They Threw Out the Maid's Daughter, Now She Sits at Their Table novel · Chapter 3 of 32
Chapter 3: Sunday Dinner
She walks into the Ryu dining room on his arm and pulls out a chair for her mother.
On Sunday Ye-rin walked through the front door of the Ryu mansion for the first time in her life.
For twenty-five years she had used the kitchen steps.
Now the maid who took her coat held it out with both hands, and her eyes were wide.
"Don't stare," Seo-jun said, low, at her shoulder. "It confirms the point."
He had come to the Mapo stairs at six in a dark car, in a dark suit, and said almost nothing.
He had looked at her mother's blue church dress, then at Ye-rin's grey one, and nodded once.
His arm was crooked at her side now.
She put her hand through it.
The dining room had a table for sixteen and a lamp that cost more than her mother's apartment.
Tonight it was laid for six.
The chairman sat at the head, in a charcoal vest, with the cane propped against his chair.
Madam Gu sat at his right in grey silk, her mouth pressed flat.
Da-hee, across from her, was staring at the napkin in her lap.
Nobody got up.
"Ye-rin," said the chairman, in his ordinary Sunday voice. "Seo-jun tells me you've been offered a place at a culinary school."
"I haven't taken the exam yet, Chairman."
"But you will."
"Yes, Chairman," Ye-rin said.
The old man nodded. "Good. Sit."
Ye-rin did not move.
She turned to her mother, who had stopped just inside the door with her hands folded over her purse, looking at the carpet.
Sun-hee had carried every dish into this room for two decades.
She had never once sat at the table.
Ye-rin went to the chair beside her own, pulled it out and held it.
"Mother."
"I should be in the kitchen," her mother whispered.
"Tonight the kitchen can cook for itself."
"Sit, Sun-hee," said Madam Gu, through her teeth.
It was the first time Ye-rin had ever heard her say that name without an order behind it.
Her mother sat down slowly.
Seo-jun took the seat on Ye-rin's other side.
For a while the only sound was the soup.
It was clear beef broth with radish.
Ye-rin recognized the stock at the second spoonful, because her mother had made it that morning from a pot the staff had not been allowed to touch.
Madam Gu took one sip and set her spoon down very precisely.
"Before the main course," she said, "there is a matter to be settled."
She slid an envelope across the white linen toward Sun-hee.
"I was told to write this," said Madam Gu. "I have written it."
Ye-rin's mother stared at the envelope and did not touch it.
"I accept it," Ye-rin said, "on my mother's behalf."
She took it herself.
She did not open it.
Under the table, something touched her knee.
It was Seo-jun's hand, flat and steady, resting on the grey cloth.
He did not look at her.
He went on eating with his other hand.
She waited for him to take it away.
He did not, and neither did she.
The warmth of it traveled up her thigh and sat in her stomach, and she lifted her water glass to give her face something to do.
It was not part of the terms.
She told herself it was part of the act.
Across the table, Da-hee had gone white.
"Da-hee," said the chairman mildly. "You've been quiet."
"I'm not feeling well, Father."
"Then you'll want to say what you owe, so you can go up."
"Not here," said Madam Gu sharply.
"I did not say here," said the chairman. "I said soon."
He lifted his glass to Ye-rin.
"To new faces at an old table," he said.
Everybody drank.
Ye-rin drank too.
Over the rim of her glass she noticed the chairman looking at Seo-jun, steadily, for a long time.
It was not a father's look.
He was counting something, and the count was not finished.
After the plates were cleared her mother slipped out to the kitchen, and Ye-rin followed her.
Her mother did not speak until the door was shut.
She stood at the long steel counter with her back to the room and both hands braced on the edge.
"Mother?"
"Close the door."
Ye-rin shut it, and her mother turned, and her face in the fluorescent light was grey.
"That boy," she said. "The way he sat tonight. The way he held his spoon."
"Seo-jun?"
"I know whose eyes those are," Sun-hee whispered. "Ye-rin. Leave him."
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