Chapter 30 #3
Mikhail's eyes went a little wet. He looked at Daniil, then at me, and the joke went out of his face for a second.
"I have known my brother my whole life," he said, quieter.
"I have never seen him soft. Not as a kid.
Not after our father. Not after anything.
And then this woman walked into our family with a diaper bag and a Korean American attitude problem, and my brother went soft right in front of me.
Right where I could see it. Sweetheart, I do not know what you did to him.
I do not want to know. Whatever it is, do not stop. "
He raised the glass.
"To my brother, who finally got smart. To my new sister, who has been smart from the start. To both of you. To whatever you build."
We drank. He sat down. He immediately wiped his eyes on his napkin and pretended he was wiping his mouth.
My grandmother stood next.
The room hushed without anyone asking it to. There is a kind of quiet a small old woman can pull into a room when she stands up, and it had moved through the gallery before she had even lifted her glass.
She held her water glass in both hands.
"I have been waiting a long time," she said, in her careful English, the way she always spoke when she wanted everybody to hear her exactly, "to give this girl away to a man who knew how to keep her.
Tonight I have done it. I am tired now. I am also very happy.
Daniil, take care of my granddaughter. Chloe, take care of your husband. Be good to each other."
She lifted the water glass.
"Live long," she said. "Live well. That is all."
She sat. The gallery was very quiet for half a second. Then everybody at once was raising their glasses, and Daniil, beside me, was pressing his thumb hard against the corner of his own eye in a way he thought I had not seen.
Rhea stood up on her chair.
"I have one too," she announced.
"Sweetheart," Lily started.
"I have one too."
Daniil reached out and steadied the chair with one quiet hand and nodded once at her. Permission. She lit up.
"Okay," she said. She held up a small juice glass. She held up Beom-Beom in the other hand. "Okay. So. Beom-Beom and me have a speech. We practiced. Beom-Beom didn't really practice because he's a stuffed animal. But I practiced."
Mikhail was already crying again.
"Daddy is the best dad," Rhea said, very seriously, looking at Daniil. "He's not the best at games. But he's the best at everything else. And Chloe..."
She stopped. She looked at me. She looked at me for a long second. Her chin did a small wobble she fought very hard.
"Chloe is my mom," she said. "Not instead of my other mom. Just also. She's also my mom. And the baby is going to be my sister or my brother, and Beom-Beom is going to be their cousin. Because Beom-Beom is my brother. That's how it works."
She lifted the juice glass.
"To Mom and Dad," she said. "And Beom-Beom. And the baby. And Halmoni."
She took a careful sip.
"Okay. I'm done."
I lost it.
I sat there at the long white table with my husband's hand on my thigh under the cloth and tears coming off my face in front of every single person who mattered to me, and I did not try to hide a single one of them.
Daniil pulled me into him and pressed his mouth to my temple and did not say anything, because there was nothing to say.
Halmoni, beside me, reached over and put her small dry hand on top of mine and squeezed once.
Mom. She had said it. On a small juice glass, on a small chair, in front of everybody. Mom.
Lily was full-on weeping into a napkin. Sienna had given up on her own face and was simply leaking quietly into her wine. Mikhail had a fist over his mouth. Even Ivan, who I had once watched count gunshots like a man counting laundry, had pressed a thumb to the inner corner of his own eye.
The string quartet shifted into something soft.
Daniil stood and held out his hand. I took it. He walked me out onto the small cleared space at the head of the gallery and pulled me into him for our first dance.
He kept it slow. He kept it close. My belly was a small soft round between us, and he settled his hand low on my back like he was holding both of us in place, and I tucked my cheek into the place where his collarbone meets his shoulder.
He was humming. He did not know he was humming.
The quartet had picked up some old slow song I didn't recognize, and he was humming along anyway, low in his chest, like he had heard it once, in a life he could not remember, and his body remembered it for him.
"My husband," I said, into his shirt.
"My wife," he said, into my hair.
We turned. We turned again. I could feel everybody watching and I did not care.
When the song ended he kissed my forehead, and then, before I could miss him, he was walking past me to where Rhea was sitting on the edge of her chair like a small white rocket about to fire.
"Princess," he said, and bowed.
"Daddy."
He scooped her up. Beom-Beom went into the middle of them, between his chest and hers. He danced with her slow and exaggerated, the way you dance with a small child, big swooping turns that made her braid swing out and her dress flare. Her face was pressed into his neck and she was laughing.
I sat down in the chair he had pulled out for me, and Halmoni's hand slipped right back into mine.
"That is a good man," she said, quiet, watching him.
"I know."
"Keep him."
"I will."
The brothers had gathered at the corner of the table, all of them slightly drunk by now, all of them in suits, all of them with their wives somewhere nearby keeping an eye on them.
"He is humming," Mikhail said, scandalized.
"He is humming," Ivan confirmed.
"He hummed twice."
"He is still humming."
"I have known him my entire life and I have never heard him hum."
Alek, halfway through a glass of wine, said calmly, "He hums in the car."
"Excuse me?"
"In the car. He thinks no one notices."
"You have been holding out on us for twenty years."
"Yes."
Lily came up behind me and dropped a kiss on the top of my head and said, in my ear, "He's a goner. You've ruined him for life. Good work."
I laughed, watery, into my grandmother's hand.
It was very late when the family began, in twos and threes, to drift out of the gallery.
The candles had burned low. The cake table was a soft wreckage.
Mikhail had carried Rhea to bed an hour ago with Beom-Beom under his arm, and I had kissed her hair while she was already half asleep against his shoulder.
Halmoni had let Jade walk her to her room.
Daniil found me at the window.
He put his hands at my hips and bent and kissed the side of my neck once, slow, and then he said into my ear, very low, "Come."
He walked me through the quiet house to his room.
His hand stayed at the small of my back the whole way, warm through the silk, steady.
We passed a tall lamp on a console near the corner, and the light caught the gold band on his left hand and the gold band on mine in the same moment, two small flashes side by side, before the dark folded back over them. We did not talk. We did not need to.
He shut the door behind us. The latch clicked very small in the quiet, and I felt it land somewhere low in my belly.
I could hear my own breathing now. I could hear his, slower than mine, deeper, the breathing of a man who had been holding himself together carefully all day and was just now allowing his shoulders to lower.
The bedside lamp was on low. Some thoughtful soul had turned the bed down, sheets folded back into a soft white triangle.
I turned to him in the middle of the room and he did not move toward me right away.
He just looked at me for a long beat, the way he had looked at me from the altar, like there was something he was still putting together inside his head about the fact of me being here, in this dress, in his room, with his name now sitting on the end of mine.
"Wife," he said, soft, like he was tasting the word.
My breath caught. "Husband."
He crossed the carpet. He did not hurry. He came close enough that I could feel the heat off his chest through the silk of my dress, and he lifted one hand and brushed a piece of hair back behind my ear with the careful deliberate slowness of a man who had decided to take all night.
He turned me, gently, by the shoulders, and stood behind me in front of the long mirror.
I watched us in the glass. My hair was still pinned at the nape with my grandmother's old wooden hairpin.
His ring lay light on my left hand. His mother's ring lay above it on the same finger, two small bands stacked, his and his line.
His hands came to my shoulders and rested there, not pulling, just holding, his thumbs moving over the bare skin at the top of my arms in two small arcs.
"You are my wife," he said, low, into the side of my hair.
"I am."
His fingertips traced up from the top of my shoulder blade to the soft hollow at the back of my neck before he ever went looking for the zipper.
He bent his head and pressed his mouth to that hollow, dry and warm, and held it there a beat.
Then his hand slid down between my shoulder blades and found the small tab at the top of the zipper.
He took his time. Tooth by tooth. He worked it down in small careful increments, and at the same time he moved his mouth along the curve of my shoulder, an easy line of kisses, dry and reverent.
I felt the cool air on my back as the silk parted, inch by inch.
His knuckles brushed the bare line of my spine and I shivered.
He felt it. His mouth paused at the side of my throat for one breath.