible to believe it fully. She touched the baby’s soft foot, almost to make sure that he was real.
Chul dropped them off at Unu’s apartment. The doorman on duty was Frank, and he waved hello. George was off that weekend.
At home, Unu hung up Casey’s raincoat. He pulled out a compact disc wrapped in cellophane from the console drawer in the foyer.
“It’s not much,” he said.
“What’s the occasion?”
“No reason.”
It was a Carly Simon anthology with the song “Coming Around Again.”
She kissed him on the mouth. “I love it. And I didn’t have it. I mean, I used to, but I lost it.” She felt terrible.
“I was walking through Tower, and you said you liked that song. A while ago.”
“I remember.” The day he’d won all that money. Casey sat on the armchair.
“I know things haven’t been great. With me lately. I’m trying to figure out the job thing. You’ve been such a good friend the past few months. I couldn’t have made it without you. Things will get better. I should have gotten you jewelry or something like that—”
Casey shook her head. “No. I prefer this.”
Unu nodded. He wanted to be with her, and he grew more certain of this as time passed. He’d get his act together. Make the calls he had to make. Quit gambling. You could start again if you had love.
“I slept with Hugh Underhill. In Vermont,” Casey blurted out. She covered her mouth with her hands folded.
“What?”
Casey did not repeat herself. The hurt in his eyes was awful, but she couldn’t have kept it from him. It needed saying.
“You’re unbelievable,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“How could you do that? You read the Bible every fucking day. Go to church every Sunday. Do they make hypocrites as big as you?”
Casey lowered her head. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should go.”
“What? Are going to meet Hugh who-fucks-everything-that-moves Underhill? Is that how you got your job?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No.”
He looked incredulous. “You’re a goddamn cliché. The girl who sleeps her way to the top. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you. There are thousands of guys like that on Wall Street. They’re no good, Casey. How could you?” Unu felt like he might hit her, and he stepped back.
“That’s not what happened.”
“Right.”
“I’m sorry, Unu. I am sorry. I couldn’t not tell you.” Casey looked at her hands. She missed her bracelets.
“Get out of here. Get out. Get the fuck out!” he screamed. “And take your shit with you. Get the fuck out!” He sat on the floor, his upper body crumpling. He hated her. He had been right not to marry again. She was worse than his wife. At least his wife had been in love with an old flame. She hadn’t spread her legs for a sleazy broker for a job. What kind of person would do that?
“It’s not what you think. I can’t explain what happened, and it didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry.”
“Get your shit and go.”
Casey hurried into the bedroom and threw some work clothes and shoes into the suitcase she’d used for her trip to Vermont.
When she was done, she stood by the front door with her bag. “I’m sorry, Unu.”
“Just go. Please.”
Casey left her keys on the console and closed the door gently.
Seventy-second Street was empty of people. Most were gone for the weekend. Frank asked if she needed a cab, and she said no. Casey looked up at the building windows. There were more darkened ones than lit.
10 ADJUSTMENT
ASKING FOR JOINT CUSTODY IS CERTAINLY NOT an unreasonable request,” said Chet Stenor. Ted nodded in agreement with his lawyer, unwilling to meet Ella’s gaze. She sat at the opposite side of the conference table. Ted focused on the neat stack of papers in front of his lawyer.
“You don’t even know what she looks like,” Ella mumbled, staring at Ted. She hadn’t meant to say this right then, but she couldn’t help it. Ronald Coverdale, seated beside her, touched her forearm. She ignored him. “You haven’t seen her in weeks. Hardly at all. Why are you asking for half the time, Ted? I don’t understand you. You’re too busy anyway—” Ronald Coverdale touched her arm again, then picked up his pen.
“W
hat Ella is saying is perfectly reasonable, too. The father has a doubtlessly demanding job. Ella is not criticizing his parenting. That’s not it at all. But he may not be able to manage the daily needs of a small child, and in her best interest we should consider—”
“You know that’s not true, Ronald,” Chet said. “And I trust that you will not be sexist about this. It goes without saying that a father plays a significant role in the healthy development of his child, equal to the mother’s role, and should therefore have equal access.”
Ella’s lawyer stared blankly at opposing counsel. Chet Stenor was a class A prick. Ronald would play the nice card for a little while longer.
“Ted works exceptionally hard at his job, but he is also passionately interested in being involved in his daughter’s life. All the studies indicate the essential benefits of having two parents in a child’s life, and in Irene’s best interest. . .” Chet paused when he saw Ronald opening his mouth, having anticipated the interruption, but Ella jumped in, beating her lawyer.
“But you don’t visit her, Ted. Since she was born, you’ve seen her maybe half a dozen times. You’re just negotiating this because you want to win. Ted, this isn’t some game. It’s our daughter’s life.”
“Ella, you’re being unfair.” Ted finally looked at her face. “I want to know Irene better. I even rented a three-bedroom apartment not five blocks from the house just so I can see her more. I’ve been settling into my new job at Lally, and—”
“Don’t tell me about fair, Ted—”
“Good grief. . .” Ted sighed, then picked up the coffee carafe and tipped it toward his cup, but the pot was empty. “Is there more?”
Chet nodded. His colleague Kimberly Heath got up and called reception to send up more coffee. Then she handed the crying wife a tissue. Kimberly was a senior associate in her mid-forties who’d gone to law school as a second act after teaching Latin at a private school for a dozen years. She served as a soft touch at these meetings. Chet hated female histrionics. Women cried too damn much, especially if they were ambivalent. From his experience, Chet knew that the judge would take the existing custodial arrangements seriously, but it didn’t help the wife’s case that she had a full-time job as well, albeit her job was more like 40 hours a week maximum, whereas Ted could work anywhere from 60 to 120 hours a week, especially clocking travel time. But it would be easy to argue that the wife relied on baby-sitting for 60 hours a week, which was likely the case since she’d have to incorporate transit time as well as work time. So it could be easy to establish that there was no full-time parent in either household. Why people who had no time for kids bothered having any was a mystery to him.
Kimberly gave the wife the rest of the tissue box, and the wife blew her nose. The young woman was beautiful in a portrait kind of way, he thought, but the fiancée was definitely hotter. Second wives uniformly were that. Sex was not a negotiable for men who could financially afford a second or third marriage. Chet had advised a prenuptial for Ted, but he had refused. Moron.
Ted took off his glasses. His contacts had been bothering him lately. All three lawyers checked to see if the husband was going to break down, too. It was almost customary to have tears shed in the conference room of a firm specializing in matrimonial law. But the husband wasn’t crying; instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked his eyes rapidly.
“Very dry in this room,” Ted said. A gust of cold air came from the wall vents above Ella’s lawyer’s head.
Ella noticed that Ted was rubbing his face, especially his eyes. Was he crying, too? It had been so long since she’d seen him cry that she felt sorry for him. His father had just died, and Ella imagined that all this must be hard on him, too, though physically he looked no worse for the wear. Like her, he had lost weight. The thinness made their faces gaunt and older. Ted was still a striking man. Today, he looked like a successful art dealer in his titanium eyeglasses, blue jeans, crisp white shirt, and black blazer.
Ted blinked his right eye repeatedly. He swerved his head back and forth and looked at everyone in the room. He picked up the papers in front of him, and with his left eye closed, he tried to read the words but couldn’t. His name was written above the word RESPONDENT on the top sheet of the pile—he knew that because he could read it with his left eye, but with his right, he couldn’t make out his own name. It had to be his name, but it looked like dark, wavy smudges floating on white space. “What in the world?” he said out loud.
“What’s the matter? Are you okay?” Ella got up from her seat and walked around to look at his eye, just as if she were examining the scrape of a boy at St. Christopher’s. Ted was blinking furiously now, looking up and down at the walls, everyone’s faces, then again at the papers. He put a sheet of paper up close to his eye.
“I can’t see. In my right eye,” he said. “Ella, I can’t see.”
Ella stood over him and peered into his right eye. “Is it an eyelash? I don’t see anything.”
Ronald observed his client hovering over her husband’s face. Did she still have feelings for this guy? What a mess, he thought. Love was such a fucking toxic waste dump. Women always wanted these divorces because they were hurt and angry, and these men never responded correctly. You shouldn’t bluff, he thought. Never bluff in love. If you have to, it’s not love. It was like that favorite quote of his grandfather’s: “There are only two questions that can’t be answered: First, ‘How much do you love me?’ and second, ‘Who’s really in control?’” Basically, Ronald believed that a marriage was fundamentally based on these two sphinxlike riddles, but in the end, both parties could get eaten alive giving the wrong answers.
Ella took a tissue and cleaned his glasses, blew away the lint. “Put these on again,” she said gravely.
Ted put them on.
“Is it any better?”
“No. I can’t make out my own name,” he said, apoplectic.
Ella crossed her arms, not knowing if she should return to her spot. Did Ted have some ulterior motive? Lately, she felt almost invulnerable toward surprises or wrong-mindedness. People were not always very good, and she had been naive for a long time. Unu had just told her that Casey had cheated on him with a colleague of hers at Kearn Davis. How could she? After what Jay had done to her? After knowing what it had done to her own marriage? And to Unu, who was such a sweet person? Ella returned to her seat.
“Are you all right?” Chet Stenor spoke up finally. He hadn’t wanted to interrupt Ella’s efforts. It would have appeared rude.
Ella looked up to see what Ted would say. He didn’t say anything but appeared lost. She wanted to help him. “Do you have any drops? Can I get you anything?”
Ted could hear the kindness in Ella’s voice, and he felt lousy. He shook his head no, unable to speak. From his left eye, he could see her face perfectly well with his glasses on. He could see the whiteness of her skin in contrast with the navy fabric of her simple dress. It was a knit wool dress that she had bought when they first married. From Saks. It had been expensive, but he had insisted on it, because it made her look so confident and elegant. Had she worn it to upset him? No. Ella wasn’t like that. But it did remind him of their happier times. She also wore a pearl necklace that he didn’t recognize. Where did she get that? She would never have bought it for herself. Did she have a boyfriend already? The possibility of it rankled him. From his right eye, at best he could manage the outline of a pretty Asian girl—the soft features of an oval face, the dark pink of her lipstick.
Ted looked around the conference room again, his left eye closed, trying to make out the blurry shapes. The edges of the picture frames on the walls were wavy, too. From his right eye, his lawyer’s head was the image reflected in a funhouse mirror. No one else spoke while he tried to see them.
“It’s like everything is behind a greasy lens. Fuck,” he said.
Chet turned aside and put his arm on Ted’s shoulder. “Maybe we should stop the meeting here. You need to see a doctor about this,” he said
, cocking his head to the side, wondering what was really happening to his client. In his twenty-two years of practice, he had witnessed one fatal heart attack (a wife, not a husband, surprisingly, and because they were not yet divorced, the husband ended up with a bundle on her life insurance policy, and her family naturally tried to sue), thirty, give or take, physical altercations, and one unloaded pistol-waving incident. Yelling and cursing were par for the course. A client becoming nearly blinded in one eye—this was new. In a perfectly calm voice, he asked, “May we phone your eye doctor for you, Ted?”
“What’s his name?” Kimberly asked, nimbly picking up her pen so she could look up his number.
Ted didn’t reply, but made a face. He exhaled loudly.
“My father,” Ella said. “It’s my father. He’s Ted’s eye doctor.”
Kimberly and Chet nodded as though this were not unusual.
Ronald smiled and looked away.
“Do you want me to call him?” Ella asked. Ted had never appeared as flummoxed as he was now. He actually looked terrified. She would take him to the hospital immediately.
“I could go to the emergency room. Maybe I should do that. Yeah,” he said coolly, accepting that her father was no longer an option. He’d hardly spoken to Dr. Shim since he left Ella.
Ella furrowed her eyebrows, indignant. “Don’t be stupid, Ted. My father will see you. He’s a doctor.”
She phoned her office and explained that she’d be late. Her boss was a saint, as usual. Then she phoned her father’s office, and Sharlene said her dad was in and would love to see her. Ella didn’t mention that she was bringing Ted. The meeting broke up after Ella’s call, and the lawyers shrugged and said all the polite things. Everyone would be in touch.
In the taxi, Ted kept trying to test his vision, but he couldn’t make out anything from his right eye except for blurry colors and soft shapes. The light in the taxi was dim.
“I’m sorry, Ella. I’m messing up your day.”
“You’re messing up my life,” she replied.
They were both surprised that she’d said this.
