Page 77 of Free Fall
She rolls her eyes. “You care about him, and I just don’t see the evidence that he feels the same way. You’ve made so many changes for him—”
“I have not!”
“You go climbing with him—”
“I’m challenging myself. And it’s at night, on easy walls. I don’t even really see how high up I am, and he never makes me rappel down. He always agrees to hike out the back way.”
She points a finger at me like she has me now. “You watched a Marvel movie with him because that’s whathewanted, and you don’t like action films.”
“Like you’ve never seen a movie with Martin that you knew you wouldn’t like?”
“Martin’s my husband. This is just some guy you—” She breaks off and looks at Jeremiah and then back to me before she mouths the word “fuck.” “Or that’s how he treats you anyway. You go out of your way for him. But what does he do for you? Other than insist that his goals are more important than your feelings, and—”
“Aren’t they though? This is a lifelong dream of his, Leenie. If he met me and within a few weeks just walked away from it? What would that say about him? What would it mean that I even asked him to do that?”
“Did you ask him?”
“Of course not!”
“Does he know it bothers you?”
“Yes!”
“But he does it anyway.” She points at me again like this is her victory.
“Leenie, I know he rubs you the wrong way, and I know you just want what’s best for me, but I think if you really look at what you’ve just said, you’ll see for yourself how unfair you’re being to him. It’s his life’s work.”
“Work—ah, now there’s something he doesn’t do. He has no job, Sejin. He’s basically homeless.”
“Unhoused. Yes, but that’s the lifestyle of a professional climber, you know that.”
“Professional implies he gets paid to do what he does, which according to him, and according to you, he does not.”
“He doesn’tyet,”I clarify. “I mean, if he feels like it’s important to keep money out of his motivations for free soloing, or whatever more difficult climbs he chooses to do, in order to feel like he owes nothing to anyone while going up those walls—if that makes him safer—then what does it matter one way or another?”
“It matters whenyou’reworking two and a half jobs and sleeping on my sofa, and the man you’re seeing semi-seriously, no matter how you want to pretend otherwise—has no means of helping you into a more prosperous future.”
“I know you want me off your sofa—”
“I don’t!” Leenie exclaims. “I just want you to be happy. And, honestly, Sejin, how can he make you happy in the end? At best, you’ll live in poverty together. At worst, he’s going to get himself killed and then you’ll be miserable. Think about how hard it hit you when you lost Lisa. You don’t want to live through that again.”
I want to snap back with “you only lose your mama once,” but I keep my mouth shut. I know she doesn’t want to fight with me, and she only has my best interests at heart. But I also know I’m not walking away from Dan. Not right now, and maybe not ever. Like it or not, it seems I’m the seahorse, and I’m on this ride with Dan until the end—bitter or sweet. I’m sorry it upsets her, though, and my silence seems to break through her burst of anger.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she says to me, moving away from the counter to take my face in both of her hands. I look up at her and she smooshes my cheeks so that my lips pout out. “Let’s not fight on your birthday. We just love you so much, don’t we, Jeremiah?”
“Sejinie loves me too!”
“Yup, he does.” She pushes my cheeks out, flattening my lips, and then smooshes them together again, a laugh coming into her voice. “We love you, Sejin. We just want everyone in your life to love you like we do.”
She kisses my forehead and then turns back to the fridge. “Okay, let’s see about that cake. Ready to decorate, Jeremiah?”
“Yes!” he says, standing up on the chair and cheering. “I’m ready!”
I seize his little legs to make sure he doesn’t fall and smile at Leenie as she brings the layers over, grabs the mixing bowl of icing, and we start to assemble my birthday cake.
Jeremiah only makes a little bit of a mess when he dumps the entire contents of the yellow sugar sprinkles over the top. But I tell him I like it and turn it into a round sun over the white icing. It reminds me of a certain egg-yolk sunrise I saw on Pothole Dome. Like that morning, the cake is destined to be a beautiful memory and, like I’ve tried to achieve with my fears for Dan, I resolve to let the disagreement with Leenie go.
Love—if that’s what the tide of life is bringing in as it rushes between us all—can’t be dealt with logically. Love is just too powerful for that.