day, and write you every hour.”
Hana finally let go of her father. Her face was wet with tears. She put on her clothes slowly, as if putting on an old self, once discarded, and now recalled to life.
Soo-Ja wondered if her daughter would hate her for the rest of her life. Of course she would. She was a teenage girl. She’d find reasons to hate her mother, and to love her, every day of her life.
And Min, who was this Min in front of her? Had he been there all along, and she had simply neglected to see it? Or did she make him day by day, inch by inch, build him lovingly and patiently, sparing him cross words, offering him a kind look here and there, so that one day, one day at last, he’d do exactly this and finally let her go? Soo-Ja did not love the man she married, but she loved the man she divorced. It just so happened that as she found her heart swell with joy for him, it was also time for her to leave him. She wanted to speak to this man, to get to know him, this man leaning over the window of the taxi, looking at her in the passenger seat, looking at her as if for the last time, but the words never got out of her mouth, as the taxi drove away, and she saw Min growing smaller in the distance, disappearing already into some nostalgic past.
chapter twenty
When they returned to Seoul, Soo-Ja and Hana resumed their lives as if nothing had happened. Soo-Ja went back to work, and Hana returned to school. They had the money. Soo-Ja had checked with the bank; it was all there. If she wanted to, she did not have to work again for a long time. But Soo-Ja longed for routine, for her life to be as close as possible to what it had been before. She had lost both her father and her husband, and she still felt the grief in her bones. When the divorce papers were finalized, Soo-Ja surprised herself by feeling sorrow, rather than relief. She didn’t know many other divorced women. They were like ex-convicts—people you talk about but don’t associate with. Did this mean she had failed, to some extent? She had always dreamed of the day she’d be free from Min, but when it arrived, it provided no joy.
At the time, Soo-Ja worried most about Hana, though her daughter seemed to take her father’s decision well. She even joked about it, said it made her more like American girls, whose parents were all divorced. Soo-Ja knew then that she’d lose Hana to America eventually. First the summers, then college there, then she’d probably move west for good, and marry an American boy. And Min, Min kept busy—he liked being needed by his parents, driving them around to play golf, going on fishing trips, having barbecues. Soo-Ja suspected he might even start dating soon.
And Soo-Ja? Well, she worked a lot. She thought about Yul and Eun-Mee, how they had probably managed to work things out between them. She could not bring herself to hurt their marriage, so she stayed far from both of them. Now that she was no longer married herself, it felt wrong to speak to Yul. Once, she saw him in the street, coming out of the New World Shopping Center. She turned and walked the other way, before he could see her. If they stayed away from each other, thought Soo-Ja, maybe at least one of them could have a good marriage.
But that is not to say she didn’t miss him. Soo-Ja thought of him almost every day, especially before she fell asleep in bed. And she figured maybe that was why she waited so long to return the money he loaned her—that was her last link to him, and once she gave it back, she would have no reason to speak to him. But finally she realized she had to learn to let go, and she gave Hana an envelope with a check inside in the amount he’d loaned her, and asked her to drop it off at his house. Hana went on the errand, curious but asking no questions. Soo-Ja waited anxiously for her daughter’s return, hoping for a word from Yul, or a reaction, but when Hana came back, she said Yul hadn’t been home, and she’d had to leave the envelope with the maid. Soo-Ja tried to hide