Charles handed the choir secretary, Mrs. Noh, the new score for next week.
“I thought on Sunday, we’d try this arrangement of ‘How Great Thou Art.’ There will be two duets—a male and female pair.”
The Kim brothers were very pleased when their names were announced.
“Deaconess Cho, you have returned to us,” Charles said, his voice flat.
Leah nodded, her jaws clamped down.
“And how are you feeling?”
The choir members looked at her kindly, waiting for her reply.
“I. . . can sing,” she said.
“Good. You and Mrs. Shim will do the duet together,” Charles said to her quickly, then faced Mrs. Shim, a young mother of two and a mezzo-soprano.
Kyung-ah whispered, “I did two solos this month already since you were gone.” She giggled, remembering how Charles had held her by the waist possessively before she’d left his house yesterday. Men were ridiculous, but they were good for a few things.
Mrs. Shim turned to Leah and smiled shyly at her. They’d never sung together as a pair.
Charles asked the accompanist to play today’s first selection. The rehearsal began.
After services ended, Leah grabbed a cup of tea and followed the choir to the room for next week’s rehearsal. She hadn’t anticipated singing in a duet next week. Last night, she had not slept well thinking of all the possible things she would say to the professor. How were they supposed to work together after what had happened? She had pledged to God to be a good choir member, to practice more, and to always be careful around him. It had been a careless and foolish indulgence to have romantic feelings for him. That night had been a sin for which she would always be guilty. The memory of it made her want to die. But she had reasoned that suicide was a greater sin. She had to live to take care of Joseph. But it was so confusing. God would want her to respect her superiors, and the professor was her superior. God must have wanted her to be under the professor’s instruction, and Leah intended to obey his teaching. In her shameful heart, though, she’d imagined being alone with him again, talking about music and his life. After he had called her house, she had found his phone number through information and had picked up the phone numerous times when she was home by herself. But she had envisioned him hanging up angrily at her. You said it was a mistake, he would say. You made a mockery of our love. He could have said all those things, and he would have been right. What Leah had felt for him, she had never felt before for another human being. But she had never intended to be an adulteress. What God had made—her sacred marriage bonds to Joseph—she could not possibly break. Her love for the professor would be her sacrifice for God. She would place it on the altar of her heart. Christ, the one without sin, gave up everything, including the communion with his Father, for her sake, for her sins. Forsaking the girlish feelings she had for the professor seemed paltry indeed. Last night, Leah justified herself with these thoughts as she lay awake in her bed, dreaming of the sound of the professor’s voice. I will give him up, she’d told herself, and I will serve God by singing faithfully to Him alone.
When the rehearsal for the choir ended, everyone left except for the Kim brothers, Mrs. Shim, the professor, and her. He hardly looked her way except for when it was to give her an instruction. Leah wondered where the feelings between them had gone. Perhaps she had imagined all of it. She gathered her music when they’d finished the duets’ rehearsal. Everyone said good night to the professor, and he did not give her even a quick glance. There was this heavy push inside her chest. God was with her in this. Somehow, this was what she deserved. What God would want for her. She was a married woman, and her husband was a good man.
In the parking lot, Leah waved good-bye at the Kim brothers, two large men who had little to say for themselves and smiled uneasily at women, and at Mrs. Shim, who was sweet and wouldn’t stop bowing. Leah got into the car, knowing that the professor was still inside the church building. She belted herself into her seat and turned on the ignition. You must not go inside, she told herself. She drove home slowly, wiping her face at the intersections along the way.
12 LINING
IT’S DAMN, DAMN HOT,” Kyung-ah muttered to Leah, tugging at her white sateen collar. “I hate this polyester crap.” The reversible V-neck shifted askew over the sky blue choir robe. The soprano was also tired of Elder Ahn, who droned on with her prayer. “Jesus did not have that much to say.”
A few of the basses and tenors seated behind Kyung-ah snickered. Leah patted Kyung-ah on the thigh as if she were calming a fidgety child. She was hot, too. This morning, she had put on her good blue dress—a summer-weight wool with sleeves that reached to her elbows—that should’ve been cool enough for the end of July, but the pale blue lining she’d sewn in herself stuck to her clammy back. Parched and uncomfortable, she forced herself to pay attention to Elder Ahn’s long petition to their Father in heaven.