The Weddings (Inheritance collection)

by Alexander Chee

  “She’s beautiful,” Caleb said. They were standing in the buffet line, scanning the food trays when Caleb’s most amused expression came over his face. Jack followed his eyes to where the bride stood, next to Scott. As he looked back to Caleb, he saw that all of this would be fascinating to him in some way he hadn’t anticipated.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected of Soon-mi exactly. She was, as Caleb said, beautiful. She was clearly an athlete, and as she leaned in intently and listened to the elderly guest who was bending her ear, it occurred to Jack that she was also, possibly, very kind. And very fashionable. Scott had never been as well-dressed as she was right then. She had already changed out of her hanbok into a chic black silk jumpsuit and heels. Elegant, slender modern gold jewelry hung from her ears and neck, and gold bracelets armored her forearms. He had expected Scott to marry someone attractive but he hadn’t expected him to marry someone intimidatingly attractive, and so confident. The line of her jaw, the way it complemented the flex of her collarbone, the way she could gently lean her head back and smile without condescending.

  Around her in the garden and the yard, he saw, at last, the other Korean guests, filing in as if they also had gone and changed. They soon made up at least half of the guests. He studied the way they filled their plates and was satisfied that they were hungry, and had not been at some other separate Korean dinner.

  She hadn’t looked their way yet, and then she did. She looked sort of at him and through him, though she didn’t seem to recognize him. He wondered if she would have gone through the members of the wedding’s Facebook pages. And then she looked away.

  Caleb tugged his elbow. “Oh, it is on. Let’s go eat before our food gets cold.”

  Back at their table they had been joined by a mother and daughter sitting together, oddly identical, like versions of each other at different ages. They greeted each other, and then Jack and Caleb began asking questions of the daughter, making conversation. After the second exchange of questions and answers, the mother said, “Guys, you’re a little old for her, don’t you think?”

  Caleb looked at Jack, delighted and appalled. Jack knew he’d tell this story for years. “We’re . . . we’re together. We’re not”—and here Jack’s fingers wagged back and forth between them—“we’re gay.”

  The mother clapped her hands to her cheeks. “But you don’t seem like flamers at all!”

  Caleb smiled even more. “Well. Not tonight.” And then they all laughed.

  She had no gay friends, Jack realized. What kind of weird emotional desert do some of these straight people live inside of, he wondered, even as he saw himself again from their perspective—a man of a certain age could be seen as basically dangerous to women until proven otherwise. Especially if conversation was being “made.” He came to his senses and apologized. “I’m so sorry to have given you the wrong impression,” he said, even as he took Caleb’s hand in his own.

  “Well, don’t get carried away,” the mother said, looking as if Jack had groped him.

  He nodded. But didn’t let go of Caleb’s hand.

  “You kind of look like somebody,” she said. “Somebody famous. I can almost think of who.”

  Jack blinked in surprise. No one usually said this.

  “Tiger Woods!”

  She reached up and put her fingers into a square as if viewing him through a camera. “He’s part Oriental, right?” She clapped her hands in delight. “Yes, yes. Him.”

  Caleb let go of his hand to make a square of his fingers too—he always liked to take a joke too far—and squinted. Jack stared back at Caleb, playing along, shaking his head in a slow no.

  “I don’t see it,” Caleb said as he dramatically put down his hands and sat back, pushing at his slacks as if cleaning them of what he’d done. The mother smiled and shrugged, unconcerned. Jack nodded. She was making conversation too.

  As Caleb leaned over the table and raised his eyebrows in mock horror at him, he reflected again on how Caleb was the only white man he’d been with who understood how strange it could be, or was, or always was, even in a wedding like this, even where there were now at least as many Koreans as white people. Even then, that he would endlessly be a curiosity and not a person. He would forget this was true and then be reminded this way, this the most recent in the jarring series of moments that threaded through his whole life in America. When did it end? When would they all just get used to him—to all of them?

  The mother and daughter pushed their plates away in unison, placing their napkins on top. And Scott, at last, appeared.

  “Hey! You made it!” He looked pale, almost physically ill. He had gained a little weight but was still boyishly handsome in that way that was almost supernatural. His clothes still bulged with weightlifter muscle, his jaw was still square. Those bright-blue eyes were cautious, though, almost dim, as he hugged Jack. Scott noticed Caleb smiling next to him, and asked, “Who’s the lucky guy?”

  Before Jack could answer, Soon-mi came up next to Scott and took his arm. She wore the power of their connection lightly, which was to say, she didn’t seem to wear it at all. He tried to imagine her in that harness, or holding that dildo, tried to imagine her with Scott, but he couldn’t, even standing there next to him. She said, “So you’re the famous Jack,” and he remembered how she’d looked at him earlier. She had known precisely who he was.

  The only sign something was off was the way she then directed her attention to his boyfriend. They were briefly like a movie poster—Soon-mi looking at Caleb, Caleb looking at Jack, Jack looking at Scott, who was looking at Soon-mi—like in one of those eighties comedies about everyone being in love with the wrong person at the wrong time.

  “I’m so sorry we were late,” Jack said. “A flood around Corning. We were even forced into the evacuee traffic, it was insane.”

  “I heard about the flooding,” Soon-mi said. “I was getting texts all day about it.” This had the effect briefly of somehow sealing out all the ambient horror of the event, reducing the flood to an inconvenience to her. “Thank you for making the effort, we really appreciate it. Have you checked in at the hotel yet?” He wondered if she’d been told about them changing in the bathroom.

  “Not yet,” Jack said. “This is my boyfriend, Caleb,” he said to them both, and they each shook his hand. Caleb’s introduction to Scott had been interrupted by Soon-mi’s arrival, and if left unfinished, he knew it was the sort of thing Caleb wouldn’t forgive.

  “He remembered how she’d looked at him earlier. She had known precisely who he was.”

  “I am so glad you could join us. I hope you’ll find the hotel comfortable.” And here she looked at Caleb as if for the first time, and then the mother and daughter. “Have you made some friends?” she asked the table. The signal from her that it was almost time for her to move on.

  Scott hadn’t really said much. He still had the blank expression from when he shook Caleb’s hand.

  “Yes,” Jack said, gesturing at the two women at the table. “Making friends.”

  The photo Caleb had posted to Instagram was soon covered in comments speculating about whether they were getting married. “What do we say?” Caleb asked him, showing him his phone. “My friends are insane. I should delete this.”

  “Tell them we eloped.”

  Caleb raised an eyebrow as he kept looking at the screen, intrigued. But he wouldn’t give Jack the satisfaction of looking up to laugh at this joke.

  For the half hour they stayed afterward, Jack watched as the newlyweds went from table to table. Their act was much the same—Soon-mi taking the lead usually, listening and then offering an observation, and then signaling they were moving on. Jack realized he knew nothing about being the center of a wedding like this, as he’d never had to and none of his friends had married this way, and at this size, or if so, certainly never inviting him—and Scott didn’t know either. Scott, who followed her like an employee in training.

  Perhaps that was it—Scott wanted to be taught, more
than to teach. Jack had been a student of his at the beginning of their friendship, or at least, he had posed as one. He doesn’t love her, he told himself. And then brought that thought to a halt.

  Scott did love her. Watching him follow Soon-mi around, he could still hear Scott telling him his dick was the only dick he’d ever touched, using those words exactly. He had been so close to being free of his obsession with him until then. But being the only one Scott had experimented with meant being special. And when Jack decided to believe him, the story had preserved this fantasy and might keep Jack trapped, maybe forever, with wanting more. Without quite knowing what more meant.

  Oh dear God, he told himself. Let this go too.

  Caleb punched his shoulder, as if summoned. “Snap out of it. You’re being really boring.”

  “Sorry. It’s just all so fascinating to me. I keep thinking, ‘So this is how straight people get married.’”

  “Some of them. Listen, let’s go back to the hotel. This is not good wine. I want a real drink and your full attention.”

  Caleb held out his hand and Jack took it as they stood, amazed again at how quick he was to offer it. Caleb was ten years younger, but he was so much less afraid, more sure of his place in the world. His expectations had been calibrated differently. Jack hadn’t thought it would happen in his lifetime, but the way this magic trick worked, he would think something was impossible and then it would come to pass. Marriage equality was now the most recent example. Caleb was someone he hadn’t even dreamed of. How far would it go, he wondered, as he walked hand in hand with Caleb to the car.

  Far, he hoped. Further than this.

  At the hotel, the bar was boiling with wedding attendees, like another evacuation—as if everyone from the flood down south had made their way here. Perhaps they had. The hotel was one of those weird corporate hotels built for speedy business trips, and the bar was also a café during the day, as well as the place where you checked in. It felt uncertain to order drinks there, but before they could, they noticed a woman sitting by herself who looked familiar to Jack.

  She had the sort of blonde, manicured, sunburned look of the California women in Scott’s family. They stood out a little here in Niagara Falls, especially in the lobby of this hotel. They looked casual but also somehow too dressed up in that California way. She was explaining a drink she wanted to the bartender, who was gamely looking it up on his phone despite the massive crowd, and as he did, she had the expression of someone adjusting her expectations downward. He had felt like that his whole life. She looked up and caught him noticing her, and shouted his name.

  He looked closer. “You probably don’t remember me,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

  As Jack puzzled out where he might have met her, she turned to Caleb. “Hi, I’m Jen, I’m from San Bernardino, Scott’s hometown. I met Jack at Scott’s graduation—back when I was Scott’s girlfriend.”

  He blinked. Of course. She’d left before he could be startled that she was white.

  “Can I buy you two a drink?” The bartender had set hers down, and she turned to him, a finger raised.

  “Yes,” Caleb said to Jen, looking at Jack meaningfully. “Thank you. I’ll have a Manhattan. On the rocks with a twist.”

  “Make it two,” Jack said. This was their drink now.

  It seemed they were each about to tell their stories about Scott, as if this were part of the wedding also. He wasn’t sure he could stand it. Jen began. “I hadn’t heard from him in I couldn’t even tell you how long, and then he called me and invited me.” She shrugged. “All of my exes do it. It’s some weird guy thing. Like they want to say goodbye before they enter the passage. I almost said, ‘I didn’t think you thought about me.’”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “I hadn’t heard from him in years either.” Caleb winked at him.

  He watched as Jen responded to Caleb’s attention to her by bringing out a story of uncertain dimensions. Jack fully remembered her now, and the memory was a guilty one. Jen had come to Scott’s graduation, and they’d been introduced shortly before Scott had said goodbye to her—and he and Scott had finally hooked up.

  Jack excused himself to find the restroom. When he saw the line he remembered they hadn’t checked in yet, so he went to the desk and checked them in, and then took the elevator quickly to the room to use the bathroom. Their bags were still in the car, so the dark room, so strangely full of furniture, was almost like a store. He checked out his complexion in the mirror, washed his hands, and then adjusted his short hair with a swipe of his hand.

  This wedding had quickly revealed itself as the most bizarre episode of his adult emotional life to date, and so he tried to take it all in as he studied his reflection. Yes, it really was as if Scott had finally found the Korean family who would have him, and it was as if he wanted Jack to see it happen live. And only Jack: Scott hadn’t invited any of their other friends. Jack had wanted to see it too. And then missed it. And now Jack felt left behind.

  He didn’t want to be with Scott. He had no secret fantasies of him anymore. Something else was pushing him around these rooms, though.

  He poked at his hair again one last time, and the gesture was so optimistic, so hopeful, he turned the light off, eager to forget it.

  He had been gone from Caleb too long, meanwhile, and he knew it.

  Jen was one of those people who, as she drank, seemed to melt by faint degrees. You didn’t notice it unless you got up and came back, as Jack did, and then you saw it. She had transformed into a slower and angrier version of herself. The earlier veneer of cheer had slid off like a paper coaster that ends up on the floor of the bar.

  As he approached, Jen fell sobbing into Caleb’s shoulder. He could never leave Caleb alone with people, but women especially. He would return to find someone on his lap, his hands in their hair, or half naked, or changing into a costume, or simply learning the darkest or most heartbreaking secret of someone’s life, saved up somehow until Caleb had arrived and it was delivered to him. And Jack forgot about it each time until the next time it happened.

  He was about to intervene when his attention was drawn to the sound of Korean being spoken from the seat next to him in the bar. A group of people he decided had to be Soon-mi’s friends or family had just made a toast to the couple in Korean. A little conversation began, and then one member of the group said, “Sorry, I don’t speak as much Korean as that.”

  There was some laughter and they shifted back to English, but not before another woman sitting on the stool next to Jack asked, “You don’t speak Korean?”

  The question that was always a comment. The questioner invariably knew the answer when they asked.

  Jack still did not speak Korean. He wanted to, certainly, but growing up, his parents had told him it was important he assimilate, speak English with no accent, and so to learn now felt strangely like disobeying them. They meanwhile had enjoyed it for so long as a sort of private language the kids couldn’t understand, almost like they’d invented it themselves. He’d once had a fluent Korean American boyfriend who said, after meeting them, “They . . . kind of speak the way people spoke when they left Korea in the sixties. It’s almost like watching a vintage film.” Jack didn’t date him for much longer, in part because he couldn’t bear that this man believed this about his parents. And yet as soon as their relationship was over, Jack began using the description as a punch line, and then as a way to explain why he hadn’t learned Korean. As if they were the only ones he might use it to speak with.

  This relationship to the Korean language made perfect sense to Jack within the tiny world that was the Cho family, but out in the real world, say, at a bar, or at a wedding between your college friend and his Korean American wife, not learning Korean felt like the one truly indefensible decision he’d ever made in his life. If he’d made it. And so he found he was waiting to hear what the woman who’d been questioned on her lack of Korean would say.

  She saw him looking at her, and she flicked her eyes t
oward him and then away, annoyed at being observed. She wasn’t prepared to engage in some kind of cheap solidarity. “Don’t make me explain this to you again,” she said to her friend instead. There was a brief moment of tension within the group as they realized that was her answer, and then everyone switched back to English, and the tension didn’t so much evaporate as flee all at once as they lifted their glasses together and drank down a shot.

  Jack turned his attention back to Caleb and Jen and the drinks in front of them, truly large Manhattans, in what looked to be glasses as big as their faces. Who knew how many of these drinks had been consumed? Jen by now was very drunk, at the angry end of her story, and he knew without asking that it was still about Scott.

  He hadn’t wanted to listen because he feared learning what she knew—about him, specifically. He almost backed away, and then Caleb looked up as soon as he noticed Jack had looked over. He had a faint exasperation to his expression, clearly waiting for Jack to notice something was wrong. Jen was fishing through her pocketbook. Caleb watched her search and then reached out to grab some bar napkins off the counter to hand to her. Under the cover of her dabbing her eyes, Jack was trying to figure out what to say when she abruptly said something to Caleb, just loud enough for Jack to hear but not loud enough to understand.

  Jack ordered her some water. “Make it three,” he said.

  Eventually, they got her upstairs to her room safely, installing her in her bed complete with a trash can beside her. “He was beautiful,” she said. “Beautiful.” As if telling the walls of the room.

  Of course, Jack thought. Of course.

  “What happened?” Jack asked as they walked back to the car to collect their bags.

  Caleb shrugged, something he almost never did. “Tell you outside,” he whispered. They made their way to the dark parking lot like thieves, where they each grabbed their overnight bags, and as they walked back, Caleb said, “Scott cheated on her, and got the other girl pregnant. And then that girl had a miscarriage.”