Chapter 8
I was lying on a couch with a blanket and a pillow, about to fall asleep, when Channing came in with two large mugs of hot tea, the steam curling above the liquid. Her face hovered over them. I smelled peppermint.
“Are you awake?” she asked.
I sat up and took one of the mugs from her. “The kids go right to bed?”
“Without a peep. They were worn out.”
I took a sip. “You want to talk about Minjae?”
“No. Hey, there’s a new Chunhyang on Kovikiflix.” She set up her laptop on a chair at an angle for both of us to watch.
“Who’s in it?” I asked. All the Chunhyang shows were similar. Like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, there were many versions of the “Tale of Chunhyang.”
Channing watched every one. Several were period dramas set in the Joseon dynasty.
In a modern comedy rendition, Chunhyang was a high school student who dreamt of a career as a K-pop star, and Mongryong was a teenager who rode a motorcycle and got in trouble with the law.
The evil villain who kept them apart was an entertainment mogul.
Channing obsessively watched all of them on repeat.
The one I took biggest issue with was a movie where Bangja, Mongryong’s servant, played a bigger role in the love story.
Unfair and unrealistic, I thought. It should be Hyangdan, Chunhyang’s maid, who got more screentime.
“Is this one historical or modern?” I asked.
“Historical,” she replied.
“How many times have you seen it?”
“Only twice. I like that they include Chunhyang’s mother’s life before Chunhyang was born,” Channing said, and put her tea down. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to start the show. “Why aren’t you in the parents’ room? It’s totally empty,” she continued.
She’d shown me all the rooms earlier, and it had just felt odd to sleep in the Ahns’ bedroom, so clean and neat with Korean figurines in traditional clothes and lots of photos in ceramic frames of the children.
Also, Edison had scowled when we’d opened the door and said his parents didn’t like anyone going in there when they weren’t home.
Instead of the parents’ bedroom, I’d chosen to sleep in the mother’s study with her smooth white leather modern couch padded by wide cushions.
Besides a desk, a shelf, and this couch, the room was empty, as if the boys’ mother hadn’t begun the work she intended to do in this space yet. I liked how impersonal it was.
“It was a fun night. Good to see Harabeoji with his best friend,” I said.
“Until Kent showed up. Didn’t I say he’d be there?”
“Why did you tell him if you didn’t want him there?” I asked.
“I didn’t.”
“Well he said to Harabeoji and Mr. Yun that you’d told him all about me and Harabeoji coming today.”
“He’s a liar.”
“Then how did he know?” It made no sense to me.
“Dahee, you’re saying I’m lying?” She got up and walked to the window, moved aside the curtains, and looked out at the street.
I pulled the blanket up to my chin. “I believe you. I just thought maybe you forgot.”
Channing was quiet. I said after a minute, “Did you see how he slapped away Edison’s hand when we were walking to the cars?”
She came back to sit on the floor by the couch, and her shoulders slumped. “That’s exactly him. He’s like that. Horrible. I’m glad you saw it.”
I brought the cup to my lips. “We’ll figure it out. Harabeoji is on the case. And if Kent shows up in this house while I’m here, I’ll scream and scare the shit out of him.”
She didn’t laugh like I expected. Time to change the subject, I thought. I said, “What do you think of Alice and Jesse? Is Ames her younger sister?”
Channing took a sip of tea, then raised her chin. “That’s so wild they have a baby. I never thought Alice would be with Jesse. She had a boyfriend for years who her parents hated.”
“They told me they both lived in New York before moving back to East End.”
“Oh, that makes sense. They had to leave East End to find each other. I guess you never know. It’s all changed—everyone is paired up now. Except us.”
“We’re not the only ones.” I laughed. “What about Ames? You two looked like you were having an argument.”
“Yeah, Ames.” Channing grimaced. “I thought she was my friend, but she dropped me after my mom died. Do you know she picks the worst boyfriends? One of them used to cheat at chess. We all knew it, but we couldn’t ever catch him.
I quit the team because the teachers always put him ahead of me and Ames, but she stayed in there even when she knew he cheated.
How could she accept the second-place trophy?
It didn’t mean anything if they gave a cheater first place. ”
“Yikes, okay, what about Paul?” I was just trying to lift her spirits. His name popped up in my mind.
She put down her mug of tea. “So, you want to know about Paul, huh?”
“What? He makes good cinnamon rolls.”
She had a look on her face I knew well. “Put yourself out there. It’s not like the lake.”
“My life is fine as it is,” I said as I always did when she started down this path. Channing was on every online dating app and believed in finding true love like in the story of Chunhyang. I didn’t. Instead of seeing it as an aspiration, I saw that old Korean folktale as a warning.
At the mention of the lake, my memory brought me back to when I was a kid. An autumn storm had blown in unexpectedly. I had run toward my house to escape it and fell into a pit formed by an uprooted tree. But my problem didn’t last. It took a while, but I was found by my grandfather eventually.
The hours I was stranded in that crater were nothing compared to Channing’s permanent loss.
Channing and I each experienced pivotal events that year, but hers was more significant than mine.
Her mother died of cancer. Her life changed drastically, and I hated when she brought up my fall into that pit as if we shared a similar loss.
I dismissed it as an unfortunate mishap.
She disagreed, said it changed the course of my life just as her mother’s death had altered hers.
“I’m less afraid because of my experience,” she said. “You’re more.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d begun to believe she was right.
If I was truthful, I had to admit I felt as if I were running out of life.
I meant time, but the word life was what was on my mind really.
As if I’d run down that, too. Why did I feel ancient when I was thirty years old?
Would I ever be happy? Did getting lost when I was a child prevent me from seeking true love?
I didn’t want to dwell on these questions.
“Let’s watch the new Chunhyang,” I said, changing the subject again. “I’m ready. Go ahead, start it. Stop once the evil magistrate comes to town.”
“When the bad guy comes to town is half the story,” she said.
“I like the episodes before the evil one takes over. You know I hate the part that comes after.”
“It’s just a story. It’s the real-life villains I’m worried about.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I started having nightmares again. Being back here and driving by my old house. Haven’t been able to sleep.”
I joined her on the floor and spread a blanket over our legs.
“It makes sense, and you sounded stressed looking after the kids. While Harabeoji and I are here, you should let us help. Go ahead, sleep in. I’ll cover you.
I’ll get groceries tomorrow before you all wake up.
You know I’m up early anyway, can’t help it, a habit from teaching. ”
“You don’t have to. But I’m really glad you came.” Channing patted my leg.
“Okay, now tell me about Minjae,” I said.
She couldn’t hide a smile that spread across her face. “Minjae says Paul is trying to change careers, from working in IT to becoming a gym teacher. He’s applying to graduate school. You should talk to him about it.”
The thought of Paul becoming a teacher brought up my ex to my mind. He had been a colleague at my school when we met. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t date another person in my line of work. “Probably should sell his cinnamon rolls instead. But tell me about Minjae, not Paul.”
“Minjae thinks Paul really wants to work for the New England Revolution but doesn’t believe he’s good enough, so he’s falling back on teaching. He and Minjae both played in college. They miss playing soccer.”
“Enough about Paul. What else did you and Minjae talk about?”
“When you lost your balance when we got to the house, you sensed something, didn’t you?” Channing spread the blanket over more of my legs and less on hers though the room was cold.
“Why is the air-conditioning on so high in this house?” I said. “Take more of the blanket.”
“I can’t lower it, I’ve tried. For a new house, the controls are old tech. Anyway, I’m fine. Stop changing the subject. What happened to you? You almost fell.”
“Probably just the long drive today. What’s it got to do with Minjae?”
She looked down at her mug of tea. “We’ve talked about it before, the way you call when I’m just about to call you. There’s a kind of knowing about things that we can’t explain.”
I waited.
“I felt that with Minjae today,” she continued. “He’s so easy to talk to. Like we didn’t just meet, like I’ve known him forever.”
I was relieved. “You did meet before. Paul said Minjae’s family came to East End when they were kids; you met him in real life, Channing. He remembered you. You’re not easy to forget—even as a kid, his words: ‘She was fun.’”
She nodded. “I know, he told me, but it’s more than that. It’s way more than that, Dahee. I need to figure out what it is.”
There was silence for another few seconds.
What could I say? Again, I told her to start the show.
Channing complied by clicking a key on her laptop.
I set my tea on the table and lay back down on the couch.
“I’ll watch one episode and half of the next one with you, because if we get to the end, we’ll have to watch another one.
They get you with a cliffhanger at the end of each episode,” I said.
My eyelids closed and wanted to stay that way as fatigue washed over me.
“You always say that. How can you stop in the middle? It’s so good,” she replied.
Cheerful orchestral music filled the room.
The story always began on an upbeat note.
I opened my eyes to an image of a traditional Korean house with a thatched roof and wide porch.
A young woman in a red-and-white hanbok and a young man looked shyly at each other across a low table with an assortment of food on it. “Already?” I asked.
Channing paused the show and clicked on another one. “Yeah, no, that’s where I was. Let me start it at the beginning.”
A lush green series of summits flashed on the screen.
It was a panoramic of Jirisan, the mountain range near Namwon.
I remembered how Harabeoji described it with its hidden healing herbs.
Then the camera focused on a house in Namwon.
The first episode showed Chunhyang’s mother talking to a man about her hopes for having her own child.
We watched for a while before I yawned again. “I can’t even right now, this one starts before Chunhyang was born.”
Channing’s voice wafted toward me. “Did you know Minjae’s dad died when he was nine?
How strange is that? That’s when my mom died, and he’s been going from job to job like me and his mom relies on him like my dad does me.
How do you explain that? He understands me, even without my explaining anything.
It’s just he’s different, the way I’m different. ”
“You’re both only going to be in East End for a few more weeks, too, remember that detail? How’s this going to work out?” I mumbled, and that was the last of the show and the conversation before I woke the next morning.
I didn’t tell her that I had researched the story of Chunhyang when I was in college.
Among the books I’d read was the one I remembered seeing in Channing’s mother’s room.
It was called Virtuous Women. I was upset to learn that the story might have been based on real people well before the pansori version Harabeoji had told us long ago.
The actual Mongryong arrived too late to save the real Chunhyang.
I never told Channing about the people upon whom the tale was based.