The Queen of Tears (18 page)

He smiled and stepped out of the car. “Remember what I said about the adventurous man. But I should not remind you. You will remember soon enough. You are my romantic love.”

The car drove off. Soong did not look back.

When Soong arrived in Hawaii three days later after a stormy flight that scared her to death, she called Henry from the airport. Henry and the two children were in Fresno, California waiting for her arrival. After she hung up the phone, she couldn’t really remember what had just been said. She faintly remembered complaining about the flight, asking about the children, and telling Henry how much she loved and missed him, but the last several days had left her so tired and disoriented that her mind was terribly cloudy. She had to focus. She was in a foreign airport with foreign symbols she could not understand. As she aimlessly looked for the gate for her connecting flight to California, something that Henry had said over the phone suddenly popped into her head. “I have this great idea for a business,” he said. “Let’s invest in the farming industry. Food will be a great investment. Everyone has to eat, right?”

He had also told her about all the grapes in Fresno. Grapes. If she and Henry had children, she would be glad to be around a city of grapes. Yes, investing in grapes would be a great idea. So there she was, conscious of the fact that she simply and perhaps falsely assumed, like millions before her, most of whom had been way worse off than her, so they had been more susceptible to the illusion, that life got simpler on American soil.

TURBULENCE

chapter seven

-1-

W
HEN Henry and Soong had gone on their third secret date, Henry had told her about how he was in the second wave that invaded Normandy Beach. He never once described himself as brave or courageous, instead he used the word “lucky” at least a dozen times. Through the sides of his eyes, he’d seen his companions fall, each one shooting or oozing fluids where no fluids should come out. One of his friends, a Private Jonah Smiley, whom they called “Rabbit” because he was the quickest, fastest, and most athletic in the company during basic, had his head disintegrated. There were no lasers or space weapons in the 1940s, but Henry had seen it. His friend’s head disintegrated, leaving behind nothing but a shattered helmet and Army fatigues stuffed with dead flesh. Not even a mist of blood was left, or at least Henry hadn’t seen one.

Now, thirty years after this first date, Soong thought about the story again. In fact, whenever she was not satisfied with how her life was going, she thought about poor Private Smiley, the unlucky rabbit. To make matters worse, Private Smiley had a pregnant wife waiting for him back in Idaho. Henry had shaken his head when he told the young Soong the story, and the older Soong shook her head now as she thought about it.

Life was unfair. It was unfair to her because she had been born poor, her first husband died, she hadn’t had the time to raise her children, she was practically exiled from her country, she lost a half a million dollars in bad investments, her children, especially her daughter, suffered in her absence, her second husband died, and her children continued to suffer perhaps because of the unfairness that had plagued her life years before. Life was unfair, but not as unfair as it was to “Rabbit” and his wife and child back home. No, she knew she was luckier than that. And besides, what was fair? Everyone hopes that their lives will turn out like a fairy tale or movie, and if it falls short of that, then life is unfair. Yes, Soong thought, hope makes life unfair.

As Soong unpacked in her new apartment, she looked out the window. Her heart went out to the Smiley family. She thought about the unborn Smiley child, who would be in his fifties now, and it made her sad. But she also missed Henry Lee; she missed her husband. He’d had a way of making her feel better with his tragic stories and his unbending refusal to take life seriously. She missed his irresponsibility. She was all about responsibility, and so she lacked balance without him.

Things were looking bad for her family. Her son, Chung Yun, or “Donny,” as everyone else called him, was still estranged from his wife. He was drinking heavily, and sometimes he would pick her up ten minutes before their shift would start, so they would arrive at W & D late. Her crazy daughter-in-law, Crystal, was still staying with Won Ju, Kenny, and Brandon. Soong wasn’t fooled. She knew Kenny lusted for Crystal, as she knew most men would. Won Ju, also aware of this, was coming closer and closer to separating from her husband. Brandon was becoming even more quiet and distant, reminding Soong of a young, hating Chung Yun. It was ironic. The more Brandon hated his uncle, the more he was becoming like him.

As for Darian, the girl who had once been Soong’s hope, she rarely showed up. Instead she sat around drinking coffee all day, talking about working, talking about school, talking about living, but evidently doing none of these things.

Since her husband’s death, Soong obsessed over her own mortality, and as she thought about her legacy, she felt as if she’d failed. It could’ve all gone better. Unlike young “Rabbit,” she was given a chance, but perhaps because she had not been around when her children were young, they never grew up, especially her son.

There was still so much to do. Stacks of brown boxes waited to be opened. Suitcases filled with clothes waited to be hung. And bags of groceries waited to be unpacked. She looked around the small, one-bedroom apartment, and was painfully reminded of that big, brown house in Korea with the garden, fishpond, and grapevines in the back, wondering if even today Chung Han waited for her return.

She had gone back once. Just once. It had been 1973: The Year of the Ox. Her daughter Darian had just been born in a sea of green grapes. She was born in Fresno, California, where acres of grape vineyards lined up in rows. So many grapes. Too many grapes. It had been an unwise investment. So almost a half a million dollars poorer, Soong Lee returned to South Korea because it was the only place where she knew how to make money. And again, in her quest for fortune she felt was necessary, her children were left behind.

Surprisingly, her decision to return had been met with little resistance from the dishonorably discharged ex-Army captain, Henry Lee. He didn’t want her to go, but he knew she needed to go. Henry Lee was never the type of man to keep people away from their needs. It was because he’d kill before anyone could keep his from him. Henry always had that kind of open-mindedness, that objectivity which would’ve driven lesser women crazy. But Soong loved that easy-going way about him, perhaps because it was so unfamiliar to her, and perhaps because she was confident that he’d always love her, but didn’t need to flex his jealousy muscles to show it.

Stripping open one of the many brown boxes, Soong came across a picture of Henry. It was a black-and-white eight-by-twelve, framed with tarnished gold trimming. He was wearing his dress uniform, hat and all, and wearing that look of easy confidence. He looked completely happy with himself, but didn’t pose with an arrogant smile to prove it. Soong sighed and pulled out the photo albums beneath the picture.

If he had known her plan, he probably would have put up more of a fight. She told him a half-truth. She’d said that she had a friend in South Korea who was going to invest in a high-class restaurant in Seoul and that friend wanted her to run it. She also planned to do some acting. This was true. However, she did not tell him who the friend was, and Henry being Henry, he didn’t ask. Maybe he knew, but didn’t want to hear it. His years in Military Intelligence had probably taught him how to put away information that would make him emotionally involved. But Soong didn’t know if he knew her friend was her ex-lover, Moon Chung Han.

She looked in the albums. They were filled with pictures of the children when they were young. Most of the photos had been taken by someone else besides her. She closed the albums and put them back in the box. She stepped away from the boxes and walked to the small kitchen. She unloaded the groceries into the refrigerator. She thought about her grandson Brandon as she loaded wonbok kimchee, hotdogs, ketchup, dijon mustard, two Japanese pears, and a papaya into the refreshingly cold box. She would never get used to Hawaii’s humidity.

After unpacking her groceries, Soong decided to go three floors down to see if her grandson was back from school. He was a high-schooler now, attending the same high school as his father did. Punahou, the expensive private school that Won Ju hated. It was almost the end of his first year, and he didn’t talk about it much. He seemed almost suspicious of his family, like they were trying to catch him doing something wrong.

Soong waited for the elevator. She hated elevators. In heaven, which she did not believe in, elevator doors opened as soon as you pressed the button. Her awareness that her mortality clock was ticking, and there were things to fix, gave her little patience for waiting for elevators. Just as she felt she would scream, the little orange light went off, and the doors opened.

Soong entered the elevator and stood uncomfortably as two local teenagers, a girl wearing denim shorts and a red halter-top and a boy wearing a blue tank top and red surf shorts stood in an embrace. The colors of clothing pressed together with the bodies, but did not mix. The color purple was once again elusive for Soong. When the doors opened to her daughter’s floor, she gratefully stepped out of the elevator, and headed for the apartment, knowing that no one was home. Won Ju was at work with Crystal. Kenny was also at work. It was only two o’clock, and school didn’t get out for another half an hour, so Brandon was also not home. But she still had the key. She could wait. Donny wouldn’t pick her up for work for another two and a half hours, if he’d actually be on time. She knew her grandson avoided her too, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to make sure the child was not hungry. Food concerning her grandchild had become a fixation with her. She always felt that the tall, lanky boy was not getting enough to eat. She disliked hotdogs, ketchup, and dijon mustard, but Brandon liked these things, and they sat in the refrigerator on the unlikely chance that she’d be able to prod him up to her new apartment once in a while.

Soong looked for the appropriate key on her key chain. So many keys. One for her new apartment, one for her daughter’s apartment, one to get into the apartment building, three for the restaurant, and one small one for her jewelry box upstairs. She found the key and opened the door.

Someone had closed all the windows and drapes. The heat was stifling, but she heard the air conditioning. Like when she had gotten off the airplane months before, the humidity slapped her in the face. She swore under her breath and gently closed the door. As she walked towards the windows, she heard music coming from the door of Won Ju and Kenny’s bedroom. She listened closely. It was that new, infuriating music: rap. She hated rap. So much anger, and absolutely no melodic quality. But she didn’t suppose the music was made for sixty-year-old Korean women.

She walked to the windows, thinking it odd that either Won Ju or Kenny was home. The air conditioner must’ve just been turned on, she thought. The cool air jetted out of the vents on the ceiling, but the only cold pocket was directly underneath the vent. She walked to the pocket and stood there, despite her hatred for air conditioners.

Not finding the cool, chemical air satisfying, Soong walked again to the windows. After opening the windows and drapes, she stuck her head out the window to feel a breeze. No breeze came. The air was unmoving atmosphere which seemed to hold heated moisture in every atom. The trees way down on the sidewalks stood unflinching. No leaves seemed to be moving. As Soong tortured her fear of heights by looking down at the trees, she heard laughter. The laugh was unrecognizable to her. For a moment she stood still in terror, imagining a rap-listening young man behind the door looting the room. Then she heard another laugh. It was the laugh of a woman she recognized. She could recognize Crystal’s laugh easily, because it seemed to her that the silly girl was always laughing. It was a throaty, unbridled laugh that was loud but not oppressive. She didn’t hate the laugh, just that it came out too often. But this laugh was a little bit different. It was a sex laugh. Soong frowned and walked to the phone.

She dialed the number for W & D. Darian answered the phone. “Darian,” she asked in Korean, “where’s your sister?”

“Mom, she’s in the back grilling meat. Do you want me to get her?”

“Where’s Crystal?”

“She called in sick. I’m here for her. Do you want me to get Won Ju?”

“No, I’ll call back later.”

Soong hung up the phone. It was that whore Crystal. She’d brought someone over. Did marriage mean nothing to that girl, despite the lack of love or flawed reasons for getting into it? You don’t have to like marriage, Soong thought, but you have to respect it. You must always respect promises no matter how ill-advised. Crystal’s disrespect for marriage went so far as to use her hosts’, a married couple’s, bed, for her sordid affairs. The heat in the room somehow got into her, and she decided to go back to her apartment. There was little she could do. Besides, a part of her was glad it seemed to be ending so quickly. The slow death of a thing is very troubling to watch.

But as she reached for the doorknob, another thought occurred to her. Why here? Was Crystal that insane? Surely she would go to the man’s place. Unless the man was married. It wouldn’t surprise her. Could a married man take his mistress to his house? Well, anything seemed possible to Soong; many American wives worked too now. In her day, in her circle, it had been done more appropriately. Maybe to restaurants that the wives never went to, then a hotel. She never would’ve dreamed of going to Moon Chung Yun’s wife’s home. That’s right, she thought, I had an affair with a married man.

Then her ears began to throb with heat. Her ears were so hot that even the hot air in the apartment seemed to cool them a little, keeping them from bursting into flames. It was a married man, and they were at his home. His wife’s home. It was Crystal and Won Ju’s no-good husband. Won Ju would hear about this. Soong walked towards the door to return to her apartment. Before she could open it, images of her daughter raced through her mind. The unborn fetus in her womb that she’d never seen, but had imagined eating plump, purple grapes. The quiet little round-faced girl who’d used to watch things patiently, waiting as if a plot twist in seemingly insignificant events were always about to occur. The angry teenager, who’d yelled at her mother for the first and last time when she’d found out that Soong was leaving Fresno and returning to Korea alone. The broken young woman in Las Vegas, whose quiet state scared Soong far worse than any hateful yelling she could hear from any soul on earth. The young bride, who seemed recovered, but not fully so. The young mother, who, after the birth of her son, seemed glued together by the process. No, Soong would not walk out of that door. She would find Kenny and Crystal behind it in bed and kill them with her shrieking voice. They would shatter like glass.

Soong walked to Brandon’s bedroom. She wanted to make sure he wasn’t home. Finding his room empty, his bed neatly made, she walked to the master bedroom. The music, which sounded like pulsating gibberish to Soong, still played. She gripped the doorknob and sighed. She waited a few seconds, preparing, it seemed to her, for an acting scene, then she opened the door and stormed in. Crystal was dancing naked at the foot of the bed while Brandon lay on his stomach with his hands resting under his chin. Soong ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

-2-

When Won Ju got home, she was surprised to see that no one was there. Crystal had said she was sick earlier in the morning, and several hours later, Punahou had called to inform her that Brandon was going home sick and he was being picked up by his aunt. She didn’t expect Kenny home yet. He’d been coming home later and later over the last few weeks, saying it was work or telling her he was taking Donny out. Maybe a few years before, this would have caused suspicion, but at this point in their marriage, Won Ju found herself not even caring. Often, she’d rush to bed early, just so she could enjoy the bigger area of cold sheets, and think about how many thousands of generations it took to produce Kenny Akana, and how it was such a waste of time.