6
Peter’s House
After the last student was picked up from Fortress, Peter and Mido headed to the parking lot, luggage in hand. Peter would take her home.
“Tired?” Mido asked.
“I’m fine. Slept on the flight.”
“How’s the band?”
“Good. Rehearsal on Thursday.”
“Do you still write songs? I was thinking about that one about wasted paper? I didn’t catch the name.”
“ ‘Drafts.’ It’s about writing songs. I’ve only written six. It’s not a lot. I’ve started dozens but finished only those.”
“Yes, ‘Drafts.’ And that ballad, ‘Rosetta.’ I thought those were so clever.”
“Well, that seems to be my problem.”
“Hmm?”
Peter opened the trunk to store their bags.
“I think I’m too clever when I write. Or maybe I want to be seen as clever.
When I sing other people’s music, I turn to the stuff that’s got more feeling, something that I haven’t thought about before but feels so true that I wish I could sing it out loud.
I want my songs to be smart, of course, but that feeling has to be there,” he said, realizing that he’d never admitted this before, not even to Lion.
“Do you like the melody part or writing the lyrics?”
“It’s funny, but I think both Lion and I prefer the melody more than the lyrics. It would have been great if he was stronger at one and I was at the other.”
“You have a beautiful voice,” Mido said.
“Thanks.” Peter smiled and looked away.
In the car, she asked him, “I think the tour went well, right?”
“No one died. No one is missing. No one went to jail.”
“That’s your metric?” she asked.
“Well, no. I’m sure the trip was life-changing for every single child. That’s my standard.”
“Oh.” Mido smiled.
“If the kids had fun, and they got to see differences in the campuses, then I think it was better than nothing. It was a bit of a blur, but they took a lot of photographs and notes,” he said.
“I’m not sure if the tour helped enough, though.
Ginny is convinced that Dartmouth is the school for her.
If anything, I was hoping she could feel something was off. ”
“Why?”
“It’s a great school, but what if she doesn’t get in?”
“Their loss,” Mido said. “Ginny is amazing.”
“Yeah, it would be their fucking loss.”
“You see what’s happened to us? We’re like the parents now. We don’t want them to be disappointed.”
“But they have to be disappointed,” he said. “Life has a lot of that. And for many kids, this will be their first major disappointment.”
“I think Ginny has had quite a few more letdowns than college admissions. She’s been living without her family since middle school. I can’t even imagine.”
“Yeah,” Peter said. “Hey, you hungry?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You want to come over?”
“To your place?” Mido tried to sound cool about it.
“I can cook us something. My brain feels noisy. Don’t feel like eating alone.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, and I’ll take you home after we eat. No pressure if you’re busy.”
Mido was curious.
She had never been to Peter’s. DH had stayed over a few times, but he’d never described what his place was like.
Even something as ordinary as where Peter lived or the kind of apartment he had was somehow off-limits for conversation, so Mido had not pressed it.
Always, Peter picked her up in front of her house, and while he’d eaten with her family numerous times, she didn’t even know where he lived.
The guard in the security hut waved Peter through, and Mido realized that he didn’t live in an apartment at all. He lived in Turtle Rock, a gated community of high-end houses tucked into beautifully landscaped hillsides.
The house was very large and modern with a two-car garage.
It was the second house on the hill and had tall cypress trees shading the backyard.
Mido spotted the glint of a swimming pool behind the trees.
The front garden was well maintained, and the long seamless panes of the glass on the second floor, overlooking the hills, were shiny and clean.
In the late-afternoon light, the house cast a blurry shadow across the road.
He pulled into the driveway and pressed a button, which she had never noticed, above his dashboard. The garage door opened and revealed another car, a silver BMW.
“Is that your landlord’s?”
“No.”
Mido had to stop herself from asking more questions. When she opened the car door, she could smell jasmine and eucalyptus. The evening air felt clean and light.
They entered the house from the garage, stepping into a white-tiled laundry room with a large washer and dryer and a rotary iron. A long hallway connected the laundry room to a vast kitchen with a stainless steel–paneled refrigerator. There were European appliances on the deep marble counters.
She tried to contain her amazement. Peter lived in a magazine spread.
“Do you live here alone?”
Nodding, he pointed to the powder room in the hall. “You can wash up there if you want.”
Mido checked her face in the vanity mirror and finger-combed her hair. Her makeup was mostly gone, and she looked more like a kid than the manager of a hagwon. She sniffed the University of Sydney sweatshirt she’d been wearing all day; it smelled like the plane.
In the kitchen, Peter pressed a button on the rice cooker.
“What are we having?”
“Curry rice. In my freezer, there’s always frozen Japanese curry.” Peter read the digital clock on the rice cooker. “In thirty-eight minutes, we will have dinner.”
A foyer connected the kitchen to an enormous living room and dining area. The front double doors were large enough to push a grand piano through. A modern Italian sectional took up a quarter of the glass-walled living room, and near a fireplace, there was a bone-colored leather daybed.
“Okay. I give up. I’m going to ask questions, and you don’t have to answer them.”
Peter looked as if he were preparing for the firing squad.
“Did you do all this?” she asked, pointing to the well-appointed house. “I’m confused.”
He shook his head. “My mother’s designer. I know. It’s kind of Hollywood. Not my choice.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t hurt his feelings. If I asked, I guess they could have done it again, but that seemed ridiculous and wasteful.”
“This house is big enough for half a dozen people. Maybe a dozen?”
“Yeah.” Peter opened the microwave and began to defrost two containers of frozen curry.
“Do you get paid ten times more than I do?”
“I don’t think so. I made $150,000 last year. That’s probably a bit more than you, but I have more students than you do. I teach two large classes and take private—”
“You do. You have way more students than me. I’m being rude. I’m sorry. This is none of my business.”
“My mother comes from a lot of money. Her grandfather started a tire company, and then he created a transport business. Dad comes from money, too. Chemicals. Fertilizer. Anyway. I’m the only child of divorced parents who wants to be a musician and doesn’t want to live in Korea.
My mom bought this house as an investment and had all this done.
I know it’s a lot. I’m grateful, but I didn’t ask for this. ”
“That’s cool. For you, I mean. I’m happy for you.”
She had long ago figured out that Peter was not poor, but because he worked so many hours, she had thought he needed money.
However, after what his friend Jack said at Dartmouth about him being posh, she had wondered what he meant by it.
Mido had never been to a house in America like this before.
There’d been nothing about Peter that suggested he was this wealthy.
He drove an old Volkswagen and wore faded rock T-shirts and jeans.
His sneakers were less fancy than the ones their Fortress students wore.
Mido tilted her head.
“You do that whenever you have a question,” he said.
She righted herself.
“Okay. I don’t understand why you don’t do music full-time. You don’t have to be a hagwon teacher.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why?”
“It gets me out of the house. Work gets me out of my head. I don’t want to think about myself all day. When my students figure out how to solve a problem, I guess I feel useful. I don’t feel very useful with my music.”
Peter opened the refrigerator. The second shelf was stacked with side dishes in Pyrex and stainless steel containers. There were half-gallon containers of milk and pink grapefruit juice and liter bottles of club soda.
He pulled out the side dishes.
She pointed to the kitchen table. “Eat here?”
“Sure.”
Mido prepared two place settings. She tilted her head again. They’d been gone for almost eight days, but his refrigerator was stocked with fresh vegetables, drinks, and assorted types of kimchi.
He answered the question without her even asking.
“Ajumma comes by twice a week. My mother and I have an agreement.”
“An agreement?”
“I pay my bills—food, taxes, utilities, gym, gas. However, my mother has hired a housekeeper to clean, shop, cook, and deal with house stuff. When something breaks, Mrs. Ma handles it. I tried to avoid this but couldn’t. The deal makes her calmer.”
“Who?”
“My mother. My uncle, her younger brother, persuaded me to let this arrangement continue just to settle her nerves. Until I get married, Mrs. Ma will do all this domestic work.”
Mido opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.
“Just say it. DH makes fun of me all the time. Jack spilled the beans, so I figured you might as well see how posh I am.” Peter drew air quotes around the word “posh.”
“Everything is so nice. Your mother’s designer has great taste.”
“He tried really hard. Even got me an incredible stereo system. Without having met me, he knew exactly which speakers and amplifier I’d wanted. It’s your brother’s favorite thing in the house.”
“Have Yun and Lion seen this place?”
“Nope.”
“They think you’re like me? Middle-class?”
“I don’t know, but does it matter?” Peter looked at her. “Anyway, if we could keep this quiet, I’d appreciate it.”
“That you’re rich and your mom hired you a housekeeper?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you and Lion are friends.”
“Yes, we are friends, but money ruins everything.”
“You work really hard at Fortress.”
“I always work hard.”
“My brother never said anything.”
“He knows how I feel about this stuff. Also, it shouldn’t matter.”
“Do you want to do music full-time?”
“I thought I did, but I couldn’t. The isolation made me kind of crazy. That’s why DH thought I should work at Exodus. He also wanted me to get to know Bo and you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. He thought we should be friends.”
The microwave beeped, and Peter removed the containers and laid them on the table. He gestured to her chair, and she sat down.
“He said we’d get along.”
“Tell me about the song you’re working on now,” she said, not knowing why DH had said this and not knowing how to ask.
“You switched topics.”
“Yes.”
Peter put a Springsteen record on low, and they talked about colleges and where the kids wanted to go most. After dinner, Mido offered to wash dishes, but he said Mrs. Ma would come in the morning.
He zipped up his navy hoodie and picked up his car keys, and she followed him to the car. Peter would drive her home.