12 #2
After the movie ended, Bo ran back to his car to beat the traffic back to Irvine.
As he drove, he couldn’t shake off his embarrassment.
His student Hattie thought his decision to get a PhD was foolish.
From the look on her face, his poverty was something to be mocked.
He wondered how young people could have learned such terrible ideas about education, money, and hierarchy.
She had complained to him, her TA for Statistics for Psychology, a prerequisite for every psych major. In her calculation, he didn’t matter.
After each reading, lecture, and assignment, something in him opened up, and Bo believed he was meant to be a clinical psychologist and see patients.
Every study, article, and clinical experiment led him to reinterpret his own life, and he felt eager to learn more.
He wanted to work with immigrants, and the more he studied, the more he realized that the way most modern Western families functioned would make little sense to diasporic families from Korea, Australia, and the States.
If he ever had kids of his own, he wanted to know how to raise them better.
As he studied family structures, he thought of his mother more often than his father, and he regretted having spent so much time in that tiny hotel room in Seoul, trying to get into an impressive college that was different from his father’s.
When he studied the research on romantic and erotic love in a seminar, he recalled his first love, and, borrowing his cousin’s Cyworld log-in, he found Ara without any effort.
In one photo, Ara was at a restaurant in Garosu-gil with a nice-looking young man in a suit, which was enough information for him.
In another image, the same man was in his military uniform.
Like Hattie, Ara might not respect the degree he wanted.
Why be a psychologist and make less money than a medical doctor?
Ara might look down on him for having misspent his twenties in a room the size of two coffins. He wanted to give his first girlfriend more credit than that, so he stopped looking at her profile. He diagnosed it for himself as unhealthy.
Today, Priscilla had saved him. She was beautiful and funny. He could not have met her unless he had come all this way, taking the most circuitous path.
Each day, as he walked from Franz Hall to Weyburn, past enormous palm trees beneath the seemingly endless sunlight of Los Angeles, he felt grateful for the end of that college testing period in his life.
He would not wish it on his enemies, if he had any.
It was self-awareness alone that made him less angry with Hattie.
She was a young person with her own rigid thoughts, trapped in her own rented room without windows and doors.
Once, he too had lived in that imagined prison.
He would never have argued with a teacher for a better grade than he’d received, but he had also given up almost everything for his grades and a test. He was almost thirty years old, and this afternoon he had gone to his first movie since high school.
When he arrived at Fortress, Mido called out to him.
“You have twenty minutes to eat your sandwich,” his sister said.
Bo opened the white paper bag she handed him and smiled.
“My favorite.”
“For some reason, today I felt like a turkey sandwich, so I got three.”
“You ate two?” he asked.
“Oh, I got one for Peter.”
Bo had noticed a difference. Something had changed between them.
Peter was now attending church, then driving Mido back to Fortress.
Then their body language. At the hagwon, the space between them had grown closer.
They didn’t touch. It wasn’t like that. Their father had mentioned that Mido was working too hard and that he was worried.
She was coming home later than usual. She’d prepare his meals and leave them in the refrigerator for him to heat up, but often, two or three nights a week, she didn’t come home until eleven o’clock.
She was supposed to be at Fortress working, but the hagwon closed at 10:00 p.m. at the latest. There was a strong demand for late-night tutoring, but Lion and Yun had drawn the line at ten o’clock.
She could have been doing administrative work, but Bo still had doubts.
If Peter was bringing her home, he assumed they had been together.
As an older brother, he didn’t know how to broach the subject, and he wasn’t sure if it was his place. She was twenty-seven years old—fully grown. Without question, she was more mature than he and DH. She had given up school and Tek. She had worked to earn money to replace their mother’s income.
Bo had been observing Mido with Peter at church and at the hagwon to see if they behaved as friends, colleagues, or lovers. If they were dating, he didn’t understand why they hadn’t told anyone.
Bo got up and checked the glass door. No one was in the hallway.
He turned to face Mido. “Are you seeing him?”
Mido paused, then shook her head.
“Is that a no, you’re not seeing him, or a no, you’re not talking about it?”
“Oppa, you should eat your dinner.”
Bo bit into his sandwich, then opened the bag of chips.
DH had told him years ago that Peter came from an important family in Korea with money and connections.
He had not specified much, but Bo, who followed the news in Korea more often than DH and Mido, had figured out that Peter’s mother was the only daughter from a major conglomerate family, and his father was the second son of another prominent family in business.
“You know about his family, right?”
“No need to know,” Mido replied. She opened a bottle of water for him and placed it near his food.
“I like Peter. He’s a good guy,” Bo said. “DH hasn’t mentioned it. I can tell he doesn’t know.”
Mido glanced up from her pile of test papers.
They had been as careful as possible, and Mido knew things were getting serious but had no idea what to do.
Peter was clear that he wanted a commitment from her but also clear that he would never marry.
She didn’t care about getting married, but the hiding was getting awkward.
At her age, she felt silly for concealing it.
“It would be hard to marry him, though,” Bo said before taking another bite.
Mido pretended to make notes on the student charts. If she asked him why, then it would be an admission that they were seeing each other.
“His family would be upset about you not finishing college. I realize part of this is my fault. If you want me to take out some loans, you can go back to school and get your degree, so no one can say anything about your—”
“Getting a degree from a community college is not going to impress Peter’s parents, and besides, he doesn’t want to get married.
” She gave up the pretense. It was a relief not to hide it from Bo any longer.
“Doesn’t believe in it. Won’t move back to Seoul.
He wants to stay here to do his music and teach.
That’s why he doesn’t take their money anymore.
” Mido didn’t mention that Peter’s mother still paid for the housekeeper, who stocked the refrigerator and cleaned the house.
“I don’t want to get married anyway. Are you going to tell?” she asked, sounding younger suddenly.
“I trust you,” Bo said, wanting to add that he was there for her, that he’d protect her, do whatever he could to fix things, but she knew all that already. “I went to the movies,” he said, changing the subject. “With a woman from my program.”
“What?” Mido was delighted. “Tell me.”
“Oh, look at the time, I have to teach,” he teased. The car ride home would be filled with questions.