2
Compromise
Sonya’s long and frequent absences had taught the Chairman that she might leave forever, and the shrewd businessman decided to change course.
She’d been gone for nearly a month, and it had been more difficult this time, even with the boys home. In May, she’d leave again for her nephews’ graduation ceremonies.
“What can I do to stop these frequent trips to California?”
They were in the den. He put down his reading, and she continued to crochet.
“We need you here.”
“I am here.”
“I don’t want you to go so often. And the trips get longer.”
“It was not a month.”
“Right after your sister passed away, it was almost four months—”
“That was almost two years ago. I had to get my license to transfer ownership.”
“You would rather clean a stranger’s toenails.”
“I told you that I don’t have to do any of the work anymore, but I had to learn it for the licensing requirements, and I don’t mind doing any of it.”
Sonya looked at her hands. Before she left, Miss Hong had given her French tips, cut short, painted in a blush-colored polish. During her early training at Saddleback College, Sonya had liked doing the pedicures, recalling the Bible stories of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
“I wish you didn’t go so often.”
“I have to check on the store. It’s an investment, and my family needs me. I promised Helen.”
“They’re not your family. Your sons are here.”
“When I was gone for the licensing, they weren’t here. College. Military service. Work. They’re young men with their own lives.”
“They’re home now.” He raised his voice.
“Seungman and Jiman are doing well at work with their father. I thought you’d be glad.”
“I am glad,” he said, pleased by how perfectly his succession plan had worked out. His nephew and grandnephews would take over the company. Neither of the boys was reckless, and like their father, both were ambitious and competent.
Yong-gil still kept mistresses but managed to have them under better control. The Chairman’s last warning had been effective. There were to be no more daytime excursions at luxury hotels. There would be no more visits from mistresses to the house with appeals to Sonya.
Sonya picked up her yarn basket.
“It’s late. I’m going to sleep. Good night.”
“I miss you,” he said, looking up at the slim outline of her form beneath the plum-colored cashmere sweater and dark-green skirt. He wanted to touch her skin. “Can you stay with me? The boys are out late.”
“We mustn’t while they’re—”
“I bought the unit downstairs.”
“Why? We already own both units on this floor.”
“It was up for sale, and I thought the boys might want to live in their own place. They can come up for meals.”
“Is that what they want?”
“Who wouldn’t want an apartment in Apgujeong?”
“I like them being here. They’re not married yet.”
“When they marry, I can buy them a bigger place. I’ve been thinking of getting a house in Hannam-dong. Would you like that?”
Sonya shook her head and closed her eyes.
“Do you want to see it? I got the key last week.”
She didn’t answer.
“Come.” He tried to take her hand but she bowed her head, not looking at him, and followed behind as they walked to the elevator.
The layout of the downstairs apartment was original, and it hadn’t been remodeled as much as their two units. The view of the Han River was not dissimilar from the one above. The drapery was worn and faded.
“They left the sofas,” she said. “Were they included?”
“Come sit,” he said, then kissed her.
Sonya could smell him, the clean scent of starch in his shirt, the vetiver of his aftershave. She leaned into his chest, and he held her.
“You are my woman,” he said quietly. “How can you go away? Don’t you know that I can’t sleep when—”
Sonya raised her arms as he removed her plum-colored sweater over her head. He pushed up her green tweed skirt and reached for her buttocks, and, aroused, Sonya held her breath, unable to resist him. She reached to undress him.
There was a roughness to their sex, which felt different and more powerful in the dark, empty apartment. The heavy sound of their quick breathing seemed louder, and in his arms, she climaxed.
When he was finished, she caught her breath, then pulled away as if waking up to remember herself.
“Where are you going?”
Sonya pulled on her clothes, feeling awful. Again. She had done this again.
“It’s wrong. This is something we should not do. I’ve been wanting to talk with the pastor. Do you think we can do that? Maybe if someone else knew, then we would stop this. I’ve already lost my sister. If Helen could see me, she would be so disappointed.”
“No. It would be foolish to talk to him. He’d never understand. This can’t be wrong. And a divorce would merely be a legality.”
“Then why can’t I get a divorce? It would be terrible, I understand. Terrible. But we wouldn’t be sinning against God if we were to marry.”
“Are you prepared to deal with the consequences if you were to be my wife? You’d be both mother and great-aunt to Seungman and Jiman, and even if they understood, no one else here would.
It would destroy my nephew and my sister-in-law, who has always been good to me.
Yong-gil, the one who has cheated on you dozens of times with whores half his age, would be seen as the victim.
You’d become a laughingstock, and I’d be a villain. ”
He didn’t even bring up how his company would be tainted by the gossip. That much he could face. He had made the company from nothing, and if he were to lose it, so be it. But he could not imagine hurting his aging sister-in-law, the nephew he had adopted, and those dear boys he had named himself.
“My sister-in-law would never understand.”
“My sister, Hejin, is dead. She was punished for my sins.”
“I told you already that God doesn’t work that way,” he said, his voice certain.
“Then surely I’ll be punished later. I don’t want my children to suffer.”
“The scandal would follow your sons forever. Our world here does not forgive or forget. How will they hold up their heads? No one can ever know.”
“Their mother is a whore.”
He brushed her dark hair away from her brow.
“You could never be that.”
“I am your nephew’s wife. I was your secretary. I am the daughter of two drunken gamblers. No one will care that I’ve loved you all my life. None of it will ever matter.”
Sonya waited for him to dress. In their lovemaking, her mauve lipstick had been erased and her hair had come undone. She didn’t want to run into anyone in the elevator, so they climbed the stairs to go home.
When they returned, no one was home. He asked her to stay with him. “I sleep better when you are beside me.”
Sonya went to her bathroom to wash, then changed into her white silk nightgown. Standing in the hall outside her bedroom door, she stared at her heavy doorknob for a few moments, then locked it from the outside before going to him.
For breakfast, the housekeeper served two different meals. The two brothers ate toast with eggs, and the Chairman and Yong-gil were eating rice and grilled fish.
Seungman and Jiman wore dark-gray single-breasted suits. Seungman wore a red-and-navy college rep tie he’d had since high school, and Jiman, the younger son, wore a deep-blue French tie borrowed from his father’s closet.
Both young men were tall and slim with thick, chestnut-colored hair, pale complexions, dark eyebrows, and large smiling eyes. Seungman resembled his father with his straight nose, and the younger Jiman looked more like Sonya around the mouth and chin, giving him an almost pretty appearance.
Girls preferred Jiman because Seungman could seem too serious.
Neither had any difficulty getting offers of girls’ phone numbers when they went to nightclubs with their friends.
The young men’s fine physical appearances as well as their academic accomplishments fed the vanity of both the Chairman and Yong-gil.
Breakfast, the meal the family always shared, was usually a happy occasion, with the brothers teasing each other or their father.
“Jiman has another date tonight,” Seungman announced. “I feel sorry for her.”
“She will be treated like a queen,” Jiman said. “I made a reservation at a cool Italian restaurant in Garosu-gil. I will not be home tonight.” He smiled at his mother.
“Yes, you will treat her like a queen until you tire of her. Then you will break her heart like all the others,” Seungman said.
The Chairman drank his tea and said nothing, and Yong-gil smiled at his sons.
Neither man pushed the boys toward marriage.
The older one was a devout Christian, and he was not against marrying young.
He wanted a wife who shared his faith, but his standards were unbelievably high.
She had to have the looks of a model, the education of a genius, native English-language ability, and the virtue of a nun.
Jiman, who had loathed his recent military service, wanted to fool around as much as possible with as many girls within reasonable limits. His father had told him three rules: Use condoms for sex; give a generous gift when ending things; and preserve his future by always being better than decent.
More than once at nightclubs, when drunk girls flung themselves on Jiman, his older brother had instructed: No sex with drunk girls.
Never. If a sober girl wanted to do things, and if Jiman could not overcome temptation, do everything but intercourse and know that you may not want to marry the girl you sleep with, so be mindful of that.
A woman’s virtue was something for which he should be prepared to take responsibility.
Seungman was saving himself for his future wife and believed that she should be a virgin, too.
“I guess you don’t have a date tonight, Brother,” Jiman said. “I can introduce you to someone if you like.”
Seungman pretended to hit the back of Jiman’s head, and as he swung his arm, he knocked over Jiman’s coffee, ruining his brother’s shirt and tie.
“Oh, sorry.” Seungman laughed.
Jiman shook his head and got up. He was laughing, too.
“Just grab another tie in the closet,” Yong-gil said as Jiman walked to his room, removing his jacket. “I guess we’ll be late for work.”
Seungman wiped up the coffee on Jiman’s chair, and Sonya helped him.
“Your brother is so good-natured,” she said.
“Yeah, I would have been shouting if he’d done that.”
“Well, I guess we can all learn from your younger brother.”
“You started all this,” Yong-gil said to Seungman.
“I guess I did,” Seungman said. “I was just teasing him. Sorry.”
“You were just joking,” the Chairman said. “None of it matters. Finish your breakfast.” He turned to the housekeeper, who had come out of the kitchen with a cloth to clean up the spill. “Bring Jiman more eggs. There’s coffee all over his plate.”
When Jiman returned with another one of his father’s ties, Yong-gil said, “You look better in it than I do.”
After Yong-gil and the boys left for the office, the Chairman called Sonya to his office.
“I’m making you a vice president. You’ll get a salary, and the salary will be set aside for your retirement. No one can touch the money except you, but you cannot have it until you turn sixty-five.”
“That’s generous of you.”
“Don’t you want to know how much your salary is?”
Sonya said nothing.
“It is $150,000 a year. It’s more than what you’ll ever make owning the nail salon. I spoke to a lawyer, and he can figure out how to transfer some of it to your brother-in-law and your nephews and niece, if you like.”
Sonya stared at the bridge outside his picture window. The water was dark green and blue in the bright sunlight of the morning.
“Your sons will get the company as long as they keep doing good work.”
Still she stayed silent.
“A woman needs money when she gets older. When I’m gone, you’ll be taken care of.” The Chairman waited for her to react, then continued.
“Every additional year that I am alive, I will set aside one percent of the stock of my company in an escrow account. The amount given will increase by one percent each additional year. Soon enough, you’ll accumulate more stock in my company than my nephew.
In the first year, you get one percent, the second year, you get two percent, and so on.
In five years, you will already have a total of fifteen percent of the company.
If I live long enough, you could control the company. Imagine that.”
Sonya blinked.
“Why?”
“I believe my nephew will do right by you after I’m gone, but I won’t allow him the opportunity to do something stupid because he can’t control himself or recognize what is truly valuable.
I know that you would never dispossess him or harm the company.
You will preserve and nurture everything for the boys. You will always know what matters.”
The Chairman tracked her brown eyes as they stared into the river. She was seeking privacy, and he knew she’d think deeply about what she valued.
In the evening, she ate dinner alone with the Chairman, and afterward, they went to the den. He read on the sofa.
Nothing was amiss in his attire: gray wool necktie, white dress shirt, navy blue V-neck sweater, gray cashmere slacks, and black dress socks.
On his feet, leather slippers from England from a maker he favored.
At sixty-seven years old, he had remained fit, looking like a man in his early fifties.
He was still expanding his business interests and keenly interested in the world.
Death was nowhere near him, Sonya thought.
He could live twenty-five more years, and she wanted him to live forever.
“Sit closer to me,” he said.
Sonya got up from her armchair and sat beside him.
“For your lifetime, you can control the stock and benefit from it; but upon the end of your life, all of it will go to your sons equally.”
“This again. I don’t know what you expect me to do. It seems crazy.”
“The boys are excited to move downstairs, so you can take Seungman’s room next to mine. Jiman’s can become a closet, and our rooms can be joined.”
He framed her face with his hands.
“When you are gone, I cannot stand it.”
Sonya looked down, unable to bear his gaze.
“I am here now.”
“This is holy and separate from the world,” he said, reaching for her mouth, but Sonya knew that wasn’t true.