Chapter 2
I loved leaving the city. My plan was to drive to Boston to pick up my grandfather and then go together to help Channing in East End.
Whenever I mentioned the name of this town to friends, they assumed I meant a region in Long Island, so I had to explain that it was located in New England, about eighty miles south of Boston.
“Never heard of it,” they’d say, as if they doubted it existed.
Maneuvering around the heavy traffic that encircled Manhattan didn’t faze me.
Fridays were particularly brutal, but I was ready.
I’d driven this route many times. I went so often that the principal at the school where I worked asked me why I didn’t live there.
The truth was I couldn’t tell her I was afraid to try.
I’d gone to college and graduate school in New York, and one of my professors had recommended me to the principal I worked for now.
It was important for me to be certain, to keep risks low and have a steady income.
Channing was the opposite. She didn’t want to be tied down to a job and other people’s rules.
I didn’t understand what she did exactly—she was a programmer—but apparently, she was good.
Really good. She’d had job offers from Google and SpaceX and other companies, but she preferred to work for equity in friends’ startups, which rarely became successful.
She believed in their ideas and wanted to support them rather than be a cog in the wheel of commerce.
The problem was she still needed to make money somehow.
Her father’s health care was costly, and he couldn’t work anymore.
They’d sold everything they’d owned over the years.
Even with my parents pitching in each month, Channing was paying more and more for his care and falling behind on bills.
It was mid-afternoon when I turned onto my grandfather’s street.
There had been more construction on the highway than usual.
He rented the third-floor apartment with my uncle Albert, Channing’s father, so Harabeoji had planted flowers and a small vegetable garden in large clay pots out front.
Greens and purples and pinks burst from containers, bordering the facade of the clapboard house.
Everywhere he lived benefited from his ability to grow a bounty of food and beauty.
It might seem odd that Channing and I were the ones who looked after our grandfather.
Some of it was just practical: My parents moved to Vancouver, Canada, after I went to college and were wrapped up in their import/export business, and Channing’s father was unmoored after his wife died.
I heard my parents say he’d lost an astronomical sum of money for investors in a real estate development project and eventually was forced to leave East End.
He couldn’t hold down a job after that, constantly going in and out of treatment for alcohol use.
My grandfather took care of him and Channing.
As Channing and I got older, we tried to take care of our grandfather as best we could.
Harabeoji was special to me. He always said the words I needed to hear. It was never a burden to be with him. I enjoyed his company and worried about him, hoping he was comfortable.
Now, as I neared his apartment, I saw him before he noticed me.
I stopped the car a short distance from the driveway and tried to memorize his appearance.
He was bent slightly, sweeping debris from the sidewalk with a long common broom.
His small navy-blue duffel bag, bearing the round logo of a company Channing had worked at for a couple of months, sat in the walkway with a stocky brown paper bag propped up beside it.
He was six feet tall with jet-black wavy hair that he put some sort of oil into to sweep off his forehead; it made him look like an old-time movie star.
He was wearing his tan cotton twill jacket with a two-button strap collar that he’d owned for as long as I could remember.
Channing said it was from the 1970s in Korea.
Below that, I saw his usual crisply pressed short-sleeve button-down shirt.
This one was in that plaid print with pinks and oranges and greens.
He ironed his clothes without fail and took such good care of them that he never had to replace them.
Below his sharply creased khaki pants, he wore brown leather dockside shoes I’d bought him last Christmas.
He’d made me take a penny for them, so he purchased them from me rather than accepted them as a gift.
He said that if you give shoes to someone as a present, then it will allow them to walk out of your life.
I told him my parents had bought me my shoes, so did they want me to leave them?
He said that was different. So, I pocketed the penny.
And I was just glad he liked the shoes enough to wear them.
He was most comfortable tending to his garden and fishing, telling stories about the farm on which he’d grown up.
He attributed his knowledge of plants, cooking, weaving, and knitting to his grandmother who raised him.
It was as if Channing and I knew her through him.
Everything they needed to live, he said, they grew on the farm.
What they ate and drank, the clothes they wore.
Everything. His description of it felt cozy and reliable.
When I pulled the car back on the road, he lifted his head in my direction, and I saw that he had spotted me.
He raised his hand high, and I felt an immense feeling of relief.
It was always the same, and I knew it had to do with how safe he made me feel, as if each time he was pulling me up out of that deep hollow in my yard I fell into once when I was a child.
“Channing needs us for moral support,” my grandfather said as we merged onto the highway. It was approximately a two-hour trip to East End this time of day.
“She also needs us to cook and do laundry,” I replied.
His face creased into all kinds of wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, and he gave a laugh that burst first as a big breath before the sound emerged.
“Channing will be all right,” he said.
“She’s always all right,” I replied. “She gets to be in East End! The beach, the seafood. Who wouldn’t want to be there? It’s us I’m worried about.”
He laughed again. “Summer always makes me think of that town.”
“Glad she got this job. The last one she had was five months ago.” I signaled to move into the passing lane.
East End had been Harabeoji’s home for ten years, so he knew the people there, the old ones anyway.
His friend Mr. Yun had recommended Channing for this babysitting position because he’d heard from Harabeoji that my cousin needed work.
“You mean more than a year. I helped her sell some of her things to pay off credit cards. She was evicted from her apartment before she started this East End job,” he said.
My foot pressed down on the accelerator. “Typical Channing to keep that information from me. Thought she still had her apartment,” I said. “Is there anything else she didn’t tell me? Is she trying to get back together with what’s-his-name in Fall River?”
Harabeoji put his hand out toward the dashboard, which made me realize I was accelerating. I apologized and slowed the car down to the speed limit.
“No, no, she didn’t want to worry you. She doesn’t lie. She leaves things out sometimes, you know that,” he said.
I tried to remember when we’d talked about her apartment. Harabeoji was right. Channing had never told me she wasn’t evicted.
“It’s going to be all right,” he continued. “She’ll get back on her feet. She needs a reason for being.”
I wondered how they’d managed in his apartment with my uncle in a one-bedroom that they shared. Channing must have slept on the couch in the small living room with the kitchenette.
“It’s never been this bad before,” I said now, tapping the steering wheel with my fingers. This job in East End was more important than ever. She had to finish it to get paid so she could go back to Boston and get her own place.
My grandfather took out a white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and began wiping the console between us. Then he carefully folded the square cloth and put it into his left pocket. The right side had at least one more clean one in it. The left was for the ones he’d already used.
“The two of you are very different. Love has always been part of Channing’s way of looking at life,” Harabeoji said.
I told him about the man Channing had mentioned and added, “It’s a stretch.
He sounds like a menace, but maybe it’s bad manners.
Just ring the doorbell. Then again maybe this Kent Cho is the one she’s been searching for.
If I remember correctly, Chunhyang doesn’t like Mongryong at first in that Korean folktale Channing loves so much. It’s an enemies-to-lovers story.”
Harabeoji cleared his throat, then he said, “That’s not quite right. Not enemy. They didn’t know each other. That name, Kent Cho, I’ve heard of him. He’s a good man, helps the Korean community, works for the mayor.”
My grandfather’s words reassured me. I eased my grip on the steering wheel. “Yes, that’s the guy. Channing said something about the mayor. A steady job and being a good person aren’t at the top of Channing’s list for the man of her dreams,” I said.
“Can’t change the way you feel,” he replied. “She has good instincts, like you. You both do. You have to trust them.”
“Eomma says Channing and I aren’t like our family from Namwon. We’re too blunt. But you’re from Namwon and you’re direct. My parents never say what they mean—I guess they’re like people from Namwon then.” I looked in my rearview and returned to the driving lane.
“You’re more like your mother than you think. You don’t like conflict, Dahee,” he said. “You never have. You go out of your way to avoid it. That’s not direct. Channing just says what she wants.”
“See? But Channing is more from Namwon than I am. Both her parents were from there. My mom is not.”
Harabeoji laughed. Then he reached into his right jacket pocket and handed me a ginger candy. It was my favorite. I unwrapped it and popped it into my mouth.
We drove in easy silence for a while until he spoke again. “I brought some Korean squash for the Yuns and should bring something more,” he said. He told me he planned to stay with his friends in East End in their house while I was with Channing and the children she was babysitting.
“Your squash are the best gift,” I replied, but I knew he believed it wasn’t enough, and it was a good excuse for me to get clam cakes. Plus, we knew Channing didn’t cook, so picking up some food would serve multiple purposes.
The first clam cake stand we headed toward had closed. The second place, too. A bad omen I refused to acknowledge about the changes in the region.
I patted my grandfather’s hand as we stopped at a fruit stand, comforting myself as much as him. There would be time to get clam cakes, just not today. Nothing could bring down my mood. I told him the Yuns would be glad to have fresh peaches.
When we opened the car doors, the sound of seagulls, wind, and surf flooded our ears.
We climbed out into the salty smell of the ocean and humid air.
The Atlantic was pungent and thick with sea life.
It had been a while since I’d been this close to it, and I had forgotten how the ocean could wrap the land with its briny arms.