They say that Francesco Cossiga’s hair went white in a single night, when the government decided not to negotiate with the Red Brigades for Aldo Moro’s life. It was the only case of overnight aging I’d known of before this morning, when I saw in the mirror that the skin beneath my eyes, which was tight yesterday, now resembled torn fabric. I felt betrayed, but by what I couldn’t say. And yet I could say because it’s happening to me. This sort of collapse had to be due to stress, not age. I’d done my due diligence against time. I never went to bed without taking off my makeup. I won’t deny that I forgot a few times at first, but in the 80s we didn’t have two-step makeup removers that get rid of mascara in a few strokes. When I’d come downstairs for breakfast in the morning with streaks under my eyes, my mother, who applied her precious Olay like a sentry marking his paces, would tell me I didn’t take care of myself. Her words irritated me, but at the time I still didn’t understand aging is a sort of disease. When I was 20, I read an interview where Madonna said that even on tour she never forgot to take off her makeup before bed and I felt like I’d been accused of a hit and run. I think that was when I finally lost faith in my collagen’s immortality. If Louise Veronica could be bothered to wash off her mascara after an exhausting concert, who was I to say no? As the years went by I made other errors, but surely none of them could explain that morning’s disaster. I put on a surgical mask to go downstairs and get the mail so my face was at least a little hidden. I would’ve avoided doing even this, but the package I’d been waiting for had arrived and I couldn’t wait another minute to have him.
As I’d requested, the courier had left him at the wineshop downstairs, and I immediately threw out the packaging so they wouldn’t notice anything when they returned. I’d already decided where I would hide him until tomorrow. Out of his box, he sits at the bottom of a large wardrobe in the bedroom. I hated the idea of putting him there in the dark with his face turned toward the wood, but no one in the house would understand if I let them see him. I can already hear the conversation that would follow. “This is Park Jimin. Starting from today he’ll be staying with us, is that a problem?” It’d be fine with my husband. He’d tease me, that’s for sure. But I know his weaknesses and they aren’t much more dignified. It’s my son’s face I don’t think I could bear. I don’t know when he started looking at me in that judgmental way. I imagine it was at the beginning of high school, when teenagers choose which parent they don’t want to be like. It was easy for him: he only had me. I’d like to tell him that desiring things doesn’t automatically make them true, that he looks more like me than he imagines, but he stopped listening to me a long time ago. Now he no longer asks for anything and instead just presents me with a fait accompli, like this story of living on his own for university. Same city, different houses, just so it’s clear to me he’s not leaving because of the distance. He moves out next week, but I’m not surprised. I’d long been preparing for the day he’d feel grown enough to try feeding me the rhetoric of independence. It happened like it did to Cossiga and the skin around my eyes: it all came crashing down suddenly, and one can never be prepared enough for a crash. Making choices is always the same as getting old, but it’s only at nineteen that the world still grants you the indulgence to call it growing up.
2
While my son and husband are still asleep I make pancakes. I’d taken up this habit about a month ago, after a trip to America when the three of us had breakfast together every morning, coffee and maple syrup at a surprisingly good place near Grand Central Station, where my son, with his Roman English, asked the astonished waiters for a cock (he meant Coke). During those long breakfasts we cherished each bite as if we’d never had sugar. Comfort food spots know that travelers need one last good taste to want to return to, and in that café every pancake was designed to stick like a grappling hook to our stomachs’ long memories. My husband had prepared an itinerary that included galleries and monuments that were “must-sees” according to all the guides, but we didn’t listen to him. We were in New York for the first time and I thought it seemed better to wander at random through the streets of Manhattan. Not knowing where to go is a good way of getting everywhere. I remember those American days as a happy return to the old days, when we didn’t measure the exhaustion of living together with furtive glances at a smartphone. When we got back, I liked to delude myself that replicating the café’s caloric menu could evoke that same joyful feeling of being overseas. But the concept of vacation exists precisely because that magic doesn’t belong to everyday life. We still like pancakes, but every time the door closes behind my husband and son and I sit at home waiting for them to come back, there’s no doubt who’s the train and who’s the station in our family.
Today, the turn of the keys didn’t make me sad.
I’d been waiting since dawn to be alone and get settled with Jimin. I’ll take him from the wardrobe, assemble him, and put him in the middle of the living room so I can look at him from the comfort of the couch. He’ll be so pretty in the morning light. The man is breathtaking even in two dimensions, as radiant and smooth as Joseon porcelain. This business of aging doesn’t touch him, he’ll look sixteen even when he’s forty. They say online that this infinite youth is all thanks to a rice-based diet, but a tour of Vercelli would be enough to tell you that the Internet can’t always be trusted. I tell myself three times a day that Asians have a genetic advantage over us that’ll always be beyond our reach so I don’t buy into the illusion and devour bowls of basmati. Jimin won the genetic lottery, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for him, either. He’s 5’7”, well above the national average, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling short, shorter than the rest of his group. It’s always the context that makes things difficult. I’m barely 5’3”, so the life-size cardboard looks to me like the totem of a very tall child. I’ll take some selfies with him as soon as I get him all put together, but I won’t post them in the fandom forums. I’ve seen what happens to women my age who try to share their passion with young girls. The girls are vicious and write whatever it takes to make you feel like you don’t belong. They label you with English words like cringe, which means more than just “embarrassing”: cringe tells you, with contempt, that there are things you can no longer do or be. Cringe means that sixteen-year-olds find it grotesque that their mothers still want to live. My son has never said that word to me, but I have good reason to believe he’s thought it many times. Jimin would never, he’s too nice, or maybe just too Korean. Over there, respect for elders is a fundamental part of education, for better or worse.
The photo they used for the cutout isn’t one of his best, but I didn’t have much of a choice. It’s from the era when he wore his hair bleached, a very chic color that only suits fair skin like his, and he wears a silver bomber jacket over skin-tight black pants. He’s very thin, 130 pounds at most. In interviews he confides that he’s always hungry and sneaks food secretly from his agency whenever he can, only to worry that he’ll end up with a “giant ass,” whatever it means to have a giant ass in a part of the world that considers a size six a large. The picture is taken from above and doesn’t do him justice, he wears very little makeup and looks pale, but it’s the poor print quality that washes him out. It’s my fault. In my rush, I’d ordered a substitute from a print site that does a little bit of everything, even Al Bano’s hardcovers. I don’t think they even pay for the image rights, but they guaranteed the fastest delivery and I needed it right away. It’s not like I could expect high fidelity for less than 50 euros. Besides, what cardboard could reproduce the aura that radiates around this boy? Whether dancing or singing, laughing or sleeping, Jimin is a perfect blend of lightness and power, he’s energetic and elegant, seductive and childlike. I hate it when people call him sexually ambiguous just to avoid saying faggot. If someone mixes different behaviors a little, people label him. It’s cultural xenophobia, but they try to pass it off as a compliment. The Internet is filled with videos of men reacting to his performances, with titles like “Here’s Jimin making men question their sexuality,” seemingly lighthearted ways of blaming him for the fact that you can’t bring yourself to admit you like men. The Jimin effect, they call it. Once you Jimin, you’ll never Jimout. I hope that behind the label’s overprotective filter he’s never seen this stuff. The very idea he could be saddened by it bothers me.
3
Yesterday we were together all afternoon, we watched TV, and just before my husband and son returned I made a mortadella sandwich and ate it on the sofa. I thought I’d crash into bed that evening, but I didn’t sleep a wink. Knowing Jimin is behind that door is an electrifying, almost guilty feeling, like those movies where the wife shoves a guy in the closet and then says to her husband: honey, I can explain, it’s not what it seems. If they accidentally opened the wardrobe they’d see him, but they’ve never done that. Like a baby in the womb, Jimin could stay there forever, safe, if I don’t take him out. Not even children in utero can be entirely trusted. I had a seven-month pregnancy. Even my son had an easy move. Jimin would never do anything like that. He came to stay. To be sure, I’d prefer him where I could see him, but at the end of the day closets aren’t so bad. Spending the night in there is a decent compromise. Isn’t it through a wardrobe that you get to Narnia? Emerald landscapes, houses illuminated under a blanket of snow, a magical world full of surprises. I’ll sleep tonight holding onto this thought. I’ll imagine that the bottom of the wardrobe tapers off, becomes transparent and then passable, where Jimin can see a parallel paradise, green and full of beautiful surprises, without witches or treacherous fauns. I hope this fantasy universe makes up for the fact that I couldn’t take him out of the closet today because my son decided to study at home. I didn’t expect it. In the middle of the morning, after getting up late as usual, he sat in the living room with earbuds on and his computer in front of him, immersed in a world from which I’m cut out. He doesn’t usually study at home because my coming and going, as he calls it, doesn’t let him concentrate. At first, before he preferred to go and prepare for exams elsewhere, I don’t deny that I hovered, but little things, nothing really intrusive. I’d ask him if he needed something and if he didn’t answer I’d prepare him a nice plate, two dry biscuits, a few slices of ham, a cup of strawberries and sugar, leaving it on the table so as not to disturb him. Who doesn’t like a snack? He’d eat it, he always ate all of it, but it was made clear to me that these attentions weren’t enough to excuse my having violated his space. Yet today I felt uncomfortable. When I realized he wasn’t leaving the house, I went back to the bedroom and closed the door. I thought about pulling Jimin out and propping him up in the room, hanging out with him for a while, listening to some music together, but the thought of my son being there, rushing in for whatever reason, stopped me. Pointless worry: he never entered.
4
I didn’t sleep last night, either. The idea that you could go from the wardrobe to Narnia was no comfort. It was too hard imagining an undergrowth full of fireflies while being here in the suffocating heat. The idea of Jimin shut up the entire night between four planks of wood had me struggling for breath even with the half-open windows. When my husband fell asleep I got up and opened the wardrobe door a crack, just enough to let in some air. Not much, of course, but something, just enough for him to breathe and me to fall asleep. But at three my husband got up to use the toilet, and in the semidarkness he collided into the protruding door. I heard him curse, and when I turned on the light he scowled at me in his underwear in front of the wide-open wardrobe. “Are you leaving the fucking thing open for me?” I wanted to snap back at him, but all I could think was that he’d only have to shift his gaze 45 degrees to see Jimin at the back of the closet. So I didn’t. He glared at me a bit before his hydraulic urgency got the best of him and forced him to make his way back to the toilet. As soon as he left I ran to close the door, though I was certain I’d left it open just an inch before going to sleep. Could it have opened wide enough to bump in the night? Impossible, unless the hinges were loose, but in the morning I checked them carefully in the light and they closed regularly with their little magnetic click. I just have to be more careful in the future.
Today the house was all mine and Jimin stayed with me for as long as he could. After doing the housekeeping we watched hours of the group’s performances on YouTube, mostly fancams of him. And there are hundreds. These little fangirls film everything, but I never cease to be amazed by his duality: he’s so shameless on stage, so shy off it. When we got tired of watching TV I took him to the kitchen and while I prepared dinner we chatted a little about the group’s breakup. I know they don’t like that word. They prefer to call it as “a break to work on personal projects,” but I’m not a 17-year-old girl who needs everything to be dressed up with half-truths. I know what they want to say with that pitiful formulation. I’m worried about him. He’s a delicate vocalist with a unique timber, but unlike the others in the group he’s never had the charisma of a soloist. He dances better than most of the others and has an unparalleled grace—the legendary Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu said he inspired some of his choreography—but there aren’t solo dancers in pop music. What will he do if they break up? He hasn’t been able to give me an answer, but we’ll have plenty of time to talk about it. Even hotter temperatures are announced for tonight. I’ll open the door again, but just so. It’s a risk: if my husband wakes up again, he could get curious. But I couldn’t bear the thought of Jimin in there, completely in the dark.
5
I passed another night with almost no sleep. After four nights of insomnia I didn’t have the courage to look at myself in the mirror. I imagined that there was nothing salvageable about the situation around my eyes. “But you look so young,” my husband insisted, that type of well-meaning lie that only ends up making him barely credible even when he’s telling the truth. Out of a sense of obligation I bought melatonin but didn’t take it. It was a trap. It would lull me into an initial sleep that wouldn’t last, and I’d find myself with my eyes nailed to the ceiling at three a.m. while my husband’s nose buzzed like the fan of an AC unit. The house was hot, but the temperature in the wardrobe must have been unbearable. I think that’s why, when I did manage to doze off a bit, I had a horrible nightmare. Jimin was inside the closet, but he wasn’t alone, he was curled up with something alive, something dark and evil that threatened him. In the dream I sensed that it was there with him and breathing, terrifying him. I don’t know how this creature got into the wardrobe, but the answer is so clear now that I should’ve thought of it sooner: we’re also the Narnia of some other. I woke up at two and went straight to the wardrobe to catch the creature, whatever it was, but when I opened the door there was only Jimin. As I closed the door, taking care that it clicked shut, I heard something outside in the hall. I went out and found my son, gazing at me sleepily but severely.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you up so late?”
“I could ask you the same.”
“I got up to take a piss.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“You didn’t take melatonin?”
“I’d rather not, it’ll become a habit.”
“If you can’t sleep, take it. Your face is scary.”
(He speaks the truth.)
“Are you my mother?”
“A son can’t worry?”
I couldn’t help but smile and instinctively gave him a caress as I continued toward the bathroom. I thought he’d pull away, but he didn’t. With his gray t-shirt, red boxers, and his curls crushed on one side from the pillow, he struck me as helpless, like when he was little. Even after all these years I still ask myself where he got all that blond on his head, so white it looks bleached, a flare that other children lose after a few years. When I got back to bed the light in his room was off, but I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid of dreaming again of Jimin with that crouched thing in the dark. When it was light out, I got up in silence: everything was the same, except the wardrobe door was open.
6
I finished packing the boxes of clothing my son had to take with him that afternoon. I packed only what he would need for the season. It wasn’t like he was leaving forever. It was only for a year of university, one of the thousands of many houses he’ll inhabit throughout his life. His home will remain this one. He’ll pick up his things with his friends, but he had class in the morning and left early. I asked Jimin if he wanted to be with me while I did this tedious work. He’s used to the disciplined life of an idol, little sleep, early wakeups, training and rehearsals, music video shootings, fan meetings, interviews, performances, constant traveling, cameras always on. My life must seem very peaceful to him in comparison, and a temporary move, which upsets me so much, much for him seem utterly trivial. As I folded sweatshirts we talked again about the hiatus and his future projects, but he seemed fine about all that. He told me about the solo album he wants to make before leaving for the military, the theme song he’s writing for a TV show, collaborations with other artists, advertising contracts, many things. Is it possible I underestimated his capacity to evolve? Maybe he’s better equipped to attempt a solo career than I give him credit for, but if he wasn’t, would he really tell me? I didn’t ask. You have to be sure you really want to know the answers when asking questions. I felt bad putting him in the closet in the early afternoon, but I couldn’t risk having my son and his friends see it. They arrived around six, took the boxes and loaded them in the car in less than an hour. At seven the house was empty again, just enough time to prepare dinner before my husband returned from his studio. Though I smiled as I walked them to the door, all of them hurried and excited to get settled elsewhere, I was a little disappointed. I had defrosted three steaks. I didn’t realize that our last dinner before the move would be yesterday’s.
7
Last night my husband wanted to make love. He must have thought I needed it, I imagine he thought it would reinforce the idea that there’s still a family in this house, that our ties persist even if “the boy,” as he calls him, is gone. To comfort him I let myself be comforted, this is sometimes necessary. It was a nice thought and even a good fuck, though I had the uncomfortable feeling of being pitied the whole time. I think he sees me as someone who can’t accept change. A woman who gives birth to a child and raises him alone learns to live with change every day of her life, but he only understands this up to a certain point. By the time he came along my son and I were already there. When we finished, he fell asleep immediately, he never has problems sleeping, but I stayed awake. As we had sex I worried that the closet door was open and Jimin was listening. Even if he was, we aren’t a wild couple. The walls of the house are thin and we’ve learned to be discreet. Now there will be no reason to be, but I’m still glad we respected the tradition of the silent fuck. Later that night, I opened the wardrobe. I stood before it in the dim light of the room, and Jimin and I looked at each other for a few minutes. I felt sad as I closed the door. I can’t stand being there for so long anymore. I didn’t sleep that night. I’d have many things to discuss with him. As I laid there awake I counted the cobwebs on the ceiling lit up by the lamplight that filtered in from the street and listened to the bell tower tolling each hour of the night. When the sun finally rose and I got up to go make pancakes, the closet door was open again.
8
On Saturdays my husband doesn’t go to the studio and we have lunch at my parents’. Even if I didn’t want to, it seemed appropriate to respect the ritual. I don’t want him thinking I’m incapable of overcoming this. When he thinks I can’t hear him on the phone, he insists on calling it “empty nest syndrome.” My girl friends agree with him, not because he’s right, but because of the mysterious mechanism of maternage through which, during domestic squabbles, a friend’s partner ends up being more understood than the friend herself. You have to understand, they told me, he’s confused, he doesn’t recognize you anymore, you’re always nervous, you unload on him. Take your menopause drops and meet him halfway, poor thing, he has already done so much. That “so much” consisted, I imagine, of the fact that he’d married me even though I already had a kid. And it’s because of this generosity, I suppose, that the fact that I’m sick only matters because it makes him feel bad. I won’t listen to this bullshit. Let them take their own drops, go to their therapists to agonize over everything, sign up for yoga and ikebana classes, book the acupuncturist, convert to Buddhism, swallow all the necessary pills, I’ve never judged them for their anesthesia. But I won’t pretend my pain is a disease that I need to shut up about, just so everyone else can feel comfortable. Even if none of them agreed to understand what I’m going through, I still won’t be alone: I have Jimin. Sometimes I think that he’s all I need to feel understood. As the car zips along the Casilina towards the countryside where my parents live, his voice from the stereo fills the car with a sweetness that is a remedy in itself. I wanna be with you / And I stay with you / Just like the stars shining bright / You’re glowing once more. “What is this song?” my husband asked me, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gearbox, relaxed enough to be curious about its background. “A soundtrack,” I replied, “Korean stuff.” We listened quietly, peacefully, until we reached our destination, as Jimin’s glass-blown voice traveled with us. My mother had prepared my husband’s favorite dish, baked pasta with meatballs. Luckily, the weekly interrogation was monopolized by my sister and her husband, whose illness, though perfectly curable, was bad enough to make any other hardship appear laughable.
“How are you all?” my mother always asks, as if moods were just one of the many things that married couples share.
“Good, mamma, we’re alone now, he’s started university and we’re resettling.”
“How beautiful when they grow up,” my father said, wiping the gravy-smeared blade of his knife on the bread, “it gives you a sense of the life investment you’ve made. Everything being realized, seeing lives grow. You don’t feel so useless.”
I could’ve disagreed, but I stopped trying to make my parents understand me when I left home 25 years ago. It’s different with my sister.
“Do you think I feel so worthless because I don’t have kids to watch grow up?” she asked me as we did the dishes. “How come? You married a big boy who’ll never leave home, you’ll never suffer from empty nest syndrome.” We laughed with our hands in the sink foam, but we were a strange and pitiful diptych, she young and already filled with regrets and I old and still with pretensions. Looking at her profile, her toned face and the well-spread makeup on her compact skin, I didn’t feel the usual envy. On the contrary, I felt the ten years that prevented us from being on equal footing when we were younger vanish. Back in the car, I put on the same playlist and my husband, tired with food and family drama, didn’t ask any questions. Right by your side / I’ll keep walking wherever you go / You’ll live in me forever / Breathing deep, into me. When we got home, the wardrobe door was open. Unless you want me to believe doors open by themselves, there’s only one explanation.
9
Tonight I entered the wardrobe.
I didn’t turn on the lights. I knew how to avoid making noise even in the dark. It’s as big as I’d thought. I’ve been taking measurements for days to figure out if we could both fit comfortably inside. I laid down a folded blanket to make it soft and crouched over it, hugging the pillow I keep in there for guests. I was careful to set the alarm to go off before my husband woke up. Jimin was there against the back of the closet and I leaned in, too. I closed both doors and in the silence I felt my heart beat faster. It didn’t seem hotter to me, rather it was as if there was a small current of fresh air inside the wardrobe, an unsuspected change from outside. I wanted to stay awake, but in the end I must’ve found the right position, because sleep took over and I rested better than I had in days. When my phone vibrated, I woke up reluctantly. Though I was a bit stiff as I got out of the closet, I felt strangely refreshed. In the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, I wasn’t afraid that I might see someone who was no longer me.
“Did you sleep well?” my husband asked me at breakfast.
Maple syrup dripped onto the pancakes.
“A fairy tale.”
