The Interpreter by Suki Kim

comforting idea, but definitely not her parents’. But, then again, what did Suzy know about her parents?
    Barely two in the afternoon; the darkness is menacing. When she first came here five years ago, she saw nothing. All she could focus on was the urn Grace was carrying, in which her parents’ ashes were mixed together. Dome-shaped, wrapped in stiff white linen, the way the dead were kept in Korea. Suzy could not stand looking at the thing that held her parents, and was relieved when Grace assumed all responsibilities for handling it. Neither cried. Suzy was still in shock, and Grace, being in charge, seemed unable to cry. Suzy had no doubt that once they found themselves finally alone in their respective apartments each would burst into tears. Afterward, Grace must have gone straight to church; Suzy packed her bag and left Damian’s house immediately. He was not around when she left. During their final six months, she had stayed at his Berkshire house while he spent much of his time abroad. She left without a note, and he did not try to find her. She went straight to Jen’s apartment and slept for several weeks. When she was finally able to get up and walk outside, she wandered into the East Village and found the apartment on St. Marks Place. And still Suzy had not cried.
    The path cuts into the main road, where the sign reads “Montauk Highway.” Definitely not the smartest thing to walk along the highway, not in this rain, not alone, not dreaming of
tears. But Suzy is determined; so is the person ahead. Hardly any cars pass. The road may continue this way, and Suzy will have circled the edge of New York, down to its rocky bottom.
    Then, suddenly, without warning, emerges the lighthouse, up there in the distance, beaming into the brooding sky. The white.tower is forlorn and majestic, fenced in from all sides. Its silence seems so repressive that for a second Suzy is afraid for her parents, who lie beneath the cliff. Even in this rain, the flag hangs from the pole on its left. The gray colonial house has been turned into a museum with a gold plaque at its entrance which reads “Montauk Historical Society.” She soon finds the spot where Grace stood five years ago, holding on to the urn before finally opening its lid. Nothing there now except a lone bench behind a rusty viewfinder.
    Tell me what happened, Mom, Dad, what really happened to you?
    One thing Suzy has learned in the last five years is that nothing follows death, no revelation comes into play. Death is silent, heartless, heart-wrenchingly unfair. Each time Suzy comes here, sometimes twice, three times a year, she realizes how stock-still everything is, how immutable the lighthouse, how infinite the Montauk sky, how constant the rain, how absolutely unforgiving the water appears from where she stands. Each time Suzy stands here, she cringes at the way the watchtower looms over everything, as if it suggested man’s ultimate power over nature, and the star-spangled banner at the edge of the eastern coast, as if this very cliff were the helm of the American dream. And each time, she becomes certain that time has played tricks on her, and those five years—during which Suzy floated from job to job, from one married man to another—happened only so that she might stand and wait for someone, anyone, to step in and say, Look what you’ve done, look what you’ve been left with, look what you are, is this what you wanted?
    What do you want after all, do you want me to tell you? Damian had pleaded in his final message.
    But she is not alone. Someone else is here, over in the distance by the drenched flag, now facing her direction. It is hard to see the face buried beneath the hooded raincoat under the black umbrella, and so much rain between them. It is a man, she can tell that much. She takes a step toward him. An Asian man. Something about him strikes her as being familiar, the way he stands with his head tilted slightly to his right. She takes another