“This is Jay. Jay Currie,” Casey said. Her mother didn’t have to say another word. Casey could read her thought bubble. “He’s my fiancé. We are going to get married. I was going to—”
Leah nodded quickly, still unable to shake the man’s outstretched hand. She turned to leave—it felt as though her shoulders were frozen, and she had to tell her feet to move.
“Umma, you should stay and have coffee. With us. Can’t you?” Casey bit down on her molars.
Leah faced the door with her back to Casey.
Casey stared hard at her mother’s long shoulder blades beneath her coat.
“I don’t understand. Maybe your umma is not so smart, but. . . How? I didn’t raise my daughters to—”
“What? Sleep with white men?”
“No. I didn’t raise my daughter to lie to me.” Leah turned to face Casey. She felt lost.
Jay rubbed his neck with his left hand. Casey’s mother had white hair and possessed the face of a pretty child. She spoke Korean with a gentle dignity, and though he didn’t speak the language, it was possible to comprehend that she was unhappy. He felt foolish for having forced this. But Casey’s refusal to introduce him to her mother and father was offensive. His friends’ parents universally adored him. “Charming” was the word most often used to describe Jay Currie by that set. He loved Casey. She had agreed to marry him. Casey was curious, bold, and smart. Quirky in her thinking. She could be very funny, sometimes petulant like a child. In bed, they were magical—it wasn’t a word he would have used comfortably, not something he’d say out loud, but when they made love, the world was ordered in a better way. During sex, he believed in whatever she thought of as God. Was it adolescent to view sex as a manifestation of divinity? He could have written about that during college. Regardless, those sorority girls had shown him how unsavory it was to be that way with women. Some guys could do that without regret, fantasized of such things, but it turned out that he was old-fashioned after all. Love. Yes, he actually wanted to love a girl to sleep with her.
He looked down at what he was wearing; his feet were bare except for a sprinkling of pale hair on the knuckles of his toes. His mother called him her tall, fair hobbit. He must’ve made a terrible first impression. All his life he’d won people over, collecting every vote that was needed, gaining every inch of coveted territory. I’m not a bad person, Jay wanted to tell her. He wanted to make Casey happy. Would it be impossible for him to make Casey’s mother like him?
Jay cleared his throat. “I wish you’d stay. I would love to invite you to breakfast. We can go anywhere. There’s a wonderful hotel on Madison. I’d need only a minute to put on a tie.”
Leah said nothing, still dazed by what she was saw. Her daughter was living with this man. Her daughter was getting married.
What do you do with silence? Casey wondered. It was easier to yell back at her father. It was impossible to beat a person who refused to fight, who’d never had a wish to win. She tried to give back the envelope, but her mother said no. Casey held on to it.
There was no obvious resemblance between them, Jay noticed, except for how intensely they stared at things. Sometimes the way Casey looked at a thing was as if she were putting an object through heat, so focused was her gaze.
“I can call now to get a table,” Jay said. “The Mark has a delicious brunch.”
Leah turned to him. It was only after he’d spoken for a while that she realized he was younger than he looked. There were soft pouches under his eyes. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six. He was probably Casey’s college boyfriend.
“Thank you. I have to go back to the store. It was nice meeting you, Mr . .” She halted, unable to remember his last name.
She gave up trying and decided to leave. This was too much for her.
Casey stared at her mother’s small white hand resting on the brass doorknob painted dove gray, trying to remember the sensation of her mother’s warm palm. They must have held hands long ago. Wasn’t that right? Back in Seoul, her mother used to walk her to kindergarten in the mornings and pick her up at the end of the day. Where was Tina then? There had been a yellow beret and a matching satchel with a shoulder strap for kindergartners. Funny how certain things were so clear in her mind. Yet the outline of the squat concrete school building was more shadowy. The school was behind the town clinic run by a female pharmacist who gave her Charms sour balls whenever her mother went to fill a prescription.