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Rhea & Hyun - eyes wide open naked as we came
Even though Hyun found it difficult to sleep at night or in their bed, now that Rhea was pregnant, he’d come to the doorway and look in on her briefly while she slept. He liked that, leaning against the door and watching her pale eyelids occasionally fluttering, her chest rising and falling with deep, calm breaths. He would feel a protective urge rise up in him, his throat constrict and something warm bloom inside his stomach, like a flower of happiness opening up its petals. That bed contained his entire family, wife, child, future children. If he felt sleepy enough or even simply wanted to lie beside her, he would climb gently into the bed so as not to disturb her and take her into his arms, resting his head against her back or chest and matching his breathing to hers until he either fell into sleep or a deep, meditative calm. Usually though, he would return to the sofa in the room beside the bedroom and lie on it like one of their faithful dogs, ready and listening for any problems.
Tonight though, when he came to look in, he found Rhea face down on top of the bed, still fully dressed. She’d buried her face in a pillow and, worst of all, he could hear little sobbing noises coming from her prone body. “Are you crying?”
“No,” she sobbed.
“Rhea…”
“I haven’t cried for years,” she said, her voice muffled by tears and the pillow. “And now I can’t stop!”
Hyun lay down beside her and rubbed her back. He stroked her hair and said “Hey, hey. Hey.”
Eventually she lifted her head off the pillow and put it on his chest. He moved his hand down to the small of her back. He’d seen her stretching it and wincing lately. Even though she wasn’t showing too much, it looked like it hurt. He rubbed and rubbed until she began to sigh and seemed to stop crying. When she lifted her head, Hyun wiped tears of off her swollen eyes and kissed her nose. She kissed him back and rested her head on his chest when he sat up to meet her kiss. “You did this to me,” she sighed again, accusing. She wrapped his arms around her so he was cradling her body.
“If this is too much for you…” But he couldn’t finish that sentence. He knew, academically, that this was Rhea’s body, not his. He knew that she had executive power over all decisions, that right now this baby was nearly more hers than his simply through the act of carrying it as it developed from ball of cells into sentient being. Even as he reasoned with himself, it doesn’t even feel pain yet, it’s not really a human, there’s no brain development til later, his stomach acid thrashed inside of him, making him feel sick for even suggesting the idea. “If this is too much for you,” he began again. “Why don’t we talk,” he finished, lamely. “Talk about it.”
“No,” she said and took his hand and put it on her stomach. The skin there was beginning to stretch out. Hyun smiled, feeling like his heart had been released from a clamp. “Absolutely no. It’s just a little bit strange right now. I keep crying. And I feel other things too.”
“Like what?”
“Really happy, even when I don’t mean to be. Annoyed. Depressed. Er,” she said, and cleared her throat. Which meant ‘in the mood’ in their strange, muted two person language. Hyunsoo stroked her arm again. “Angry too, sometimes.”
“Angry?”
“I don’t get it either. I just get angry at you for getting me pregnant. And not-angry.”
“Not angry?”
“I don’t know. Not exactly angry but not quite anything else. It’s just hormones. I just don’t usually feel anything but happy.”
“Yeah, I can see where they’d get you,” said Hyunsoo, frowning and nodding. Rhea found his hand to hold it, and twisted, pressed her face into his chest. He felt her breathe, her ribs expanding and contracting. He let his fingers spread out over her stomach and felt butterflies rise up in him, fluttering all the way up to his throat.
“Would you…” she began, then frowned. “Would you…”
“Are you trying to,” he felt suddenly awkward. “Initiate?”
“Yes,” she laughed. “Trying to.”
He hesitated, torn. On the one hand, she’d been upset: under normal circumstances he’d have never thought of it. But when he looked into her eyes they were still the same baby blue he remembered and he kissed her without thinking and she laughed softly into the kiss.
An hour later, naked and warm, they pressed against each other and lay in silence, curled up in a nest of bedding. Rhea’s eyes were closed and he lay on his back and watched the ceiling, shadows flickering across it. “Soon you’ll be really big,” he said without thinking. When he looked at her face he saw her raise her eyebrows high and drop them again. “Sorry…just truth...”
“Mm,” she rolled onto her side and put her hand on his stomach, her fingers spreading out over his muscles. “Like a house. And you’ll be half to blame.” She kissed him on the cheek and watched her own fingers walk their way over his chest. “…Names.”
“What?”
“We need some names. For a boy and a girl…first choice, second choice…about four names.”
“Four?” He scratched his jaw and scowled. His brain felt like happy cotton wool and wouldn’t think for a little while. “Two will do…right?”
“We might meet someone with the same name, who’s horrible,” Rhea pointed out. “Or a friend or relative might have a kid and name it one of our names.”
“I don’t know if that matters,” he told her, his hand moving down to her bare hip. When he lifted her he could smile up at her eyes. “Our kid will be different from someone with the same name. They’ll be a Tae.”
Rhea bit her lip in thought, but smiled. She moved on top of him, lying over his chest. “I like lists.”
“I know.”
“I want baby Tae to have a fall back. I mean,” she was going pink, tender and soft again. “This is our first child,” she whispered. “I want everything to be perfect, or as close to perfect as it can be.”
“So that means a list of names?”
“A shortlist. So we’re prepared. Perfection is preparation.”
“Hm, that’s smart.” He rubbed the small of her back again, willing to concede this battle. Names, names. “They need to work in both English and Korean, right?”
“Seems easiest.”
“Hm,” he considered this a bit longer. “Yujin,” he said finally. The name had popped into his head. Yujin. It sounded good.
“Yujin?”
“Like Eugene.”
“Oh.” She thought about this. “That’s a good one. Hang on, I’m going to roll over again, rub my belly.” She did as she’d said and he did as she’d asked, rubbing his hand over her slight belly. He kissed her cheek and put his other arm around her and felt good and warm and satisfied in a way he hadn’t before he’d met her, before they’d gotten married. “Yujin,” she said thoughtfully. “Eugene. Yujin. I like it, I really like it.”
He moved down and kissed her belly and whispered “hello, Yujin,” and felt her hold her breath. She released it all in a little laugh when he came up. “There’s definitely fluttering happening there.”
“Fluttering?” Hyun’s jaw dropped open. “You mean, moving?”
“Yeah,” when he looked up at her she was looking down at him with the kindest little smirk he’d ever seen. “He – or she – definitely moved just then.”
“When I kissed—“ Hyun took a deep breath. His baby was moving and kicking and living deep inside Rhea. His baby had moved when he’d called his name and kissed the area above him. “Yujin,” he said quietly. “Yujin.”
“That’s what we’re calling him if he’s a boy. What if she’s a girl?”
Hyunsoo came up and kissed the area between Rhea’s breasts, where he could feel her heart beat. When he leaned over her, she always flushed happily and touched his chest. His baby had moved and answered to Yujin. Their baby had moved and answered to Yujin. “I think,” he said, voice solemn. “It’s gonna be a boy.”
“I love barbecues,” Rhea said.
“I know.”
“I think they’re just great.”
“I know.”
“The outdoors, the cooking, the setting fire to your apron.”
“That part was an accident.”
“I know.”
Yujin was splashing around in his paddling pool, occasionally standing and taking a shaky step forward to retrieve a toy. Sat on the side of a lounger with her feet in the water and the ends of her jeans turned up, Rhea was half watching their son, half watching Hyun as he struggled with the barbecue. She called to her mother, “How much lighter fluid did you put on there when you were out here, ‘preparing’? Were you tampering with it?”
“Oh, not at all,” Meredith said as she took a seat next to her on the side of the lounger. “I dropped my martini on it.”
“That explains it. Don’t go near the fire, mum. I’m fairly certain the alcohol content in your blood’ll send half the neighbourhood up in smoke.”
Yujin picked up a toy rubber duck, his brown eyes dark with concentration and his fingers wrapping around the neck of the little yellow bird. He thrust it up to his grandmother, who took it and said, “Thank you, dear. This is absolutely lovely. I shall treasure it. You’re much nicer than your mother.”
Rhea put her arm around her mother and put her head on her shoulder. “He’s such a little gentleman.”
“He really is. You two are raising him well.”
Rhea beamed at the compliment, looking up at Hyunsoo to make sure he’d heard; he twisted around and smirked back at her. She lifted their son and kissed him gently on the forehead. “He’s very good,” she said when he frowned at being out of the pool, and she put him back in. “Very good, little Genie.”
Hyun served them round burger patties on wholemeal buns, with fries made from sweet potatoes. Yujin insisted upon sitting on the table with his bottle, leaning back again Hyun’s shoulder. Hyun wanted to be a good dad. He wanted to tell the boy to sit at the table properly in front of company. Wasn’t that what he was supposed to do? But he couldn’t. He loved this, having Yujin’s warm weight against his arm, watching the child’s deliberate movements as he reached onto Rhea’s plate for a sweet potato fry, the way he looked, so filled with concentration when he picked up the fry in his fist and accidentally crushed it. Yujin stared at the mash in his hand and put the bottle down. He brought his hand up to his mouth and stuck his fist in. Hyun had never noticed before, just how focused and filled with concentration babies were, how hard they worked to accomplish even the simplest task – like picking up a fry and putting it into their mouths unsmashed, or giving a toy to their grandma. He picked up a paper cloth and cleaned up around Yujin’s mouth and hand, getting sweet potato mash off of him. Picking up a fry with two fingers, he held it up. Yujin stared at it, that same focus coming into his face.
Hyun was so concentrated on Yujin, he’d barely heard Rhea and her mother’s conversation. When Meredith called, “Hyunsoo, dear?” He heard, though and looked up.
“Yeah?”
“Rhea won’t tell me the new name.”
Rhea’s mouth was pulled up to one side, her eyes on her hands in her lap. “It’s a short list,” she said.
“There must be a favourite.”
“It’s secret.”
“Sorry,” Hyunsoo shook his head and grinned. “I can’t betray my wife. And…I can’t tell you because she hasn’t told me yet.”
“You haven’t told him?” Meredith turned to Rhea with confusion on her face. “What’s he supposed to do? Just wait in the maternity ward when you book your caesarean and wait to come face to face with some stranger named something like…Jeff?”
“Maybe not Jeff,” Rhea said. Yujin was reaching for another of Rhea’s chips. She picked one up and offered it to him, but he seemed determined to pick one himself. “Maybe something else.”
“Charles,” said Meredith. “Oh! Camilla!”
“Absolutely not.”
Hyunsoo chuckled and rubbed Yujin’s hair. His hair was so soft, not like Rhea’s, but not quite like his own, either. It was a texture slightly different to either of theirs, a feathery sort of hair. Hyun liked touching it. Sometimes on Saturdays when Rhea was out and her strict ‘no TV for the baby’ rule was lifted, he and his son would watch an afternoon film, flat out on the couch, Yujin lying on Hyun’s chest, a bowl of healthy snacks balanced on Hyun’s stomach. Yujin liked movie afternoons…Hyun was looking forward to when he could introduce his little son to Star Wars with an excitement that he’d rarely felt before. But that would have to wait until Yujin was older; movienoons now usually ended in Yujin dozing off, thumb in his mouth. While Yujin was sleeping on his chest, Hyun would lie on his back and watch his son rise and fall with each breath he took, rubbing the small child’s beautiful dark hair. He looked like Jae, Hyun would think, and felt a strange crushing happiness, a melancholy that left him emotionally exhausted…but somehow warm, somewhere deep inside.
It grew dark and time for Yujin’s bed time and Meredith happily took him in. Rhea watched after her, contemplative. “I wonder if she’s lonely.”
“Lonely?”
“Her daughters, her grandchildren, we’re all in different countries. She doesn’t have much, does she? I mean, aside from toyboys and a mild drinking problem.”
“Maybe,” Hyun put an arm around her and pulled her in close. “Do you want to suggest she live closer?”
“No,” Rhea touched her hand to her lips. “Maybe.”
“I don’t,” he paused. “I don’t mind. I mean, with two kids. And you’re going back to work.”
Rhea made a happy sound and kissed his cheek. “Yes I am.”
“Have Meredith around to play grandma, having my parents around…” He scowled. “Might be useful.”
Rhea kept her lips on his cheek, moving her head down to rest it on his shoulder, her nose against his neck, her chin on his shoulder. They watched their house silently, as though the future could be read in its white painted brick.
“Sunny,” Rhea said after a moment.
“Sunny?”
“Sun-Hee. Sunny.”
“Sunny.”
“So you won’t be strangers,” she said and took his hand and put his on her stomach, on the beginnings of the bump that was growing there. Hyunsoo took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead.
“Sunny,” he said again and smiled down at the ground. Sunny.
Rhea had the innate ability, even when heavily pregnant, to be packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Her water had broken ten minutes ago. She had calmly packed a nightdress into her ready overnight bag, called her mother to babysit Sunny and Yujin who were playing in the front room and was waiting patiently on the front step for Hyunsoo by the time his car squealed into the front driveway.
“Rhea,” he called and ran to her. He picked her up, adrenaline pumping, ready to carry her in his arms to the hospital if need be.
“Hello,” she threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.
“It’s too early, right?”
“I get the feeling he’s a bit impatient.”
“Oh no,” he said. And took a deep breath. “Baby sitter?”
“Mum’s here. I hid the gin.”
“Okay,” he said and breathed out. “Okay.”
Hyun carried her to the car and put her in the front seat. It was rolled backwards so that her legs wouldn’t cramp up. Her ankles were getting a bit swollen these days. This past month he’d been being careful with her, rubbing her feet when she complained of soreness, stroking her hair, looking after the babies as much as he could. He looked over at her again when he got into the front seat and she looked back at him and he was struck again by just how much he loved her. “What’s our best time for getting to the hospital?”
“Five minutes,” Hyun replied, setting his watch.
“Alright,” she struggled with getting the seatbelt over the round dome of her belly, finally managing it. “Let’s try and beat that.” When he looked at her, she was smiling, eyes lit up with mischief.
After it had happened, all the pain and the pushing, they were handed a healthy baby boy who screamed with healthy lungs until Hyunsoo cradled him. After the baby grew quiet he handed him to Rhea who let him rest on her chest. “I’m exhausted,” she said. Hyun held her hand and she smiled.
“What’s the short list again?”
“Oh, check the bag. Front pocket,” Hyun found it, tucked into a copy of War and Peace. Rhea shrugged. “He interrupted me. Save my place?” He dogeared the page and came to sit back down next to her, holding the list.
They looked down the names. Rhea picked up their baby and looked at him. “Are you a Martin? A Patrick? A Lee? You don’t look like any of them.”
Hyun looked down the list, going over the list she’d made. Four male names, two emergency female names (just in case). He went over them carefully and looked at his new son. “I’m not sure if any of these fit.”
“Me neither,” she frowned and kissed the baby’s forehead. “What are we going to do with you, you impatient little thing? I love you.”
“Our third child,” Hyun said and grinned. “I’m a dad, three times over.”
“Three children,” Rhea sighed. “You’re carrying the next one.”
Hyun smirked and kissed her mouth. A big family was something strange to both of them. They’d both been isolated children, in their own way. But somehow it felt right, too. They weren’t the sort of people to suddenly stop being careful; everything was planned, with lists and fall backs and with love. A third child had felt…right. Sunny was sleeping through the night and Gene was doing well at the nursery they’d enrolled him in. Hyun had just gotten a promotion, Rhea had a steady job as a lecturer. The stars had aligned, and a third child had just felt right. It was just the name. That seemed to have escaped both of them.
They sat in silence for a little while, half listening to the beeps and robotic sighs of hospital machinery floating in from the corridor. “Sam,” Rhea said, after a little while.
“Samuel? Or like,” he paused, thinking. “Young-Sam?”
“Sam,” she said.
“I like it,” Hyun told her. He picked up the baby. “Hey, Sam.”
Sam made a pleased noise.
“Hyun Junior,” said Rhea.
“I don’t know…”
“Hyunsoo Junior.”
“I really don’t know…”
“We can call him Junior.” Rhea shifted slightly and breathed out sharply. The gel on her stomach felt icy cold and the probe running its way over her skin felt strange and slightly uncomfortable. Hyun squeezed her hand. “I’ve always wanted to name one of my kids Junior.”
He smiled and rubbed her palm with his thumb. “Junior,” he said. “It’s not bad. But it would be weird…having two Hyunsoos.”
On the screen an image was beginning to form. Developing babies in the womb always looked weird, like little aliens. There was something strange here; their child was somehow inside Rhea and inside this computer screen, in two places at once. The pressure on his hand from Rhea’s fingers was growing. When he looked up she was crying, wiping her eyes with the heel of her other hand. The technician handed over some tissues. “Hormones,” Rhea clarified. “I don’t normally cry at technology.”
Hyun kissed her temple. “I’ll keep your secret.”
“You’d better,” she mumbled into a tissue. “What’s wrong with me?”
He kissed her again. “That’s our baby.”
“Yeah,” she gave a watery smile. “We have a baby.”
They looked up at the screen, at the little being inside of it, inside of Rhea. “Junior,” Hyun said, getting used to the word. “Junior.”
Junior was a clever boy, Hyun thought. He learned how to walk and talk and was sleeping through the night faster than any of the other kids. “Wow,” Rhea said as they tidied up the house together, putting away strewn toys and folding clothes. “Is it just me or is it quiet in here?”
“It’s quiet,” Hyun scratched his cheek. “Yujin’s out with the dogs, Sunny’s at a sleepover.”
“Junior’s asleep,” Rhea closed her eyes briefly. “The other one’s studying.”
“The other one.”
“That one.”
“You mean your son, Sam?”
“84,” said Rhea.
“What?”
“84 months. Seven years. I’ve spent seven years either pregnant or breast feeding. I’m allowed the privilege of forgetting his name,” she bumped his shoulder. “I’m joking, of course.”
“Right,” he kissed the top of her head. “Mrs Tae, I think you’re getting senile.”
“Yes, Mr. Tae,” she took his hand and pressed her forehead into his shoulder. “Oh my god. I’m so old.”
“You’re not,” he smiled at her and she smiled up at him. “Just…forty isn’t old…”
“Forty one,” she corrected, bringing his hand so that she could look at it. “That’s getting on a bit.”
“No,” he put his free hand on her hip and pulled her in. “You’re just a little bit older. And a lot wiser.”
“I love you,” she told him and Hyun felt butterflies in his stomach. Through overuse some words became mundane; Rhea carefully rationed out her ‘I love you’s, wanting no words containing that much importance, that much significance, to become every day, routine, discardable. Sometimes…he understood her better than anyone else in the world. Sometimes he looked at her and no time had passed; they were up late in the AM building, playing pool and laughing instead of patrolling. Last night he had swept her off her feet and into a dance when the radio played one of the songs he knew she liked and when he’d looked into her baby blue eyes he could have sworn they were in New York again, hiding in their pillow fort, listening to music and cuddling.
“I love you too,” he told her, and kissed her. They lingered close to each other and then he picked her up and twirled her around the way he’d done at their wedding, so that she laughed and touched his cheek.
“You’re the greatest person I’ve ever met,” she told him. “And you make me a better person every day. Every day. All six thousand, five hundred and seventy of them,” He felt choked up. Suddenly he couldn’t say anything. All he could do was stare down at her and feel, less a thought than an impulse, rush through him, a love that stirred deep inside of him and seem to move its way up to overwhelm his throat and tongue so that all he could do was hug her tight.
When they got back to cleaning up the den, they were both beaming, their hands brushing knuckle to knuckle as they worked side by side. They finished packing away toys and cushions and went into their bedroom to finish up in here. Hyun tidied their bedspread and their chest of drawers. When he looked around to see what Rhea was doing (it had become instinct, almost, to call out to her when she was out of sight, even when he had nothing to say, just to know she was near) he saw her folding baby clothes. These were too small for Junior now and they’d taken them out thinking about giving them away, but they had been Yujin’s, and Sunny’s and Sam’s and Junior’s. He knew as well as she did that these little baby grows seemed to have the combined smell of all of their new born children. Rhea was folding them slowly, with a look of softness on her face that he’d come to be familiar with. He came over and took the little piece of clothing from her. “I have a problem,” she sighed as she handed it over.
“What is it?”
“I’m feeling just a little bit—broody.”
“Broody?”
“Like a hen.”
“You want another one.”
Rhea smiled and looked at her feet and went red. “We should probably talk about it. I mean—it’s what I want, but I’m not sure…I mean, if you don’t want to, we should look at that.”
Hyun looked down at the baby grow he was holding. Five was a big number. They already had a lot of cats, a lot of kids. What more could any family want? But Rhea wanted more. Just one more. She was looking at him anxiously and he rubbed her arm.
“I can go find the whiteboard,” she suggested. “Where we wrote down the pros and cons before. We have some more to add to it – age of mother, I’m sure I can find some articles about it for us to read. Savings – I mean, should the worst come to the worst, we’ll have to survive on them and we need to be able to calculate, see how long we could survive on our savings with four kids, versus surviving on our savings with five kids. College funds, space—we may need a bigger place. Resources, space, timing…” She was counting items off on her fingers but Hyun was thinking about things that felt like they ran deeper. He kissed her and she stopped talking, relief in her face.
They sat down on their bed and after a little while they lay down on their bed, looking up at the white plaster ceiling. “Another baby,” Rhea said with a little undercurrent of excitement and held his hand.
“Another baby.”
“Another nine months. Plus twelve for breastfeeding. One hundred and five. 8.75 years.”
“How have we never been to Vegas?”
“I can’t take the heat.”
Hyun squeezed her hand. “You’ve got a name, don’t you?”
“Whatever do you mean?” But she was grinning.
“You’ve already got your shortlist of names. I can tell.”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “A little one. Oh well, actually just one.”
Hyun rolled onto his side and put his arm around her. She kissed him tenderly on the forehead.
“Hana,” she said and smiled.
“Hana?”
“Hana Tae.”
“I like it,” Hyun said and looked at his hand and counted the fingers on it. Five. He counted the number of rooms the house had. Five. But the basement could be converted, the attic explored. They hadn’t opened it once, had they? “Do you think Yujin would give up his room if we converted the basement into a bedroom?”
Rhea laughed and nodded. They cuddled for a little while and then she sighed. She whispered a question she’d never asked before, never had the courage to ask before, “What if it’s twins?”
Hyun lay silent and thinking beside her, holding her close. “I don’t know,” he answered finally. “We might have to convince Sunny to move into the attic. If we still want them all to have separate rooms.”
He was careful to be casual, to speak like a parent rather than one half of a whole. She kissed him tenderly. “Five,” she said.
“Five.”
They held each other close and kissed each other and laughed suddenly. Hana, Hyunsoo thought. Hana.
Tonight though, when he came to look in, he found Rhea face down on top of the bed, still fully dressed. She’d buried her face in a pillow and, worst of all, he could hear little sobbing noises coming from her prone body. “Are you crying?”
“No,” she sobbed.
“Rhea…”
“I haven’t cried for years,” she said, her voice muffled by tears and the pillow. “And now I can’t stop!”
Hyun lay down beside her and rubbed her back. He stroked her hair and said “Hey, hey. Hey.”
Eventually she lifted her head off the pillow and put it on his chest. He moved his hand down to the small of her back. He’d seen her stretching it and wincing lately. Even though she wasn’t showing too much, it looked like it hurt. He rubbed and rubbed until she began to sigh and seemed to stop crying. When she lifted her head, Hyun wiped tears of off her swollen eyes and kissed her nose. She kissed him back and rested her head on his chest when he sat up to meet her kiss. “You did this to me,” she sighed again, accusing. She wrapped his arms around her so he was cradling her body.
“If this is too much for you…” But he couldn’t finish that sentence. He knew, academically, that this was Rhea’s body, not his. He knew that she had executive power over all decisions, that right now this baby was nearly more hers than his simply through the act of carrying it as it developed from ball of cells into sentient being. Even as he reasoned with himself, it doesn’t even feel pain yet, it’s not really a human, there’s no brain development til later, his stomach acid thrashed inside of him, making him feel sick for even suggesting the idea. “If this is too much for you,” he began again. “Why don’t we talk,” he finished, lamely. “Talk about it.”
“No,” she said and took his hand and put it on her stomach. The skin there was beginning to stretch out. Hyun smiled, feeling like his heart had been released from a clamp. “Absolutely no. It’s just a little bit strange right now. I keep crying. And I feel other things too.”
“Like what?”
“Really happy, even when I don’t mean to be. Annoyed. Depressed. Er,” she said, and cleared her throat. Which meant ‘in the mood’ in their strange, muted two person language. Hyunsoo stroked her arm again. “Angry too, sometimes.”
“Angry?”
“I don’t get it either. I just get angry at you for getting me pregnant. And not-angry.”
“Not angry?”
“I don’t know. Not exactly angry but not quite anything else. It’s just hormones. I just don’t usually feel anything but happy.”
“Yeah, I can see where they’d get you,” said Hyunsoo, frowning and nodding. Rhea found his hand to hold it, and twisted, pressed her face into his chest. He felt her breathe, her ribs expanding and contracting. He let his fingers spread out over her stomach and felt butterflies rise up in him, fluttering all the way up to his throat.
“Would you…” she began, then frowned. “Would you…”
“Are you trying to,” he felt suddenly awkward. “Initiate?”
“Yes,” she laughed. “Trying to.”
He hesitated, torn. On the one hand, she’d been upset: under normal circumstances he’d have never thought of it. But when he looked into her eyes they were still the same baby blue he remembered and he kissed her without thinking and she laughed softly into the kiss.
An hour later, naked and warm, they pressed against each other and lay in silence, curled up in a nest of bedding. Rhea’s eyes were closed and he lay on his back and watched the ceiling, shadows flickering across it. “Soon you’ll be really big,” he said without thinking. When he looked at her face he saw her raise her eyebrows high and drop them again. “Sorry…just truth...”
“Mm,” she rolled onto her side and put her hand on his stomach, her fingers spreading out over his muscles. “Like a house. And you’ll be half to blame.” She kissed him on the cheek and watched her own fingers walk their way over his chest. “…Names.”
“What?”
“We need some names. For a boy and a girl…first choice, second choice…about four names.”
“Four?” He scratched his jaw and scowled. His brain felt like happy cotton wool and wouldn’t think for a little while. “Two will do…right?”
“We might meet someone with the same name, who’s horrible,” Rhea pointed out. “Or a friend or relative might have a kid and name it one of our names.”
“I don’t know if that matters,” he told her, his hand moving down to her bare hip. When he lifted her he could smile up at her eyes. “Our kid will be different from someone with the same name. They’ll be a Tae.”
Rhea bit her lip in thought, but smiled. She moved on top of him, lying over his chest. “I like lists.”
“I know.”
“I want baby Tae to have a fall back. I mean,” she was going pink, tender and soft again. “This is our first child,” she whispered. “I want everything to be perfect, or as close to perfect as it can be.”
“So that means a list of names?”
“A shortlist. So we’re prepared. Perfection is preparation.”
“Hm, that’s smart.” He rubbed the small of her back again, willing to concede this battle. Names, names. “They need to work in both English and Korean, right?”
“Seems easiest.”
“Hm,” he considered this a bit longer. “Yujin,” he said finally. The name had popped into his head. Yujin. It sounded good.
“Yujin?”
“Like Eugene.”
“Oh.” She thought about this. “That’s a good one. Hang on, I’m going to roll over again, rub my belly.” She did as she’d said and he did as she’d asked, rubbing his hand over her slight belly. He kissed her cheek and put his other arm around her and felt good and warm and satisfied in a way he hadn’t before he’d met her, before they’d gotten married. “Yujin,” she said thoughtfully. “Eugene. Yujin. I like it, I really like it.”
He moved down and kissed her belly and whispered “hello, Yujin,” and felt her hold her breath. She released it all in a little laugh when he came up. “There’s definitely fluttering happening there.”
“Fluttering?” Hyun’s jaw dropped open. “You mean, moving?”
“Yeah,” when he looked up at her she was looking down at him with the kindest little smirk he’d ever seen. “He – or she – definitely moved just then.”
“When I kissed—“ Hyun took a deep breath. His baby was moving and kicking and living deep inside Rhea. His baby had moved when he’d called his name and kissed the area above him. “Yujin,” he said quietly. “Yujin.”
“That’s what we’re calling him if he’s a boy. What if she’s a girl?”
Hyunsoo came up and kissed the area between Rhea’s breasts, where he could feel her heart beat. When he leaned over her, she always flushed happily and touched his chest. His baby had moved and answered to Yujin. Their baby had moved and answered to Yujin. “I think,” he said, voice solemn. “It’s gonna be a boy.”
“I love barbecues,” Rhea said.
“I know.”
“I think they’re just great.”
“I know.”
“The outdoors, the cooking, the setting fire to your apron.”
“That part was an accident.”
“I know.”
Yujin was splashing around in his paddling pool, occasionally standing and taking a shaky step forward to retrieve a toy. Sat on the side of a lounger with her feet in the water and the ends of her jeans turned up, Rhea was half watching their son, half watching Hyun as he struggled with the barbecue. She called to her mother, “How much lighter fluid did you put on there when you were out here, ‘preparing’? Were you tampering with it?”
“Oh, not at all,” Meredith said as she took a seat next to her on the side of the lounger. “I dropped my martini on it.”
“That explains it. Don’t go near the fire, mum. I’m fairly certain the alcohol content in your blood’ll send half the neighbourhood up in smoke.”
Yujin picked up a toy rubber duck, his brown eyes dark with concentration and his fingers wrapping around the neck of the little yellow bird. He thrust it up to his grandmother, who took it and said, “Thank you, dear. This is absolutely lovely. I shall treasure it. You’re much nicer than your mother.”
Rhea put her arm around her mother and put her head on her shoulder. “He’s such a little gentleman.”
“He really is. You two are raising him well.”
Rhea beamed at the compliment, looking up at Hyunsoo to make sure he’d heard; he twisted around and smirked back at her. She lifted their son and kissed him gently on the forehead. “He’s very good,” she said when he frowned at being out of the pool, and she put him back in. “Very good, little Genie.”
Hyun served them round burger patties on wholemeal buns, with fries made from sweet potatoes. Yujin insisted upon sitting on the table with his bottle, leaning back again Hyun’s shoulder. Hyun wanted to be a good dad. He wanted to tell the boy to sit at the table properly in front of company. Wasn’t that what he was supposed to do? But he couldn’t. He loved this, having Yujin’s warm weight against his arm, watching the child’s deliberate movements as he reached onto Rhea’s plate for a sweet potato fry, the way he looked, so filled with concentration when he picked up the fry in his fist and accidentally crushed it. Yujin stared at the mash in his hand and put the bottle down. He brought his hand up to his mouth and stuck his fist in. Hyun had never noticed before, just how focused and filled with concentration babies were, how hard they worked to accomplish even the simplest task – like picking up a fry and putting it into their mouths unsmashed, or giving a toy to their grandma. He picked up a paper cloth and cleaned up around Yujin’s mouth and hand, getting sweet potato mash off of him. Picking up a fry with two fingers, he held it up. Yujin stared at it, that same focus coming into his face.
Hyun was so concentrated on Yujin, he’d barely heard Rhea and her mother’s conversation. When Meredith called, “Hyunsoo, dear?” He heard, though and looked up.
“Yeah?”
“Rhea won’t tell me the new name.”
Rhea’s mouth was pulled up to one side, her eyes on her hands in her lap. “It’s a short list,” she said.
“There must be a favourite.”
“It’s secret.”
“Sorry,” Hyunsoo shook his head and grinned. “I can’t betray my wife. And…I can’t tell you because she hasn’t told me yet.”
“You haven’t told him?” Meredith turned to Rhea with confusion on her face. “What’s he supposed to do? Just wait in the maternity ward when you book your caesarean and wait to come face to face with some stranger named something like…Jeff?”
“Maybe not Jeff,” Rhea said. Yujin was reaching for another of Rhea’s chips. She picked one up and offered it to him, but he seemed determined to pick one himself. “Maybe something else.”
“Charles,” said Meredith. “Oh! Camilla!”
“Absolutely not.”
Hyunsoo chuckled and rubbed Yujin’s hair. His hair was so soft, not like Rhea’s, but not quite like his own, either. It was a texture slightly different to either of theirs, a feathery sort of hair. Hyun liked touching it. Sometimes on Saturdays when Rhea was out and her strict ‘no TV for the baby’ rule was lifted, he and his son would watch an afternoon film, flat out on the couch, Yujin lying on Hyun’s chest, a bowl of healthy snacks balanced on Hyun’s stomach. Yujin liked movie afternoons…Hyun was looking forward to when he could introduce his little son to Star Wars with an excitement that he’d rarely felt before. But that would have to wait until Yujin was older; movienoons now usually ended in Yujin dozing off, thumb in his mouth. While Yujin was sleeping on his chest, Hyun would lie on his back and watch his son rise and fall with each breath he took, rubbing the small child’s beautiful dark hair. He looked like Jae, Hyun would think, and felt a strange crushing happiness, a melancholy that left him emotionally exhausted…but somehow warm, somewhere deep inside.
It grew dark and time for Yujin’s bed time and Meredith happily took him in. Rhea watched after her, contemplative. “I wonder if she’s lonely.”
“Lonely?”
“Her daughters, her grandchildren, we’re all in different countries. She doesn’t have much, does she? I mean, aside from toyboys and a mild drinking problem.”
“Maybe,” Hyun put an arm around her and pulled her in close. “Do you want to suggest she live closer?”
“No,” Rhea touched her hand to her lips. “Maybe.”
“I don’t,” he paused. “I don’t mind. I mean, with two kids. And you’re going back to work.”
Rhea made a happy sound and kissed his cheek. “Yes I am.”
“Have Meredith around to play grandma, having my parents around…” He scowled. “Might be useful.”
Rhea kept her lips on his cheek, moving her head down to rest it on his shoulder, her nose against his neck, her chin on his shoulder. They watched their house silently, as though the future could be read in its white painted brick.
“Sunny,” Rhea said after a moment.
“Sunny?”
“Sun-Hee. Sunny.”
“Sunny.”
“So you won’t be strangers,” she said and took his hand and put his on her stomach, on the beginnings of the bump that was growing there. Hyunsoo took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead.
“Sunny,” he said again and smiled down at the ground. Sunny.
Rhea had the innate ability, even when heavily pregnant, to be packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Her water had broken ten minutes ago. She had calmly packed a nightdress into her ready overnight bag, called her mother to babysit Sunny and Yujin who were playing in the front room and was waiting patiently on the front step for Hyunsoo by the time his car squealed into the front driveway.
“Rhea,” he called and ran to her. He picked her up, adrenaline pumping, ready to carry her in his arms to the hospital if need be.
“Hello,” she threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.
“It’s too early, right?”
“I get the feeling he’s a bit impatient.”
“Oh no,” he said. And took a deep breath. “Baby sitter?”
“Mum’s here. I hid the gin.”
“Okay,” he said and breathed out. “Okay.”
Hyun carried her to the car and put her in the front seat. It was rolled backwards so that her legs wouldn’t cramp up. Her ankles were getting a bit swollen these days. This past month he’d been being careful with her, rubbing her feet when she complained of soreness, stroking her hair, looking after the babies as much as he could. He looked over at her again when he got into the front seat and she looked back at him and he was struck again by just how much he loved her. “What’s our best time for getting to the hospital?”
“Five minutes,” Hyun replied, setting his watch.
“Alright,” she struggled with getting the seatbelt over the round dome of her belly, finally managing it. “Let’s try and beat that.” When he looked at her, she was smiling, eyes lit up with mischief.
After it had happened, all the pain and the pushing, they were handed a healthy baby boy who screamed with healthy lungs until Hyunsoo cradled him. After the baby grew quiet he handed him to Rhea who let him rest on her chest. “I’m exhausted,” she said. Hyun held her hand and she smiled.
“What’s the short list again?”
“Oh, check the bag. Front pocket,” Hyun found it, tucked into a copy of War and Peace. Rhea shrugged. “He interrupted me. Save my place?” He dogeared the page and came to sit back down next to her, holding the list.
They looked down the names. Rhea picked up their baby and looked at him. “Are you a Martin? A Patrick? A Lee? You don’t look like any of them.”
Hyun looked down the list, going over the list she’d made. Four male names, two emergency female names (just in case). He went over them carefully and looked at his new son. “I’m not sure if any of these fit.”
“Me neither,” she frowned and kissed the baby’s forehead. “What are we going to do with you, you impatient little thing? I love you.”
“Our third child,” Hyun said and grinned. “I’m a dad, three times over.”
“Three children,” Rhea sighed. “You’re carrying the next one.”
Hyun smirked and kissed her mouth. A big family was something strange to both of them. They’d both been isolated children, in their own way. But somehow it felt right, too. They weren’t the sort of people to suddenly stop being careful; everything was planned, with lists and fall backs and with love. A third child had felt…right. Sunny was sleeping through the night and Gene was doing well at the nursery they’d enrolled him in. Hyun had just gotten a promotion, Rhea had a steady job as a lecturer. The stars had aligned, and a third child had just felt right. It was just the name. That seemed to have escaped both of them.
They sat in silence for a little while, half listening to the beeps and robotic sighs of hospital machinery floating in from the corridor. “Sam,” Rhea said, after a little while.
“Samuel? Or like,” he paused, thinking. “Young-Sam?”
“Sam,” she said.
“I like it,” Hyun told her. He picked up the baby. “Hey, Sam.”
Sam made a pleased noise.
“Hyun Junior,” said Rhea.
“I don’t know…”
“Hyunsoo Junior.”
“I really don’t know…”
“We can call him Junior.” Rhea shifted slightly and breathed out sharply. The gel on her stomach felt icy cold and the probe running its way over her skin felt strange and slightly uncomfortable. Hyun squeezed her hand. “I’ve always wanted to name one of my kids Junior.”
He smiled and rubbed her palm with his thumb. “Junior,” he said. “It’s not bad. But it would be weird…having two Hyunsoos.”
On the screen an image was beginning to form. Developing babies in the womb always looked weird, like little aliens. There was something strange here; their child was somehow inside Rhea and inside this computer screen, in two places at once. The pressure on his hand from Rhea’s fingers was growing. When he looked up she was crying, wiping her eyes with the heel of her other hand. The technician handed over some tissues. “Hormones,” Rhea clarified. “I don’t normally cry at technology.”
Hyun kissed her temple. “I’ll keep your secret.”
“You’d better,” she mumbled into a tissue. “What’s wrong with me?”
He kissed her again. “That’s our baby.”
“Yeah,” she gave a watery smile. “We have a baby.”
They looked up at the screen, at the little being inside of it, inside of Rhea. “Junior,” Hyun said, getting used to the word. “Junior.”
Junior was a clever boy, Hyun thought. He learned how to walk and talk and was sleeping through the night faster than any of the other kids. “Wow,” Rhea said as they tidied up the house together, putting away strewn toys and folding clothes. “Is it just me or is it quiet in here?”
“It’s quiet,” Hyun scratched his cheek. “Yujin’s out with the dogs, Sunny’s at a sleepover.”
“Junior’s asleep,” Rhea closed her eyes briefly. “The other one’s studying.”
“The other one.”
“That one.”
“You mean your son, Sam?”
“84,” said Rhea.
“What?”
“84 months. Seven years. I’ve spent seven years either pregnant or breast feeding. I’m allowed the privilege of forgetting his name,” she bumped his shoulder. “I’m joking, of course.”
“Right,” he kissed the top of her head. “Mrs Tae, I think you’re getting senile.”
“Yes, Mr. Tae,” she took his hand and pressed her forehead into his shoulder. “Oh my god. I’m so old.”
“You’re not,” he smiled at her and she smiled up at him. “Just…forty isn’t old…”
“Forty one,” she corrected, bringing his hand so that she could look at it. “That’s getting on a bit.”
“No,” he put his free hand on her hip and pulled her in. “You’re just a little bit older. And a lot wiser.”
“I love you,” she told him and Hyun felt butterflies in his stomach. Through overuse some words became mundane; Rhea carefully rationed out her ‘I love you’s, wanting no words containing that much importance, that much significance, to become every day, routine, discardable. Sometimes…he understood her better than anyone else in the world. Sometimes he looked at her and no time had passed; they were up late in the AM building, playing pool and laughing instead of patrolling. Last night he had swept her off her feet and into a dance when the radio played one of the songs he knew she liked and when he’d looked into her baby blue eyes he could have sworn they were in New York again, hiding in their pillow fort, listening to music and cuddling.
“I love you too,” he told her, and kissed her. They lingered close to each other and then he picked her up and twirled her around the way he’d done at their wedding, so that she laughed and touched his cheek.
“You’re the greatest person I’ve ever met,” she told him. “And you make me a better person every day. Every day. All six thousand, five hundred and seventy of them,” He felt choked up. Suddenly he couldn’t say anything. All he could do was stare down at her and feel, less a thought than an impulse, rush through him, a love that stirred deep inside of him and seem to move its way up to overwhelm his throat and tongue so that all he could do was hug her tight.
When they got back to cleaning up the den, they were both beaming, their hands brushing knuckle to knuckle as they worked side by side. They finished packing away toys and cushions and went into their bedroom to finish up in here. Hyun tidied their bedspread and their chest of drawers. When he looked around to see what Rhea was doing (it had become instinct, almost, to call out to her when she was out of sight, even when he had nothing to say, just to know she was near) he saw her folding baby clothes. These were too small for Junior now and they’d taken them out thinking about giving them away, but they had been Yujin’s, and Sunny’s and Sam’s and Junior’s. He knew as well as she did that these little baby grows seemed to have the combined smell of all of their new born children. Rhea was folding them slowly, with a look of softness on her face that he’d come to be familiar with. He came over and took the little piece of clothing from her. “I have a problem,” she sighed as she handed it over.
“What is it?”
“I’m feeling just a little bit—broody.”
“Broody?”
“Like a hen.”
“You want another one.”
Rhea smiled and looked at her feet and went red. “We should probably talk about it. I mean—it’s what I want, but I’m not sure…I mean, if you don’t want to, we should look at that.”
Hyun looked down at the baby grow he was holding. Five was a big number. They already had a lot of cats, a lot of kids. What more could any family want? But Rhea wanted more. Just one more. She was looking at him anxiously and he rubbed her arm.
“I can go find the whiteboard,” she suggested. “Where we wrote down the pros and cons before. We have some more to add to it – age of mother, I’m sure I can find some articles about it for us to read. Savings – I mean, should the worst come to the worst, we’ll have to survive on them and we need to be able to calculate, see how long we could survive on our savings with four kids, versus surviving on our savings with five kids. College funds, space—we may need a bigger place. Resources, space, timing…” She was counting items off on her fingers but Hyun was thinking about things that felt like they ran deeper. He kissed her and she stopped talking, relief in her face.
They sat down on their bed and after a little while they lay down on their bed, looking up at the white plaster ceiling. “Another baby,” Rhea said with a little undercurrent of excitement and held his hand.
“Another baby.”
“Another nine months. Plus twelve for breastfeeding. One hundred and five. 8.75 years.”
“How have we never been to Vegas?”
“I can’t take the heat.”
Hyun squeezed her hand. “You’ve got a name, don’t you?”
“Whatever do you mean?” But she was grinning.
“You’ve already got your shortlist of names. I can tell.”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “A little one. Oh well, actually just one.”
Hyun rolled onto his side and put his arm around her. She kissed him tenderly on the forehead.
“Hana,” she said and smiled.
“Hana?”
“Hana Tae.”
“I like it,” Hyun said and looked at his hand and counted the fingers on it. Five. He counted the number of rooms the house had. Five. But the basement could be converted, the attic explored. They hadn’t opened it once, had they? “Do you think Yujin would give up his room if we converted the basement into a bedroom?”
Rhea laughed and nodded. They cuddled for a little while and then she sighed. She whispered a question she’d never asked before, never had the courage to ask before, “What if it’s twins?”
Hyun lay silent and thinking beside her, holding her close. “I don’t know,” he answered finally. “We might have to convince Sunny to move into the attic. If we still want them all to have separate rooms.”
He was careful to be casual, to speak like a parent rather than one half of a whole. She kissed him tenderly. “Five,” she said.
“Five.”
They held each other close and kissed each other and laughed suddenly. Hana, Hyunsoo thought. Hana.