Page 8 of For You, Sir

I thought having more time would be a relief, but the anxious furrow in Jun’s brow deepened. “Thank you, Sir. I’ll consider it.”

Jun resumed washing the dishes. The plates and pans drifted and clinked together, muffled by soapy water—a distinctive homey sound that took me back to childhood.

The silence stretched between us. I wanted to say something to make Jun feel better, but that probably wasn’t what he wanted from me. Our relationship was transactional, not personal. Pitifully one-sided at that.

I rested my chin on the heel of my hand and stared out the kitchen window. My eggs were getting cold, the broken yolks congealing. Another good thing I’d let go to waste.

Chapter 5 (Jun)

As soon as I’d parked the car, I already dreaded that awful hospital smell. I didn’t know how medical staff could face that nauseating potpourri of disinfectant, sickness, and misery day after day. I daubed on a little Acqua di Gio I kept in my glovebox before getting out of the car.

On autopilot, I headed through the hospital doors and checked in with the oncology ward’s receptionist. I’d brought along an insulated lunch tote containing the chicken rice porridge I’d made for Mom, and a little pink azalea. A potted plant would last longer. I didn’t want a cut bouquet decaying beside the hospital bed of a woman doing the same.

Mom was asleep when I got to her room, looking frail and shriveled, her mouth hanging open. My brother Ho-Sung sat at her bedside, scrolling through his phone. As usual, he wore loose-fitting streetwear he’d cobbled together from thrift stores, and smelled faintly of cannabis. I stepped inside, and he beamed his big, snaggle-toothed smile at me.

“Hey!” He stood and clasped me in a tight hug. “You should’ve told me you were coming.”

Ho-Sung was one of the few people I felt okay being hugged by, so I stiffly patted him on the back. “Good to see you.”

I hadn’t realized how much I missed him until the knot in my chest eased. We were nothing alike, even as kids. But in the face of our parents’ tyrannical strictness, we became unlikely allies, covering for each other’s mistakes before Mom or Dad could bring down the hammer. I kicked myself for not thinking of visiting Mom in tandem with him sooner.

“What’d you bring?” He rubbed his hands together. When we were little, he’d always been an enthusiastic taste-tester, even when many of my culinary experiments failed.

I set the azalea on the table beside Mom’s bed and handed him the lunch tote. “Guess.”

He unzipped the top and didn’t even need to look; the smell alone told him. “No way!Dakjuk?”

I nodded. “Mom’s recipe. As well as I can remember it.”

“Damn. That’s a good idea.” He put his face over the bag and inhaled greedily. “Takes me back.”

Mom always made chicken rice porridge when my brother or I got sick. We had to practically bleed from the eyes before she’d let us stay home from school, but thedakjukwas a symbol of her affection on those rare occasions.

“People makecongeeand stuff like this on cooking shows now,” Ho-Sung said. “You still watch those?”

“Yeah.” Though I’d never gone to culinary school, I always loved picking up new cooking techniques from competition shows. They were my TV guilty pleasure, and I was surprised Ho-Sung still remembered. He paid attention; he cared about people. Shame on me for being so distracted by his pot smoking and laziness that I sometimes forgot his good qualities.

“I figured it would be easy for Mom to digest while she’s going through chemo.”

“Yeah.” He looked at our mother and sighed. There were cables and wires and IVs snaking all over the bed—things I didn’t want to think about. “Don’t mention her hair when she wakes up. She gets pissed.”

I nodded, grateful for the warning. Mom’s black-and-gray hair had thinned to the obscurity of a comb-over, her scalp glowing moon-pale beneath.

“Want to eat some before it gets cold?” I suggested.

“Nah,” he said, zipping shut the container. “Let’s save it for Mom. She’s been out for a while, so she’ll probably wake up soon.”

A ripple of nerves rolled through my belly. Would she be glad to see me, or would I look like a bad son next to Ho-Sung? He must visit her often if he knew her sleeping habits. Guilt panged my chest.

But of course he could visit her more! Ho-Sung had never held down a job longer than five months. He was always chasing foolish dreams—becoming a hip-hop artist, a video game streamer, a clothing designer. He would start a project with joyful enthusiasm, but never had the persistence to go anywhere with it. Then he’d work for minimum wage at a grocery store or a smoothie shop until his next hare-brained scheme led him to quit and start the cycle all over again.

Last I’d heard, he was still living with Mom, yet somehow I remained the black sheep of the family. Ho-Sung had been a freshman taking pre-med prerequisite courses when Dad died and we both dropped out of college to help Mom. There was no way Ho-Sung could have made it through med school when he couldn’t even keep a job at the local swimming pool, but that didn’t seem to matter to our parents. The image stuck he was the obedient one who had been studying to be a doctor like Mom and Dad wanted. I was the rebel who had gone my own way by studying sociology.

From the start, Mom disapproved of my buttling for being too servile. She and Dad didn’t move to this country so her children could serve white people, she’d said. I was supposed to become a surgeon or CFO or something.

“How’s Christie?” I asked. Ho-Sung’s new girlfriend was a sweet but ditzy yoga instructor who once encouraged me to use crystals and an ionizing salt lamp to“cleanse my negative energy.”Thanks, but no thanks.

He shook his head. “Amelia’s my girl, now.” He smirked and cupped his hands in front of his chest in an approximation of gargantuan breasts. “She’s… real smart.”

---