Cutting Edge by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates [Oates, Joyce Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781617753336
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2019-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Thief

by Steph Cha

After the funeral—lunch. It was customary, expected, a way for the mourners to come together on familiar, neutral ground, always the same Korean restaurant on Vermont. Jangmi didn’t arrange it. That had fallen, like so much else, to her brother-in-law, her sister, the ones who could breathe long enough to make plans, phone calls. Jangmi could hardly speak. She said nothing at the funeral, only murmured and nodded as the mourners clasped her hands. There were so many of them. They crowded the chapel. It was the fullest she’d ever seen it, the pews swelling, the aisles crammed with wreaths. Isaac was only twenty-one.

They buried him, and she sat there, letting them do it. Her firstborn. Her one son.

She stared at her plate, piled with food from the buffet. Slick meat and boiled vegetables, greasy glass noodles. Someone had made her the plate and dropped it in front of her, nudging her to eat. She felt gas building in her stomach, closed her eyes and covered her mouth to swallow an acid belch.

The chair next to her squeaked as someone sat down. Jangmi willed herself to put her face together. No one wanted to see how she felt, not really. It would only make them uncomfortable. She sat up straight and opened her eyes. She’d never noticed the horror of this restaurant, the banquet rooms windowless, overbright.

Her niece was there, staring at her. “Auntie,” she said, and pulled her chair closer.

Lynn’s eyes were already red and teary, and just looking at her aunt seemed to make her cry harder. Jangmi knew what she was feeling—a deep but manageable grief, sharpened with pity. It was what Jangmi would feel if it had been anyone else who’d died. A church member, a friend. Even Lynn, her sister’s child. Her face burned with the wicked thought—she loved Lynn, and she wouldn’t wish this on her sister. But she would have traded anyone for Isaac, herself first of all.

She looked at her niece and felt a stab of guilt and tenderness. Lynn was twenty-three now, a young woman with a job, a boyfriend, straight teeth, and long eyelashes—fake, Jangmi realized, extensions put in at a salon. But Jangmi could still see the gangly bucktoothed girl, the oldest of the cousins by a short but important two years. For a sharp moment, it was all she could see—Lynn in a pink one-piece swimsuit, chanting, Dig! Dig! Dig! as Isaac and Christina plowed sand with their heels, building a Jacuzzi on the beach to Lynn’s specifications. She wondered if that’s how Lynn would remember him, as a sweet, plump child, guileless and laughing.

That child had been in him still, underneath it all. Among his tattoos, Jangmi’s name on his chest, encircled in thorns and rose petals. The mortician had shown it to her, after he washed his body. A gentle offering, small proof that this boy, despite his sins, had loved his mother. She hadn’t known it was there.

“Auntie,” Lynn said again, her voice high and trembling, “do you have the money? Uncle Simon said to ask you.

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