You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

‘I’ll call her when you go downstairs,’ I blurted out.

‘Okay,’ he said, but he didn’t move. He studied me carefully. ‘Are you okay? Have you… Did you not take your pills?’ He said the last part cautiously, as though he was worried that his words would anger me.

It had been four days since I’d stopped taking the pills. A week ago, I had experienced the worst and longest headache of my life, a common side effect of the medication. For several days my pulse surged and my ears rang, and I felt as though a metal skewer was stabbing my brain. Nothing worked. I tried lying still; I fell over with my head in my hands; I moaned with my head stuck between my knees; I pressed the back of my head with my fingers laced together. I waited endlessly. It felt like my tongue was swelling up and blocking my throat. After three days of that, I decided I didn’t care if I had a seizure or not. I was enraged at Auntie for prescribing the pills, and at Mother, who was always watching to make sure I took them. I didn’t want to take these stupid pills for the rest of my life.

‘Hey, Yu-jin,’ Hae-jin said, interrupting my reverie.

‘Yeah?’ I glanced up at him.

He looked beyond my shoulder. ‘Phone’s ringing.’

I nodded. It was my mobile, which was in my desk drawer, in my room, of all places. Who could it be?

‘Aren’t you going to answer?’

The phone rang on. I looked down at my feet. ‘It’s probably a cold caller.’

‘How would you know that from here? It could be Mother.’

If only. I would have loved for Mother to call me from the retreat. It would have been amazing if the call revealed it was all a terrible nightmare. The ringing stopped, then started once more.

Hae-jin glanced at my door again. ‘She would know what time the results went live.’ His logic had gone from ‘It could be Mother’ to ‘It is Mother’. ‘She must be so nervous. Go and answer.’ He looked like he wanted to go in and answer it himself.

I just stared at him. If there was one thing I was better at, it was being patient. ‘I will, in a sec.’

We stood there for another ten seconds or so. It felt like an eternity. His eyes were probing. Why aren’t you going into your room? Why are you making me stand outside like this? What’s inside that you don’t want me to see? Is that why you’ve been acting so strangely this morning? I pulled the shutters over my eyes and emptied my head of thoughts. Finally the phone stopped ringing.

‘Okay then,’ Hae-jin said, breaking into a grin. ‘Take your time. I’ll make us some lunch.’

I nodded. He turned around and disappeared down the stairs, and I went into my room. I pulled my mobile out of my desk and checked to see who had been calling. Aunt Hag , it said on my screen. That overeager witch was as annoying as the yappy dog three floors down. She’d been calling since seven in the morning.

I didn’t have to wrestle with whether I should call Auntie back or not, because the cordless phone began to ring insistently. I didn’t hesitate; I picked up so that Hae-jin wouldn’t. If she asked for me, he would obviously come back up to bang on my door. ‘Hello.’

‘Are you busy?’ Auntie asked. Her dignified question masked her true thoughts: What the fuck are you doing that you’re only answering now?

I, too, spoke politely. ‘Have you had lunch?’ when I really meant: If you have nothing to do, fucking eat something instead of calling me.

‘Where’s your mother?’

I was expecting that. In as casual a tone as possible, I told her the same thing I’d said to Hae-jin. ‘She’s gone on a religious retreat.’

‘Retreat? What retreat? That’s out of nowhere.’

I didn’t answer, so she moved on to the next question. ‘Where exactly has she gone?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

‘You didn’t ask?’ Auntie repeated.

I looked for him until 2 a.m. but I couldn’t find him , Mother had written . If she had called Auntie while she was out, Auntie would have asked her where she was, since it would have been obvious from the ambient noise that she wasn’t at home. Did Mother answer truthfully? That I’d snuck out through the roof door in the middle of the night, that she’d come after me but couldn’t find me? Did she ask her sister what she should do? What would Auntie have said? Would she have told her to go straight back home? Maybe she would have said, get in the car and look for him more thoroughly. Why did Mother call Hae-jin before calling Auntie, anyway?

‘When did she say she was coming home?’ Auntie asked.

I looked down at Mother’s mobile on my desk. Hae-jin was next to Hye-won – my auntie’s name – in the list of contacts. Did she press the wrong name? That was possible: Mother’s eyes were getting worse. If she was outside, on some dark street corner, it might have been easier to find the wrong name than the right one. Everything seemed to click into place. If Mother had listened to her sister and come home, changed out of her wet clothes and taken the car to search for me, then some of last night made sense: her soaked trainers, the car key in the pocket of her nightgown.

‘Yu-jin, what are you doing?’ It was a criticism, not a question. She meant: Answer my questions properly. She had been calling from the crack of dawn, probably wondering if Mother had found me or not. She likely knew about my habit of sneaking out when I stopped taking my pills. She and Mother shared all kinds of information about me, probably down to how much toilet paper I used when I took a dump.

‘I don’t know when she’ll be back,’ I finally answered. ‘I didn’t ask.’

‘Are you guys not talking?’ She was probably trying to figure out if we’d fought last night.

I quickly calculated how long it would take for her to come barging into the flat if she couldn’t get hold of Mother. Maybe one day, two if I was lucky. ‘She wasn’t home when I woke up.’

‘Then how do you know she’s gone on a retreat?’

‘She left a note on the fridge.’

‘Your mother?’ Auntie said, disbelieving.

‘Yes,’ I said confidently.

‘You’re saying that she left the house quietly, without telling anyone, at dawn?’

‘I slept in, so I don’t know if it was at dawn or later.’

‘You slept in?’ Auntie zeroed in on that piece of information. ‘Did you get to bed late?’

What was it she wanted to know? What time Mother left the house? Or how late I went to bed? I had to be careful. This hag always hung on every word I said. I pivoted. ‘If you’re so curious, why are you asking me? Why don’t you just call her?’

‘Maybe I called you because she isn’t picking up.’ Auntie put on this air when she was pissed off. It was a warning for me not to answer her questions with my own.

I tried a suggestion instead. ‘Then maybe you should try again. Maybe she didn’t hear it.’

‘I just did. It’s off. So what time did you go to bed?’ she asked.

I didn’t need to answer her every question; after all, she hadn’t told me why she was calling. ‘Do you need to talk to her urgently?’

‘It’s not urgent, but it’s a little strange…’ Auntie paused.

I waited patiently.

‘She had a nine o’clock appointment, but she’s suddenly on a retreat. It’s just odd.’

Could that be true? If Mother had a nine o’clock appointment, why would Auntie begin calling from seven in the morning? And why would she call so frenetically, trying the home phone and her mobile over and over? She was lying. I offered a banal but safe answer. ‘Then I’m sure she’ll call you soon.’

‘Probably…’ Auntie didn’t hang up. She hesitated, as though she was trying to find something to say.