Jung Yun - Shelter

Kyung knows why he did it, why he married her despite believing that he probably shouldn’t marry anyone. On some level, he was grateful that a woman like Gillian would choose to be with him. Her goodness was redeeming; it made him want to be worthy of her. But whatever impulse he has to fight for them is checked by the knowledge that this person he loves — and he does love her, more than he ever imagined possible — would be better off without him, a thought he’s had so many times before. Kyung looks up at Gillian, at the way she’s standing with her arms crossed loosely over her chest. She seems resigned, as resigned as he is to let this be how it ends.

“I can’t keep asking you the same question, Kyung. Who was it?”

“You don’t know her,” he says. “She was just some girl.”

Gillian nods slowly, struggling to take it all in. “You can’t get out of your own way,” she says. “Do you even understand that about yourself? No one’s holding you back. No one’s trying to make you unhappy — not me or Ethan or even your parents. You can blame us as much as you want, but at a certain point, maybe you just have to accept the fact that it’s you. It’s all the things you can’t let go of.”

“But how can I—?”

“No, Kyung. Just stop. I know you had a hard life before we met. I understand that now, I really do. But your parents were responsible for that. Not me or Ethan. All we did was love you, so you owed it to us to be a better man. I can’t just stand here and watch you disappoint us anymore.”

She hasn’t raised her voice at him, not once, which is actually worse than being yelled at. It’s taken him five years to realize that Gillian only shouts when she’s invested in what happens afterwards. What happens to him from this point on, she clearly doesn’t care.

“Use your credit card,” she says. “For the hotel, or wherever you decide to go.”

“Which credit card?”

“It doesn’t matter. Your father paid them all off.”

He pauses. He knows he didn’t mishear her, but he still doesn’t understand. “What do you mean, ‘paid them all off’? How could he do that?”

“I asked him to. Begged him, actually.”

“Gillian!”

She startles at the sound of his voice, biting her lip as she lifts and lowers the handle of the suitcase. “He was happy to do it,” she continues. “A little shocked that I asked, maybe. But it wasn’t like we hid things all that well. He could tell we were in trouble.”

“Of course he was happy to do it. Don’t you realize that he just bought you? That he bought me too?”

“He’s not like that.”

Kyung never understood how his father could hit his mother, how he justified his actions as reasonable or right. Even now, his mind doesn’t get it, but his body is starting to rebel. He looks at himself, at the way he’s choking the sheets and blankets in his fists, holding himself down on the bed.

“How could you do this to us?” he asks.

“I didn’t do it to us. I did it because I had to. I was tired, Kyung. Tired of waking up in the middle of the night, feeling like something was sitting on my chest. It was getting too hard to breathe.”

She looks at him as if she expects him to agree, but Kyung is still holding himself down, fighting the urge to scream at her.

“I think you felt the same way, but you could never bring yourself to admit it, to do anything about it. All those books I gave you, the Web sites and articles … I couldn’t just wait for you to fix it anymore. And your father was actually so understanding. He kept saying I shouldn’t be embarrassed. The amount didn’t even seem to faze him.”

Kyung has no idea what the amount even is. Forty? Fifty thousand? Probably more. He lost track of the total years ago, ignoring the telltale envelopes and phone calls at all hours of the night. Occasionally, he allowed himself to imagine what it would feel like to pay off their debts in one fell swoop, but his father never entered into any of these daydreams.

“Tell him to cancel the check, or however he paid it.”

“No. It’s already done.”

“Then tell him to call someone and get the money back.”

“I just said no.”

“Fine, then. I’ll tell him.”

“It won’t matter. He’s not doing this for you. He’s probably not even doing it for me. This is for Ethan.”

“I take care of you and Ethan just fine.”

He has to look away as he finishes the sentence. His voice, his expression — he can feel how ugly they are — and he doesn’t need her to confirm what he already knows. He hasn’t been taking care of either of them, not for a long time, not in any of the ways that matter. Gillian chooses to let this go, and it occurs to him, as it’s occurred to him in the past — she deserved much better than he gave her. She’d always been a good wife; she wasn’t capable of being anything less. Even now, as she’s casting him out of her life, she’s packed his things for him, making sure he has what he needs.

“You should probably leave now, Kyung.”

“How? We don’t even have a car here.”

“I can call you a cab, or there’s the bus stop over by the middle school. The 38 drops off near those hotels downtown.” Gillian lifts a corner of the blinds. The rain is letting up, but the clouds still look bruised and gray, ready to open again. “It’s getting late. They’ll be home soon.”

She has it all worked out for him, as if she’s been planning this for days. They just needed to get past the funeral so she could send him away. If this is going to be their memory of the end, Kyung wants to leave the house like a man, a decent man, but the fact that she went to his father behind his back, that both of them have been keeping a secret from him — it’s a greater betrayal than he ever thought Gillian capable of.

“I still don’t understand how you could do this.”

“I did exactly what you did,” she says, lowering the blinds.

“What does that mean?”

“I asked your father for help because I knew it was the one thing you’d never be able to forgive. But unlike you, at least I got something out of it. Ethan and I might have a chance of making it now.”

She doesn’t sound entirely convinced of this, but she’s right about everything else. He can’t forgive her, no more than she can forgive him, and he understands that she probably planned this too. It eliminated the possibility that either of them would circle back in a moment of weakness, asking for another chance. It made the break clean.

“And my father — he’s, what? He’s just going to live here with the two of you? Pay the mortgage? Babysit my son?”

“I haven’t discussed any of that with him, but he’s welcome to stay as long as he wants.”

“You mean as long as he’s willing to pay the bills.”

Gillian looks out the window again. “I really need you to go before they get here. I’m asking you nicely. If you care about Ethan at all, please don’t let him see you angry again. He’s a little boy, Kyung. Just let him be a little boy.”

* * *

It’s ten past four in the morning when he pulls off the highway into a brightly lit service area. The lot is half-full of trucks and semis, with only a few passenger cars scattered in between. He parks his rental and gets out to stretch his legs, looking up at the open dome of sky. There aren’t any stars in western Pennsylvania. He assumed there would be, but the haze makes it hard to see anything other than a pair of commuter planes blinking red in the distance. Kyung buys a map, a bottle of water, and a pack of cigarettes from a bored-looking girl at the gas station and then walks next door to the diner. The people inside — all truckers, he assumes — look up from their plates when he enters. He hesitates for a moment, sensing that the crowd is rougher than he’s used to. The men are uniformly big and white and burly. They have bags under their eyes and constipated expressions that flicker with curiosity at the sight of Kyung. He’s not in a college town anymore, a difference he can feel as he slides into a seat at the counter and lifts an oversized menu in front of his face. He quickly orders a sandwich to go from another bored-looking girl who might be the sister of the one working next door.