Free Food for Millionaires Read Free Page A

could always make a call to save their ass? Do you know what it’s like to ace my courses and to make and keep friends when they think you’re nothing because you’re from nowhere? I’ve had kids step away from me like I’m unwashed after I tell them you manage a dry cleaner. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have people who are supposed to be your equals look through you like you’re made of glass and what they see inside looks filthy to them? Do you have any clue?” Casey was screaming now. She raised her right hand as if to strike him, then she pulled back, having surprised herself. She clasped her hand over her heart, unable to keep from shaking.
    “What? What do you want from me?” she asked at last.
    “What I want from you?” Joseph looked confused. He repeated himself. “What I want from you?” He turned to Leah. “Do you hear what she’s saying to me?” Then he muttered, “I should just kill her and me right now, and be done with it.” He cast about the table as if he were searching for a weapon. Then he screamed, “What the hell do I want from you?” Using both hands, he shoved the dinner table away from him. The water glasses clinked against the dinner plates. Soup spilled over the bowls. Joseph could not believe his daughter’s nerve.
    “What do I want from you?”
    “Dammit, that isn’t what I meant.” Casey tried to keep her voice from quavering, and she willed herself from dissolving into tears. Don’t be afraid, she told herself; don’t be afraid.
    Leah shouted in Korean, “Casey, shut up. Shut up.” How could the girl be so stupid? What was the point of being good at school if she couldn’t understand timing or the idea of finessing a difficult person? Her older daughter was like an angry animal, and Leah wondered how it was that she hadn’t been able to prevent her from becoming so much like Joseph in this way. A man could have so much anger, but a woman, no, a woman could not live with that much rage—that was how the world worked. How would Casey survive?
    Joseph stood up. “Get up,” he said, gesturing with his hand for Casey to rise.
    Leah tried to pull him down. “
Yobo
. . .” She was begging him, and her fingers caught the belt loop of his slacks, but he swiped her hand away and pushed her back to her seat.
    Casey rose from her chair, tucking aside the loose hair that had fallen over her face.
    “You stupid girl, sit down,” Leah cried, hoping that of the two, Casey might be reasonable. “
Yobo
,” she pleaded. “The dinner. . .” She wept.
    “Come here,” he said, his voice calm. “What?” he began, his shimmering eyes unblinking. “You think you know more about life and how you should live?” He’d long feared that his college-educated children might one day feel superior to him, but he would never have held them back from any height they wanted to scale. Still, he hadn’t anticipated how cruel it’d be for his child to condescend to him in this way—to consider herself equal to him in experience, in suffering, in the things he had seen. He could hear his Korean accent muddying his English words, and he regretted having told them always to speak English at home. He’d done this for their benefit—so they wouldn’t look stupid in front of the Americans, the way he did. Joseph regretted so many things.
    Tentatively, Casey shook her head from side to side, not quite believing what an asshole he was. He was so unfair.
    Tina pressed the fine features of her oval face into her folded hands. From behind her seat, she could feel the heat of Casey’s long body moving toward their father. Ever since Casey was in high school, she’d fought with Joseph once or twice a year. And each year, her sister’s anger toward their father grew, compacting into a hard, implacable thing. In ninth grade, Tina went on an overnight school trip to Boston, and there, at a museum, she saw a real cannonball. Tina could imagine such a thing lodged in Casey’s belly,