In this chapter, Sunny died. Sorry ><

GRANNY SUNNY DIED of heart failure eight months before summer fifteen on Beechwood. She was a stunning woman, even when she was old. White hair, plump lips, pink cheeks; though she wasn't so tall. But that's because she wasn't the original Jung. She's the one who made Mummy love dogs so much. She always had at least two and sometimes four golden retrievers when her girls were little, all the way until she died.

          She was quick to judge and played favorites, but she was also warm and wise. If you got up early on Beechwood, back when we were small, you could go to Clairmont and wake Gran. She'd have muffin batter sitting in the fridge. and would pour it into tins and let you eat as many warm muffins as you wanted, before the rest of the island woke up. She'd take us berry picking and help us make pie or something she called a slump that we'd eat that night.

          One of her charity projects was a benefit party each year for the Farm Institute on Martha's Vineyard. We all used to go. It was outdoors, in beautiful white tents. The littles would run around wearing party clothes and no shoes. Minho, Tiffany, Taeyeon, and I snuck glasses of wine and felt giddy and silly. Gran danced with Minho and then my dad, then with Grandad, holding the edge of her skirt with one hand. I used to have a photograph of Gran from one of those benefit parties. She wore an evening gown and held a piglet.

          Summer fifteen on Beechwood, Gran was gone. Clairmont felt empty.

          The house is a three-story gray Victorian. There is a turret up top and a wraparound porch. Inside, it is full of original New Yorker cartoons, family photos, embroidered pillows, small statues, ivory paperweighs, taxidermied fish on plaques. Everywhere, everywhere, are beautiful objects collected by Sunny and Grandad. On the lawn is an enormous picnic table, big enough to seat sixteen, and a ways off from that, a tire swing hangs from a massive maple.

          Gran used to bustle in the kitchen and plan outings. She made quilts in her craft room, and the hum of the sewing machine could be heard throughout the downstairs. She bossed the groundkeepers in her gardening gloves and blue jeans.

         Now the house was quiet. No cookbooks left open on the counter, no classical music on the kitchen sound system. But it was still Gran's favorite soap in all the soap dishes. Those were her plants growing in the garden. Her wooden spoons, her cloth napkins.

          One day, when no one else was around, I went into the craft room at the back of the ground floor. I touched Gran's collection of fabrics, the shiny bright buttons, the colored threads.

          My head and shoulders melted first, followed by my hips and knees. Before long, I was a puddle, soaking into pretty cotton prints. I drenched the quilt she never finished, rusted the metal parts of her sewing machine. I was pure liquid loss, then, for an hour or two. My grandmother, my grandmother. Gone forever, though I could still smell her Chanel perfume on the fabrics.

          Mummy found me.

          She made me act normal. Because I was. Because I could. She told me to breathe and sit up.

          And I did what she asked. Again.

          Mummy was worried about Grandad. He was shaky on his feet with Gran gone, holding on to chairs and tables to keep his balance. He was the head of the family. She didn't want him destabilized. She wanted him to know his children and grandchidren were still around him, strong and merry as ever. It was important, she said; it was kind; it was best. Don't cause distress, she said. Don't remind people of a loss. "Do you understand, Jessica? Silence is a protective coating over pain."

          I understood, and I managed to erase Granny Sunny from conversation, the same way I had erased my father. Not happily, but thoroughly. At meals with the aunts, on the boat with Grandad, even alone with Mummy---I behaved as if those two critical people had never existed. The rest of the Jungs did the same. When we were all together, people kept their smiles wide. We had done the same when Aunt Bess left her husband, Hwang Ki Tae, the same when William Oh left Aunt Carrie, the same when Gran's dog, Peppermill died of cancer.

          Taeyeon never got it, though. She'd mention my father quite a lot, actually. Dad had found Taeyeon a decent chess opponent and a willing audience for his boring stories about military history, so they had spent some time together. "Remember when your father caught that big crab in a bucket?" Taengoo would say. 

          My nickname for her. My Taengoo.

          Or to Mummy: "Last year Sam told me there's a fly-fishing kit in the boathouse; do you know where it is?"

          Dinner conversation stopped sharply when she'd mention Gran. Once Taeyeon said, "I miss the way she'd stand at the foot of the table and serve out dessert, don't you? It was so Granny." Minho had to start talking loudly about Wimbledon until the dismay faded from our faces,

          Every time she said these things, so casual and truthful, so oblivious---my veins opened. My wrists split. I bled down my palms. I went light-headed. I'd stagger from the table or collapse in quiet shameful agony, hoping no one in the family would notice. Especially not Mummy.

          Taeyeon almost saw, though. When blood dripped on my bare feet or poured over the book I was reading, she was kind. She wrapped my wrists in soft white gauze and asked me questions about what had happened. She asked about Dad and about Gran---as if talking about something would make it better. As if wounds needed attention.

         She was a stranger in our family, even after all those years.

WHEN I WASN'T bleeding, and when Tiffany and Minho were snorkeling or wrangling the littles, or when everyone lay on couches watching movies on the Clairmont flat-screen, Taeyeon and I hid away. We sat on the tire swing at midnight, our arms and legs wrapped around each other, lips warm against cool night skin. In the morning we'd sneak laughing down to the Clairmont basement, which was lined with wine bottles and encyclopedias. There we kissed and marveled at one another's existence, feeling secret and lucky. Some days she wrote me notes and left them with small presents under my pillow.

          Someone once wrote that a novel should be deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.

          Also, here is a green toothbrush tied in a ribbon.

          It expresses my feelings inadequately.

          Better than chocolate, being with you last night. 

          She loved chocolate.

          Silly me, I thought that nothing was better than chocolate.

          In a profound, symbolic gesture, I am giving you this bar of Vosges I got when we all went to Edgartown. You can eat it, or just sit next to it and feel superior.

          I didn't write back, but I drew Taeyeon silly crayon drawings of the two of us. Stick figures waving from in front of the Coloseum, the Eiffel Tower, on top of a mountain, on the back of a dragon. She'd stuck them up over her bed.

          She touched me whenever she could. Not ually, but gently; with care, like I was the most fragile thing in the world. Beneath the table at dinner, in the kitchen the moment it was empty. Covertly, hilariously, behind Grandad's back while he drove the motorboat. I felt no barrier between us. As long as no one was looking, I ran my fingers along Taeyeon's cheekbones, lips, chins, down her back. I reached for her hand, pressed my thumb against her wrist, and felt the blood going through her veins.

          We were alive.

A/N: The Jungs are ignorants. No one is needy. No one is weak. Remember?