Chapter 9 - Mother

Yi Jeong was never sentimental. The past ached where it should have been sweet, scathed when it should have soothed-he only remembered the chicory bitterness of familial history. He let his gaze swim around the formal living room where his mother was receiving him. The So living room was frozen in time; every Joseon dynasty vase stood exactly as it had a decade earlier, the deep curves of the thick damask curtains might as well be carved out of marble for all the changes it had seen. Yi Jeong didn't miss this room, but its outline had been permanently etched in his memory-he checked the accuracy of his memory, like fitting trace paper over the original.

Yi Jeong had long since moved out of his father's home, or more specifically, his grandfather's compound when he determined that sleeping at the studio reduced the number of times he would awake to his mother, a ghost above his bed, demanding retribution for some new violation of his father's. His first night of sleep in the studio passed without vengeful interruption and Yi Jeong never returned to his childhood home again.

"Adeul!" His mother, Park Hae-Ryeon, named after Joseon dynasty royalty, floated into the room. He could tell from her glazed expression that she had mixed her serotonin reuptake inhibitors with soju for breakfast. He shuddered when she hugged him-her skin was papery and dry-she was lifeless as a toy. If he thought she was ethereally beautiful when he was a child, she'd become even more ghost like with age. Her fine bones had never seemed strong enough to support either he or his brother, they were never the fat babies on the hips of their mother. She was forever complaining of health problems. Yi Jeong did not remember his mother without complaint.

She was still a beautiful woman, preserved in the amber of her marriage. His mother glided into her seat opposite him and looked at him with her wide, blank eyes. She lurched forward, trying to control the movements of her arms.

"Yi-Jeong-ah." She offered him a cup of cold tea that had been awaiting her arrival. He raised the decorative cup, a finely wrought filigree with cranes flying on the side, and sipped politely. The tea set was nothing new, but he remember the first time he tried to make something that resembled the piece in his hand; it took him two years to get the shape.

"Umma." He offered a butter biscuit. She refused, naturally.

"You look different." She sipped her cold tea. Her eyes taking a quick calculation of his appearance. "Has your Appa given you money? Is there any reason for you to dress like the homeless?"

Yi Jeong chortled. Sometimes, his mother's directness was her only redeeming quality.

"Umma, don't worry. The So foundation trust is still mine."

"For now, Yi Jeong." The tea cup chattered against her teeth. She spat out the liquid and screamed. "Yah! This tea is cold!" She glared at one of the maids, her wrist slackened, and she let the cup splinter into shards. the floor. Hae-Ryeon made everything look elegant and intentional. Yi Jeong hadn't missed the dramatic rise in tension that his mother caused whenever she awoke from her drugged stupor, her tempest in a teacup temper that threatened everyone within radius.

"You don't think I've been watching out for you, Yi Jeong? As your mother, I am always watching." She clutched his hand, her eyes searching and empty.

"Umma. I know you watch out for me." He patted her hand and tried to make his voice as soothing as possible.

"That's because you're the only son that shows any of my bloodline."

"Is that so important to you?"

"Yi Jeong. You have Park blood running in your veins, far older and wiser than the So family. Maybe your father has forgotten how difficult it was for him to marry me?" She preened. "When he began to court me, I turned him down twice a day."

"I remember the story, Umma."

His mother wasn't listening to him, her eyes already taking the trip down memory lane. Hae-Ryeon's ego needed this, Yi Jeong knew that.

"Your father, came to the house everyday. Each day with a different dress, with a different piece of jewelry, hoping that one of them would tempt me." She leaned forward and caressed Yi Jeong's face. "You see, Yi Jeong, I wasn't interested in clothes. I wanted the man." She smirked at him. "So I made him wait, outside the house, everyday."

"Then what did you do?" Yi Jeong was well-practiced in this game.

"I said to your father that material things were vulgar. Only the transcendental would win me over."

"And then?" He settled back into his chair.

"Your father came one day empty-handed."

Yi Jeong knew all the beats, he made his face wide open with curiosity. "What did you say to him?"

"I was fascinated. Finally your father was doing something I hadn't seen before. He sat down and began to draw me. He told me that he would make a mask as beautiful as my face so that I refused him again, he didn't have to live without me."

"You believed him?"

"I thought he was lying. My mother, your grandmother, said that I had played too hard and that your father just gave up." Her eyes drifted around the room and settled on the ceramic piece in question. Hae-Ryeon's mask was eerily beautiful. The poreless surfaced matched her own, but the beatific expression rarely matched Hae-Ryeon's troubled face.

"But you know then I didn't see him for five months. I began to worry. I looked out my windows, saw the cherry blossoms fall, and still didn't see your father." Hae-Ryeon face reflected the turmoil she had felt. "It was the most the most perfect romance, Yi Jeong. I waited, I yearned, I held my heart in secret for him. You have no idea how eager I was to give it to him."

"You were in love with father." Yi Jeong repeated the beat that was expected of him. He couldn't stop looking at his mother when she was like this. She leaned on one hand, in rapture, swollen with the promise that Yi Jeong's father never fulfilled. It was all the past, but Hae-Ryeon had no choice but to live there. She couldn't face the corrupt present; a husband that she who cheated on her as easily as he ordered lunch. Her life, emptied of emotions, refilled with obligations she didn't want to fulfill, a son she was forced to disown, and Yi Jeong, her greatest joy. Yi Jeong felt the weight of her happiness around his neck, a heavy stone bound hung around him with the maternal love he knew he was lucky to have.

Of course, Hae-Ryeon didn't know that Yi Jeong's father didn't make the ceramic mask himself. No, the elder So woke up long enough from his drunken stupor to throw some directions at one of his willing craftsman. Yi Jeong's father hated the mask, it was the thing that cemented his dead marriage, it was a false promise made to a woman he didn't care about, and barely knew he was ruining. Yi Jeong remembered coming home late one night and spotting his father, staring at the mask, revulsion distorting his face. He had held the piece in both hands, intent snapping Hae-Ryeon's face in two. Yi Hyun, his brother, had stopped his father then. Yi Jeong heard the whole sordid story, hiding in the shadows of the enormous house. The mask was an imposter.

"Have you spoken to him?"

"He told me that the So family board meeting was tonight."

"Has he said anything to you about me?" She leaned in eagerly.

Yi Jeong closed his eyes and slumped back in the chair. He chose his words carefully. "Umma, I don't think it's good for you to think so much about Father."

"Why can't I depend on my husband?"

"Mother," he spoke slowly as if he were speaking to a child. "He's not a very good husband."

"So you see, Yi Jeong, you have to stay by my side." Her clapped onto him, unwavering. "I have no one in this family."

"Mother, you know I'm on your side." Yi Jeong's expression softened.

She smiled coldly. Her teeth clenched, she spat out her words softly his ear. "That's right. You were in Sweden when Yi Hyun married Eun Jae."

Please read the rest of Love and Luck here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8663756/9/Love-and-Luck