The only similarity to before was his droning on until the sun rose about all the harm America had done to the rest of the world, how America controlled everything, from the world economy to global culture. He used words like “hegemony,” “neoliberalism,” and “cultural toadyism” like he was a social science textbook. But who cared about any of that crap? I just wanted to hold him, to fold every inch of my body and soul into his heat and heartbeat. Totally oblivious to such feelings, he brought his lecture to an end with this indictment:
—Mr. Young, you can’t imagine what kind of world I’ve lived in.
As if you knew anything about my own world. Or even tried to. These words came up to my mouth, but I couldn’t let them out. I had a feeling that they would kill what we had in an instant, that such words would only drive us further apart.
?
While I was obsessing over him, Umma was obsessing over her own goal of achieving “complete remission” and using her characteristic diligence to achieve it. After a couple of surgeries, both big and small, she had become (in her own mind, at least) one of the foremost world authorities on cancer. She read every popular science book published on the subject, joined an Internet community that continuously uploaded the latest information on cancer treatment, and memorized the names and hospitals of every cancer specialist and their national rankings. It reminded me of how she had put together my college entrance strategy when I was a high school student, and of the devastation on her face when she saw my national college aptitude exam results. Just as she promptly gave up on me as soon as she saw my grades, my mother completely accepted the fact that she needed surgery once she heard that the cancer had metastasized to her lymph nodes. She said she would give up everything to the will of the Lord.
The Lord was in a whimsical mood, as this third operation, unlike the others before it, did not have a good outcome. Her biliary tract got blocked, and there was an infection in the surgical spot, which caused her temperature to rise up to 104 degrees. Her weight dropped to 99 pounds after she threw up everything she ate for two weeks. Taking care of her also made me lose weight, and with her vomit and diarrhea happening at ten-minute intervals, I came to the realization that life was merely the forward motion of going from one’s first hospital room to one’s last.
Being stuck with her all day gave me zero chance to meet up with him. I called once in a while, when I could, and even then it was mostly me listening to his metaphysical bullshit. During his series of weird stories, I conducted a psychological analysis of sorts as I listened, wondering if his propensity to ignore the problems of the real world stemmed from his feelings of helplessness in the face of his mother’s daily drinking and subsequent shopping. I tried to learn from this by thinking: You’ve got to grow up a bit in the face of suffering.
Umma seemed to be feeling her physical pain in a different way than before. Unlike during her last recovery, she suffered from separation anxiety, and I had to be next to her always. She called for me as soon as she opened her eyes and didn’t eat anything unless I fed it to her. I fed her, supported her at the toilet, cleaned up her vomit, and sat down on the caretaker’s bed to write five thousand to ten thousand characters of an autobiographical novel.
We hired a private caretaker as soon as Umma was moved out of post-op to the regular ward. I would die before she did if I had to deal with her any longer, but more than that, I just wanted to touch him.
It was pure ecstasy to see him again after two weeks. There we were, six months after we’d met, seeing each other’s faces in broad daylight on a crowded street for the first time. He looked a bit different when I saw him in the day. His dry skin looked even drier in the sun, and what I had taken to be the extended length of his eyes were actually deep wrinkles—that was the least of it. Out there among the people, he looked cowed somehow, and his head hung low like he’d been hit a few times.
He was trying not to show it, but I could tell he found it very uncomfortable to walk with me. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t hurt my feelings, but I still felt passionate toward him. My hurt even turned into a kind of pity. Me at twenty-five, him at thirty-seven, our little fingers occasionally brushing against each other’s but our eyes never meeting as we walked down the streets of Gangnam, stealing sideways glances and grins as we talked about nothing.
Just when I was totally soaked in the silly romance of our walk, someone called my name. It was a coworker from my previous company, the woman who ended up getting the permanent contract. I greeted her warmly (and in my mind cursed her for interrupting us). “How are you? I’m the same . . .” He stood a few steps away and scratched at the pavement with his foot. Glancing at him, my former coworker asked me who he was, and I just replied that he was an upperclassman from college. They awkwardly bowed their heads to each other, and we went our separate ways. What kind of a thirty-seven-year-old still hangs out with a twenty-five-year-old underclassman? she might have been thinking. My feelings about this were a bit complicated, but I snapped myself out of it. Life was complicated enough as it was. Why make it even more so?
And then there was that other time. As soon as the caretaker came to the ward, I took a taxi and went straight to Olympic Park. He was wearing his black hat and backpack as always, but the white shirtsleeves he had rolled up to his forearms and the sunscreen that gave his face a white tint made him look so cute I couldn’t stand it. It was a weekday morning, and there weren’t many people at Olympic Park.
When I thought no one was looking, I snuck a kiss on the back of his hand. He snatched his hand out of my grasp and said, “Don’t do that,” but he didn’t seem to have disliked it. There was still an anxious atmosphere between us, which made us keep a six-inch distance from each other.
The cherry blossoms were in bloom, and white petals fell like snow whenever there was a breeze. The artificial reservoir was placidly still, the air was clear of pollution for once, the mood was calm, and there was an occasional young couple pushing a pram, or an old couple strolling hand in hand down the paths.
Stopping in front of a forsythia bush, he snapped off a twig of blossoms and slipped it into his buttonhole. This was somewhat shocking, the kind of old-man thing an elementary schooler’s parent would do on Parents’ Day.
—Uh, baby, excuse me, but what are you doing?
—I asked you not to call me that in public.
—I’d think what you’re doing right now is a lot more embarrassing.
—And don’t come up so close to me. Do you want to tell the whole world what we are?