Umma’s cancer was declared to be in remission after a year and a half of treatment. Her doctor declared it a triumph of persistent and effective therapy based on state-of-the-art medical technology. I declared it a triumph of dedicated and selfless nursing on my part. Umma declared it a miracle sent to her directly from God.
Four days before she was discharged, he came for the first and last time to our house. I had decided to cook him a meal in our own kitchen since he found being together with me outside so uncomfortable. The prospect of a visit from him in broad daylight excited me. To watch him eat a meal I cooked with my own hands, in the place where I grew up! He arrived exactly on time, calmly laid down his backpack near the entrance, and daintily stepped into the house in incontrovertible “polite guest” mode, calling out the customary “Please excuse me.” Glancing around the living room he added, “You have a lovely home.” The first thing he did after this ceremony was to go straight into my room and look carefully at the spine of every one of my books on the shelf like he was an archivist at the National Library. He sat on my bed. What a sensation to see him sitting on my own bed! I felt so happy, I was walking on air. I took off my socks and crept toward him over my own duvet that had the scent of my own body, seeking a kiss from his lips. He turned his head slightly, pointed at the duvet, which happened to have a Michiko London duvet cover, and began to scold me.
—There’s a Union Jack on this blanket.
—Uh, yeah.
—Mr. Young really loves the flags of Western countries.
—Not really. I didn’t even notice that was there. You do know that you’re the one obsessed with flags, right?
—There you go again. You always sound so defensive.
—I do not. I just talk the way I talk.
The mood chilled between us. I slid off the bed and said I’d make him lunch. Pasta, which I had never eaten with him, ever. In the kitchen, I cooked the spaghetti, chopped the garlic, heated a pan with olive oil, and sautéed the peperoncini and clams. I must say I was enamored by this image of myself cooking for him, seeing myself wiping the occasional bead of sweat from my forehead. It gave me joy that food I had made with my own hands would become part of his body. That satisfaction would be enough, I thought, as I plated the spaghetti and placed it on the table. He stirred at it with his chopsticks, not even trying to taste it. Then he put down his utensils and looked down at the baby photos of me underneath the glass top of our dinner table.
—Looking at these photos makes me think that your mother truly loves you.
—Really, now.
—Yes. There is something different about the face of someone who is loved. And something different about a photograph taken by someone who loves. And that’s the thing, Mr. Young.
—What is, hyung?
—I think you should meet a good man someday.
— . . . What did you just say?
—Or maybe you should meet a good woman?
A thing as casually spoken as if he were suggesting we go for hwe instead of pasta. I couldn’t reply to that. What else could I do but stare? Who would say such a thing as if it were nothing at all? Who was this man that I had obsessed over so much, this man I had been so ready to throw myself at? Suddenly the whole world had stopped making sense, and all I could do was keep staring. Did I, in that moment, resemble Umma as she’d stared at Father and the Other Woman playing badminton? Why so suddenly . . . or was it not so sudden? Had he found out that I had used his computer and dug through his secrets, that I had tried to turn his life upside down and see what I could shake out? Was it impossible to go back to the way we were?
He sighed and spoke again.
—What did you think we were? The two of us?
—What are you saying?
I grabbed his arm as he got up from his seat. I couldn’t simply let him go like this—I wasn’t Umma. I held onto him tighter as he tried to shake me off. He stared down at me with that pitying gaze of his, the one I was so used to.
—You didn’t think this was love, did you?
I slapped him in the face, hard, before I could stop myself. By the time I regained my senses, I found myself with my hands strangling his neck as I held him down on the kitchen table, despite his being four inches taller than me. His face turned bright red as he struggled to get my hands off his neck. There were tears in his bloodshot eyes. The tears from my own eyes splashed his face and ran down his cheek. I let go. When I realized what I had done, it was too late, and after a few coughs, he got up from the table as if nothing had happened and put on his coat with his usual, sloth-like movements. Then he slung his ancient backpack on his shoulder and went out the front door, leaving me behind. I did not go after him. Instead, I went directly to the balcony as soon as he had left. I opened the window and stared out at his back. I stared and stared. I just knew this was the last I would ever see of him. I stared until he disappeared completely, until he became a dot that faded away, keeping him in my sight until the end.
A few days later, I rang the bell at the gate of his house. No one answered, no matter how many times I pressed. His gate, which once made a sound like a crying person as it opened, remained closed.
I left a letter in his letterbox. Well, not really a letter, just some ripped-out pages from the diary I had kept while we were together. Thirty pages overflowing with my emotions from the times I had spent with him. I didn’t even recall what I’d written. Just like I didn’t know what we had been, in the end. On the last page of my diary, I wrote that I hoped he would consider seeing me again, that I would wait for him to call me. I tossed it in his letterbox like throwing rubbish into a bin, this piece of my raw and still-beating heart.
Two weeks later came a text message.
Why don’t you try becoming a writer?
There was no answer to my plea.
This bastard, to the bitter end, said only exactly what he wanted to say, never failing to condescend to me. All sorts of replies flitted through my head; I ended up putting my phone down. I made the decision, for the first and last time in our relationship, to choose what was best for me. Closing my eyes, I pressed Delete on his number. The digits came to mind as clearly as if they’d been branded down my cheek from my eyelid to my upper lip, but someday, I knew, even this would fade from memory.
In the end, we didn’t even eat a plate of warm pasta together.