Shelter(91)

The word continues to beat, even louder and faster than it did before. Run. And this time, Kyung has to listen. Every muscle in his body is awake now, vibrating with the horror of what he’s done and what he knows he has to do next.

*

There’s a single lamp glowing in the living room window, a single figure sitting on the sofa inside. The front door is unlocked, as if Jin is expecting him. There’s no use trying to deny it now. He and his father share the same mind. Jin knew what Kyung would learn at the police station, so he returned to his house in the Heights to spare Ethan, to prevent him from witnessing what Kyung had so many times as a child. His choice to come here is the closest thing to an acknowledgment of his wrongdoing, an invitation to end this where it all began.

Kyung makes no effort to enter the house quietly. He announces himself by throwing his keys on the floor. It’s not the element of surprise that he’s after. What he wants to incite most is dread. He remembers it so clearly from his childhood—hearing something as innocent as a plate or glass break and then the awful wait, wondering when the screaming would start, wondering how long he’d have to count before it stopped. No wall was thick enough, no door closed tightly enough to keep the words from reaching him. Ha ji mah! Ah pa. “Don’t! It hurts.” There was no such thing as mercy then. No mercy, no pity, no god, no grace. Only open palms and closed fists and the seed of this moment planting somewhere deep inside him.

Jin remains seated on the sofa when Kyung enters the living room. He doesn’t seem alarmed, or even worried to see him. He just sits there with his elbow propped up on a pillow, drinking a bourbon or Scotch. He empties what’s left of his glass and refills it, three fingers high, from a bottle on the end table. Kyung walks past the sofa, saying nothing as he pours himself a whiskey from the bar.

“You saw him at the police station?” Jin asks.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Was he sorry?” He clears his throat. “About what he did to us?”

Kyung thinks for a moment as he settles into the armchair across from Jin. The word “sorry” never crossed Nat Perry’s lips. “No, he wasn’t. Not at all. Are you sorry?”

“Would it matter to you if I was?”

Kyung thinks about this too. “No.”

“Then there’s no reason to say that I am.”

They sip their drinks, and it all seems strangely civilized. A father and son, sharing a round of cocktails as the night ticks slowly toward dawn. Kyung was hoping for this, this last window of quiet when he could ask the things he’s always wanted to know.

“You got mad at Mom for something when I was ten. Something that happened at a party, I think. You ended up knocking out one of her teeth.” He pauses, trying to erase the image of the bloody, broken tooth, an incisor that he later found under the edge of a rug. “What made you mad enough to do that?”

“Is this really what you want to talk about right now?”

Mae was more traumatized by the loss of her tooth than by any bruise or black eye she’d ever received. She cried about it for days, probably because it was something she couldn’t hide under her makeup or clothes. Kyung remembers trying to comfort her when they were alone, wrapping his arms around her shoulders as she sat on the bathroom floor. For his efforts, he limped away with a backhand to the face.

“Yes, this is exactly what I want to talk about.”

“It was the price tag,” Jin says, staring into his drink. “My department, they had a reception for everyone who got tenure that year. All the wives were invited. I didn’t want your mother to come—the men and women used to socialize separately in those days—but it would have been strange for her not to be there.” He crosses his legs, frowning as he flicks a stray piece of grass from his shoe. “I told her to buy a new outfit, an expensive one. I even gave her a list of things the other wives would be interested in, so it’d be easier for her to make conversation. But during the reception, I noticed some of the women laughing at her, talking about her behind her back, and then some of the husbands too. It kept getting worse and worse. So there I was, trying to feel proud of what I’d done. I’d finally gotten tenure after six years of people whispering about whether I was good enough, whether my research even mattered. I’d put up with my idiot students trying to correct my English and having colleagues pick me apart in meetings because they knew I wouldn’t challenge them. I’d survived all these things, and it was like none of it even mattered that night because of her.”

The thought of people talking down to his father or complaining about his work is completely at odds with Kyung’s understanding of him. In Korea, everyone openly admired Jin. Their neighbors and relatives called him “professor” long before he even finished his degree. They treated him like someone to be reckoned with, so to come to a place where the opposite was true—Kyung can imagine the shock of it. He can see why his father always held himself to such impossibly high standards. Jin thought he had to be perfect. And Mae and Kyung and the house, they had to be perfect too. They were his extensions into the world, the things by which he was judged, and to hear it now, Kyung understands that people sometimes weren’t kind. It makes sense, then, why the smallest things often mattered to Jin, why a burnt dinner or sullen expression or innocent mistake were all cause for a reaction. It makes sense that when the valve opened even slightly, the pressure building up inside needed a form of release. But why take his anger out on his wife instead of the people who mistreated them? This is where everything seizes up for Kyung, where his mind simply narrows and no amount of empathy can squeeze through to the other side.