“She’s resting today. I think she’ll go to the doctor next week.”
“She said her grandson is coming.” Kyung-ah smiled at him. Most men liked her, and it bugged her that he didn’t. Clearly, he preferred the white-haired sexless type. “That will cheer her up.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling quickly before putting on his hat. He had to go to the Korean mart to pick up some feast food that Leah had ordered for lunch.
“You must be busy,” she said. He wanted to go, and she was keeping him from it. “You better go home to take care of her. I’ll phone her later.”
Joseph nodded. He had never understood why his wife even talked to a woman like her. Her lipstick was blood colored so that it looked as though she’d eaten a rat.
Leah was in the kitchen by herself. Before he left, Joseph had made her a pot of ginseng tea, and she had promised that she’d drink some, but the smell of it bothered her so much that when she brought it close to her lips, the few spoonfuls of bop she’d had for breakfast almost came up. She was so tired that she could barely stand, and she coughed some more. Her coughing was often so violent that she had to sit down afterward. It felt as if someone were punching her in the chest.
The children were coming today, and she hadn’t cooked anything. Joseph had forbidden it. So for the first time in her life, she had ordered prepared food from a store. Kyung-ah had told her that Mrs. Kong’s catered meals were perfectly good enough and to forget making lunch. “Don’t be a dumdum,” her friend had said.
Leah left the kitchen and went to the living room to lie down on the sofa. When she was alone and still, her thoughts drifted to the professor. There were guilty moments when she wished she were sitting with him in that diner, listening to stories about singers he had known, concerts he’d attended. He’d talked passionately about the song cycle commission he was writing, his inexplicable interest in organ music: “Widor is astonishing. You must’ve heard it. At least the fifth movement of his Organ Symphony number five? The toccata. At weddings, it’s often performed.” Excited, he had hummed a few bars. Leah didn’t know any of it but wanted to. There was so much she didn’t know, and being with him had awakened her to the idea that there was something else out there in the world, rhythms she now craved. In her ear, she could hear his voice—when he was stern or excited—and it swam back to her when she was by herself. In the car, he had been so soothing and urgent. She had fallen into his voice despite her terror. At one point during the dinner, he’d pronounced with a kind of finality, “Rachmaninoff is sentimental,” as if that were a kind of curse.
It must be something to make judgments like that, to be able to say such things with confidence. It was impossible to imagine a woman being that way. He had said to her, “Your voice is unlike anyone I’ve ever heard. I’m only sorry we hadn’t met when you were a girl.” He hadn’t said it to be cruel, she thought; it was just a fact that he was a teacher and she was a singer who had missed her chances. That’s all. Yet he thought she was a real singer rather than another member of a church choir in Woodside. When she put all that out of her mind, however, she recalled what else had happened in the car. The thing she could never take back. She would be an adulterer forever. The man had entered her body, and when a man and a woman came together to form one body, then everything was different. Sex was the gift a woman gave to one man—her husband. Men needed that like water. Everyone knew that. She had been frightened and stimulated by the recognition that a man as worldly and sophisticated as her teacher could desire her. No, she’d said. Please. She had asked to go home. Yet she must have enticed him. And that was a serious offense against God. The impossible thing was: Leah had never believed that she was capable of seducing a man. No one but Joseph had ever wanted her before, not as far as she knew. In a way, that belief had been her protection. She should never have gone to the diner with him. Leah wanted to die.
The phone rang, and she rose to get it.
“Hello,” she said in Korean, and speaking out loud, for she had been alone most of the day, made her cough again.
“Are you alone?” Charles asked.
“Uh-muh,” Leah said in shock. It was his voice.
“I can come get you now.”
Leah shook her head no. What was he talking about?
“Leah, can you leave? Live with me.”
She coughed and coughed.
“You would make me happy.”