Jung Yun - Shelter

“It’s a parsonage. It was no more my father’s house than it is mine.”

Something about Reverend Sung strikes him as more human today, more benign. From a distance, he always seemed several ranks above everyone else, beyond reproach in a way that made Kyung feel distrustful and judged. But the reverend looks so stricken now, almost childlike in his remorse.

“It was fine, you know. The service. I’m sure it’s a lot of pressure to deliver a eulogy.”

There’s a couple standing in the hallway, but the reverend politely waves them off and closes the door, trapping Kyung in the study with him.

“My father was planning to come — did you know that? He was looking for a plane ticket from Seoul up until the very last minute, but I’m glad he couldn’t find one now. He would have been so embarrassed.”

“It was nice of him to try. That’s a long trip for a funeral.”

“He was very fond of you and your parents.”

Kyung pauses. “I always liked him. He did a good thing for me once.”

“I know,” he says, looking over his shoulder, confirming Kyung’s suspicion that his family’s history had been passed down from one reverend to the next. “And I like your father too, despite some of his past behavior.”

The fear of being known like this, it was always the thing that governed him. He didn’t want to be the subject of other people’s pity, but the reverend’s tone is so matter-of-fact, with no judgment or condescension at all. He looks at Kyung calmly, waiting for him to continue, as if nothing between them has changed.

“I was terrible to my mother the night before she died. I said things to her, things I can’t take back.”

“We all say or do things we regret from time to time. God made us imperfect so that he could—”

“Please,” Kyung says, raising his hand in the air. “Can you please not talk to me like that right now? I can’t — I just can’t listen to that.”

The reverend nods. “I think I understand. You’ve always had a difficult relationship with your parents, and now that Mae’s gone, things will never improve with her. Is that what’s bothering you?”

Kyung doesn’t think it boils down to something so simple. The “it,” in fact, feels like an ever-thickening mass, the threads too twisted and tangled to find their beginnings or ends. The reverend isn’t entirely wrong, but he’s not completely right.

“I was the reason she drove off that morning.”

“But it’s not your fault she gave up, Kyung. Mae chose to take her own life. And what she did to herself and that girl — I know you don’t want to hear it in these terms, but it was a sin. It was as much a sin as what those men did to them, hard as that might be to hear.”

The awkwardness of the service — the things that were said and the things that weren’t — begins to makes sense to him now. The reverend wasn’t nervous. He simply wouldn’t lie.

“Who told you?”

“Your father called me this morning, right before I left for church.” The reverend kicks the trash can again. “I accept the fact you don’t have faith at this particular moment in your life, so the idea of sin probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but I just couldn’t stand there and read what I’d written about her, not after I knew.”

The inventory should have left no doubt that the accident was intentional. But for days, Jin refused to look at it, refused to accept the truth of what Mae had done. Kyung understands this impulse more clearly now. To hear the reverend describe her death as a sin is terrifying, not because of his own beliefs, but because of his parents’. Mae knew what she was doing when she got in that car and asked Marina to join her. How miserable her life must have been to choose hell instead.

“I know you and your father have never been close, but if you could have heard his voice this morning, you might think differently of him. He was distraught, Kyung. He is distraught.”

“He hasn’t spoken to me for days. Neither has Gillian.”

“So I’ll tell you the same thing I told him. They’re wrong to blame you. It doesn’t matter what you said to Mae or how you said it. You can’t be held responsible for her actions. Are you listening, Kyung? You’re not to blame for what happened.”

Of all the people in the world, he never expected Reverend Sung to be a source of comfort, the first real sense of comfort he’s felt in so long. He’s thrown by it, stunned silent by the possibility that he isn’t so undeserving of kindness as he believes himself to be. Kyung sits down and takes the reverend’s hand, squeezing it to convey the volume of things he can’t, and the reverend, in another act of kindness, simply stands there and lets him, saying nothing in return.

Gillian sends Ethan and Jin away the next morning. She suggests a trip to the zoo, the park, the library, anywhere. Kyung is standing in front of the window, watching dark gray clouds streak across the sky as the wind bends thin treetops like bows. He thinks of the roof in Gillian’s car, how it leaks on the driver’s side when it rains, but he keeps this to himself. He wants them out of the house as much as she does. Kyung can’t remember the last time he and Gillian were alone together, when they could say what needed to be said without worrying who would overhear. As soon as the car pulls out of the garage, he braces himself for an argument, but Gillian goes upstairs to their bedroom and shuts the door behind her. She’s trained him over the years — a closed door means don’t bother me —but an hour passes and nothing happens. Then another hour passes and nothing still. He wonders if the rules are different now, if the very thing she’s told him not to do is the thing she actually wants.

Kyung continues to wait, circling the living room and kitchen in long, idle loops. He doesn’t know how to start the conversation they need to have. All his previous attempts have ended badly. No amount of apologizing has been able to soften Gillian. Apologies, in fact, only seem to upset her more. He’s not sure how many times he can say it, or how to say it differently. He’s sorry for what he did at the Cape; he’ll always be sorry. The fact that she doesn’t believe him feels like another kind of loss.

He lifts the edge of a curtain and looks at the rain, which is coming down in sheets now. It cascades from the gutters and pelts the windows with pea-sized hail. There was no mention of a storm in the forecast today. If it keeps up, Jin and Ethan will probably come back from their outing soon, and nothing with Gillian will have changed. Kyung doesn’t know how much longer he can live like this, exiled and ignored in his own home. He goes upstairs and presses his ear against the door, listening to her walk back and forth in the bedroom.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks.

The door doesn’t open, not that he expected it to. He leans against the wall and glances at one of the night-lights in the hallway, a fluorescent green palm tree they bought in South Carolina. Five feet away, there’s a seahorse-shaped night-light from Florida. And down the stairs are two more from Bermuda and Saint Croix. Night-lights were the only things they allowed themselves to buy when they went on vacation. Whatever guilt they felt about maxing out another credit card was mitigated by coming home with light bags.

“Remember when we drove down to Charleston after I defended my dissertation?”

This isn’t what he intended to say when he went upstairs, but it feels better than offering another apology that she won’t accept.

“Maybe we should go back there again and spend a little time by ourselves, stay at a bed-and-breakfast or something.…”