Chapter 24
We had to pass Channing’s childhood home on the way to Kent’s party.
I was surprised to discover that Kent lived on the same street.
As we drove by, I noticed the new owners had kept my aunt’s orange tiger lilies at the curb.
They were in full bloom. Channing seemed preoccupied with her thoughts.
It was quiet in the car. The boys’ stomachs growled loud enough for us all to hear and no one laughed.
A few minutes later, we turned into Kent’s driveway.
I felt a sense then that something wasn’t quite right when the curved path reminded me of Channing’s old house.
That in itself wasn’t special. But then as we made our way closer to the building, we were faced with the exact replica of my cousin’s house.
Channing’s house had been designed by my aunt who had wanted an Elizabethan house with elaborate stonework.
She’d added tall towers that they usually didn’t have.
In East End, a town full of Cape Cod–style homes, if Kent wanted a house to stand out, I would only have been slightly surprised by this choice.
Instead, Kent’s house had towers, as well. It was a duplicate of my aunt’s design.
Channing gasped at the same time I did. We looked at each other but didn’t say anything while the boys were in the car. On our way to the front door, I whispered to her, “Maybe the original owner admired your house. Kent could have bought it this way.”
Channing nodded, but she seemed on edge.
She stayed right by my side. There was a mix of people, non-Korean and Koreans.
People came up to greet us, the ones who knew Channing and declared about how much she’d grown as if she were a tall child, and looked at me as if they were supposed to know who I was but couldn’t remember and so they brushed me aside.
They raised a hand to their brow as if I made their brains hurt.
But they didn’t matter. I was reminded of holidays at Channing’s house again, only this time, I stayed on the first floor and the children didn’t gather upstairs.
Instead, they were sent to the basement, where Kent had a ping-pong table and mini arcade games.
I went down to check on them and noticed that a few of the older kids were voluntarily babysitting.
I saw many of the gadgets Kent had bought for Channing and the children, run by one of the catering staff. We let Edison and Austin join the children, who were playing a variety of games, and went back upstairs.
People milled around in the first-floor rooms. Harabeoji and Mr. Yun sat around a low table with men their age.
Mrs. Yun and a small group were standing in the hallway commenting on the photos on the wall.
I heard her say, “How much did it cost Kent to build this house?” Someone replied, “It looks like the Shins’ house, doesn’t it? ”
“If Kent was going to build a brand-new house, I guess that’s a good one to use as a model,” a man replied.
Channing and I exchanged glances again. We had our answer.
Kent was the only one responsible for copying Channing’s childhood home.
Mrs. Ku was wearing a bright yellow hanbok with red embroidered flowers on the skirt and talking to a young Korean woman in a stunning white halter dress who could have been a model.
She was taller than Channing. That must be the woman who was going to be introduced to Kent, I thought.
In the dark wood-paneled front hall of my aunt and uncle’s house, they’d hung black-and-white photos of relatives in Korea, of Channing as a baby and then a toddler, first-grade and second-grade class photos, their wedding portrait.
In comparison, Kent had framed newspaper articles of himself with accompanying photographs.
I spotted a couple of him at ribbon cuttings from the East End Courier.
I was reading one of them when Channing tugged at my arm. “Minjae says he’s here, do you see him?”
I scanned the crowds of faces as we made our way through the dining room and into the living room.
Behind us I heard Kent’s distinctive voice using English and Korean phrases.
When I looked over my shoulder, it occurred to me that Kent was wearing the same light blue polo shirt that Minjae had worn the night of the Yuns’ cookout.
If I hadn’t heard his voice and seen him at a distance, I might have mistaken him for Minjae.
People have the same shirts, I told myself.
But I started to doubt that Kent was ready to move on to another woman from my cousin.
Channing heard his voice, too, and quickened her pace.
Where was Minjae? We had just exited the living room and were trying to decide which direction to go when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
Channing paused, and we faced Kent together.
She was slightly behind me, and in turning, she ended up with her back really close to the wall in front of a photograph of Kent and the mayor.
A group of loud men asked to pass by. Channing and I quickly separated so they could walk through. Two stopped to speak to my cousin. She engaged with them. I waited to return to her side. It was like a packed subway car during rush hour.
When I finally reached Channing, Kent had closed in on her.
“It’ll take five minutes. As friends, that’s all. Since you’re here, the least you can do is give me your opinion,” his voice carried.
“Dahee, hi!” she called to me. She hesitated. Kent looked over at me and then turned back to her, maintained his stance.
Nothing had changed. He was still as determined as ever.
“Kent, you said you’re meeting someone from Philadelphia,” I said as if picking back up our conversation from the library event.
He actually glowered at me like he had the night the policeman came to the house on Sandpiper Lane. “Not now, Dahee. I need to talk to Channing.”
I heard my voice rise. “But you said you were going to stop doing this to my cousin. Give her some space.”
He didn’t budge, but his voice lightened. “We’re friends. Can’t we be friends?” he said, and smiled at both of us. Not quite the Kent from the library, but he was attempting to yield. Channing shifted left and then right. She needed a little more room to get away from him.
I was about to grab his shirt and pull him from her when I heard Mrs. Yun’s voice.
“What’s going on here, Kent? You invited too many people. I can’t breathe,” she said. And then she noticed Channing. “What are you doing to that poor girl?”
Miraculously Kent backed up, right into me, stepping hard on my toes. I stumbled but didn’t fall. Someone kept me upright. It was Alice, and Jesse helped by holding out an arm.
Kent cleared his throat. “I was just offering to give these ladies a tour of the second floor,” he said to Mrs. Yun.
Channing was about to slip away into the crowd.
“I want to see,” Mrs. Yun exclaimed, and linked her arm through my cousin’s.
“I can’t take everybody,” Kent protested.
“You can take us, right, girls?” She looked at Channing and me. Alice and Jesse made their escape.
“I was going to get some water,” Channing said, but Mrs. Yun wouldn’t release her.
“Surely that can wait, and we can all sit down for some refreshment afterward. Let’s go, right now,” the older woman said, and then called over her shoulder. “Mrs. Ku, second-floor tour, hurry, hurry.”
Just from the way we were grouped, Mrs. Yun and Channing went up the stairs ahead of Kent, and Mrs. Ku and I trailed behind.
As we climbed, our hands on the railing, Mrs. Ku began to sneeze and asked me to get her tissue.
I had to comply and ran down the stairs.
It took a while, but I finally located a stack of napkins, grabbed two, and squeezed my way back through the crowd.
A conversation caught my attention, making me slow down to hear more.
Two women who were Mrs. Ku’s age were sighing and carrying on, grasping each other’s forearms to steady themselves.
“Aigu ukgee Chunhyang. I feel so sorry for her!” one exclaimed. The other agreed, replying in Korean, “She waited too long. That man was never going to marry her. Why did she give him her best years?”
My Korean wasn’t that good, but I’d definitely heard her say “Chunhyang.” What did ukgee, which I knew to mean “forced,” mean in this context?
At first, I thought they were talking about a K-drama, but their words indicated they were talking about a real person.
Aigu was an expression I’d heard before from my parents and Harabeoji.
It was like “OMG” or “Oh no.” But why did they pity whomever they were talking about?
The first older woman who had exclaimed said in Korean, “Well, she’s going to meet wonderful Kent now, so maybe she’ll be married soon and have a life. ”
When I heard Kent’s name, I suspected they were talking about the woman from Philadelphia who was going to meet him tonight.
I wanted to ask them to explain the Chunhyang reference, except just then I spotted Minjae.
He was talking to people by the front door.
Our eyes met and I pointed to the second floor.
He nodded and wove around the crowd to join me on the stairs.
“Channing’s looking for you,” I said.
He thanked me and we hurried up together. At the top, we ran into Mrs. Yun and Mrs. Ku. Their heads were bent together looking at a phone. “Can you believe it?” they murmured.
“Where’s Channing?” I asked. Panic ran through me.
I looked down one hallway and then I immediately let out a breath of relief.
Harabeoji’s familiar figure was standing in front of a door midway down the corridor.
I called to him as Minjae and I approached.
I filed away a mental note to ask him about the meaning of “ukgee Chunhyang.” At the sound of my voice, he paused, and then instead of waiting for me, he opened the door and entered.
Before Minjae and I reached that room, Channing ran out of it and threw herself into Minjae’s arms. Her chest was heaving.
Behind her, Kent emerged swiftly, followed by my grandfather, who looked perplexed.
All of this took seconds and yet it seemed to stretch in time.
Without a word to any of us, Minjae sheltered her, and Channing was enclosed by him, as if they were one body.
Then they separated and rushed down the stairs, holding hands.
I was roughly pushed out of the way by Kent, who ran in pursuit.
Harabeoji helped me to my feet, and we watched over the railing as Channing and Minjae bolted for the door.
People made a path for them, and in seconds they were gone.
The door slammed behind them, probably by the strength of the wind, but it punctuated their departure.
The temperature dropped in the hallway, and everyone, including me, looked at Kent, who stood halfway down the staircase, absolutely still, his eyes trained on the door.
He looked enraged. His face reddened. His hair mussed.
He held a hand up to his cheek. He hated the two of them, Channing and Minjae.
That was clear. I rubbed my elbow, which had taken the brunt of my fall.