The Whitakers of Sullivan’s Island

Chapter One

Charleston, South Carolina, Wednesday, November 24, 1971

Eli had given the secretary his name. He had not told her that he thought her employer was his father.

Now Graham Whitaker stood in the doorway with a folder under his arm, looking from the young man to the clock behind the secretary's desk.

“Mr. Park?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come in. I have a little time.”

For nearly three weeks Eli had been finding reasons to wait. He followed before he could find another.

“Will you need that typed before Friday, Mr. Whitaker?” the secretary asked.

Graham looked down at the folder as if he had forgotten it.

“No. Leave it for Friday. You can go when you're finished.”

Inside, he put it on a stack beside the telephone and offered Eli a chair. There was a Duke law diploma on the wall. On the desk, turned toward the chair Graham had just left, stood a photograph of Graham with a woman and three children.

Eli sat with his satchel on his knees.

“My mother knew you in Korea.”

Graham had begun to sit. He stopped with his hand on the back of his chair.

“What's her name?”

“Hana Park.”

Eli took the photograph from the book in which he had carried it. The younger Graham was standing beside Hana, whose head was turned toward him. Eli slid it across the desk.

Graham picked it up by the edges.

“Oh,” he said.

For a while he did nothing else. Eli had practiced answers to questions about where he had got it and why he had come. The man did not ask them.

“Is she here with you?”

“She died in January.”

Graham looked up. Then his eyes went back to the print.

“This January?”

“Yes.”

A car sounded its horn outside. Graham pulled his desk chair closer and sat down without letting go of the photograph.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't know.”

Eli watched the man's thumb move away from his mother's face. He had seen that careful way of holding the print before, in his aunt's hands, but not here, not in a man who had lived all these years without her.

“How old was she?” Graham asked, and shook his head before Eli could answer. “I know how old she was.”

He put the photograph flat on the desk.

“She was my mother,” Eli said. It was the one part he had already told him, and still it was where he had to begin. “After she died, my aunt told me you were my father.”

Graham looked at him then, properly, without the photograph between their eyes.

“When were you born?”

“October. Nineteen fifty-three.”

“October.”

“Yes.”

Graham's hand closed on the edge of the desk. “I didn't know she had a child.”

“She wrote to you.”

“I never received a letter.”

Eli opened the book again and took out an envelope. He laid it on the desk, with the folded letter beside it. Graham's name and an old military address were on the front; the marks beneath them showed that it had been sent back.

“This is the letter she sent. It came back to her. My aunt gave it to me with the photograph when we were sorting Mother's papers.”

Graham turned the envelope toward him.

“That was my address in Pusan.”

He reached for the letter, then stopped.

“You can read it,” Eli said. “But I want it back.”

“All right.”

The letter was in English. Graham read from the beginning. Hana wrote about two new desks she'd received for her classroom, joking about her sister Sujin's complaints at having to move them with the drawers full. At Sujin's name, Graham's mouth moved a little.

Then he reached the words Eli knew without looking.

“I am going to have a baby. You did not know when you left. Neither did I.”

Graham stayed on that part longer than it took to read it. He went on to the request for an answer through the school, and to the line about making arrangements. Eli left the page where it was. His mother had needed things. He would not hide that from this man.

At last Graham looked at the date again.

“April,” he said. “I was already back in the States.”

Eli looked at the envelope. His mother had held it after it came back, knowing it had not reached this man.

“But you didn't know.”

“No.” Graham raised his eyes. “I didn't know about you.”

Eli had thought that an answer, once he had one, would tell him what to do. He could hear the secretary closing a drawer in the next room.

“You didn't know my name before this year?” Graham asked.

“No. Only that my father was an American soldier.”

Graham drew a breath as if he meant to say something more. Instead he laid the letter on its envelope and pushed it back with the photograph.

“Your aunt is Sujin?”

“She lives in Pusan. She took the picture.”

“I have one too.”

Eli looked at him.

“She had two prints made,” Graham said. “Your mother gave me one before I left.”

“You kept it?”

“Yes.”

For the first time since entering the room, Eli looked away because he wanted to, not because he was afraid of being seen looking. In the desk photograph the youngest child had one hand over the older boy's sleeve. The woman stood close to Graham, who was laughing.

“My wife,” Graham said. “Caroline. And our children.”

“I knew you were married. Does Mrs. Whitaker know about my mother?”

“Yes. I told her before we married.”

Eli folded the letter along its old crease. He did not ask what the wife had said.

“Where are you staying?”

“With Mrs. Alden. Ruth Alden. She taught in Korea. She knew my mother. She helped me find your office before I came.”

“When did you arrive in Charleston?”

“Early November. I'm here on a short educational visit. Mrs. Alden is hosting me while I visit schools. I go home on January twenty-eighth.”

“And you've had the address all this time?”

“Yes.”

Eli looked at the door through which he had finally come.

Graham glanced at the clock. Eli closed the book.

“You said you had a little time.”

“No. I was only...” He looked at the folder on the desk. “I was going to finish that and go home.”

The secretary called goodbye from the outer office, and Graham answered her. They listened to the outside door close.

“Would you have lunch with me?” he asked.

Eli kept a hand on the satchel clasp.

“There are things I'd like to ask you,” Graham said. “And things you may want to ask me. I don't seem to be doing very well at either.”

Eli had questions. He was less certain now that he could bear all the answers in one day.

“Lunch would be all right.”

* * *

At the Colony House, Graham waited for Eli to sit before taking the chair opposite him. Eli put the satchel between his feet. Without the desk, he did not know where to rest his hands.

A man carrying menus greeted Graham by name. Graham began to answer, stopped, and looked toward the other tables.

“This is Eli Park,” he said.

“How do you do?” the man asked.

Eli answered him. Nothing else was asked. Graham moved his water glass, although it had not been in the way.

When they were alone again, he asked what Eli would like to eat.

Eli chose something he recognized. He had been hungry outside the office. Now he hoped hunger would come back before the food arrived.

Graham asked about Ruth, and Eli told him that she had left Korea years ago but still wrote to Sujin. The conversation became easier while it concerned someone who was not at the table.

“Do you have classes this afternoon?”

“No. I have some reading to finish.”

“For the schools?”

“For myself. Mrs. Alden has more books than places to put them.”

“What are you reading?”

“Three Men in a Boat.” Eli had left it open on Ruth's sitting-room table, where she had complained of finding it facedown.

“I read the last page first,” he said. “I don't think I should have done it.”

“Why did you do that?” Graham asked.

“My mother did it.”

“She did?”

“In a shop. Before she bought one. If she didn't like the ending, she put it back.”

Graham smiled, and Eli could see him trying to put the woman who bought books beside the one he remembered.

“I didn't know that.”

“She told me not to do it with books for school.”

“Sound advice.”

“I didn't always take it.”

Their food came. Graham waited until the plates were down, then asked whether he had many books at home.

“Some.”

“We could see about getting you a few while you're here.”

Eli set down his fork.

“I haven't finished Mrs. Alden's.”

“I only meant, if there's something you need.”

“I don't need anything today.”

Graham nodded. He cut a piece of his lunch, but did not eat it at once. Eli wished he had answered differently and was also glad he had not thanked him.

After a while he said, “Did you love her?”

“Yes.”

The answer came before Graham had put down his knife.

Eli looked at the tablecloth. “She never told me about the two of you.”

“I loved her,” Graham said again, more quietly.

“Did she know?”

“I told her. I think she believed me.”

He was silent long enough that Eli thought that was all he meant to say.

“I was waiting to hear from law school. I told her I might not get in. She said she'd want to see me even if they turned me down.”

A small smile had come into his face. It did not last.

“She was afraid she'd asked me to supper too soon. With her mother and Sujin there. I was afraid of saying something stupid in front of them. We walked halfway down the road before either of us admitted being nervous.”

Eli had known his mother could be afraid. He had not pictured her wanting this man to come back to supper, listening for what he would say.

“She could make you think she wasn't afraid of anything,” he said.

“Yes.”

Graham looked down at his plate. Eli took a bite of his lunch and gave him time. He did not know how much of this memory he wanted, only that he would have been angry if there had been nothing to tell.

“Are you with Mrs. Alden tomorrow?” Graham asked.

“We're going to her daughter's.”

“Would you come to us instead? For Thanksgiving dinner.”

Eli's fork stopped above the plate.

“My mother will be there,” Graham said. “I'd like you to meet her. I'd like you to meet all of them.”

“Have you told your wife?”

“No. I'm going to tell her today.”

The man with the menus passed behind Graham. Graham did not look around this time, but Eli remembered the first glance.

“Perhaps you should talk to her.”

“I'll speak to her when I get home. But I do want you to come.”

“What will you tell her?”

“What you've told me. About your mother. About you.”

Eli moved a small piece of bread away from the edge of his plate. He wanted to meet Graham's mother. He wanted to know whether Graham was different at home. Neither want made him certain he should go.

“I'll speak to Mrs. Alden,” he said. “I think I would like to come.”

“May I collect you at half past eleven?”

“All right.”

“And take you back afterward.”

“Yes. Back to Mrs. Alden's.”

Graham nodded. He asked for the address on a clean piece of paper, and Eli wrote it without opening the book in his satchel.

* * *

Ruth was at her kitchen table when he returned. There were two onions on the cutting board and a third in her hand.

“I went to his office,” Eli said.

She put the onion down.

“He was there?”

“Yes.”

He sat in the chair across from her. Now that he was home, he could feel how tired he was. Ruth had not known who his father was until he and Sujin wrote in the spring. She had found the office and helped arrange this visit. The walk through the door had been left to him.

“What did he say?”

“That he didn't know.”

Ruth waited.

“He read the letter.”

“Do you believe he didn't know?”

“I think so.” Eli looked at the knife beside her hand. “I thought that would make it easier.”

She drew the cutting board away from his sleeve.

“He asked me for dinner tomorrow. With his family. I said I would like to go, but I was meant to go with you.”

“I'll tell my daughter.”

“You won't mind?”

“I'll miss having you there.” She picked up the onion. “That isn't the same thing.”

He watched her begin to cut it.

“He's coming at half past eleven. He'll bring me back.”

“Then leave your key where you can find it. I may still be out.”

Eli put his hand in his pocket to make sure it was there.