The Good Son

by You-Jeong Jeong

  A thrill ran down through my entire body. I was out of breath and dizzy. It was as if the razor had gripped my hand and pulled it into her, so powerfully that it was impossible to resist. Everything in sight began to shake. My hand holding the razor tingled. Shock crashed over me. Something thudded shut inside my head, the passageway that had been cracked open to this present world. I was at the border of another universe. I had no way of going back, nor did I have the willpower.

  I’d imagined this very moment countless times. I was always confident that I’d be able to control myself. Now that it had actually happened, I realised that I’d been deluding myself. I had reacted to the orders of my sympathetic nervous system and crossed over the boundary to fantasy. It had been too easy and too quick. The flames that had been burning me up inside let loose in my lower abdomen, like sexual desire. This was the moment of ignition, the magical moment where the possibility of sensation expanded infinitely. I could read, see and hear everything about her in that moment. I felt omnipotent. Everything was possible.

  She slumped onto my chest, and I heard a car braking and skidding. Headlights covered everything in sight. I dragged the woman back a few feet and pushed her over the railing into the water below. I heard the splash. The crimson umbrella bounced and rolled along the dark wet road. I couldn’t hear the giant singing any more. I heard a sharp scream. ‘Yu-jin!’

  My heart instantly returned to its regular beat. Still standing in the shadows, I looked out at Mother, who was holding the driver’s door open.

  She was shaking in the pouring rain. It was as if she didn’t want to believe that the murderer standing a few metres from her was her son. ‘Yu-jin…’ Her voice was low and pained.

  I glanced down. Under the lamplight, rain was washing away the splattered blood into the sewer. I didn’t regret it. I wasn’t afraid, either. I just wanted to get out of this situation. I took my latex gloves off and threw them in the river, then turned and ran as fast as I could towards the interior of the neighbourhood, filled with large-scale construction sites, where Mother couldn’t follow me by car.

  I finally stopped at a building that was half finished. A dim light hung on the entrance and the plastic tarpaulin shrouding the site flapped loudly in the wind. I stood there a long time. I was doing the most important task in the cold, quiet, deserted darkness: I was reflecting on that moment where I could sense that girl and her entire being. I fantasised about her body as it passed through the river and was swept out to sea. A cold breeze hit me. I hadn’t realised that I was completely exhausted; I hadn’t even realised I was holding something small and round in my hand. When I came back to myself, I couldn’t feel my fingers and toes. Only my instincts were awake. Get a grip, they whispered. It’s time to go home.

  Somehow I got back to the flat. I didn’t bump into Mother. I didn’t see any police cars either. I remembered the giant, but dismissed that thought. He wouldn’t have seen much of anything. I tried to ignore the fact that he could have heard Mother scream. He might have even heard my name. But there had to be tons of people named Yu-jin; I couldn’t possibly be the only one in the entire nation with that name.

  And Mother couldn’t have been certain that it was me. The footpath, three metres wide, had been between us. Mother was under the street lamp but I was in the darkness. It wasn’t as if I answered her, and we hadn’t exactly come face to face, either. I didn’t want to think about how she knew it was me; I was too tired to think.

  I entered the building, my head ducked. I ran up the main stairwell to the sound of Hello barking and got to the roof door. That was when I realised again that I was holding something in my fist. A small white thing. The pearl earring I’d yanked out of her ear immediately before I pushed her in the water. I didn’t know why I’d done that and I couldn’t begin to guess. It was just something my hand had done. I shoved it in my pocket and reached for the roof door.

  The front door opened downstairs. ‘Yu-jin,’ Mother called, as if she had been waiting for that very moment.

  Oblivion was the ultimate lie, the complete falsehood. Last night I had done something I couldn’t deal with. As a solution, my mind had selected oblivion, and I’d spent an entire day struggling with fragments of images and sounds that swam around in my consciousness.

  Only now did I realise that I’d known I would kill some day. Why else did I keep warning myself to stop the dangerous game along that road? I’d continued it, confident that I would never cross the boundary of fantasy; that was how much I’d believed in the solidity of my socialised ego. I’d had no idea I didn’t have the power to stop myself from exchanging my life for a pleasurable pastime. I had overestimated myself. My reckless belief that I was in control had made me offer myself up to fate last night.

  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 ou
t 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.’

  Hae-jin turned to look at Mother. Mother, who had been continuously and anxiously sweeping her hair to the side, froze. Her mouth dropped open. She stopped herself from speaking. I watched her with interest, knowing what she’d almost said. Mother, who was normally so calm, was clearly shaken, completely taken aback. She looked like she had forgotten that the old man was there, that I was there, that people were coming and going, or even that we were in a hospital. I knew what she was feeling, since I’d felt the same thing when I saw this kid on the first day of middle school.

  That day, Hae-jin had become the star of the school. Right when the welcome ceremony was about to start, a strong, high-pitched voice rang out. ‘Hae-jin! Hey, Hae-jin! I’m here! Grandpa’s here!’

  The auditorium hushed in an instant. Hundreds of pairs of eyes looked over at the old man who was rising in his seat, waving his rake-like hand, and the boy turning beet red.

  ‘Here! Right here!’ the old man continued to yell, finally standing all the way up. He was in a suit he must have worn fifty years ago on his wedding day. He was so thin that it looked like a feather duster was poking out of his sleeve, not an arm.

  The boy waved back, but his hand didn’t go side to side; it went up and down, indicating, I know, I know, sit down.

  I was sitting right behind him. I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. I nearly called out, ‘Yu-min!’ It wasn’t a passing resemblance; he looked exactly like my brother. The same gentle brown eyes, the same wavy hair, the same neat demeanour of a star student. My eyes slid down to find his name pin. Kim Hae-jin.

  Our names even shared the same last syllable. If we had the same surname, people would think we were siblings. I felt as if I had just found out about a brother Mother had kept hidden from me.

  Mother was probably feeling all of this here in the hospital; she would be thinking she was meeting a son she hadn’t known she had. ‘Are you Hae-jin?’ she managed to say, her voice trembling.

  ‘Yes.’ Hae-jin looked at me standing next to her. We stared at each other for a long time.

  ‘Do you know each other?’ Mother cut through the awkward silence. ‘Same school, I see…’

  My eyes still on Hae-jin, I didn’t answer. Hae-jin didn’t have the chance to say anything, as his grandfather called him and he immediately turned towards him.

  ‘What are you doing just standing there? Go and get the nurse. It hurts so much! I think I’m going to die!’

  That day, I didn’t end up going to Auntie’s office. The old man was admitted at 8 p.m., and Mother volunteered to handle the paperwork normally done by the insurance company. She requested a good room, lobbied for an earlier date for surgery, and pushed the old man’s gurney from the X-ray room to the examination room to the ward. It was obvious what she was doing. She didn’t want to say goodbye to Hae-jin. She would have wanted to show him what kind of person she was: I did break your grandfather’s leg but I’m not so bad.

  On our way home, she asked, ‘Yu-jin, you know that boy, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I could tell she wanted details. I was strangely annoyed by all of this, so I didn’t offer anything else.

  ‘Are you in the same class?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you not friends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s pretty tall, too. Does he sit at the back with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’re not friends?’

  Honestly, what did that have to do with anything? Was it constitutionally mandated that people who sat near each other had to be friends? I didn’t answer.

  ‘Does he not talk to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you don’t talk to him?’

  ‘No.’

  Mother nodded dreamily and didn’t say anything else.
r />   Looking back now, I could see that Hae-jin hadn’t been Hae-jin to Mother over the last ten years. To her, he was Yu-min, which meant that she could have told him her secrets. The only question was whether it was possible for Hae-jin to keep those secrets. He was so transparent. It was impossible for him to hide what he was thinking or feeling; anything she told him couldn’t be kept quiet. I was an expert when it came to him, and from how he’d acted today I was sure he didn’t know a thing.

  So then the journal wasn’t for Hae-jin. But it wasn’t as though she didn’t have time or a way to get rid of it; all she had to do was burn it in the barbecue on the roof and it would disappear into a pile of ash. I thought about the second person Mother had called last night. Was it Auntie who knew everything about me?

  I thought carefully about each word I had heard from Auntie on the phone earlier today. I didn’t get the sense that she knew anything in particular; she’d asked questions that poked around every which way. It was 1.31 a.m. when Mother and Auntie had spoken. Mother would have just returned home. What did they talk about for those three minutes? Did she tell Auntie everything she’d seen? Did she ask her for advice? It couldn’t be. If that had happened, there was no way Auntie wouldn’t have taken action. She would have reported it immediately and she would have turned up at the flat herself with the police.

  My head pounded. My thoughts were so tangled that I couldn’t even remember what I was trying to figure out. But a feeling of regret pressed down on my chest. Why had I come home? If I’d stayed out, Mother wouldn’t have died. If I’d come home just a little later, everything would have turned out differently.

  I let go of the journal. I looked down at my hands, which appeared so alien to me all of a sudden. Twenty-seven bones, twenty-seven joints, one hundred and twenty-three ligaments, thirty-four muscles, ten fingerprints. My hands, which had held food, washed themselves, picked up objects and touched the things I loved the most, had become murder weapons overnight. I tried to focus my thoughts. I thought about my twenty-five-year-old life that had become wrecked, the rest of my life that was looming outside, the things I could and could no longer do. Nothing could save me now. Hope slipped out of my grasp. Cold, heavy fear tightened its grip around me. There was no way back. I couldn’t fix any of it.