Re Jane (27 page)

I placed her image side by side with the photo of my father. Could I picture them as a pair? I squinted, comparing them to the distant, hazy faces I had created for them when I was a child. My father was pretty much consistent with the picture I'd long created for him. But my mother was different. I'd always imagined her as looking more coquettish, in a way that would have lured men. What happened to her laughing in a convertible, hair whipping across her face? Instead she seemed bookish, serious, and introspective.

Emo had said my mother stared up at my father during that Chuseok dinner as if she were grateful. Just as Nina had accused me of being with Changhoon. It was the same word that had echoed through all of my childhood in Flushing.

If I had stared into my mother's face one year ago, I would have pronounced her handsome. Seeing her now, though, through my Seoul-adjusted gaze, I realized this: My mother would have been considered plain.

I
ended things with Changhoon. Reader, I wasn't an idiot; I knew he was everything on paper. Marrying him would have been the responsible choice, providing the ultimate stamp of legitimacy for me in this not-quite motherland. I would finally shed my problematic American
gyopo
honhyol
ways and, with Changhoon's guidance, fully immerse myself in the waters of Korea-Korea. But you could list assets ad nauseam and still the balance sheet staring back at you would not change what your heart longed for you to do.
You only doing what your heart wants,
Sang had chastised me. He'd been right about me after all.

When I broke the news to Changhoon, he told me I was just nervous, that it was perfectly normal to have cold feet. We were sitting on a bench on the banks of the Han River, and he was taking quick puffs from his cigarette. He said we should continue going ahead with it and that later, after the rush, we could sift through my confused emotions and make sense of them. As he spoke, I scratched my cheek; a film of foundation rolled under my fingernails.

But when Changhoon saw that I was resolute, he hunched over, his hands tapping together. He wouldn't look at me. He sat like that, blinking. Composing himself. Finally he said in his deepest voice,
“I know that my feelings are stronger than yours.”
He took a long, deep pull of smoke. It swirled in his open mouth before a hopeful wisp streamed out.
“But . . . couldn't you just work on it? I'll help you.”

I thought back on Changhoon's “Development of Myself” chart. I thought of each of his elaborately constructed plans, our trip to Busan. Across the water, on the banks of the Han, there was a gap in the skyline, where a stretch of old buildings had just been razed. The city was dotted with cranes and scaffolds and stacks of building materials. All of Seoul under construction—a never-ending scramble to develop and redevelop itself.

With Changhoon I felt I was trying to be someone I wasn't. Yet he'd continually reward me for behaving in ways that felt unnatural, so I kept working on the act. But I couldn't force something that wasn't there. There comes a time where you've just got to be who
you
want
to be. His
words were finding their way back to me.

“You deserve someone who's all in,”
I told him. I didn't know if the words translated, but I know he understood.

Changhoon and I were over. Ever the gentleman, he insisted on driving me home. It was a slow, despondent drive, nothing like the thrill of rushing over the Brooklyn Bridge with Ed. I wondered what that view from the Promenade looked like now, without the towers. Their absence must have echoed all through that empty sky. As we crossed the Han, I took in the river's stillness, this foreign expanse of water that should have felt like home—but never did.

* * *

When I returned to the apartment, Emo was sitting on the floor, back propped against the leather couch, watching television. She spotted my sullen face and jumped up.
“Apologize immediately,”
she said, before I even uttered a word.
“It's not too late to salvage things. If you don't act now, you'll lose your chance to secure your future forever!”

At first it sounded as if she were speaking the language of commerce, of infomercials. But her words were accompanied by an expression that looked utterly pained.
“Do you want to be lonely for the rest of your life?”

“Emo, I broke his heart. But I don't—I couldn't—love him. . . .”
I trailed off
.
I was losing confidence.

She pointed to the TV screen. It was a rerun of
Don't Throw Me Away and Leave Me. “You never finished watching it with me,”
she said.
“You were too busy going on dates with Changhoon.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

She waved away my apology.
“Only because you never learned how it ends.”

“What you talking about?”
I said.
“Eun rejects Jihae and marries Bora. The end.”
The preview commercials for the finale had told me enough, without my actually having to watch it.

“But he only marries her because he thinks Jihae's going to marry Chulsu. And Jihae only marries Chulsu because she thinks Eun's marrying Bora. When they each find out what the other did, it's too late. And the rest is trage—
Wae wooruh?
”
she said sharply.
“You'll ruin your makeup.”

Emo was right. I shouldn't be crying. I couldn't stop them, though, the tears welling up in my eyes, threatening to smudge my mascara.

But there was a flicker across her face, her expression going gentle.
“Who is your Eun?”
she asked softly.

Ed and I used to sit around the kitchen table, eating his heroes and making stupid jokes long into the night. We spoke with an ease that never came naturally to Changhoon and me. It wasn't just due to his poor English and my weak Korean.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand—makeup be damned—and whispered,
“Ed Farley.”
I wasn't sure how Emo would react. She'd want a name like James Kim or John Hong. I remembered the way she'd referred to my father as “that man”
and the scowl that had accompanied it.
“This man,”
she said.
“Do you still love him?”

I nodded.
“I think I still do.” I know I still do,
I corrected silently.

“Does he love you back?”

“He did.”
I paused.
“I don't know if he still does.”

“Then you have to go back and find out. Before it's too late.”

I knew how much Emo understood longing. She could not get her sister back, but maybe I was the closest thing. What about all that Emo had said about guarding her heart?

“But, Emo—I would leave you.”

Her lower lip trembled. But she bit down and swallowed. She took in a deep breath and righted her face.
“Do you want to end up like the people from
Don't Throw Me Away
?”

Apparently Bora went mad and set the house on fire. Eun tried to save her, but she leaped to her death. He ended up maimed and blind. Jihae committed suicide, and Chulsu remarried. Then the network shut down the show.

She continued, in a bright voice,
“What can I say? I'm a sucker for romance.”
She put the photo back down on the table. Then she shot a fist into the air. Emo could have been Beth, rooting for local produce.
“Ee Jane, fighting!”

It was time to come home.

* * *

I set about making arrangements for my return. I knew I should have looked for a corporate-finance position. But I was tired of doing all the things I
should
do. Once again I found myself on the job hunt. This time, though, I changed the focus of my résumé, playing up my small-business experience. Those jobs were there aplenty—if you knew to look for them—but they were overshadowed by their flashier big-bank counterparts. I applied for an analyst position at a family-run real-estate developer. I passed the initial phone interview and was asked to come in person. I set my return date to the States accordingly. It was probably not the most glamorous of jobs, but I was familiar with the work. I took a small pleasure in corralling details into place and trimming away inefficiencies.

After I gave my resignation at Zenith Academy, Monica said,
“Must be so nice for you, sweeping in and out as you please.”
She struggled to keep her voice light, but a note of resentment cracked through. I noticed her change in tone before I registered her switch to Korean.

“What's your meaning?”

Monica began ticking off her fingers.
“Looks. Boyfriend. Job. Whereas some of us have to
work
for the things we get. Or don't get.”
There was now no mistaking the bitterness steeping her words.

“You may
think
you know me,” I said tersely, switching into English, “but you don't know the other half.”

“Oh,
tap-tap-hae
!”
she cried.
“You just don't get it, do you? They just gave you that job because you're the only native English speaker on staff. Principal Yoo thought it'd look good. You know”
—she let out a little laugh—“
for the image of the school.”

The words cut; they undermined the work I'd been proud of and cheapened it.

“Then maybe good for you I leave. Freeing up the budget. Maybe now
you
getting the promotion.”

“Wow, lucky me. I get your leftovers.”

Maybe Nina had been right after all about Monica. I was too stunned and angry in that moment to process entirely what was happening. But later, looking back on that final conversation with Monica, I realized she must have found me as insufferable as I had found Beth, perhaps as insufferable as Emo and my grandfather had found my father. All those times I'd offered my advice to her—
Put your foot down
or
The squeakiest wheel gets the oil—
when I myself didn't have a clue about the system here. Maybe Monica longed to repeat back the same words I'd used to explain to her the rules of English grammar:
I don't know why, it just is.
No matter how hard we tried, neither of us would ever master how the other's world worked.

* * *

I wrote to Nina. I told—spilled, like a gushing watermelon—about everything I hadn't, or couldn't, that last night in Seoul. I worked up the courage to e-mail Ed.
“I'll cut straight to the point,”
I wrote.
“I have not been able to stop thinking about you since the day I left New York.”
It was a burden, I knew, to unload my feelings this way, but I ignored Sang's words echoing in my head. I poured out my heart to Ed.

When I wrote to Beth, I told her that “I'm sorry” couldn't even begin to explain—let alone excuse—what I'd done.
“I did something very bad when you were away at that conference in California. But in truth my betrayal to you began long before that.”
At a certain point, I didn't even know what I was typing anymore. I just blurted out the whole truth. Then I hit
SEND
.

I wrote a censored version to Devon, explaining my hasty departure. I told her I was sorry for breaking my promise to return, but I hoped I could make it up to her back in New York.

I did one last thing before I left Korea. I ended up going back to Itaewon, even though I told myself I'd never return. You could say I was paying homage to the place where I was born—and borne from. But the real reason was for bootleg videos. I rescued the entire series of
Don't Throw Me Away and Leave Me
on VHS from the bargain bin.

A few hours before I was to set off for Incheon Airport, Ed Farley wrote back.
“Jane! Jane! Jane!”
Nothing more. Hastily I fired back with my flight info.
I am coming! Wait for me!
I shouted in my head.

* * *

At the airport Emo handed me an envelope. Inside was the picture of my father and me. But she'd also included another photo—the one of her and my mother. When I tried to give it back to her—“
Emo, this is all you have of her”—
she pressed it into my hands.

“And now it's yours. Your mother . . .”
Emo was suddenly spirited away to somewhere else—a faraway look bloomed over her face.

“Emo, what is it?”

She shook her head and chuckled.
“I'm just remembering a prank your mother pulled on the school bully.”

My mother? Based on Emo's stories, I thought Sang had been the prankster. But apparently a boy in Sang's year—known as Dongho the Terrible—had terrorized every kid in the school.
“Stealing their marbles, their pocket money, you name it,”
Emo said
. “He was jealous because your American Uncle always did better than him on exams. So one day Dongho lied and told the teacher your uncle had cheated. American Uncle was devastated. You know how much of a stickler your uncle is about that sort of thing.

“That was the last straw. Your mother hatched a plan. She saved up all her pocket money for three months to buy a jar of honey. Do you know how expensive honey was back in those days? When I saw the jar sticking out of her backpack at school, she said, ‘Oh, that's nothing for you to worry about, Younghee-ah.'

“It was school assembly day. Right before Principal Suh was about to speak, we suddenly heard a
huge
squelchy sound, like a fart. Then another. It was coming from Dongho! He turned bright red. Principal Suh was furious. After that, Dongho the Terrible became Farty Dongho. No one could take him seriously, not even the teachers. And your uncle's honor was restored.”
Emo let out a peal of laughter.
“I knew that Big Sister was the one who'd coated Dongho's seat in that honey. If she took the credit for the prank, she would've been the most popular girl at school. Not even Big Brother Number Two knows about it! But that's the kind of person Big Sister was. Quiet and polite, but ooh . . . if you messed with her or one of her friends . . .”
Emo took my hand, squeezed it.
“I see her in you, too.”

Emo's story was like a parting gift. I started blinking, rapidly.
“Emo, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.”

“Laugh
and
cry!”
She placed a gentle finger on my mother's photo.
“Each time I stare at her picture, thoughts of the past come rushing back to me. I can't stop them. I think that's why I had to put it away, out of sight. If I stare at it too much, I'm afraid I'll just . . .”

She swallowed, quieting whatever swell of tears threatened to rise up. I swallowed, too. We were both determined not to cry. We stood together like that, each of us fighting back the sobs that threatened to surge. She and I were so alike. The waves passed; calm was restored.