Chapter 40
The paint chips were in the drawer under the register, buried beneath layers of junk mail, paid invoices, and the printed instructions for seven different board games.
At least Jiyeon knew where to look next time their Friday gaming group disputed the rules for Scrabble.
She wanted to send both of her parents to buy paint, just to cut the lecture short, but they were in charge of providing breakfast for the volunteers. The job was too important to reassign.
“Walked back home from the shop,” her mother exclaimed again, waving a whisk. “Middle of the night! Walked all the way home with your bags, exactly like a crazy person!”
“Han Jiyeon. Why do this, huh? Jeannie comes to get you, that's it, you listen right away. Dad comes to get you, no. Dad brings you dinner, new magazine, picture of your boyfriend — nothing!”
“Okay, and how did you end up with one of Eunjae's photo cards? Feel like explaining yet?”
“Those cards,” said Joey, “are for collecting. I buy the CD, I get two cards. Lucky, too! So many of them, but I get lion boy on my first try?” He pointed at her. “Meant to be. That's what happened, Yeonnie.”
Lizzie slotted the whisk into the drying rack with a vengeance. “Why are you so quick to get up when Jeannie starts crying?”
“I thought she needed help.”
“This is what I'm saying! Why only come out when somebody else needs help? What about when you need help?”
Jiyeon saw her mother’s expression and fell headlong into a memory.
Last December, she went to Ivy Lane with her shoes full of sand, no phone, no job, and Lizzie looked just like this when she came to the door.
Went to the beach, no jacket! Middle of the night!
Threw your phone in the water, exactly like a crazy person!
No one had ever scolded her so thoroughly. No one had ever held her so tightly.
She thought of how Eunjae might respond. Draping her apron over a chair, Jiyeon went to give Lizzie a hug. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Our Yeonnie, scared of nothing in the world," said Joey. "Nothing, except asking for help. What does your brother call this?” An invisible lightbulb went ding above his head. “A-ha! Tomfoolery.”
She’d have to hug him later. For now, Apollo had arrived. Jiyeon heard them before she saw them, as usual.
She picked her way over the plastic sheeting laid out on the dining room floor.
A breeze whistled through the busted panels where glass used to be, carrying the noise indoors.
Who told Jesse he could borrow that jacket?
Could this old man buy Jaehwan-hyung a pizza franchise instead of ice cream again?
Would it kill him to make an effort? And when would they get to eat breakfast?
Some of them were starving. Some of them hadn't eaten in hours.
She counted only six of the eight. “Where’s Eunjae?”
“Whoa, ajumma. That’s how you say hi to me?”
“Yikes.”
“Aww, Max isn’t here either. Why didn’t she ask about him?”
“He’s not important,” sighed Jungwoo, “and neither are we.”
Jesse bounced up in Vuitton overalls, warm and cozy in a matching Vuitton jacket. “Oh my gosh. Noona, what if it was one of us instead? You know, when you opened the door that night—”
“Hmm. No.”
Six jaws dropped. Six sets of eyeballs popped out of six bewildered skulls. “Wow. She didn't even have to think about it… I've never been rejected so fast in my life...” Was that a shadow on the sidewalk, or Jungwoo's soul leaving his body?
Jeannie herded them into the restaurant.
“You’ve gotta quit doing this,” she whined at Jiyeon.
“Who just randomly finds idols standing outside? Who does that more than once in their lifetime? I can’t cope, okay?
I’ve only had two shots of espresso and it’s not enough.
I’m just absorbing the caffeine now. No, I'm becoming caffeine.
So I energize other people, but I can't make any energy for myself.”
The guys were ordered to march into the kitchen.
They promised Jeannie all kinds of treats in exchange for breakfast: concert tickets, incriminating photos, a villa in Tuscany.
She told them to zip it and prepare for the mission brief.
“How dare you ask me for food? Don’t you know I’ve got nothing left to give?
Do you think this event organized itself? ”
Not long after that, Jiyeon heard Denny and Max come in through the back. She couldn’t explain the compulsion to open the blinds; she just knew, somehow, that Eunjae would come around to the front. He’d want to see the door.
She went outside and rushed into his embrace. Eunjae could only hold her with his left arm; he had a parcel tucked under the right, flat and thin, wrapped in brown paper. Seeing the damage in person, he couldn’t manage a single word.
“It’s okay,” Jiyeon told him. “We’ll fix it.”
“We will.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Had to make an extra stop.” And then he said, “We’ve got time. Let’s run away.”
They couldn't be gone for long, so they didn't run very far.
There was a small park down the block, a triangle of greenery wedged between two residential streets.
The walk involved a slight uphill climb that took five minutes, give or take, and Jiyeon figured no one else would be around at this hour.
It was still so early, just after daybreak, with the sun obscured by a bank of clouds.
Sometimes it managed to shine through, piercing the milky blue light with a glimmer of gold.
They didn't talk much on the way there. Eunjae held tightly to her hand, breath fogging the air above the shearling collar of his jean jacket.
In the spring, the park’s lone jacaranda tree produced cascades of blue-violet blossoms. Jiyeon used to sit in its shade with Janie, stealing away from the shop for weekend lunch breaks.
The last time she came here, Eunjae had just flown back to Seoul and a thick carpet of petals covered the ground.
Now the tree was bare, its branches full of sky.
Yellowing leaves trembled in the breeze.
They could come back at winter's end. Eunjae would be here, taking a million pictures.
She wouldn't need that calendar on the wall in her kitchen because she'd be with him all year round.
And there was still so much left to do, a battle they had yet to win, but Jiyeon felt only contentment.
They were here together. They'd be here together again.
She'd gotten better at finding silver linings.
Janie would gloat, if she knew. She'd be so annoying about it.
“There are always flowers,” her sister loved to say, regardless of the season, untethered by time and its constraints.
The girl read one coffee table book about art history and went on to quote Matisse at Jiyeon forever after.
There are always flowers for those who wish to see them.
“You need to get better at finding the flowers, Yeonnie.
Just keep looking and you'll find something good.” And then her sister would stitch another daisy into the cuff of her sweater, she'd embroider a bouquet on the pocket of Jiyeon's favorite jeans.
Janie knew that it was hard for her to see the flowers, so she put them everywhere, well-meaning and heavy-handed in a way that only older sisters can be.
When she left, off to see the world and live a life apart from them, her absence yielded a new lesson to be learned: how to be Jiyeon, without Janie. Sitting with Eunjae, she understood that a similar lesson awaited him, too. He'd have to learn how to be Eunjae, without eight brothers.
If he was worried, if he was afraid, it didn't show just then. He put the parcel in Jiyeon's lap and said, “Look what I got.”
Carefully, she peeled the brown paper away. She went so slow that Eunjae had to laugh through his own impatience. “I’m trying not to rip it,” said Jiyeon, uncovering the beveled edge of a picture frame.
“Just rip it.”
“No way. What if it gets scratched? I still need to bring it home.”
“I need to borrow it first. They want it back when I'm done, but it's okay. I'll make two copies.”
And that was where Jiyeon stopped. “What is this? What did you do?”
“Offered to buy it. Golden Grove wouldn't sell, though.” He shrugged. “Thought that was fair. Can't expect them to break up their collection for some guy.”
“Eunjae, you didn't.”
But he did. Under the wrap, just a little bit faded by sunlight and the passage of time, Jiyeon saw the house she'd drawn in eighth grade. It had an orange door.
She looked up at him, speechless. Eunjae brushed a tear from her cheek. “When I find an apartment,” he said, “it's going on the wall. And when you open your own place, whatever that place might be, we'll hang it up again.”
Jiyeon hooked an arm around his neck and kissed him. “I love it. I love it more than I can say. Thank you.” But then she was sobbing in earnest, because she had no idea where this picture would go. That certainty was lost to her. “I wish I knew,” she whispered. “I thought I knew, and now I don’t.”
“You don’t have to know,” Eunjae whispered back, gently. “You’ve got so much time.”
“I said that to Ezra.”
“You did. He told me. And I don’t know what I’m doing, either. I just know I love you.”
The picture frame almost slid right out of her lap and onto the cracked pavement below. “Eunjae. You’re saying that to me right now?”
“I am.”
“But you’ve never said that to me before,” she stammered.
“I wanted to,” Eunjae said in a hurry. “So many times. I mean, all the time, but I wasn’t sure if it was too soon.” Overcome by belated embarrassment, he added, “Google said I shouldn’t.”
It was so warm. Jiyeon had never been warmer.
Why did she borrow this jacket he’d left in her car?
Why did she insist on pretending it ever got cold in California?
She would get nothing done today. She would sit on this bench and freak out.
And for the rest of this day, for the rest of her life, she would obsess over the look on Eunjae’s face when he heard her say, “I love you, too.”
This felt like her last love, but it was also the first.
There was still work to be done. Eunjae helped her up so they could walk back. Volunteers were arriving in cars and vans and more than one bus. They came bearing food, ladders, power tools. They fussed over Denny when he emerged from the shop to greet them.
Jiyeon forgot to breathe. She hadn’t hoped for such a turnout, what with the short notice and how rough things had been in recent weeks. “But there’s so many," she said. "I can’t believe it.”
Eunjae waited for her, smiling. “Yeah. Kindness comes back to you.”
She felt the shift when it happened, like the light changing at daybreak, like every cell in her body wide awake and singing. The dream, the dream. It hadn’t changed at all.
It grew.