Leah lifted her head when she heard the rapping against the glass. Tina was standing outside the paneled door. Joseph got up from his metal stool to let her in.
“Hello,” Tina said shyly. She’d just come from the Korean beauty parlor on Forty-first Street that specialized in weddings. Her black hair was swept up in three cylindrical rolls on top of her head, and a few tendrils hung from the side of her face. She was wearing the ivory-colored silk suit that Casey had found for her at Sabine’s—a gift from Sabine herself. Tina could’ve been one of the pretty reporters on the television news. Leah felt a streak of pride at her daughter’s beauty.
“Wah,” Leah exclaimed proudly. “Tina, you look like a TV star!”
Joseph nodded, smiling.
Tina blushed deeply. She’d never cared about her appearance or what she wore. The girlie things Casey cared about so much had always seemed like a vast waste of time. All this fuss about hair and clothes. Seeing there was nowhere to sit, Tina went to the back of the store and grabbed two folding chairs. Casey would be there soon. She’d promised. Casey hadn’t seen their parents in over two years. Her mother occasionally let it slip to Tina that Casey could be hard-hearted to stay away even for the holidays. Casey’s constant excuse was work, but that didn’t make sense on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Her father didn’t bother to mention her name anymore. He had thrown Casey out of his home, but he had been confident that she’d ultimately apologize. And he would have forgiven her. Casey phoned their mother on the first Sunday of the month when their father would be at Edgewater checking on his building; Tina got a call every two weeks.
“How are you, Dad?” Tina asked brightly, hoping her cheer would dispel some of his unhappiness. Her father hated socializing. He wanted to be left alone, and with her wedding, there was nowhere for him to hide.
Joseph nodded, trying to smile for his daughter. She was his wise child.
Tina deserved a nice wedding, yet he couldn’t help but want this evening to be over as soon as possible. What did his boss, Mr. Kang, always say? A—SAP—yes, that was a good New York saying. His customers said it, too. “I need my shirts ASAP,” they’d bark after dumping off a load of wash. The other saying was “I needed it yesterday.”
In half an hour, they’d meet everyone at Mr. Chan’s. Howie Chan was his longtime customer who owned the famous Shanghainese restaurant on Fifty-seventh Street where rich Americans paid top dollar for General Tso’s chicken and beef and broccoli—dishes the Chinese would not touch. When Howie heard Joseph’s younger daughter was getting married, right away he’d offered to arrange the best twelve-course wedding banquet for the rehearsal dinner. Howie, who was the same age as Joseph, had already married off all three of his daughters. “Girls are very, very expensive,” Howie would exclaim. “But they come back home. When boys get married, you never see them again.”
From the opposite side of the street, obscured by a diseased elm tree and two blue mailboxes, Casey could see her parents and Tina. Her family looked so attractive and well dressed that it almost took her breath away. If she were playing her roof game of choosing a life behind a window, she’d have paused for a long time at this one. Why was this prosperous-looking, beautiful family wearing their fine clothing and sitting on metal folding chairs at a dry-cleaning shop after closing hours?
They were waiting for her. The last time she’d seen them was at Ella’s wedding. Since then, she’d spoken to her mother on the first of the month and holidays and birthdays, sending gifts and cards by mail with brief, almost cheery notes. Her alibi for staying away was work, but it wasn’t as if they were asking to see her, either. Casey felt terrified to walk the thirty feet across the street to meet them.
But she couldn’t miss Tina’s rehearsal dinner or the wedding. Her sister had asked her to come, and Casey would control herself, no matter what her father might say. And this time, she’d have Unu by her side on both nights. He swore he got along with all Korean parents. “Just watch,” he’d said.
Casey knocked on the door, and Tina let her in. Leah looked startled. Joseph glanced at her briefly, then returned to unfolding his newspaper.
Leah smiled at Casey. She’d grown thinner in the face, and the weight loss had made her small facial features more pronounced. She looked older than twenty-five. In January, her first child would be twenty-six years old. When Leah was a girl, it would have been unheard of to let the younger daughter marry before the elder, but everyone at church said America was different. So it was.