14
Wives
Helen never returned to the Emporium.
After the rotation of emergency room doctors and nurses, a succession of specialists followed. First there was an ultrasound, then a scan, which revealed a large mass on the pancreas, and that the cancer had already spread to Helen’s liver and bones.
The doctors were kind and respectful. They listed the ailments she’d been experiencing without her ever mentioning them: back pain, bloating, cramps, weight loss, fever, vomiting, constipation, dark urine, and inability to eat. She said yes to most of them.
How did you bear it? they asked.
How you must have been suffering, they said.
No, they did not know how she’d gotten this.
No, no, no. Of course it was not her fault.
Yes, we will do everything possible to relieve you of your pain.
Hospital clergy stopped by to pray with them, and a nice social worker who spoke Korean gave them some phone numbers. While she was hospitalized, Mido, Bo, and Peter took turns staying with John, who had to miss work.
Helen and John did not have health insurance.
Everyone in their household earned an income above the poverty level, and Helen and John had just finished their immigration paperwork and received their green cards.
They were on track to get their citizenship.
They would not qualify for Medicaid because they made too much money.
Bo and Mido told them not to worry. They had jobs and credit cards.
Doctors offered treatments without much enthusiasm.
Helen received a stent to improve her bile flow.
Over the course of a month, her condition deteriorated so rapidly that the doctors recommended palliative care.
They laid out her options. Helen wanted to be at home.
She made everyone promise not to tell DH until Thanksgiving, when he came home.
“It’s his first year in law school,” Helen pleaded.
“I have to tell him myself. When he’s home. ”
Bo picked him up from the airport, and as soon as they walked through the front door, DH shouted, “What’s the matter with Mommy?”
Helen was resting on the sofa with an aluminum cane by her side. Her skin dark gray and her body nearly skeletal, she was watching the Korean news with her eyes half-open while Mido set the table. Over her yellow flannel nightgown, she wore DH’s Andover sweatshirt.
Removing his shoes and dropping his coat on the floor, DH rushed toward her.
“Stop. You should wash your hands,” Mido said, and pointed to the kitchen sink.
DH scrubbed his hands with soap, and, his hands still wet, he went to his mother. Helen opened her eyes and smiled when she saw him leaning over her, his wide shoulders and tall frame towering over her shrunken one.
“Ah, my Dae-hun is home. Mommy is so happy to see you. I waited.” She touched his wavy hair and mussed it up playfully. “Didn’t I do a good job waiting for you? I missed you so much.”
DH glanced at Bo and Mido, both weeping silently.
“How could you not tell me?” DH said, bursting into tears as Helen explained. “Oh, Mommy. Oh, Mommy. Not you. Please, not you. Please.”
DH wanted to take a leave of absence, but Helen said absolutely not. In exchange, even though it was expensive, she asked him to phone her for a few minutes every day.
When DH argued that he couldn’t study because he’d be worrying about her, Helen told him that people usually die without warning, and in a way, this was far better because every call mattered, and she would have more peace of mind if he was in school.
If things were really awful, she promised he could come home right away.
It would make her happy if he did well in his first semester at Columbia.
“I want you to stay on track. Bo is doing his very best to finish Fullerton while working so hard, and he will get his four-year degree soon. Both of you and Daddy will make sure that Mido gets her turn at school, right?” Helen looked at her sons while smiling at Mido, who did her best to smile, not wanting to disagree or upset her mother.
“Mido earns more money than all of us now. Isn’t that amazing? Oh, my children.”
“I can stay home and help,” DH said. “Drive you to the doctor and run errands.”
“I’ll ask God for another Christmas, when you can come home. Maybe I will get another Christmas.”
“Ask God for another summer, because I’ll get an internship in Los Angeles.”
“Deal,” Helen said, smiling weakly before closing her eyes.
Each morning, Nari drove John to Shrimp Castle.
He could not afford to stay home. The hospital bills continued to arrive, and though a social worker had connected them with an organization that assisted immigrants, John could not see how they could ever pay all the bills.
The mailbox filled him with dread. Bo and Mido told him not to worry.
The three of them were paying for everything in installments.
Every credit card they had was spent up to its limit.
Just when it looked like the total amount of debt was $36,000, suddenly another bill would arrive for a scan and a doctor’s visit from weeks ago, and it would be for a few thousand dollars.
The pain medication always had to be paid for.
Like a faithful ox pulling a plow, John worked silently each day.
Nari made sure that he ate breakfast and lunch.
She raised his salary to $1,400 a week, which was the best she could do while she paid off the promissory note for the store.
Yun, having graduated, now worked full-time at Exodus as the CFO.
With her salary, she was helping her mother with the rent and utilities.
On the Monday following Thanksgiving weekend, Taehun Shin dropped by while John was hosing down the kitchen floor.
The shop was closed but, recognizing the deacon, Nari let him in. She bowed to him and pointed to the kitchen.
“You should stand back because the water might get on your nice clothes,” she warned Shin.
Nari knew there was something wrong between the men, but no one had told her about what Danbi Jung had done to John Koh.
Helen had never mentioned that Shin wasn’t divorced from Mary, or that Danbi wasn’t his young wife.
Nari just knew the men had once worked together and that they were not close.
“Knock, knock,” Shin said, tapping on the counter.
“What are you doing here?” John asked sharply. He was tired.
Taehun Shin wore a clean white dress shirt with a crimson silk necktie and navy suit trousers. He’d left his suit jacket in the car, not wanting to show off; however, his well-tailored clothes were costly and looked so.
“I heard about Helen. I wanted to see you. If there is anything I can do, you should know that I’m here. I always thought Helen was a kind person. An elegant woman and a good mother.”
“She’s not dead, you son of a bitch. Get out.
Can’t you see that I’m working?” John flung his sponge on the ground, missing the boots he wore when he sprayed down the tiled floor.
What was the point? he wondered, wiping his forearm across his forehead.
The smell of bleach water on his gloves overpowered him and stung his eyes, making him blink back tears.
Shin stood there, feeling the weight of the man’s sadness. He’d known John for almost three decades and had never seen him like this.
The back door of the kitchen opened and Ernie, the new helper, walked in, having finished his cigarette.
“Boss,” Ernie said, “I’ll finish up if you want to go home.”
“Thanks, Ernie,” he said, picking up the sponge, then removing his wet apron and gloves.
Shin offered to drive him home, but John refused.
“Oh, that would help me,” Nari said. “I have to wait until Ernie is done, then I can head straight to Yun and Lion’s place, and you can get home faster.” She knew he was worried about Helen.
John sighed and followed Shin to the parking lot. He drove a new white Mercedes sedan. Shin and Danbi had opened their insurance agency, and many of the newer parishioners from their church bought their policies there. They’d quickly made a success of it.
“I know you’re angry with me,” Shin began, “but the church asked me to come by. Do you want to get a drink? I can buy you dinner.”
“We are never going to drink together again,” John said.
“Do you know how many hundreds, no, thousands of meals you and I’ve shared? You are one hard-hearted bastard,” Shin said, pulling out of the parking spot.
John leaned against the headrest, feeling the weight of the day worsen. He was in Shin’s expensive car because he didn’t have one of his own. Bo was driving their only car to and from work and school. He closed his eyes.
“You’re tired. If you don’t want dinner, you can sleep. There’s going to be traffic, so you can rest.”
“Why did you come again? I told you to never show up.”
Shin didn’t answer. At an intersection, he stopped the car and turned around to take out an envelope from the pocket of his suit jacket, which was hanging on a hook above the back passenger-side door.
“I wanted to give you this. You must have a lot of bills.”
“I don’t want anything from you. I’d rather fry shrimp for the rest of my life.”
Shin exhaled, having anticipated as much.
“It’s not from me, you bastard. It’s from the deacons’ fund. The church wanted to give it to your family. Helen’s not working, and I don’t know about your insurance situation, so—”
“Why didn’t the pastor give it to us? He was at the house the other day.”
“The deacon fund is different. Yaah—don’t be so difficult. If you want me to ask another deacon to bring it to you so you don’t have to accept anything from me, I can do that. Don’t be such a prick. Your wife is—”
“Shut up. Shut up.”
“I was wrong for what I did back in Korea, but I also helped you out a bunch of times. You’ve been mad at me, and I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be, but I’ve said I was sorry a hundred times. I am sorry.”
John looked straight ahead. It didn’t seem fair to have to forgive him, too, on top of everything else.
If Helen died, then he would have been forced to lose almost everything in his life—his parents and brother, his career, his only friend, and his treasured wife.
Shin could not possibly understand how cruel it was to make him sit in this car, scented by some car freshener that smelled like vanilla candy.
Shin missed him, and that was why he had come, but not forgiving him had been the only thing John could hold on to that had allowed him to keep his dignity. Now Shin wanted that as well.
It occurred to him that he hadn’t been in a car with Taehun Shin since they were in Seoul.
“This morning I was thinking of when we got snowed in that time in western Alberta,” Shin said, laughing.
John remembered that long drive from Calgary to Hinton. They’d gotten a flat tire and the snow had started and wouldn’t stop.
“I thought we were going to freeze to death. I didn’t want to die trying to visit some coal mines,” Shin said, smiling.
John recalled how beautiful it had been in that car, the snow falling, falling. The hush of the powdery white flakes descending upon them, and the whole world remembering to be still.
“You brought those sandwiches and chocolate bars. Koh Yohan. Always prepared.”
They had stopped driving and sat in the darkened road until the snowplows arrived. The men had eaten their ham sandwiches, then the Hershey bars. Shin had told funny stories from their days at KATUSA, and John had laughed in the warm car, unafraid because the two men were together.
“Are the children okay?” Shin asked.
“Are yours?” John had always liked the boys. Joey was responsible, Luke was studious, and Patrick was like a comedian. John could remember little Patrick doing funny dances. Mary had done a good job raising them.
“The boys don’t speak to me anymore. They took their mother’s side. I can’t blame them.”
John shook his head. Nothing could have made him give up his children, and if they gave him up, John did not think he could bear it. In the kitchen at Shrimp Castle, he had hung a plastic-covered photograph of his family taken in Sydney years ago, which always made him smile.
“I have a little girl now. With Danbi. Her name is Anna.”
“I saw her at church. How old is she?”
“Almost three. Girls are different than boys. I think she owns me.” Shin laughed.
John knew what he meant. He loved his sons, of course, but Mido was different. He didn’t know if that was because she was a daughter or if it was because she was Mido, but if she asked him, he would have fought a war for her.
“My little girl talks all the time and has so many questions. When my sons were small, they were kind and sweet, but none of them was as affectionate as my little Anna. She’s smart like her mother, but of course, unlike her, innocent.”
John said nothing and let the silence fill the car. He would not say anything about that woman. This was something that he and Helen had agreed upon, to never speak of her. The only people who knew about Danbi were Helen’s sister and brother.
“I tried to leave Danbi a few times, but she threatened to kill herself and Anna if I did.”
“Crazy woman,” John blurted out.
Shin exhaled. “I’ve never met anyone as crazy as the woman I am living with.
Every day is a kind of new hell. I am being punished for all that I have done to my family.
I am being punished for what I did to you.
It would be easier for me to die now. If I could die instead of your wife, it would be justice,” Shin said.
“If I could have my way, I would ask for that. I am so sorry. You have always been a friend to me, and I was wrong. I was weak.”
Shin was looking straight ahead, his right hand on the steering wheel and his left covering his mouth as if to suppress a scream. John recognized that expression.
When they had been in the army, a soldier would be picked on and on occasion hit by a superior-ranking soldier or just someone stronger.
When a man was being beaten and didn’t know when it would end, he looked like Shin did now, as if he knew it would be worse to let the pain out.
At first, when a soldier got yelled at, smacked, punched, or kicked, naturally there’d be some fear, but when it didn’t let up, there was a kind of horror, not just from the pain that would surely come but also from the thought that there might be no end to the beating and more might come the next day and the days to follow.
Shin got off the freeway and drove toward Cypress.
“There’s a restaurant down that street,” John said.