Chapter 2 - Mino

Jennie was still on the phone–unusual for her. True, she wasn’t the one doing the talking, and she’d probably have hung up a while ago if she could have. Jennie hated the phone.

“You should call her,” Jiwon used to tell me, and in the beginning, I called Jennie pretty often. When I say in the beginning, I mean when we got back in touch again and we started to live together. Before we got engaged, obviously. According to Jiwon, all women were secret agents in the employ of the telephone company–he often liked to reminisce about his past married life when he spoke of this. But whenever I spoke to Jennie on the phone, she always sounded irritated. 

“Maybe we should talk about this phone thing,” she said one day.

“What phone thing?”I said, looking down at the zippo lighter I’ve been flipping open and shut in my hand. It was a rainy night, and I was calling her outside some bar with a Wild West theme. 

“I mean, don’t feel like you have to keep calling me all the time,” she said. “Anyway, you don’t really like talking on the phone either, do you, Mino?”

I had to admit she was right. “No. How did you know?”

I looked over at Jiwon, who was sitting at the bar drinking with his back to me. I vowed then never to heed his theories about women again. 

“Wanna drink?” A glass was in front of my face. Jennie’s long phone conversation had come to an end and I hadn’t noticed. 

“What’s this?”

“It’s called a Silver Streak–gin and kummel.”

It was clear like soju. I took a sip just to be polite and gave it back to Jennie. Receiving the glass, she savored a mouthful, swallowed it slowly, and smiled with contentment. 

“Seems Chaeyeong is having mother-in-law problems.” 

“Oh?”

Chaeyeong was Jennie’s best friend from high school. Her one and only friend, other than the other bandmates. Cheerful and lively, Chaeyeong was so wildly different from Jennie that the few times I had seen them together the strangeness of their attempts at communication had been pretty engrossing.

“I guess most mothers-in-law are impossible,” Jennie said. Then she added, “In our case, she’s really nice,” with such sincerity that I felt a little bad.

At long last, the gay son, who had happily vowed to die a bachelor, had come across a woman to his liking. It was only proper that his mother should be really nice to the woman for agreeing to a less union and becoming his fiancée. Jennie leaving me was my mother’s idea of disaster. 

“Running a business involves trust,” my mother used to remind me. “Being single forever isn’t good for your reputation.”

Suddenly, a cushion came flying across the room and hit me in the face. I looked up to find Jennie sitting on the sofa, her lips drawn tightly together into a straight line.

“You’re not listening.”

Jennie’s always quick to start throwing things around.

“Sorry. We were talking about Chaeyeong, right?”

“Yeah, and tomorrow I’m supposed to go over to her place. I might be a little late. Is that fine?”

I said it was fine. “Want me to pick you up around nine?”

Jennie shook her head and looked me straight in the eye. “Why don’t you go see Jiwon-oppa for a change?” Her tone was serious as if we were discussing something important. “I bet he really misses you.”

It was a strange feeling, a woman worrying about her fiancé’s lover.

“Uh-huh, Jiwonie-hyung isn’t the sort to feel lonely. But thanks for being so thoughtful.”

“All right.” Persuaded, Jennie smiled and finished off what was left of her cocktail.

My mother came to me at the gallery the next day. I had just finished an exhibition opening and was having a cup of coffee in the back office. 

“How is everything going?” She said.

A split second before I heard her voice behind me, I knew she was there. I recognized her perfume. “Hi, mom,” I said. “You didn’t need to come all this way. You should have stopped by the apartment.” But I knew why she had come. She had something she wanted to discuss. Not with the two of us, but just with me.

“How’s dad?”

“Oh, he’s fine.” She took off her coat. She was wearing a white Angora sweater, her full red lips blooming. She could have passed for ten years younger than her real age. 

“How’s Jennie?”

“Fine,” I said, offering my mother a chair and a cup of coffee. I wanted for her to get around to whatever it was she had come to say.

“The house is so empty without you,” she said sadly. I used to live in an apartment two blocks away from my parents' so I visit almost every day, but have recently moved to Gangnam to be closer to my gallery and studio. Her shoulders seemed to sag. “It’s so cold this winter…”

“It is cold,” I agreed. “There’s something going around too, so be careful,” I said. 

“Is that so? Because my throat does feel a little sore…”

I could only laugh dryly at this. “I’m sure dad can give you something.” My father was a doctor, with his own practice. “What was it you really wanted to talk to me about?” I spoke first to help her along since she seemed to be having so much trouble getting to the point. She lowered her voice, whispering her reply. “It’s about having children.” 

“Children?”

My mother started to cross-examine me. “What do you think? Have you discussed it with Jennie?”

“We’re not even married yet, mom.”

“Mino-yah. Seunghoonie is a gynecologist, isn’t he?” My mother asked. Seunghoon was a childhood friend of mine back in high school. “Why don’t you go in for a consultation–about artificial insemination?” My mother spoke the words as easily as if she were pronouncing the name of some dessert. Artificial insemination. Well, it had to be about something.

“Sorry to disappoint you, mom, but I haven’t discussed anything of that sort with Jennie.”

My mother’s disappointment showed plainly on her face. “Well, that’s just not normal. No healthy woman would not care about such things,” she said.

“I’ll talk to her about it soon,” I said, pressing the elevator button. “I’ll let you know as soon as we come to any decision. If and when.”

The cream collared doors slid open, and I ushered my mother inside. 

“Take care. Give dad my best. We’ll come and visit soon. Jennie wants to see you again too.”

My mother gave me a hard stare. “Mino-yah.” Then came her trump card. “Don’t forget, you’re our only son.”

The elevator doors slid shut before I could object. I stood there and watched the floor lamp until it indicated the ground lobby. I heaved a sigh.

I went up to the rooftop for a cigarette break and called Jiwon. He played a lot of online games and spent most of his mornings asleep in his home. As I called I thought, “Funny Jennie told me to call him; I want to see him tonight like I haven’t in a while.”

I got home to find Jennie singing to herself again. Well, actually, not quite to herself. She was singing to the oil painting on the wall. 'Any Song' seemed to be the song of the day. She’s kind of strange like that sometimes, my fiancée. 

“Hey, I’m home.”

I loved the look on Jennie’s face when she turned around to welcome me home. She was not someone who could ever fake cheerfulness. First, a