Love in Many Languages

by Jamie Bennett

  “Out.”

  I sighed. This girl wasn’t what you’d call a font of information. She ate like she was starving, which maybe she was. We finished up breakfast in silence and before the bill came, she stood up. “Bye.” She hesitated. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. If you happen to need a place to sleep, you can always come back to my house. You don’t have to go with Fox,” I mentioned casually.

  “He wasn’t that bad.”

  “Just saying,” I put in. “In case you were tired of him yelling in your ear. I thought he was loud and I was in another room.”

  That made her smile a little. The waitress came over with the bill. “Those two guys paid it for you,” she told me, then shook her head. “Every damn time you come in here!”

  I waved at the table in the corner. “Thank you so much!” I called to them, and they waved back.

  “Why did those men pay for our breakfast? Do you know them?” Corrie asked me.

  “No, but people are so nice. Someone’s always paying for my lunch, or my bus fare…” Speaking of, I had to get to work. I said goodbye to Corrie on the corner and hurried to my stop, and fortunately the driver saw me coming and waited. He was a great guy.

  I didn’t see Corrie again that night, but things were really busy at my house because there was a party, so maybe she had been there but I missed her. I didn’t totally remember planning to have people over, but it was still pretty fun, especially after I got ahold of some friends from art school and they came over also to hang out. We looked at some of the things I was working on, and then we danced for a while, too, until someone—I assumed the people next door—called the police, again. They couldn’t seem to stand other people enjoying themselves. I saw Sania and both her daughters heading to daycare the next morning and she shot me a dirty look, which I returned because I was cranky from the late night. When I thought about it that day, I felt sorry, because it wasn’t at all nice to spread negativity. I left them a little drawing of their house on their front porch to say sorry.

  Soon enough it was time for me to head back to my Japanese class on Wednesday night, which I had really been looking forward to. Before it started this time, I walked up to the professor, Gin, to ask what I had been wondering about. “Konnichiwa, Gin.”

  He looked up from his laptop and smiled at me. He did have a lovely smile. “It’s Ione, right? How can I help you?”

  “Wow, I’m impressed that you remembered my name! I wanted to ask you when we’ll start writing?”

  “Writing?”

  “The characters. I wondered when we’ll start studying those.” That had been why I had wanted to learn Japanese.

  Gin looked a little pained. “Oh, I’m sorry. We don’t get into writing at all. If you really want to learn Japanese, spoken and written, you can take my regular course, but it’s not offered in the evenings.”

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed.

  “Or maybe,” Gin continued, “I could tutor you. Over dinner?”

  “Oh, dinner?” I knew what he wanted, sex, because I was very good at reading people’s hidden intentions. Also, he had reached forward with one finger and stroked across the knuckles of my hand and his lovely smile turned into a smirk, so I was pretty clear about things. “I’m very busy right now, but thanks anyway.” I went and took my seat near the back. A different man sat next to me and started to try to talk, but I turned to my left, and said hello to Cooper.

  He seemed startled. “Have we met?”

  “I’m Ione. We sat next to each other on Monday. Remember? We were partners?”

  “Yes. Right.” He looked down at the page of notes on his screen. I looked at it too, and it was almost word for word what the teacher had said in the last class, in outline form. Either Cooper had managed to organize it like that as Gin spoke, or he had done a lot of work when he went home. “Sorry, I was really focused on the class.” He went down the page, eyebrows drawn in, reviewing what we had learned.

  I hadn’t taken notes, and I hadn’t thought at all about doing work for this class once I had left it. I hadn’t even done the assignment that Gin had emailed to all of us. Now I opened up that message a little guiltily. Cooper flipped to another window on his screen and I saw that he had already done the homework. Quickly, I tore a page out of my datebook (figuring I wouldn’t be doing too much on September fifth) and scribbled a few lines.

  “I bet you were really good in school,” I commented to Cooper. According to the email, we were supposed to have written out a short dialogue using the vocab we had learned in the last class. Cooper’s dialogue went for an entire page, single spaced.

  “I guess so.” He turned the laptop a little when he saw me looking at it.

  “Not me,” I confessed. “I’ve always been a really, really poor student. Like almost flunking out, that was how bad I was. I tried, but I never really got stuff. Except in art, I guess, but even in art class, I got bad grades because I didn’t do what the teacher said. But I made it through college,” I volunteered. “And I got my master of fine arts.”

  “That’s, uh, good. Congratulations?”

  “Yeah, thanks. How far did you go in school?”

  “Uh, PhD.” He was flicking through things on his screen, not really paying attention to me. I drew a little on the back of my homework, just like when I had been back in real school, high school and college. I had spent most of my time drawing instead of paying attention to what we were supposed to be doing, but I had squeaked by. Now I looked at Cooper, with his lip poking out a little as he concentrated. I drew his mouth quickly, and also the line of his neck.

  Gin called the class to order. He had us exchange dialogues and review each other’s work. Cooper passed me the hard copy of his homework and the guy on my right tried to give me his, as well. It had his phone number written at the top.

  “You can keep it,” he told me, and winked.

  “No, thank you.” I handed it back, and gave the page I had torn out of my datebook to Cooper. I read through what he had done, and was impressed. “Good job on this,” I told him. “You did a good job writing it out.” Maybe he would be better at Japanese than I had thought.

  Cooper was trying to read what was on my paper. Teachers had always given me a lot of shit for how poor my handwriting was, but mostly I could read it. “Thank you,” he said. “Is this a T or a U?”

  I looked over his shoulder. “It’s an E. I’m a little disappointed that we’re using the regular alphabet. You know, just plain old letters, instead of writing in Japanese. That’s what I thought this class was going to be, learning to write. Like, all the characters.”

  He looked up from my homework. “Why would it be called ‘Conversational Japanese 101’ then?”

  “I didn’t really get that part.” I hadn’t read the course description very well. “I think they’re so interesting, like perfect little pictures and not just letters.”

  “The Japanese writing system is very complex. It isn’t just letters. Have you studied it at all?”

  I nodded. “I saw a lady at the Detroit Institute of Art writing haikus once, with a paintbrush, and it was beautiful. You know what I wonder? Can you have bad handwriting in Japanese? See how mine is pretty poor? I wonder if you can have bad handwriting if you’re doing characters.”

  “Why not? I’m sure you could be sloppy in any language.” He looked up. “Not you, particularly. Anyone in general.” He pointed to my homework. “Is that a B or a Z?”

  “It’s a G.” I looked more at his dialogue and made some comments in the margins. “Why are you learning Japanese?”

  Cooper handed the paper back to me. “For business reasons.” I waited, but he didn’t continue, and Gin was asking us all what we had learned. Then we started talking about Japan and various aspects of Japanese culture, learning more vocabulary about meeting people and asking how they were, more greetings and polite phrases. I watched Cooper taking diligent notes on everything that went on. His fingers flew over the keyboard and
again, his focus was intense. He didn’t even see when I offered him a piece of gum.

  Maybe I should have brought a notebook or something. I took out my datebook to write in there again, thinking that nothing was going to happen on August 16th. We watched a short movie about a man and a woman greeting each other and talking about the weather.

  I found myself drawing a lot on August 16th. I was also watching the man to my left, to see what he was writing. Cooper got everything, almost word for word, when Gin was speaking in English. When things were in Japanese, though, I noticed that his fingers barely moved at all over the keyboard. He squinted and leaned forward as if that would help, but he didn’t type anything except exactly what Gin put on the board.

  At the end of class, everyone clustered around the teacher again. He waved to me from the front of the room but I ignored it.

  “Good night. Oyasuminasai,” I told Cooper.

  “Yes, um, oyster soup nightly,” he answered. He looked down at the paper I had been taking my notes on. “Is that me?”

  “Oh. Yes, sorry. I try not to draw people without their permission but sometimes I forget. You can have it.” I held out the pictures. I had drawn him concentrating, dark eyebrows pulled down. I had also drawn little pieces of his face: his straight nose, his grey eyes. He had a very serious look during class and I had captured it, especially the stubborn set to his jaw. He looked like he was determined to learn, damn it. And he looked cute, I had decided. Not like an actor, that kind of plastic-y look, but appealing in a different way. He appealed to me, somehow, so I had drawn him, a lot.

  He took the paper. “Are these your notes, too?”

  “I don’t really need them. You can have it.” We were moving toward the door together. “Want to go practice more? We could have coffee or something.”

  He looked startled. “No. No thanks.”

  “Oh, ok. Sure. I guess I’ll see you next week.”

  “Sure,” he echoed me, then turned and walked out. I spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out where my car was, before I remembered that I still hadn’t found my keys and had gotten a ride share, then I had to find a janitor to let me back into the classroom because I had left my purse in there.

  It was a while before I got home, but that was ok, because I thought about the class the whole time. People in the class, too.

  Chapter 2

  I held up my heavy ponytail off the back of my neck, thinking about when I had last gotten a haircut. My hair was very long now, and a little wild. I appraised the garden clippers in my other hand, thinking for a moment, but then I decided that no, scissors would be better to chop it all off. And maybe a flamethrower would be better for the situation in my front yard. I looked around, discouraged. I had noticed before that it was a little overgrown, but it was much, much worse than I had thought. Mixed together were the plants that were supposed to be there but had gotten out of control, weeds that I hadn’t taken care of for a while (a very long while), a thick layer of dead leaves, and unfortunately, a whole lot of trash. I was already tired and extremely hot and even I could see that there was a lot more to do.

  Two tricycles rattled down the sidewalk in front of me and I waved to the little girls again. They giggled and waved back. They were out riding under the watchful eye of their dad, Devesh, the husband of my mean neighbor Sania. He was probably in cahoots with her too, calling the police on me, reporting me to the city so they would send me letters about building codes, all the things they had pulled since they moved in. Despite that, after watching me struggle for a while in the yard, Devesh had disappeared for a moment then walked over and handed me some heavy gardening gloves, which I was now wearing. “Thank you,” I’d told him, and he nodded back.

  I had already filled all the bags I’d found in the garage with sticks, dead leaves, garbage, and all the live stuff I had hacked back so that the windows of the house were visible. There was still so much left over that didn’t fit in the bags! I started wondering about actual flames. What if I had a bonfire in the back yard and we just burned everything? It could be pretty fun. We could have fireworks! I thought about what had happened on my birthday the summer before. No, no fireworks. Then I reconsidered the back yard, because it seemed to be in worse condition than the front had been, almost impenetrable with the overgrowth, a shed that had fallen in, and maybe a car. But maybe...

  No, a bonfire wouldn’t be a good idea back there, and if I did it in the front, my neighbors would get into another snit. Anyway, I was going out that night, to a party at my friend’s house. I pulled all the debris into a pile in the driveway so I could think about it more, and I carefully put the gardening gloves on Devesh and Sania’s front porch. I waved again to the little girls, Mita and Ani, when they rode by, and I went inside. I planned to do some clean-up in there, as well.

  A bunch of people had come over the night before, including Corrie, the woman who had slept with Fox and come to breakfast with me. He had been very surprised to see her and immediately made a move, which she rebuffed. Now she was gone, before I’d had a chance to talk to her, but most of last night’s other guests were scattered around the living room. I needed them out so I could work. “Excuse me! Time to get up,” I said as I went from person to person. I tried some Japanese, too: “Ohayougozaimasu, good morning!” It reminded me of how that guy from my class, Cooper, had said it: “Ohio Godzilla. Is that right?”

  “Very close,” I had encouraged him. I smiled thinking about that, even though I realized that one of the people sleeping on my floor had thrown up sometime in the night. I really needed to freshen things up.

  Fox came down and helped me rouse everyone and they eventually drifted off, moving a lot faster when they saw that I was breaking out cleaning supplies. We did the floors and a little dusting and Fox heroically took the bathroom. After we cleaned for a while, the house started to smell sharp and lemony, just like it had when my grandma had been alive. I talked to Fox about her as I mopped.

  “There was always something on the stove. She always encouraged me to bring people over and she always had something for them to eat, a big pot of soup or something. She made hot chocolate for everyone in the winter.” I wiped sweat off my forehead. I was dripping with it. “She was such a wonderful host to everyone in the neighborhood.”

  Fox came out of the bathroom and removed his surgical mask and gloves. “That room may need to be condemned.” He took some deep breaths of fresh air. “Is that where you get it? Wanting people around?”

  I leaned on the mop and thought. “Maybe. I like being with people. I like the idea of having a space where people come together.”

  “I don’t like what happened in this bathroom,” he told me, gesturing with his spray bottle of cleaner. “It was horrible.”

  “Sorry. Thanks for cleaning it.” I went into the kitchen and got a little depressed. Thinking about my grandma, how good it had always smelled in there, made me get a little sad about where things had gone. I resolutely started to wash the floors.

  Fox had followed me. “Hey, um, what about if you and I go out tonight? Dinner?”

  “Huh? Tonight?” I stopped trying to force the mop to go under the refrigerator for a moment. “I’m going to Karis and Reid’s loft. She wants me to come early to look at bridesmaid dresses.” I laughed. “Me, a bridesmaid! Do you want to come there with me?”

  “Nah.” He and Reid, my boss, didn’t get along very well. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Thanks for doing the bathroom!” I called after him. The mop head broke off and stuck under the fridge and I threw in the towel on cleaning, too. I went up to my studio and tried to paint, but I was so hot and sticky, all the fans in the world couldn’t have cooled me down. I looked longingly out the window next to my easel at the pool in the back yard next door. When the Kaminskis had lived there, I had been welcome to come and swim whenever I liked, but then they had sold the house to Sania and Devesh. I wiped my face with one of my paint rags. I really, really wished that Mr. a
nd Mrs. Kaminski hadn’t retired to Tampa. After a while I gave up and went to stand in the cold shower in the bathroom that Fox had recently cleaned.

  A few hours later I was on the road to my friend Karis’ house. She lived with her boyfriend—now her fiancé—in an amazing loft in Detroit in an old manufacturing building. There were a lot of people there when I arrived, but it was quite a bit different from one of my parties. For one thing, everyone had on clothing, and for another, there was food. Also, you could talk over the music. It was a kind of a refreshing change, when I thought about it. I was a little surprised by all the people there already, since I had arrived early to look at wedding things, but I just wended my way through the bunches of guests to find my friend.

  Karis was a funny, tiny, wonderful person. She had saved my ass when we had worked together at a real estate development firm and I had gotten myself into a job that I absolutely couldn’t do. She had also figured out how on earth I was going to keep my grandma’s house when my money situation had been a wreck, and she had suggested me for my current job as the receptionist at her boyfriend’s—now her fiancé’s—company. I owed her, immensely. So I gave her a huge hug when I saw her, squeezing her tight, and I also handed her the painting I had brought with me.

  “Ione! You didn’t have to give me something else.” She held up the canvas. “Thank you. This is beautiful. Can you help me figure out where to hang it?”

  “Sure!” Karis was one of the smartest people I knew, but she didn’t quite have the eye for visual stuff. Like clothes, furniture arrangement, things like that. For example, she was wearing a long, black dress that made her look like she was at a Victorian funeral. I really, really tried not to focus on the external, but I also knew that Karis was still worried about making a good impression with her boyfriend’s—fiancé’s—family and friends. So I suggested, “Let’s go to your bedroom to talk about bridesmaid dresses and you can change.”

  She looked down at her dress. “Is this not good? My mom made it for me.”