The biggest catch to living where they did, Grace and Paul liked to tell friends, was that you had to cross over the highway to get anywhere worth going. It was a matter of limited access. Their apartment was on the first floor of a row house hard by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, whose construction decades earlier had isolated their block and ensured a steady outpouring of compressed horns and exhaust from the cars idling below. To the west lay the piers, with barriers of steel and concrete that rose out of the water like skeletal mastodons. Across the street, an abandoned furniture warehouse showed black holes where the windows had been. The local hospital, supermarkets and banks, florists and off-track betting parlors–places that served, as Paul put it, a discernible and present purpose–remained a brisk walk away, on the other side of the BQE.
The Moscatellis, who rented next door, could remember when the neighborhood was hopping with factories and parochial schools. The couple spent their afternoons sunning themselves on their front stoop. Mrs. Moscatelli was a former beautician with grizzled red hair who used to give perms out of her living room. Mr. Moscatelli had worked the sander at the furniture warehouse. “Forty-five years,” he told Grace, “to put a son and daughter through college and where are they now? Long Island.”
“Oh sure,” said Mrs. Moscatelli. “It’s gorgeous out there. Nice and clean.”
“Used to be nice here too. See the lady down the block, in the building says hot coffee?”
Grace nodded.
“That’s Franny. Her father ran the diner. We took our lunch breaks there.”
“She’s crazy, that one,” said Mrs. Moscatelli. “I think she wears a wig.”
“We ate together, like family. Vacationed in the Poconos. Watched each other’s kids.”
“Don’t it look like a wig? All blond and perfect. She ain’t fooling me.”
“But the block is different now. Eh. What can you do?”
“Nothing you can do. It’s them blacks and Puertos, Vinny.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Grace.
Mrs. Moscatelli looked flustered. “Not you, dear. Our daughter had a lovely Chinese friend at dental school, didn’t she, Vinny? So polite. And clean.”
“May something.”
“Wang, Wong. Wang? May Wang. Do you know her?”
“No,” said Grace. “I don’t know her.”
She thought about explaining, at the very least, that she was not Chinese but Korean. There was the time the Moscatellis waylaid Paul and asked where in Italy he was from. “My father’s Indian,” he said. They looked him over, reassessing. “Whaddayou, Cherokee?” said Mrs. Moscatelli. Paul said, “I mean East Indian.” They shrugged and smiled their vague, old-people smiles.
“Enjoy the weather,” Grace said to the couple, shutting the door as she went inside.
It could have been worse. Before she and Paul moved in a year ago, they’d wasted several weekends vainly scouring Manhattan for a decent-size one-bedroom. Their prewar on West 87th was finally going co-op. It was bound to happen, but they had grown complacent. They’d forgotten about broker’s fees, about credit checks and references. A colleague of Paul’s at Columbia suggested the Brooklyn Heights area. The commute wasn’t ideal, but it would do until he finished out his fellowship. As for Grace, she’d lost her editorial job in a recent flurry of downsizing, and the distance posed less of a problem. They circled an ad in the paper for Carroll Gardens and couldn’t believe their luck. They found ample closet space, hardwood floors, even a patch of morning glories flourishing in the back yard, which would be a plus if they ever did manage to get pregnant. For the rent they were paying, they had quite a lot, Grace reflected. For what they were paying.
One Saturday morning she was heading home from the grocery store with a bag of autumn apples in her left hand and a jug of water in the other. She stopped to rest at the traffic light on one of the streets that bridged the expressway. The sign above the corner laundromat, she noticed, had changed. The old sign was a faded plank that simply stated an identity: “Sackett Laundry.” The new sign made bold promises: “Modern Coin-Operated Machines. Same-Day Dropoff Service. Dry Cleaning Available.”
Grace stepped up to the window and peered inside. The rundown washers and dryers looked the same, but in an orange plastic chair near the counter she saw a woman who must have been the current owner. She wore a dirty apron over a calf-length dress with turquoise blossoms and swung her legs as she sat. Her feet didn’t quite reach the floor. She stared back at Grace and broke into a grin, pushing open the door.
“Come in, why don’t you,” the woman said in swift Korean. She was tugging at Grace’s sleeve. “You live nearby?”
“Not far at all,” said Grace. She allowed herself to be led inside. The suds and water gave off a moist heat that enveloped her. It was a familiar sensation: Her parents, who owned a dry-cleaning store in Rhode Island, had shared their lease with the people who ran the laundromat next door. Through high school and college, Grace had spent most of her weekends helping out at the store, serving as cashier on a wooden stool that wobbled behind the register. When business was slow, she would head next door for a change of scenery.
The woman here was older than she’d first appeared. Her coarse bobbed hair was streaked with gray. Under her jaw the skin buckled and sagged, like a turkey wattle. But something about her reminded Grace of her mother’s unmarried sister. Aunt Jung was tiny and grabby in just the same way. She seemed to think her nephews and nieces were still in school; she sent checks in the mail to encourage good grades.
“Oh, but you’ve been shopping,” said the woman.
“A few things. Nothing perishable.”
“I don’t want to keep you.”
“All right. I’ll be back. When I’ve got laundry.”
The woman chuckled. “Nice to see one of our own.”
Yes, it is, thought Grace, as she reclaimed her bags. She’d have to mention the resemblance next time she called her mother.
Doing laundry was one of the chores Grace hated most. Now that she wasn’t working, though, she tended to obsess over the details of execution, like where to collect change for the machines or whether fabric softener was worth the extra money. She’d amassed a bunch of coupons for products she didn’t really need; sheer consumerism, she realized. And yet she found herself organizing the coupons by expiration date and clipping them together in piles, the way banks did with currency. She sat in her kitchen and sifted through the glossy squares that came from magazines as they caught and held the light that filtered through the blinds. No doubt, she said at last, I’m losing it.
She drew up a schedule that matched days of the week with given tasks. It would stave off anxiety about the secret and terrible heart of the matter, which was filling up the hours that stretched before her like flat pavement. The other extreme was doing nothing at all. She could litter the apartment with the foil wrappers of toaster pastries she devoured, keep the TV running loud. But knowing Tuesdays were for laundry helped settle her. She began looking forward to the routine. Mornings, she set her alarm clock for 9:30, woke and slipped on an old barn jacket of Paul’s for a walk and coffee. The neighborhood was fresh and still. Few people roamed the streets. Even the merchants were just rolling up the gates of corrugated metal that protected their storefronts. Paul was at his office by then, correcting student papers. Which was fine by her: He would have disapproved, loudly, of her dependence on caffeine. She could imagine him citing a battery of studies on prenatal care. Recently he’d spotted her sneaking a few of Mrs. Moscatelli’s satin-tipped cigarettes. “Don’t you understand how a fetus can be affected by junk in your body from a year before?” he scolded. “We’re not pregnant yet,” Grace said. “It’s enough that we’re trying,” he said.
In a sense she’d lost the argument when she lost her job. But there were small rebellions. Sometimes she’d go for a second or third cup in the afternoon. “A double espresso,” she told the waitstaff at cafes. “And make sure it isn’t decaf.”
Maybe she had babies on the brain, but at that hour it seemed to her the neighborhood was rife with nannies steering collapsible strollers or toddlers by the arm. They must have wandered over from the Heights. The women were frequently Caribbean, the children white and blond. Grace wondered what the mothers did with the time they saved. Surely not everyone with nannies had high-powered careers. That was the point of sports clubs and sherry, wasn’t it? Still, it was more than she did, she supposed.
The best days produced surprises, variations on the route she took or the people she encountered. On Baltic she saw a man carrying his infant son in a pouch across the stomach. The baby was trapped, his little limbs wriggling, like a beetle flipped onto its shell. Another time she turned on Cheever Place and bumped into a group of elementary school kids on a field trip. They were at an age when they didn’t discriminate among partners. They held hands quietly and tottered forward, two by two. Grace trailed them down the block, not minding the crawl of a pace. It nearly convinced her that maternity had its unexpected pleasures, that she’d made the right choice after all.
Then there was the day she was hurrying down President toward the subway station. She had an errand to do in Manhattan, so she’d put on plum lipstick, a silk scarf and charcoal wrap skirt. A teenage boy with a tennis visor cocked to one side stood talking to a friend. As Grace approached, he cut himself off and let his eyes slide over the sight of her. He clutched his chest as if stricken. “Oh my god,” he said, “my mom’s told me to phone home when I meet the woman I’m-a marry. Do you got a quarter?”
It stopped Grace in her tracks. She laughed as she hadn’t in quite a while, from deep down in her gut. The air rushed through her lungs. She felt young and free and flattered.
‘I see you’ve got a wedding band,” the woman at the laundromat said. Today she wore a cardigan over her dress. Her name was Mrs. Lim. “How long?”
“Almost six years,” said Grace. She had brought in bedsheets and Paul’s T-shirts, all white, to wash together.
“Is he Korean?”
Grace busied herself with the detergent. “No, he’s not.”
“Too bad. I have a son your age.”
“I’m probably older than you think.”
“A pretty girl like you? No wrinkles anywhere.”
“It’s the lighting in here. Makes us look like movie stars.”
Mrs. Lim laughed. “You’re a liar.”
The fluorescent bulbs gave everyone a jaundiced cast. It wasn’t the sort of place where customers cruised each other; you did a load and fled. Even the decorative touches were depressing. The sloping tiles that straddled the row of dryers were etched and painted to suggest a hut’s thatched roof. The effect was less Tahiti than trailer park. Grace was stymied by the people who ate there, leaving pizza crusts or slabs of pernil on top of the machines. When she worked at her parents’ store, the most she could stand was cranberry juice; the chemical stink made her gag. How anyone managed to keep food down, she couldn’t say.
But Mrs. Lim took her meals there daily. Her husband did too. A stocky man with liver spots, he stayed in the back with the cash register and portable TV. They dined on noodles or bulkogi from home, the pickle dishes in containers with snap-tight lids. Or they bought fried rice flecked with pork and frozen peas from a takeout joint. Mr. Lim would scoop up mouthfuls with his chopsticks, his eyes fixed on a game show on the Korean-language channel. Once in a while the son joined them. Mostly, though, there was a worker who was paid to sort and scrub and fold the laundry that had been dropped off. He didn’t seem to talk to anyone. Mrs. Lim told Grace he was Mexican and spoke only Spanish. She and Mr. Lim spoke Korean, so the three of them relied on a language of gestures. On a floor scale Mr. Lim would weigh a bundle to determine the price. When he was done, he’d point to the bundle and then to Luis, the worker; Luis took care of the rest.
“Why don’t you use the dropoff service?” Mrs. Lim asked Grace. “We can give you a discount rate.”
“I don’t know,” said Grace. She felt funny about someone else having to do her wash.
“You can trust Luis. He won’t steal from you.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Just try it.” Mrs. Lim patted Grace’s back. “Someone like you must lead a very busy life.”
They consulted manuals, boiled bitter herbs, recorded her temperature in a spiral notebook they’d propped on the nightstand by the bed to monitor every interaction. When she was ovulating, her gynecologist said, her fluids would thicken and change. Once a month, Grace locked herself in the bathroom with her legs spread slightly and probed. Compared to this, inserting tampons was a breeze.
Paul tried to accommodate her with gifts of juniper incense and massage oil. The scent insinuated itself into the weave of her clothes, wafting into the closets and drawers. The oil dripped everywhere. It meant more laundry for her later; she couldn’t stop fretting about the sorry aftermath even as they lay together. He kissed and rubbed her forehead, as if to resuscitate her. His mouth left damp rings on her skin. The balls of his fingers traced her body along well-worn grooves. Her attention flagged.
An old lover used to take her on road trips through New England. They’d pick towns to visit for no special reason: The names struck them as odd or excessively WASP, fuel for jokes that sealed their intimacy. The automobile-club guides listed festivals and museums that they’d sample or not, according to their mood. More likely, they’d park at night in the lot of some Shriners lodge and jam the seat back in their rented car. They always requested a sun roof so they could view the stars. It amazed Grace that however nondescript the town, this angle was a beautifying one. She missed it and made the mistake of telling Paul so. “Sex in a parked car,” he said. “Hey, no cliches there, not a one.”
And yet Paul, too, had been capable of tenderness they didn’t need to orchestrate. In college he would kneel at her feet and flick them gently across the top with the knuckles of his hand. Then he’d stick an index finger between two of her toes and move it up and down. The friction was warm and steady. She listened to him breathe. He would be rapt, his head bent over the act in a way that stirred her. She’d have to hold onto something, an earlobe or a lock of hair; she felt that faint just watching.
“Is it good?” he murmured now as he bumped her against the wall.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.” But she was remembering again.
In a couple of weeks, she got her period. They’d have to start over. Like clockwork.
There were days when she overslept, her body drained and sluggish despite the fact that she napped. It might have been boredom. With the sun setting earlier all the time, she woke up confused by the sepia light. Shadows from the traffic outside flickered over the comforter in mutating shapes.
One afternoon she elected to drop off her laundry. It was a Tuesday; she wasn’t that far gone. But she’d lost her coffee and walking time. She thought she might salvage what was left of the day with a stroll through Manhattan in lieu of household chores. She dreaded the notion of fighting for dryers, of waiting for a cycle to end. Just this once, she told herself, as she put on lipstick and a wool jersey dress and stuffed a drawstring bag.
At the laundromat a young man in a baseball cap was berating Mrs. Lim. Grace had seen him around the neighborhood, probably Italian, with the beefy torso of a weightlifter. His shirt was tucked into a pair of nylon jogging pants, but the stomach that should have been cut with muscle jutted over the elastic band. A sausage in its casing, thought Grace. He brandished a brown leather car coat whose grain was stamped like alligator hide. Red ink dotted the lapel.
“Whaddaya mean, you don’t know?” he shouted. He shook the coat in Mrs. Lim’s face.
Her expression was blank. “Was there already.”
“Listen, I should know. It’s my coat. No stain when I brought it in, understand? No stain.”
Mrs. Lim’s eyes lit on Grace. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she said in Korean. “Please tell him, we sent it out to a dry cleaner. It’s not our fault.”
“Speak English! English!” said the man.
With a pang of anger, Grace tried to explain.
“I don’t give a damn, it’s ruined. You know how much it cost?”
“Fine. What would you like them to do?”
“Pay for a new one.”
Mrs. Lim crossed her arms. “That stain could be from anywhere. He’s a troublemaker.” She showed Grace a receipt. It was printed with a disclaimer of responsibility for services rendered off the premises. “You see?”
“He won’t stand for it,” said Grace.
“We’ll give back the cost of cleaning.”
“Can they remove the ink stain for you?” Grace asked the man.
“Are you crazy?” He was shouting again. “It won’t come out. Piece of crap now.”
Grace’s stomach was knotting. “Then I’m fresh out of ideas.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Damn gooks. What you need is another Hanoi.” He kicked Grace’s laundry with all his might and stomped off. The door shivered in its frame.
Grace started shaking.
“Too bad Mr. Lim isn’t here,” said Mrs. Lim. “He’ll be upset when he gets back with dinner.” She seemed strangely calm.
“You’re not frightened?”
Mrs. Lim shrugged. “It’s not the first time.”
“What are you saying?”
“In this country customers always think they’re right. Of course it’s not true. But you have to keep going. Make money. Live.” She stooped to retrieve Grace’s things. Towels, panties, a set of pillowcases had scattered across the floor. Mrs. Lim crammed them back into the drawstring bag. “Luis?” she called out. “Job for you. Rush order.”
When Grace returned in a few hours, the metal gate had been pulled down over the laundromat. The lights were on, but only the Lims and Luis were inside. Mrs. Lim was crying.
“What happened?” asked Grace.
He’d come back. He’d found a brick or chunk of concrete, nestled its smooth heft in the crook of his arm, contracted and pumped and flexed. In the darkness he’d dashed up to the laundromat and aimed for the window that flanked the expressway. The glass had shattered and webbed in places, the lines like a twisting black net. He’d run off into the night. He’d run off without a second glance.
“A coward,” said Mrs. Lim. “A thief.”
She was crying not because she’d been hurt, but because she was estimating how much a new window would cost. They couldn’t afford the expense. Overhead was bad enough.
“You should go to the police,” said Grace.
Mr. Lim snorted.
“They won’t do anything,” said Mrs. Lim.
“You could take out a restraining order,” said Grace. “To prevent it from happening again.”
“For that we would need a positive ID,” said Mr. Lim.
“You didn’t see him?” asked Grace.
“Only from behind. We chased him down the block.”
There was silence. Grace tapped the bridge of her nose gingerly, a habit of indecision.
“Lo vi,” said Luis suddenly. “Lo vi.”
Grace was surprised. “You saw him?”
His face, rough and pockmarked like a grapefruit, was upturned as he met her gaze. She studied him closely. He didn’t betray his emotions, but it was clear he was following.
“OK,” said Grace. “In that case, we’d better go.”
In the back seat of the Lims’ maroon sedan, she turned toward Luis. She wanted to thank him, but didn’t know how. “Do you mind if I ask, where do you live?” Her words were halting and shy.
“Here? Or there?” He meant New York or Mexico. He motioned with his plump hands.
“Yes, both.”
“My hometown, no es famous.”
She nodded.
“Durango. Lo conoce? Do you know?”
She smiled uncertainly. “Is it near Mexico City?”
He shook his head. “Es a big country.”
Stupid, she thought, stupid of me. It was no different from people assuming she must be from Seoul. As if all the Third World were contained in its metropolises, its Olympic capitals and host cities.
“Is your family there?” she asked.
“I have six brothers, one sister. Three boys live with me.”
“In Brooklyn?”
“Elmhurst. Queens.” He shifted, adjusting the cuffs of his trousers. He had short legs to match his hands, and yet his movements were elegant, restrained. How he held his body inward, observing distance in the hump of velour seat that lay between them. She realized she was being intrusive. He was too polite to ignore her questions altogether, but as he reached down to crease and recrease the fabric between his fingers, she wondered if the roommates were even related. They might have had false papers and jobs that paid in cash. Was it fair to involve him? And yet, she thought, they had to.
The police station was paneled with beige wood and calendars. A clerk sat typing in a wire cage, not unlike the cashier’s enclosure at a liquor store. The Lims perched themselves on a hard bench and let Grace take the lead. She delivered her account of the events from earlier that day. The officer on desk duty asked if she was the eyewitness. She indicated Luis.
“Spanish?” asked the officer.
“That would be best,” said Grace.
The clerk turned out to be Dominican; she was recruited to assist with the paperwork. Luis was slow in starting but warmed up as he went. The clacking of the typewriter keys became an incessant rhythm.
“Anything else I can do?” asked Grace. She hesitated to leave.
They said she’d done plenty. Plenty. “Go home,” the Lims told her. “You should get some rest.”
That night in bed Grace told Paul about the incident. “What a mess,” she said. “If I ever run into him again.”
“All kinds of nuts in the city.”
“No, but I mean he seemed vengeful. Not what you’d call a stable personality.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” Paul hugged her and dropped a kiss in her hair.
She hugged him, grateful he wasn’t built like that guy. “So what if he decides he wants more?”
“You don’t think he’ll be back?”
“I hope not. Jesus. But what if? He sees these immigrants in his neighborhood and he thinks they have no right.”
“Sweetheart.” Paul pulled back slightly to look at her. “One time. One idiot. Let it go.”
But it wasn’t one time, she wanted to explain. Speak English! English! Damn gooks. What you need is another Hanoi. She had heard the same insults and epithets when she worked at her parents’ store. Every week, irate customers complained about grass stains and splotches of red wine that wouldn’t dissolve, no matter how hard her parents tried. They had relied on Grace to communicate in English that they had done their best. She had a knack for calming people, a pleasant face, but that was hardly enough to do the work of conversion. And now, years later, the words were still being used as weapons, virtually unchanged. Was it too much to ask for racism these days to come to her more artfully concealed?
“You he would have called a towelhead,” she said. “Right?”
“Or not,” said Paul. “Around here, they seem to think I’m Italian.”
“That’s not funny, Paul.”
“Who’s laughing?”
“I’m saying, what would you have done?”
He rubbed the back of his long neck where the nub of his spine poked out. “I would have prayed he didn’t decide to kick the crap out of me. Which might have happened, even if I were white.”
“He did those things in front of me, Paul. And to me. I was there.”
Sighing, Paul tugged the comforter over her stomach, still flat underneath his palm. He rubbed until her skin was glowing with warmth, and then he took her hand and brushed it against his bare abdomen, which bore twin scars from a hernia operation he had endured years ago. The stitches remained, purplish tracks around the soft part of his groin.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply.
“Please hold me,” she said, and he did.
The next day the Moscatellis were on their stoop with a tabloid paper and an ancient transistor radio. Grace stepped outside and waved hello. Mrs. Moscatelli set the paper down. The radio crackled.
“We heard,” she said.
“They’re all mental,” said Mr. Moscatelli. He fiddled with the tuning dial.
“I just got through telling Vinny,” said Mrs. Moscatelli.
“Frankly, it makes me wonder about security around here,” said Grace.
“Security?” said Mr. Moscatelli.
“Now don’t you worry,” said Mrs. Moscatelli.
“But you can’t defend against somebody like that,” said Grace.
The Moscatellis exchanged a look. “Like what, dear?” asked Mrs. Moscatelli.
“He was violent,” said Grace.
“The D’Angelo boy?”
“I didn’t ask his name.”
“He’s a hothead, all right, but he don’t mean nothing by it.”
“You think throwing bricks through windows is acceptable behavior?”
“Nicky D’Angelo, we knew his father before he passed.” Mrs. Moscatelli lowered her voice. “Cancer of the prostate. Did his business through tubes at the end.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But his son’s a grown man.”
Abruptly, Mr. Moscatelli switched off the radio. “Blood,” he said, “will tell.” He rose from his seat.
“Vinny, don’t start,” said Mrs. Moscatelli.
“I’m just showing her something.” He pointed to a green metal stump at the end of the block. “See that?” he said. “What used to be a stop sign?”
“I see it,” said Grace.
“A garbage truck did that. Rounded the corner too fast, tore the sign right off. Like mowing down a flowerbed.” He licked the edges of his mouth. “Been that way for years. Damn city never bothered to replace it.”
“Here we go,” said Mrs. Moscatelli.
“She oughta know,” said Mr. Moscatelli. “Park in that spot, get your fender smashed in. People don’t care. They don’t stop. Leave a note for the insurance company? Never heard of it. Strictly hit and run.”
“We do our best,” said Mrs. Moscatelli. “We try and memorize the plates, when we’re able.”
“There was a family in Franny’s building. Two sons and a daughter. Anna, that was the little girl.”
“A tragedy,” said Mrs. Moscatelli.
“Well, whaddaya think, on a block with kids? Go slow. It stands to reason. So they’re playing pickle after school. Anna in the middle. The ball gets away. She runs out into the street and bam, like that, it’s over. Lincoln Town Car. Black. Probably one of them livery cabs. Never found the driver.”
“Her poor parents,” said Mrs. Moscatelli. “They moved away, from grief. Of this I’m certain: no one should outlive their children.”
Grace had nothing to say.
“Believe me, there’s worse than Nicky D’Angelo. A lot worse,” said Mr. Moscatelli. He sank back into his chair, his brittle legs like matchsticks. “Lousy city.”
They had a week of thunderstorms that confined Grace to the apartment. The rain poured down the windows in slick, translucent sheets. She gulped Paul’s stash of green tea by the potful and leaned into the sills with the restive energy of a tethered dog. The cold of the panes against her cheek was a welcome shock. After several days of this, she discovered the tea canister that she’d handled for so long had a cartoon geisha in its logo. The drawing’s kimono and slitted eyes irritated her so much that she tried to flush the contents of the tin down the toilet. The leaves floated to the surface and turned the water amber. She hurled the canister against the tank. The porcelain clinked. In its joint her shoulder ached.
When the rain finally cleared, the air smelled loamy and the sky was bathed in pearled blues and grays. There were so many earthworms and loose bits of timber, Grace had to step carefully. But she reveled in the momentary balm.
On Sackett she stopped at the drugstore for a home pregnancy kit; at last she’d missed her period. She stowed her package into the inner pocket of Paul’s jacket and went by the laundromat to check up on the Lims. The metal gate still covered the cracked glass, but Mrs. Lim had dragged her orange chair to the sidewalk in front of the store. The bottom of a cardboard box was next to her. Sweat beaded at her temples, and yet she beamed.
“Nice to be outside,” said Grace.
Mrs. Lim put a finger to her lips and bent toward the box. “Look what I found.”
A baby bird was scrabbling across the cardboard bottom. Grace could see it was ripped from a supermarket carton that had held granola bars. A mound of food and water for the bird were laid out in chipped saucers; the food appeared to be canned tuna or mackerel, something equally incongruous.
“It must have fallen from its nest,” said Mrs. Lim. “So much damage.”
And she described the flash of lightning that had splintered the gingko and sycamore trees around the neighborhood. Her hands flew in widening arcs as she talked: about the sizzle of burnt wood, about the thud of the tree branch that had interrupted the rain drumming on the roof, about the habits of birds and how they fed each other, beaks perfectly fashioned for thrusting insects down the throat. The baby chirped. “We used to have finches, back in Kwangju,” said Mrs. Lim. “They sang to us, dawn to dusk.”
Her face had unfurled in the sun. She was fussing over the bird, the box in her lap now and the ends of her hair lifting in a stray breeze as she moved the saucers back and forth. Grace couldn’t bring herself to mention the police report. She watched and wondered if this was one of the few highlights in Mrs. Lim’s month, the days measured in spin and cycles since she’d migrated from Korea. Was it worth the leaving? It was a question Grace had often thought to ask her parents. But she’d never quite gotten around to it.
She still had a craving for coffee, the last of her guilty pleasures. The others she could give up easy, wouldn’t even miss, following doctor’s orders. Ever since confirming that she was pregnant, Paul had been crowing he’d told her so. She needed to clean out her system; the restrictions had been official for about a month. But she clung to her old habits, frequenting a coffee bar on Court as if nothing much had changed. Along one entire wall were barrels lined with burlap sacks and stocked with fragrant beans. They served the best variety: French roast, Jamaican Blue Mountain, Guatemalan blend. She ordered hers black, no sugar. It seared her tongue as she drank.
The customers were mostly old Italian men who bragged about their winnings in Atlantic City and indulged in chunks of pannetone displayed in the store’s deli case. The owner, who assembled sandwiches behind the counter and chatted with these men, treated Grace like a stranger each time she entered. He wasn’t rude, exactly, but he refused to greet her on sight. She got used to the rules, accepted her niche, taking her coffee to go.
In line to pay, she focused on the owner’s deft strokes as he split a kaiser roll in two. He tore out the innards to make room for the filling and palmed the bready white pulp. A stainless steel meat slicer stood at the ready. “Whoever’s next,” he said.
“Can you do up a couple heroes?” asked a voice behind Grace. She turned with some annoyance. It was the guy from the laundromat. Nicky.
He didn’t seem to see her. He pushed past to the counter with instructions for the owner and a $50 bill in his fist. He was bare-headed this time, his brown hair buzzed short around the ears with curly overhang at the crown and down his nape. It resembled an animal’s tail, glued to the middle of his scalp. Grace dropped her eyes over his motorcycle jacket and acid-washed jeans to the tan workboots on his feet. These are the boots, she thought, that kicked my laundry and ran away.
“Excuse me,” she said to the broad dam of his back.
He didn’t hear. “I said one with prosciutto, one mortadella. Mortadella.”
“Keep your pants on,” said the owner. He unwrapped the offending hero and tore off a fresh sheet of butcher paper.
She tried again. “Excuse me.”
“How’s this? Better?” The owner splayed a hand in front of the sandwich. “Your Majesty.”
“Ha ha. Watch me crown ya.”
She tapped Nicky’s shoulder. It twitched like a horse’s flank. He spun around wildly.
“What’s your damn problem?” he said.
“Language,” said the owner. “Potty mouth.” But he was watching her too.
“I don’t have a problem,” she said. To her right a customer asked for a cappuccino. With lots of foam, he said, and a half-pound of Kenya AA. Loose beans rattled in the grinder. Was there ever such a loud machine?
She considered where to begin. In the middle of the store, people showing their impatience all around her and the air dense and humming with noise, not so different from the motorized garment racks her parents operated, she inhaled the odors of coffee percolating on the burners and thought about the life that burrowed deep inside her.
“I believe I was here first,” she said.
“Is that right?” said Nicky.
“Yes, that is right. You cut in front of me.”
“So what do you want from me? A sandwich?”
“An apology would be nice.”
“For what?”
“I’ve been waiting to place my order, same as you. Longer, actually.”
“Me, too,” said the customer who had asked for cappuccino. “Would you move?”
“Hey, don’t blame me,” said Nicky. “She’s the one starting crap.”
“Christ Almighty,” said the owner. “What’d I just tell you about language?”
“Depends,” said Grace, “on what you call starting. In a way, you started it when you stepped up to the counter without looking around you first.”
“Looking around?” Nicky stuffed his heroes into a paper bag. “Gimme a break. This is my frigging lunch.”
“I gathered that. So how about my apology?”
“Lady, I don’t even know you.”
“Exactly. You don’t know who you’re talking to. Maybe it’s my lunchtime too. Maybe I’ve got to get back to the office in five minutes or I’ll be fired.” Grace bit her lip. “I mean, who knows? Who knows? Maybe I’m pregnant and standing here, my water’s about to burst.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” said the owner.
“Ah, don’t be a stronzo,” said the other customer. “Apologize to the pregnant lady, Nicky, and let’s get this line in gear.”
Nicky reared back on the crowd and hugged his sandwiches to his chest. He locked glances with Grace, who stared back at him unblinking until he finally looked away.
“All right, already,” he said. “Sorry. Happy now? Pipe down.”
“See how easy?” said Grace. “And thanks. Thanks for that.”
She struggled to sound conversational, light, but her hands were trembling from the effort that it cost her. She shoved them into the pockets of Paul’s barn jacket, which smelled of his sandalwood cologne. The scent was at once spicy and familiar, distinctive as a signature. Or a positive ID: She suddenly remembered the phrase that Mr. Lim had uttered with so much skepticism about his broken window.
As if preparing to pick Nicky out of a police lineup, Grace studied his features closely, his nostrils that flared like the snout on a Picasso minotaur, his low, square forehead, the clenched-tight bulb of his chin. Rough features, yes, but less harsh than she remembered, now that they weren’t contorted with anger.
“You don’t recognize me,” she said. “Do you?”
“No,” said Nicky. “Should I?”
Something about her rang a bell, but he couldn’t quite manage to place her. He was working steady these days, roofing jobs around the city that kept him outdoors and with an unobstructed view of the girls who swept past him on the street. This time of year, they were bundled up tight, rushing off to work or walking their dogs on taut, retractable leashes. This one reminded him of the actress in that TV show about doctors in an emergency ward, or maybe it was porn. His gaze roamed over Grace’s hair, her eyes, her small frame and maybe not-so-bad figure. They all looked the same to him anyway: Oriental girls. “What, did I date you or something?”
The owner snorted. “A likely story. When’s the last time you took a girl out?”
“Last Friday night.” Nicky threw back his shoulders.
“Your mother,” said the other customer, “don’t count.”
Grace shook her head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
She wanted to bring up the laundromat or lecture him that his family had been immigrants, too, the way she had fantasized doing a million times before, when a customer or any other person she encountered in the course of a day had seen her without really seeing her–which is to say, as Grace. Not a color, not a conquest, not an envoy for a group; but for now, she had opened her mouth wide enough to give Nicky pause and that seemed like a lot, considering.
She asked for a double espresso. When the owner tendered the cup to her, she dropped a tip in the jar.
“By the way,” said the owner. “That’s decaf I give you. In case you really are expecting.”
On her way home, Grace passed Luis and the Lims in front of the laundromat. Clad in matching thermal jackets and black knit caps, the two men looked like brothers from behind. They were putting up 2-by-4s where the glass had shattered. Luis held each board in place while Mr. Lim pounded nails into the siding; Mrs. Lim supervised. Grace crossed the street to admire their handiwork. The unvarnished wood fit snugly across the frame with the cantilevered effect of drawn blinds. She admired the ease with which the men moved, the ceaseless thud of the hammer. When she called out their names, they turned in unison, and Mrs. Lim raised a hand. “Looks good,” said Grace. “Que bueno.”
Luis let slip a smile.
“Bueno,” said Mr. Lim, testing out the word.
“Not bueno,” said Mrs. Lim. “But not bad.”
It was only when Grace reached her block and caught sight of the Moscatellis on their front stoop that she felt self-conscious, uncertain of how to proceed. Since their last conversation, she had taken pains to avoid them, waiting to leave her building for those moments when they weren’t planted outside. But Mr. Moscatelli seemed intent on other things. He was clutching his portable radio and muttering under his breath. Grace nodded at them curtly as she hurried up the stairs to her apartment.
“Hey,” said Mr. Moscatelli, flagging her down. “You know what Jimmy Roselli sounds like?”
“Vinny, if I told you a thousand times,” said Mrs. Moscatelli. “Buy a new radio. Don’t be so cheap.”
“It works. It works. You just gotta jiggle.”
“So what, you spend the whole day jiggling?”
“Naw, she got young hands, this lady next door. She’ll get my station back.”
“Who, me?” said Grace.
“Who you is right.”
“Enough,” said Mrs. Moscatelli.
But Mr. Moscatelli extended the radio to Grace. “Please,” he said. “Some help.”
His wrists poked through the sleeves of his coat, the veins florid against his thin skin. The radio was brown and decrepit, held together by flaps of duct tape. Behind him, Mrs. Moscatelli shook her head and settled deeper into her chair.
I bet they don’t even know my name, thought Grace. Who you, indeed. May Wang or Wong was more like it.
Grace looked at him and then at Mrs. Moscatelli, swaddled in layers of thick wool to stave off the late autumn chill. They could have gone inside, but they opted to listen to their music alfresco, sitting on their stoop the way they did nearly every afternoon. Didn’t they ever tire of it? Privacy seemed to matter very little. Maybe they enjoyed the view of the piers, stark but not unlovely when the rays of the setting sun hit just right. Maybe the hum and whir of cars from the expressway let them feel more connected to a life bound up in the city. Or maybe it had something to do with protecting their claim to this once-thriving street and making new neighbors their own. Like family, the Moscatellis once said.
And what do you say to family, exactly, when you have bad blood between you?
It helped, Grace decided, if she saw it that way. She opened her mouth, she opened it, she opened it good and wide.
———-
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
June Unjoo Yang was born in Junjoo, South Korea, and grew up in Lincolnwood. She graduated from Niles West High School and earned a bachelor of arts degree in semiotics from Brown University and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Houston, where she won a Michener fellowship for her fiction. This year she received a grant from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston and Harris County, and fellowships for residencies at Hedgebrook and the Vermont Studio Center. Her book reviews and articles have appeared in The Nation, Hungry Mind Review and The Women’s Review of Books; her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Glimmer Train, Manoa, Bellingham Review and Post Road; and she has just completed a short-story collection. She lives in New York.
