Circles and Circles || Jensoo

Chapter 6

Jisoo awoke groggily to the sound of her alarm beeping insistently in her ear. At first she was confused, but eventually she managed to rouse herself long enough to figure out what it was. She hit the snooze button grumpily and rolled over. She hadn’t slept through her alarm for a long time, but, then again, she hadn’t been this exhausted before. Despite previous efforts with jogging, cleaning and work, it had apparently taken the emotional turmoil of the last few days to really drive Jisoo close to the edge.

Oh well, she thought, as she stumbled out of bed, at least I’m heading to the right place if I fall right off the edge.

She had factored in enough time that she should have been ready well in advance, but her general lethargy meant that she was still putting on her shoes when Joon rang the doorbell. She swore, and made it to the door with her shoelaces untied.

Joon raised an eyebrow as Jisoo nearly tripped over while letting him in.

“I think your shoelaces are untied.” He was evidently holding back a laugh.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Jisoo stuck her tongue out at her brother.

It took them a while to get out on the open road. Jisoo stared out the window as the grimy city suburbs gave way to the more open suburban sprawl and finally to the lush green grass and trees of the countryside. Joon let the silence sit between them until they were past the city limits, and then he started. Jisoo had known he would.

“Are you going to tell me what’s up?” he began, gently.

“Nothing’s up,” Jisoo tried, knowing full well that he would never believe her. Since their conversation on the night that she had argued with Jennie, Joon had somehow found time in his life to call her every night, which meant that every night she had to make up an excuse for why she sounded upset, or flat-out lie. She was running out of excuses. And lies.

For a moment, she considered telling him everything. Of anyone in her family, Joon was the most likely to listen and make no judgment. She would never think of burdening her father with this – he had enough on his plate – and, well, that pretty much left Joon. Talking to Joon, though, would mean that she would actually have to process what had happened and what was going to happen. Since Jisoo had been doing everything in her power to avoid doing just that, she couldn’t find it in her to begin the conversation.

“Things are just really intense at work at the moment. And I seem to be letting old things get to me, too,” she offered, non-specifically. At least it was a half-truth.

Joon took his eyes off the road just long enough to cast a look over his sister. She had lost too much weight recently and the shadows under her eyes were worrying him. He had lost enough family members to be genuinely petrified of something happening to Jisoo. He wanted to see her happy, but that hadn’t happened in a very long time.

“You should think about coming and staying with Ada and me,” he offered. “You know we’d love to have you, and the kids would be over the moon.”

Jisoo smiled at the thought of her nephew and niece.

“Just for a little while,” Joon added, in his most tempting voice. Then he decided to go all out for begging. “Pwetty pwease?”

Jisoo laughed and slapped him on the arm. “Maybe. For a little while. Soon.” She sighed. “I’m just busy at work. I couldn’t get away right now, Joon, no matter how much I wanted to.” It was an unfortunate truth. And she was going to get busier, as of Monday.

Joon nodded, and wisely let the topic drop. They spent the rest of the journey alternating between companionable silence and idle chit-chat. Jisoo caught up on the gossip in her brother’s life, and he found out none of hers. It was a typical drive for the two of them.

As they got closer to their destination, they both got quieter, and the air in the car thickened. They pulled off the main road on to a small side avenue lined with trees and turned off that soon after into a driveway. They passed through a red brick gate, the wrought iron bars of the door pulled back, and drove up a neat gravel path until they parked in front of a large, stately building.

Jisoo sighed again, wondering if she made any other noise lately, before stepping out of the car and staring morosely at the building. Joon locked the car and checked his watch.

“Dad should be here already. I offered to pick him up, but he said he’d meet us here.”

Jisoo shrugged, and together they walked up to the doors. As they passed through, Jisoo couldn’t help briefly tracing her fingers over the sign on the door which said, starkly, Oakpark Psychiatric Institute.

Once inside, they found their father waiting in the foyer. Arthur Kim had aged a lot in the previous few years, and the hair at his temples was now a steel grey. He retained his old curls and colour, but Jisoo could see a few new lines added to the myriad that occupied his face. Her father looked tired and a little defeated; every time she saw him, it nearly broke Jisoo’s heart.

As usual, he greeted her with a hug, and she squeezed him tight, her arms around his waist. He stroked her hair, and lifted her chin up with his knuckle.

“You’re getting too thin,” he said, but Jisoo let it pass. “Let’s go on through, Dr. Maywright said she was in the sun room”.

Jisoo could never put her finger on exactly what had driven her mother to this place. Joon had said that, after Jin died, she had taken to stealing drugs from the hospital just to sleep. Combined with the alcohol that she consumed each night, the potent cocktail had been enough to have her hospitalised her over and over. But her slow decline into madness over four or five years had been so painful to watch that Jisoo felt like she’d nearly gone too. Sometimes Jisoo thought that Jin’s death alone was enough to have driven her mother mad.

Paula Kim sat in the sun room next to a window. Her dark hair sat lankly on her shoulders, but at least today it was clean and brushed. She wore old clothes, comfortable clothes. And, as always, she cradled one of Jin’s sports sweaters in her arms. She didn’t look up as the family approached, but kept blankly staring out of the window. Jisoo felt her insides clench.

Arthur reached his wife first, and put his hand on her shoulder, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek. She sat, staring out the window, not moving. Joon knelt down next to his mother, greeted her, and also got nothing in reply. Jisoo stood, unmoving, mirroring her mother’s behaviour, a few feet away from the others. Joon looked up at her, his emotions indecipherable. Jisoo took a deep breath and moved forward.

“Hi, Mom,” she whispered, putting her hand on the older woman’s, and kneeling down next to Joon.

Paula turned her head to look at Jisoo. Her dark eyes, the exact shade of her daughter’s, stared deeply into Jisoo’s, then she went back to staring out of the window, as though she had never moved. With the silence and still that engulfed them, Jisoo felt as if the world had stopped. Then her mother moved her hand out from under Jisoo’s, drew it back, and back-handed Jisoo across the face so hard it sent the raven haired sprawling on the floor.

“Paula, no!” Arthur cried out, grabbing at his wife’s arm. But she had gone back to staring out the window, cradling her precious sweater like a baby. Jisoo sat on the floor, her cheek stinging. Joon reached out a hand, and she hesitated, then accepted, standing up slowly. She ignored her father’s pleading with her mother and took a step back.

Joon looked torn, until she softly said, “It’s okay. It didn’t hurt.” The bruise that was rapidly appearing across her cheek branded her a liar immediately, but Joon squeezed her hand in mute understanding.

And so the afternoon wore on. Joon and his father talked earnestly to Paula, filling her in on the details of things that had happened, on the antics of her grandchildren, and the state of her garden. Through all of it, she sat unresponsive, staring out the window, never moving. And Jisoo sat, a little way away, in another chair, staring out of a different window, wondering if she wasn’t a little too much like her mother anyway. She gently touched her cheek, where the swelling was now acutely painful, and dropped her hand. It wasn’t the first time that Paula had hit her and Jisoo knew, as long as she kept coming to visit her, it wouldn’t be the last.

At least this time she didn’t spit on me, Jisoo thought bitterly.

* *©clomle44* *