Page 26 of Perfect Happiness
“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.
Eun-ho went back downstairs to find Noah and his grandma standing face to face with Wife and Jiyoo.Noah was hugging his grandma’s waist, and Jiyoo had her eyes cast down toward the floor, her shoulders slightly angled toward her mom.Yuna and Eun-ho’s mom looked like two team captains confronting each other on the pitch before a match.And between them was Noah’s soccer ball.
“Obviously he didn’t do it on purpose,” Eun-ho’s mom said.“And it’s not like she’s hurt.”
Wife didn’t even look at Eun-ho’s mom.Her gaze was fixed on Noah.
“Noah,” she said in a stern voice.“Say sorry to your big sister.”
Eun-ho put himself between the two teams.No sooner did he ask what was going on than his mom came forward to explain.Jiyoo had been hit by one of Noah’s penalty kicks.But to her eyes, the ball had only slightly tapped Jiyoo on the chest.
Wife explained the incident from her point of view.According to her, Jiyoo wasn’t just “tapped.”She had been hit so hard that it knocked her on her butt when she caught the ball.Then Noah came running over and pushed Jiyoo as he took the ball from her.This caused Jiyoo to fall backwards.The problem was that Noah wasn’t apologizing.
“I doubt he pushed her on purpose.He just wanted the ball back.”
“Is that how you taught him?To push other people over to get what they want?”
“I would never!”Eun-ho’s mom, whose voice was already a notch higher than everyone else’s, raised her voice another octave.“And Noah is barely six.”
Wife responded to Eun-ho’s mom raising her voice by lowering her own voice a notch: “Jiyoo and Noah are only eleven months apart.”
“He has asthma, for heaven’s sake.”
“That doesn’t mean he can hit Jiyoo.”
Every time these two women exchanged blows, Eun-ho felt like he was being forced to swallow a quarter.Yuna wasn’t the first woman who had butted heads with his mom.His ex-wife, Yoon-hee, also hadn’t gotten along with his mom.Other than their names, not much had changed.
Eun-ho could feel something sour working its way up his throat.He wanted to take care of this before he vomited.It was because of this that he decided without much deliberation to take Wife’s side and scold Noah.
