Janice Lee: The Expatriates

SHE IS WALKING through IFC running errands when she is accosted by an Indian man.

“You are lucky,” he says, “but you are sad. Can I tell you what will happen next?”

She looks at his eyes, and he smiles ingratiatingly. He is dressed in a cheap suit, the kind that makes you sad because the effort must be so great, like when she lived in New York City and once the Chinese deliveryman was dressed in a suit. To show you they are still hoping. She has heard of these men who accost you in public places, who offer to tell you your fortune and try to reel you in. She remembers reading about a court case where one woman had given her life savings to a psychic and then come to her senses.

“What do you think will happen?” she asks.

“I sense you are missing someone,” he says. So vague it could apply to anyone, and yet….

“Margaret!” she hears. It’s Hilary Starr.

“Oh, hello,” she says, turning to her.

“What are you doing?” She pulls Margaret away from the man. “Haven’t you heard what these men do?” she asks, glaring at him. “Sometimes they blow some sort of gas in your face that makes you drowsy and susceptible. It’s dangerous.”

“Urban myth, surely,” Margaret says, although she’s not sure.

“This man is not the solution,” Hilary says. “Do you want to get a coffee? I have to tell you the insane thing that just happened to me.”

“Sure,” Margaret says. They find a Starbucks and order lattes.

“I just had lunch with David,” Hilary says. “I wanted to tell him that I’m going ahead with adoption. I don’t know if you knew, but I’ve been having this boy come to my house for several months for piano lessons. He’s seven, Julian, and I’ve decided I want to adopt him.”

Margaret had heard vaguely about this and nods.

“That’s wonderful, Hilary. Congratulations.”

“But get this! So I’m telling him because I want to keep his name on the forms because it’s easier to adopt as a couple, and then he tells me he’s gotten some girl pregnant!”

Margaret claps her hand over her mouth. “Come on!” she says. “No way.” It feels good to be having this conversation about other things, other people.

“Yes! And she’s keeping the baby! She’s young, some Korean American girl who went to Columbia.” Hilary keeps talking, not realizing that Margaret has stopped reacting, gone white with shock.

Hilary stops after a while. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“Wait,” Margaret says. “A Korean girl? From Columbia? What’s her name?”

“A strange name. Mercy? Milly?”

As if she had summoned the girl into her universe again, just by writing the e-mail.

Margaret gets up abruptly, uncertainly, as if she is drunk, chair clattering to the floor behind her, and walks out, leaving Hilary agape in her wake.

THE ODDEST THING. She ran into Margaret after leaving David, and full of the news, she asked her to coffee so she could tell someone, share with someone. Why does it not seem real until you’ve told someone?

But when she told her the news, Margaret got up and ran, like someone was after her. She left her latte steaming on the table.

Hilary let her go, then, thinking it over, it hit her.

Of course! The girl.

The girl who lost G. The nanny. David’s girl. The same.

Jesus.

SHE HAS TO WRITE BACK, of course. But what to write?

Maybe meet face to face? But the baby, her swollen stomach. She doesn’t want to spring that on her.

She goes home that day, having sold an antique chest to a nice older couple from Indiana. She helps them fill out the shipping forms, and they pay with traveler’s checks, something she hasn’t seen in years. She feels useful, good, as if she has a place in the world.

At home, her mother is making kimchi jjigae , one of her favorites.

“Thanks, Mom,” she says. “That smells really good.”

“When I was pregnant with you, I always want the spicy food.”

They sit down to eat at her tiny folding table, one of them on the bed, the other on the chair. Mercy wants to weep, because it feels so nice to be sitting here with someone who loves her unconditionally.

“Are you going to move?” her mother asks. “This place so small.”

Mercy knows what her mother is asking. “I don’t know,” she says.

“Coming soon,” she says. “Four months and you’re going to be more and more uncomfortable.”

“I know,” she says. “But I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“We could go back to New York,” her mother says. “You can come home. Have more space. And baby can be born in America.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she says. “I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

“I can help you, Mercy.” Her mother moves over to sit next to her. Mercy can smell her familiar smell — the lotion she rubs on her hands after she finishes cooking, mixed with the scent of doenjang , a unique, pungent odor that brings her back to childhood.

Mercy’s eyes fill with tears. “ Umma ,” she says: Mom. And she breaks down.

She tells her mother everything, the whole story, with all her jobs and the unemployment and how she met Margaret and went to Korea with their family, and G — her mother breathes in sharply at this part but does not interject, just lets her keep going — and how she’s been living, or not living, for the past year. She tells her about David and about Charlie and how she’s messed everything up and how she thinks she always will be messed up. She tells her how she knows she’s going to have a girl, and she’s deathly afraid for her already. Mercy has been alone with all this for so long that, while she is telling it, she is so overwhelmed with gratitude and relief that someone is there to listen that she almost feels happy. She even tells her mother about getting the man to translate the fortune booklet when she was a teenager.

Her mother listens to all this and starts crying in the middle of it, so they are both weeping together, talking and listening, sitting on the bed in the tiny apartment.

“I love you,” her mother says. “Don’t worry. You are okay. How can you not tell me before? I am your mother. I fail you.”

Mercy has watched enough Korean dramas to know that Koreans are used to tragedy and melodrama. It’s in their blood. Mothers pretend to abandon their adored child rather than let them know some secret that would hurt them, or lovers don’t tell each other the one thing that would unravel all their issues. It’s a distinctly Korean way of being, and so she fits right in.

“It sounds like a drama,” her mother says, as if reading her mind.

“I know!” she says, smiling through her tears.

“You shouldn’t think you are unlucky forever,” her mother says. “You can change your destiny. Look, I change mine by leaving your father. It reset. I don’t know how it is going to be, but it’s going to be different. It will be.”

“But what should I do? Should I write her back?”

Her mother gets a fierce look on her face. “That woman cannot tell you you are not allowed to be happy. She is not in charge of you.”

“But I ruined her life. Her family’s life.”

Mercy remembers something from her teenage years. She lost an earring at someone’s house, and after searching for a while, she went to ask her mother for help. Her mother went and scanned the area where she had lost it. “When you want to find something small like this,” she told Mercy, “you have to get down to the floor.” She lay down on the carpet and put her eye to the ground. “Come down, Mercy,” she said, gesturing. They lay on the carpet and scanned the floor at ground level. She was right: Things looked different from down there. Mercy found the earring immediately. “See,” her mother said. “You have to get down to the level of the thing. Don’t be too proud to do it.” They lay there for a moment more, Mercy absorbing the lesson, the fact that her mother was there with her, willing to get down on the floor and find something with her, teach her something. She felt lucky.