Suki Kim - The Interpreter

The umbrella is a weapon. She can leave now, out into the torrential sea where her parents wait. Bob looks happy with his five-dollar tip, almost as much as the whole bill. But today is not a day for calculating the 20 percent, and Suzy is holding on to the nameless umbrella left by a drunkard on a rainy night.

“Oh, I knew I forgot something,” Bob hollers after Suzy. “Kelly’s back, tell him Bob sent you and he’ll give you a deal. Make sure you tell him you can’t even swim.”

Crazy to hit the beach in this rain. The lighthouse is on Montauk Point, the easternmost tip of New York. From here, Suzy can either follow the shore for about six miles or just hop in a taxi. An impossibly long pilgrimage, but Suzy cannot bring herself to call a cab, not now, not on her way to see her parents. One of the wires of the umbrella hangs loose, through which the precarious sky threatens to break. It seems almost perfect, that the rain should follow each step and erase the trace of this mourning.

So it had been Grace after all. On Friday, while Suzy was interpreting in the Bronx, Grace had shown up at McSwiggin’s looking for something. Neither Grace nor Suzy can swim. Their bodies simply will not float. Suzy tried to learn a few times, but her body would tense immediately upon hitting the water. Grace is terrified of the water—as far as Suzy knows, possibly the only thing she is afraid of. So it had to be Grace: poached cod, Sweet’n Low, seltzer with a straw, can’t swim… Then who’s Kelly? Three days ago, Grace may have stood on this very path. She may have continued up the shore holding the umbrella with a broken frame. She may have cried a little, praying for a miracle.

Suzy has a hard time picturing her. She has not set her eyes on her sister for five years. In fact, she has barely seen her since they both left for college at seventeen. Grace came home only twice during the four years. Suzy saw her just once, during the Christmas break one year. Suzy was struck by how thin her sister looked. Even Dad commented on it, telling Mom to give her an extra scoop of rice at dinner. Grace mostly kept to herself during the four days she stayed. A few phone calls came for her from the same husky-voiced guy, who would only identify himself as a “friend,” to whom Suzy had to lie each time and say that Grace was not home. Grace seemed somehow subdued, a bit nicer. The only time Suzy glimpsed the familiar cynicism was when she expressed her surprise at Grace’s choice of major, which was religion. Grace smiled faintly, as though it were a private joke that Suzy did not understand, and muttered, “What does it matter?” Although the visit went smoothly, without much commotion, Suzy was relieved when Grace took the bus back to Northampton.

Grace is thirty now. She will turn thirty-one at the end of this month, only two days after Suzy’s birthday. Suzy the 24th, and Grace the 26th. Grace always resented their birthdays’ falling so close together. She said it took all the steam out of her day. To appease both, Mom used to make them miyukguk, the traditional birthday seaweed soup, on the 25th. Kill two birds with one stone, Grace would grunt as she slurped her soup with a vengeance. What Grace really could not stand, Suzy suspected, was that they were the same age for those two days. They were equals suddenly, neither younger nor older. Grace no longer had the upper hand. Last year, for Grace’s thirtieth birthday, Suzy bought a card for the first time in years. She stood for a while before the Hallmark section of the stationery store and looked through the ones with the gold-engraved “To Dear Sister.” She chose instead a plain white one, but she never sent it.

The walk is not easy, increasingly rocky. On Suzy’s left is the dramatic formation of eroded cliffs, the land broken by years of water. To her right is the ocean. No one is around. One o’clock on a rainy November afternoon, who in their right mind would be out here?

Except someone is. Far in the distance, Suzy can see a figure walking ahead. Either a man or a woman under the umbrella, but a tinge of familiarity in the shape, in the way each step is dragged. Where did the person come from? Had he or she been walking ahead the whole time?

For a second, Suzy imagines that it might be Grace, and that she will run and catch up until finally the two will be joined, holding hands, together to see their parents, a family as they had never been, as they should have been—Mom and Dad, Grace and Suzy. Since when do you care about their wishes? Grace will never let her forget. It was Suzy who had cut out first, the first escape, the first hole in the foursome. It was Suzy who had ruined it all, Suzy who ran off with her professor’s husband and left everyone back home in shame, Suzy who disappeared for four years, until the day the police tracked her down at Damian’s Berkshire house with the news that her parents were dead. Grace never forgave Suzy for ditching Mom and Dad in their final years. Jen found Grace’s resentment toward Suzy unfair. “I thought your sister never came home either when she was at Smith. Why is she suddenly the good daughter?”

But of course it cannot be Grace walking ahead. Grace must be tucked safely back in her Godly New Jersey home. What happened at Smith? What happens at her church, where Grace must spend all her time now? In the spring of 1991, over nine years ago, when Suzy chose Damian over everything, Grace had just moved back home from Northampton, where she had tried a few jobs with not much luck. Suzy was surprised when she learned that Grace was home. Suzy thought that Grace, more than anyone she knew, would have some grand plan waiting for her upon finishing college. Moving back to her parents’ house seemed like a desperate decision. Grace was living in New Jersey when her parents were shot in their Bronx store in November 1995. She taught ESL at Fort Lee High School. Most of her students were Korean kids who had recently landed in America, whose parents were often gone, working overtime. The same kids also attended Fort Lee New Joy Fellowship Church, where Grace was in charge of the Bible study Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons. Grace was a good teacher supposedly, exceptionally competent and quick with her lessons. That was her style, never sentimental, never messy. Suzy overheard all this on the bus after the funeral. The older women who sat opposite Suzy must have been the parents of Grace’s students. “So what about the other daughter?” one of them asked. “Shhhh.” The second woman made a hush motion with her finger on her lips, glancing at Suzy.

Definitely not Grace up ahead. Someone entirely different, a stranger with his back toward Suzy. Quite a distance separates the two, and with the rain and all, Suzy can barely make out the shape of the other. The rocks are getting sharper, and from here on, there is no choice but to follow the steps to the road, which continues for a few more miles parallel to the shore. The path is uphill, slippery. Whoever’s ahead must be heading in the same direction. Whoever’s ahead keeps an even distance without once turning around, or perhaps it is Suzy making sure that she keeps up. Perhaps there are other ashes scattered from the lighthouse; perhaps it is the locals’ favorite burial spot. Why scatter the ashes from the lighthouse? Whose romantic notion was that? Suzy, of course, had been left out of the decision. It seemed like a good idea, a comforting idea, but definitely not her parents’. But, then again, what did Suzy know about her parents?

Barely two in the afternoon; the darkness is menacing. When she first came here five years ago, she saw nothing. All she could focus on was the urn Grace was carrying, in which her parents’ ashes were mixed together. Dome-shaped, wrapped in stiff white linen, the way the dead were kept in Korea. Suzy could not stand looking at the thing that held her parents, and was relieved when Grace assumed all responsibilities for handling it. Neither cried. Suzy was still in shock, and Grace, being in charge, seemed unable to cry. Suzy had no doubt that once they found themselves finally alone in their respective apartments each would burst into tears. Afterward, Grace must have gone straight to church; Suzy packed her bag and left Damian’s house immediately. He was not around when she left. During their final six months, she had stayed at his Berkshire house while he spent much of his time abroad. She left without a note, and he did not try to find her. She went straight to Jen’s apartment and slept for several weeks. When she was finally able to get up and walk outside, she wandered into the East Village and found the apartment on St. Marks Place. And still Suzy had not cried.