Tina didn’t want to talk about the wedding anymore.
“Now, here’s the bad news.”
“So that was the good news, then?” Casey laughed.
“Ha, ha . . Dad’s building burned down last Sunday,” Tina said calmly. She lifted a cover off a lone hatbox within reach. Her eyebrows arched in wonder at the wide-rimmed straw encircled with pink fabric peonies. “Pretty.”
The pizza arrived, but Casey couldn’t eat. She watched Tina devour her first slice while she discussed the fire and how the insurance would come through soon. Tina had dealt with all the paperwork that her parents couldn’t read. Faulty wiring had caused the total loss. Nobody was hurt because it had happened on a Sunday. No one had bothered to call Casey, making her realize that she must’ve missed many other things and would miss more as time went on. Casey was feeling left out, but Tina was excusing her parents, because they were hurt too by Casey’s withdrawal from their lives. “They didn’t want to bother you at the office,” Tina said. Their father wasn’t the same, she added.
Three years ago, when Joseph bought the building in Edgewater, Casey had gone to the closing with him. Leah had called her at school. “Daddy is going to buy a building. Our retirement money will be the down pay. Elder Kong said it was a good investment.” Leah told Casey where the closing would take place. Tina could have gone—her father might have preferred that—but she was in Boston, and it was cheaper for Casey to show up. And Casey was older. So she skipped her microeconomics class, took a train to the city, and met her dad at the bank lawyers’ offices. Though her father understood almost everything, his lawyer talked mostly to Casey, and she translated whatever else was needed. After all the checks were passed out, Mr. Arauno, the seller’s lawyer, handed Joseph the keys. Mr. Arauno told Joseph that he had a nice daughter. After the closing, Joseph drove Casey to the building before taking her back to school.
“I saw the building. After the closing,” Casey said.
“Yeah?” Tina sprinkled garlic powder on her second slice.
That afternoon in Edgewater, the sun had glowed fiercely on the modest storefronts of Hilliard Avenue. Her father’s building was a three-story brick with two shops on the ground floor—a pizzeria and a small electronics outlet. A side door opened onto a modest carpeted lobby with stairs that led to the professional offices on the second and third floors. Joseph didn’t say much as the two of them walked around the building. He walked into the electronics store, and the salesman asked him if he needed any help. Joseph shook his head no, picking up a Panasonic answering machine that was on special, then putting it down. He never told them that he was their new landlord. Casey followed him when he walked out. They peered into the pizza shop. It looked clean. After they toured the two ground-floor stores and checked out the dentist’s office and the accountant’s office upstairs, they left the building. Casey returned to her father’s blue Delta 88, which was parked not ten yards away. Not hearing his footsteps behind her, she turned and saw that he was standing beside the building; his right hand was pressed against the brick of the facade. Her father was smiling.
“How is he doing?” Casey asked.
“Lousy. What do you expect?”
“Can’t he get a new one? With the insurance money?”
“Mom said he doesn’t want to risk it. And you know her. She’s no gambler. They’ll probably put the money in a savings account.”
What Casey had seen on her father’s face that day was pride. Some happiness.
“He looks much older,” Tina said.
“How old is he again?”
“He turned sixty in June.”
“I sent him a tie,” Casey mentioned. She’d bought an Hermès necktie that had cost over a hundred dollars and mailed it to him from the store, although it would’ve been far easier for her to just walk it over from Kearn Davis.
“Mom told me.”
Casey nodded. The last time she spoke to her mother was around Thanksgiving, when she’d told her that she was working through the holidays for overtime money. For turkey, she’d gone to the Gottesmans’， where Sabine was hosting a dinner for twenty of her favorite strays.
“Sixtieth birthday. That’s—”
“We didn’t do much for his hwegap,” Tina said.
“Damn. That’s right.” Casey jerked back, sighing loudly. “Damn. Damn,” she muttered, disgusted with herself. Their parents were often invited to these fancy potlatches thrown by well-off adult children to celebrate their Korean parents’ sixtieth birthdays—the sum of five zodiac cycles. A person was supposed to have completed a full life cycle by living from zero to sixty.