10
Debate
Orange County
They made love, and it was good like before.
Mido buttoned up her cocoa-brown cardigan over her indigo sundress and sat on the armchair. On the bed, Tek was still wearing his blue cotton boxers.
The room wasn’t big, but there was a desk for work and beside it a single-cup coffee machine on a mini refrigerator.
The window overlooked the tarred roof of the building next door and the half-empty hotel parking lot.
It was dark outside, but it was possible to make out the tall palm trees alongside the streetlights.
“I can’t stay over,” she said.
Tek had assumed that she would, and he began debating with her, which she never enjoyed.
“You’re almost twenty-two years old. Your parents can’t possibly think that you’re a virgin.”
Mido didn’t know what they thought, never having discussed it with them.
Tek pulled on a blue sweater and a pair of jeans. He stood barefoot on the tan carpet, hands on his hips, ready to argue.
“Your parents would understand. It defies logic that I’d fly all this way and we would not see each other as much as we could. Be reasonable, Mido,” he said, then closed his argument: “Deceit breaks bonds. Truth builds trust.”
He took her hands into his.
Mido remained seated and looked up at him.
“Tek, my parents expect me back home.”
“This isn’t a play,” he said.
Mido looked at her bare feet. Had she known that he was coming, she would’ve given herself a pedicure. She tucked her coarse heels beneath the armchair.
“Are you writing out a part for me? Am I the handsome romantic lead? Or the villain? The young lawyer from Australia who travels 7,500 miles to Los Angeles to rescue the budding playwright or to kidnap the sacrificial heroine?” He wagged his eyebrows, trying to make her laugh.
This was Tek. He knew the old Mido—what she had once cared about.
In her bedroom, she had not yet unpacked the small stack of plays and writing books that she’d allowed herself to bring to California.
In a battered footlocker, she’d stored away her secondhand copy of Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing, which she’d read cover to cover three times, and treasured books from childhood that Bo, DH, and she had read together.
Until now, she had forgotten about the trunk.
In Sydney, she’d seen nearly every new play, musical, and film.
Here, only an hour’s drive from Hollywood, a place that made movies for the world, she had not watched a single American film.
It had been easy to forget what had once given her immense joy because there was always so much work to do at the hagwon.
If she had any free time, she’d go to Yun’s to eat takeout and watch rented videos of dramas that sometimes had sixty episodes, which she’d never done in Seoul or Sydney, since her parents didn’t like television then.
She’d sit in Yun’s living room with her and occasionally her mother, Nari, and Ginny, not knowing which episode she’d happened to drop in on, not that it mattered, because she was just there to be with people who gave her strength.
They could have been eating a pizza, talking about their lives, or baking a cake.
She enjoyed watching their rapt faces and listening to the Korean being spoken.
It didn’t seem to matter how similar the romantic plots were, no matter which era; the stories seemed to comfort Yun and her mother in their predictability.
It was in Mido’s nature to keep from mentioning the number of times the same plot devices would occur: A man would give a back hug to a woman cooking or cleaning in the kitchen; a man would grasp a woman’s forearm to keep her from walking away; a woman would trip and fall into a man’s arms, teaching them to look into each other’s eyes and feel the power of an accidental embrace; lovers would never kiss until the second or third episode from the final one.
She knew Tek would mock the stories—amnesia, evil mothers-in-law, fated reunions, finale weddings, the way everyone good got a happy ending.
In Seoul and Sydney, Mido’s family had watched Korean news occasionally, but here, if Bo wasn’t studying, her parents might watch a Korean documentary or the latest drama on a Korean channel.
They were living in America, but it didn’t feel like it.
They spoke more Korean in Orange County than they had in Sydney.
Mido didn’t know how to explain any of this to Tek—so bright-eyed in his hopeful expression. He had asked to say hello to her parents, but she had put it off.
He was staying in California for a week, and she’d told him that it would be best for him to see her parents after church, when they could all go out to a restaurant for a meal.
She didn’t want to bring him home. They had met him a number of times in Sydney, and liked him, but everything was different now.
He would have been startled to see how they lived. Her father fried fish, and her mother sold imported face cream and handbags in a makeshift Korean department store that looked like a warehouse.
At least the new hagwon in Irvine was smart-looking and new, unlike the one in Cypress—three one-story storefronts capped together like uneven teeth to accommodate over a hundred children of salesclerks, line cooks, nurses, schoolteachers, mechanics, and shopkeepers.
Only three years ago, Mido had been a first-year student at the University of Sydney with a play chosen to be staged and performed at the Cellar Theatre by the oldest student theater group in Australia. That part of her life seemed, even to her, to have belonged to another person.
Before Tek arrived, she had been feeling proud that she was helping to pay the rent and contribute to the savings account for their house down payment. The hotel room felt too cold, and she hugged her arms. Mido didn’t want to feel embarrassed about her family’s place in the world, but she was.
Tek sat on the floor by her feet. He picked up her right foot and massaged it, and she pulled it away gently, not wanting him to feel the rough heel.
“It tickles,” she lied.
“Are you writing at all?”
She didn’t know how to answer him. He didn’t mean to be hurtful, but she felt awful.
“Why did you come?” she asked.
“What? Because I missed you. I thought you’d be glad to see me.”
“You said you had work. I wasn’t expecting you. I would’ve planned something—”
“In record time, I finished the PLT and found a new place to live. For the next five or six years, I’ll be working like a crazy person at the firm, then start the bar training course so I can read at the best chambers.
It’s madness how much I have left to do before I become a serious barrister, but I fixed it so I could come right away—” Tek looked hurt, and Mido felt worse.
“I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re here.”
“You could come back with me. I know all the answers you’re going to give already, but I wanted to hear it from you. In person. That’s why I came. I make decent money now, not as much as I’ll earn as a barrister, but I can cover our costs. Without my parents paying for everything.”
“I can’t go back.”
“You could go back with me if you wanted. This is your life, Mido. Finish uni. Get your degree. You can live with me. I can pay the tuition. I have savings. I have a plan. Stephen Jackson is the best in complex commercial litigation in all of New South Wales—a legend—and he said after my bar training course, I can read at his chambers. His floor has some of the best barristers in Sydney. I’ve been so busy because I was setting things up for us.
Before I turn thirty, I could really be on my own, and I’ll get referrals from my firm and from the others on the floor.
I’ll be arguing really interesting cases.
There’s not a lot of money now, but there will be loads later.
Stephen said that he’s never seen a person so young who can argue tactically as well as me.
“If we live simply at first, maybe we can send some money to your folks later. I know they’re hard up right now and you’re worried about them.”
“They’re fine,” she said, getting up. “I have to go.”
“Why are you pissed? Just stay and discuss it. Tell me why I’m wrong. I’m capable of admitting that I’m wrong, but tell me why.”
Mido stared at the door, its polished brass knob, and she wanted to go home.
She didn’t want to explain that she had to help her brothers finish school, that she was thinking of maybe not going back at all.
If she kept her salary as the manager of Fortress and increased her tutoring, she could make almost six figures, and she could help her parents get a house and stop paying rent.
There had been immigration lawyer bills, car payments, insurance, furniture, rent deposits.
What she had not realized as a child was that every day you’re alive costs money.
If she stopped earning, then someone in her family had to earn more and defer their goals, or put them aside altogether.
“Mido, your parents are good people. They can’t possibly expect you to sacrifice your future.”
“My folks didn’t ask me and don’t expect it. This is my decision. My salary is meaningful to our family right now.”
“I can help you.”
“I don’t think that’s right.”
“I can’t move to Los Angeles, Mido. I can’t practice law here like in Sydney.
I’d have to start all over again, go to law school here, and I’ve already finished my PLT and have a job at a great firm.
I’ve laid out the course to become a barrister.
Do you know how hard this is? There are very few solicitors who are Korean in Sydney and less than a handful of barristers.
I’ve even learned enough business Korean to speak with my firm’s Korean corporate clients.
My achievements mean something back home—”
“I didn’t ask you to live here.”
Tek looked pained. “Why, why don’t you ask me?”
“I couldn’t ask you to start again.” She looked pleadingly at him. “And you are meant to be in Sydney, Tek. You love Australia.”