“I don’t think I want to be,” I said. “You’ve got to know exactly what your help is for.”
Chapter 13
Flowering pink and purple bushes bordered the sandy road that led to a large gray clapboard building sloping toward the ocean. I thought it was someone’s home until I spotted a pristine parking lot and a small blue-and-gold welcome sign to the Leeward Beach Club. With such few cars, the Ahns’ white SUV was easy to find. We pulled into a spot and walked over. Evenly spaced grass sprouted between paver stones. Channing, Minjae, and the children were all sitting in the car licking ice cream cones. My cousin grinned at Minjae, and he gave her a smile back that seemed almost conspiratorial, like I’d seen parents give each other during parent-teacher conferences at school.
Austin noticed me first. “Dahee, it’s so good,” he said. “Do you want to taste mine?”
His chocolate ice cream was melting, but it wasn’t that big, and it was unhygienic for me to lick it to keep it from dripping into his hand, so I refused.
Minjae sprang out of the passenger seat, bowed to us, and filled the air with apologies. “Please forgive me, I should have bought you some ice cream, totally my fault,” he said in Korean to my grandfather and then to me in English, “Dahee, it’s easy to drive back and get more.” His face was completely red.
Channing joined us just then and nudged his shoulder with hers.“Minjae, it’s ice cream. In this heat, it would have melted before they got here.”
He wouldn’t give up. “But we could go now and—we should have met them there instead of here,” he said, with his head still turned toward my grandfather respectfully. “Let’s go now, it’s so close.”
Harabeoji declined. “I’m still so full from breakfast, thank you. I appreciate your offer.”
I told him I couldn’t eat another bite of anything also.
“I promise you, my grandfather and Dahee would say they want ice cream if they really wanted some,” Channing said to Minjae. “No reason to lie to us.” Her words put him at ease, and the flush faded from his face.
He went to get the boys out of the car, and together we walked into the beach club’s quiet halls. Channing’s head turned left and right with excitement. She’d belonged to this same club as a child. It had been expanded to twice the size and was now a full-service resort.
She didn’t comment on the changes that had been made. I remembered it as being paneled in dark wood the one time we’d come as guests. I think it was after my aunt had died, a memory I’d filed away and forgotten. It had been a short visit. We’d seen none of the other Korean families, and my uncle drank cocktail after cocktail that night.
Now it was limestone with windows everywhere, giving the impression that we were on a cruise ship. Minjae signed us in as his guests, then he pointed to the locker rooms. Channing let him show us around with an amused expression on her face. When we were outside by the pool, Minjae said he’d go to his room to get his swimsuit and left us. The children suddenly took off running.
“Slow down! Watch out!” I called. Channing and I hurried after them. The boys didn’t get far. A sharp whistle from the lifeguard high up in a chair shrieked through the air. The children halted immediately. We caught up to them as everyone’s heads turned in our direction.
Several people lounged, some with children. I saw only one other Asianfamily and they didn’t acknowledge us, so I thought maybe they weren’t Korean. A white woman on the other side of the pool in a pink baseball hat and sleek navy one-piece suit waved frantically in our direction. Channing noticed her at the same time I did and waved enthusiastically back, which launched the young woman toward us. She and Channing embraced and then shook their heads in disbelief at each other.
“Nora, did you move back?” Channing asked.
“Just here for the summer, you know how it is. My parents are getting up there in age, so we’re trying to spend more time with them,” Nora replied.
“Totally get it,” Channing said. “How long has it been? Your wedding was…”
“Just celebrated our seventh anniversary. Can you believe it?” Nora answered, and then turned and pointed across the pool where two girls about Austin’s size were engrossed in iPads on lounge chairs.
Channing’s jaw dropped. “Your babies?” she asked.
Nora let out a laugh. “I know, right?” Then she peered at me and bent down to give high fives to the boys by my side.
Channing explained about the kids and that I was her cousin, visiting for a few days. Nora nodded at me and smiled at the boys.
Edison and Austin stared at their feet. They seemed shy after the reprimand from the lifeguard. Meanwhile, Harabeoji was grabbing lounge chairs and asking people to shift so we could all fit.
Nora straightened up with a smile. “I should get back, but call me, please,” she said. “Let’s get the kids together. They’re in town camp all day, but how about after that?”
“The boys are at the camp, too,” Channing said.
Nora’s smile widened. “Even better, they probably know each other. Want to come say hi?”
Channing agreed and asked the children if they wanted to go. They shook their heads emphatically in the negative, which made Nora nodknowingly at them. “I get it. I promise you my girls are nice though,” she said.
As Channing headed off with Nora, I stayed with the boys and set up towels on the chairs that Harabeoji had managed to obtain. As he offered a tube of sunscreen to the children, I noticed that Channing had greeted Nora’s daughters and was already on her way back to us. Instead of taking a seat though, she stood with her eyes closed. She was physically with us but was traveling back in time in her mind. I asked her when she’d been out here last, and she said when she was twelve years old.
“It’s so wild that this place is still the same. We stayed members for a bit until my dad couldn’t afford it. I used to love to dive,” she said now, blinking rapidly. “I wanted to be a high diver in the Olympics. Isn’t it funny what we think we want.” She pointed to a smaller pool farther away from us with a set of two diving boards, one higher than the other.
