Chapter 22
Channing held it together the next day, getting the boys off to camp, then returned to the house.
Harabeoji and I couldn’t leave her in East End in this condition.
We decided to postpone our departure yet again.
When Channing became quiet like this, it meant she was more upset than if she cried and yelled.
The only thing that remotely piqued her interest was watching the Chunhyang K-drama, so that’s what we did, sitting at the kitchen table, watching it on her laptop, drinking cups of tea.
She refused the ginseng now. She wanted only peppermint.
The Yuns invited us over for dinner that night, but Channing refused to go.
I drove the boys, and we had sujebi in chicken soup.
Edison and Austin jumped on the trampoline and ate watermelon and peaches again.
According to Mrs. Yun, Paul was busy, so he didn’t join us.
A disappointment. I didn’t realize how much I’d hoped to see him.
Mr. Yun was showing Harabeoji real estate listings for houses in the area, which my grandfather was gently declining.
“Think about it. If you lived here, we could go fishing every day,” Mr. Yun said.
“How can I wait until the next time you visit? We aren’t young anymore.
How many years do we have left, do you think? Two, three?”
“More than that,” I said. “Ten!”
All three of them laughed at my response. “Wah, I’ll be ninety-nine,” Mr. Yun exclaimed. “That would be something if I could drive and fish in my little boat at that age.”
“Well, in the old days, that was possible,” Harabeoji said.
“I’m planning on it. Speak for yourself, old man,” Mrs. Yun exclaimed in a stern voice. “Mrs. Ku says an apartment might be available above her bakery.”
“An apartment! That’s for young people. My friend needs a house,” Mr. Yun said.
It made me realize that he didn’t know where my grandfather lived in Boston and had never visited him.
Mrs. Yun’s face showed she was hurt by her husband’s comment.
Maybe she understood my grandfather’s finances better than Mr. Yun did.
I changed the subject to Kent’s party. I must have sounded enthusiastic about it because Harabeoji said if Channing wasn’t attending, then he’d keep her company that night and I could take the children to it.
Mr. Yun said the other Korean families would want to see my grandfather.
I mentioned Kent’s interest in the new woman from Philadelphia and how Channing didn’t have to worry about Kent anymore, and that seemed to put Harabeoji at ease.
The next morning, Thursday, Channing couldn’t manage to get out of bed to drive the boys to camp.
The house was quiet when I woke, and she was huddled under her blankets.
I had to hurry to get the boys dressed. I’d hastily thrown their swimsuits, towels, and lunches together but didn’t have time for them to eat at home, so we stopped at a drive-through doughnut place to get them breakfast. Austin asked if we could do this every day.
When I returned, the house was quiet. Channing’s flip-flops were by the door, so I knew she hadn’t gone out.
Harabeoji called to ask how Channing was feeling, so I filled him in.
He was at Mrs. Ku’s bakery helping out today because she was shorthanded.
“Bring Channing,” he said. “She should get out of that house.” I promised him I’d try.
When I went up to Channing’s room, the curtains were still closed.
She covered her head with a blanket when I let the sun in.
I’d seen Channing like this before. Every few relationships, it was as if she lost hope.
Those times the only answer was to get moving.
She was a gymnast, a diver, a runner. If she could get herself out into fresh air, she would find faith again in her dreams, in herself.
Without it, when she was in bed like this, she scared me.
No one should be in bed in the middle of the day unless they were sick.
I thought of the last time I saw her mother.
I worried that Channing would become ill like my aunt.
Her voice came muffled from under the covers. “Let me sleep. I’ll pick up the boys, don’t worry.”
“Let’s sit outside. Come on. After today, it’s nine more days until this job is over. If you just make it through, you’ll be paid the whole amount they promised, and you’ll go back to Boston.” I tugged the quilt.
“I don’t have a home there,” she mumbled.
“Yes, you do. You’ll stay with Harabeoji or even me until you figure out next steps. With money, you’ll have some options.”
“It’s not enough,” she replied.
“Harabeoji is worried about you, he just called, you can’t stress him out like this.” I hated guilting her, but I had to. I was unnerved when she was in this state.
She rolled over and stayed silent.
“He’s at Mrs. Ku’s bakery. We should go over and see him. It’d be fun, right?” I dug through a pile of black T-shirts on the floor. “We need to throw these into the laundry, Channing,” I said.
Suddenly she threw the blanket off her face. “Did we get rid of all those things Kent bought me?” she asked.
I was surprised at her interest in them, so I said, “You didn’t want to donate them, remember? They’re still in the garage.”
“That’s it, that’s the problem. They’re bad energy, let’s get them out of here.”
In the next second, she was sorting through a pile of her laundry and claimed to have found a clean pair of sweatpants and a shirt.
I grabbed an armload of the rest of her clothes and made my way to the laundry room by the primary bedroom and threw them in to be washed.
The laundry for the boys had grown, too, even though it had not yet been a week since we’d done it the previous Saturday.
I made a note to throw their clothes in the machine another day soon.
Plus, I needed mine done since I hadn’t brought that much, thinking I was only in East End for a few days.
Channing was insistent we drive straightaway to the community center and unload all the items Kent had bought. She even insisted on the kitchen gadgets. “If he wants the Ahns to have them, he should have bought them when they were home,” she said.
I did as I was told. It was good to see her moving again with purpose.
Only afterward, with the SUV empty, did Channing agree to grab coffee and a double chocolate doughnut at a drive-through. A little sugar hit seemed to help her mood.
“Maybe I will stay with you in New York after this job,” she said with her steaming coffee under her chin. “We’ll hang out like we always do.”
“Only if I get to choose the next K-drama,” I told her.
She let out a laugh, which made me feel hopeful that she was going to get over Minjae in record time.
We hadn’t made it to Sandpiper Lane yet when her phone rang. From the tenderness in her voice, I knew it was Minjae even before she told me.
“Hold on,” she said. She turned to me. “Can Minjae come over for a few minutes?”
“Are you kidding? Can I say no?” I exclaimed.
She seemed rattled, but there was color in her cheeks, and she rolled down the window and stuck her arm out. “Jeez, just asking, Dahee.”
“Has he ended it with what’s-her-name?” I asked.
“We’re going to find out,” she said.
Minjae stayed longer than a few minutes.
They sat outside on those front steps for hours.
Then he went to his car, and she ran after him, and they sat in his car for another hour.
Then she ran up to her room and he followed her up there, and they were in there for a while.
I left the house at that point and walked around the neighborhood.
It was close to the pickup time for the boys at camp, so I didn’t dare leave until I knew Channing was going to get them.
I had a theory about memory and love. If you had a really good memory, like I did, it was harder to move on to a new relationship.
If you had a terrible memory, like Channing did, you could easily start fresh with someone new.
In this case with Minjae, it seemed there was more back-and-forth than I’d ever seen her experience before, but maybe I was wrong.
Usually, I saw her days after a breakup.
Maybe it was how she was with all of them.
That thought made me feel that if Minjae was like the others, there was a map to surviving and moving on for Channing and she’d be okay.
I had the SUV’s key fob in my hand and was about to leave the house when Channing and Minjae came running down the stairs.
She was wiping her face with the back of her hand and smiling through her wet eyes.
“We’ve got this, thanks, Dahee. Minjae’s going to come with me.
” He nodded. His eyes looked wet, too. I handed her the fob, and the two of them ran out to the car.
It was obvious when you saw them now that they’d put their disagreement behind them.
They were joined together by an invisible thread.
They reminded me of that race at a state fair once.
Two people with rope tied around each other’s waist, long enough so that they had room between them, running through an obstacle course together.
The winners were in synchrony with each other.
A graceful and efficient team effort. No rope was visible between Channing and Minjae, but it was there.
He moved left and she moved left. He moved right and she moved right.
Without even looking at each other, they knew.
Their bond seemed stronger than ever. They didn’t have to look at the other to move as one.
For an hour after the boys returned from camp, Channing and Minjae played basketball with the children in the driveway and chased each other in a game of tag in the yard.
At dinner, I caught Channing and Minjae holding hands under the table. She wasn’t as jubilant as she’d been before, I noticed. There was a tenderness between them as if they were running out of time.