Shelter (2 page)

“Four,” he whispers, retreating behind Gillian again. She makes no effort to stop him, which they've discussed in the past. The boy is shy because they coddle him.

“What a gorgeous child,” Gertie says agreeably. “Biracial children are always so beautiful. The best of both parents, I think. You two are what? Chinese and Irish?”

“Korean,” he corrects.

Gertie quickly depletes her reserves of small talk and asks for a tour, which they start in the living room. Gillian takes the lead and tries to point out the nicer features of the house, describing even the smallest things too cheerfully, as if the person she needs to convince is herself. Kyung brings up the rear, occasionally stealing a peek over Gertie's shoulder as she jots down notes in a leather-bound legal pad. The brick fireplace in the living room receives a check-plus, along with the bay window, the wood floors, and the size of the adjoining dining room. The kitchen appliances, the worn carpets on the second floor, and the water stains in the bathroom all receive a check-minus. Pantry and garage, check-plus. Wet basement and old boiler, check-minus. He isn't insulted so much as impressed by the skill and speed with which she catalogs the good and bad. Gertie sees dollars, not disappointment, which is exactly what he needs right now.

After the tour, they sit down at the kitchen table while Gertie removes a manila folder from her briefcase. The label on the tab reads
MCFADDEN
—Gillian's last name, not his.

“I pulled up some sales data on comparable houses in the neighborhood.” She flips through a few sheets of paper, frowning as if she left something behind at the office. “Of course, you know the market's down right now.”

Under the table, Gillian taps nervously on Kyung's leg. Get to the point, he thinks. Get to the point already.

“I'd say your biggest selling point is the neighborhood. The taxes are a little high here, but you're in an excellent school district, and the commute to Boston is pretty reasonable. As for the house…”

He wants to cut her off and tell her about their plans. They had so many of them—a new kitchen, a sunroom, replacement windows, and a deck—but what does it matter now? It's obvious they couldn't afford to do any of it. That's the hesitation he hears in her voice.

“… the house could use a fair amount of remodeling. And that boiler will have to be replaced soon, which won't be cheap. Ah, here it is.” Gertie pulls out a piece of paper from the bottom of the stack and adjusts her reading glasses. “I'd probably suggest a list price of three hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. Maybe you could go as high as three ninety if you're not in a hurry to move, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that route.”

It doesn't matter what she would or wouldn't recommend. Even the higher price is less than what they hoped for, less than what they owe. Kyung forgets himself for a moment and rests his forehead in his hands. This is exactly why he put off the meeting for so long.

“I'm sorry. Is that not what you expected to hear?”

He can't quite bring himself to answer the question. Although he knew Gertie wouldn't be able to save them, at the very least, he thought she might throw them a rope.

Gillian sends Ethan into the living room and tells him to turn on the TV. “Can we be completely honest with you?” she asks.

“If you expect me to sell your house, you shouldn't be anything but.”

“Well”—she picks at a line of dirt under her nail—“we're kind of embarrassed about this, but you might as well know … my husband and I refinanced at the height of the market and took cash out against our mortgage, so we actually owe the bank about four hundred and eighty thousand for this place.”

The books and Web sites that Gillian always asks him to read refer to this state as “underwater” or “upside down”—terms he actively dislikes. It's bad enough that everything in the house keeps breaking. He doesn't need to imagine himself drowning too.

“So it's a short sale,” Gertie says. Her expression gives away nothing. “They're much more common these days. The trick is getting your bank to take a loss on the difference between what you owe them and what you can sell for.”

Her matter-of-fact tone should encourage him, but it doesn't. He already knows their bank won't agree to a loss unless they fall behind on their payments. By some sort of miracle, they haven't yet, although they're behind on everything else. Gertie fails to mention that a short sale would be disastrous to their credit rating, almost as bad as a foreclosure. No one would be willing to lend to them for years. Kyung can't stand the idea of being reduced to a renter at his age, asking a landlord for permission to paint a room or hang up some shelves. He was raised to believe that owning a home meant something. Losing a home like this—that would mean something too.

“An alternative to selling now is renting this place out until the market picks back up. You could easily get twenty-five hundred a month, maybe even as much as three thousand.” Gertie turns to him. “Would you have somewhere else to go if I found you a good tenant? I actually know of a couple. They're relocating to the area and want to get acclimated for a year before they buy.”

They do have a place to go, a place that makes sense financially, but it would wreck him to exercise the option, to explain why he had to. His parents live three miles away, just past the conservation land that separates their neighborhood from his own. As Gillian keeps pointing out, they have plenty of space, they could live there rent-free, and it's what his parents wanted all along—to spend more time with their grandson. He just can't imagine living any closer to them than he already does.

“Kyung's parents own a six-bedroom up the hill,” Gillian says.

“Marlboro Heights.” Gertie is impressed. “Well, this will be perfect, then. I'll call my clients and schedule a showing the next time they're in town.”

The conversation is moving ahead without him. Kyung hasn't even committed to the idea of renting yet, and already, Gertie and Gillian are making plans.

“How do you know these people will even want to rent our house? What if they don't like it?”

“What's not to like?” Gertie stands up and walks to the kitchen window. “Second to Marlboro Heights, this is the best neighborhood in town. And look at this view. Trees as far as the eye can see.”

Their backyard abuts twenty-six acres of pine and spruce. The locals on both sides of the conservation land refer to it as the “green wall.” It was the feature Gillian fell in love with when they first started house hunting, that sense of being surrounded. The three-bedroom colonial was at the top of their price range, but he could tell how much she wanted it, and he wanted it for her. Now their decision is ruining them. He shakes his head and glances at Gertie, who hasn't said a word since she turned toward the window. Her eyebrows are angled sharply into a frown, and her mouth is open as if she means to speak, but can't.

“Is something wrong with the yard?” he asks.

Slowly, she lifts her finger and taps on the glass. “I think that woman out there—I think she might be naked.”

Kyung and Gillian gather around the window, craning to see what she does. Their backyard is empty except for the swing set and clothesline. The neighbors' yards too—all empty. He looks out toward the overgrown field of weeds and wildflowers where their property line ends and the conservation land begins. Kyung's eyesight isn't what it used to be, but when he squints, he thinks he can see someone wading through the tall grass.

“Is she actually naked?” he asks.

Gillian leans in closer, fogging the glass with her breath. “Jesus, Kyung. I think that's Mae.”

He narrows his eyes, trying to sharpen the blur of lines and colors coming at them. The woman's hair is black like his, but with the sun parked behind a cloud, he can't make out her face. It's not her, he thinks. She's limping. Mae doesn't have a limp.

“You two know this person?” Gertie asks.

“I think it might be Kyung's mother.”

He continues staring as the woman approaches, holding one hand over her breasts, and the other over her privates. Neither hand can obscure what Kyung realizes is not an optical illusion, not some crude misunderstanding of distance and light. His mother is completely naked.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I don't understand.…” Half of him wants to tear out of the house, but the other half wants to salvage the meeting by making up excuses. “She hasn't been well lately. She's … forgetful, I guess you'd call it.”

“My mother had Alzheimer's too,” Gertie says. “It's a sad way of losing someone. Why don't I leave you two alone now?” She collects her papers and puts them back in the folder. “When I hear from my clients, I'll give you a call.”

Kyung restrains himself, clutching the back of his chair as Gillian tries to show her out, but Gertie stops just before she reaches the door.

“I know you probably hate the idea of renters in here. Most people in your situation do, but it might not be the worst thing in the world to spend more time with your parents right now. I wish I had.”

Mae is fifty-six years old. She doesn't have Alzheimer's. She doesn't have anything. But Kyung doesn't bother to correct her because dementia is the only reasonable explanation for what she's done. As soon as Gertie leaves, he runs out the back door toward the field, the same way he did when he saw Ethan turning blue at a neighbor's birthday party. He was choking on a piece of candy, a thumb-sized chocolate that he wasn't supposed to eat. Kyung was terrified at first, and angry later. Now he feels the full force of both. He rips a beach towel from the clothesline, and a plastic pin snaps off and hits him in the face, missing his eye by almost nothing.

The grassy field comes up to his knees, littered with things that he never noticed from a distance. Everywhere he steps, there's broken glass and pieces of metal and thick patches of thistle that sting and scrape his legs. Even if the ground were free of obstacles, he wouldn't look up. He can't. His mother is so conservative, so timid about her body. She's never even worn a bathing suit. He doesn't understand how that woman became this one. As they meet near the middle of the field, Kyung turns his head and hugs her with the towel, covering the parts of her that he doesn't want to see.

“What?” he shouts. But his thoughts are too scattered to finish the question. “
Why?
”

Mae's face is filthy. Her skin is covered with dark brown streaks. He worries that it's excrement, a possibility no stranger than wandering naked from her house to his.

“Where are your clothes?”

Mae's expression doesn't change, not even when he shouts the question just inches from her ear.

“Help,” she says, followed by something in Korean—so low, he can barely make out the words.

“English. Speak English. I can't understand you.”

“Help,” she repeats.

“I'm
trying
to.” He pulls the towel around her tighter, embarrassed by the sight of Mae so diminished, wrapped in hot pink sea horses and neon green stripes. “Where's Dad? Can we call him to come get you? Can he bring you some clothes?”

“Aboji ga dachi shuh suh.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“Aboji ga dachi shuh suh.”

Korean is no longer the language he speaks with his parents. They retired it from use years ago, when Kyung was just a child. Like a dog, he sometimes recognizes the sounds of certain words, but doesn't always grasp their meaning.
Aboji ga …
your father?
Dachi shuh suh …
hurt me? Your father hurt me? The air catches in his lungs as the question forms a statement, and suddenly everything forgotten is familiar again. He turns Mae's face toward his, gently lifting her chin until he notices the bruises. Two in the center of her throat. Eight more fanning out on the sides of her neck. Fingerprints. When he backs away, the towel slides off her shoulders and falls to the ground, but Mae doesn't reach for it or even cover herself with her hands. She just stands there, trembling as he takes in everything that he missed before. The scratches on her arms and breasts. The bloody patches where her pubic hair has been ripped out. Bruises everywhere. Bruises again.

Behind him, the kitchen door squeaks open and bangs shut.

“Is she all right, Kyung? What's going on?”

As Gillian approaches, his mother buries herself in his arms and starts to cry, but it's like no cry he's ever heard before. She wails, long and low, like a wounded animal that any decent man would have the sense to kill.

*   *   *

One of the paramedics asks if Mae speaks English. Kyung insists that she does—she's fluent, he tells them—but she keeps screaming at all of them in Korean. Twice, she lurches up to a sitting position on the gurney and rips the oxygen mask off her face. When the paramedics try to strap her down, she fights them both, throwing punches as if she's gone wild. Kyung has never seen his mother act like this before. She's not the type to resist. He rests his hand on her shoulder, startled by the temperature of her skin, which is burning hot.

The female paramedic covers Mae with a thin, crackly sheet that looks like tinfoil. “Don't touch her,” she warns. “She has frostbite.”

“But it's June. And it was warm this morning.”

“But it was raining last night,” she snaps. “Those blisters forming around her ankles? That's trench foot. She was probably out in the woods since yesterday.”

The woman doesn't try to hide that she blames Kyung for what happened. He bristles at this, the idea that he's somehow responsible, or irresponsible.

“My father did this. She told me, right before I called you. She said, ‘Your father hurt me.'”

The woman glances at her partner as he prepares an IV line. When he finishes inserting the needle into Mae's arm, he knocks on the sliding glass door that separates them from the driver.