10
Return
S?o Paolo, Brazil
The taxi driver dropped her off on Rua José Paulino. Nari stood outside the clothing and fabric store and stared at her husband through the plate glass. Seated on a barstool behind the counter, Joonho was reading a newspaper.
He was thinner and browner than she remembered.
His reading glasses were perched on his sharp nose.
When he was a boy, the children had called him Hawk because of his prominent nose and his broad shoulders.
Gray and white patches streaked his thick black hair.
She felt compelled to tell him to dye it, and Nari covered her mouth with her left hand, chiding herself for criticizing him in her thoughts. She was afraid to go inside.
The busy street was filled with clothing stores, manufacturers, and clusters of pedestrians in motion.
With all the Korean signage, Bom Retiro felt more like downtown Seoul than anywhere in Orange County.
All around her, there were Koreans moving about and colorful words in hangul on storefronts, and though Nari hardly knew any Portuguese, she felt like she could get by on the languages she already knew.
Lion had taught her how to say “thank you,” “help,” and “please”: obrigada, ajuda, and por favor.
Joonho didn’t look up from his focused reading, and Nari pulled out a mirrored compact from her zippered nylon tote bag and checked her lipstick.
Her forehead was mostly unlined, but the crow’s-feet had deepened and spread toward her hairline.
Before she got on the plane to Brazil, she’d had her hair cut, colored, and styled, hoping to look younger.
Nari pushed the glass door open, and a bell tinkled. Once he saw her, his mouth opened slightly, his feet still fixed to the floor.
“Nari.”
She glanced around the store. He seemed to be alone. A faint musty odor of fabric and dust mingled with the smell of an unfamiliar lime aftershave. Joonho had always preferred citrusy scents.
Six mannequins were dressed in bright-colored evening gowns, and behind them were enormous bolts of jewel-toned fabrics. Rolls of measuring tape, pairs of scissors, and pincushions covered an oak worktable near the front counter, where Joonho stood.
“Let’s go,” Nari said.
“What?” Joonho remained dazed by her appearance, as if she were a ghost.
“I came to bring you home,” she said, trying to keep her voice from breaking.
“How did you get here?”
“I took two planes.”
Remembering himself, he picked up a barstool with a red leather cushion and brought it closer to her.
“Are you happy to see me?”
He nodded. “Why are you here?”
“You have a grandson.”
“What?” Joonho put his hand over his heart.
“Yun had a baby, and I thought you should come home now. Michael is the most beautiful child in the whole world. Even more beautiful than our daughter.”
“When did you get here?”
“Late last night.”
He couldn’t believe that his wife could travel all this way by herself.
“I put my things in the hotel room and took a nap. Lion found a very nice hotel for me. He was so worried about me coming.” Nari didn’t mention how she’d quarreled with Yun for two months about traveling to Brazil by herself.
As soon as she received her American passport, she had pleaded with Yun and Lion about making the trip. “Do you have any coffee for me?”
Joonho rushed to an alcove behind a curtain. Nari could hear a spoon clinking against the mugs. He brought her the coffee.
“It tastes like Taster’s,” she said. “Why did I think that coffee would be different here?”
Joonho laughed. He didn’t know what kind he drank, having bought the large red box at the mart down the street.
Sometimes he forgot where he was. Seven days a week, he worked, and he never left the Korean neighborhood.
He moved in a closed circuit of his studio apartment, the clothing store, and the mart.
Once in a while, he and his cousin Max ate at a Korean restaurant on Rua Prates.
Joonho pulled his stool over to sit near her, but they did not touch. The married couple spoke to each other with the curiosity and politeness of two people on a blind date. He felt as nervous as when he’d first confessed his feelings for her in high school.
“Will you come home with me? Can you leave right away?” she asked.
“I haven’t made back my fortune.”
“Is this store yours?”
“It’s my store, but I owe the manufacturers a lot for the cloth. Paying the tailors is expensive. I didn’t know the margins would be this bad. All these clothing stores”—Joonho gestured to the businesses on the street—“we’re just killing each other. The prices are so low.”
Nari said nothing, knowing how bad her husband was at negotiating. His former partner, the one who’d stolen from them, had been the one who understood how to make money. Joonho was the one who knew how to work.
“I just didn’t want to work in food anymore.”
“My boss said there’s a job for you,” she said, referring to Sonya. “It’s not food related.”
He tilted his head attentively, wanting to go home, but still ashamed.
“We’re opening a second nail salon and need another manager. You’d be doing the same job as Mido’s father. My boss said that if you came back, you could have the position. She promised me. Elder Sonya Cho is an honest woman. She’s Helen Cho’s older sister. I wrote to you that she passed away.”
Joonho bowed his head slightly in recognition.
“As a manager, I earn more than I did when I was running Shrimp Castle. I brought money with me. To pay off any of your debts. Will you come home?” Nari said again. She tucked in her lower lip, her eyes fearful that he might say no.
Joonho clasped his calloused hands. He wanted to hold her in his arms but didn’t think he had the right to do that.
“Is Yun angry with me? Did she tell you not to tell me about the baby?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
His daughter never called. On occasion, when he heard from Nari, she’d mention that Yun and Lion were fine and living well, but there was never any news from his daughter.
Even a brief message from her in one of Nari’s letters would have given him hope. “I guess I ruined her life. And yours.”
Nari reached across the coffee tray and put his left hand in hers. He still wore his platinum wedding band.
“Every day, I was hoping that you’d come home. That you would walk through the doors of the nail salon and tell me that you’re back for good.”
He clenched his jaw, his eyes downcast.
“But then you didn’t come. And when little Michael was born, he looked so much like you. Just like your baby pictures. When he was born, he had so much dark hair. Like a silky black mop above the sleepy face of an angel.”
Nari dug into her tote bag and pulled out a small blue album filled with photographs of him and Yun.
“You missed his baek-il, but you can still make his first birthday party. Remember how I lost that pregnancy before Yun was born? The doctor said it was a boy. Our Yun has a son, and she wants to have three or four kids. Isn’t that amazing?” Nari said, crying.
Joonho looked down, feeling the warmth of his wife’s tiny hands, her nails a brilliant red. She looked so pretty in her pink linen dress, and he wanted to tell her but felt afraid.
“Where are you staying?”
“At the Luz Plaza. Near the park.”
“Yes, that’s a good one,” he said.
Nari put her hands on his leathery face and felt the scruff of his beard.
“Look at all your freckles,” she said, laughing. “I missed you so much.”
Joonho couldn’t speak.
“You didn’t come for me, so I came for you.”
He couldn’t look at her face.
“I don’t care if you don’t have a cent. You took good care of me, and I should have said that, when we were having a hard time. If you don’t want to work in the nail salon, you don’t have to. I don’t mind working. I like it.”
“No, I want to work. I will work. I am glad you came here.”
He wanted to tell her that he was grateful. All he had ever wanted was to go home.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Yes. You should buy me breakfast.”
“I should.”
“Yobo, I don’t want to get on those planes by myself. It was so scary. You should take me home,” she said, looking at him imploringly. “Please.”
Joonho nodded.
When Lion and Yun made the announcement about Fortress Seoul in their email newsletter, over six hundred students applied for their pilot program for Korean students who wanted to attend college in the United States.
In the first year, they had room for fifty students.
Renee and Lion agreed that forty students would pay a reasonable, market-rate tuition, and ten students would receive a full scholarship, but no one was allowed to discuss their financial status, and, if anyone did, the offending student would face expulsion.
Since nearly all international students paid full-freight tuition at American colleges, Renee and her company pledged to provide four-year private scholarships for the ten students.
Through assessments, Lion established a floor for high-aptitude students, and then, from that pool, he chose students by lottery.
Standardize, then randomize. In addition to the hagwon tuition payments and pledge of college tuition for ten scholarship students, Renee’s family provided Fortress Seoul with office space, dorm rooms, and airfare for the overseas tutors.
Lion and Yun would figure out the math to make the numbers work so that the pilot program wouldn’t lose money.
Tom Song from Eagle Academy had always wanted to try something like this, but it would have been too expensive for him to do by himself.
From the beginning, Tom guessed why Renee had cooked up this scheme. When she came by his office in Daechi-dong, he asked her outright.
“Are you doing this so you can bring Peter back to Korea?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“It’s an awful lot to go through to—”
“Also, I saw what happened when DH got a scholarship. You made that happen,” she said. “It was your brilliant idea.”