“I call a cheek!” Charles shouted eagerly.
Irene looked over in time to see that Mr. Cho was carving up the gigantic snapper and passing portions out to his sons.
William protested. “The cheek’s the best part! Irene should get one — she’s a guest!”
“She’s your girlfriend. Give her yours.”
They began to bicker again in Korean, and Irene graciously accepted the delicate cheek meat that Mr. Cho placed on her plate.
It was only then that Irene noticed Mrs. Cho was leaning over the carved fish, rolling her ringed fingers lightly over the bony carcass, and singing something. “What is she doing?” she asked Emily breathlessly.
“She’s a witch,” Emily whispered, the first words she’d spoken aloud all night.
Irene was about to say that it wasn’t nice to say such things about one’s grandmother, when Mrs. Cho ran the tip of her knife along the scaled, pink face of the fish and, with a gasping sound, plunged her fingertip into the small gap behind its eyeball and popped it out.
Irene lost her balance, just for an instant, but that was all it took. She felt her whole stomach heave inside her, a ship tossed in a tempest of bile. The pink, glassy fish eye rolled an inch or two like a wobbling marble, leaving a translucent trail behind it. Irene tried to clamp her mouth shut. She felt something rising inside her, boiling against gravity, up her esophagus. She grabbed her napkin and held it to her lips, her throat flexing and seizing.
Charlotte shrieked, “Groooooossssssss!”
Irene was able to keep herself from vomiting all over the table, catching a little with the napkin and choking the rest hotly back. William was shouting at his mother, who was still singing and going for the other eye now. Charles and Kyung-Soon were shouting at Charlotte. Even Mr. Cho was barking something, apparently back at the sympathetic Christ above his head. Irene felt Emily’s small hand squeezing on her wrist, not in panic but in comfort. She had a look, as if Irene were her doll and Emily meant to drag her to the other room to safety. But Irene couldn’t keep her eyes off the fish, from Mrs. Cho’s knife as it fumbled at the edge of the other pink eye. The tip of the knife again slipped into the space between ball and fish skull, and with a squishy pop, the second eye was loose and everyone was silent.
Calmly, Mrs. Cho plucked the two eyeballs off the tablecloth and placed them onto a small white side plate. She looked up at Irene and politely offered her the plate. Irene took a deep breath, feeling a bit steadier as she stared down at the plate’s two gelatinous passengers.
“Eat these,” she urged kindly. Then, as if confused that Irene didn’t understand, Mrs. Cho added, “They’ll make your eye better.”
Irene covered the spot under her eye and looked over at William with no small amount of horror.
William, speechless, just waved his hand at his mother to put the plate down.
“Ew. Total VOM!” Charlotte snapped. “That’s like the grossest thing ever.”
“They’re considered a delicacy,” Charles said, trying to lighten the moment.
Irene knew she was a guest in the home of another, but surely this was something beyond grace. And why exactly was she wasting so much time and energy trying to be gracious anyway? She was exhausted. She could feel wet splotches on her red dress, where drips of vomit had gotten past the napkin. Now she would have to spend the whole ride home marked with stains. What had she done to deserve this? This, which was the cure? What had she done, even, to deserve the disease? So why was she sorry? She should be alone in her apartment with no tree and no fireplace and no presents and no family. She was full of poison. She wanted to be quarantined, sent to Siberia, put out on an ice floe. She’d stayed too long in the city. She’d forgotten to keep running, and now Death had caught up to her. Now He stared at her, from the surface of a porcelain plate, through these two roseate eyes.
Irene reached out and plucked the fish eyes off the plate. She held them in the open palm of her hand like a pair of dice. Then she popped them both into her mouth and bit down against their jellied circumference. A bursting of fishy goop clung to the back of her tongue. Charlotte screeched again, and William stared in horror. For a moment, Irene thought she might throw up again, but something about Mrs. Cho’s gaze kept her stomach still. Just then she felt a small hand, Emily’s, patting the belly of Irene’s dress. There, there, she seemed to be saying. Isn’t that better?
• • •
The storm outside was far too heavy for anyone to leave that night, so William set Irene up on the pullout couch in the study. They waited until the girls had placed a bowl of black bean noodles on the edge of the fireplace for Harabeoji Santa, and then when they were safely asleep, Charles helped William build a fire in the fireplace. William apologized for the five hundredth time since dinner. Irene was back to acting normally, back to pretending that everything was “Fine! Absolutely fine!” but William knew better. He could see the panic behind her eyes, even after his mother brought down some old clothes for her to change into.
“I wish you could sleep down here with me tonight,” Irene said, pouting. But William could feel it — she was lying. There was this imposter look about her; it was hard for him to put his finger on. It was the way she’d sounded when she’d first called. Like Joan Fontaine in the movie.
“We’ll have to leave tomorrow for the hospital before the girls are even up to open presents. But I have something for you,” William said, taking a rectangular pile of silk out from the pile of extra clothes that his mother had given him for Irene. “Merry Christmas.”
“Oh, William,” she moaned, touching it. She unfolded the parcel, and it became a beautiful silk kimono, covered in butterflies and weeping trees and winding rivers. “It’s—”
“It’s a little old,” he apologized. “But I promise it’s never been worn.”
Irene began to cry a little, and William couldn’t think why. He moved in to comfort her, but she pulled away, as if she were contagious and might infect him.
“I feel awful,” she said. “I bought you something but I left it at my apartment.”
Irene slipped the loose kimono on over the billowing pajamas that Mrs. Cho had given her. William was stunned at how beautiful she looked in its folds. There were tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said, kissing him on the forehead tentatively, as if she weren’t sure it wouldn’t leave a mark.
“What for?” William asked. And though she had lied to him over and over, and though she had refused, again and again, to tell him the truths he wanted her to tell, he said, “You’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”
“Give me time,” she said lightly, as if it could be a joke.
He left her there and went up to his old bedroom to sleep. In the morning, she was gone. The only sign of her was a little water on the floor by the front door where the snow had blown in on her way out and then melted.
William took the subway back down to her apartment, but the main entrance was locked and no one answered. He followed someone through the front door, went upstairs, and pressed his ear up against her door. It was ice cold, and there wasn’t a single sound inside. He called the hospital, hoping, but the nurses there said she hadn’t shown up yet for her appointment. Dr. Zarrani called back, worried, and told William that if Irene didn’t come in for the second half of her dose, they’d have to start all over again. She asked him if he might know where she would go. Was there anyone else she might be staying with? William said he didn’t know, that he didn’t really know that much about her. He didn’t know where she was from. Would she go to Sara’s, up north? Then he thought about the photograph and its inscription. He hopped in a cab and asked the driver to take him to Penn Station.