Shelter(39)

*

The car is silent during the ride home. Kyung replays the slap over and over again, his blood pressure spiking each time Mae’s hand makes contact with his cheek. At first, his impulse is to shout at her, to make her regret what she did, but when he looks at Mae, the anger slowly begins to spiral down his throat. She’s sitting in the passenger seat—forehead in her hands, elbows on her knees—gently rocking herself back and forth. She seems wounded, as if she feels more pain than she just inflicted.

“That can’t happen again,” he says, his voice quiet but firm.

Not once have they talked about the way she used to treat him. Avoidance was always the price of their détente. But now he worries that he dismissed Gillian’s concerns too quickly, and whatever faith or confidence he had in Mae, she’s just lost.

“If you ever put a hand on Ethan, if you ever scare him or hurt him in any way, I can’t—I won’t let you do that.”

She rocks herself harder.

They drive through several lights without speaking, although Kyung keeps thinking that they should. If there was ever a time to have this conversation, to revisit the source of their resentments, now seems right. Now seems like their last best chance. He can’t, however, bring himself to start. He knows why she stopped hitting him so many years ago, even though the subject has never been discussed. When he entered his teens, he was big enough to hit back. The thought of this makes his chest tighten, hardening the air in his lungs. He would never. But he allowed her to think so because the threat of violence was the only thing that protected him from harm.

As he turns onto his street, he swerves to avoid a car parked too close to the corner. Mae sits up, startled by the screech of his tires. Dozens of cars are parked along the curb, end to end down the length of the block. Kyung’s neighborhood is full of families, young ones not much bigger than his own. Aside from the occasional garage sale or birthday party, crowds like this are rare. He wonders if a neighbor is hosting a barbecue that he and Gillian weren’t invited to, but the slower he drives, the more he notices the bumper stickers with the telltale logo, and then there’s the familiar red Buick in front of his house.

“No,” Mae says, tapping her window. “No, no.” She grabs her door handle as if she wants to jump out. “I knew they’d do something like this.”

“Why are they all here?”

“I think they came to see me.”

He doesn’t need to ask who she means by “they.” It’s Sunday, a day they own. When he woke up that morning, he assumed his father would ask for a ride to church, but the hours kept ticking away, and Jin never mentioned it.

“Should I keep going?”

“No,” she sighs. “Just park.”

Kyung pulls in behind the Buick, which has a shiny Jesus fish attached to its bumper. Beside it, there’s a sticker that reads PEACE, scrawled in childlike cursive letters. He turns to Mae, who’s examining herself in the mirror, pinching her cheeks to bring out their color. Her face is smooth but tense—the upper jaw locked tightly against the lower.

“Do you even want to see these people right now?”

“What does it matter? I’ll have to see them eventually.”

“But if you’re not ready—”

Mae snaps the visor back into place. “Please,” she says quietly. “Please don’t make this any worse.”

Reverend Sung is the first to greet them when they open the front door. A kiss on both cheeks for Mae and a stiff handshake for Kyung, followed by something he can’t hear above the crowd.

“What did you say?” Kyung asks.

“Your parents couldn’t join us at church today,” he repeats. “So we brought church here.”

The reverend makes it sound like he’s doing them a favor, and Mae responds with a grateful nod of her head, but Kyung can’t stand the sight of so many strangers milling through his house. It feels like they’ve been invaded.

“Where’s my wife?”

The reverend cups his hand to his ear. “What?”

“My wife?”

“In the kitchen, I think.”

He leaves Mae with the reverend and squeezes through the hallway, occasionally throwing his elbows to separate the bodies pressing in around him. He finds Gillian in the dining room, standing in a corner with her arms crossed over her chest. The room is overrun by women, all jabbering away at each other as they organize the meal. The table is covered with huge trays of Korean food, surrounded by neat little containers of paper plates and plastic utensils, bottles of soda, and stacks of napkins embossed with the church’s logo. The women take no notice of Gillian as they go about their work, setting up a buffet line that would rival any restaurant’s.

Kyung leans down to whisper in her ear. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did. I’ve been calling for over an hour.”

Kyung pats down his empty pockets. The last time he saw his phone, his mother was using it. “How long have they been here?”

“Since four, I guess. Did you know this was happening?”

“No, of course not.” He looks around and lowers his voice. “I would have told them not to come.”

“Actually, they’ve all been very nice. Did you see how much food they brought?”