“I’m sure it was nothing. They just can’t release any details on the phone.”
The three of them climb into the Suburban—Connie and Jin in front, Kyung in back. As soon as Kyung puts on his seat belt, he feels an uncomfortable pressure against his bladder, but it’s too late to stop for the bathroom now.
“How did this happen?” he asks.
“They must have taken your car this morning before everyone got up.”
The Suburban bounces along the gravel, shaking Kyung like a loose marble in the backseat. He clutches the door handle to steady himself, trying to make sense of what he just heard.
“I don’t understand,” Jin says. “Marina doesn’t drive.”
“Apparently, Mae was the one driving.”
“But she can’t drive either. There must be some mistake.”
“I taught her,” Kyung says quietly, not certain if he’s admitting or explaining.
“You did what?”
“She asked me to. She wanted to learn, so I taught her.”
“So she can handle a car, then?” Connie asks. “She knows what she’s doing?”
Kyung isn’t sure how to respond. “We only practiced that one time.”
Jin glares at him in the rearview mirror. “You did this,” he says. “You and your drunk ranting last night … in front of your own child, in front of our guests. You have no respect for anyone. That’s why your mother and Marina left this morning. You think those two haven’t been through enough without you making more trouble?”
“You’ve done a thousand times worse in front of me.”
“Children are supposed to honor their parents.”
“And parents are supposed to take care of their children.”
“You ungrateful little—”
“Grateful for what? What exactly should I be grateful for?”
“Enough,” Connie says. “I can’t think with the two of you shouting in my ear.”
Kyung is about to continue when Jin leans forward in his seat and points at a small marker approaching on the side of the road. “There,” he says. “That’s where you want to turn. Right there.”
The change in direction takes the air out of their argument. The three of them sit silently as they join a narrow two-lane highway that winds through a residential area, a homelier part of Orleans that reminds Kyung of the Flats. The houses they pass are modest. Small and untended and built up right along the side of the road, with no view of anything worth seeing. He assumes this is where the real people live, the ones who work the cash registers and wait on tables and bag groceries for the vacationers who invade every summer. He watches their rusty cars and yards filled with garage-sale junk pass through his window, wondering where Mae and Marina thought they were going. There aren’t any stores in this area, and if they needed a pretty drive to clear their heads, this wasn’t the right place to do it.
“Dickinson Farm Road,” Connie says. “That’s the cross street they gave me. How far is that from here?”
“Not far. But why would they be in this part of town?” Jin asks.
Kyung assumes that Mae got lost and flustered. He taught her to drive in circles, not to find her way home. “She was a fast learner,” he says, if only to reassure himself.
They follow the highway for a few miles until traffic begins to slow, then crawl, then simply stop. The car in front of them is a pickup truck with a noisy exhaust and too many bumper stickers. The driver is hanging his sunburned arm out the window, drumming his fingers impatiently on the door. In front of him are at least two dozen cars, and possibly dozens more after the wooded curve they can’t see around. They sit in traffic for several minutes, not moving an inch until Connie suddenly cranks his wheel and pulls over onto someone’s yellow scrap of lawn.
“We should get out and walk,” he says. “We’re not going to get any closer driving.”