Last Night in Twisted River

"It seems that Youn is still married," the cook replied, as Danny and Joe got into the car. "It seems that Youn has a two-year-old daughter, and that her husband and daughter have come to visit her--just to see how all the writing is going."

"They're at the house?" Danny asked.

"It's good that they came after Youn was up. She was already in her room--writing," the cook said.

Danny could imagine how she'd left their bedroom--meticulously, without a trace of herself remaining, just that pearl-gray nightie tucked under her pillow, or maybe it was the beige one. "Youn has a two-year-old?" Danny asked his dad. "I want Joe to see the daughter."

"Are you crazy?" the cook said to his son. "Joe should go to school."

"Youn is married?" Joe asked. "She has a kid?"

"It appears so," Danny said; he was thinking about the novel Youn was writing--how it was so exquisitely written but not everything added up. The usually limpid prose notwithstanding, something had always been unclear about the book.

"I think you should go to school, sweetie," Danny said. "You can meet a two-year-old another time."

"But you want me to meet one, right?" Joe asked.

"What's this about?" the cook inquired; he was driving to Joe's school, not waiting for contradictory directions.

"It's a long story," Danny told him. "What's the husband like? Is he a gangster?"

"He's a surgeon in Korea, he told me," Tony Angel replied. "He's attending a surgical conference in Chicago, but he brought his daughter along, and they thought they'd surprise Mommy--and let Youn look after the two-year-old for a couple of days, while Kyung is in meetings. Some surprise, huh?" the cook asked.

"His name is Kyung?" Danny said. In the book Youn was writing, the gangster husband was named Jinwoo; Danny guessed that wasn't the only element of her story she'd made up, and all along he'd thought her novel was too autobiographical!

"Her husband seems like a nice guy," Tony Angel said.

"So I'm going to meet Youn's two-year-old daughter?" Joe asked, as he was getting out of the car.

"Eat something," the cook told his grandson. "I already called the school and told them you were coming late."

"It sounds like you may meet the little girl, yes," Danny told the boy. "But what are you on the lookout for?" he asked Joe, as the boy opened his lunch box and peered inside.

"The blue Mustang," Joe answered, without hesitation.

"Smart boy," his father said.

They were almost back at the Court Street house before the cook told his son, "Yi-Yiing and I decided that it should appear you two are a couple."

"Why should Yi-Yiing and I be a couple?" Danny said.

"Because you're the same age. While the husband from Korea is around, you should just pretend that you're together. Not even a Korean surgeon is going to suspect that I'm sleeping with his wife," the cook said. "I'm too old."

"How do we pretend?" Danny asked his dad.

"Let Yi-Yiing do the pretending," his father said.

In retrospect, the writer was thinking, the pretending hadn't been the most difficult part of the impromptu deception. Yi-Yiing did a good job of acting as Danny's girlfriend--that is, while Youn's husband was there in the Court Street house. The surgeon from Seoul struck Danny as a sweet man, both proud of himself and embarrassed for "surprising" his writer wife. Youn, for her part, could not conceal how happy she was to see her daughter, Soo. The Korean writer's eyes had sought Danny for some reassurance, and Danny hoped he'd provided it; he felt relieved, actually, because he'd been looking ahead to their inevitable parting with more than the usual guilt.

Yes, he would definitely be in Iowa City through this academic year--he'd already asked the Writers' Workshop if he could stay another year after that--but Danny knew that he probably wouldn't be staying in town long enough for Youn to finish her novel. (And when Danny went back to Vermont, he had all along been assuming that Youn would go back to Seoul.)

The surgeon, who would be in Chicago for only a few days, kissed his wife and daughter good-bye. All the introductions and good-byes had happened in the Court Street kitchen, where the cook acted as if he owned the place, and Yi-Yiing had two or three times slipped behind Danny and encircled him with her arms--drawing him to her, once kissing the back of his neck. It being a warm fall day, the writer wore only a T-shirt and jeans, and he could feel Yi-Yiing's silky pajamas brushing against his back. These hugs conveyed a coziness between them, the writer supposed--not knowing what Youn might have made of this intimate contact, or if Yi-Yiing and the cook had informed the Korean adulteress of their plan that Danny and the Hong Kong nurse should "pretend" to be a couple.

The daughter, Soo, was a little jewel. "She's not wearing a diaper?" Danny asked the surgeon, remembering Joe at that age.

"Girls are toilet-trained before boys, honey," Yi-Yiing told him, with what struck the writer as an overacted emphasis on the honey word--but the cook had laughed, and so had Youn. Danny would wonder, later, if perhaps Youn had also been relieved that her relationship with her fiction teacher was so efficiently ended. (What need was there for any further explanation?)

The days when the Korean doctor was in Chicago were easy enough, and Joe could see with his own eyes how innocent a two-year-old really was--about dangers in the road, obviously, but about angels falling from the sky, too. The eight-year-old could observe for himself that little Soo was capable of believing anything.