Becoming Marlow Fin: A Novel, page 7
I didn’t ask Sawyer about the woman. Partly because his eyes went sad, an expression I wasn’t used to seeing from him. And partly because I didn’t get a chance to, as Moni called me home from outside.
Mom and Dad were heading out for a dinner date. I had heard them eagerly chatting about it in the days before. Some new restaurant opening in downtown Saint Paul that meant a new red dress. Mom hung it up, showing it off in a clear dry-cleaning bag on their bedroom door. I passed it each morning, admiring the fiery, silken fabric. The sheen made me want to smooth it over with my hands.
I returned home with Moni to be immediately assaulted with questions.
“Isla, have you seen my dress?” Mom demanded as she attempted to get the back of her earring on. Her blonde hair in perfect, hot-ironed curls arranged in rows over her shoulders.
“No,” I answered quickly.
“Are you sure?” she asked again, this time with more urgency. I watched her mouth move, the red lipstick just outside the lines.
“Yes. I thought it was on your door?”
She shook her head. “Not there anymore.”
Dad appeared shaking the car keys in his right hand as he slipped his wallet in his jacket. “Stella, please. We’re already late.”
She brought her arms up exasperated. “I don’t understand. It’s been there for days, Patrick. I bought it specifically for tonight.”
He shrugged sympathetically. “I know but . . .” He waved toward the garage. “I doubt they will hold our table for much longer. Maybe wear a different dress?”
Mom breathily returned a few minutes later. Her curls were now scattered and out of place and she wore a plain, black sleeveless dress. She gave me a cursory kiss good night, trailing Dad who was already out the door when she halted, her eyes darting up the stairs.
I followed her gaze. There she was. Perched at the very top, staring down at us like a bird of prey. Half her face guarded by the shadows, her hands folded in her lap.
Three weeks later, I was playing near the creek with Sawyer when I found it. Drenched and covered in streaks of mud. Barely recognizable, the skirt end fraying. I poked it with a stick, letting it roll in the water like a crocodile barreling with agitation.
The red bled through, deep and questioning.
CHAPTER 13
* * *
ISLA
1996
There are days for the lambs. And there are days for the wolves.
Moni used to say that to me.
Days I would scrape my knee raw, the weather gave me the blues, the kid in class mercilessly teased me. Days the ice cream truck circled back, the new green dress got a flurry of compliments, the sun dried my skin until it tingled at the pool.
“Days for the wolves,” she would plainly say, if I came into the kitchen sullen and worn.
A bowl of filling for mandu would be on the counter, a mosaic of minced pork, onion, cabbage, zucchini, and mushrooms. My nose would fill with brine and garlic; my eyes would take in her fingers so delicately pinching the dough, each drop of filling softly cocooned in a shell of white plushness. Each dumpling she would delicately drop in boiling water, then pull out onto a plate for me. It steamed in freshness as a drop of soy sauce and vinegar was added before my teeth sank in.
She would lean in, almost drinking in my satisfaction from her food. It never bothered me, her leaning in like that. Her round, forgiving face—beyond anything merely pleasant. Hers was a face of luminosity.
“Now. Time to let those wolves go. Let in room for the lambs.”
She arrived in the US when she was twenty-four.
Young-Mi Baek was one of only a few women out of the select number of students allowed to come over under the pretense of studying. It was 1957 and she was secretly pregnant with a son. She never spoke of the father. Not even to Dad. She named him Patrick, after the pastor who helped her learn English at the Methodist church a block from her boardinghouse.
Moni never liked to tell me stories of those early years. Possibly because she didn’t want me to pity her. Or maybe it was simply too much to repeat out loud, to live all over again. Dad once told me it was because she missed her family. She never saw them again after the war. There were too many stories like hers . . . I never pried.
But she loved telling me about Dad.
How he was the most beautiful little boy and all the other Korean mothers at church envied his button eyes and full lips. He loved hot dogs like all the other “American” boys but loved her ge jjigae, spicy crab stew, the most.
But he was teased the most.
“No one else look like your Daddy,” she would say as she pruned bean sprouts over a metal bowl. “Oh, he handsome now. Everybody say that. But your Daddy . . . he had to be brave.”
The kind of teasing that sticks like a barb in the chest, prickly, burrowing in further and further.
Her eyes would look a little bothered, as if she were worrying all over again about her precious son. He was the only one. The only one who ate kimchi. The only one who knew another language. The only one who wasn’t white. I wondered how much of this story was still left inside him, a reluctant pioneer.
“He have to be perfect. Perfect in everything. Best grades, best student. Even now. You know that, Isla?”
She didn’t have to use words for me to see how she ached over it. How she ached over him not having a father in his life. Maybe it was her drive that had pushed him to such rigorousness. She wore her mother’s guilt like a badge, tattered and useless, as it would do nothing to right any wrongs she may have committed.
It was impossible for me to picture her as anyone but the lenient and soft Halmoni she had always been in my eyes. A pleasant, agreeable woman who wore the same floral pink apron when she cooked for her family. Who always gave the best parts of a dish to everyone else, keeping the lesser scraps for herself.
The sacrifice.
That was the only way she knew how to live. The only way she felt whole. As if her skin existed to protect us all, stretching far and wide, so thin and transparent it would inevitably snap. A tear at first, fissuring, then ripping all the way.
The first summer after Ada and Sawyer moved in, our kitchen had grown extra warm with the air conditioner being on the fritz. The heat swelled an already rising strain in the house.
Dad decided to scoop out ice cream for us all.
We ate around the kitchen table that was mostly quiet, a clink here and there against the bowls.
Mom ate slowly and methodically, as if forcing herself to ingest each bite. She sat directly across from Marlow. I never found out what Marlow did or didn’t do. What her expression was or what she could have mouthed.
But whatever it was did not agree with Mom.
Her spoon dropped loudly, clanging like a cowbell in her dish. She dusted her hands and drew her chair back.
“Is there something wrong?” Dad asked without looking up, as if he didn’t want to give her irritation any more life.
She looked over at him, eyes narrowing before retreating into weariness. “I’m not sure, Patrick. What could possibly be wrong?” Her hand took part of the light-green plastic bowl and held tight.
Moni’s jaw clenched as she sucked in her breath.
Dad remained silent, his head bowed down before he dipped his spoon in again.
“That’s right. We’re all fine. Everything is fine,” Mom said. She shook her head tightly, quick with irritation, before leaving us all in the kitchen.
I heard Moni exhale slowly and heavily. Her relief also washed over me.
Later that summer, Dad would take me to his office occasionally. The shelves on the wall were packed with books, the spines shiny and smooth under my finger. There would be students who popped in and left, a brief chat or question that had to be addressed. I didn’t take that much notice for the most part.
But there was a woman with long, curly auburn hair. I remember her because I thought her to be especially pretty. She looked like Ariel incarnate. (I was fixated on The Little Mermaid right then.) I wanted to ask her if she knew her, but it seemed a silly question, so I kept my mouth shut. She never told me her name, yet she acted as if she knew me because she handed me a sticker book. It was brand new and there was a unicorn bookmark with a pink tassel tucked inside.
Dad told me to wait outside.
He closed the door, and I sat in one of the hard wooden chairs in the hallway. Some of the stickers were scratch and sniff. I put my nose deep into the one with a dancing grape. There were other times like that, with other stickers. Other trinkets and cheap toys to preoccupy me.
It’s funny how you can remember such details. And then other things get washed away into an unintended indifference.
I can remember Moni’s face whenever she made oxtail soup. Her eyes in a dull concentration as she skimmed fat off the boiling broth, tedious in getting every drop. But I can’t remember what it looked like the last time I saw her. Was she smiling? Did she have on her glasses? Or did she leave them off, sitting on a stack of magazines in her bedroom?
There are the memories that stick to your bones, that feed you when there is nothing left to cling to. And there are the ones that fade in and out, a tattered cloth that ripples in the wind and then flaps away with one final gust.
CHAPTER 14
* * *
WREN
1980s
Wren looked around the basement apartment with blank eyes.
The cement walls, low ceiling, and single egress window would have deterred most from saying yes. She was new to the Twin Cities but she wasn’t new to living in places like this. She nodded as the landlord stated the monthly rent and handed her a set of worn keys.
“I don’t take late payments,” the middle-aged woman said, a slight Eastern European accent curling at the end of her tongue. “You pay or you’re out.”
“I understand,” Wren replied, taking note of the cobwebs in the corners and rusted pipework overhead.
The landlord suddenly eyed her. “How old? You even twenty-one?”
“Yes.”
“You Chinese?” she asked.
“No. But I am part Asian.”
The woman turned with a grunt; the door jammed a few times before it shut. Wren locked it instinctively, despite the woman’s seeming to be harmless. She reached up to touch the dusty lightbulb, twisting it to stop its flickering. She suddenly felt so tired. The single mattress in a metal frame was her only piece of furniture. Her eyes fluttered into sleep quickly as she lay on it.
She spent the next few weeks looking for a job. Work. Anything to make a few dollars. Whenever her pen came to a certain part in an application, she would pause and then leave. There was nothing to put in those blanks. There was nothing to share.
She was a ghost that no one would hire.
Meals were often instant noodles or bags of chips. Anything that was cheap and could fill her up with calories. She turned to one of her previous habits of lingering near restaurant patrons dining outdoors. She didn’t look the part of desperate; maybe that was why she could get away with it. There was an innocence to the shape of her face, a collegiate look. To most, she was a student sitting down for a meal. No one knew that the girl sitting at the café table was eating a stranger’s leftovers.
At one of her haunts, a Mediterranean bistro, a server she had seen a few times seemed to catch on. He was a tall young man, hard to miss. She was in the middle of putting rolls into her purse when he strode toward her with his hands behind his back. She shot up, head ducked down, but his hand reached her shoulder first.
“Here,” he said softly, as his smile stretched across his shiny dark cheeks.
She looked down to a white paper takeout bag. Her hand clutched the top of it, shaking with embarrassment.
“Thank you,” she said as she began to exit.
“Julien.” He placed his hand on his chest.
“Wren,” her voice came out hushed.
When she reached the security of the basement apartment, she hurriedly opened the bag to find a container of creamy chicken pasta tossed with sundried tomatoes and herbs. Her eyes closed as she ate slowly, savoring each bite.
She was shy at first to return, but the thought of a decent meal overrode any further inhibitions. Julien always spoke so gently to her, trying to probe more out of her. But she would only smile politely and eat as he did most of the talking. He told her about some work she could do for the restaurant owner—cash-under-the-table kind of work. A few early mornings a week, she brought in the day’s crates of provisions and helped wash and peel all the produce the kitchen staff needed.
It was enough to survive. That was all she needed right then. Survival.
But as her stomach began to get nourished, other parts of her began to wake up. On her days off she would wander the streets of Minneapolis. Her eyes filled with images of how other people lived. Normal people. Couples. People who could rely on each other, hold hands, go to lunch, browse a clothing store, all with such ease. Such carefree airs that floated toward her, as if to invite her in.
She didn’t envy them. It was more than that. She wanted to immerse herself in what they had. She wanted to somehow transform.
It was on one of her walks in late summer when she saw them. Sitting across from each other on the patio of an Italian restaurant in Uptown. Her breath caught and she placed a few fingers near her throat. She was disconcerted with her reaction to these two people. What was it that made her stop like that?
They glowed. A halo that only she could see lassoed around them. The woman had fair hair, the features of a beauty as if plucked out of a Scandinavian fairy tale. Her ice-pick eyes glinted as she sipped from her glass and listened intently to her companion. With a half-serene smile, she didn’t take her eyes from him once.
Him.
It was him that really halted her. She watched him smooth back his jet-black hair; a lock kept straggling and she wanted to go put it back in place for him. The outline of his lips looked almost drawn—a light burgundy hue that perhaps was stained even further by the red wine he shared with his wife. She could see the bands on their fingers. He whispered something and she laughed. Their affection seemed genuine. They weren’t putting on airs, were they? At least that was what she wanted to believe. They were beautiful to watch.
Beautiful.
“Are you ready to go, honey?” the woman asked, pulling her violet shawl over her gracefully sloped shoulders.
“Yes, yes, we should get going . . . I’ve got a big day tomorrow. My first faculty meeting.”
He began to get up but she stopped him. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
“I’m so proud of you, Patrick.”
CHAPTER 15
* * *
ISLA
1996
Mom smeared the orange paint across my cheeks. She paused to dab more on her brush and stepped back to look at her work.
“Do I look like a tiger yet?”
She shook her head and smiled. “But we’re getting there, Isla.”
Halloween always meant my birthday. Dad made a point to tell me the same story every year. How Mom’s water broke right as they were about to leave for a party. She didn’t even have time to take off her Marie Antoinette costume, I came out so quickly. Dad was dressed as Frankenstein and it was quite a scene to see him hold me, crying so loudly. He would shake his head when he said this part, then tousle my hair.
It always seemed like such a crazy story. And he remembered every detail like it was yesterday. I would ask to see a picture of them in costume, but they could never find it.
This year the story wasn’t mentioned. Dad was too busy putting Marlow’s ladybug costume on. He struggled with the black tights as she wriggled and played with the antennae headband, the two velvet balls at the ends bobbling sideways.
“Can you please stay still, sweetie?”
She tossed her head back and forth and then smacked her mouth a few times.
“Marlow . . .”
She giggled and leaned forward, patting his cheeks. “Okay, Daddy.”
Mom stopped mid brushstroke. It was the first time Marlow had called him that.
Dad froze and then pretended that name was nothing new. That she had always called him that and there was no need to give it attention.
“There,” said Mom as she put her hands on my shoulders and turned me to the bathroom mirror.
I looked up to see the black and orange streaks she had carefully created across my cheeks, my forehead white, my nose dotted with a tiny black heart.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes.” I turned my head side to side to admire her work.
“Happy tenth birthday, my Isla,” she said in my ear, her breath warm.
Marlow squirmed her head under Mom’s elbow, clinging to her. “Happy birthday!”
I felt Mom go rigid. She awkwardly moved away from Marlow’s head. I could see her staring at the three of us in the mirror. Our faces, each a different piece to a puzzle that didn’t quite fit together.
She scooted us downstairs to the kitchen, where she made us a quick dinner of leftover porkchops. The microwave whirred as she took out the steaming breaded meat with some green beans on the side. The smell of her food circled around and danced with the lunch Moni had made earlier—one of my favorites, pan-fried mackerel with rice and kimchi. The synthesis of their distinct aromas wisped about the kitchen, entwining and creating a mixture that was nurturing to me—an essence of home.
A few of the neighborhood kids were invited over for cake and ice cream before we went trick-or-treating.
Sawyer arrived first. “Cool face paint!” he exclaimed, his voice muffled behind his red Power Ranger mask.
He was followed by the Bollinger twins, Topher and Greta, and then Oliver, who lived at the far end of the cul-de-sac.
They each handed wrapped gifts over to Mom, as if it were their entrance ticket to the house, and she judiciously stacked them on the kitchen table. Dad brought out the cake, Funfetti with white icing as I’d requested. Marlow sang the loudest in my ear, but I didn’t mind. I blew out the ten candles but forgot to make a wish.
