Like Wind Against Rock: A Novel Read online

  ALSO BY NANCY KIM

  Chinhominey’s Secret

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Nancy Kim

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542025461

  ISBN-10: 154202546X

  Cover design by Laywan Kwan

  For my parents,

  Yeun Soo and Mi Wha Kim

  CONTENTS

  DEATH AND DIVORCE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LOVE AND LONELINESS

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  SECRETS AND LIES

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DEATH AND DIVORCE

  CHAPTER ONE

  I am sitting on Ahma’s bed, waiting for her to come out of the bathroom and show me the new outfit that she is going to wear on her Friday-night date with a man she met at the gym. In houses all across America, mothers wait for daughters to emerge—ta-da!—from behind locked doors, transformed in shiny pastel dresses for proms, lacy confections for debutante balls, and fluffy white gowns for weddings. But in this house, it’s the mother who dresses up and goes out while the daughter stays home and watches television in her sweats.

  I glance at the clock on the nightstand. It is six forty-five.

  “Ahma! You better hurry. He’ll be here soon.”

  “It’s okay! Man have to wait!” my mother yells from the bathroom. I sigh. Of course. Man should wait for woman. Show woman more desirable. Not desperate. Nope, no desperate women around here.

  The bathroom door suddenly opens and Ahma bursts out like a superhero. Instead of a cape and tights, she is wearing a crinkled, sequin-encrusted top, skinny blue jeans, and silver stilettos. Her outfit makes me think of tropical fish. I hate to admit it, but she looks good—for a sixty-two-year-old. She also looks kind of bizarre, like a forty-year-old woman with the aura of a sixty-two-year-old woman rather than the other way around. She recently dyed the gray in her hair and had it cut in layers around her face. She is in the best shape I have ever seen her in, which is not too surprising since she has, for the first time in her life, started to exercise. She has even joined a gym, where she seems to be meeting every eligible bachelor in Orange County over the age of fifty.

  Ahma stands in front of me, smiling widely. She is wearing red lipstick. When Appa was alive, she never wore lipstick. She also never wore tight blue jeans and spike heels.

  “What you think?”

  “Aren’t you going to be cold?” I ask, although it’s now July.

  “Not cold! Jeans maybe too hot.” She swishes her hips like a runway model.

  “It . . . it looks kind of young.” I want her to change into one of the outfits I am used to seeing her wear. Maybe the chocolate-brown velour sweats. Or the beige slacks with the white blouse. Or maybe just her comfortable flannel robe and fuzzy slippers.

  “You just jealous,” she says with a laugh. “I look good! Everybody say that! All the salesgirls say, ‘Ah! You sixty-two? Can’t believe it.’”

  “Of course they’ll say that. They’re trying to sell you clothes.”

  “Nobody say that to you when you go shopping!”

  My mother smiles and starts to comb her hair, which she has blown out.

  The doorbell rings. Ahma searches for her purse.

  “Stay there! I don’t want him see you and think he some big deal!”

  “I can’t even meet your date?”

  “What you think you are? My mother? Ha!”

  In the past few months, my mother has started to speak to me solely in English, which I hate. Her English is surprisingly awful for someone who has lived in California for over forty years. But until the past year, she didn’t have a single non-Korean friend. Now it seems that all her friends are single non-Koreans.

  Ahma sits on the bed for a few minutes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Man have to wait!” She takes several deep breaths. The doorbell rings again. And then again.

  “Will you just go?”

  Ahma calmly rises from the bed, purse in hand.

  “Don’t forget, lock door,” she whispers, pointing to the doorknob.

  I hear her open the door and then apologize for being late. I hear masculine exclamations of approval over her outfit. Immediate forgiveness of her tardiness. The front door closes. Morbid curiosity gets the better of me. I sneak downstairs and peer through the front curtains, just a peek. I see my mother with a tall, dark-haired stranger. I immediately notice two things about her date. He is much younger than she is, and he is Caucasian. Just like all her other dates. Ahma turns her head and glares menacingly right at me. I drop the curtain but then open it, just a sliver, in time to see them get into a powder-blue Porsche and drive away.

  For three straight hours I watch reality shows and news programs. Crisis in the Mideast. Bank robbery in Santa Ana. A special on the precarious future of polar bears. I watch a majestic white creature drift away on an ice floe in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, floating away to certain death. I vow to buy less, drive less, and to reuse and recycle.

  It is nearly eleven o’clock when I hear a car pull up into the driveway. I run to the upstairs hallway window and peer through the curtains. Ahma’s date gets out of the Porsche and walks around to the passenger side. A true gentleman. She steps out like a princess. I run downstairs and settle myself on the sofa. The key turns in the lock, and the front door opens. I hear voices in the entryway. Laughter. Giggles! My mom is giggling like a schoolgirl. My stomach lurches. Suddenly there is silence as they seem to become aware of the mumbling from the television.

  “Is somebody here?”

  “My daughter.”

  I want to bolt from the sofa, but the only way out is the direction in which they are coming. I could hide behind the sofa, but who knows what might take place then. I stay rooted to my seat, my eyes fixated on the TV screen as though I am oblivious to their presence.

  “Alice,” my mother says. “You watch too much TV.”

  Ahma and her date are standing in the archway. He is politely smiling at me. He is tall, about six four. He has dark-brown hair with some gray around the temples. I hate to admit it, but he is handsome.

  I hit the remote, and the screen goes dark.

  “This is my daughter, Alice. This is Stephen.”

  I raise my butt from the couch so that I am half standing. “Hi.”

  Stephen gives me a half salute in respons
e to my squat. “Hey there.” He turns to Ahma. “I didn’t know you lived with your daughter.”

  “She live with me,” Ahma says. “Like old-fashion Korean.”

  “Just for a few weeks,” I say. “My landlord decided to condo convert, so I moved out when my lease ended at the end of May.”

  “That’s more than a few weeks,” Stephen says. “It’s already July.”

  “Who’s counting?” I ask, but obviously he is. I turn to Ahma. “How was your . . . dinner?” I can’t say the word date aloud, at least not in relation to any activity of my mother’s.

  “Delicious,” my mother says. Stephen snorts, presumably at her lack of culinary sophistication.

  “We dined at La Chemise,” he says. He glances around the room as though he were thinking of buying the paint off the walls. La Chemise is a pricey French restaurant in Newport Beach. I’m supposed to be impressed, but instead I’m suspicious. It’s a first date, not an anniversary dinner. What sort of payback is he expecting?

  “Do you know why it’s called ‘La Chemise’?” Stephen asks, turning his discriminating shopper’s gaze to me. Is he always this condescending?

  “Because a meal there will cost you the shirt off your back?”

  Stephen acts like he doesn’t hear me. “It used to be a shirt factory, if you can believe it. But the feds closed it down and sent all the little ladies back to China.”

  “You want something drink?” my mother asks him, her eyes and mouth open with exaggerated hospitality.

  “Hmmm . . .” Stephen glances over at me. I glare at him with my eyes but smile like a geisha with my lips. “I think we should call it a night.”

  “Good idea,” my mother says, her brows furrowed with understanding. “Have to surgery tomorrow early.”

  “Exactly,” he says with a nod. He turns to me. “Nice to meet you.” His eyes are round with insincerity.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  My mother walks him to the door. I’m not sure, but I think I hear the quick, smacking sound of lips on flesh, and I cringe.

  I turn the television back on. My mother sits on the couch next to me.

  “What you think?” she asks.

  “Gasoline’s going through the roof. Better fill up your tank tomorrow. They’re expecting another hike.”

  “Not gas. Stephen. Handsome, yes?”

  “I guess. He’s kind of young for you.”

  “More energy!” She raises her arms in the air like she’s just won the Tour de France.

  “More energy for what? To go disco dancing?”

  “Nobody disco anymore.” Ahma gives me a look of pity. “We play squash.”

  “Squash? When did you take up squash?”

  “Next weekend. Stephen going to teach me.”

  I pick up the remote and change the channel. “See? I told you. Everyone says gas prices will rise this weekend.”

  “You watch too much junk TV.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t have a hot date to keep me busy.”

  Ahma gives me a funny look, nose slightly wrinkled, eyes squinted. It’s the same look she gives me when I eat too much kimchi and forget to floss.

  “You think he should be your date.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s normal. I have date. Stephen is a handsome and your same age. He drive expensive car.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  One side of her mouth curves skeptically.

  “Your old mama get hot dude.”

  “Will you quit talking like that? Don’t say ‘dude’!”

  “I even take your cool talk.”

  “It’s not cool to say ‘dude.’ You’re not a . . . surfer!”

  “Stephen knows surf.”

  “Good for Stephen.”

  “He say he show me how.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Why not? I have good shape. Everyone say so.” She smooths her hands against her waist and straightens her spine.

  “I know. They can’t believe how old you are.”

  “Grandma age.” She is halfway up the stairs when she leans her head over the railing and shares, “Stephen like jeans.”

  I roll my eyes. I bet he does.

  Ahma wasn’t always such a desperate housewife. When I was growing up, the battles over clothing concerned my skimpy outfits. She wore shapeless shift dresses or khaki slacks and white polo shirts. She was big on designer handbags, but they were usually knockoffs. After Appa died in April, she underwent some kind of transformation and changed everything—the way she looked, her friends, the way she talked. I expected a mourning period. Appa was her life, or at least that’s what I’d thought.

  A couple of weeks after my father died, I found two men hooking his beige Audi to a tow truck.

  “What’s going on?” I asked my mother, who stood in the doorway with a blank expression. “Why are they taking Appa’s car?”

  “I don’t want keep your daddy car.”

  “And what’s all that?” There were four stuffed garbage bags at the curb.

  “Junk.” She turned and walked into the house. I followed her. Inside, she busied herself making tea, a convenient way to avoid eye contact.

  “He had that car for years. How do you know that I don’t want it?”

  “No reason keep old car. You have car. Old car too expensive maintenance.”

  Of course she was right, but I couldn’t understand her efficiency in trashing his things. Isn’t there a denial period to mourning? Isn’t it supposed to take months, even years, to accept the death of a loved one?

  My parents seemed to have had an understanding about how their marriage would work. My mother would belong to the family and be the witness to my life. She was the one who kept the household functioning, the one who was there when I got home from school. She was the one who made dinner every night, the one who made the doctor’s appointments and bought the toothpaste and toilet paper. My father stood at the periphery of our family, both a guard and an honored guest. He ventured out into the world in the mornings and returned in the evenings. He was the one who ensured we were able to live in a nice house in a good neighborhood. He was the one who made sure we were safe in the world. I always thought she was grateful to him for this, for being a good provider, for being dependable. He may have been reserved, but he was never cruel or unkind. Now that he was dead—her husband of over forty years!—I expected Ahma to show some emotion. But she didn’t seem to miss him. His death seemed to have left no emptiness in her heart.

  The teakettle screamed. She started to pour the water into the teapot. She cursed and dropped the kettle onto the kitchen floor. I rushed over and thrust her hand under the kitchen faucet.

  “It’s okay!” she yelled, trying to take back her hand. I held on to her wrist and forced her fingers to stay under the running water. They were red, and their undersides were already starting to rise into welts. I turned to look at her. Up close, I could see that her entire face was swollen and blotchy. She averted her eyes, as though I had caught her doing something shameful.

  I picked up the teakettle, wiped the spill, and then poured hot water into the teapot. While the tea steeped, we each waited for the other to say something.

  My father’s death was sudden and unexpected. The doctor said it was stress-induced cardiomyopathy, which means that his heart stopped working. I had no idea that he’d had problems with his heart, or that he had been experiencing unusual stress. Almost as sudden as my father’s heart failure was my mother’s transformation from grieving widow to swinging single. It was as if she only allotted herself a couple of weeks to mourn and then, by sheer force of will, moved to the next chapter of her life. She purged Appa’s belongings as though she were meeting a deadline. What was more aggravating was that she wouldn’t let me help, telling me that I would get in the way. Those four garbage bags I had seen outside were the last remnants of my father’s life.

  “What if there’s something in those bags that I wan
t to keep?” I asked.

  “Just junk.”

  “Maybe to you, but I might not think so.”

  “Anything good, I leave for you.”

  And she had left a pile for me. Fancy fountain pens, gold cuff links, and a mound of cashmere sweaters and scarves—all things that had objective monetary value but no sentimental value. The rest she had stuffed into the four extra-strength garbage bags and dragged to the curb for trash pickup.

  “I’m going to just go through them and see—”

  “No!” she said, her voice suddenly sharp. It was a tone she didn’t use often, and it typically would have made me drop the subject. But I was upset, too.

  “What if you missed something? What if there’s something that I want to keep?”

  She turned to me, one hand on her hip, her face taut, as though it were pulled tight by a string. “What? What you looking for?”

  “I don’t know.” But I did know. I was looking for memories, something to remember him by. Something that would reveal how much my father loved me. He had never been very expressive, and even when he was home, he was never really present. What did I hope to find? Homemade cards that he had saved from me, his only daughter? Crayon drawings from kindergarten? Things that he’d accepted with barely a nod of acknowledgment, often not even that—maybe they’d meant more to him than he’d let on?

  Ahma seemed to know, and her expression softened as though the string had been released. “We have picture. Lots of picture.”

  I nodded.

  “He already tell you everything when he was alive. If he don’t tell you . . . you don’t need to know.”

  She was right, the way she was always right. But still, I was his daughter. Shouldn’t I have the right to say goodbye, in some way? But no, she was his wife, his widow, and my mother. She had veto power, and she used it. I felt the unfairness as acutely as I did when I was a child and had no choice but to go to bed, brush my teeth, clean my room, wear the ugly raincoat.

  That evening, I pulled out of her driveway and waved goodbye to Ahma, who stood on the front stoop, solemnly waving back. The stuffed garbage bags beckoned to me from the curbside like four dumpy, forlorn hitchhikers. I drove the twenty minutes to my apartment, brushed my teeth, and changed into my pajamas. I climbed into bed, turned out the light, and stared at the inside of my eyelids for a few hours. I practiced the body-relaxation technique that always worked in yoga class. I focused on relaxing my toes, then my calves, then my knees, and so on, all the way up my body. By the time I got to my eyebrows, I was wide awake and out the door, car keys clutched in my fist.