“What about him?”
“He tell me not to come here. He think something bad happen. My father is—coward, afraid of everything since the war. He always talk about girls who go to America, to Europe, how men trick them into being prostitute. But I said no, I go to work, to study. Maybe I come back as lawyer or doctor one day, but he warn me over and over. Something bad happen if I leave.” She blows her nose again, crumpling the wet napkin in her fist. “I have sisters, Mr. Kyung. Four sisters, all younger than me. If I come home like this, my father will never let them leave, not even to study. He will say he was right.”
Kyung can’t remember the number of times he’s passed Marina on the couch and wished her gone, blinked somewhere far away. But sitting across from her now, he sees how young she is, how permanent the damage of her life back home and her life here. There’s a point, he thinks, when no amount of psychiatry or pharmacology can help a person lead a normal life. He passed his long ago. There’s no helping her either, but he still feels the need to try, to extend the hand that was never offered to him.
“I won’t let anyone send you away.” Before he has a chance to second-guess himself, he adds: “This is my house, and you can stay here as long as you need to.”
Marina brightens immediately. She doesn’t understand the dynamics of his family or the hell he’ll take to defend this decision, and for the time being, he doesn’t want to think about it either.
“Thank you, Mr. Kyung. I be helpful here, I promise. I make things easy for you and Miss Gillian.”
She gets up from her seat and tiptoes through the maze of cookware, resuming her place beside an empty cabinet. He’s about to tell her no—just leave it—but she’s already kneeling on the floor and leaning into the cabinet, scrubbing the far reaches with a sponge. In this position, the back of Marina’s petite figure resembles a violin. Wide at the shoulders and hips, cinched narrow in the middle. The further she reaches, the higher her nightgown climbs, revealing faded pink underwear with blue and yellow stripes. Nothing about what he sees—the Bugs Bunny shirt, the thick woolen socks, the baggy, stretched-out underwear—should appeal to him, but the longer he stands there, the more turned on he feels. It’s disgusting, he thinks. He’s disgusting. He backs out of the room, his face lit with shame, and walks stiffly up the stairs. For a moment, he considers waking Gillian, but he knows better than that by now, and just the thought of her irritated, exhausted rejection begins to deaden what Marina awoke.
Upstairs, he opens Ethan’s door to check on him and finds the boy asleep next to Jin. The two of them are curled up together on the cot. Ethan’s little bed is empty; the race car–patterned covers are still made up, as if he didn’t spend a minute there before crawling in beside his grandfather. Kyung wonders how many nights they’ve been sleeping like this, and who suggested it first. It’s jarring, such an outward display of tenderness from someone who never seemed the least bit tender. Kyung tiptoes to Ethan’s side of the bed and tries to lift him up. He whines and turns toward Jin, stretching himself out long. The boy is taller now, even taller than when the summer began. It’s hard to believe that anything could grow so fast. Kyung was terrified when Gillian gave birth, watching the doctor raise their tiny baby into the air, so slick and fragile and noisy from his first breath. He didn’t feel any of the joy he expected at the sight of his son, only worry. He worried when Ethan cried and cried for no apparent reason; he worried when he wouldn’t walk like other babies his age and then worried he’d crack his skull open when he did. He worried that Ethan was slow to learn his letters and numbers. He worried that television would make him sullen and rude like the neighborhood kids. Parenthood felt like nothing but a lifetime of worry, which made Kyung worry even more.
He tries to pick him up again, but Jin startles awake, clutching Ethan with one hand and the bedsheets with the other.
“It’s me,” Kyung whispers. “It’s just me.”
Jin adjusts his glasses, which are still perched on his nose. He keeps blinking at Kyung, as if he doesn’t trust that he’s awake. “What are you doing?” he whispers back.
“Nothing. I just came to check on him.” He motions toward Ethan, who’s still asleep, his mouth open and whistling.
Jin adjusts himself, pulling the sheets higher and the boy closer.
“You should let him sleep in his own bed.”
“He’s fine here.” Jin looks down and brushes a sweaty wisp of hair from Ethan’s forehead. “Just let him be.”
His father and son look like they belong together, like they’ve always been this close. But it bothers Kyung to see them this way. It feels like Jin is slowly taking over everything that matters.
“We have a system now, and you’re ruining it. It took us months to train him to sleep alone.”