All the lights are off and the back door triple-checked; the traffic rumble wanes and the thrum of the refrigerator spreads to take its place. Even when I move away from the kitchen I can hear its echo. It rattles the plumbing and loose skirt boards, filling the space where my father ought to be playing his Delta Goodrem techno remixes. Randal is sent to bed, red-eyed from today’s session of MSN and World of Warcraft. My mother retires to her room to tackle the laundry, and take comfort in Korean soap operas.
When I pause in the doorway she is frowning at the screen, mouthing dialogue half a beat after the pale actors. Her classes at the community college are paying off; she glances less at the subtitles skimming the base of the television screen.
“Anyong ajuma,” I say. My mother looks up at me. Onscreen, Kim Sam Soon drags the hapless chef out of the restaurant by the ear.
“I should never have taught you to say that,” she says, then, “go away, this is a very important plot development.”
The chef says something to Kim Sam Soon; she turns to thrash at his head in a flurry of handbags and pastry. It reflects in reverse on my mother’s glasses, a pale blue gleam that serves to deepen the lines around her eyes.
He’ll be home soon, I want to say. But we’ve all given up on the calendar’s solemn promise, the red ring around September sixteenth. I kiss her goodnight and make sure Randal is actually asleep. He is, bony chest surging in deep irregular breaths. He smells like toothpaste and milk; tomorrow it will have turned into the peculiar scent that only morning breath can manage. For now it’s young and new, like the way my brother looks as he sleeps.
A ring tone breaches the quiet of the house. It’ll be a text message from my dad, saying his flight was delayed, again, something about monsoons, tidal flows, you probably haven’t even noticed I’m gone. Not true, I think, watching my mother reach for her phone. I shouldn’t be the one teasing your wife, calling hello old woman and thumping through the hallway. I shouldn’t have to watch your son and wonder at the way he looks ten years younger as he sleeps. You shouldn’t have gone, I think as my mother reads the message. I shouldn’t have to stretch to fill the space you left behind.
When my mother looks up, she shines blue with the phone’s display screen. “He’ll be home tomorrow,” she says, and my bones ache. It hurts to reach up and brush my palm against the doorframe for good luck. The house coughs and sinks deeper into its foundations.
