You-jeong Jeong - The Good Son

Maybe Mother had known this all along. Maybe that was why she kept tailing me. How had she planned to fix this? I thought about her voice last night, when she called me from downstairs. It wasn’t that different from usual; it sounded like a teacher calling a student instead of a mother calling a son, cool-headed and calm. I probably would have been suspicious if she’d sounded nicer than that; I was exhausted but I hadn’t lost my mind. And if she’d called me angrily, I would have fled, despite not having anywhere to go. Nothing was scarier than an angry mother, at least to me. That was obvious; that was why I’d ended up killing her last night.

She’d called me again. I didn’t move, but I sensed this in her tone: I didn’t see anything. Even if I did, I’m going to pretend that I didn’t.

I had gone downstairs, thinking about the day ten years ago when I’d had the seizure during the swimming competition. She had taken me out of the car park without telling anyone. I thought she had decided to do the same thing with what she had seen by the river, just as she had hidden my epilepsy for so many years.

But now I was curious. Why didn’t she report me? Why did she wait for me at home? Did she want me to confess? But she hadn’t even brought it up.

I remembered what she’d said when she had pushed me into the corner of the landing and tried to shove the razor back into my hand. ‘Don’t worry. When you’re gone, I’ll go too.’ That wasn’t a threat. It was a plan. She was going to cover everything up by making me kill myself and then taking her own life. Maybe that was why, as soon as we stepped inside, her demeanour changed and she forced me to take my jacket off, rifling through my pockets. She probably became aggressive because she was so angry that she wasn’t thinking straight. She could never have imagined that Father’s razor would emerge from my pocket. Maybe she took it as an insult to his memory.

How was she planning to kill me? She wouldn’t have been able to make me surrender; I wasn’t five, I was twenty-five and a former athlete. Even if she’d got Hae-jin to help, it would have been hard for them to get the upper hand. If I refused to go along, there was no way Mother could have done it. Maybe she was going to poison my food. I mean, even a raging wild animal had to eat.

The landline had been ringing for a while now. Who was it? Hae-jin? Auntie? I picked up the phone and looked at the screen before pressing the talk button. The number started with 032. I didn’t know who that was. I didn’t feel like speaking to someone I didn’t know. I put the phone back down and went to my chair. I ignored the ringing and looked over at Mother’s things on my desk. The journal, the car key…

But last night, when I saw her in the street, she hadn’t been wearing a white dress. I couldn’t remember what she was wearing, but it wasn’t a skirt or a dress. Maybe she had changed once she got home. Mother always put things back where they belonged, so that meant that the key in her pocket hadn’t been used yet. She was planning to use it. She was going to drive me somewhere. Maybe to the ocean or the river, where we could both die in seclusion. She would have had to lock the doors and windows, so that I wouldn’t end up surviving on my own.

Finally it all made sense. Mother didn’t have to be stronger than me, and I wouldn’t be able to resist. All the problems would get sorted out in one act. If we died in a car accident, I wouldn’t be arrested for murder. She wouldn’t be known as the mother of a killer. What she had seen would remain a secret among the dead, and the murder would remain unsolved. Or maybe the giant, who would have been caught on camera by the bus stop, would be falsely accused. He’d argue that there had been a third person on the street, but nobody would believe him. That road didn’t have any cameras, and there were no witnesses. It would be hard for the giant to prove that he followed the woman but didn’t do anything.

So I’d killed someone in front of Mother’s eyes and she had planned to die with me instead of giving me over to the police. But because she was so incensed over the razor, she had ended up dying alone.

Yet there were still some loose ends, like Mother’s mysterious attire. Why was she wearing the white nightgown I’d given her, of all things? Did she want to be wearing what her son had bought her when she died next to him? That was an overwrought sentiment but I supposed it made sense. She’d worn Father’s gift, the anklet, for sixteen years. And why had she left this journal? If she was planning to die with me, she should have got rid of it too. Maybe it was for Hae-jin, so that he would know that we’d had to go out of necessity. But it was not very useful for that purpose; it was only a record of facts, with no context. What would he be able to figure out from this? For him to be able to read between the lines, it meant that he knew what she knew. Were they that close? I suddenly recalled the spring of 2003, when Hae-jin and Mother first met.

It was one of the two days a month that I had to go and see Auntie. I ran out to the front gates of school as soon as the bell rang. Mother was supposed to pick me up at one for my two o’clock appointment, but she didn’t arrive till two. She didn’t tell me why she was late, but drove so quickly that she didn’t see that an old man with a trolley full of recycling paper had stepped out from behind a bus. She braked, but it was too late. The tyres screeched, there was a smash, and the old man was slumped under our car. The trolley, flipped upside down, slid all the way to the bus stop across the street. Recycling paper and cardboard boxes scattered like birds. Buses stopped and people rushed over and circled the old man. Mother glared out through the front window, gripping the wheel as though she wanted to rip it out.

‘Mum. Mum!’

She blinked, as if awoken from a dream.

‘Hurry, see what’s happened.’

Mother unfastened her seat belt and got out. I followed. The old man was tall and skinny. His leg, clad in worn trousers, was bent at an awkward angle. It didn’t seem like he was breathing or moving. I thought he was dead, but I crouched down next to him and shook his shoulder gently. ‘Grandfather, are you okay?’

The old man peeled his eyes open. From his toothless, sunken mouth, a scream erupted like thunder. ‘Hae-jin!’ He couldn’t move. But he held his left leg, gasping and yelling, ‘Hae-jin! Oh, Hae-jin! Grandpa is dying!’ He kept yelling throughout the journey to hospital by ambulance.

Thankfully he hadn’t suffered a life-threatening injury; his leg was broken. Every time the nurse asked him a question, he screamed, ‘Hae-jin!’ He reeked of alcohol. He needed surgery since it was a compound fracture and his muscles had ruptured. Neither his head nor his hip had been injured. He seemed to have his faculties about him, too. He unfailingly gave a clear, instant answer when asked about the accident: ‘I’m telling you, it’s all that woman’s fault.’

Mother interjected, saying, ‘He suddenly appeared in front of me…’ and then had to endure thirty minutes of ranting: ‘Why would a woman drive around without any purpose and run over someone who’s busy trying to make a living? I’m the only one supporting the family; now what will we do?’ Then the old man began to wave and yell towards the door. ‘Oh, Hae-jin! Here! I’m here!’

A boy wearing the same school uniform as me ran over. ‘Grandpa!’

It couldn’t be. Was it the same Hae-jin as that day? The same old man? Was it really them?

‘Are you okay?’ Hae-jin asked, looking at the old man’s splinted leg.

‘Ask them,’ the old man said, stabbing his long, skinny finger towards me and Mother. ‘Ask them what they did to me.’