Jung Yun - Shelter

“My mother’s resting. Is there anything else we should know?”

“About the house? Not really. You’ve got good insurance, I hope?”

The question was clearly directed at Jin, who makes no effort to respond. He just sits there with his chin tucked to his chest, staring at the manual, which appears to be upside down. Kyung isn’t used to seeing him this way, so desperate to be ignored. At work, his father is always the center of attention, a position he says he earned over time. Back in the ’70s, when Jin first started teaching, his research on renewable energy was easy to ignore, almost even laughable. Now he generates more grant money than anyone else on the faculty, and his patent revenues, a small fraction of which goes to the university, keeps the campus well fed. His success makes him popular in a way that his personality doesn’t, and he abuses his colleagues freely, always talking more than he listens.

“Sorry,” Lentz says. “I wasn’t trying to pry. I just thought you might want to hire a cleaning crew before you go back.”

There was no need to share this information in person. All of it could have been done on the phone. Kyung wonders if there’s something else he came to say, but can’t in front of a woman or a child.

“So that’s it?” he asks. “Nothing else?”

“Well, there’s a detective assigned to your case now. His name’s John Smalley. He was the one who asked me to stop by today.”

“Why didn’t he come here himself?”

“His wife’s been in and out of surgery this week. Blood clots or something. But don’t worry. John’s good — he’s been around a long time. He already got a positive match on that guy I was telling you about. Fingerprints, hair…” He glances at Ethan. “You know, that kind of thing. He also sent a statewide bulletin out, so now we’re just waiting for Perry to turn up somewhere.”

Over a week has passed and this is all the progress he has to report. It hardly seems like enough. Kyung hasn’t thought twice about the police — he’s been too preoccupied with his parents to think of anyone else — but now it occurs to him that they aren’t doing everything they should.

“Are you telling me you’re just waiting around for this guy to make a mistake?”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“But that’s what you said: Now we’re waiting for him—”

“I didn’t say we’re not looking. We’re actively looking.”

“But how do you know he’s not in Canada? What good is a statewide bulletin if he’s not in the States?”

“Hey,” Gillian says, pulling on his sleeve. “Calm down. He’s just telling us what they’ve done so far.”

She pulls again, harder this time, but Kyung doesn’t care. He can’t imagine a world in which Nat Perry is allowed to enjoy his freedom after taking so much of theirs. He wants this man in a prison or a grave. He expects the police to put him there.

“So what does ‘actively looking’ mean? Where are you actually looking? And how many of you are there?”

Lentz tosses his baseball cap back and forth from one hand to the other, looking nervous or confused — possibly both. He’s just the messenger; Kyung understands that. But he has a message of his own that he wants Lentz to carry back.

“That day in the waiting room, when half the department turned up … I thought all of you were invested in this, but you’re not really doing anything, are you?”

“Cut it out,” Gillian says. “Now you’re just being unfair.”

“How is that unfair? You were standing right there — you heard him.”

“There’s a process, Kyung. I should know. I grew up with this. They’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing.”

His father is watching Gillian, studying her as she speaks. Her behavior is probably distasteful to him — a wife sharing an opinion that differs from her husband’s, contradicting him in front of others. Mae would never dare, having learned long ago that dissent was the fastest route to grief. Neither of his parents really knows Gillian — how stubborn she is, how she doesn’t hesitate to speak her mind. Over time, he’s come to accept and sometimes even love this about her, but suddenly she’s making him nervous. After a week of living together under the same roof, she’s abandoned his careful list of dos and don’ts. With no advance warning, no discussion at all, she’s letting his father see who she is, who they are as a couple. Kyung doesn’t know how to interpret the expression on Jin’s face, a queer mix of curiosity and embarrassment, maybe even anger.

“I’m sorry,” Gillian says. “My husband’s anxious — we all are.”

“Why are you apologizing for me?”

“Everyone’s a little on edge right now.”

“But we’re not the ones who should be apologizing. We’re the victims.” He stops and tries to glide over his mistake. “My parents are the victims. They shouldn’t have to live like this, knowing he’s still out there somewhere.”

Lentz’s cheeks flush pink, and he looks at the platter of sandwiches again. Something about this reminds Kyung of the kids he grew up with, the ones whose parents were too poor or neglectful to feed them properly. He was always grateful to Mae for offering them food, for encouraging them so kindly to take it. Kyung, however, regarded them differently afterward, saddened by the glimpse of something shameful about their lives. He realized how little it took to reveal a secret, and what a burden it was on people once they knew.

“If you want a sandwich, then just take one already.”

He slides the platter across the island, pushing the slick plastic much harder than he means to. The platter veers off toward the edge of the countertop like a bowling ball headed for the gutter. Kyung sees it all happen in slow motion — the skid, the drop, the crash of the platter against the tile and the startled jump that Lentz takes to avoid the bread and cold cuts strewn at his feet.

“What is the matter with you?” Gillian shouts.

Kyung locks eyes with Ethan, whose face registers an early, confused stage of alarm. He can stop it, he thinks. He can stop it if everyone else plays along. He walks to the other side of the island and gets down on his knees, using his hand as a makeshift broom.

“Sorry about that,” he says, not looking up.

Lentz gently kicks his foot to the side, discarding a piece of lettuce on his boot. “It’s all right. Like your wife said, you’re all on edge these days. You have every right to be.”

This wasn’t what Kyung intended, not at all. He wanted to be assertive in front of his father; he wanted to prove that it was possible to disagree with his wife without feeling the need to beat her into submission. Instead, he’s crouching at another man’s feet.

“I should probably get going now,” Lentz says. “If you folks need anything, if you have any more questions…”

Kyung continues scooping handfuls of meat and cheese onto the platter until he realizes that no one is talking; no one is moving at all. He turns and finds Mae standing behind him with a towel draped over her shoulders and a head of dripping wet hair. She’s dressed in the powder blue bathrobe that Gillian bought her, a cheap polyester one that zips all the way to the neck.

“What happened?” she asks.

Her face is even paler than usual. The skin hangs loosely from her chin. Mae has always been a petite woman — a hundred pounds wet, at best — but even the billowy, oversized robe can’t disguise the fact that she looks thinner than before, almost skeletal.

“What happened?” she repeats.

“Nothing,” Gillian says. “I knocked a plate off the countertop.… I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”