{"id":2990,"date":"2023-04-30T02:36:14","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T02:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/?page_id=2990"},"modified":"2023-04-30T02:51:47","modified_gmt":"2023-04-30T02:51:47","slug":"the-virus-of-elegance-by-christine-kwon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/the-virus-of-elegance-by-christine-kwon\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Virus of Elegance” by Christine Kwon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
        Sometimes, when I\u2019m with my father, I find myself hoping that Uncle Roberto were my dad instead. \n\tMy father doesn\u2019t walk straight-on; he leads with the left side of his body, dragging the right side like a corpse. He doesn\u2019t walk in a straight line, either. To go between two places on the same street, he\u2019ll walk in zig-zags to double the distance. When he walks in the woods, it\u2019s like he\u2019s walking onto another plane, another universe in the leaves. When I lose sight of him, my instinct is to look up, as if he might have floated into the trees. \n\tHe is quiet, exceedingly quiet. You can mention how America is on fire and the sun is blocked in the west, or how an entire species of primate has disappeared from the jungle, or even that you, his only daughter, have just gotten engaged\u2014and he\u2019ll sit there with his chin in his hand.   \n\tMy friends have described him as \u201cunnerving.\u201d When I was a child, I was told he was \u201cscary.\u201d Other parents took note; I was invited, never visited. \n\tPeople say he is the most brilliant philosopher alive today. In Europe and Japan, he\u2019s treated like a god. I admit that in his books lives an eloquence that must be an effect of his abstinence from everyday interaction. But when I was a kid, how I hated it. It\u2019s only now that I\u2019ve lived a little more that I see that he is merely preserving himself, like a monk that retreats into the sweet darkness of a temple. \n\tWhen I ask my mother, a Dutch Argentinian stunner of a woman, and brilliant herself, what she saw in my father, she says, what the world sees or his theories on life. Now you see why my mother is difficult. \nIt was always a wonder to me how she could have snagged such a disinterested man. And why would she resign herself to such a life?\n\tA tall, strapping woman who perpetually looks like she should be mounting a horse.\n\tMy uncle, Roberto, is her twin.\n\tThe two of them side by side are an advertisement in good DNA.\n\tRoberto is a tennis star. Because of him, I grew up knowing the taste of glamour, of the US Open and Wimbledon and white terry and stars over a black lawn. \n\tHis tan was the antidote to my father\u2019s spectral presence. \n\n                                   \u2206\n\n\tIt was my own grandmother who revealed the family secret to me. We were talking in the kitchen of her wooden summer house in the Hague. She was chopping cucumbers. I must have been twelve or so, old enough to be careful around, for I understood everything happening around me. \n\u201cYou don\u2019t mean your uncle is there now?\u201d\n\t\u201cStaying?\u201d\n\u201cFor how long?\u201d\n\u201cAnd where\u2019s your father?\u201d\n\u201cDoes he stay like that, often?\u201d\n\u201cAnd no one else?\u201d\nIt was the way she chopped\u2014as if trying to sever some invisible bough from her chest\u2014that tipped me off, and the abruptness with which she shipped me back to America when I was supposed to stay the whole summer. There was something improper and wrong about my uncle and mother being alone together.\nIt was my mother\u2019s disappointment and my uncle\u2019s unusual coldness when I got back that solidified the idea in my head.  \n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you just go up,\u201d Uncle Roberto said, tapping his cigar against the crystal ashtray. Usually, he would have taken hold of me, picked me up and twirled me around in his arms so that my legs flung out like streamers behind me. \n\u201cI don\u2019t know what you will do all summer now,\u201d my mother said, her teeth grit.\n\tI had found them in the dining room, at the long oak table, sitting side by side. My mother\u2019s hand was encasing my uncle\u2019s on the table. A little obvious, I thought. \n\tWhen I had finally entered the room, my mother had slowly, reluctantly, removed her hand, as if giving the act great consideration. A fire was bristling behind them; its warmth made me sway. \n\tAt last, I had cried out, \u201cMother!\u201d and stepped from the shadows of the hall.\n\tThe word came out all wrong; it sounded more like J\u2019accuse. \n\n                                   \u2206\n\t\n\tThough my uncle went back to treating me as the beloved niece\u2014he had no children\u2014I never felt easy around him again. I was repulsed when he touched me. It didn\u2019t seem right, to have the hands that touched my mother, touching me. I went back and forth, too. Was he my father? Or just my gross incest-uncle? What if he decided to incest me? I didn\u2019t like to think about it. \n\tI tried to become closer to my father, but there was nothing I could say that got his attention.\n                                                                                                   \n                                   \u2206\n\n\tSometimes, shopping with my mother, or over lunch at a nice, breezy bistro, I contemplate her blonde, open face, and want to confess. I know about you and Uncle Roberto, come clean, I won\u2019t condemn or blame you. It would be a relief to know. \n\tBut my mother\u2019s gaze is cold. It sweeps down you like a broom, removing all that she doesn\u2019t like, and so often it distracts me from delving deeper into her. \n\tWhen DNA testing\u2014for ancestry questions\u2014began to take off, and there were all these commercials of people finding out they were Irish or Australian aboriginal when they thought they were only American, I became obsessed with getting a test myself. \n\tBut I was embarrassed, too. For it to be printed on paper like that, to acknowledge knowing that I was a child of incest, is a very serious thing. What if I ever wanted to run for politics? Or be the head of something? Would I have to disclose that my mother\u2019s brother was my father? Besides, I was about to get married. Josh is squeamish. \n\tI needed to know, but my source had to be private. \n\tI honed in on my grandmother, who seemed vulnerable. She liked to talk, to tell stories. By the time I saw her again, she was lying in her grave.\n\n                                    \u2206\n\n\tMy mother is especially cheerful around Christmas. Not on Christmas day, but for the month leading up to it. She\u2019ll expend an unusual amount of effort in decorating the house, a black, Victorian monstrosity that she\u2019s inherited from a twice-removed uncle. \n\tSinging along to the Christmas songs she blares, she even bakes cookies.\n\tOn Christmas day, she wakes up morose, grumpy. The spell of Christmas is broken, somehow, by its arrival. I\u2019m afraid to touch her with a ten-foot pole. \nUp until the Eve, it\u2019s a good time to ask her anything.\n\tAnd so, this Christmas Eve, I decided to talk to her. She was meeting my fianc\u00e9e for the first time, and this too worked in my favor. Josh, I thought, would be a wonderful buffer. \n\tWhen the time came, I was in a strange, exalted state. It\u2019s not every day that you find out the story of your origins. It was after dinner and she was rummaging through a pile of gifts to fashion a stocking for Josh. She extracted something small from my father\u2019s stocking, something long from my uncle\u2019s stocking, and something flat, probably a book, from mine. \n\tThe effort touched me; I took a long sip of the hot toddy I was nursing.\n\t\u201cMom,\u201d I said. It was a strong start.\n\tShe didn\u2019t look up; she was gluing JOSH onto, I noticed, the stocking that used to be our dead dog\u2019s.\n\t\u201cYou know how I look just like Uncle Roberto?\u201d\n\t\u201cYes?\u201d\n\tI didn\u2019t really know how to proceed from there. I couldn\u2019t just ask, Is he my father? Not with the sudden atmosphere in the room, like a gleaming and cold pair of scissors had appeared out of nowhere and was hovering between us, ready to cut the cord.\n\tI was giving up, smiling idiotically; holding out my mug as if to cheer, though she was sitting too far away. \n\tMy father, whom I had not noticed was in the room\u2014he must have slunk in, in his silent way\u2014laughed loudly, which made me scream.\n\tWhen I turned around, his face had returned to its immobility; it was hard to fathom he had been the source of the sound; in my memories, it was Satan himself who laughed.\n\n                                   \u2206\n\n\tThe next morning, I found my father at the breakfast table. \n\tMy mother was lying ill in bed.\n\t\u201cShe\u2019s got the bug,\u201d father said, after setting down his buttered toast. \n\tI stayed silent, afraid to disturb this new event\u2014we were communicating! \n\t\u201cA nasty little bug. Although in some ways, I find it quite poetic, too. You can\u2019t help what\u2019s in your blood. Beautiful, really, if you think what\u2019s lurking in all our bodies, waiting for the day.\u201d \n\tI was stunned and confused; what did that mean? Was I to die young? \n\t\u201cThe virus of elegance.\u201d \n\tMesmerized by Father\u2019s voice, feminine and trilling, I leaned over the breakfast table until my chest was hovering above the eggs.\n\t\u201cWhat virus?\u201d \n\tThen he told me the truth. I focused on the snow gently falling on the branches outside the window. A weak blue light streamed onto the dining room table like a puddle of detergent. When I tuned back in, father was still speaking.\n        He scraped his knife against a third slice of toast. He liked to butter all his toasts before beginning to eat. As intellectual as he was, he ate like a kindergartener, white bread, macaroni and butter\u2026I realized I had never really given my father a good think\u2014why did a grown man eat like that? \n\t\u201cAt Harvard, your mother and Roberto\u2014\u201d\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s enough,\u201d I said sharply. \nJosh had poked his timid head into the breakfast room. His hair was carefully combed and he was fully dressed though it was only six. \u201cMerry Christmas!\u201d he said. \n        Josh was Jewish and trying very hard. He had always planned on marrying Jewish, he liked to say, until he met me. I looked at my father, at the lit fire behind his chair, and out the bay windows again. I felt like I was coming down with something. \n\tCoughing weakly, I excused myself.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Christine Kwon<\/strong> is the author of A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue<\/em> (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2023), which won the Cowles Poetry Book Prize. Her short stories appear in Joyland Magazine, Louisiana Literature, and X-R-A-Y. She lives in New Orleans. Follow her on Instagram @theschooloflonging or at christinekwonwrites.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes, when I\u2019m with my father, I find myself hoping that Uncle Roberto were my dad instead. My father doesn\u2019t walk straight-on; he leads with the left side of his body, dragging the right side like a corpse. He doesn\u2019t walk in a straight line, either. To go between two places on the same street, … <\/p>\n
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