Re Jane (19 page)

The “drama”
was about to start. Eun, the male lead, had thick, strong eyebrows and a square jaw. He was supposed to be a young lad, but he looked almost as old as Big Uncle. He walked around the set with a pained expression, as if he had to relieve his bowels. But whenever his eyes alighted on Jihae, the young courtesan, his whole face broke into a smile. Eun's smile reminded me of the unabashed way Ed had smiled at me at McDonald's. It had been one of his rare smiles, the one he deemed too good for everyday use.

“If only I were half the beauty Jihae is!”
Emo sighed wistfully. But I did not find the actress playing Jihae attractive at all. Her face was pale and pointy. The bright TV lights washed her out. She looked like the “after” shots in plastic surgery ads on the subways.

Eun, staring longingly at Jihae in the distance, failed to notice the gang of Japanese samurai charging behind him with raised swords. The episode ended and was immediately followed by a commercial for a kimchi refrigerator.

Big Uncle pointed to the television screen in disgust. “See? That's what happens when you get caught up in silly romance.”

But Emo was lost in her own thoughts.
“I'm such a sucker for romance,”
she said with a dreamy sigh.
“My head says Eun should follow his duty, but my heart wants little Jihae to succeed. Jane, what do you think?”

There were infinite reasons their union was all wrong. Eun was way too old for Jihae, for one. He should have focused on securing his future—being with Jihae would only have set him back. And frankly, Jihae wasn't all that.

“Jihae should show some
nunchi
and just going away,”
I said. Then I promptly excused myself for bed.

* * *

Don't Throw Me Away and Leave Me
only seemed to stir up the feelings I'd been trying to push down since leaving—fleeing—New York. During those first few months in Seoul, as the pleasant chill of fall gave way to the early frost of winter, I found my thoughts turning continually to Ed Farley. In the mornings, when I crossed the river on my commute to work, I pictured him sitting at the block wood table carving out shells of baguette. In the evenings, when I crossed the river again, circling my way home, I thought of him sitting at that same table opposite the woman he did not love. The two of them could hardly “have a conversation” without disagreeing. Whereas Ed and I spoke the same language.

That was the other thing I missed as the months wore on—conveying all the subtleties and nuances of language. My Korean had stalled, despite the exponential leap I'd made early on. I grew frustrated at my inability to move beyond the most perfunctory speech. I could feel myself making mistakes—the clunky sentence constructions, my stunted vocabulary. At the same time, my English grew stagnant. Despite the fact that I spoke English every day in class, I repeated the same phrases over and over, like a scripted reel. The simplest of expressions were beginning to elude me—my brain growing dull as I tried to conjure them up.

I was caught in a no-man's-land—the gulf between English and Korean felt wider than the East River and the Han combined.

I was lonely, my linguistic loneliness echoing the dull ache that tugged continually at my heart. That loneliness was amplified by the swift chatter of the subway passengers surrounding me and by the ads blaring from the walls of the Number 2 train as the Seoulites and I spun round and round its endless loop.

A
Don't Throw Me Away and Leave Me
craze swept over the land. The drama was all that Emo and Big Uncle talked about at mealtimes. My students chatted about it endlessly in labored English during class and rapid-fire Korean during breaks. Then a new character arrived on set—Chulsu, a young nobleman making a play for Jihae the courtesan. The love triangle reconfigured into a quadrangle.

That winter there was a popular ad for a brand of kimchi refrigerator. A bride in a white wedding gown and a tuxedoed groom stood on either side of the pink-and-white flower-printed appliance. The bride was the actress who played Jihae. The groom was Chulsu, and he had the same windblown hairdo and jaunty lankiness as Chandler. Their faces glowed; their arms formed a heart shape over their heads.

The slogan, written in English, read
FRESH . . . MOIST . . .
WELL-BEING. WHEN ONLY
#
1
MATTERS
. The first time I read it, I snorted; the passengers on either side of me glanced over and inched away. It was only when I stopped laughing that I noticed the two parents in traditional
hanbok
dress, tucked away in the corner of the ad.
“Our child deserves only the best for a perfect life!”
said the balloon blowing out of their mouths. They stared with approval at the newlywed couple.

The news about
Don't Throw Me Away
even spread to Flushing, where, of all people,
Sang
learned about it. Imagine my surprise when an e-mail arrived from him. Well, not from him directly (to this day I still don't think Sang knows how to operate a computer). It was sent via George.

“Yo, Jane Nuna. Abba made me write to you. He says, ‘Your aunt like drug addict for
Don't Throw Me Away and Leave Me.
But they not have yet in New York. Church mothers, they say you buy VHS tape in Itaewon. But I say, NO WAY. Aunt say maybe you find someplace else, safe place, like Dongdaemun Market. When you coming back home, you give to her. But only after you bargaining down price.

“‘You not forget, Jane: you living there still burden for Big Uncle and Emo. No making mess. Once a week you buy something, say thank you. You not be cheap. Right now Jeju
hallabong
orange in season. Use money Uncle give you.

“‘Yesterday Uncle get call from your old lady boss. “What we gonna do Jane's stuff?” she say. So now Uncle have to go all the way Brooklyn. Why you not taking care your stuff
before
you leave?'”

I shuddered thinking of Sang entering the Mazer-Farley house. Would he be able to sense what had happened between Ed and me? Hurriedly I read through the rest of the e-mail.

But Sang had no more words for me. George had taken over. “P.S. Jane Nuna, I heard H.O.T.'s coming out with a new album. Can you pick it up for me before you come home? I'll totally pay you back.”

And then the last postscript: “Abba didn't tell me to write this, but at dinner last night he said, ‘I'm glad Lowood rejecting her.' I just thought you should know.”

Sang's e-mails, by way of George, were not the only reminders of home. Nina and I continued a regular correspondence. It was she who narrated the aftermath of the attacks, the utterly downcast spirit that shrouded the city. And it was she who sent updates about the Mazer-Farleys. Interwoven with these accounts was the latest in her own love life: Joey Cammareri had finally asked her out.

I scrolled down through her e-mail. Joey (though Nina was now calling him “J.”) had taken her to a gallery opening in Chelsea. Nina couldn't follow any of the conversations that swirled over toothpicked cubes of smoked gouda and water crackers flecked with black pepper, so she quickly downed three Grey Goose and tonics instead. She spent the night gazing at the floor tiles that lit up to a neon pink until Joey packed her off in a cab with the promise they'd do something again “real soon.”

I braced myself for the next paragraph, one undoubtedly chockablock with Joey Cammareri effusions. But instead my cursor landed on the word “Ed.”

The morning after that first “date” with Joey, Nina was stumbling hungover down sunny Court Street in search of ginger ale when she ran into him—them.

“Ed and Beth were out buying their bagels and coffee, and—get this—they were holding hands.”

In my one year with the Mazer-Farleys, I had never seen Ed and Beth hold hands, in public or in private. (I had also never seen Beth eat bagels or drink coffee.) They never displayed any affection at all, except for that one time I'd overheard them having sex
.

“I was going to say hi but the two of them looked totally lost in their own world.”

Ed and Beth. Holding hands. Ed and Beth. Holding hands.
The words glowed in pairs from the screen, flaunting their union.

All this time I'd taken a silent comfort in knowing that we were both suffering, respectively, even if on opposite sides of the globe. I
loved
him. I gave him (sort of) my virginity. And apparently it had all meant nothing. As soon as I'd left, Ed went right back to Beth. Her! Parading Beth down Court Street, for all the neighborhood to see. There was an expression they used a lot here:
There's no tree trunk that doesn't fall after it's been struck with an ax ten times.
It sounded much more elegant in Korean, yes. Couldn't Ed see? Of course I was the one who had to leave—I was the one who'd wrecked their home. But if he had truly wanted me, wouldn't he somehow have chased after me? It was a stupid thought, yet still it persisted.

“I thought things were rocky between them when you lived there. So . . . what happened?”

If Nina was hinting at something, she could just forget it. I had been reduced to nothing in his eyes. And spilling the beans to Nina would change none of it.
You did the right thing
.
I should have been happy he was honoring his commitment to his family, to his wife, to his daughter.

But I wasn't happy. The ache in the cavity of my chest resurfaced. I remembered that graph I'd imagined, the one that clearly showed all the ways Beth took precedence over me. It was obvious that Ed had made his choice: Beth. Not me.

* * *

The school semester was drawing to a close. After our last class, Chandler, Monica, and Rachel invited me out to the local
hof,
or bar.
Always refuse offer first time.
If the offer was renewed, you knew it was genuine. At least this one bit of advice from Sang proved true. After two rounds of refusals, my students insisted, Chandler especially. He nodded vigorously—“We take American teacher to American
hof
!”— and led the way.

I had never been inside one before, even though I'd seen them everywhere. This one was Western-themed, with a sign in the shape of a spur and glossy swinging saloon doors. We ordered
chi-maek—
short for fried chicken (
chiken
)and pitchers of beer (
maekju)
. This was also the first time I'd been out socializing with other young Koreans. It was a welcome change after spending months watching the cake-eating groups all around me while I sat alone.

Our food and drinks arrived. Rachel was frowning at Monica, whose fork was hovering in midair above the plate of fried chicken. Monica glanced up at her friend before moving her fork to the bowl of radish cubes. She speared one and gently gnawed off one corner, her mouth and tongue going
chyap-chyap.
A large sound for such a small bite.

Then Rachel's eyes flitted over to me. Was I imagining the way they explored my chin, my cheeks, the bridge of my nose? She said, “Chandler, you not say you want to see new Ahn Jaeni movie? Monica, she also want. Maybe you must go together.” She was going
chyap-chyap,
too—on a large hunk of fried chicken.

Chandler busied himself with refilling my beer glass. “No, I never say.”

He was moving on to fill the other glasses, but Monica took the pitcher from him.

Rachel, rebuffed, tried again. “
Ya,
Monica! What do you eat? Your skin looks so pretty!”

Monica jumped in. “Ah, no, no, no. I am not pretty. Rachel is pretty. Jane Teacher is pretty. So pretty she look like actress!” That's what they called me, no matter how many times I tried to correct them. (“You don't actually
call
your teacher ‘Teacher.'”)

Chandler nodded—“Yes, just like Jihae from
Don't Throw Me Away
!”—and I demurred. Rachel shot Monica a look.

That Rachel was trying to peddle Monica to Chandler was obvious; what I didn't pick up on for a long while yet was
why.
At the time I thought it was less about Monica's feelings for Chandler and more about Rachel's attempts to make me look like a
babo,
a fool, in front of him. She must have picked up on the fact that over the course of the months I'd found myself drawn to Chandler. I always perked up with a nervous energy when he was in the room. Emboldened by the alcohol, I found myself fluffing my hair coquettishly and addressing him pointedly in the conversation, sometimes to the exclusion of the others. Girls can be petty when they're competitive. Even more so when they're drunk.

My paranoid suspicions were confirmed when Rachel, her eyes once again latching onto me, cocked her head to one side. “Jane Teacher, may I ask you question? Where your parents are from?”

My chest tightened at the thought of where this conversation was leading. “My mother's from here,” I said cagily.

“Your father, too?”

When I was younger, I tried to pass. It would have been easier to lie.

There comes a point where you just got to be who
you
want to be.
Ed's words were wending their way back to me.

“Yeah, they met here,” I said at last. “He was an American stationed here. I'm
honhyol.
”

Rachel nodded knowingly, as if congratulating herself for being right.

“Who care, someone
honhyol,
someone not
honhyol,
” Chandler said. I looked up at him and smiled, grateful to him for easing the tension. Then I threw a smug look at Rachel—but she was poking at her chicken and missed it.

“I'm so jealous!” Monica exclaimed.

“Jealous?” I repeated back.

Monica, whose cheeks were flushed with beer, started counting off her fingers. “
Honhyol
has the white skin, big eyes, big nose, small chin, long legs,” she said. “You so lucky.” She spoke wistfully, as though romanticizing my
honhyol
-ness.

Still, the weight of lying by omission had been lifted from my shoulders. And, thankfully, the conversation didn't linger on me. They talked of the latest episode of
Don't Throw Me Away
, and celebrity gossip.

I could not believe we went through our 3,000 cc pitcher so quickly. Chandler flagged down the waiter and ordered another. He poured our refills, and we all toasted—they taught me the word
Gunbae!—
and drank. And drank. And drank.

“So . . . why'd you guys choose
Friends
for names anyway?” I asked them. “Back home the show's
kind of passé.”

“What it means?” Monica said, reaching for her pink notebook.

I was getting tipsy. My tongue, without my realizing it, slipped into Korean.
“It's meaning it's played out already,”
I said, trying out a new phrase I'd overheard at Michelangelo's.

“What?”
I said, staring at their stunned faces.
“Why's everybody looking so surprised?”

“We didn't know you could speak our people's language,”
said Rachel.

“It's
my
language, too,”
I mumbled into my beer.

Monica backpedaled.
“No! It's just, we heard that our people raised overseas don't speak our language well. It's kind of
singihae
.
”
Singihae—
a novelty.

Chandler said,
“You really speak our language excellently!”

I started at hearing Chandler speak Korean. His English was endearing but choppy and awkward. With the switch to Korean, he shed his linguistically bumbling self and then some—he was so self-assured in his native tongue. I was still getting accustomed to hearing Korean being spoken by young men. The only male voices that spoke it back home were middle-aged; the language was rendered in rough, unemotive tones.

“You sound different when you speak Korean,” I told him. (Of course I didn't mean different; I meant
hot.
)

And those were the last words I spoke in English that night.

Would it be too corny to say that the shift from English to Korean was accompanied by a shift in mood—one that seemed to bring us all closer together? Winter was thawing and, with it, the collective cold shoulder of the city. I imagined the other tables watching our tight-knit circle with envy while they were left out of the loop.

After we changed to Korean, Chandler—Changhoon—demanded to know our ages. Rachel, Monica, and I were the same age, but Changhoon was three years older.

“Changhoon Oppa, since you're the oldest, you're picking up the tab, right?”
Rachel said.

“Of course,”
he said.
“What else should I treat you guys to? Ice cream? Choco Pies?”

“Choco Pies? Pfft!”
I said, farting the word out of my lips. I was, at this point, pretty drunk.
“If you buy us Prada bag, I call you Oppa any day.”

I was subconsciously mimicking the way I heard girls on the subway and in Café Michelangelo talk to their boyfriends.
Oh-p-p-pa-a-a-ah!
they'd wail—
Big Brother!—
voices dripping with
aegyo.
It was how Jihae talked to Chulsu on
Don't Throw Me Away.
And yes, maybe I was being a flirt.