That wasn’t the last surprise he had in store for us.
Someone from the Audiology appeared with a knock on the door a couple of hours after mom woke up. “Is now a good time for your consultation?”
“What consultation?” Mom and I both asked at the same time.
That was how we found out that Victor had arranged for her to be fitted with a waterproof processing unit for her implant.
It had taken months of appointments to get my mother and brother outfitted with their first implants back in the aughts. But my mom’s was done by the time the nurses came through with mom’s first post-surgery meal.
Victor. This was all Victor.
My entire chest tightened with confusion as I stared at him. When did my monster morph into a prince?
And why.
23
VICTOR
“You’re the Chinese boy, aren’t you?”
Victor jolted in his seat when Gyeong asked him this question. Her daughter had just gone downstairs to the cafeteria to get food for them. It would be the first meal they’d eaten all day. Dawn had been too nervous to consume anything while her mother was in surgery.
Gyeong had lain down and closed her eyes after she finished eating, and he had thought she might be asleep. But no. Victor wondered if she’d been waiting all these hours for a moment alone with him so that she could ask him this question.
She mistook his hesitation to answer for confusion.
“The Chinese boy,” she reiterated. “The one Dawn was secretly dating in high school?”
How much did Gyeong know about her husband’s job? He had assumed wrong once before with Dawn. Nonetheless, he answered, “Yes, I’m the Chinese boy.”
“I thought so,” Gyeong answered with a tired smile. “I still remember the day that phone you gave her arrived. Dawn was so surprised. And all I could think was, ‘this Chinese boy likes her. He likes her very much, and she doesn’t realize it.’ I think my husband thought that too. That’s why he didn’t want her tutoring you after the winter break. I should’ve known it was you she was sneaking around with before that night she came home late. She was so upset when her father forbade her from seeing you again. But it doesn’t matter now, I suppose. You found her.”
Victor stared at Gyeong, who apparently knew nothing of what had happened between him and Dawn after her supposed fight with her father. Yes, he had found her again. But ten years later, he was still at war with himself about their reunion.
“Is that why you two married in secret?” Gyeong asked. “Because you were afraid of our disapproval?”
“No,” he answered honestly. “It is a lot more complicated than that.”
Gyeong clamped her lips the same as Dawn so often did when she was conflicted. “I thought so. You remind me much of my husband. Quiet and angry for some reason, with big secrets you can never tell. You should give Dawn some children. Someone to keep her company when you can’t. That’s what my husband did, and it worked for a long time.”
The thought of children with Dawn twisted his stomach and stabbed at his heart. He hadn’t thought of them when he was eighteen and stupid. But now…
You still can’t think of them, he reminded himself. At least not with Dawn.
Four months. No matter what illusion they were putting on for Dawn’s mother, the fact remained that after May 25th, their deal would dissolve.
“Dawn would make a great mother. Much better than me,” Gyeong said. Her tone was thoughtful, as if she were just now realizing this herself. “Now that I am through my surgery, I probably will never tell her this, but I’m proud of her. I never would have stood up for myself like she did. The only defiant thing I ever did was run away from home to be with a black American soldier boy I met at my family’s farm-stand. And even then, my parents forgave me when we brought them to America and set them up with the dry-cleaning shop. They died right before we left for Japan. Liver cancer for my father too. And my mother just gave up. I don’t think she could bear living in America without him. How about your parents? Are they still alive? What do they think of Dawn?”
He hesitated, then decided to answer truthfully, “They’re both dead. My mother passed away when I was young, and my father died a few months after your family left Japan.”
Gyeong made a tutting sound. “Dawn said you were her same age. So you were so young! Eighteen! Just a baby still, and there you were, with both your parents gone.”
A strange sorrow gathered in his chest at her words…along with a new guilt. Yes, they had been young back then. Easily manipulated. Not only by their parents but also by each other. Had he been punishing Dawn all this time for something he might’ve done if his father had put him in the same position?
“You know, I liked art too when I was a girl,” Dawn’s mother said. “I was always getting in trouble for drawing on walls and counters. Blank paper wasn’t as easy to access for me back then as it is now, you see. I thought my artwork was beautiful. But my mother beat me every time she found one of my drawings, and that made me stop. Dawn was smart. She kept her art on paper. But I was still so scared for her future…”
She looked into the past Victor couldn’t see as she spoke and signed, but then she came back to the present to say, “Byron told me that she got a job in Pittsburgh. They liked her thesis project so much, they said she could come work for them as soon as she was done with grad school.”
Every cell in Victor’s body stilled. What? She already had a job lined up? When had this happened?
“I never imagined her getting paid for art the first time she got to that school of hers,” Gyeong said. “But she did it. I’m so proud of her. You know, maybe I will tell her that when she gets back.”
She smiled toothily at Victor. “If you have children with her, maybe you could be as proud of them someday as I am of her.”
Something cracked in Victor’s chest. Something that made it feel as if his heart would spill out if he allowed her to continue with the subject.
So he decided to introduce a much colder topic.
“I’ve made you a reservation for when you are discharged from the hospital. At the East Winds Center. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
Gyeong stilled. “Yes, that’s where all the country singers go. And the news anchor on Channel 5 after he got into that car accident. It’s very expensive.”
“There is a spot waiting for you, all expenses paid. And a shuttle will take you to all of your chemo appointments.”
Gyeong was very quiet for a long time. And when she spoke, her voice seemed weaker than before. “This place… it’s too expensive for me. I don’t deserve it.”
Victor merely signed back, “Thank you for the hot pot.”
Gyeong went quiet for a long time. Then she tentatively asked, “If I go to this place, do we have to tell Dawn or Byron?”
He owed this woman nothing. She was the wife of the man who had ruined his life. Yet he found himself immediately signing back, “No, we don’t have to tell them.”
Her mother teared up. But she nodded. “Okay, then I’ll go.”
She let out a watery laugh, “I had a feeling it was bad when they told me I might have liver cancer, and I went straight home to pour myself a drink.”