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  DRIFTING

  HOUSE

  DRIFTING

  HOUSE

  VIKING KRYS LEE

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2012 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Krystn Lee, 2012

  All rights reserved

  In slightly different form, “A Temporary Marriage” first appeared in The Kenyon Review and “The Salaryman” first appeared in Narrative magazine.

  Publisher’s Note

  These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ­CATALOGING-­IN-­PUBLICATION DATA

  Lee, Krys.

  Drifting house / Krys Lee.

  p. cm.

  EISBN: 9781101571972

  I. Title.

  PS3612.E3446D75 2012

  813’.6—­dc23 2011036188

  Printed in the United States of America · Designed by Nancy Resnick

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  To Amy, who knows

  CONTENTS

  A TEMPORARY MARRIAGE

  AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

  THE PASTOR’S SON

  THE GOOSE FATHER

  THE SALARYMAN

  DRIFTING HOUSE

  A SMALL SORROW

  THE BELIEVER

  BEAUTIFUL WOMEN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There is a waving senatorial candidate with false teeth and hair implants in X, flooding in B, a famine in K, a civil war in R, the first democratic elections being held in S, an oil war raging in D, an actor as president presiding in Z, a nation splitting apart in T, a museum being constructed in L, a snowstorm devastating in U. And there is solar time, nautical time, inconsequential time, the time of memory, Greenwich Mean Time, geologic time, the drift of snow and sand and people, the cycle of whale sharks and spotted nutcrackers always returning home, their sense of time more instinctual than clocks or chronometers, and more exact.

  A TEMPORARY MARRIAGE

  FOR THREE YEARS after her ex–husband and their daughter, Yuri, disappeared to California, Mrs. Shin had designed clothes by day and sold handprinted scarves by night to save the necessary sum of money to depart Seoul and come to America. In order to find her daughter, she had assented to move into a stranger’s two-bedroom condo on the fringes of Culver City—like two apartments! They would share the common space, nothing more. That had been the agreement.

  But now that she had arrived, she saw that the living arrangements could be dangerous. The duplex was hot and cramped inside: a thready chintz sofa, the display cabinets heavy with souvenirs, the cumbersome oak table stained with the marks of sweating glasses, all seemed to touch one another. The kitchen faced the living room, and the living room, Mr. Rhee’s bedroom. If he leaves the door open, she thought, we will see each other each time I look up from the cutting board. The lamp that Mr. Rhee switched on cast more shadows than light.

  “Welcome to your new home.” As Mr. Rhee spoke, his hands fluttered skittishly, batting at the air as if there were invisible mosquitoes. “Well, not really so new, but everything works well, well enough.”

  “Yes, it is a new home for me, isn’t it?”

  She did not want to look at him, understanding that she was aware of him as a man, and that gave him an immediate advantage over her. But she found herself looking. He was gangly and quick like a badminton player, unlike her ponderously built, strong ex–husband, and she disliked her disappointment. His doughy eyelids and sagging cheeks wore more sadness than she approved of, aging his face beyond his fifty years; his baggy peppermint-striped sweatpants smelled like a hospital gown and telegraphed his recent misfortunes. Even after the shame of her husband’s departure five years ago, she had behaved like the fashion designer she was: she had never sanctioned mix-matching her bras and panties or privileged anyone to see her without an Hermès silk scarf, all efforts that gave her the appearance of confidence. Even after she lost her daughter, she had not allowed herself public displays of grief.

  “I’ve left you the large room upstairs,” he said. “I don’t need a lot of space.”

  Mrs. Shin thanked him, all the time wondering if he was as innocuous as he looked.

  “Well, shouldn’t we document this—predicament?” she asked.

  They needed photos to authenticate their engagement, then their marriage, to immigration.

  “Predicament?” he said. “Well, yes, I suppose that’s what it is.”

  She tolerated Mr. Rhee’s arm around her shoulder, his parched white hair like the roots of spring onions, the dry-cleaning chemicals on his plaid shirt—a professional hazard of running Pearl Express, a dry-cleaning business. His garlicky breath scraped her nose. He, too, must have endured her stale travel smells.

  After he set up his camera on the living room table, they both forced a smile until the timer clicked, the shutter snapped back, and she drew away. He continued to gaze.

  She said into the silence, “Is there a rice grain on my nose?”

  She had chosen not to marry some lonely Korean widower in America the old-fashioned picture bride way. The K–fiancée visa, and the next step, the marriage visa, had cost her a tidy sum precisely so he would not confuse this “predicament” with love.

  “You have such young skin,” he said, admiring her smooth, round face, her eyes the shape of plumped kidney beans.

  She said, “I’m not looking for a real husband. I thought that was clear.”

  She was tired and frightened, so her words clicked like stilettos on tile.

  She added, “I prefer a world without men.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, blushing, twisting bunches of his hair with his hand. “I live for my boys. If you had children, you would know what I mean.”

  During Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship nearly thirty years ago,
Mr. Rhee had quit his engineering job at Hyundai Heavy Motors and immigrated to America with his wife. The family of four had settled in the basement of a kind American couple and cleaned office buildings until purchasing their own dry-cleaning store. They had done well enough until the recent recession, which had even lawyers watching their expense accounts. Until Mr. Rhee’s wife had abandoned him for an American man she met in salsa classes, he had watched Korean news clips of the developing country’s daily disasters—student demonstrators attacked by pepper-spray bombs in 1986, the Sampoong Department Store collapse that killed generations of families in 1995—and convinced himself that he had been right to leave, even after the country flourished and began giving academic scholarships to the brightest from Guatemala to Mongolia, and setting trends in film and technology.

  Mrs. Shin knew another Korea. In 1996 she had married up. A glittering four-hundred-guest Hyatt Hotel wedding, a Tiffany diamond flashing on her finger, and a villa nestled high in the hills, like a medieval castle overseeing the neon signs and pollution of Seoul, had transformed her. But money in Korea meant residing with the in–laws until the new bride was made acceptable; it meant surveillance and criticism. While hip-hop became the rage and women were sworn in as senators in the National Assembly, Mrs. Shin had subordinated herself to her husband’s will, rivaled her mother–in–law for his affections, and accepted all blame when she remained childless the first six years of marriage. After nine years of a difficult, exciting life together, her husband had said that he could not do it anymore, that they were not healthy for each other, and left with their daughter. She was no different from Mr. Rhee; she felt that she had failed at living.

  On that first night in America, Mrs. Shin’s failures returned to her in her dreams. As she slept, her hands, those animals of habit, clutched at her crotch, a spot that she forbade herself to touch when awake. She dreamed of a missed appointment, a flippant remark, and the rituals of violence they would cause. Her husband lifted her by the slant of her black hair. His fist smashed her nose; his right foot bruised her ribs, her breasts. A purple flower bloomed across the ridge of her back, her hair fell out like dried leaves. She woke up trembling with excitement, her arms filmy with sweat and the residual scent of sex. She reached for her dressing gown in the dark and covered herself.

  Downstairs she sat and sipped from a glass of water only after she spread a handkerchief on the sofa. The carpet roughened up by previous tenants and the desperate cheer of the coffee table’s dusty plastic roses insulted her sense of propriety, so she started up, unwilling to sit any longer in the germ-infested room, when she heard a repetitive tapping. She could not bear not knowing, so she tiptoed over and cupped her ear to Mr. Rhee’s door. To her horror, and delight, the door gave in and opened.

  There he was, in ridiculous reindeer-patterned shorts and a shirt covered with tiny coconut trees. He stood behind a Ping-Pong table, the room’s only substantial piece of furniture—if it could be called furniture. Across the table from him, a squat ball machine spat out a ball from one of the five mouths in its rotating head. The whip of his paddle shook the net as he chopped, covering the entire table with his forehand. He was more aggressive behind the net than the man she had determined him to be.

  She laughed nervously. “Surprise,” she said.

  Mr. Rhee dashed to the robot and switched it off.

  “Have visiting hours changed in 2011?” he said. “It must be past two in the morning.”

  He fanned himself with the paddle as he took in her billowing white gown and her cropped hair matted to her scalp like hairnetting.

  He added, half-smiling, “I thought you liked your world without men.”

  His mouth was thin and stretched back. A line of sweat ran down toward his solar plexus. Her body became alert when she saw the bottle of rice wine that he had been drinking alone, and with head bowed, hands clasped behind her, she approached, aroused by the idea of this man out of control.

  “A drink? Korea’s finest,” he said, balancing the cheap rice wine that Korean men favored on his head.

  She nodded, suddenly thirsty.

  He walked to an orange crate, his table, and poured her a thimble-size glass of the soju. She accepted the clear rice wine. She was so close she could see a vein in his neck throbbing, and she found herself wanting his dry lips, his hands tight around her neck. But when he kissed her, his lips were tame, disappointing. His hands stayed limply at his sides.

  She turned so his second kiss missed her lips and descended on her cheek.

  Immediately after, she patted her lips dry on her sleeve—she would wash before bed. He rubbed furiously at his hair, his eyes looked for somewhere to rest. Then he crawled underneath the Ping-Pong table and fumbled with the cotton yo that he now lay on top of, escaping into sleep.

  “Sleep will do us good,” she said decisively, and fled upstairs. She locked the door behind her.

  The next morning Mrs. Shin disinfected the bathtub with a travel-size spray she always carried with her. She showered, dried her bob into two symmetrical points, and steam-pressed her white linen skirt suit, though she had nowhere to go. When she came downstairs, Mr. Rhee was preparing bean curd stew, dried yellow corvina, and small plates of cooked bracken and balloon flower roots. Mortified to see a man in a kitchen, she tried to wrench the spatula away, then she remembered last night’s scene. This was America, she reasoned, as Mr. Rhee hugged the spatula. Hadn’t she come to live differently?

  Over breakfast they were careful and cordial to each other, their eyes converged on the bubbling ttukbaegi of stew.

  “America’s a dangerous place,” Mr. Rhee warned her.

  “I’m not afraid of danger,” she said, unwilling to take advice from a man who slept under Ping-Pong tables.

  He told her that to their right sat the Verdugo Mountains, and to their left, a shopping center the size of Seoul’s Olympic Park with a Korean supermarket, video store, and salon specializing in Asian hair. And in a small building rented from the American Methodists was a Korean church, where the community’s business deals were made. A Korean lawyer, a dentist, an optometrist, even a pet stylist, populated the mini-mall. Two cable stations broadcast Korean programs exclusively. She could, he reasoned, comfortably manage by confining herself to this one-mile area.

  Mrs. Shin listened, nodded agreeably, and within a week purchased a burgundy-colored Hyundai Excel from a used-car lot. Its back door didn’t open, she had to hit the driver’s window twice to roll it down, the left signal indicated right, and the right signal indicated left. She inched the car onto the highway toward Koreatown. Her broad forehead beaded with sweat as a truck the size of a small house whizzed by on a curving overpass and sent her car rolling on its axles, but she sang loudly to herself until her car stabilized. The sky outside the window was empty even of clouds, and the mountains were an unfamiliar, vast landscape of desert. She was not certain that Yuri still lived in California; she considered herself without a country. She couldn’t afford to be scared.

  Detective Pak was a lean silver-haired man in black slacks, white collar shirt, and wire-frame eyeglasses, an unadorned, efficient costume that matched his straight nose and blunt fingernails. His greeting was crisp and uninflected, unhurried and uninterested. He was a man who cared about details: handpainted bookmarks were stacked neatly at the edge of bookshelves crowded with books of poetry, a greenhouse of plants in descending sizes lined the small office, and, most worrying, an accounting exam certificate with his name, Gilho Pak, stenciled in, and a diploma from Korea’s best university, Seoul National, were displayed in matching cedar frames behind him. She had hoped for a second generation with sloppy Korean, a man raised on hamburgers and fries, someone who might not have crossed the Pacific with his patriarchal ideas intact. Instead she got Detective Pak.

  He shut her skinny file. “When you first called me, you claimed your daughter was kidnapped.”

  “But in a way, Dr. Pak, she was.”

  She always call
ed people doctor when the situation required flattery.

  He did not look flattered.

  “If she’s been kidnapped, I’m the last Joseon prince. I learned your husband got legal custody when you divorced.” He gazed at her with a coolness she was unused to in men, and she wondered with amusement and worry if she, despite her efforts, now looked her age. He said, “And now you’re remarried?”

  So that was what he was thinking. That she was another Korean mother who had abandoned her daughter in order to remarry.

  She looked for family photos on Dr. Pak’s desk: for the young son and daughter, a svelte wife in golf shirt and shorts, but there was only a photo of Dr. Pak standing beside a young man with large, despondent eyes. Dr. Pak turned the photo over when he saw her looking. Still, she assumed he called his wife jip-saram, literally houseperson. Undoubtedly she made him two hot meals a day, the children would attend Ivy League schools, or at least UCLA or UC Berkeley. Nothing truly terrifying had ever happened to him, which gave her the small comfort of someone who had suffered. The vision of that excruciatingly ordinary life, that bonhomie, made her shudder. She wanted to want it; she loathed it.

  He doodled question marks on letterhead stationery.

  “It’s a lovely family photo,” she said.

  “Samo-nim, why’d you let her go?” he said, his voice and gestures mechanically polite. “Do you know what it means, to lose your kids?”

  She sat as erect as a queen. Then smiling, she said, “Dr. Pak, your job must be so emotionally taxing. I consider myself permanently bound to you.”

  “I need the real story.” His gaze was unswerving in its need to understand. “So you gave up and agreed, and now you don’t?”

  “You’re paid to be a detective, not a….” She struck the table with her purse. “You don’t know what happened. Dangshin, you know nothing about me!”

  He apologized, suddenly confused and upset in a way that made him more human, but she was too furious to stay. She marched out of the office. From the car, she watched pigeons snap at scraps of rotting pickled radish. The trunks of palm trees that she felt an urge to dress swayed precariously. She had lost face. Still, she would not share her secrets: how powerless she had been when her husband had bribed judges and taken Yuri away. How, on their last meeting, he had jammed a fat envelope of bank checks into her hand, saying, “You will start over.” Or how she had refused the money that she needed, refused to retreat in the quietly disgraced way hundreds of divorced Korean women had, to one of the many Koreatowns in America. Only then the unexpected had happened. Within a year her husband and his lover had disappeared with Yuri.