Chapter 14 #2
“Those are different things in her head.” The sound of something being moved.
“Hanbok. Hayoung’s wearing pink. It’s super cute.
Jaewon is—” A crash in the background. Minju switched to Korean, sharp: “PARK JAEWON PUT THAT DOWN. I SAID—yes. Both hands. Thank you.” Then, back to English: “He’s wearing the blue one.
I’m letting the hem out tonight. He wants the shoes. ”
“I don’t see why he can’t wear the shoes.”
In the background, Jaewon’s voice, in the English that Minju and David’s combined efforts had not yet displaced at home. “MY FAVORITE COLOR IS RED.”
Minju, ignoring her son: “They’re killer animatronics, Oppa.”
“His favorite color is red. You’re already putting him in blue. Let him have his shoes.”
“You are not my ally.” A pause. “—Fine. We’re doing the Parks on Tuesday, then here Wednesday. Two Seollals in two days. Both kids in hanbok twice.” She exhaled. “At least David’s umma is less… Type A.”
“Than ours.”
Two Seollals. His sister had been splitting holidays since Jaewon was born. He suspected David’s father was the easier negotiation compared to their mother. Give him the grandson first and the rest was flexible.
“Sebae at half past ten. Dinner at five. You and May taking BART?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Sebaetdon—Honestly, Hayoungie hasn’t gotten the bowing down yet.”
“I won’t mention it to her.”
“Funny. I need to manage—” Jaewon’s voice in the background, closer. “—yes, you can have the—no. Not that. The other one. —Oppa, I have to go.”
She hung up. The singing had stopped. Cassiel stood in the kitchen with the phone in his hand and the tea cooling on the counter.
He texted May.
Cassiel
What are you wearing Wednesday?
Forty seconds.
May
to Seollal??
Probably clothes.
Cassiel texted back:
Cassiel
Wear the blue oxford.
May
OK!! Do I need to practice the bowing?
I looked it up and one website said full kneel and another said just a bow. How low. I can kowtow like a eunuch
Cassiel
It’s a bow. You’re not greeting the emperor.
May
Interesting you didn’t address the eunuch part
Cassiel shook his head and set the phone on the counter. The apartment was quiet. He walked into the bedroom and hit play on the Marantz.
THE THURSDAY BEFORE SEOLLAL
May’s shift ended at four, and he’d said he’d come to the apartment after, and the word after in May’s vocabulary meant anywhere from forty minutes to two hours depending on whether he got distracted by a storefront or a stray cat.
Cassiel used the time. He sat on the bedroom floor with the headphone case open and checked the battery. Eighty-three percent. He’d charge them overnight. The case went on the nightstand beside his glasses case and phone charger, positioned where his hand could reach it without sitting up.
The forecast was clear, low fifties, no rain.
BART to Fremont, forty-nine minutes platform to platform, then the six blocks from the station.
Arrive by 10:15. Sebae at 10:30. The children in hanbok—Hayoung’s first, Jaewon’s with the shoes that his uncle had helped negotiate.
Tteokguk came next, then the long afternoon of food and family and Jaewon’s volume and Hayoung’s unpredictable nap window.
He knew where the noise would peak: after lunch, when the adults shifted from the table to the living room where the TV would be on and the conversation would layer over it.
He knew where he’d go: back bedroom, the one that used to be his, door closed, headphones on, thirty minutes.
He knew how to signal it. He would stand up, touch Minju’s shoulder, leave. No announcement. She’d cover.
He’d done this math for every family gathering since he’d figured it out at seventeen.
The variables changed—Hayoung was new, Jaewon less new, David about as new as Jaewon was, give or take a year.
The house had been rearranged, rooms repurposed, but the pattern held.
He knew how long he had. Two hours before the noise started to wear on him, three before it became actively antagonistic.
He’d never been wrong by more than fifteen minutes.
May would be there, and May was fine. May was the person who’d walked into Chuseok and made his mother laugh in the first twenty minutes.
Who’d stood in front of the TV with his father and understood it was more about not saying anything than the watching, and it was more about the standing than being quiet.
Who’d let Jaewon claim his lap, show him his tooth, who wrote Hayoung’s name in hangul in a notebook when Cassiel was still thinking of her as ‘the baby.’ May, who’d built rapport with David, and handled Minju watching him without flinching.
May was the part that didn’t need managing.
The front door opened. The sound came down the hall.
Hinges, then the scrape of shoes being removed and placed against the wall, then socks on hardwood, then May’s voice, already mid-sentence, something about a seagull that had stolen a man’s sandwich on Judah Street and the man had chased it, Cassiel, he chased the bird across two lanes of traffic and didn’t die—
Cassiel stood from the bedroom floor. His knees clicked, his ring didn’t. The headphone case was on the nightstand, charging, positioned for retrieval.
He walked through the French doors toward the voice.