Free Food for Millionaires (41 page)

“Good night,” Kyung-ah said to her, slipping her arm into the crook of Deaconess Chun’s arm.

They were alone, and unconsciously, Leah paced around the small perimeter of space she’d allowed herself.

“You can sit down,” Charles said.

Leah tucked herself into the seat in the first row where Mrs. Noh, the choir secretary, sat. It made her feel safer to sit in her spot.

“This is where you’re having trouble. . .” He talked to her more kindly, as if she were one of his voice students. He sat up straight on his piano bench, inhaled deeply, then sang, “Hear my cry, hear my cry, save me Lord, in Thy mercy.” Without taking a pause to breathe, he sang the line again.

The words calmed her. His tenor voice was cool, like a cup of well water. For the first time that night, she felt the anxiety of the sinner’s plea—the sinner would understand in his heart that he is undeserving of God’s protection.

“Now, if you. . .” Charles turned his face from the sheet music. Leah was in tears, her face wrapped in her hands, and at that moment, he found her inexplicably beautiful. This wasn’t unusual to witness a soprano crying; both his singer wives wept at the slightest provocation. If he was late coming home, his second wife, crying out of control, would throw the dinner on the floor. His first wife cried when she saw the color periwinkle or smelled lavender. But Charles was surprised to see Leah cry. In the brief time he’d observed her, her stoicism was thoroughly marked in her manner, expression, clothing, and posture.

Charles swallowed. “Are you all right?” he asked. He smiled at her. “You don’t like the way I sing or play Gounod?” This was his first smile since he’d been in the practice room.

Leah didn’t understand his meaning.

“The composer, Charles Gounod,” he said in his respectable French accent. “He was going to be a priest, and he, too, was a choirmaster for over four years. I doubt I will last half that long.” He laughed.

“I’m so sorry.” Leah looked at him, sniffling. She was embarrassed by her emotions. She didn’t know what brought it on exactly.

Charles was right—Leah didn’t cry often, but somehow, when he’d sung just that verse, she had been impossibly moved. But this wasn’t something she could say. Throughout her life, many had praised her singing, appearing startled by the sound that came from her mouth, and in her lifetime, she too had heard a number of voices that had affected her deeply. Yet she herself was unable to put into words the sentiments racing through her heart. Sometimes she wished she could sing back to them. But that would have been insane. Life was not an opera. When she heard a voice like Charles’s or the one on the recording, what she wanted to say was,
I can hear God when you sing.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I shouldn’t sing the solo. I sang last week, and it’s not fair to the others in the choir—”

Charles cocked his head. Singers did not turn down solos. This woman was ridiculous, her selflessness implausible.

“You must understand something: I’m not interested in fairness. And your God doesn’t seem interested in fairness when He gives out talent. I see mediocrity or ambition most of the time. You have talent, but no ambition. That’s why you’re stuck here.”

Leah furrowed her brow, not grasping his meaning.

“Mr. Jun has already explained to me his system of solo schedules. Everyone is pissed. I didn’t miss that today. I will figure out an alternative, but next Sunday is Easter—a big-deal holiday for Christians, as you and I know. And it should have the finest music, don’t you think? And your Mr. Jun is leaving. Shouldn’t we send him off with a nice song? For this Sunday, I expect you to sing because you’re the only voice I can bear right now.” He resented like hell the way singers needed stroking—their bottomless need for confirmation of their gifts. Was he begging a singer to do another solo? Impossible.

“But—”

“Do you object to the song?”

“No, no. It couldn’t be more beautiful. . . but, but—”

“Do you really care that your little soprano buddies are angry with you? The best is always shunned. Do you really care more about approval than about praising your God? Don’t you care at all about Mr. Jun’s last service? I saw you sobbing up there last Sunday when he announced the news.”

“I. . . I—” Leah, who preferred silence over talking, and singing over everything, wished she could say something, but she had no words.

Charles was angry now, because he could tell she still didn’t agree.

“You can’t care about what people say or what people think, dammit.”

“It’s not just that I care what—”

“Don’t be a sheep. You’ve already lost so much. If you’d only fought for your own—”

Leah stared at this man who didn’t know her at all. Why was he saying these horrible things about her life? There was nothing wrong with her life. She was grateful for her hardworking husband who loved her, for her smart daughters, her good health. Her singing was this extra beautiful gift that she’d never expected. And she cared about her friends. Everyone should have a turn. She stared at the red tiles beneath her feet.

“This is why I never work with Koreans. They are so goddamn stuck. You must choose yourself over the group.” Charles said these things, not caring if Leah even understood his meaning. He was angry with his family, with the immigrant communities in New York, even the artists he knew who weren’t Korean who kept on wanting to compromise. An artist, a real artist, couldn’t do that. An artist could not necessarily have the things other people had—a happy marriage, children, a quiet home life, a retirement account, even mental health. These were things that following convention might give you, but most great artists had been denied much of them. Both of his wives had wanted children, but he had told them no, for these very reasons. Charles had no intention of giving up his art to make room for a steady job or crying babies, because to him, a life without music was insupportable. Without it, he would have certainly put the gun in his mouth.

Charles put his head down on the piano. His life of music had been reduced to this basement practice room smelling of kimchi
chi-geh,
where a white-haired housewife who had true talent was reminding him to be fair.

Leah didn’t know what to do. The new director was very upset with her.

“I’ll sing it,” Leah said. “I’ll sing it for Mr. Jun’s retirement on Sunday. And I’ll practice at home,” she continued, hoping the new director would raise his head from the piano and look at her. Perhaps smile again. “It’s just that I didn’t think it was right for me to sing for two Sundays in a row.”

Charles lifted his head and shouted, “Goddamn you! Did you hear anything I said?”

Leah pulled back, her eyes blinking in terror. Joseph had never said anything so awful.

Charles took another breath. “Take the recording from the player and listen to it at home. Listen to her feeling. Think about the words, feel the music. Feel more than you want to. If you want to sing about redemption, you have to recognize the sin.” He didn’t know if she understood him.

Leah got up from her seat. Her hand trembled as she removed the compact disc from the player, and she restored it to its jewel case. She walked quietly to the coat closet to get her things. She opened the door, then turned around to bow. Charles wiped tears from his face with both hands. Leah pretended not to see, wanting to protect his pride. In the church parking lot, the only car was hers, and Leah drove home slowly, wondering where he lived exactly and how far he’d have to travel tonight.

14
HOSPITALITY

C
ASEY FINISHED THE BREAKFAST DISHES
and got dressed for work. She had an hour and a half before she had to be at Sabine’s, but she couldn’t stay home.

Unu didn’t ask why she was leaving early, but Casey told him anyway that she had promised to meet Sabine before work. That wasn’t true, and as she walked toward Madison Avenue, she couldn’t figure out why she had lied to him.

She hated it when she felt sorry for herself and hoped a long walk down Madison might help her lousy mood. The first year of business school was almost over, but she still didn’t have a summer internship with an investment bank, and it was making her feel horrible. Hugh Underhill had said to give him a call if she needed anything, but she hated the idea of asking for help. Most of her friends at school had summer job offers with Internet start-ups, and though Casey had interviewed with a few, nothing was even remotely interesting to her. She couldn’t understand what happened when you stuck a “.com” behind a word or what these companies did. But everyone said that’s where the action was. Also, a lot of the interviewers looked twelve. But she reminded herself that girls with five-figure debts couldn’t be picky, so she had not turned down a summer internship offer from Sklar.com, a market research company. For the past three months, ever since Unu lost his job, her credit card debts had only gotten worse. The debts she’d been paying off steadily had crept up again. As she walked and walked, dressed in one of her Sabine’s getups—hat, dress, and fancy shoes—Casey felt like escaping, but where would she go?

Most of the shops on Madison sold clothes, and strangely, Casey didn’t care to look in them. Everything looked expensive and forbidding. Lately, she’d been revolted by her own clothing expenditures; she was in a perennial state of buyer’s remorse. On the corner of Seventieth Street, she rested at the flashing DON’T WALK sign. A few feet away was a rare-book store.

The box air conditioner propped on the lintel of its front door hummed steadily, dripping water onto the street pavement. Sleigh bells tinkled when she opened the door. From somewhere in the shop, oboes played on the radio. Illustrations from loose book pages, framed handsomely long ago, hung on yellow-painted walls.

An older man wearing a pea green–colored golf shirt greeted her.

“Good morning.” Fluffy white hair seemed to fly about the sides of his otherwise balding head. The frames of his eyeglasses were lapis blue, and the color matched the large face of his wristwatch. He was a very pale man, and the bright spots of blue on his face and wrist made him look younger, almost comic. He was perhaps seventy-five or eighty years old.

“That’s a remarkable hat,” he said. His voice was youthful and warm—it was a happy voice, and Casey felt comforted hearing it.

She touched her cloche—she’d hand-blocked the linen hat herself, sewn small red silk flowers on its left side.

“And your dress. My, my. Tremendous.” His voice was filled with pleasure.

Casey glanced down at her ivory flapper-style dress. It had two crimson lines flowing vertically across the front and back, and draped over her shoulders was a cranberry-colored silk cardigan from a thrift store. On the weekends, her fanciful clothes resembled period costumes nearly.

“Daisy Buchanan,” he said, referring to the coldhearted girl from
The Great Gatsby.

“Yes. I guess so,” she answered. His comment was like a private wink. She hadn’t been aware of it, but he was right. Her hat and dress were things that a character like Daisy might wear. When Casey made up hats, she never thought of herself, but imagined a more interesting woman. It hadn’t occurred to her that she’d dressed like a character from a story. “Well, if she were Korean, that is,” she said, feeling self-conscious.

He looked at her quizzically. “Her ethnicity would hardly matter,” he remarked sternly, as though he wouldn’t back down on this point. “No doubt there must be many Korean Daisys or Beatrices or Juliets.”

Casey blinked, not wanting to disagree with an old man. It seemed disrespectful. Where was Beatrice from? Was it Dante? There was so much she hadn’t read. Jay used to say this often.

“Joseph McReed,” he said cheerfully. “You can call me Joe or Joseph. I answer to both.”

“Oh. . .” She smiled, feeling shy suddenly. He had her father’s first name.

Joseph limped carefully across the hardwood floor with his aluminum walker. He wore faded corduroys and tan-colored Hush Puppies. His left shoe looked far too big for his withered ankle. When he finally reached one of the glass-fronted bookcases, he scanned the spines of the stacked volumes and pulled out a small, fat book. “Yes,” he said, appearing pleased with himself. He pressed the book close to his chest with his long, mottled hands. Casey worried that he might fall over now that his hands were no longer on his walker. Liver spots dotted his creased brow, and the crinkles around his eyes deepened pleasantly when he smiled.

“Look, look.” He waved the book like a child with a toy.

To keep him from having to walk to her, she went to where he stood.

Joseph was grateful for this. He never took any kindness for granted. He moved nearby to his library chair beside his walnut desk, piled high with books and newspapers, and with his right hand motioned her to sit on the wing chair opposite his. Casey glanced at her wristwatch, then sat down. She had some time before catching the train.

Joseph was still holding the book close to his chest, hiding the cover with his two hands as if he were playing peekaboo. He looked at her with great concentration, then sprang the book from his tight embrace.

“You’re going to like this, I bet.” He handed her a copy of
Jane Eyre
wrapped crisply in conservator sheeting.

“Oh. . .” she said with a sigh. She opened the cover, and in it was a three-by-five index card: “1st American Ed., Excellent Condition, sm. ink stain on the back cover. $5,000.”

“That was my favorite book in high school.” She wanted to ask,
How did you know?

His dark green eyes had brown flecks in them. His blond eyelashes were short and feathery, and the papery skin around his eyes were heavily freckled from the sun. Maybe he was even older than eighty. He was much older than her father, but with white people she had a hard time dating them accurately, because they acted more youthful than the Koreans she knew who were about the same age.

“Every bookish girl in the world is Jane Eyre,” he said. “Every girl who wants to be good, anyway.”

“But I’m not bookish,” Casey said. She had read some old books from a short list made up by Mrs. Mehdi, her favorite librarian from the Elmhurst Public Library, and a few that Mary Ellen Currie had recommended over the years, but the problem was that when Casey liked a book, she’d habitually reread the same one. It was hard to explain why she did this exactly, but to her, the books she liked were better on the second and third readings. Virginia Craft had read everything, including Dante in Italian and all those volumes of Proust in French. Jay had read dozens of Shakespeare’s plays. He could recite Shakespeare’s sonnets and chunks of Baudelaire’s poetry. Casey had read only
Hamlet
and
Romeo and Juliet
. And as for poetry, which Ella and Jay adored, she understood almost none of it. She was an econ major, and she had read about twenty Penguin classics on her own without any real instruction as to how to read them. However, she enjoyed hearing her friends’ opinions on books, and she admired how confident they were about their likes and dislikes. When her friends talked about books, she asked lots of questions. Those conversations were like good lessons to her. Her friends who’d gone to private schools and majored in comp lit and English seemed to possess the ideas inside books and felt free to argue with them. Before walking into this bookshop, Casey hadn’t realized just how much she’d coveted her friends’ authority and ease with literature.

Each morning, Casey read the Bible, and on the subway she reread her same books like a little child with a favorite storybook. She was not an intellectual or an aesthete like Virginia; she was more at home in front of a sewing machine or standing behind a counter. At Kearn Davis and at Stern Business School, no one she knew read novels, and at Sabine’s she’d met salespeople who were writers and artists, and they didn’t talk to her, pegging her as a girl who liked to wear over-the-top hats and expensive shoes. And they weren’t wrong, exactly. Many of the people she’d met with Wall Street jobs wanted to possess fancy things, eat in new restaurants, and go away on exclusive trips, and artists she’d known expressed contempt for those things. Casey didn’t feel she belonged in either camp.

She cradled
Jane Eyre
in her hands. Her high school copy of it was somewhere in the middle of her book pile in Unu’s apartment. There was no need for this old book. Yet she wished to put it in her purse, to go through it alone, the way she wished she could stare at a good painting by herself without the bustle of a museum crowd.

Joseph looked at the girl in the hat. She had such a sad expression on her face, and he wanted to make her happy. He closed his eyes and raised his arms dramatically. He waved his hands—hocus-pocus—like a circus magician in the direction of Casey’s handbag.

“In your bag, you have a worn paperback of
Middlemarch
.”

“What?” she said out loud. The zipper of her bag was closed. “How?” she asked.

Joseph burst out laughing, unable to contain himself. “We wait at the same bus stop on the corner of Seventy-second and Lexington. Until last fall, from Mondays through Fridays, you wore office clothes, and on the weekends, you wear sublime hats and extravagant dresses. Nowadays, I don’t see you during the week. But on Saturdays when I see you on the bus, you are always reading. Sometimes I worry that you’ll get hit by a car because you’re not paying attention. This year, you read Thackeray, Hardy, and Eliot. Either you’re a slow reader or you read the same books over and over. Last year, you read
Anna Karenina
for a long time. You’ve read some of the Americans: Cather, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Sinclair Lewis. Nothing past 1945, almost. Almost never anyone French.”

Casey opened her mouth but felt confused as to what to say. Was she in danger?

“I love
Madame Bovary
and
Cousin Bette
,” she said finally, her statement sounding like a question.

“Very fine books,” Joseph said approvingly. He felt energetic. “Though Flaubert is superior to Balzac, of course.” He tipped his head to the side and adjusted his blue eyeglasses.

Casey smiled, not saying anything. She’d read only one book each by those authors.

“But you often return to
Middlemarch
. Last Saturday, you were reading it. I figured you’d probably still be in it.”

“But I never noticed you,” she muttered; then it occurred to her that she might have hurt his feelings. She’d been ignored before in places, and she hated to think she had not paid attention to him. She didn’t feel afraid of him exactly, but this had never happened to her before. She’d never thought of herself as someone to observe.

Joseph sensed her anxiety. “You mustn’t be frightened, dear. I’m a harmless old man. A cripple, really. I’m just nosy about what people read on the bus. My wife, who passed away last year, used to say that my staring was beyond rude. She said it was a sickness, can you believe it?” He giggled. “And you always catch my attention because of your beautiful clothes.”

Casey glanced at her dress and high-heeled Mary Janes. “I look silly, I know. I think this is how I put up with working all the time. To amuse myself and—”

“No, no, dear. Not at all,” he cut her off, seeing that she looked embarrassed, then regretted having done so, because he was, in fact, exceedingly curious about what she did for a living. Was she an actress? “You look lovely. My wife wore the most beautiful hats in the world. It was her great indulgence, and I’m very pleased when I see women wearing them.”

“I. . . I didn’t see you at the bus stop, I can’t remember. . .. You’re right, I am always reading as I wait. I have so little time to read—”

“No one notices old men,” he said, smiling. This was something he’d started to understand in his early sixties: You’d be invited to fewer things, that young people didn’t want to be around you, and middle-aged people didn’t think you had much to offer. What humbled Joseph was that he had been no different when he was a young man.

Casey felt bad. Her oldest friend was Sabine, and she was only in her early forties.

“It’s all right,” he assured her. She wasn’t the kind of girl who’d intentionally snub anyone. “I had plenty of lookers once. Now it’s your turn.” He laughed as though he’d amused himself with a litany of charming memories. Joseph crossed his arms and puffed out his chest in pride.

They both laughed.

“You can have Jane for two thousand five hundred, because you finally walked into my shop. I never thought you would. Daisy has come to my party,” he said.

Casey smiled. She glanced at the yellowing index card and flipped to the back cover. The ink stain was negligible, faded to the color of wine.

“You see, I’m retiring this year, and I’m letting my inventory go slowly,” he said. “I’m closing after Christmas. Seven more months.”

Casey put
Jane Eyre
in her lap. She opened her purse and fished out her copy of
Middlemarch
. Feeling brave all of a sudden, she said, “Isn’t Dorothea Brooke such a fool?”—denouncing Eliot’s main character, whom Casey loved and disliked at the same time.

“Yes. Principled individuals often are,” he said. “But Eliot lets her have it. Dorothea marries old Casaubon. Now he’s the fool! I feel quite sorry for Dorothea. She’s just a young girl who believes too much,” he said. Dorothea’s husband, Casaubon, was a pedagogue who’d spent his life researching a big book that no one would ever read.

“Yes, but Casaubon has his tragedy, too,” she replied. “He had money and work, but not true love. You can’t live without that,” she blurted out.