At the airport we were early to the boarding gate, and I left Serena without telling her where I was going. I called Lloyd on a pay phone across the hall. I could still see Serena, and she looked at me curiously. A woman answered and made me wait awhile before I heard Lloyd’s voice. “I knew it was you. Had a feeling. What do you mean you’re in New York?” he said.
“We’re on the same wavelength again. I’m here! Well, I’m at JFK, but I came here with Serena for her interview. Who was that? Have you found Tongsu Cho?”
“My mom—she answers all calls and takes the phone with her when she leaves. Can you believe it? Wait, JFK? I’ll come get you.”
“Flight’s boarding soon. Tell me about Tongsu Cho.”
“It’s useless.”
“Don’t say that. Did you call?”
“Can’t believe my dad is going along with her. They control everything. You should see the look on her face when she told me I had a phone call.” He laughed. “She’s listening in right now, I bet.”
“So buy another phone and plug it in when they’re gone.”
“Hah! Don’t say that too loud. She’d love that. That way, they’ll never give me back my passport, and this time when they kick me out, it’ll be for good. What’s going on at school? How are you?”
“What happened to your passport?”
“Yeah, that one’s my dad’s idea. He thinks I’ll try to run away to Korea. With what money, I don’t know what he thinks. I did take his credit card a few times, so maybe he has reason to doubt me. I thought about sending a telegram to the tour to ask about Tongsu. You sound different, how come?”
“That’s good—try that. How different? Do you know where he keeps the passport?”
“In the safe in the store. You sound really close. I’m sorry I haven’t called. Are you mad? I promise I’m working on finding Jaesung. It’s all I think about. The phone situation sucks. Hey, we have to fly to North Dakota and convince them there’s something wrong with the story they were told,” Lloyd said.
“They won’t believe us.” I remembered your uncle’s voice. “We don’t have any evidence.”
“I can explain, if they give me a chance, face to face. They’ll believe me.”
“I believed you.”
“Exactly. Let me pick you up. We should have thought of this earlier, and you could have come back with me.”
“We’ve got to convince Jaesung’s parents he’s alive.” I saw Serena wave to me near the gate. “I’ve got to go,” I said.
“We’re running out of time,” Lloyd said.
I hung up and hurried to board the plane.
66
YOU CAN’T STAND ME.
I have to tell the truth. I remember my mother knew this when my father raged. I stammer, “It’s this whole thing, this thing you’re doing right here, Lloyd. I was wrong not to tell you about the pregnancy. Honestly, I still can’t accept that it’s real. It’s not real to me, do you understand? The whole thing, my body, everything about me right now, the way you touched me—if anyone touches me, it makes my skin crawl.”
BUT IT’S JAESUNG’S BABY. YOU SAID YOU LOVE HIM. DOESN’T IT MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU? DON’T YOU LOVE ANYONE BUT YOURSELF?
“I did, but when I heard—look, you don’t know what it’s like. I feel like my body has been taken over. It’s not mine, but it is mine, and I want it back. I’m eighteen, Lloyd.”
BUT YOU’RE THE MOTHER OF HIS CHILD. There’s a plaintive tone to his voice. I would have thought this once, idealized it, maybe, but not now.
The phone rings, and Lloyd answers it, turning his back to me. Heather inches forward, and the mattress creaks, but Lloyd doesn’t notice. He’s busy listening to whoever is on the phone, and holds it close to his ear so we can’t hear.
NO. He slams the phone back into its cradle and spins around to us. Heather slumps, returning to her position. Faye moves her shoulder in front of Heather’s shoulder as if to keep her in place.
Lloyd rubs the side of the gun against his forehead like a washcloth and looks at me. A glimpse of my old friend Lloyd is in his eyes. I appeal to it.
“I don’t want to be anyone’s mother.”
SO WHAT? WHY DOES IT MATTER WHAT YOU WANT? He hits his face with the gun. He seems to be fighting a part of himself.
I hold out my hand to him. “Lloyd, let’s talk about this without the police outside, without Faye and Heather. We’ll figure out what to do. We’ll go home. You’ll come with me to Lakeburg, and we’ll figure out what to do. If you want me to keep the baby, we’ll talk about it.”
YOU’RE LYING.
“I’m serious. I’m sorry, I see now why you had to bring Daiyu here, you had to get Heather and Faye in here, to get me to listen to you. I see you had no choice.”
YOU DIDN’T GIVE ME A CHOICE. YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING HOME TO YOUR PARENTS’ HOUSE. YOU SAID THAT TO ME, DIDN’T YOU, IN THE QUAD? YOU SAID, ‘LLOYD, I’M NOT GOING TO THE CLINIC, I’M GOING TO LAKEBURG.’
His voice has taken on a screech as if he’s in pain. I WAS ALL ALONE. I DID WHAT I HAD TO DO.
67
On the plane with Serena that day, flying back to Weston from New York, I regretted not taking a chance and driving with Lloyd to your house in North Dakota. I should have let him pick me up and gone with him. We should have at least tried. And if that didn’t work, we’d figure out something in New York. I had no further plans beyond something as vague as that, but I still regretted not trying. We’d figure it out. Me and Lloyd. As simple and as thoughtless as that. Silly girl. But part of me knew we didn’t have the money or the plan.
I listened to Serena talk on and on about where she was going to tour, and I finally snapped at her, “Why are you at Weston? You sound like you should be doing what your dad says instead of pretending to be a college student.” She didn’t reply, just stared at me for a few seconds and then turned to the window.
What was I doing with her? Playing her sidekick as she played around with things that didn’t matter. How did her music matter in the face of what had happened to you? Why wouldn’t she help me find you?
I called Lloyd when I returned to my dorm, and this time the phone rang and rang and rang, and I pictured the empty phone socket, the cord wrapped around the body of the phone in his mother’s purse somewhere—wherever she was. Lloyd was a prisoner in his own house. When the phone rang back in my room a few minutes later, I thought it was him, that we were on the same wavelength, as he said, but it was my mother asking me where I’d been. I explained about Serena. “You didn’t tell me you were going to New York,” she said, panic in her voice. “Where else are you going without telling me? Just like Willa. You’re supposed to be studying.”
“It was interesting, the radio station.” I tried to spin it the way she might appreciate it. “Serena is a famous musician. She’ll tour Korea. Ask your sister about her.”
“Are you planning to go back to Korea? There have been more protests—it’s not a safe place, Yoona. Your father won’t allow it.”
“No, why would you think Korea?”