Then, three months later, Caleb started dating an older man who one day walked into the restaurant and fell in love with him, and three weeks later, he packed his bag and moved into the man’s spacious one-bedroom apartment in the West Village. “He has a real sink, with gold faucets and everything. I feel like I’m back in Scarsdale,” Caleb said, chuckling into the phone on his first night away.
Suzy did not bother looking for a new roommate. There was still some money left over in the savings account that Damian had set up for her during the later stage of their escapade. It occurred to her that she should send it back to him, but she knew that he also expected her to. It was Damian’s way. It was his hook, his excuse to keep her in his tow, and she knew that he waited patiently for a day when she would throw the money back at him with a letter, a memo, a phone call, so Suzy would not do it. She kept it instead, and paid her landlord $966 each month with Damian’s money. She thought this ensured her as his kept woman, as everyone had believed, including Professor Tamiko and their mutual colleagues, including her parents and Grace, including Damian himself, although Suzy was the last one to find out.
Suzy spent the first year back in New York doing nothing. She lay around the apartment all day and called no one. Caleb dropped by once in a while, after his day shift at the restaurant. They would walk around the neighborhood on sticky evenings and sit on a bench at Tompkins Square Park munching on crème brûlée wrapped in tinfoil. Caleb would buy her a Starbucks Frappuccino, which he said was her Jappiest habit and that if she ever met a decent boy, she should keep it a secret from him until he was well hooked on her Asian charm, and she would laugh, realizing that her own laughter sounded almost foreign to her. Caleb would tell her all about his new boyfriend and the incredible sex they were having: “Three courses a night, darling. I tell you, you ain’t seen nothing yet until you fucked someone your dad’s age.”
But everything comes with a price, Suzy thought. She was twenty-five then, unemployed, goal-less, an orphan.
At the funeral, Grace avoided Suzy. They sat next to each other and did not exchange a word. No one spoke to Suzy, not her parents’ acquaintances, not the man with gold-rimmed glasses who had helped Grace out of a car, not Mr. and Mrs. Lim, whom Suzy grew up next door to when they lived in Flushing years ago. It was as if they considered her also dead, as if respecting the wishes of her parents, who had disowned her the minute she ran off with Damian in her senior year. Quite a crowd had gathered at the Korean church in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where Grace now lived. There were no relatives, because they did not have any except for a few aunts back in Korea whom neither Suzy nor Grace had ever met. Her parents barely had any friends, never liked people much, but their death had been shocking, scandalous, tragic, and people, especially churchgoing immigrants, loved tragedies. The only thing Grace said when Suzy went up to her to say goodbye was, Don’t bother showing up for the ashes, they are with God now. Do me a favor, Suzy; leave us alone.
The phone starts ringing again. Whoever it is does not want to leave the evidence. Whoever it is is desperately looking for her. The Caller ID says “private.” But she knew that without even looking at it. Suzy finally takes off her coat, throwing it on a silk hanger from the pricey Madison Avenue shop. Took Sandy all afternoon to find it, Michael claimed. Michael wants Suzy in the latest fashion. He wants the latest of anything. Often she stands in front a mirror, clad in what strikes her as carefully sewn and stitched money, lots of it. She hardly recognizes herself. A bona fide mistress, whose clothing shields her from herself. Suzy brushes her fingers across the array of silk shirts and cashmere sweaters. They come in every shade of black. “To match your hair, Suzy,” Michael said. She imagines his wife in the most flamboyant pitch of red and green, a blonde surely, once-upon-a-sorority, maybe a book club or two, that would suit him. Michael never discusses his family. It is taboo, and Suzy prefers it that way. She knows how to be a kept woman. She got her start early. She even sacrificed her own parents to be one, so she had better be damn good at it. The phone starts again, and Suzy stares at it without turning off the ringer. Then she walks to the end of the railroad and turns the hot water on to the fullest.
4.
THE VOICE ON THE OTHER END shouts, “Delivery.” Suzy presses the intercom button, standing at the door in her bathrobe with her hair wrapped in a towel. The deliveryman smiles, as if her wetness suggests a private promise. In his arms is a bouquet of white irises. “Sign the receipt, please,” he says, and she asks, “From whom?” although she already knows the answer. No sender’s name, nothing. No note, no miniature card with a happy smile, no heart-shaped balloon with a double I-love-you’s. A bunch of white irises, a rarity in November, but only in November, always in November. Almost exactly four years ago, a man first appeared at her doorstep with a bunch of white irises much like these. It occurred to her that they might be from Damian, but this was not Damian’s style, and delicate white irises definitely not his thing. Then who? Not Michael, because she did not even know him then, and not a secret admirer, Caleb said he hoped, because the joke was too old and she was not so young anymore. They were always delivered right around the anniversary of her parents’ death. She wonders if they were sent to Grace also. But why irises, why such insistence? Mom had liked them, Suzy vaguely recalls. Her parents used to sell them at their store. Mom said that, among all garden flowers, irises needed the most care, because they withered quickly and had virtually no smell. Her mother was not one of those softies whose hearts melt at the sight of long-stemmed roses or tulips, and neither was Suzy. They were pleasing to look at, she thought, but why not leave them wherever they came from, either the perennial fields of the Netherlands or the sloping valleys of northern California, anywhere at all but primped like a poodle and squeezed into a glass vase on a now-satisfied girlfriend’s mantel in order to reassure her that somebody loved her on this Valentine’s Day or birthday or anniversary? A bouquet reminded Suzy of a Hallmark card from a corner stationery store, whose price was preprinted and whose purpose was long prescribed. Only once she thought that flowers served a purpose, and that was at the funeral. Grace must have arranged it, which surprised Suzy, but one could never tell how a sibling might react to one’s parents’ death, which sort of coffin, open casket or not, a chorus of hymns even if they had never believed in Christ. There were white flowers everywhere around both coffins, either lilies or chrysanthemums, although Suzy cannot recall if she saw irises among them. Dad would have thrown a fit, she thought then. “Frivolous!” he would’ve screamed. “What a waste! In Korea, no one would dare to throw away so much for nothing!” And that must be exactly why Grace chose to do it. Everyone thought that the flowers were appropriate. But Suzy knew that they were the last things her parents would have wanted at their final moment.
Grabbing the nearly empty Evian bottle from the refrigerator, Suzy cuts open the top part and sticks the flowers in it. She is not sure where to put it, although she must have found a spot for it each year. On the dining table, there, she places the bottle on the corner as if putting it away. Irises are sad flowers, she thinks, neither as glamorous as roses nor as graceful as lilies, just a run-of-the-mill sort. Each flower stalk stands perfectly straight, with slivers of drooping falls. White ones are the worst. Such petals, signaling perpetual mourning. Mom was right. It is eerie how they carry no scent, no trace.