“How did she find out?”
“I speak to her every Sunday. She calls to tell me about Irene. I called her to tell her about Daddy.”
Ted nodded. He couldn’t imagine any soon-to-be ex-wife going to the trouble.
“I told her to come, but she said it wouldn’t be right since I hadn’t spoken to you yet. But I want to see Ella and the baby. I’m going to go to New York to see them in August.”
Ted nodded. It was worse than he had imagined it would be. He hated Ella all of a sudden. It wasn’t her intention, but Ella was perennially competing to be the better child, and there was simply no way to beat her. His father used to talk to her every time she phoned them, and he didn’t even like talking on the phone.
“I can’t believe you brought her here,” Mrs. Kim muttered in disbelief.
Delia smiled at Ted’s mother, trying to be brave. She didn’t know that Ella hadn’t told Mrs. Kim anything about them except that Ted had fallen in love with a woman from work and that the marriage was over.
“You brought her to your daddy’s funeral. How could you do such a thing to your daddy?”
Ted exhaled. “Can we talk somewhere else? Is my room empty?”
“Your bags?” Mrs. Kim didn’t know where Delia would sleep. There was no way she’d allow a married man and a single woman to sleep together in her home. “Where are your suitcases?”
“They’re in the car. We’re staying at a hotel.”
“Ho-tel?” she said in English. Family didn’t stay in hotels. Mrs. Kim looked hard at her son.
“Mom, let’s talk upstairs.” His Korean was awkward. The inflections didn’t match his adult voice, and he found that his words were slipping away. What was the word for divorce?
“A ho-tel?” Mrs. Kim asked again. The hotel was like a slap. “What kind of talk is that?”
Ted’s back straightened considerably. He didn’t feel like apologizing anymore. They were still standing in the entryway, and Delia stood about two feet away from him. He hadn’t introduced her yet. She had stopped trying to smile and was staring at the photographs on the wall. There were many of him and Ella. Delia couldn’t stop looking at Ella in her wedding dress. Casey had once said long ago, before she knew anything was up, that Ted’s wife resembled Gong Li, the Chinese actress, but Delia thought Ella’s features were even finer than hers.
Mrs. Kim saw Delia staring at the wedding photographs. Everyone who visited the house looked at them and told her how kind and beautiful Ella looked. How lucky Teddy was. It was too much, Mrs. Kim thought, to lose her husband and to watch her children divorce. Her daughter, Julie, was divorced, and now Teddy was divorcing such a nice girl. Her oldest, Michael, hadn’t married yet, and it didn’t seem that he ever would.
Mrs. Kim turned around and walked to the kitchen, which was a few steps away from the foyer. At her distraught expression at the new arrivals, the church women who’d been putting away the tea things in the kitchen nodded among themselves and shuffled away wordlessly to the living room, leaving the three of them alone.
Ted turned to Delia. “I’m sorry about this. She doesn’t like to speak English, but she understands everything.”
“Don’t worry about me, Ted,” Delia said. She smiled at Mrs. Kim again.
“This is Delia.” Ted looked at his mother. “She’s my fiancée. We are going to get married as soon as the divorce is over.”
Delia extended her hand. “Hello, Mrs. Kim. I’m so sorry about your husband. I wish we could have met under better circumstances.” This was what she had rehearsed by herself on the plane.
Mrs. Kim stared at the young woman’s face, trying to learn something about her. She didn’t like the girl’s sharp chin, the way her jawbones jutted out slightly. The girl had a bad pal-jah. How would this fate affect her son? Was the girl the fox who’d stolen from the henhouse? Or was she the hen that her Teddy had stolen? Her son was not so innocent. But they were old enough to know that it was wrong to be together when someone was married and the other person wasn’t.
Delia took back her unmet hand. She smiled somberly, focusing on the kitchen objects nearest to her: an old-fashioned toaster, the rice cooker, large empty Mason jars just washed and drying on the sink. The smells here were not unpleasant—pungent chili powder, soy sauce, and garlic. Delia didn’t cook much, and her kitchen smelled only of the Pine-Sol that she used to wash down her counters.