Page 104 of Here One Moment

“Well, I am not a saju reader.” Michelle looked alarmed.

“No, I wasn’t—I was just mentioning—please go on,” said Mum.

Sometimes Mum and Michelle couldn’t quite get their footwork right in the dance of conversation.

Michelle told us saju readers can determine if couples are compatible by checking their “gunghap”: marital harmony. If they are not compatible they’re advised to change their first name, something that millions of Koreans have done and continue to do. She said some couples, if told they had bad gunghap, and if they were serious believers, would regretfully separate.

“I wonder if David and I are cosmically compatible,” I mused.

“Of course!” cried my mother and mother-in-law at the same time, and I saw them exchange secret sparkly looks. Now they were in perfect sync. They both very badly wanted grandchildren.

—

A week after our first wedding anniversary David came home in an excellent mood, his cheeks flushed.

He’d done a night dive off Shelly Beach and seen a wobbegong shark, apparently a good thing. Then he’d been out for dinner at a new restaurant with his diving friends.

Meanwhile, I’d eaten dinner with his parents, played chess with his dad, looked at old photo albums with his mum, and then the three of us had watched a documentary together while we drank tea and ate Korean honey cookies that I had made myself in Michelle’s kitchen, with minimal supervision. They were good. I was improving. David ate three of my honey cookies and kindly but erroneously said they were better than his mother’s while I told him more than he probably needed to know about the documentary I’d watched with his parents. It was about Spitfire pilots.

Then we stopped talking and sat in our favorite corner of our sectional sofa, draped all over each other, limbs overlapping, hands entwined, my nose in his neck, his nose in my hair.

David brushed my hair out of my eyes and cleared his throat.

I thought he was going to say something of a sexual nature. My body was already responding on cue.

Instead he told me we were moving to Perth next month.

The phrase “the rug was pulled out from under me” aptly describes the disorientation I felt.

“Blindsided” also works.

David explained that he would be undertaking three years of advanced cardiology training at the Royal Perth Hospital. We would rent out this house, and the hospital had already found us somewhere to live, by the beach. It was going to be a wonderful adventure. New friends! New restaurants! New diving sites!

I asked why this move to the other side of the country was being presented to me as a fait accompli.

“Because it is one, Cherry,” he said. “I just want to be honest withyou.”

He said it would be wrong to pretend there was any possibility of a compromise. Moving to Perth was a necessary stepping stone in his career. It had to happen.

I said, “What about my career?” I was still working for the National Parks and Wildlife. I will admit I had thought it was probably time to do something different, especially as Baashir was leaving soon to go back on his travels, but I’d been distracted by getting married. It’s a distracting thing to do.

He said, “Come on now, Cherry. You’re not interested in a career. You could stay at that desk forever, happily adding and subtracting.”

“Adding and subtracting?”

“All right, and multiplying and dividing.” He grinned hopefully, as if I would find this witty, which I did not.

He said, “Anyway, we’re going to start trying for a baby soon.”

“Are we?” I said. I didn’t remember discussing this either. Was it also a fait accompli? I guessed it was; certainly our mothers considered it one, and I longed to make them both happy.

“I don’t want to move to Perth,” I said. “I really don’t.”

I’m sure you know what happened. When a man’s decision has momentum, it can rarely be stopped.

We moved to Perth.

Chapter 90

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