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  With each mile, I grew more anxious. What if the garbage collectors had already come by? But I knew it was still too early. The sky was black, even the stars had gone to sleep. What if someone else had picked up the bags? I pressed my bare foot down on the accelerator. I turned the corner onto Bernardo Lane, switched off my headlights, and stopped in front of the house where my mother now lived alone. The four bags waited, their bellies sagging like men who had given up hope. I opened the trunk of my car. Was it stealing if they were being discarded? Was it theft if they had once belonged to my father? I felt like a crook, because no matter what it was called, it was wrong. I was directly disobeying my mother’s wishes, even though she had no right to make decisions for me, even though I had a right to mourn. I wanted to dig through my father’s belongings and decide for myself what to keep, what to toss. The truth was, I didn’t want to toss a single thing. The bags were heavy. I wondered how Ahma had dragged them to the curb without ripping them. My pajama T-shirt was damp with sweat by the time I got back into the car and drove away.

  Feeling like a murderer with a body to hide, I dragged one bag a few feet and then the next, continuing that way until I had all four bags in the elevator. The lobby was empty, and I wanted to hurry and get to the safety of my apartment before anyone could see me. I didn’t want to answer any questions. I needed no witnesses to this act of filial disloyalty. Ahma shouldn’t have put me in this situation anyway. What was the big deal? It wasn’t like I was stealing anything from her. It would have all ended up in the trash anyway. So what was the harm?

  But I knew. Even without knowing what it was, I was looking for something that she did not want me to find. I know Ahma too well. She is a cheapskate, a saver. She keeps things because she doesn’t like to spend money unnecessarily and because she doesn’t want to be punished for wasting God’s resources. With my mother, superstition, religion, and conservation are inextricably bound. Her God doesn’t demand prayers before meals or attendance at church but damns those who waste rice and electricity. Ahma should have recycled Appa’s belongings. Instead, she seemed to want to remove all trace of his existence by sending his belongings to the dump. She was upset, maybe even angry, and I suspected that something in those four bloated plastic bags would explain why.

  I loosened the mouth of the first bag. Then the second and the third. Old slacks and books and stained shirts freed themselves and polluted my small apartment with the smell of mothballs, dust, and the stale scent of my father’s aftershave. In the fourth bag was more junk—old pens and papers and toiletries and a large yellow envelope. I bent the metal clasp to open the envelope and peered inside. A soft-cover notebook. A journal of some sort, written in my father’s handwriting. The date of each entry was written in the top-right-hand corner of the pages, which was the only thing I could decipher. The rest of the notebook was written in hangul, Korean characters. This was what I was looking for. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it was important.

  CHAPTER TWO

  After the funeral, Ahma joined a gym, lost ten pounds, got a new haircut, and found a new job. I, on the other hand, gained ten pounds and lost a husband. Louis had filed for divorce.

  Louis and I had already been separated for a year by that time. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment near our old place. It wasn’t far from my parents, although I hadn’t told them that my marriage was falling apart and that I had moved out. They were old fashioned, and to them, a separation would have been shameful, although not as shameful as divorce. Secretly, I hoped that Louis and I could continue the way we were, living apart but legally married. There was no reason to go through with all that paperwork, was there? We had been together so long, and divorce was so final. We still liked each other. Louis knew what a big deal our separation would be for my parents, and he was a sport about it. He even came with me to dinner at my parents’ house occasionally, just to keep up the charade. When I told him that my father had died, he said he would pick me up and we would go to the funeral together. I think I’ll always love him for that.

  After the funeral, Louis drove me to my apartment. We sat in the car together. I felt it then, his longing to comfort me, to soothe me and hold me as I cried. But I just couldn’t. Instead, I thanked him for driving and gave him a peck on the cheek. I ran up to my apartment, closed the door, and cried for everything I had lost.

  That night, some line was crossed. We both knew that we couldn’t go back to the way things were, but only Louis could admit it. Two weeks later, he came by to talk, but my heart wasn’t in it. Then he told me that he was filing for divorce. His timing could have been better, given that my father had just died. But if he hadn’t done it then, we might have continued the way we had been for another decade. Maybe my dad’s sudden death made him realize that we were all running out of time.

  I always sensed that my parents weren’t crazy about Louis, but he was so helpful that they didn’t have the heart to criticize him. He stopped by my parents’ house to fix their clogged sinks, trim tree branches—he even retiled their bathroom floor. They treated him like the son they never had. It wasn’t long before we adapted, acting like brother and sister instead of lovers. We trained ourselves to keep our feelings for each other in check when we were with my parents and, because we spent so much time with them, what had started as an act became reality for us. We started to feel uncomfortable when we were alone together, in our rented house with no distracting pets and no demanding kids. What we felt when it was just the two of us wasn’t the awkwardness of strangers but the lonely quiet of a party after the guests have departed.

  It was already too late by the time we got married. Maybe passion naturally dissipates after a certain period of time for all couples. I assumed with my parents it was just a cultural difference, but maybe time does that to all married couples. Louis and I had been together since our freshman year of college—nearly twelve years—before we decided to get married. But our marriage only lasted five years. Maybe because we’d taken each other for granted for so long, marriage couldn’t consecrate our mundane relationship and transform it into something precious. We had hoped it would infuse our love with passion. We wanted to feel like hormone-charged adolescents. We wanted to be the kind of newlyweds who couldn’t wait to rip off each other’s clothes on our wedding night. Our minds were in sync, but our bodies just weren’t that into it. Whoever said that the brain is the largest erogenous zone has never been in a long-term relationship. We gossiped about the guests, groaned over the toasts, raved over the food. Then we brushed our teeth, flossed, and took off our clothes. He rolled on top of me, we did our thing, and then we pulled our bodies apart and kissed. “That was nice,” he said. I nodded. We held hands and fell asleep.

  Louis and I first met at the Chancellor’s Ball for incoming students. His friends dared him to ask me to dance. “Please don’t laugh in my face,” he pleaded, his face stiff with embarrassment, his mouth like a ventriloquist’s, barely moving.

  I glanced over at the group of guys, who were too obviously trying to be nonchalant, and asked, “A bet?”

  He nodded.

  “Are they betting I’ll say yes or no?”

  “Definitely no.”

  “If I say yes, what’s in it for you?”

  He held my eyes and said, “A case of Heineken. And if I’m lucky, maybe your phone number?”

  We drank the beer that night with his friends.

  Although he didn’t believe it, Louis was the first boy I ever slept with. “But you’re so hot,” he murmured in my ear as he slipped his hands underneath my paisley-print blouse. “Your dad must have a shotgun.” In truth, it was Ahma, not Appa, who kept me from dating throughout most of high school. With the exception of the Homecoming Dance and prom my senior year, I spent most of my Saturday nights during high school watching television with her while Appa worked late or went out with his friends. I always got a weekend synopsis from my best friend, Janine, who had no curfew and lots more fun.

 
I never actually told my parents that I was dating Louis. They met him for the first time at college graduation, after we had been dating for almost four years.

  “This is Louis,” I said.

  My father nodded as his eyes scanned the crowd for something more interesting. My mother smiled and extended her hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Loudeese,” she said.

  About a year ago, Louis started to talk about things that didn’t interest me, like life and legacies, ambitions and desires. When he started to rant and rave about the overpriced real estate market or the lack of affordable health care, a coffee cup or a bottle of beer in his hand, I wanted to flee the room. It wasn’t what he was saying but what it meant. He was looking to the future, and I wasn’t ready. We started to do something that we almost never did. We fought. At least it was a version of fighting, with him yelling at me and me looking away and trying not to get mad, trying not to engage him in an argument. It was a communication style I had learned from my parents, who never argued or kissed in my presence. It’s what he eventually threw in my face, my “disengagement” from our relationship. I tried to avoid a squabble and ended up with a divorce.

  California law has a six-month waiting period, so our divorce won’t be final until mid-October, another three months. After we separated last year, Louis traveled around the world for six weeks. When he returned, he called to tell me that he was training to be a financial analyst. I laughed when I heard this.

  “You must be the only person on the planet who goes soul-searching in India and discovers his inner capitalist.”

  “It was time to start thinking about the future.”

  “So you decided to be a stockbroker?”

  “It’s a financial-services company, not a brokerage. Anyway, it’s practical. Did you think I would be a slacker my entire life?”

  That stung. Maybe he hadn’t meant to take a dig at me, but we both knew that I was not living up to my potential by working as a part-time bookkeeper. I stared at the peeling paint on the bedroom walls. For the first time, I noticed that the white walls had gradually faded and aged until they were now a sickly yellow.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yeah, I do. It makes me feel like I have a purpose in life.”

  I didn’t tell him that I thought it was pathetic that his purpose in life was to teach people what to do with their money. It was even more pathetic that our marriage had failed to give him the purpose that the stock market now did.

  I’ve always considered Louis to be my first boyfriend, although I guess technically, he may not have been. I went to two dances with Jim during my senior year in high school. Jim was on the football team and scored the most touchdowns in the history of Green Hills High. But I never saw him play, since I never went to any football games. I didn’t think he was particularly smart or funny, but he liked me for some reason, and that was reason enough for me to say yes when he asked me to the Homecoming Dance. If I am completely honest with myself, maybe I was flattered that I’d bested the blonde cheerleaders who suddenly seemed to notice that I existed. We didn’t really date, since Ahma didn’t allow me to go out at night unless it was a special occasion. It was a bit of a mystery why he chose to ask me to the two biggest dances of the year, since I didn’t offer him much. I allowed him only a quick peck on the cheek after the Homecoming Dance, and a quick peck on the lips after the senior prom.

  But I learned something about Jim and the nature of attraction at a party that took place the summer after graduation. Ahma let me go after Janine begged her, promising to have me home before midnight. The party was supposed to be a big one, since Megan, the girl who was hosting it, had an older sister who went to Saint Vincent’s, the nearby Catholic high school. The girls who went to Saint Vincent’s had a reputation for being wild, and that ensured a large turnout from the Green Hills boys.

  I was mildly surprised to see friends from school brazenly drinking beer from bottles and pulling on joints. Of course I knew that this happened, but it was one thing to hear about what happened at parties and another to actually experience it. Jim was at the party, standing in the kitchen with his best friends, Walter and Greg. They were chatting up a few girls from Saint Vincent’s. The girls wore high heels, with tight jeans and halter tops. Jim seemed to have a particular interest in a girl with waist-length black hair and an olive complexion. She was the only other Asian at the party. I felt the color rush to my cheeks. All this time, I had thought that Jim liked me, when it turned out that he just liked Asian girls. Janine glanced over at me with a stricken expression, and I was touched by her empathy. My humiliation didn’t end there. Later, after a lot of people had left, and long after the time Janine had promised my mother she would have me home, we were sitting on the couch in the living room when Walter came storming into the room with an excited grin. “Jim is doing it with that Chinese girl upstairs!” The room fell silent and everyone looked at me. I stared at the table and took a sip of the cola I had been nursing all evening. Then we heard it. A rhythmic thumping sound and breathless yeah, babys. Janine sprang from the couch and raced upstairs. We could hear her pounding on the door, screaming profanities at Jim and the “slut” with no shame who had so easily replaced me.

  Louis was the polar opposite of Jim, which may be why it wasn’t difficult for me to trust him. While I let Jim kiss me only twice, I never felt like I needed to draw boundaries so firmly with Louis. He was sensitive to ambiguities, able to tolerate indecision. Louis wanted to be a working musician, and he rationalized that even if he didn’t make it big, at least he’d be doing what he loved. Making money didn’t matter the way making music did. He picked up some web-design work because we still had to eat and pay the rent. But I think that no matter what he said—all that garbage about doing what he loved and not trying to be a rock star—he did think he was going to make it. Maybe he wouldn’t be the next Bono, but he thought that he could make a decent living somehow if he kept at it long enough.

  The years passed, and one by one, our friends from college traded in their instruments and paintbrushes for luxury cars and mortgages. But not us, and it was okay for a while. It didn’t feel like we were slackers. We were romantics, idealists. They were sellouts, but not us. It doesn’t feel that way anymore, now that Louis has abandoned his dream, and me.

  My relationship with my soon-to-be ex-husband is pleasant now, but I can’t say that we are best friends. We don’t see each other much, which is less painful than I would have thought if I had ever thought about it when we were together. Now, when we talk, it’s a brief phone conversation about the logistics of dissolution, legal paperwork, items to return, sorting bits of this and that from our nearly two decades together. The conversation is stilted, and we are as polite as strangers.

  He’s called me tonight to tell me that he found my social security card in one of his coat pockets. I’m not sure how it ended up there, but I’m not surprised. Our lives were so intertwined that it will be a while before we are really separated. I can still smell his scent when I pull on a sweater that I haven’t worn in a while, and he undoubtedly still finds long black strands of my hair on his shirts.

  “Are things still good at work?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Great.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  In the silence, I can visualize his annoyed expression. If we were still living together, he would taunt, “Why don’t you tell me what you really think?” He might have even called me an emotional coward. But there is no point anymore.

  “Have you found a new place yet?” I ask. The last time we spoke, Louis told me that he was sick of renting, that he was thinking of buying.

  “Yeah, sort of,” he says, and then he stops. In his pause, I realize that he is seeing someone else. It’s been well over a year since we separated, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Still, I pray he won’t say anything more so that we can go on pretending. I need to, even if he doesn’t.

  “How is your mom?” he finally asks, and I t
hink of how decent he is, how kind. The failure of our marriage is nobody’s fault.

  “Fine.”

  “Good. Tell her I say hello.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  At the beginning of May, my landlord gave me notice that he was planning to convert the apartment building into condominiums. He said that I could stay until construction started, on a month-to-month basis, and he offered to let me purchase one of the units at an astronomical price. My mother made me a better offer.

  “You stay with me,” she said. “House is too big now. You can save money.”

  I knew her offer meant not only that I could stay rent-free but that I wouldn’t have to pay a dime in expenses, including groceries. This was a financial lifeline. Paying rent had been a huge strain on my budget. But I also knew that when Ahma said, “You stay with me,” she meant me and Louis. She thought we were still living together. I hadn’t yet told her about the separation. When she suggested that Louis and I could take the more spacious master bedroom and she would take my old room, I had to come clean. Sort of.

  “It’s just a break. For a little while,” I lied.

  “No divorce,” she said. It was not a question but a statement in need of confirmation.

  “No, not a divorce.”

  “Okay,” she said, then added, “I keep master bedroom.”

  I know I’ll have to tell her someday, but I can’t do it now. It’s too soon, for both of us. My mom is the only one left for me, as I am for her.

  It would be different if I had a sibling, someone with whom I could share the experience of being in a family, our family. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so alone.