Page 9 of Perfect Happiness

“You should slow down when you see a crosswalk. Don’t you know you have a child in the car? What if you had hit someone? Don’t you remember last time? You got distracted and almost hit that delivery bike.”

Eun-ho just took it in silence. He knew that his mom wouldn’t stop even if he told her to.

Eun-ho had experienced this often as a child.

The only difference was that it was Eun-ho’s dad who was driving and not him.

His mom would make all sorts of nasty remarks, if something happened, she would blame his dad’s poor driving skills, and if his dad asked her to stop, she would bring up the past and continue to attack him until they got out of the car.

After his dad left the company, he “graduated from marriage,” as he put it, and left Eun-ho and his mom for Jeju Island.

Eun-ho only saw him two times after that.

Once was on his wedding day with Yoon-hee, and the second time was on his wedding day with Yuna.

Eun-ho didn’t blame his dad for the way things turned out.

In fact, he sympathized with him. Although, the same couldn’t be said for her.

Even after all these years, Eun-ho’s mom still wouldn’t admit that she was the one who drove Dad away.

But unlike him, Eun-ho couldn’t run away.

It would be a lie to say that he stayed out of some sense of duty to her.

The truth was that he needed her to raise Noah.

Eun-ho harbored no expectations that she would change.

After sixty-five years on Earth, humans were more like mathematical constants than variables.

“Well, are we just going to sit here? Or are you going to go?”

Her shrill voice woke Eun-ho up from his deep thought.

The light had turned green. Eun-ho stepped on the gas.

Eun-ho listened to her nagging all the way to the house, by which time he was sure his eardrums had holes in them.

“Slow down, you’re going to hit the car in front of you.

” “Go faster, the person behind you is honking.” “What’s the rush?

” “Stop passing everyone.” “Why are you following this truck so closely?” “Pass him already!”

Only when they parked in the driveway did his mom stop her backseat driving.

Eun-ho looked for signs that Wife was home.

The lights were on, and Wife’s car was parked in the garage.

A thought was wiggling in the back of his mind, as tenacious and filthy as a cockroach.

It was relief about Wife’s return, a willingness to forgive her for everything if things would just go back to normal.

Eun-ho looked back at his mom.

“Take Noah and go inside. I’ll get the bags.”

After they got out, Eun-ho drove the car into the garage. Parking next to Wife’s car, he took a second to steady his breathing. He had to go inside like it was just another day. He had to face Wife like nothing was wrong. He had to be a good enough actor to fool his mom. But could he do it?

Eun-ho got out of the car with the bags.

He walked out to the driveway and headed to the front door.

He opened the door feeling like he was going to the dentist. Wife was standing in the middle of the second doorway just beyond the place to remove shoes.

Eun-ho looked at her with uncertainty as she beamed at him.

“Fewer bags than I expected,” she said as her eyes moved down to his hands. “I cleared out Jiyoo’s room.”

Eun-ho knew immediately what she meant by this.

This was the second time that Mother had come to spend the night.

The first time, she had slept with Noah in his room.

Jiyoo had slept by herself in her room, and Eun-ho and Wife slept together in the master bedroom.

Peaceful times. But things had changed. It was this change that Wife was informing Eun-ho of.

She would be sleeping in the master bedroom with Jiyoo, Grandma would be sleeping in Jiyoo’s room, and Eun-ho would be sleeping with Noah.

“Put the bags upstairs and hurry back down. I’m making your favorite.”

Eun-ho’s lungs seized up. Her smile was as bright as a summer afternoon, and her voice was trickling gently into his ears like a mountain spring.

But her eyes—Her eyes were cold, like a desolate gust of autumnal wind from the north.

Eun-ho’s senses were spinning from the dissonance of fire and ice on her beautiful trim face.

“My favorite?” Eun-ho asked with his jaw unhinged.

He asked this question despite knowing the answer, which had been given to him by the smell of goulash filling the house.

Suddenly, a loud noise could be heard coming from the living room. Eun-ho guessed it was the sound of Noah’s soccer ball banging against the glass door to the balcony. Eun-ho took off his shoes and stepped inside. Wife turned sideways to let him pass, revealing a small shadowy figure behind her.

“Hello.”

Jiyoo brought her hands together in front of her and bowed to him.

Eun-ho’s lungs seized up again as he remembered how Jane had told him not to bring Jiyoo over to their house.

He couldn’t figure out what Jiyoo’s being here meant.

Was it evidence that Wife and her sister Jane were on good terms?

Or was it evidence that Wife and Jiyoo hadn’t been at her mother’s house?

Or was it evidence for something else completely?

Eun-ho needed to respond to Jiyoo’s greeting, but his mouth was clamped shut. He was afraid of his own mouth. He was afraid he might ask which “home” she had come from.

“Eun-ho, Jiyoo said hello.”

Her voice still trickled like a mountain spring, but Eun-ho could sense the icepick lurking beneath the surface of the water.

It was then that Eun-ho finally realized what he was doing.

He was just staring at Jiyoo like she was a leper, ignoring her greeting.

Although he couldn’t see his own face, it probably wasn’t very welcoming.

The intensity and duration of his stare might even be scaring her.

“Jiyoo, you made it.”

“Yes.”

Eun-ho passed Jiyoo and continued to the living room.

He could feel Wife’s eyes burrowing into the back of his head, but he didn’t want to make an attempt at redemption.

Instead, he felt a sense of rebelliousness.

Ignoring Jiyoo’s greeting was an accident, but what Wife did to him was intentional.

She didn’t have the right to be angry with him.

Noah was taking penalty kicks between the sofa and the table.

As the ball left Noah’s foot, it pinballed around, hitting everything from the table and sofa to the flowerpots and the glass door to the balcony.

The living room floor looked like someone had died there.

The telephone was face down on the ground, there was dirt from the flowerpot on the floor, one of the branches on the Bengal rubber tree was broken, and the remote-control holder was on the other side of the room.

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes since they arrived.

“Noah, you should sit down,” Mother said as she chased Noah around the room. “Don’t overdo it. You’ll have an asthma attack.”

Eun-ho went up to the second floor. The second floor was built like a loft with a high ceiling and was about half the size of the first floor.

Two bedrooms faced each other with the living room, which was used as a playroom, between them.

One room was Jiyoo’s, and the other was Noah’s.

The bathroom was adjacent to Noah’s room.

Eun-ho opened the door to Jiyoo’s room but didn’t turn on the light.

He didn’t even look inside. He pushed his mom’s bag in through the doorway and closed the door immediately.

Eun-ho didn’t usually go into Jiyoo’s room.

In fact, he’d never once gone into her room by himself.

He had no reason to go inside when Jiyoo wasn’t there, and had every reason not to go inside when she was there.

According to Wife, Jiyoo’s biological father had “sneakily” molested Jiyoo behind her back.

But Eun-ho never learned what exactly she meant by “sneakily.” All he knew was that it was the main reason for Jiyoo’s father losing parental rights.

But once he knew this, Eun-ho found it hard to interact with Jiyoo.

He always had to be careful around her to avoid doing anything that might be misconstrued.

Because of this, he could never imagine hugging her or rough housing with her like he did with Noah.

He also felt too guilty to ever discipline her.

Jiyoo’s personality was another reason their relationship lacked intimacy.

Jiyoo was an independent and precocious kid who liked to keep to herself.

She also had this calmness and spunkiness to her that Noah didn’t share.

She was too smart for her age, and beautiful, too, making Eun-ho that much more uncomfortable around her.

The combination of these things made the distance between him and his stepdaughter like the distance between Earth and Pluto.

But if he had molested her . . . Eun-ho paused as he opened Noah’s door.

He had been too focused on the possibility that Wife was having an affair to notice the contradictory nature of it.

Wife had tried so hard to keep her ex-husband from seeing Jiyoo.

She didn’t even accept the visiting rights that the court granted him.

She said it was to protect Jiyoo from him.

So, it made no sense for her to take Jiyoo to her ex’s house—although, it might make sense if she was lying about why they had gotten a divorce.

Standing at the doorway, Eun-ho looked down at the bed.

Noah’s favorite stuffed animal, a large penguin with beady eyes named Pengsoo, was lying on the right side of the bed.

Eun-ho stared at Pengsoo’s open yellow beak for a moment before he heard a voice in his head: You can think about this again on Thursday after Noah and Mom are gone.