Happiness Falls

“Even before I saw the police uniforms through the peephole, I had the feeling of everything changing. Their flashing lights must have been on, the red-and-blue strobe beams slicing through the faux-sunset backdrop and setting my senses on edge. I don’t remember seeing the lights, but I must have. That’s the only explanation I have for what I did next. I scooped up the pile of Eugene’s dirty clothes and rushed to the laundry room to throw them in the washer with heavy-duty detergent. I pressed Start. As the doorbell rang again, I ran back to Eugene, whispered ‘come on,’ and led him into the bathroom. I turned on the shower and told him to get in. I put soap on a sponge and handed it to him, pointed to his fingernails. I mimed scrubbing, told him to scrub hard. Get everything off. Wash it away, clean.”

Kim employs vivid imagery, which highlights the striking visual of the police lights and the sunset, but the passage undercuts the reality of those images: The phrase “flashing lights must have been on” suggests that they maybe weren’t, and the “faux-sunset backdrop” feeds into the motif of masks (See: Symbols & Motifs) to paint the sunset as a fake theatrical prop. Similarly, the fact that the instruction to “get everything off. Wash it away, clean” is in indirect discourse rather than in dialogue suggests that Mia is unsure exactly what she is saying in her heightened emotional state.

“Details were jumping out at me, from the way I grabbed salt at breakfast and Dad said, ‘Mia, you should taste it before you assume it needs salt’ (trying to teach me one last life lesson?), to him making real bacon instead of our usual tofu bacon (a last-meal treat, knowing cholesterol issues would soon be moot?). But even more those specifics I noticed only in retrospect there was a different feel to the breakfast as a whole—a bit off, or rather, too on, everything 5 percent brighter than usual. Eugene’s smile, for one, seemed less nebulous, directed at and connected to specific comments and people, his happiness rising and waning in waves rather than remaining steady at one level. Once, he laughed at a joke Mom told. He often laughed when everyone else laughed, but that morning, I noticed him looking at Mom directly, his eyes in focus, like he got the joke and was laughing at that rather than due to some contagion effect.”

The use of parentheticals in this passage highlights the numerous possibilities of Adam’s disappearance. Further, these syntactical choices indicate an additional layer of hindsight, as Mia thinks about these events after the fact. Ascribing Eugene’s sometimes involuntary laughter to a “contagion effect” has a dual meaning, emphasizing the novel’s pandemic setting and undercutting the idea that Eugene understands what is happening around him.

“Eugene made that sound again the following morning right as he woke up. It was as unbearably intense as the previous night, but there was a warbly plaintiveness, too, like a farewell aria in a changeuk, a traditional Korean opera. I heard in it what I couldn’t see in his smile the previous night: the pain of witnessing Harmonee’s death but being unable to tell anyone, the grief and fear—an entire requiem in a single dissonant, frenzied note.”

The simile compares Eugene’s scream to a farewell aria in Korean opera, which underscores how much Mia relies on her insightful understanding of music to process the complexity of the emotions Eugene conveying through his vocalizations. Vivid word choice, like “warbly,” “dissonant,” and “frenzied” add sensory detail to the reader’s idea of the sound being conveyed.

“Eugene wasn’t just glancing toward the direction of the screen. He was reading. He didn’t look the way most people did, with their eyes moving left to right and up to down, but more like he was taking a picture of all the words together as a whole: his eyes fixed on the screen, squinting as if to bring the words into focus, and then, click, a hard blink, that smile of his remaining on his lips but accompanied by a look of pure confusion and panic in his eyes, around his eyes, his eyebrows rising and rising, the wrinkles across his forehead deepening at a matching rate.”

Eugene reads with extreme physicality, using most of his face to facilitate the process. This description characterizes Eugene’s experience of language as almost an object and his heightened emotional state. It also shows Mia’s changing perspective, as she pays more attention to his movements without dismissing the idea that he may be comprehending more than she realized he could.

“The Q hadn’t meant anything to me before. There were so many things it could be without the context of the first word: quotes, quarter, quarantine, quorum, quiche, quick, quirk, quiet, quit, query, quibble, quantify, and on and on. But next to Happiness, the meaning of Q came to me right away. I blinked, and the words appeared in my head. Happiness Quotient.”

The list of “q” words dramatizes the quick progress of Mia’s thought. Paradoxically, she realizes that her father’s “Q” stands for quotient immediately, and thus doesn’t actually need to generate this list. However, she can’t resist considering the manifold possibilities, even despite her certainty that she can anticipate her father’s work and interests.

“A quick pause for a thought challenge: What’s your best guess as to why my mom believes in this idea? Is it because a) she’s Asian and this we-are-all-connected thing sounds Asian in a Kung-Fu-Panda ancient-Chinese-secret kind of way? Or b) you remembered her linguistics PhD, also remembered my earlier reference to Chomsky’s nativism, and figured she, like many linguistics PhDs, idolizes Chomsky? (Correct answer: b.)”

The use of footnotes combines a tangential, academic mode of writing with the mystery narrative genre. Kim also uses allusion to famed linguist Noam Chomsky to highlight Hannah’s experience and expertise, and to connect the concepts of this novel with real linguistic theories.

“Counterintuitive Case Study #2: The POW Paradox: US officers are prisoners of war in a horrific foreign camp for years. Who fares better and survives—optimistic or pessimistic POWs? Surprisingly, James Stockdale (vice admiral in the navy), POW for 7 years in N. Vietnam, wrote in his book that the most optimistic of his fellow POWs didn’t survive. They kept saying they’d be rescued soon, by Xmas, Easter, etc., and eventually died of a broken heart.”

Like footnotes, the inclusion of Adam’s notes and case studies in the narrative blends the missing-person story with other genres of writing: in this case, the documentation of scientific hypotheses and experiments. The use of abbreviations and casual tone emphasizes the fact that the notebook was written by Adam, for his own reference.

“It was our cakes. Both of them. Completely smashed up. Eugene was destroying them, one hand inside each cake, squeezing, mauling, smushing, clawing, and flinging all over. If he’d desperately wanted the cake and lost control shoveling it into his mouth, I might have understood. But it wasn’t that. It was like he hated everything the cakes stood for and wanted them gone from the world, like every morsel was an enemy that needed to be vanquished. Or, no, like we were the enemy, John and I, and he wanted to punish us. To destroy everything good in our lives.”

The use of specific, gestural imagery indicates the intensity of Mia’s memory, and how upsetting she found the situation at the time. The use of repeated gerunds creates immediacy, as if the movements of destroying the cake are ongoing.

“I sat across the table from Eugene, with Mom and John on either side of Eugene. Looking at this tableau—Eugene enveloped in the bright spotlight sunbeam, tiny sparkling strings of light piercing through the green veil of willow branches undulating back and forth in the summer breeze, cascading all around him as if dancing to the music from the iPad, Mom hugging Eugene, her arms tight around his body, her fingers combing his hair, smoothing it—if you were an outsider, you would think this was a carefree picnic of a beautiful, happy family.”

Natural imagery in this passage transports readers out of the bleak indoor settings of the police department and the detention center and into a peaceful, beautiful environment. Building on the motif of masks and the difference between appearance and reality, Mia imagines what her family looks like to an outside observer in this moment—happy and carefree, and not betraying any of the difficulties they are actually facing.

“Have you noticed how different things sound out loud versus inside your head? Sometimes you think something and it makes so much sense, seems brilliant, even, but once you speak or write it, the eloquence disappears. I used to blame it on things getting lost in verbalization, the inadequacy of words to fully capture abstract ideas, but I think it’s also that seeing/hearing the words triggers you to evaluate them, exposing flaws that the initial excitement blocked. It’s like when your friends say something judgmental about a new boyfriend, and in order to respond, you have to process and evaluate what they said, which often starts that painful process of removing the infatuation filter that previously blocked all his flaws from view.”

In this footnote, Kim uses second person to draw the reader into Mia’s thought process, which invites the reader to think through the same ideas. Alongside other references to Instagram, the word choice of “filter” connotes both an abstract sense of viewing a romantic prospect through an unrealistic lens, as well as the idea of visual manipulation of an image for social media.

“We talked about it later, Mom and me—why we didn’t try to communicate with Eugene immediately upon watching that first solar/Mia’s mouth video. ‘If this is real,’ Mom said, ‘if Eugene can really read and spell and communicate, that would mean he’s been trapped in there all along, just suffering. No one believing in him, treating him like a…’ ‘Bah-bo,’ I said. I hated that word, hated the memory of the time I associated with that word, and saying it out loud, it actually hurt, physically—a zap behind my eyeballs like the beginnings of a migraine—and the room seemed to tilt.”

The dialogue in this passage emphasizes Hannah and Mia’s shared fears about what it means that Eugene can communicate—the horror of realizing that he has been trapped without being able to make himself understood for years. They are so connected and on the same page that Mia finishes Hannah’s sentence. Kim also includes physical details, such as the migraine-like “zap” and the room tilting to emphasize how viscerally painful Mia finds the idea that Eugene has been forcibly silenced for his entire life.

“I had to laugh—at myself, my inane naivete. I should have known—I did know—that their declarations of devastation for their dear friend, the planning of virtual vigils, etc., were performative, like so much else on social media (like everything on social media). Of course their day wouldn’t actually be consumed with prayers for me, of course they weren’t literally crying for me, walking around with heavy hearts. But the time stamps proved it with such crushing clarity. They commented publicly on John’s post, and less than a minute later, in this private forum, they posted selfies with huge smiles, confetti, party hats framing looks of orgasmic joy plastered on their faces—it seemed lewd, like I should avert my eyes, the incontrovertible evidence punching me in the gut. It was anger and betrayal, but more than that, it was envy. For my family, the grief was ever-present and all-encompassing, whereas for everyone else, it was a choice.”

The complex syntax and run-on sentences in this passage mirror Mia’s layered thought process: her frustration with the falseness of social media, and with herself for reading too much depth into people’s ostensible sympathy. The phrase “selfies with huge smiles” emphasizes the performative aspect of social media, tying again to the novel’s interest in the performative and false nature of smiles.

“Mom was on the phone with the health department for more than five minutes (ten, if you include the hold wait time). Here’s what she find out about Eugene’s exposure: nothing. No name of the person who was sick (due to HIPPA medical privacy laws), no time when the exposure might have occurred (because disclosure of that information might enable us to figure out the COVID-positive person’s identity), no location (same), not even this person’s current condition, whether it was asymptomatic or dead or something in between.”

In this passage, Kim uses parenthetical sentence structure to emphasize the family’s frustration with the bureaucracy of the phone call, and the lack of information received. The contrasting word choice to describe the severity of the person’s condition—“asymptomatic or dead”—further emphasizes the family’s need for clear information, and their frustration at being unable to obtain it.

“**6/2020: Trip being postponed due to pandemic adds interesting wrinkle. On the one hand, the pandemic lowers family’s (and society’s) baseline such that we should get more pleasure out of travel (and restaurants, plays, etc.). On the other hand, because those outings are more rare, we might place unrealistically high expectations on them. Will the lower baseline and higher expectations cancel each other out?”

Kim characterizes Adam in his absence through what he writes about in his notebook. The tone is curious and focused on detailed thoughts about how events will affect his family’s happiness, which indicates his devotion to his family. The use of “we” and omission of articles, as in the phrase “adds interesting wrinkle,” emphasize the personal and quick nature of these entries, which are intended for Adam’s own reference rather than to be read by others.

“The woman said, Oh my God, what is that?, which I’d thought was in response to the screams, but right then, a huge flock of black birds flew up from the jagged cliffs and tree branches, making this beautiful fluttering, as if you were looking at a painting and a whole swath of trees you assumed were in the shade because of their dark leaves all shook and the darkness lifted like a pointillist special effect, the shadow rising into the air like smoke and ash, the chorus of caws and wing flaps drowning out Dad’s scream. Before the recording stopped and the video ended, a blur of images flashed by: the jagged cliffs in the distance, the churning water below, then a flip to the bright cerulean sky above, the black birds rising up and up and up.”

Kim provides vivid visual details in this passage through word choice and the simile of looking at a painting. The horror of what Mia is seeing—possibly Eugene killing Adam—makes her dissociate a bit; the birds provide a way to distance herself by imagining the scene as an example of pointillism, a painting technique that uses dots to build up an image. Likewise, the peaceful image of the “cerulean sky” contrasts the dire implication of Adam’s fall. The focus on visual and aesthetic details thus indicates cognitive dissonance, as Mia focuses on those details as a defense mechanism.

“We didn’t need to say the rest. It was easy to deduce from everything that came before and after, easy to see—in ourselves, in each other. Dad’s fingers tightly gripping Eugene’s arm, pulling, pulling, the gravel sliding his feet closer and closer to the unstable edge, and then the final effort, a last act of courage to save his son. An attempt at an even exchange, a body for a body: a huge tug hurling Eugene up and over onto safe ground, but the force required for the effort sliding Dad’s feet off and beyond the cliff’s edge, the two bodies crossing mid-air to change places, the terror of the fall overcome, overtaken, by the comforting knowledge that cushions him: Eugene is safe. He will live.”

Kim blends physical details about how John and Mia envision Adam’s fall with references to Adam’s paternal love for his son and relational ideas of exchange. The references to “a last act of courage,” “a body for a body,” and “comforting knowledge that cushions him” emphasize that this vision describes Adam’s fatal fall over the cliff face, while also giving his death meaning and characterizing him as a courageous and devoted father.

“It was a little strange watching this, what, in person, I might have called a verbal volley. But on Zoom, with both of them looking straight forward, side by side, it felt surreal. Staged. Neither of them blinking but instead of it looking like a staring contest, a power play. I wondered if their screens were frozen.”

Kim employs verisimilitude by referencing Zoom, and provides vivid detail about the surreal experience of human interaction in a virtual rather than face-to-face setting. Imagining the glitching software as displaying a staring contest rather than a frozen screen emphasizes the sense of pandemic stagnation, as the Parkson family waits for resolution both regarding what happened to Adam and what will happen to Eugene.

“My heartbeat, our collective breaths, the particles of air in the room, the faint phwats of the rain hitting the windows—everything slowed to match Eugene’s arm, the distance between the pencil tip and the letterboard narrowing inch by inch, second by second, as we waited to see what Eugene wanted to tell us.”

Corporeal details of the family’s collective breaths and Mia’s heartbeat, physical details like the particles of air, and onomatopoeia like “phwats” of rain emphasize the gravity of the moment. The repetition of “inch” and “second” foreshadow the agonizing suspense Mia will later describe as Eugene communicates one letter at a time.

“I JUST WANTED D 2 LET GO OF MY ARM HIS HAND HURT SO MUCH HIS SCREAM SO LOUD CANT STAND IT. I WISHED SO MUCH I COULD TALK SO I CAN YELL AT D TO JUST LET ME GO IT HURTS I CANT BREATH I CANT SEE I CANT HEAR I CANT CALM DOWN EVERYTHING SO LOUD & ALL WHITE & BLUE & IM SO SCARED I JUST SCREAMED SO I WONT HEAR ANYTHING ELSE. I FELL UP LIKE WHEN D THROWS ME IN AIR BUT MY FACE LANDED ON GROUND. I TRIED 2 OPEN EYES BUT SO MUCH DIRT. WAITED 4 D 2 HELP ME UP DON’T KNOW HOW LONG. I THOUGHT D HAND WAS AROUND MY ARM BUT I OPENED MY EYES & D WASNT THERE. HAND WAS GONE.”

Given how long it has taken for those around Eugene—and for the reader—to realize that he can communicate, it is very significant that the information about what happened to Adam is related by Eugene himself, in his own words. The abbreviations, capital letters, and lack of punctuation reflect his typing process and enhance the urgency of the events being described.

“I pulled Dad’s note to my chest and put my head on my pillow. I pictured the tomorrow me, the next-week me, brushing my teeth, actively remembering the present-day me who desperately wanted Eugene safe, all charges dismissed, all of us here at home, together. I would keep this moment—today, right now, with Dad gone and Eugene in jeopardy of being thrown behind bars—as the baseline, ensuring that I’d be relatively happy for the rest of my life. Because this had to be my family’s bottom point. Things couldn’t possibly get worse.”

The difference between “next-week me” and “present-day me” emphasizes the trajectory Mia undergoes as a character, and the fact that the events of the novel change the Parkson family dramatically. Mia has adopted Adam’s language about happiness—using words like “baseline” and “relatively happy” that were a mainstay of his research—also foregrounds their familial connection. However, the phase “things couldn’t possibly get worse” strikes an ominous note—it is the cliché that movie characters say when the other shoe is about to drop, building suspense and tension.

“In music, the longer a dissonant chord is sustained, the greater the emotional satisfaction when it resolves. When the discordant sound stretches, going on a little too long—it sounds wrong, and you know it will resolve soon, it has to, but impatience and anticipation build, and while those notes are still sustained in the vibrations of your eardrums, the consonant chord plays. The promise of that liminal state when both things exist, the dissonance and consonance colliding into an exquisite messiness until the dissonant notes fully dissipate into harmony. This is one of the elements I’ve been trying to capture in my algorithmic programming work—trying to figure out if there is a limit to the period of dissonance. At what point would the listener get frustrated and give up the promise of resolution?”

Music symbolizes a liminal state—the sensation of anticipation that accompanies waiting for resolution. The passage contrasts consonance and dissonance, suggesting the paradoxical idea of “exquisite messiness”—disorder that is something aesthetically pleasing. The passage also compares the certainty of an algorithm to the ambiguity of music—both are based on mathematical concepts, but are differently related to systemic patterning.

“If this whole experience has taught me anything, it’s the fallacies inherent to heuristics. Shortcuts, cheats, probabilities and statistics, instead of taking the time to figure it out. Being Asian as a proxy for being a math-loving, un American foreigner, being a Black man as a proxy for having criminal intent, being nonspeaking as a proxy for being nonverbal, being unable to point to the right answers on IQ tests as a proxy for being stupid (further a proxy for being less than human), smiling as a proxy for being happy, and on and on.”

Kim argues that heuristic shortcuts cannot account for the complexity of human identity. The novel highlights issues of systemic racism, referencing the Black Lives Matter protests that took place after the police murder of George Floyd. The repetition of “as a proxy” emphasizes the connections Mia makes between different kinds of biases, suggesting that they pervade society.

“Wait. Was that why I was so eager to unlock Dad’s phone? To check if Eugene was telling the truth? Because, at the end of the day, I believed him mostly, but not fully. And I didn’t fully trust Mom and John, either. And wasn’t that—the almost-but-not-quite-certain level of faith and trust, the need for external verification and objective proof for himself and maybe for me too—what kept Dad from telling us about Eugene’s work with Anjeli, from seeing how much he was hurting Eugene? I’d condemned him for that, but was I doing the same thing?”

This passage is central to Mia’s progress as a character, as she acknowledges doubting her family members, but resists the urge to seek certainty. The use of interrogatives in this passage emphasizes the fact that Mia is actively questioning herself and her tendencies.