A week after the wedding, Kye finally took a break and borrowed my mother’s car to head down to the Highlands and gamble. My father was on his computer in the kitchen. In bed my mother and I were watching Inside the Actors Studio. Mariska Hargitay from Law and Order was on. James Lipton was asking about her mother’s untimely death. The two of us watched as this beautiful, stoic, adult woman immediately began to tear up. Nearly forty years after the fact, the mere mention of her mother still had this kind of effect. I imagined myself years from that moment, confronted by the same emotions. For the rest of my life there would be a splinter in my being, stinging from the moment my mother died until it was buried with me. Tears streamed down my face and when I looked over, my mother was crying too. We held each other, letting ourselves sob deeply onto each other’s T-shirts. Neither of us had ever watched Law and Order or even knew who this actress was, but it was as if we were watching my future play out, the pain I’d keep with me for a lifetime.

“When you were a child, you always used to cling to me. Everywhere we went,” my mother whispered, struggling to get the words out. “And now that you’re older, here you are—still clinging to me.”

We let ourselves weep fully then, gently clinging to each other the way we had for twenty-five years, our tears seeping into each other’s shirts. Over the televised applause I could hear the wheels of a car tread the gravel driveway, followed by the noisy rumble of the garage door, Kye entering the house, car keys flung onto the kitchen counter.

My mother and I let go of each other, wiping our tears as Kye came into the bedroom jubilantly. My father trailed behind her, halting in the doorframe.

“I won a TV!” she said, plopping down onto the bed beside my mother. She had been drinking.

“Kye, maybe you should go to bed,” my father said. “You must be tired.”

She ignored him, taking my mother’s hands in hers and leaning in toward her pillow. All I could see were the tops of their heads, Kye’s black and white hairs already an inch long while my mother’s bald head was turned away from me, obstructing my view of their faces. She whispered something to Kye in Korean.

“What did she say?” my father asked.

Kye lingered above my mother. I sat upright so I could see the two of them. Kye’s expression was frozen in that same flat, unfinished smile. She kept looking down at my mother, who was smiling back at her.

“What did she say?” my father asked again.

Kye closed her eyes and winced with irritation.

“You two are so selfish!” she exploded, storming out of the room. My father followed her to the kitchen. I stayed beside my mother, who was still smiling, her eyes closed in a peaceful haze.

“Don’t do this,” he said. “She’s going to die any day now, and you know it.”

I could hear the two of them stomping upstairs to Kye’s bedroom, she intent on leaving, my father trying to convince her to stay. I listened quietly to the creaking above as they made their way down the hall, my father’s heavy steps pacing, failing to get his way. His voice low and rumbling muffled through the ceiling, hers brittle and unwavering, then my father taking the stairs back down two at a time.

My father returned to the bedroom out of breath, his face cold with panic as if he had just made a terrible mistake. He asked me to go upstairs to speak to her. I went reluctantly, my heart pounding. The last thing I wanted to do was beg her to stay. I wanted her to leave.

When I got to the guest room, her luggage was open on the bed and she was packing her belongings quickly and forcefully.

“Kye, why are you doing this?”

“It’s time for me to go,” she said. She didn’t sound furious, but stern and intractable. She zipped her bag closed, hoisted it off the bed, and carried it down the stairs.

“Please don’t leave like this,” I said, following behind her. “At least don’t leave in anger. Leave tomorrow. My dad will take you to the airport.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. But I have to go now.”

She sat outside on the porch bench with her luggage, I assumed to wait for a taxi. It was getting cold out, and I could hear the wind chime jingle from the side of the arbor I’d passed under during the ceremony, and in that moment I wondered what Kye knew about my mother that I didn’t. And where a driver would even take her. It was past midnight and she wouldn’t be able to fly out to Georgia until morning.

I went back to my parents’ room and my father left again to keep trying.

“Mom, Kye is leaving,” I said, returning to her bedside. I was afraid she didn’t know what was happening, that she’d be upset with us for making Kye angry, that she’d ask me to chase after her and convince her to stay. But instead she just looked up at me with a big dreamy smile.

“I think she had fun,” she said.

13

A Heavy Hand

Two days after Kye left, my mother shot upright in pain of a new and terrible order. She hadn’t sat up in days, but whatever was breaking through now was something entirely different. Something in her bloated belly must have grown and shifted, pushed up against her organs, and induced a feeling so excruciating it burst through the foamy ceiling of narcotics like a bullet. Her eyes were wide with terror but focused far off, like she couldn’t see us. She held her stomach and cried out, “AH PEO! AH PEO!”

Pain.

My father and I frantically administered liquid hydrocodone under her tongue. Minutes felt like hours as we held her, reassuring her over and over that it would pass. At last she settled into a deep sleep. Sandwiching her between us, I filled with insurmountable sadness. The doctor had lied to us. He’d told us she wouldn’t feel any pain; he’d told us it was his job to make sure of it. He looked into her eyes and made a promise, and he fucking broke it. My mother’s last words were pain.

We were so terrified of it happening again, we resolved to snow her under completely. Every hour or so we’d slip the plastic dropper between her lips and dispense what seemed like enough opioids to take down a horse. Hospice nurses came twice a day to check in and deliver more medication as needed. They told us we were doing the right thing and left us with pamphlets that listed numbers to call when it happened and what to expect next. There wasn’t much for us to do except turn her occasionally, prop her body up with pillows every hour or so to avoid bedsores, pat her lips with a sponge so they wouldn’t chap. That was all we had left to offer.

Days passed and my mother never moved. With no control over her body, she kept wetting the bed. Twice a day my father and I would have to change the sheets around her, pulling off her pajama pants and underwear. We thought about moving her to the hospice bed but we just couldn’t.

With my mother incapacitated, my father and I found ourselves suddenly compelled to start clearing out the house. We opened drawers we’d never opened, frantically emptying them into black garbage bags. It was as if we were trying to get ahead of the inevitable, as if we knew the process would gain weight and bulk once she was technically dead.

The house was quiet aside from her breathing, a horrible sucking like the last sputtering of a coffeepot. Sometimes it stopped completely and my father and I would go silent for four full seconds, wondering if this was it. Then she would gasp again. The pamphlet hospice left told us the intervals would lengthen over time until eventually her breathing stopped completely.

We were waiting for her to die. The last days excruciatingly drawn out. All this time I had feared a sudden death, but now I wondered how it was even possible that my mother’s heart was still beating. It’d been days since she’d eaten or taken water. It destroyed me to think that she could just be starving to death.