Miracle Creek(18)

The thing Young never understood was why Mary directed her anger solely at her. Pak staying in Korea, the Baltimore host-family arrangement—everything had been his plan. Mary knew this, had witnessed him issuing commands and silencing Young’s objections, and yet Mary somehow blamed her. It was as if Mary associated all the transition pains of immigration—separation, loneliness, bullies—with Young (because Young was in America), whereas Pak, by virtue of his location, she grouped with her warm memories of Korea—family, togetherness, fitting in. Their host family said to wait, that Mary would follow the typical pattern of immigrant kids hyperassimilating, too fast and too much, driving parents crazy with their preferences of English to Korean, McDonald’s to kimchi. But Mary never thawed, to Young or to America, even after she started making friends and speaking exclusively in English on the rare occasions she deigned to speak to Young, until eventually those early associations became a mathematical truth, forever constant:

(Pak = Korea = happiness) > (Young = America = misery)

But was that over? For here was her daughter now, letting Young rake her fingers through her hair while she cried, being comforted by this intimate act. After five minutes, maybe ten, Mary’s breathing slowed to an even rhythm, and Young looked at her sleeping face. Awake, Mary’s face was all sharp angles—thin nose, high cheekbones, deep frowns that lined her forehead like train tracks. But asleep, everything softened like melting wax, the angles giving way to gentle curves. Even the scar on Mary’s cheek looked delicate, like she could brush it off.

Young closed her eyes and matched her breathing to her daughter’s, and she felt a pinch of dizziness, of unfamiliarity. How many times had she lain next to Mary and held her? Hundreds of times? Thousands? But all years ago. In the last decade, the only time she’d allowed Young to touch her for sustained periods was in the hospital. People talked so much about the loss of intimacy between married couples as the years progress, so many studies about the number of times a couple has sex in the first year of marriage versus the remaining years, but no one measured the number of hours spent holding your baby in the first year of life versus the remaining years, the dramatic dissipation of intimacy—the sensual familiarity of nursing, holding, comforting—as children pass from infancy and toddlerhood to the teens. You lived in the same house, but the intimacy was gone, replaced by aloofness, with splashes of annoyance. Like an addiction, you could go for years without it, but you never forgot it, never stopped missing it, and when you got a dab of it, like now, you craved it more and wanted to gorge on it.

Young opened her eyes. She brought her face close and touched her nose to Mary’s, the way she used to long ago. Her daughter’s warm breaths blew on her lips, like gentle kisses.



* * *



FOR DINNER, Young made the dish that Pak pretended was his favorite: tofu-and-onion soup in a thick soybean paste. His actual favorite food was galbi, marinated short ribs—had been since they’d met in college. But ribs, even poor-quality scraps, were over four dollars per pound. Tofu cost two dollars per box, which they could manage if they stuck to rice, kimchi, and the dollar-per-dozen ramen the rest of the week. On his first day home from the hospital, she’d served this soup, and he’d breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the pungent zest of soybean curd and sweet onions. He closed his eyes after the first bite, said that four months of bland hospital food had left him craving strong flavors, and declared Young’s soup his new favorite. She knew he was just saving his honor—Pak was ashamed of their finances and refused to even discuss them—but regardless, his obvious delight with every bite had pleased her, and she’d made it as often as she could.

Standing over the simmering pot, stirring in the curd paste and watching the water turn a rich brown, Young had to laugh at how contented she felt, at the fact that this was the happiest she could remember feeling in America. Objectively, this was the lowest point of her American—no, entire—life: her husband paralyzed; her daughter a catatonic mess, her face scarred and psyche shattered; their finances nonexistent. Young should’ve been in despair, so weighed down by the bleakness of her situation, by others’ pity, that she could barely stand.

And yet, here she was. Enjoying the feel of the wooden spoon in her hand, the simple motion of stirring sliced onion into the current of the liquid, breathing in the tangy vapors wafting up and warming her face. She replayed Pak’s words about the incoming insurance money and, even more, the way his hand had nestled hers, the warmth of his smile. She and Pak had laughed together today—when was the last time they’d done that? It was as if being deprived of joy for so long had made her oversensitive to it, so that even a sliver of pleasure—the everyday kind she expected and therefore didn’t notice when life was normal—now left her in the kind of celebratory state she associated with milestones such as engagements and graduations.

“Happiness is relative,” Teresa had told her once, a few days before the explosion. Teresa had arrived early for the morning dive, so Young invited her to wait in the house while Pak got the barn ready. Mary stopped on her way out to SAT class. “Ms. Santiago, nice to see you again. Hi, Rosa,” Mary said, bending down to put her face level with Rosa’s. It amazed Young how friendly Mary could be, to everyone except her mother. Even Rosa responded to the cheerful lilt in Mary’s voice; she smiled and seemed to strain to say something, a half grunt, half gurgle coming from her throat.