Page 64 of Perfect Happiness
While Eun-ho wanted to think it was persuasion, in reality, it was closer to begging.He regretted flipping his stance later.If he’d stood his ground, he might have been able to prevent his Wife from reusing this tactic of disappearing to her parents’ whenever they had a fight.
Wife accepted his proposition.This was why Eun-ho was so shocked by the news of the miscarriage.Hadn’t they agreed to wait until they brought the kids to live with them?
Eun-ho called Wife.When she picked up, she sounded a lot less angry than Eun-ho had expected.She quickly accepted his apology.And when he asked her if she was feeling all right, she said she was.But when he said he would come to pick her up, she told him no.She would return with Jiyoo after a few days.
Eun-ho accepted everything without arguing, like an idiot.Because he had nothing better to do, he decided to go ahead with their summer plans on his own.He and Wife had made plans to spend the summer vacation with the kids.While Wife was at work, he would babysit.So, Eun-ho went to pick up Noah from Grandma’s.On his way there, he stopped at the toy store and bought both kids a present.For Jiyoo he bought a book titledFrozen II – A New Destiny, and for Noah, he bought soccer cones and a soccer ball.
As soon as he returned to Cheongyeon, he set up the cones in a zigzag pattern on the living room floor.Noah looked down at the dribbling course with gaping eyes.Eun-ho put the soccer ball in Noah’s arms.
“You can kick the ball as much as you want.”
“What about as hard as I want?”Noah asked with a doubtful look on his face.His cheeks were as red as apples as he looked up at Eun-ho.
Eun-ho nodded his head.
“And can I scream?”
Eun-ho took his phone out of his pocket.
“Before that, let me take a picture.”
Noah wrapped his arms around the ball.“Cheese!”Noah said as he showed Eun-ho a toothy smile.
Noah engrossed himself with his new toys as Eun-ho posted the picture to his KakaoTalk profile.Two hours later, he got a message from Wife.
—I’m glad you’re having a happy time with your son while I’m in the hospital getting a dead baby removed from my womb.Does a child cease to be yours once it’s dead?
Eun-ho’s mind went blank.His joyful mood disappeared in a flash.Thinking about how thoughtless he had been, Eun-ho wanted to bite his own tongue.He swore he hadn’t meant to anger Wife.It wasn’t like he wasn’t worried.He’d just forgotten about it for a moment.Another thing he’d forgotten was the fact that Wife was a pro at taking the smallest of gestures or comments and making them into an indictment of guilt.By uploading that picture, he had given Wife a flamethrower and permission to blast him into oblivion.
Eun-ho quickly deleted Noah’s picture from his profile.He called Wife even though he knew she wouldn’t pick up.When it sent him to voicemail, he sent her an apologetic text message.All he could do now was wait for his punishment.Taking Noah with him to his mother-in-law’s place to apologize in person wasn’t an option.
And yet Wife had chosen this picture as the picture to be placed at Noah’s altar, this picture that Eun-ho posted on the day of her miscarriage.But Eun-ho didn’t have the time to ponder the significance of Wife’s choice because as soon as Wife appeared, the detectives showed up and demanded he come with them.As he left the funeral home, Wife whispered something into his ear.
“Only tell them the facts.And keep your answers short.”
The detectives repeated the same questions over and over again.They asked him why he wasn’t raising Noah himself, whether he drank the night before, why he didn’t notice anything strange while he slept, what position he found Noah in when he woke up.They also grilled him about his relationship with Wife and how they met.
Eun-ho searched his blurry memory as he answered a series of yes-or-no questions.It was only after giving a contradictory testimony, which was the result of a million misleading questions, that Eun-ho realized he was being interrogated to determine whether Noah’s death was intentional.
The detectives asked Eun-ho what the chances were that a five-year-old boy, not a newborn by any stretch of the imagination, could be accidentally smothered to death by his father in the bed.Surely Noah would have screamed or struggled.What were the chances that he wouldn’t have noticed Noah’s struggling desperately for air?
He had been so shocked by Noah’s death that he had never bothered to ask himself such an obvious question.Indeed, how did this make any sense?In the end, Eun-ho answered the detectives.
“Not likely.”
Wife was called into the police station yesterday afternoon.She said they asked her about Eun-ho’s sleeping habits.Wife told them that once Eun-ho falls asleep, nothing will wake him up, not even an earthquake.She said he thrashes in his sleep, and that one time, he almost strangled her to death in his sleep.She said when he woke up, he didn’t remember it.She said she’d been wondering if he had a sleeping disorder since they first got married.
But this was hard for Eun-ho to believe.If he had any sleeping disorder, it was that he was a light sleeper, not the other way around.In fact, he was such a light sleeper that Wife woke him up whenever she changed positions in bed.And he had never strangled Wife in his sleep, at least, not as far as he remembered.
“You don’t remember?I sent you a message about it before.”
Eun-ho leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes.He was tired of this.He didn’t remember, and even if he did, what did it matter?
“Look at this,” Wife said as she shook his shoulder.
Eun-ho slowly opened his eyes and looked at the phone she was holding in front of his face.It was an old text message between the two of them.
—You almost crushed me to death last night.Do you remember?Your sleep disorder is getting worse.And you sleep-talk a lot.Is something going on at work?
