Page 25 of Perfect Happiness

W ife parked the car in the driveway, and Eun-ho stepped out holding Noah’s altar picture.

“Eat something,” Mother said from the back seat. “If you keep starving yourself like this, you’ll be dead, too.”

“I’ll drive her home and be right back,” Wife said.

Eun-ho and the family had just gotten back from Yong-in Cemetery. It had been more than six days since Noah died. Because the police needed to perform an autopsy, they hadn’t gotten permission to bury his body until this morning.

Eun-ho needed to prove it was an accident, that he hadn’t murdered his son on purpose. No one said it out loud, but everyone doubted his innocence. In Korea, there were many stories of children from previous marriages dying under suspicious circumstances.

Eun-ho didn’t know when the results of the autopsy were going to be ready.

And there was no guarantee that his situation would change once they did.

Nor did he have the strength to do anything about it right now.

Whether it was an accident or intentional, it wouldn’t change the basic fact: he had killed his own son.

Eun-ho would never be able to forgive himself, even if the legal system did.

Eun-ho’s father, who got on a flight as soon as he heard the news, never said a word during the funeral—not to Eun-ho, not to Mother, not to Wife.

All he did was man his post at the funeral home and take care of what needed to be taken care of.

After they buried Noah, Father bid Eun-ho farewell at the entrance to the cemetery and said he was headed back to Jeju Island.

As he hugged Eun-ho, he whispered something into Eun-ho’s ear:

“Trust no one.”

Eun-ho entered the house and just stood there.

The house had an overwhelming sense of calm.

It felt less like he had come home, and more like he had traveled into the past. A clean kitchen, the spotless marble living room floor, carefully arranged sofa cushions, tied curtains with evenly spaced creases in the fabric.

The green leaves of the Bengal rubber tree were vibrant from being watered recently.

They even had a sheen to them, as though someone had wiped them down with a wet towel.

The soccer cones and soccer ball, which had been lying between the flowerpot and sofa when they left the house, were gone now.

The upstairs playroom was organized and cleaned, too—not a single piece of Lego remained on the carpet.

The window curtains were drawn back to let light in; two large bean bags had been placed up against the wall; the blue-roofed dollhouse basked in the red evening sunlight; and Noah’s toy chest was closed.

Eun-ho walked over to Noah’s closed bedroom door and stood there for several minutes.

He wanted to put Noah’s picture in his room but didn’t have the courage to open the door.

He was afraid that if he opened the door, the screams from that morning would come rushing out again, like terror escaping an unsealed jar.

In the end, he turned around without going inside.

Eun-ho hurried downstairs like someone being chased.

He ran inside his study and closed the door behind him.

When he saw his study, his mind went blank again.

The blinds were wide open; his bag had been stored neatly on the bookshelf; his laptop was in the middle of the desk with a squared off stack of books to the right of it; someone had remembered to turn off the power strip; the chair was pushed into the desk; and the shiny glass on the desk looked like it had been touched by the same hands that had tended to the Bengal tree’s leaves.

Someone had pressed the reset button. The entire house had returned to the past, when times were simpler.

The air was flawlessly placid, like the surface of a glass lake.

This was the holy kingdom of a family that had achieved happiness of mythical proportions.

It was as if nothing had happened. At least, that’s what the house was trying to claim.

When did Wife have the time to cast such an elaborate spell over this house?

Which one of the past days while Eun-ho was too overcome with grief to see, hear, or say anything had she come home from the funeral home to organize and clean?

Was it when he rambled like an idiot at the police station?

Was it when he waited for Noah’s body to be returned after the autopsy?

The tidiness of the house was incompatible with the chaotic emotions in Eun-ho’s head. In fact, the peacefulness of the house put pressure on him. It was almost perfect. There was just one more thing that needed to be reset for the transformation to be complete: him.

Eun-ho went over to the desk. He placed Noah’s picture next to the laptop. His shoulders and back crumpled as he collapsed into the chair. His chest was tight. He felt like he was sinking into a ravine in the ocean, his hands tied behind his back. He was desperate for air.

Eun-ho thought about what he could do to clear his mind. The thought of cleaning out the refrigerator, doing laundry, washing his face, all crossed his mind. But then he realized what was the most urgent matter.

He needed to open his laptop and search his email for the name Yoon-hee Lee. But this simple task seemed like looking for an eyelash that had fallen in the sand. The incessant voice in his head started teasing and mocking him for this.

You really think she still uses the same email address? It’s been five years. And even if she still has that email, what are you going say? ‘Our son died in his sleep?’ ‘I don’t remember what happened because I was sleeping on top of him?’ ‘I accidentally smothered our son to death in my sleep?’

Eun-ho was confident she hadn’t deleted her email.

Yoon-hee had sent him an email just before she went to study abroad in America.

She told him that she would keep this email address just to communicate with him.

She often used it to ask for updates or pictures of Noah.

But Eun-ho never once replied. He never sent her pictures or news of Noah.

Yoon-hee abandoned her own son to start a new life in America; she didn’t deserve to know how Noah was doing.

There was only one reason why Eun-ho kept her emails.

One day, Noah would start asking about his biological mother, and he wanted to be able to give him a way of contacting her.

Dear Yoon-hee…

Eun-ho didn’t know how to start. In his mind, Noah’s face was blinking like the cursor in the middle of the blank white page. Perhaps having a drink might help? But Eun-ho quickly shook his head. Getting drunk might deprive him of the little willpower he had left.

Yoon-hee was Noah’s biological mother. The person he should have contacted first about Noah’s death.

At the very least, he should have told her about the funeral.

Had he been himself, he would have done it, too.

But Eun-ho wasn’t himself. The reality of what had happened was just too much to bear without numbing his consciousness.

Every time Eun-ho had a moment of clarity, he was immediately confronted with a reality that stabbed at his heart.

The reality of Noah’s death lingered in the living room of Eun-ho’s mind like a stuffed bird.

Two voices were waging a never-ending war inside his head.

One was denying he could have killed Noah, and the other was asking sarcastically, Then who did it?

Ghosts? Seared into his consciousness like a hot iron was despair over the finality of what he’d done.

The only one who was functioning was Wife.

He heard from others that it was Wife who did everything: she called the ambulance, she contacted Eun-ho’s father, she drove Eun-ho’s mom to the hospital.

All he could do was hold Noah’s lifeless hand on the way to the hospital as he cried and begged God not to take his son, clinging to the na?ve hope that when they got to the hospital, the doctors would be able to save Noah.

But there was nothing the doctors could do. They said the window had passed a long time ago. From that moment on, Eun-ho was lost. All the blood drained from his heart. Sounds grew distant as he hunched over and fell to his knees.

The next thing he remembered was sitting alone in the funeral home. Wife, Mother, and Father were nowhere to be seen. Eun-ho turned to find Noah’s picture sitting on the altar. In the picture, Noah was holding a soccer ball in his arms and running toward the camera with a large smile on his face.

Who prepared this? The answer came immediately to Eun-ho’s foggy mind. Who else? Eun-ho wanted to know how Wife had opened his phone without him. After all, it was she who had suggested they never share passwords.

Eun-ho stood up and walked toward Noah’s picture. He raised his hand and touched the glass. Rosy cheeks, a snaggle tooth, round nostrils. When the tips of Eun-ho’s fingers met Noah’s face, a memory from last summer appeared in his mind.

It was the day before summer break. Eun-ho was in the middle of teaching a class and was unable to take Wife’s phone call.

When he called her after class, she didn’t pick up.

Because he had more classes and a faculty meeting after that, he couldn’t try her again.

He received a long message from her just before heading home from work.

—I can never seem to get ahold of you when I need you the most. I went to the hospital because I had a sudden bloody discharge from my vagina.

They said I had a miscarriage. I didn’t even know I was pregnant.

I couldn’t contact you, so I ended up going into surgery alone.

It felt like shit. I wanted to assure them that I had a husband, that I wasn’t pregnant with a bastard child.

I have a lot of things I want to say, but I’ll leave it at this.

I’m planning on spending some time with Jiyoo to take my mind off things.