“I think it’s ready,” she says.
“Ready for what?”
Mae collects her notepad from the end table, tucking her careful inventory into her bag as she sets off toward the door. She does this more often now — drift in and out of conversations, as if she’s having others that only she can hear. Kyung follows her outside and joins her in the car. The clock on the dashboard reads half past noon.
“So”—he hesitates—“should we go home now?”
She purses her lips at him, as if to hold something back. They both know what the problem is — Marina, sacked out in his living room, staring at the walls as they try to maneuver around her.
“Or maybe you’re hungry. Should I take you out to lunch?”
Mae shakes her head. Lately, she’s been eating. Not full meals yet, but small bites of things, which is better than nothing at all. For this, he has Molly and the ladies to thank. Ever since the impromptu Sunday potluck, they’ve been dropping by his house with deliveries. They’re surprisingly unobtrusive about it; they don’t even knock on the door to say hello. A cooler just appears on his steps every day. He’s not sure what to be more grateful for, the Korean food that his parents clearly prefer over Gillian’s cooking, or the lack of conversation as it’s handed off. He glances at the clock again. Only a minute has passed since he and Mae got in the car. They have hours to kill before Marina takes her midafternoon nap, when she pulls the blanket over her face and drifts off to sleep.
“Maybe you can teach me how to drive now,” Mae says.
Kyung has been waiting for this for years, but had given up hope that she’d ever want to learn. “Are you serious?”
“It’s something to do.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go.” He throws the car into reverse and backs out too fast, scraping the undercarriage against the pavement.
There’s too much traffic in the Heights to let Mae take the wheel, so he heads to the university’s athletic stadium, where the parking lot is bigger than the field. As he follows the main road around campus, ringed by classroom buildings covered in unkempt ivy, he drives past his office. The lot in front of the weathered brick building is almost half-full. His heart skips as he recognizes his colleagues’ cars. Technically, none of them are required to report to work in the summer. The break is paid time off to do their research, although Kyung hasn’t given his a moment’s thought. It’s now mid-June, nearly a month since classes ended, and it’s his first time back on campus. In another field, maybe something in the humanities, an absence like this might go unnoticed, but scientists are different. He should be here, he thinks, working in his office a few days a week, making sure everyone sees his face. Two years from now, he’s scheduled to go up for tenure, something he tries not to think about because he knows what to expect. The personnel committee will tell him that his teaching scores are just average. He hasn’t published or presented enough of his own research. And his success rate with grants is abysmal — he neither submits many proposals nor wins the few that he does. In an entirely fair world, where the process worked as it should, Kyung would be denied tenure. He hasn’t earned it, and two years is hardly enough time to catch up with his colleagues, who seem to do everything right and on schedule. The only advantage he has is his connection to Jin, who funnels millions into the campus through his grants and patent revenues. Despite the state of his finances, Kyung doesn’t worry about losing his job; he worries about what it would mean to keep it.
“What’s wrong with you?” Mae asks.
“Nothing, why?”
“You’re driving so slow.”
He looks at the speedometer. He’s going twelve miles an hour.
“If you don’t want to teach me—”
“No, no,” he says, stepping on the gas. “I just got distracted.”
Kyung drives to the center of an empty lot and turns off the engine. The stadium casts a long shadow over the asphalt, hiding the sun somewhere behind its walls. He switches places with Mae and shows her how to adjust her seat.
“Accelerator and brake,” he says, leaning over and tapping each pedal with his hand.
“Accelerator and brake,” she repeats, moving her seat so close to the steering wheel, only a few inches of space separate her forehead from the windshield.
He wants to tell her to back up; there’s no need to sit that close, but Mae gets easily discouraged. One wrong word from him could cut their lesson short. He tries to channel the instructor who taught him how to drive when he was sixteen, going so far as to emulate the man’s calm, even tone. Seat belts first, hands at ten and two, foot on the brake when shifting out of park, mirror check before pulling out.
Mae drives much like Kyung did when he first learned, accelerating with unnecessary bursts of speed and braking as if to avoid wildlife. After her first few attempts, she begins to smooth out, driving in huge loops around the parking lot at a steady, consistent speed. Kyung rolls down his window to let some air in. When he looks over at Mae, she’s smiling as the wind blows her hair back; her eyes are clear and bright. He should be relieved to see her this way, but instead, it feels like someone has taken a lead pipe to his knees. Such a simple thing they’re doing, and she’s never looked happier, as if she never had reason to be happy before.
Mae reaches over and turns on the radio, which is tuned to an oldies station that Gillian likes. Kyung doesn’t care much for music, but even he recognizes the song that’s playing a few seconds into the chorus.
“… watching the tide roll away…,” Mae sings quietly.
“You’ve heard this before?”
“Just sittin’ on the dock of the bay…”
“I didn’t think you liked this kind of music.”
“I like music.”
“No, I meant — I thought you mostly listened to church music.”
“That’s your father. Not me.” She turns to him, taking her eyes off the road in a way that makes him nervous. “You know I have a record collection now? I’ve been buying a lot of old records—”
“That’s nice,” he says, grabbing hold of the wheel to correct the car’s drifting path. “Hey, maybe”—he pauses, trying to choose his words carefully—“maybe it’d be a good idea if you watched the road instead of me.”
She looks straight ahead and starts singing again. “Two thousand miles I roamed … just to make this dock my home…”
At the edge of the parking lot, Mae loops around a light post, her arms and shoulders more relaxed than when she began, and it all seems like some strange, wishful dream, listening to Otis Redding with his mother while she learns to drive. He should sit back and just let the moment be what it is — he knows that — but he can’t help himself. He has to ask.
“So you and dad — what’s going on with you two?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.… You’re not really talking to each other. Eventually, you’re going to have to, right? When you move back into your house?”
“Why? Do you want us out already?”
“No. That’s not what I said. I just, I just want to know what your plan is, when you’re going to start seeing a therapist, maybe work some things out.”