Serial: Down the River – Chapter Fifty-Six

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets!

Today, Diego has his own encounter with Brad… and a couple other ghosts from his past…

< Read Chapter 55

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Chapter Fifty-Six
An Unexpected Gift

Ainsley stood at the entry to her parents’ mansion, staring at the double eight-foot tall red double doors.

It truly was a mansion. Her father had made a bunch of money as a real estate agent in Folsom and El Dorado Hills, and her mother had recently retired after a career on the local news. Their 7,000 square foot home was perched on a hillside in one of the richest neighborhoods in El Dorado Hills, with a view of the Sierra Nevadas on one side and the Sacramento Valley on the other. And it was just a two-minute ride to the golf course.

Not that any of that mattered right now, though the grandness of the entry and the inescapable symbols of wealth that surrounded her served to remind her why she was there.

Marissa had offered to come with her, but this was something she had to do on her own. And if they disown me for it?

One hard-earned piece of wisdom she had picked up during her relatively short lifetime was that when you became so sure of something, you had to make yourself do it—to move ahead, no matter the consequences.

It had happened when she had come out to her parents as a lesbian. That had begun a long, glacial period in the relationship, which they had only overcome when her auntie Eunji had intervened on her behalf.

She closed her eyes and sighed. Now or never.

She had waited until the last minute. Literally. The next morning she would go to work with Jun Seo Jang. She would take up the issue of her absence from school with the university once she had talked to her parents.

She knocked three times, and dropped her hand behind her back with her other one, staring at the bright red welcome mat.

“Who is it?”

Ansley could picture her mother approaching on the other side of the door, dressed in her red silk kimono, soft slippers padding across the bamboo floor. Her mother adored red.

“Eomma, it’s me!”

The doorbell camera blinked at her, and then the door opened and she was swept up in her mother’s arms surrounded by a cloud of Chanel N°5. “Oh, Ainsley, it is you! Appa, come quick. Ainsley is here!” Her mother kissed her on the cheek and beckoned her inside. “Come in, come in. It’s cold out.”

Ainsley slipped inside. It wasn’t that cold out, but her mother was always freezing. The inside of the house was a good ten degrees warmer than she was comfortable with, but fortunately she didn’t have to stay long.

The Kim home was decorated with an eclectic collection of beautiful Korean antiques, stylish modern furniture from Scandinavian designs, and a weird but somehow successful sampling of local artists, things bought at yard sales, and thick oriental rugs that somehow all worked together- eclecticism was her mother’s signature style.

Mr. Kim came downstairs, wiping his hands on an old towel. They were covered with various colors of paint, part of his latest passion—rediscovering his artistic youth. Ainsley was convinced her own artistic talent had come from her father. While her mother had a knack for home decoration, she didn’t have an artistic bone in her body.

Still, her father only viewed his artistic pursuits as a hobby, and would never have allowed himself to pursue art as a career.

“Welcome home to my beautiful daughter.” He hugged her, careful to hold his splotchy hands away from her back.

“Take her into the living room. I’ll make some tea. I have some cookies Mrs. Yoon at church made for us.” Her mother disappeared into their palatial kitchen, while Ainsley followed her father into the living room.

Her mother often bragged that the Capital Korean Presbyterian Church was the “newest Korean Church in all of California.” Whether or not that was true, the huge white building was certainly one of the most visible, right next to the freeway. And probably also from space.

“Oh, this is new.” There was a giant red velvet couch in the middle of the room, covered with yellow cushions. Her mother also adored bright colors as a general principle.

“Eomma found it at an estate sale down the street. You know how she loves her estate sales.” Her father gestured her to take a seat on the new acquisition, and sat down in one of the striped red and white recliners opposite it.

Her mother bustled in carrying a black lacquer tray with three steaming cups of tea and a plate of yakgwa—traditional honey cookies—strangely topped with powdered sugar.

How did she do that? She couldn’t have been gone for more than thirty seconds.

“Here, take one.” Her mother reached out with a sticky cookie.

“No thanks eomma.” She wasn’t hungry. In fact, her stomach was gurgling nervously. She looked down at her hands, then at her father’s. His fingers were spotted with blue and green paint. Maybe he’d been painting the ocean. Or a forest and the sky. “Appa, you like to create art, right?”

He nodded. “I find it relaxing after a long hard day at work.”

Ainsley scrunched up her nose. Not exactly the answer I was looking for, but I can work with it. “I like to paint too. And draw and make all kinds of art. Just like you, appa.”

Her mother beamed. “Your father has gotten quite good. The minister at our church put one of appa’s paintings on his office wall— an oak tree on a golden hillside.”

Ainsley bit her lip. “That’s very nice. What I’m trying to say is—”

“Our minister even took down one of the paintings by Mrs. Yoon’s husband to put your appa’s painting up. It was that one of the horse that looked like a dog, right Jae-Seong?”

“Mamma!”

Her mother blinked and looked at her as if Ainsley had just sprung up out of the bright red couch, summoned perhaps from some heretofore unknown netherworld. “You should not be so rude to your parents.”

Ainsley rolled her eyes. If they thought that was rude… She decided to rip the Band-Aid off. “Eomma, appa, I’ve decided to leave school for a while. I want to be an artist, full time.”

Her mother’s heavy gasp overshadowed the look of disappointment on her father’s face.

“Ainsley Kim, this you cannot do.” Her mother wrung her hands in her lap. “You have a rich future ahead of you in medicine. Your father and I have worked really hard to—”

“I hate studying medicine. I always have.” Ainsley risked her mother’s displeasure again by interrupting.

Her mother’s mouth fell open again, but her father’s features softened.

Are you so disappointed in me?

“What do you mean, you hate medicine?” Her eomma shook her head vehemently. “Since you were a girl, you always wanted to be a doctor. You used to bandage up your little Barbie doll. Remember? You would bring her to me and tell me that she was sick and you needed me to help heal her.”

“I was six years old, eomma.” She took a quick breath and hurried on. “I know it’s what you wanted for me. I know you want me to become a doctor and become rich and famous—”

Her mother shook her head sharply. “No. That doesn’t matter. Not rich. Not famous. We wanted you to be happy. To have a good life.” She nodded as if to emphasize her point. “If medicine doesn’t make you happy, don’t do medicine.”

Ainsley blinked. “Just like that?” She stared at her mother. And then glanced at her father. He seemed troubled. “Appa?”

He looked away, and when she followed his gaze, she realized that he was looking at a painting on the wall. It was an old black-and-white watercolor, one that had been there as long as they had been in the house, the paper a faded to yellow, and cracked. It was in the classic Korean style, with a couple of large hills in the background and a shorter hummock in the middle distance covered with trees. In the foreground, a house was partially hidden by more trees, showing only its roof.

“Your grandfather, Seong Hung, painted that for your mother and me for our wedding day. You never knew him. He was from the old country, and he passed away before you were born.”

“It’s… beautiful.” She never really paid much attention to it. It just always been there. Another piece of art in a house filled with them.

Her father nodded. “He was very talented. Just like you. He was also very poor. He gave away most of his art, and barely made a living in the small village he lived in, in South Korea.” He sighed. “When I came here. I vowed to be different. To be a success. To not have to always be worried about where the money was going to come from to feed my family. To feed you.”

“Appa, I—”

He held out his hand. “Please let me finish. I never wanted you to be unhappy the way I was unhappy when I lived with him.” He held up his hands, stretching out his fingers and looking at the paint stains. “But now I see that I made the same mistake he did. I wanted you to be like me. I thought you would find happiness being like me. Working hard, working for someone else. Making lots of money.”

“I… No, I never wanted that.” She looked down at the coffee table and the cookies, ashamed.

He leaned forward and put a hand on her cheek, lifting her face gently to look at his. “What your mama says is right. We want you to be happy. Money is just money. What’s in your heart?”

She felt suddenly filled with light. “There’s an artist, he is from Korea. His name is Jun Seo Jang, and he has asked me to intern with him as his assistant over the next few months. Appa, there’s so much he could teach me.”

Her father looked over at her mother, and she nodded.

“What?” Ainsley looked from one to the other, afraid they were about to withdraw their blessing.

Instead, her father got up and crossed the room to an elaborate chest of drawers that her mother had had imported from Korea some years before. It was shaped like a vase, its red lacquer surface a good match for the couch.

He opened one of the drawers and pulled out something wrapped in burlap cloth.

Returning to the couch, he sat next to Aisley, and handed it to her.

“What’s this?”

He gesture with his hands. “Open it. Please”

She unwrapped the little bundle carefully, exposing three bamboo brushes. They were shiny, especially around the ends, worn smooth with time and use. “Are these…?”

Her father, nodded. “They belonged to your grandfather. And now they are yours. I am certain that you will paint many beautiful things with them.”

Precious beyond measure… She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. “Thank you, appa.”

Her mother cleared her throat. “Nothing for your eomma?”

Ainsley laughed. She let go of her father and reached out to hug her mother too. “Thank you too, eomma.”

“You are welcome. And when you a rich and famous artist, you will pay us back for your college tuition.”

Ainsley sat back, eyes widening. “Are you serious?”

“We will see.” Her mother winked at her. “Now, tell us about this Jun Seo Jang. I want to know about this man who is stealing away my only daughter. Is there maybe something more to the story?” She sounded hopeful.

Ainsley laughed. “No, still a lesbian.” She squeezed the brushes tightly in her hand. “It all started when this art dealer came into Ragazzi…”