She didn’t know if it was okay to talk about Ella. With the divorce and all.
“Ted is a fool. An absolute fool,” Douglas muttered. He looked ahead at the road. The thought of his son-in-law upset him, but he was a cautious driver, and he kept his foot light on the accelerator. He hadn’t spoken to anyone at church about the divorce, not even when the minister had asked him about it. But somehow it felt all right to talk to the deaconess—perhaps it was being alone with her in the car or the fact that she, too, had a daughter Ella’s age. Douglas missed his wife most when he had concerns about Ella.
“Is everything okay with your granddaughter?” She said the word okay in English. Her Korean words felt too specific.
“Irene is perfect. Just like my Ella.” His granddaughter was a smiley baby, full of laughs and easy to please. She didn’t cry except for when she needed a diaper change, was tired, or was hungry. His office desk was covered with framed photographs of her and Ella together.
“And how is Ella?” Leah finally ventured to ask.
“She’s doing very well.” Douglas wanted to correct the last image that the deaconess might have had of his daughter: when the ambulance had to take her away to the hospital from Tina’s wedding. “She went back to work at that school, and there’s a very nice nanny and housekeeper still working for her.” Douglas grew quiet, having had to say out loud that his daughter was raising her child in the same way he’d had to after his wife had died—as a single working parent. “She’ll be twenty-six in November.”
Leah watched his face as he drove, how it softened with grief.
“She will marry again,” Leah said. “Ella is the most beautiful girl and so very kind.”
“Ted is a fool,” he repeated.
“Then”—Leah paused before continuing—“it’s good that she got rid of him sooner than later.” Her sister-in-law had once told her that a woman’s life was completely determined by the man she married. And in her experience, this was true. All the women she knew who were happy had made good marriages to nice, hardworking men. “Ella will find someone better. Because now she has. . .” Leah thought about it a bit. “Life experience.”
Her words surprised Douglas, but he could tell she meant them.
“Whatever she wants to do is fine with me,” he said, his tone confident. Yet that wasn’t entirely true. He still regretted not having pushed her to wait to marry Ted. He could’ve said no. His daughter was a mild child with a gentle disposition. Even in this day and age, she would have listened to him; he felt certain of this. But things like infidelity usually didn’t show up until the marriage was well under way. Douglas tried to imagine Irene’s face, her pretty eyelashes and gurgly laughs—how she lit up when she heard Ella’s voice. She was a year and five months, but already she was stringing words together. Irene called him ba-buh, short for hal-ah-buh-jee. If it weren’t for Ted, there would be no Irene. He would focus on the good, Douglas told himself—to possess joy and peace in Yesu Christo.
Douglas rang the doorbell—a low, quiet chime. Almost pleasant. But no one answered. He pulled out the scrap paper with the map and address. They were at the right place, standing on the limestone stoop, six tall steps above street level. There was another entrance at the street below the staircase. The facade of the Federalist house was imposing. Douglas rang again.
Leah shifted her food package from one hand to the other. Would he like her cooking? she wondered. There were houses similar to this in Sutton Place, but she’d never been to Brooklyn before. She was impressed by the size of the home and understood from rumors that he came from a prominent boojah family, but it was oddly disappointing to see him live so prosperously. She had pictured him in a small, unheated apartment, suffering for his music. He was supposed to be a composer, and she’d imagined him sitting on a hard stool, despite his illness, writing sacred music on a makeshift desk. There were a few customers at the store who were artists—one painter who worked as a waiter had given her and Joseph a small watercolor of a golden carp because he couldn’t pay to have his uniform cleaned one week. That wasn’t allowed, but Joseph put money in the register from his own wallet to pay for the cleaning.
“One more time,” Douglas said, pressing the bell. “Maybe he’s okay after all and stepped out.”
But they heard footsteps approaching. The old brass knob turned from inside. The immense wooden door opened.