The Interpreter (2 page)
Authors: Suki Kim
“Raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that you will translate from Korean to English and from English to Korean to the best of your ability, so help you God?”
“I do,” Suzy answers, thinking to herself,
Yes, please help me, God
.
Yes, please help me, God
.
On the way home, Suzy calls Jen from Grand Central, which is just a few blocks from Jen’s office.
“Do they always let you out this early?” Jen smiles when she greets Suzy at the Starbucks counter in the north wing of the station, sipping a Frappuccino. She is impressed that Suzy has stuck with interpreting for eight months, but she also makes it clear that she is not fooled.
“You’re hiding,” Jen says after ordering a chocolate-dipped biscotti with her decaf. “This is your little revenge, to make him find you, but you know Damian’s far too decadent for that.”
Suzy pretends to not hear and blows the foam on top of her Frappuccino into a little bubble, which makes a perfect round circle for a blinking second, then pops.
“The witness today said that I looked like someone he knew,” Suzy says almost in passing.
“Another married asshole with a midlife crisis?” Jen rolls her eyes.
“No, he looked sad. He reminded me of Dad.”
“Why, was he …”
“No, not angry, just sad.”
“
Suzy
…”
Suzy
…”
“I’ve gotta go,” Suzy says, sucking on the straw to get the last taste of the sugary bit at the bottom. “Michael’s calling me at three.”
“Where’s he this time?” Jen asks with a smirk, creasing her perfectly powdered face.
“London. He loves calling me from there. He says that his cell connects clearest from Heathrow. I don’t know. He might be
right. Last week, he called from Lisbon and I could barely make out a word.”
right. Last week, he called from Lisbon and I could barely make out a word.”
“Why doesn’t the big guy just call you from a regular phone?”
“Because he thinks anything’s traceable, and at least with his cell, he’s on top of it.”
They both burst out laughing then, like two coy college girls picking on the cutest boy in the room.
THE PHONE CONTINUES for four rings and stops as Suzy reaches the fifth floor and stands at the door looking for the key. It rings again as she inserts the key into the hole, and stops at the fourth ring. Then it begins again. Whoever it is does not want to leave a message. Whoever it is does not know that she never picks up the phone, a habit that started the year she left school and moved in with Damian. He always let the machine take the call. It was from neither arrogance nor aloofness. During the first few months, it was a necessity. There were too many people hot on their trail, acquaintances with too much spare time who would call periodically to alert them to exactly what other people were saying about this “terrible situation,” which they would repeat in a conspiring whisper as though it were not they who thought it “terrible” but everyone else. “New Yorkers aren’t busy,” Damian mused. “They just don’t have enough time for themselves.” Then there was the family. Damian’s one sister lived in Lake Forest, Illinois, and had rarely been in touch over
the years; Professor Tamiko would only speak to him through the lawyers. What Suzy feared was hearing her father’s silence on the other end of the line. But it soon became clear that her parents would not try to contact her. Grace left a message a few weeks after the eruption of the scandal: “Suzy, you must get out of there. God will only forgive the ones who forgive themselves.”
the years; Professor Tamiko would only speak to him through the lawyers. What Suzy feared was hearing her father’s silence on the other end of the line. But it soon became clear that her parents would not try to contact her. Grace left a message a few weeks after the eruption of the scandal: “Suzy, you must get out of there. God will only forgive the ones who forgive themselves.”
God had become Grace’s answer by then, although she had been the bad one all through their growing up. Grace was the one who got grounded for being found naked with that Keller boy in the back of his dad’s Toyota when she was fourteen. Grace was the one who hid her marijuana pouch inside her tampon case, which she nicknamed her “best friend, Mariana,” and then, to Suzy’s surprise, declared so boldly at the dinner table, “May I be excused? I promised my friend Mariana that we’ll do our homework together.” It had also been Grace who told Suzy that the only reason she applied to Smith College on early decision was that no decent Korean boy would want her now, because everyone knew Smith was for sluts and lesbians. But somehow, during her four years away, God found his way into Grace’s untamable spirit, and Suzy could no longer recognize her older sister, who left such an inappropriate message on her machine, as though salvation lay somewhere on the stoop of a Presbyterian church on Sunday mornings. Suzy began to dread the phone. Damian said that if he could help it he would live without the damn thing. He was distrustful of people anyway. The thought of Damian being stuck on the phone with any of her young friends—although, after a few months, Jen was the only one who called with any consistency—was almost painful.
When Suzy enters the apartment, the phone begins ringing again. She waits for the click at the fourth ring, but instead the machine takes it.
“Babe, it’s me, pick up!”
The voice is cheery and confident.
“Suzy, I know you’re there.”
She is not sure why she does not pick up immediately, but there is an unmistakable moment of hesitation. For a second, she is tempted to leave Michael at Heathrow, sliding down the moving sidewalk, shouting into his Motorola. For a second, that seems to be the most obvious thing to do, the only thing to do—to leave him there.
“Hi, I just walked in.” The hesitation is over.
“See, I knew.” Michael is all happy.
“London?”
“Yeah, it’s fab, brilliant. Those Brits just ate it up, man. They fucking love the whole crap. They’ve got it all mixed up. They think Java’s some coffee from the Caribbean, and HTML a code name for the newest hip-hop nation. They’re sure I’m their Bill Gates, and I told them, ‘Bill and me, we’re like brothers.’”
“Good,” Suzy agrees, as she always does when Michael’s had a shot of whiskey or two.
“I sent Sandy out to Harrods to get you some stuff, some slinky things here and there, for my pretty girl back home, I told her. I’m sure she thinks I’m a pig, so I told her to get some sexy stuff for herself too, although you make sure my girl gets the best of the pile, I said.”
Suzy smiles, imagining Michael’s curt, crisp, forty-something-and-single secretary lingerie-shopping for her boss’s mistress. Sandy often calls for Michael when he is stuck in a meeting or on the plane. Sandy is efficient and excessively private. Although, Michael has said, the minute she finds a man, she will quit in a flash. He is sticking with her, he has claimed, just to see that happen.
“Babe, you listening?”
“Michael, I miss you.” Suzy is surprised at this sudden confession and thinks that it must be true.
“Meet me in Frankfurt. Sandy will arrange the ticket.”
“I can’t. I don’t have a passport.” In fact, she has never been out of the country, not since she followed her parents to America as a child. At twenty-nine, Suzy has never been abroad. Partly for fear of flying, and partly because she can no longer leave New York.
“Suzy, I’m being serious.” Michael does not believe her. Why should he? He knows practically nothing about her.
“I really can’t. Family business.”
“What family? Babe, you haven’t got any …” Michael is good at dodging serious conversation. “Except for me,” he adds almost peevishly.
You’re hiding
. That is what Jen said this afternoon.
. That is what Jen said this afternoon.
“When are you boarding?” Suzy asks, trying to shake off Jen’s voice.
“Right now. Gotta go, call you tomorrow!”
Michael is gone before she can ask if it was he who kept hanging up at the fourth ring.
Suzy’s apartment on St. Marks Place is at the hub of downtown. It was the first place she saw when she moved back to the city five years ago. She had been in such a rush then that she just grabbed the first thing offered, although there had been a few more apartments to check out. Apartment hunters in Manhattan are truly desperate. At 7 p.m. on Tuesdays, they line up outside Astor Place Stationery, where the first batch of
The Village Voice
is delivered upon printing. That is where the apartment war begins, everyone grabbing the first issue and running to the nearest phone booth to call the handful of landlords who fill the ad space with “No broker, low rent!”
The Village Voice
is delivered upon printing. That is where the apartment war begins, everyone grabbing the first issue and running to the nearest phone booth to call the handful of landlords who fill the ad space with “No broker, low rent!”
For three consecutive Tuesdays, Suzy stood in line with no
luck. Although she had been worried that such a collective panic would make her so nauseous she would run straight back into Damian’s arms, she actually found it comforting to see that she was not the only one looking for a new home or new life in the streets of New York. Mostly they were college graduates fresh from Middle America who had watched too much MTV and decided to try their luck the minute they could scrape up some money to get to the city. They often appeared even hipper than the city kids. Clad in vintage velvet and leather, they looked everything they said they were. “We need a loft where me and my girlfriend can both paint; our paintings are huge, bigger than the stuff Pollock used to do,” one goateed boy declared, so loudly that everyone in line turned to him, as though he and his girlfriend were the newly crowned postmodern Abstract Expressionist royalty. Then others chimed in competitively: “New York rocks, man. I wrote like two hundred songs about it,” or “I’ll take anything on Avenue A; how could you be a poet and not follow Ginsberg?,” or “This casting agent says that I look just like Monica from
Friends
, and I’m, like, no way would I ever do TV!” Suzy would listen and wonder how many of them, if any, would attain their dreams, and she would realize that she, in fact, envied them all, these buoyant kids for whom life was just offering its first mysterious glimpse, while she, at twenty-five, had already given up. Then, one day, a boy who stood behind her tapped on her shoulder and asked if she needed a roommate. He was the first true redhead she had seen in a long time, and he wore a sky-blue bowling jacket that had “Vince” stitched above its right pocket. He could not afford to live alone, he said, and did not trust strangers to share an apartment, but she looked nice and he’d always wanted to live in Asia, and perhaps she was the closest thing he’d come to the continent. Then he held out his multi-ringed hand and said, “Hi, I am Caleb, I’m twenty-one,
a philosopher and a performance artist.” She tried not to laugh as she shook his hand with “Suzy, twenty-five and unemployed.”
luck. Although she had been worried that such a collective panic would make her so nauseous she would run straight back into Damian’s arms, she actually found it comforting to see that she was not the only one looking for a new home or new life in the streets of New York. Mostly they were college graduates fresh from Middle America who had watched too much MTV and decided to try their luck the minute they could scrape up some money to get to the city. They often appeared even hipper than the city kids. Clad in vintage velvet and leather, they looked everything they said they were. “We need a loft where me and my girlfriend can both paint; our paintings are huge, bigger than the stuff Pollock used to do,” one goateed boy declared, so loudly that everyone in line turned to him, as though he and his girlfriend were the newly crowned postmodern Abstract Expressionist royalty. Then others chimed in competitively: “New York rocks, man. I wrote like two hundred songs about it,” or “I’ll take anything on Avenue A; how could you be a poet and not follow Ginsberg?,” or “This casting agent says that I look just like Monica from
Friends
, and I’m, like, no way would I ever do TV!” Suzy would listen and wonder how many of them, if any, would attain their dreams, and she would realize that she, in fact, envied them all, these buoyant kids for whom life was just offering its first mysterious glimpse, while she, at twenty-five, had already given up. Then, one day, a boy who stood behind her tapped on her shoulder and asked if she needed a roommate. He was the first true redhead she had seen in a long time, and he wore a sky-blue bowling jacket that had “Vince” stitched above its right pocket. He could not afford to live alone, he said, and did not trust strangers to share an apartment, but she looked nice and he’d always wanted to live in Asia, and perhaps she was the closest thing he’d come to the continent. Then he held out his multi-ringed hand and said, “Hi, I am Caleb, I’m twenty-one,
a philosopher and a performance artist.” She tried not to laugh as she shook his hand with “Suzy, twenty-five and unemployed.”
She liked Caleb. He was honest and surprisingly shy. He also brought her luck, because on that very night they found the apartment on St. Marks Place. She was amazed that it had been so easy, considering that she was unemployed, and as far as she could tell, his day job of working at a vegan restaurant on the Lower East Side did not quite fulfill the criterion of a desirable tenant. Then Caleb told her that his doctor parents who lived in Scarsdale co-signed the lease. When she asked if they knew that the beneficiary of their generosity was an unemployed stranger their son had met outside Astor Place Stationery, Caleb winked. “Darling, I told them that I had a mad crush on you. They would’ve bought the apartment for us if they thought we were actually doing it.”
The apartment was a typical East Village walk-up railroad, an elongated stretch of three connecting rooms. Suzy had to pass through Caleb’s bedroom to get to the kitchen, which led to the bathroom that was missing a sink. Neither noticed the missing sink until they finally moved in, when Caleb walked out into the kitchen with a seriously distraught look on his face and exclaimed, “There’s no place to put a toothbrush!” Suzy thought it could have been worse. Better a sink than a tub. She could not imagine surviving New York winters without the relief of a hot bath.
Caleb often brought home leftover tofu pancakes and nondairy crème brûlée from the restaurant. The only edible things there, he explained. The rest tasted so depressingly dull that it was simply cruel to put his taste buds through such an uninspiring challenge. A cleverly concocted diet plan, he claimed. Imagine working at a restaurant where the food is actually good! The philosopher-and-performance-artist bit was hard to figure out,
though. Caleb never read books and was certainly too cynical to perform in front of a crowd. When Suzy finally approached the subject without wanting to sound either dismissive or disrespectful, he burst out laughing. “Oh, it’s a private joke with myself. My dad once said that homosexuality is for philosophers or performance artists. How could you grow up in Westchester and end up fucking boys? He wept when I came out at my high-school graduation, really. Imagine this Jewish optometrist in his fifties with tears streaming down his face. He didn’t use the f-word, of course.”
though. Caleb never read books and was certainly too cynical to perform in front of a crowd. When Suzy finally approached the subject without wanting to sound either dismissive or disrespectful, he burst out laughing. “Oh, it’s a private joke with myself. My dad once said that homosexuality is for philosophers or performance artists. How could you grow up in Westchester and end up fucking boys? He wept when I came out at my high-school graduation, really. Imagine this Jewish optometrist in his fifties with tears streaming down his face. He didn’t use the f-word, of course.”
Suzy found it almost comforting to hear about Caleb’s unending drama with his parents, who phoned every Sunday and yet always managed to avoid addressing her directly. Soon they stopped calling. Caleb’s therapist, whom his parents hired and paid for, thought it was unwise for them to keep up with this weekly communication, which only encouraged resentment in both parties. “Once the homosexual issue is ‘solved,’ Dr. Siegel told them, then they can call!” Caleb exclaimed with the cheeky smile of a kid who has just pushed the bully off the merry-go-round.
“What about your parents? Do they know that you never get laid?” Caleb asked one night after three months of living together. It must have been Thursday, the crème brûlée night, which they often celebrated with an Australian Chardonnay from the “Deal of the Week” shelf at First Avenue Liquor.
“They’re both dead. But, no, I guess they never knew, or never wanted to know at least,” Suzy answered in the most matter-of-fact tone she could muster, which she hoped would make him feel less sorry about asking.
“Gee, I’m sorry, Suz, I didn’t know …”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s been a while. Besides, we never talked much when they were alive anyway.”
With that, Suzy polished off the last scoop. Caleb sat still,
waiting for her to say more. But she didn’t. It was the first time she had said aloud that they were dead. It came out just like that, almost naturally. She had not talked to anyone she knew since the funeral. She had not seen anyone, except for Jen. She certainly did not plan on finding herself in an East Village walkthrough kitchen with a twenty-one-year-old boy whom she’d met three months ago and casually saying, while picking at a bowl of crème brûlée, that her parents were dead.
waiting for her to say more. But she didn’t. It was the first time she had said aloud that they were dead. It came out just like that, almost naturally. She had not talked to anyone she knew since the funeral. She had not seen anyone, except for Jen. She certainly did not plan on finding herself in an East Village walkthrough kitchen with a twenty-one-year-old boy whom she’d met three months ago and casually saying, while picking at a bowl of crème brûlée, that her parents were dead.
Suzy never mentioned her parents again, and Caleb never asked. Instead, she asked him about his. She inquired after his progress with Dr. Siegel, and if his father still occasionally cried, if his mother was curious at all about the supposed girlfriend who lived with her son. Suzy asked to see their photograph, which Caleb then stuck on the refrigerator door with a magnet that said “From Here to Eternity.” They looked almost exactly as Suzy had imagined, with Caleb’s red hair and extra-long eyelashes, posing before their unmistakable Stanford White house and the nougat-colored Mercedes Benz. Caleb would tell her all about his father’s glass-walled office in the center of Scarsdale, and his mother’s book club, which included other doctors’ wives from the better part of Westchester County. “Whatever’s on the
Times
best-seller list they’d read, especially the lewd ones, you know, books like
Hollywood Madam
, which I’m sure they took home to pore over only the dirty parts.” Caleb would steal a glance at Suzy as if he knew that she kept prodding him with questions so that she would not have to talk.
Times
best-seller list they’d read, especially the lewd ones, you know, books like
Hollywood Madam
, which I’m sure they took home to pore over only the dirty parts.” Caleb would steal a glance at Suzy as if he knew that she kept prodding him with questions so that she would not have to talk.
Then, three months later, Caleb started dating an older man who one day walked into the restaurant and fell in love with him, and three weeks later, he packed his bag and moved into the man’s spacious one-bedroom apartment in the West Village. “He has a real sink, with gold faucets and everything. I feel like I’m back in Scarsdale,” Caleb said, chuckling into the phone on his first night away.
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