The first day that I went to therapy, I cried for the entire hour session, and my therapist didn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak, and he didn’t ask any questions. Just stared at me from his plush armchair somewhat sympathetically. WooHyun told me to keep going to therapy after that, but I didn’t want to. The therapist sat there for two hours and watched me cry, and he didn’t and shouldn’t have hugged me. I just wanted a hug, and realizing that I couldn’t think of anyone to ask for one made it worse.

 

 

The second day I went to therapy in the following week, SungGyu came to visit our apartment before I went.

 

“What’s up, miss; can I speak to L?” he says. SungGyu thinks that I don’t remember him, but I do. He and MyungSoo went to middle school together, and every day that I came to pick him up from school they would be sitting together, slumping a little too low in their seats. SungGyu never said anything to me, but I always remembered him by his empty little slivers of eyes, which puncture your skin easily. He looks the same now, but meaner. He has a bruise on his jawline. “Well, can I?” Rising impatience in his voice.

 

I don’t want to let SungGyu in. The house is a mess, and I wanted to wash the dishes but I never really got around to it, and I don’t want him to talk to MyungSoo. I consider closing the door, and then getting back under the covers and missing my appointment with the therapist. I think about that until SungGyu shoves past me into the house and then stalks up to MyungSoo’s room. He his teeth and grumbles.

 

I manage to get myself together and stop crying about that before therapy, and my therapist and I talk about how much I hate my job. It feels like shooting the breeze.

 

 

The third day of therapy, I’m determined to have a good day, so I divert my therapist's conversation to when MyungSoo was younger.

 

He was a terrified little child, and always clung to me. When we took him to the park and put him with the other kids, he would cry incessantly and get made fun of, until I came and swept him up and held him. I remember how he used to quiver in my arms, hiccupping with little sobs long after I had taken him from the jungle gym. We learned to take him to the park in the night, and when it was late and everyone else had retired, MyungSoo had the most fun.

 

When he was six, his father got osteosarcoma and died, but I skip over that part always.

 

 

The fourth day of therapy, my therapist corners me into talking about MyungSoo now, and I tell him that he could have gone to prison last year for a murder.

 

The case wasn’t ever tried, because the evidence was really weak, so they eventually stopped considering him for the charges and tried to get him on something else. My son is a smart boy, I think to myself, because he somehow got away.

 

“He used the money that he makes from selling to pay for his legal fees,” I admit for the very first time in my life. “He did murder that boy. I know he did. The night that he did it, he didn’t eat, and when I woke up he was standing in the doorway of my room. He murdered him. I know he did.”

 

“Where did I go wrong?” I ask WooHyun a few hours later. “I talked to him every day after his father died, and I gave him everything he needed. I tried my best. Why is he like this now?”

 

“I’m sure you did a great job,” WooHyun says. Then he kisses me roughly and runs his hand high on my thigh.

 

 

The fifth day of therapy, my therapist finally gave me the prescription for my depression medication, and I took twice the daily dose.

 

“Mom,” MyungSoo says, shaking my arm hurriedly. He’s holding the prescription bottle in his hand. I must have left it by the couch after I took them. “Mom.” I don’t think I’ve heard him say that in years. “Mom. Mom. Answer me.” Anyone who wasn’t his mother wouldn’t be able to hear the panic beginning to line his voice. I smile at the irony of the situation. After all of these years of chasing MyungSoo, when it finally doesn’t seem to matter, he reaches out to me.

 

“Yes, MyungSoo?” He doesn’t say anything. He just kneels beside me, and his head hangs low.

 

 

The sixth day of therapy, I’m feeling much better, because I’m feeling nothing. MyungSoo has started coming home earlier, and late at night I hear the rattle of my pills when he checks the amount that’s in the bottle. He’s started leaving money on the table for me, but I don’t touch it. I never touch it.

 

“How has the prescription been working for you, Ms. Kim?”

 

“It’s great. I feel like I can do anything these days.”

 

 

WooHyun dumps me because I don’t go see him enough, and I get fired from my job for sloppy work. I take four pills until the walls wave at me like sea ripples, and then do it again when they calm. There is no longer any reason to get out of bed. I miss the seventh day of therapy. At first, MyungSoo doesn’t notice. He catches on when all of the food in the fridge has spoiled and there’s mold growing on all of the dishes.