Leave the Night On Pt. 04

"It's my mother," he mutters with big, horrified eyes.

****

JULIAN RIPS HIS BODY from mine, pasting himself to the wall opposite me just as his mother steps into the hallway. The surprise of her presence dissolves the lust-addled gleam in the narrow space.

Mrs. Song's cunning eyes sweep over her son and then jump to me. In a reflex that proves to be a mistake of Homeric proportions, I look at Julian and a magnetic power drags my eyes down. I gasp soundlessly, because nothing in the world could hide the too-obvious bulge in the front of his jeans.

He is wired into panic mode at the same time an overwhelming urge to laugh overtakes me. I want to giggle so bad my body starts to tremble. Even knowing we are so busted, the urgency of our situation doesn't sink in.

The intense judgment in Mrs. Song's narrowed eyes could emit laser rays in her son's direction. Julian seems to think she will actually burn him with her stare, because he whirls, giving his mother and I his back, and shoves a frantic hand inside his pants, trying to recompose himself. His fumbling just fuels the imminence of a very inappropriate reaction on my part. My belly aches with the effort of containing what would be very ill-timed laughter. I am painfully aware that my own state of disarray isn't helping our current situation, but I also know there's no remedy for it now.

It's clear to see, by the glint in some people's eyes, that they have the kind of smartness only long years of living can grant you. Mrs. Song is exactly the kind of cunning only time breeds.

I've only seen her once before; this one time she picked Hannah up at school. Although we barely interacted then, looking into her eyes now, I know she sees me.

She knows just what her son and I were doing a minute ago. Turning her attention back to Julian, she aims words at his back. HIs Korean given name is the only thing I'm able to identify being spoken in his mother's original language.

"Just a second, Umma!" He half-yells, as close to ashamed as I've ever seen him.

His outburst sets me into motion. I rearrange my dress, smoothing it down my thighs. Mrs. Song catches my shy movements with the corner of her eyes, but still won't react much to my presence.

I don't do her the disservice of feigning naivety. However, I don't have to own up to my indiscretion either. "Mrs. Song," I say, perfectly polite, once I've recomposed myself.

She gives me a smile I know is practiced. It's a polite, formal smile that doesn't reach the eyes she passed on to Julian. "Ah, you Han Han nice teacher, eh?" The tone she uses would make anyone believe we're meeting under ordinary social circumstances.

Clearing my throat, I answer, just as casually, "Yes, I am."

She nods perfunctorily. "You like party?"

"Yes, it's all very nice."

Her eyes do a fast perusal of me. She's seeing the tight, too sexy dress, the red-tinted cheeks, the slightly fussed, voluminous curls. The signs of my obvious recent entanglement with her son. That is: my overall unsuitability.

She nods again, as if to herself. Her head bobbing faster than Hannah's usually does. "Good. Good," she mutters, and I see it as a dismissal.

Julian turns back around and, this time, I focus my gaze on his face. His expression is hard, devoid of the warmth or the playfulness I was gorging on a minute ago. In place of it, I see a warning in his slightly widened eyes, an infinitesimal small shake of his head. Run, My Pearl, is what I interpret.

"If you'll excuse me, I don't want to miss the party," I say, sweetly. "Nice seeing you, Mrs. Song."

The Song's matriarch graces me with a tight-lipped smile and another nod.

Before I'm out of earshot, I hear the hushed sounds of Mrs. Song speaking to her son in hissed, nasal Korean. I don't know the language, but as a bilingual child myself, I know shit is serious when a mother is chiding her child in the mother tongue.

***

JULIAN

I'M A BOY AGAIN caught with my hand in the cookie jar. My first instinct is to lie to my mother. Apparently, given the right degree of desperation, I am stupid enough to do it. However, my brain is stuck on a blank page. Not a single plausible excuse comes to me. Thinking better of it, I know my mother well enough to know she won't buy any of my bullshit. She knows what she just saw.

I wonder if I smell like Pearl.

Thank God I didn't touch her pussy. At least, I'm not smelling like pussy.

"Aigu, Jae-Woo!." My name is a sharp knife on my mother's tongue.

"Umma."

She shakes her head. That's her Tell. She's irritated. "You pig headed boy," she says in Korean.

"Umma, I can explain." I can't.

"You should be ashamed of yourself! This is Hannah's party," she cuts me off, ruining my fumbling attempt at an excuse. "You are a father. A father must always think of a child first."

She touches my tender spot with the implication in her words. "Hannah always comes first, Umma. Always." In my annoyance, I shift to English. That always pisses her off.

She shakes her head again, hissing at me. "Ish! You are a grown man. You lead your life," she says, and, to my utter horror, her old fox's eyes move to my pelvic area. "Use your head, boy." She taps a finger to her temple and shuffles away.

Umma leaves me half-waiting for a reprimand on being a horny idiot. Her refusal to rebuke me properly worries me more than anything. I would rather have a tongue lashing on my uncontrollable libido around Pearl than an unsubtle accusation of neglectful parenting.

***

MY DAUGHTER IS HAVING the time of her life. Some of the kids she's invited to her party are a welcome surprise. Although Olivia, Hannah's new best friend I'm always hearing about, is the biggest one. A weight is lifted off my chest knowing my daughter is happy today. Her shrieks are toll bells chiming amid the other children's laughter.

The last birthday Hannah truly enjoyed and wished to celebrate was when Appa was alive, when she turned five. This year, though, she specifically asked for a party. This year she has new friends. Also, there's Pearl's gift.

Pearl actually wrote and illustrated an entire story exclusively for Hannah. Jesus she even had it leather bound. She transformed my daughter, an Asian kid, into the protagonist of her own story. The thoughtfulness of her gift is still reverberating along my bones, warming up my blood. She understands how Hannah should feel like the world belongs to her. Of course, she does. How could she not? They're the same. We're the same.

Back in the kitchen, where I'm refilling the thermos with the hot chocolate Hannah absolutely demanded we serve her guests, the entire party is displayed through the French doors' glasses. From here, I see my kid running around the lawn, Fluffies loyally in tow, her friends laughing alongside her. My mother and aunts are around each other like old hens gossiping, or more likely, exchanging criticisms of their grown children and how this generation is lost.

What snatches my attention more than any scene though, is the unrelenting sound of conversation coming from Pearl and, surprisingly, Karen. The two women have been sitting together from the moment Pearl arrived and none of them seem much interested in anyone else's company.

My blood is still singing due to Pearl's proximity. She looks so beautiful today. That dress she's wearing was enough to make me forget my family is out here and I allowed the man I only get to be with her to come out. My ears are still ringing from the shrill force of my mother's admonishments. Nonetheless, I know that before this day ends, I'll find an excuse to be near Pearl again.

It's eerily disturbing to see her with Karen in such a friendly manner. My ex-wife, mother of my child, and... Pearl. Whatever she is. Essentially, they are as distinct from each other as fire and water, and yet, watching them, I can't help but admit I have been attracted to similar traits in them.

They are both strong presences, funny in a smart way, confident, and yet laid back enough to laugh at themselves. But Karen is someone I know deeply and entirely. When I married her, I was enticed by my infatuation. I disregarded the aspects of her I didn't know yet, assuming I would love anything about her. In the end, what I didn't know and eventually came to see, was what ended us.

Pearl, for all I know about her, remains a mystery. I know her and yet I don't. At the same time, I entertain the idea that I can see through her. I recognize all the aspects of her I haven't been introduced to yet. She's easily readable. I can already point out the traits in her personality that drive me mad; her stubbornness, her guardedness, the ironic acerbic tongue she is capable of wielding as a weapon.

She is a fairly new force in my life disrupting my routine, the quietness of my days. Hard as I try, I can't imagine going back to how steady and quiet it was before her.

Picking up the turn of thoughts, Karen and Pearl both glance in the direction of the house. I know, by experience, that the view from where they're sitting is unobstructed enough to allow them to see me inside. Walking back out into the scene I've just been observing, I set the bigger thermos with the kid's hot chocolate on the sweets' table and take the smaller flask with me.

Karen's face splits into her typical smartass grin as I approach. In contrast, Pearl's face is guarded. She's sitting cross-legged and straight-backed, her hands clasped over her thighs, that dress lending her a seriously sexy air.

"We were just talking about you," Karen blurts just when I stop in front of them. "How'd you guess?"

I uncap the lip on the thermos and both women offer their Styrofoam cups to be refilled. "You were staring. I came to check whether you were exchanging compliments or criticisms."

"We were just saying it's hard to stay on a diet around you," Karen says.

I look at Pearl while I refill her cup, but she doesn't speak or look at me.

"It's good you are here, Jules. You can keep Pearl company while I go take some more histamines." Karen stands, murmuring an excuse with a comical roll of eyes. "Goddamn dog hair."

"You're subtle as ever, Kay," I say as she saunters away, heading straight for our daughter.

Once again alone with Pearl, I take the seat my ex-wife just vacated. "Hey," I say carefully.

"Hey," she murmurs, eyes aimed ahead in the direction Karen went. "I've never seen her in her natural element like this." I follow her gaze until my eyes settle on Hannah. "She's out of her shell," Pearl says. "She's so happy today. It's surreal how I see more of you in her when she's laughing so easily."

"You think?" I serve myself some whisky-laced hot chocolate before setting the flask by my feet. "Most people say she has Karen's smile."

"It's Karen's mouth. But it's your smile."

"Sometimes, I see more of Kay than of myself in Hannah."

"Your mom?" She asks, changing the subject so fast it takes me a second to follow.

"Ah, she's fine," I lie. "Don't worry about it."

Pearl's eyebrows draw together, bunching up the skin on her forehead. She has such full, expressive eyebrows that always betray her thoughts. "Are you sure?" The doubt in her voice lights a fuse in my brain. That strange, unreadable expression on her face was shame. "I feel like such an idiot. I can't believe we let that happen," she says, moving a hand to shade a side of her face.

I lift my cup to my mouth trying to hide my grin. "It was your fault."

"What?" Her laugh is both shock and amusement. You grabbed me!"

"You shouldn't have worn this dress," I try to emulate her astonishment only to break into laughter. "God, I hadn't felt like that around a girl since I was fifteen."

"How long ago was that?" Her question hits me so unexpectedly, I withdrew a little. "How old are you, Julian?"

Just then, it strikes that we've been doing this thing we're doing for almost three months now and she doesn't even know how old I am. As much as we talk, she's never asked me my age, and I've never mentioned it.

"I'm 38," I say it like I'm revealing a big secret.

"No."

I laugh at the expense of the stupefaction that's dropped her jaw open. "Pearl, I'm on the edge of middle age."

"Oh My God! I'm fucking an old man!" Surprise flares in her eyes. "You look so much younger than 38, Julian!"

I gesture to my own smirking face. "Asian genes."

"You're, like, 10 years my senior," she says, still unable to close her gaping mouth. I love watching her full, pouty lips parted like that.

I shrug. "So what? Age is just a number. It makes no difference for you and me."

Pearl doesn't say anything back, but her face changes, giving her away yet again. For a moment there, I seem to lose her interest. I wait, but silence is all I get from her. It's so disquieting I feel the urge to interfere with it. "I can't read that face, My Pearl. You'll have to tell me what you're thinking."

She places one elbow over a thigh and rests her check on her palm. "Do you remember what it was like when we met? The first time, I mean?" she asks, tilting her face to mine. "When we were complete strangers who met once a week; we drank, we talked about insubstantial things, we fucked, we parted."

I nod. "Yeah, of course I remember." I'll remember those nights until my dying day.

"It was all on the surface, but I used to love that. My weekdays were torture. I lived in this constant state of expectancy just waiting for the weekend, for the day I'd get to see you and feel that thrill. But now..." she trails off, shaking her head absentmindedly. There's a distant glaze over her eyes. It's as if she's there in the past for a moment, revisiting the people we were a year ago. She blinks, and then she's back here with me. "We're into each other's real lives now. I mean, wow, I'm in your home, Julian. Your daughter invited me to her birthday party."

Wherever her mind is going, I'm lost. "What's your point, My Pearl?"

"There's a whole you I've never met," she says, on the edge of frustration. "I guess I'm just wondering who you are when you're not with me. Because I think I might not know that guy, but I'd like to."

I could say the exact same thing about you, I think and the expression that crosses her beautiful face tells me she's also aware of her hypocrisy. Instead of calling her out on it, I nod because I agree with some of what she's saying. I do get the sense I fracture myself for the sake of the people in my life. Every single person orbiting me gets their own personal version. Truth be told, there hasn't been anyone I've been willing to serve with a whole dose of myself in years. Lately though, my favorite skin to wear is the one Pearl gets to see.

"I could introduce you to my alternative versions, if you'd like."

We hold each other's eyes; me waiting, she deliberating. "You don't owe me anything, Julian. You don't have to tell me if you'd rather not."

I love this considering side of her, even as I disagree with her. We might not be obligated to explain certain aspects of ourselves to each other. But we do owe each other something. Honesty and respect, if nothing else. "You can ask me anything, Pearl," I encourage her. "Anything you want to know, I'll tell you."

Again, her eyes escape mine and focus on Karen. "Okay," she says. "Tell me everything, then." And I know that everything means my history with Kay. So, taking a deep breath, I dive right in.

I give her the succinct version of the story.

Karen and I met in college, our freshmen year. For me, it was a fulminant blow.

Once I saw her, I was instantly awestruck by her easy laughter, fluent words and beauty. Luckily for me, the rush of young love infected her too.

Pearl listens keenly, holding her reactions at bay even while I tell her I was once so enthralled to another woman, I got married at 21. She fastens on every sentence, clinging to every word, listening to me with an involvement the lack of which cost me my marriage.

As I speak, my own faults are spilled raw. There were small things such as insufficient effort from Karen and myself both. There were big things also, such as the condescending attitude her family has always put on around me and Kay's own dismissal of my taking issue with it.

Pearl's interest peaks when I come to the part in which Hannah was born. Hannah changed everything. She came into our lives after ten years of marriage wearing my face, carrying the weight of it. That's when I knew real fear. When Karen was diagnosed with postpartum depression, and suddenly, I had a baby whose mother couldn't stand to care for her.

Hannah was barely three when Karen's parents invited my mother over for Thanksgiving dinner. By that point, Karen was better, undergoing treatment. It was the first time since our wedding, her parents had invited my family to their house. Umma never celebrates American holidays. Out of respect for Karen, she made an exception. Karen's parents, for all their air of superiority, spent the whole evening doing their best to diminish my mother. The pivotal point came when Karen's father asked Umma if she wanted another serving of turkey. When she refused, he asked "Do you prefer dog meat? You people eat dog meat in China, don't you? " And then they all laughed. Every one of them laughed while my mother sat there, humiliated mostly because she didn't fully understand what was happening. When I looked across the table and saw Hannah laughing too, I lost it. She was so little; she didn't even know what was happening. She was just imitating everyone else. That was it for me. I took my mother and my daughter and got out of there. Karen and I both knew it was over then.

"My God, Julian." Pearl interrupts my monolog with a sympathetic hand over mine. I look over at her, dragged out of my past by the sympathy she's offering. "I am so, so sorry you had to go through that."

"It's okay," I say. "Karen has apologized for that evening. Profusely, actually. And for many others, too. There was some turbulence at first, but eventually we came to an understanding. It's funny, you know; Karen and I get along much better now we're only friends. I guess she understands me better now than she did when we shared a roof. She knows Han's better off staying with me."

"It's good you two have a good friendship now," Pearl says. "It benefits Hannah's upbringing."

"Yeah, I'm also glad I can count on her as a friend. She knows me well."

Quiet falls in suddenly. Pearl is still, soaking up everything I just spilled. I don't think I've ever told anyone these details about my life with Kay. I've never had the urge, nor the occasion to tell it to anyone before.

Suddenly catching herself, Pearl removes her hand from mine and tucks both of her palms under her crossed thighs. "I can see how you loved her once," she muses, fixing her gaze on the ground before her. "She's one of those girls. Easy to love."

"She is," I agree. "But easy comes easy goes."

"You were together for a long time, Julian," she says, and I detect some defensiveness in her tone. "I wouldn't call that easy to go."

"The length of a marriage doesn't tell the endurance of love."

She scoffs. "Poetic."

"You liked her," I accuse her.

"I do."

"But?"

Pearl releases a long sigh. "I'm jealous."

My brows rise close to my hairline. Her blunt admission lands as a blow that knocks me off my balance. In face of my speechlessness, she angles her head, bashfully searching my face from under her lashes. "Am I allowed to be?"

I snort an incredulous sound. "You can't be asking me for permission. The world will freeze over first."

"I'm not asking for permission; I'm asking for an opinion."