Drifting House by Krys Lee

Author:Krys Lee [Lee, Krys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101571972
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

By fall, you agree to meet your wife. You washed as best you could, shaved, shined your shoes and briefcase, and while strolling through the department store sprayed yourself with a sample of Ralph Lauren Polo cologne. You almost look presentable. You had come to the designated café in a gentler neighborhood of Seoul braced to finesse, to persuade, to argue if necessary. But you lose confidence as soon as Jayeong arrives. Those are wild, uncertain eyes, desperate for change. She has even armed herself with the children, dressed in their Sunday finery, which you had not prepared for.

Yoona hangs back shyly, but on command pecks your cheek. Afterward, she darts back as if afraid of you. “Appa,” she says, “your eyes are red and you smell funny.”

You clutch her palm but still feel stained with the stench of the streets. As you present Yoona with pink delphiniums, you say, “That’s because Appa’s been up all night picking these for you.”

“When things are better for you, you can give Yoona flowers anytime.” Your wife’s voice is brisk and vigilant. “We’re ready to come back anytime, really anytime you want.”

“Visit?” Yoona pulls at her lace collar as if to tear it. “No more visits! Let’s all go home!”

But you know that there is no home to return to, and Jayeong is right to have made up her mind. There are the remaining assets and the children to protect. When your wife rises, it seems impossible that you once knew her body so well.

Along with the divorce papers, she presses an envelope into your ­hands—money, as you knew it would ­be—and though you will regret it later, you throw her charity at her. It slaps her chest and falls, scattering King Sejong’s somber face across the floor like nightclub advertisements.

Her arms tremble; as she picks up the money, you flounder in your dark thoughts. The children have gone so still and quiet, they do not seem like children.

You tug at the top button on your jacket until it comes off in your hand.

“You need it more than we do,” she says.

“Don’t make me pathetic!”

Your agitated hands knock down the house of sugar cubes that Jeongmin has built, which makes him cry. You are astonished and ashamed by your ability to hurt them. Your wife hugs Jeongmin with her right arm and Yoona with her left, calming them.

“Keep your mind together,” she says. “Think of the children.”

You are, you are thinking of yourself without them. You touch your children’s faces, then yours, making sure that all of you are still there. You want to hold Yoona, but that will break you. So you kiss Jeongmin’s cheeks. You restack the sugar cubes.

You tell Yoona, “This is what our house will look like when we live together.”

Though Yoona’s hands ball up on her hips, her mouth prim with suspicion, Jeongmin, for whom the past is already forgotten, struggles into your lap.

He says, “Appa, I can read now.”

He can read, and you were not there to teach him.

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