"Sweetheart, are you coming tonight too?" A fresh white bubble popped above the chat. The heat cupped in my palm seeped through the screen. Tonight marked the tenth night in a row. The sheets were still damp, our breathing trapped beneath the wallpaper. My sneakers by the door were unlaced; his oxfords were tied with soldierly precision. Then the phone rang. It was Mom.
‘The surgery to hollow out the lower belly—three-point-two million won. The deposit is due today. All because of you, son…’
I had never seen my mother’s stomach. No—I had never tried.
The Day Her Belly and My Body Collided
Mom is fifty-five this year. We had grown closer since she and Dad parted, yet we still hid our bodies from each other. She crouched, fidgeting with the TV remote; I stood with the fridge door open. Then, suddenly, he appeared—Young-jin, my junior from college. The way he said, “Hello, ma’am,” stuck to my eardrum like burrs.
While we held hands, what did she see?
An Anatomy of Desire
Infidelity is the art of “knowing yet.” Everyone can see it’s wrong, but I keep checking that boundary only to tunnel deeper. Young-jin lives with the word “sister-in-law” on his tongue, and I shuttle back and forth, a professional betrayer. The thickness of betrayal thrills me.
But Mom betrayed me. Or rather, she asked me to sanction her betrayal.
‘Is plastic surgery a crime? I’m a woman too.’
Hidden inside Mom’s sigh was a desire I could never fathom: the terror that the man her son loves might be stolen, yet again, by an aging woman, or—conversely—the hatred that even the man who caught her son’s eye would not look at her own body.
Stories That Could Be True
Case 1: Mi-young, 41, housewife
Mi-young had known of her husband’s seven-year affair. Every evening she sprayed perfume and laid fresh sheets. One day her mother arrived.
Mom: Here’s five hundred thousand won. Go to the clinic near your apartment.
Mi-young: What kind of surgery?
Mom: My breasts. I want your husband to notice me first, not that girl.
For the first time since giving birth fifteen years ago, Mi-young saw her mother’s breasts. The areolas were dark, the skin pleated. She brushed them with a fingertip. They were cold. That night the husband came home. Breathing in the perfume her mother had left, Mi-young asked,
‘Do you like my mom?’
Case 2: Ji-hoo, 43, husband; Hee-jung, 39, wife
Ji-hoo discovered his wife Hee-jung’s affair through a sex video carelessly left on her phone. The man was her ex-boyfriend. Furious, Ji-hoo marched over with divorce papers. Hee-jung’s mother, Jung-sook, late sixties, opened the door.
Jung-sook: My daughter has apologized. Instead, let me—
Ji-hoo: Excuse me?
Jung-sook: I was quite something once. Even now, beautiful enough, wouldn’t you say?
She showed him an album from twenty years ago. She did not resemble Hee-jung, yet Ji-hoo saw his wife in the way she stood, in the curve of her smile. He never returned to Hee-jung; reportedly he took Jung-sook’s number. They still meet in front of the plastic-surgery clinic every weekend.
Why Are We Drawn to This?
Infidelity and plastic surgery trace a single circle: the gaze that wants a me who is not me. Infidelity covets another’s body; plastic surgery sculpts my body for another’s desire. The 3.2 million Mom demanded buys that gaze.
Who does Mom see in the mirror? Her son’s lover? Her son’s other half? Or the desire she abandoned thirty years ago?
I don’t know. Only that night, while I was with Young-jin, I thought of Mom’s surgery fee. At that moment the feeling that I loved him wavered. No—not love, but jealousy. Jealousy that Mom might own the body I wanted, that I could never escape her.
A Final Question
If your mother—or the mother you will become—reached out to your lover, could you forgive her? Or would you lie in that man’s bed in her stead?
That night I pushed Young-jin’s hand away and went home. Mom was still on the operating table. A fresh white bandage wound across her belly. I loosened it carefully. Beneath lay the very scar that once gave birth to me.