Free The Interpreter by Suki Kim Page A

chipped pocket knives, soiled bandannas, and baseball caps, the sort of leftovers no one wants. Friday, just three days ago. Did Grace come to see Mom and Dad early so that she wouldn’t run into Suzy? Does she still hate her so? Leave us alone , Grace told her at the funeral, without once meeting her eyes. Hasn’t Suzy done exactly that, hasn’t she stayed away all these years as though she had no family left in the world?
    The umbrella is a weapon. She can leave now, out into the torrential sea where her parents wait. Bob looks happy with his five-dollar tip, almost as much as the whole bill. But today is not a day for calculating the 20 percent, and Suzy is holding on to the nameless umbrella left by a drunkard on a rainy night.
    “Oh, I knew I forgot something,” Bob hollers after Suzy. “Kelly’s back, tell him Bob sent you and he’ll give you a deal. Make sure you tell him you can’t even swim.”
     
     
    Crazy to hit the beach in this rain. The lighthouse is on Montauk Point, the easternmost tip of New York. From here, Suzy can either follow the shore for about six miles or just hop in a taxi. An impossibly long pilgrimage, but Suzy cannot bring herself to call a cab, not now, not on her way to see her parents. One of the wires of the umbrella hangs loose, through which the precarious sky threatens to break. It seems almost perfect, that the rain should follow each step and erase the trace of this mourning.
    So it had been Grace after all. On Friday, while Suzy was interpreting in the Bronx, Grace had shown up at McSwiggin’s
looking for something. Neither Grace nor Suzy can swim. Their bodies simply will not float. Suzy tried to learn a few times, but her body would tense immediately upon hitting the water. Grace is terrified of the water—as far as Suzy knows, possibly the only thing she is afraid of. So it had to be Grace: poached cod, Sweet’n Low, seltzer with a straw, can’t swim … Then who’s Kelly? Three days ago, Grace may have stood on this very path. She may have continued up the shore holding the umbrella with a broken frame. She may have cried a little, praying for a miracle.
    Suzy has a hard time picturing her. She has not set her eyes on her sister for five years. In fact, she has barely seen her since they both left for college at seventeen. Grace came home only twice during the four years. Suzy saw her just once, during the Christmas break one year. Suzy was struck by how thin her sister looked. Even Dad commented on it, telling Mom to give her an extra scoop of rice at dinner. Grace mostly kept to herself during the four days she stayed. A few phone calls came for her from the same husky-voiced guy, who would only identify himself as a “friend,” to whom Suzy had to lie each time and say that Grace was not home. Grace seemed somehow subdued, a bit nicer. The only time Suzy glimpsed the familiar cynicism was when she expressed her surprise at Grace’s choice of major, which was religion. Grace smiled faintly, as though it were a private joke that Suzy did not understand, and muttered, “What does it matter?” Although the visit went smoothly, without much commotion, Suzy was relieved when Grace took the bus back to Northampton.
    Grace is thirty now. She will turn thirty-one at the end of this month, only two days after Suzy’s birthday. Suzy the 24th, and Grace the 26th. Grace always resented their birthdays’ falling so close together. She said it took all the steam out of her day. To appease both, Mom used to make them miyukguk, the
traditional birthday seaweed soup, on the 25th. Kill two birds with one stone, Grace would grunt as she slurped her soup with a vengeance. What Grace really could not stand, Suzy suspected, was that they were the same age for those two days. They were equals suddenly, neither younger nor older. Grace no longer had the upper hand. Last year, for Grace’s thirtieth birthday, Suzy bought a card for the first time in years. She stood for a while