Shelter(74)

“I know you and your father have never been close, but if you could have heard his voice this morning, you might think differently of him. He was distraught, Kyung. He is distraught.”

“He hasn’t spoken to me for days. Neither has Gillian.”

“So I’ll tell you the same thing I told him. They’re wrong to blame you. It doesn’t matter what you said to Mae or how you said it. You can’t be held responsible for her actions. Are you listening, Kyung? You’re not to blame for what happened.”

Of all the people in the world, he never expected Reverend Sung to be a source of comfort, the first real sense of comfort he’s felt in so long. He’s thrown by it, stunned silent by the possibility that he isn’t so undeserving of kindness as he believes himself to be. Kyung sits down and takes the reverend’s hand, squeezing it to convey the volume of things he can’t, and the reverend, in another act of kindness, simply stands there and lets him, saying nothing in return.





EIGHT

Gillian sends Ethan and Jin away the next morning. She suggests a trip to the zoo, the park, the library, anywhere. Kyung is standing in front of the window, watching dark gray clouds streak across the sky as the wind bends thin treetops like bows. He thinks of the roof in Gillian’s car, how it leaks on the driver’s side when it rains, but he keeps this to himself. He wants them out of the house as much as she does. Kyung can’t remember the last time he and Gillian were alone together, when they could say what needed to be said without worrying who would overhear. As soon as the car pulls out of the garage, he braces himself for an argument, but Gillian goes upstairs to their bedroom and shuts the door behind her. She’s trained him over the years—a closed door means don’t bother me—but an hour passes and nothing happens. Then another hour passes and nothing still. He wonders if the rules are different now, if the very thing she’s told him not to do is the thing she actually wants.

Kyung continues to wait, circling the living room and kitchen in long, idle loops. He doesn’t know how to start the conversation they need to have. All his previous attempts have ended badly. No amount of apologizing has been able to soften Gillian. Apologies, in fact, only seem to upset her more. He’s not sure how many times he can say it, or how to say it differently. He’s sorry for what he did at the Cape; he’ll always be sorry. The fact that she doesn’t believe him feels like another kind of loss.

He lifts the edge of a curtain and looks at the rain, which is coming down in sheets now. It cascades from the gutters and pelts the windows with pea-sized hail. There was no mention of a storm in the forecast today. If it keeps up, Jin and Ethan will probably come back from their outing soon, and nothing with Gillian will have changed. Kyung doesn’t know how much longer he can live like this, exiled and ignored in his own home. He goes upstairs and presses his ear against the door, listening to her walk back and forth in the bedroom.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks.

The door doesn’t open, not that he expected it to. He leans against the wall and glances at one of the night-lights in the hallway, a fluorescent green palm tree they bought in South Carolina. Five feet away, there’s a seahorse-shaped night-light from Florida. And down the stairs are two more from Bermuda and Saint Croix. Night-lights were the only things they allowed themselves to buy when they went on vacation. Whatever guilt they felt about maxing out another credit card was mitigated by coming home with light bags.

“Remember when we drove down to Charleston after I defended my dissertation?”

This isn’t what he intended to say when he went upstairs, but it feels better than offering another apology that she won’t accept.

“Maybe we should go back there again and spend a little time by ourselves, stay at a bed-and-breakfast or something.…”

He has no idea why he’s saying this, or how to pay for such a trip, although money—or the lack thereof—never stopped them before. Their sense of want was always more powerful than their sense of reason. Gillian was the first to pull back when they couldn’t keep up with their bills. She drew up a budget and limited their purchases to the basics. She devised a plan to sell their house. “Retrenching,” she called it, a term that made him think of men digging holes in the dirt. Because his idea of being a husband meant giving her the things that made her happy, it was harder for Kyung to adapt. Even now, in the midst of so much chaos, getting away with Gillian feels like a necessity to him, as important as food or water or shelter.

“It wouldn’t have to be a very long trip, and I bet your dad would be willing to look after Ethan while we’re gone. What do you think? We can go to the beach for a few days, get some sun.…”

He realizes that mentioning the beach was a bad idea. He doesn’t want to remind her about the time they spent on the Cape.

“What was the name of that area you liked? The one with the big historic mansions? The Batten?” He pauses, studying a knot in the door. “No, the Battery. The Battery, right? We can go there again if you want.”

The trip to Charleston still stands out as a happier and more hopeful time in their lives. It was Gillian’s first trip south of D.C., and he enjoyed showing her around the city, introducing her to new architecture, new restaurants, new experiences that she’d never imagined before. She looked at him with admiration then, as if her life were opening up because he was in it, but he understands how differently he must appear to her now.