When I went up to Channing’s room, the curtains were still closed. She covered her head with a blanket when I let the sun in. I’d seen Channing like this before. Every few relationships, it was as if she lost hope. Those times the only answer was to get moving. She was a gymnast, a diver, a runner. If she could get herself out into fresh air, she would find faith again in her dreams, in herself. Without it, when she was in bed like this, she scared me. No one should be in bed in the middle of the day unless they were sick. I thought of the last time I saw her mother. I worried that Channing would become ill like my aunt.
Her voice came muffled from under the covers. “Let me sleep. I’ll pick up the boys, don’t worry.”
“Let’s sit outside. Come on. After today, it’s nine more days until this job is over. If you just make it through, you’ll be paid the whole amount they promised, and you’ll go back to Boston.” I tugged the quilt.
“I don’t have a home there,” she mumbled.
“Yes, you do. You’ll stay with Harabeoji or even me until you figure out next steps. With money, you’ll have some options.”
“It’s not enough,” she replied.
“Harabeoji is worried about you, he just called, you can’t stress him out like this.” I hated guilting her, but I had to. I was unnerved when she was in this state.
She rolled over and stayed silent.
“He’s at Mrs. Ku’s bakery. We should go over and see him. It’d be fun, right?” I dug through a pile of black T-shirts on the floor. “We need to throw these into the laundry, Channing,” I said.
Suddenly she threw the blanket off her face. “Did we get rid of all those things Kent bought me?” she asked.
I was surprised at her interest in them, so I said, “You didn’t want to donate them, remember? They’re still in the garage.”
“That’s it, that’s the problem. They’re bad energy, let’s get them out of here.”
In the next second, she was sorting through a pile of her laundry and claimed to have found a clean pair of sweatpants and a shirt. I grabbed an armload of the rest of her clothes and made my way to the laundry room by the primary bedroom and threw them in to be washed. The laundry for the boys had grown, too, even though it had not yet been a week since we’d done it the previous Saturday. I made a note to throw their clothes in the machine another day soon. Plus, I needed mine done since I hadn’t brought that much, thinking I was only in East End for a few days.
Channing was insistent we drive straightaway to the community center and unload all the items Kent had bought. She even insisted on the kitchen gadgets. “If he wants the Ahns to have them, he should have bought them when they were home,” she said.
I did as I was told. It was good to see her moving again with purpose.
Only afterward, with the SUV empty, did Channing agree to grab coffee and a double chocolate doughnut at a drive-through. A little sugar hit seemed to help her mood.
“Maybe I will stay with you in New York after this job,” she said with her steaming coffee under her chin. “We’ll hang out like we always do.”
“Only if I get to choose the next K-drama,” I told her.
She let out a laugh, which made me feel hopeful that she was going to get over Minjae in record time.
We hadn’t made it to Sandpiper Lane yet when her phone rang. From the tenderness in her voice, I knew it was Minjae even before she told me.
“Hold on,” she said. She turned to me. “Can Minjae come over for a few minutes?”
“Are you kidding? Can I say no?” I exclaimed.
She seemed rattled, but there was color in her cheeks, and she rolled down the window and stuck her arm out. “Jeez, just asking, Dahee.”
“Has he ended it with what’s-her-name?” I asked.
“We’re going to find out,” she said.
Minjae stayed longer than a few minutes. They sat outside on those front steps for hours. Then he went to his car, and she ran after him, and they sat in his car for another hour. Then she ran up to her room and he followed her up there, and they were in there for a while. I left the house at that point and walked around the neighborhood. It was close to the pickup time for the boys at camp, so I didn’t dare leave until I knew Channing was going to get them.
I had a theory about memory and love. If you had a really good memory, like I did, it was harder to move on to a new relationship. If you had a terrible memory, like Channing did, you could easily start fresh with someone new. In this case with Minjae, it seemed there was more back-and-forth than I’d ever seen her experience before, but maybe I was wrong. Usually, I saw her days after a breakup. Maybe it was how she was with all of them. That thought made me feel that if Minjae was like the others, there was a map to surviving and moving on for Channing and she’d be okay.
I had the SUV’s key fob in my hand and was about to leave the house when Channing and Minjae came running down the stairs. She was wiping her face with the back of her hand and smiling through her wet eyes. “We’ve got this, thanks, Dahee. Minjae’s going to come with me.” He nodded. His eyes looked wet, too. I handed her the fob, and the two of them ran out to the car.
It was obvious when you saw them now that they’d put their disagreement behind them. They were joined together by an invisible thread. They reminded me of that race at a state fair once. Two people with rope tied around each other’s waist, long enough so that they had room between them, running through an obstacle course together. The winners were in synchrony with each other. A graceful and efficient team effort. No ropewas visible between Channing and Minjae, but it was there. He moved left and she moved left. He moved right and she moved right. Without even looking at each other, they knew. Their bond seemed stronger than ever. They didn’t have to look at the other to move as one.
For an hour after the boys returned from camp, Channing and Minjae played basketball with the children in the driveway and chased each other in a game of tag in the yard.
