Sung J. Woo - Everything Asian: A Novel

EVERYTHING ASIAN

SUNG J. WOO

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS

ST. MARTINS PRESS

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martins Press.

EVERYTHING ASIAN. Copyright 2009 by Sung J. Woo. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Illustrations by Dawn Speth White

Book design by Susan Yang

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Woo, Sung J.

Everything Asian / Sung J. Woo.1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-53885-9

ISBN-10: 0-312-53885-5

1. Teenage boysFiction. 2. KoreansFiction. 3. New JerseyFiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PS3623.O6225E94 2009

813'.6dc22

2008037673

First Edition: April 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my mother, Young Sook Woo,
my sisters, Sunny Woo and Chung Woo,
and the memory of my father, Han Jin Woo

How do I thank thee? Let me name some names.

Claude Amadeo took away The Red Badge of Courage and replaced it with The Dead Zone. Carol Tistan showed me that some needles can be good. Bob Beers told me to get up an hour earlier. Suzanne Ruffo and Beth Siegrist gave me the gift of time. Dave Torok answered my questions about Great Adventure. Caroline Hwang guided me to write the perfect query letter.

These fellow NYU MFA workshoppers provided insights and encouragement: Humera Afridi, Elizabeth Chey, Alisha Davlin, Bradford Demarest, Paul Gacioch, Steve Horwitz, Arun John, Alisa Klevens, James H. Lee, Marco Fernando Navarro, Sophie Powell, and Alycia Ripley; Leila Binder, Olivia Birdsall, Shamar Hill, John Kurita, Rebecca Lane, Andrea Luttrell, Cleyvis Natera, Sara Padilla, Leeore Schnairsohn, Chastity Whitaker, and Marlene White.

Rene Zuckerbrot, agent extraordinaire, brought out the best writer in me. Diana Szu, my editor, believed in this first-time novelist. Helen Chin made me consider the importance of commas. Jessica D. White found what couldnt be found.

Suzan Cole and Susan Jarosiewicz, my ESL teachers, taught me how to read, speak, and write this language. Elaine Flynn and George Ripley introduced me to T. S. Eliot and William Faulkner. Chuck Wachtel reshaped the first half of this novel.

Stewart ONanteacher, mentor, friendread the first draft of this novel and was kind enough to read the second.

Dawn S. White offered her editorial acumen, deft strokes, and enduring love.

ITS MY SISTER ON THE PHONE. Shes talking, Im sort of listening.

So anyway, on the way down, I drove by Peddlers Town, she says.

Words carry information. Some words carry memory. And some words, like Peddlers Town, carry a life, my life, my first year in the States. I was twelve then, and even now, a quarter of a century later, I can go back in an instant to that sad sack of a strip mall. What I see most clearly is our own gift shop, Father sitting behind the register, Mother helping a lady try on a kimono, my sister and I manning the showcases, sliding open those beat-up wooden doors at least a hundred times a day.

Hey Junior, did you hear what I said?

Sorry, I say. No, I missed that.

They tore it down. Its gone.

______

I can leave directly from my house to Peddlers Town, but I dont. Instead I head back to our old apartment first. Its a fine day for a drive, not a cloud in the sky, the crisp autumn wind whipping through my car. The detour adds a good hour to the trip, but I dont mind.

I turn into the entrance of the apartment complex, which is nothing more than a couple of balding flowerpots sitting in front of a tombstone-gray block with ROBERTSON MANOR carved in sharp black letters. The yellow and red bricks of the apartments themselves dont look any better or worse than when we lived here. Back then, Reagan was maybe only one can short of a six-pack, the collective cloud of aerosol hairspray poked holes in the ozone, and girls had very cold legs, as they all wore leg warmers, even over jeans.

I park at the end of the street and walk up to our old apartment, 282B. We were on the second floor. Below us, a single mother and her son lived in near-total anonymity. Even though we were upstairs/downstairs neighbors for more than ten years, we only discovered their names through misdelivered mail. I dont remember them as being particularly surly or shy, but for whatever reason, every time we encountered one another (which happened with great frequency, as we shared the same outside entrance), we would both look askance and go quickly about our ways. This wasnt as awkward or uncomfortable as it may sound; there was an elegance to this dance of avoidance, our bodies never touching, repelling each other like magnets.

What I recall most about the people downstairs is their balcony, whose neatness was in stark contrast to ours. At one point, in preparation for the upcoming Christmas season, Father used ours for storing overflow inventory, stacking brown boxes right up to the roofline. One floor below, our quiet neighbors had three simple objects on their deck, like normal people: a round table with a parasol staked through the center, a green chaise lounge, and a folding beach chair latticed with yellow and blue straps.

Which is, as I scan the patio in front of me, exactly what the current tenants have. I suppose its possible that the same mother-and-son team is living there, but does it really matter? Would I ring the doorbell so I could look away and walk past them one more time?

Up above, its obvious no one lives there right now, as the balcony is clear and the window leading to the living room is without blinds or curtains. I cant see too much from down here, but every angle shows me white, the walls as blank as an empty canvas, the floor probably cleaner than its ever been.

Even if it is only a temporary vacancy, Im glad that on this visit, my old home remains unoccupied. Thats the way wed left it, and I can almost make myself believe that no time has passed since our departure.

I walk up to the front door, then turn around. From here, the community pool that we hardly used sits in the far right corner of the complex, the silver rungs of the diving board glinting in the sunlight. To the left is a thin line of evergreens failing to hide the beige-bricked back of the neighborhood A&P, whose loading dock is like an open mouth, with a trio of apron-wearing workers smoking in a triangle.

I follow the concrete path that leads from the entrance of the apartment out to the parking lot, the same route we took as a family every Saturday and Sunday. Father and I would lead, each of us carrying boxes of merchandise from the apartment. Mother and my sister would be a few steps behind with the days lunch and dinner in grocery bags. Kids in school were doing fun things on the weekends, going to amusement parks or watching movies, and here I was, trapped into going to the store. It didnt take long for me to resent it, yet when I look back at my teenage years, what I remember most clearly are those days and nights I spent in Peddlers Town, convincing a grandmother that her clawlike feet looked beautiful in a pair of open-toed, red satin slippers, and running the register while Mother stood by my side and bagged the purchases.