“It’s not like it’s a big apartment or anything,” Elinor continues. “It was just a place to stay during the workweek.” She turns at the sound of someone clearing his throat and sees the reverend standing outside the door. She seems relieved to have a reason to end their conversation. “She paid the rent through the end of the year, so there’s absolutely no hurry. You should feel free to come and go as you please. I just thought you’d want to have the key for whenever you’re ready.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.… I appreciate you being so nice to her all these years.”
“It was mutual.” Elinor’s eyes begin to well up. She searches through her bag and removes a small package of tissues. “I never expected we’d become such good friends when we first met, but she was such an amazing woman.” She dabs at her eyes as they begin to spill over, leaving watery brown smudges on the tissue. “Look at me. I’m a mess. I should really get going now. Please, take all the time you need with the apartment.”
He has more questions he wants to ask, more things he wants to know, but Elinor leaves before he has a chance to tell her not to. The reverend is quick to enter as she exits, stopping when he notices the papers on his desk.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I left such a mess in here.” He collects his eulogy and deposits the sheets of paper into the trash. “Gillian asked me to check on you. You know there’s plenty of space in the living room, right? You don’t have to sit here by yourself.”
“I’d prefer it, if you don’t mind.”
“I understand. You’ve always been a little shy.”
“Shy” is a generous assessment of his personality, and a completely incorrect one, but Kyung lets the comment pass.
The reverend gently kicks the trash can. “So, did you read any of this?”
“I didn’t mean to, but yes, I got a sense of what it was.”
“And you’re upset with me, I assume.”
Kyung shrugs. It’s not the right word, “upset.” He can’t bring himself to feel that much about an event he didn’t plan, a rite of passage he doesn’t fully believe in. The service wasn’t perfect, but his mother wasn’t there to see it. And the longer he drifts through the day, the more he realizes that everyone is pretending in some way. They have to. The truth has no place in the etiquette of mourning.
“I don’t have anything to be upset about.” He turns around and scans one of the bookshelves. “Have you always read so much science fiction?”
“I used to, but not anymore. This was actually my bedroom when I was little. I just have a hard time throwing out books.”
“It’s not strange, living in your father’s house?”
“It’s a parsonage. It was no more my father’s house than it is mine.”
Something about Reverend Sung strikes him as more human today, more benign. From a distance, he always seemed several ranks above everyone else, beyond reproach in a way that made Kyung feel distrustful and judged. But the reverend looks so stricken now, almost childlike in his remorse.
“It was fine, you know. The service. I’m sure it’s a lot of pressure to deliver a eulogy.”
There’s a couple standing in the hallway, but the reverend politely waves them off and closes the door, trapping Kyung in the study with him.
“My father was planning to come—did you know that? He was looking for a plane ticket from Seoul up until the very last minute, but I’m glad he couldn’t find one now. He would have been so embarrassed.”
“It was nice of him to try. That’s a long trip for a funeral.”
“He was very fond of you and your parents.”
Kyung pauses. “I always liked him. He did a good thing for me once.”
“I know,” he says, looking over his shoulder, confirming Kyung’s suspicion that his family’s history had been passed down from one reverend to the next. “And I like your father too, despite some of his past behavior.”
The fear of being known like this, it was always the thing that governed him. He didn’t want to be the subject of other people’s pity, but the reverend’s tone is so matter-of-fact, with no judgment or condescension at all. He looks at Kyung calmly, waiting for him to continue, as if nothing between them has changed.
“I was terrible to my mother the night before she died. I said things to her, things I can’t take back.”
“We all say or do things we regret from time to time. God made us imperfect so that he could—”
“Please,” Kyung says, raising his hand in the air. “Can you please not talk to me like that right now? I can’t—I just can’t listen to that.”
The reverend nods. “I think I understand. You’ve always had a difficult relationship with your parents, and now that Mae’s gone, things will never improve with her. Is that what’s bothering you?”
Kyung doesn’t think it boils down to something so simple. The “it,” in fact, feels like an ever-thickening mass, the threads too twisted and tangled to find their beginnings or ends. The reverend isn’t entirely wrong, but he’s not completely right.
“I was the reason she drove off that morning.”
“But it’s not your fault she gave up, Kyung. Mae chose to take her own life. And what she did to herself and that girl—I know you don’t want to hear it in these terms, but it was a sin. It was as much a sin as what those men did to them, hard as that might be to hear.”
The awkwardness of the service—the things that were said and the things that weren’t—begins to makes sense to him now. The reverend wasn’t nervous. He simply wouldn’t lie.