Outside his window, Kevin saw Jack’s car lights down the street, he watched Jack dim them, then roll past his house with the engine off, so he wouldn’t wake up Kevin’s mother, or the girls. His dad would kill Kevin if he woke up the girls—they’d be up all night. Another reason to like Jack, he’d never get Kevin into trouble, even though he kind of courted trouble all the time. Kevin texted Jack: B right down
Then he loaded up his backpack with all his school stuff, just in case they hung out late enough to go straight to class, and he carried his sneakers and socks in his other hand. Good thing the staircase was carpeted. He went down slowly to avoid creaks, and then walked super-carefully across the hardwood floor in the entrance hall and cautiously opened the front door. It was dark out. The air was wet and smelled of damp leaves and cool earth. A different smell from warm earth. Hard to quantify.
Kevin entered the Volvo on the passenger’s side. The wet, cold, gritty ground hurt his feet in a way that felt good. Jack was texting as Kevin slid in, Lily probably, even if it was around 5:00 a.m. in Texas, so Kevin quietly used his hands to wipe his bare feet clean of the pebbles and dirt over the road and then put on his socks and shoes, drawing his legs inside the car before closing the door. Jack kept typing with his thumbs. Jack’s blond, greasy hair was in a man bun. Sometimes he said it itched his neck. Kevin wouldn’t know. He’d always worn his hair clean and short.
“She up already?” Kevin asked. He strapped himself in with his seat belt.
“Yeah. Her mom went out to dinner with some married guy and she isn’t home yet and Lily’s freaked.”
“Word,” said Kevin. He and Jack said “word” ironically to just about anything, especially when they didn’t know what else to say. They were making fun of people who used to say it seriously when they didn’t know what to say. No one said “word” anymore but Jack and Kevin, which made it cool.
“Cindy, Lily’s mom, she’s still hoping she’ll marry someone with money. This guy’s loaded and he got her her job. He was crushed out on her in high school, but she was shallow. He’s a ginger and had zits or something. She’s still kicking herself that she married Lily’s asshole dad and didn’t give this guy a chance. Lily’s afraid her mom will get hurt, again.”
“Maybe she should go get breakfast with Grandma Rose,” said Kevin.
“No, it’s too early for that. Grandma Rose would have a heart attack and her teeth would fall out.” Jack kind of stiffened. “How do you know about Grandma Rose?”
“What?” said Kevin. “Everyone who knows Lily knows about Grandma Rose. She’s famous. Lily famous.”
There was silence in the car.
“Cindy? Lily’s mom? She’s beautiful, right? Like Lily?” Kevin asked. He knew he was pushing it, but he wanted to.
Jack turned the key in the ignition and for a moment the car lit up. He looked at Kevin and Kevin looked back at him.
“Yeah, dude, she is,” said Jack.
Then he put the car into drive and they took off.
Happy Donuts was in a freestanding maroon building on El Camino. It was open 24/7 and had great Wi-Fi, and the best part about it, besides the doughnuts and the widescreen, was the giant cream-filled papier-mâché doughnut that hung from the ceiling like a fancy chandelier. Kevin and Jack went there a lot after school and after meets and in the early-morning hours like this when Jack couldn’t sleep. Usually, Jack could. But sometimes Lily kept him up too late and then it was sort of over for Jack. That’s when he called on Kevin.
Now that they were inside, Jack perused the counters. He always liked to try something new. “Dude,” he said, “I’m seriously thinking about the ham-and-cheese on a glazed doughnut and then the apple fritter.”
“Your poison,” said Kevin. “I’ll have the Wild Berry Blast smoothie,” he said to the Mexican guy behind the counter. The guy looked to be the same age as Kevin’s father. “Please,” said Kevin.
“Pussy,” said Jack. But he smiled. “I’ll have the ham-and-Swiss pressed on a glazed doughnut, and the apple fritter. And a vanilla with chocolate frosting and rainbow sprinkles for my friend here.” He raised his shoulder at Kevin.
“Word,” they both said in unison. Then they laughed. Jack said, “This one’s on me.” Kevin looked surprised. “I mean it’s late and all, thanks for hanging out with me.”
Kevin shrugged it off. “Sure,” he said. “What are friends for.”
They sat down at two wooden chairs at one of the long blue communal tables while the counter guy got their orders. There was a Stanford couple making out at another table in the corner by the windows, and some geek buried in his computer at theirs.
“So, dude, what’s up?” Kevin said. “Where’s Dad?”
“He went chasing after some job in Boston. I dunno, man. Seems dumb.”
“Does that mean you might be moving?” asked Kevin.
“Nah, I don’t think so. My mom doesn’t think so, either. I mean, she’s got some stake in that stupid start-up and we’re all here. She said Dad’s just got to get his confidence back.”
Luckily at that moment their food came, on three paper plates with a fistful of brown paper napkins on a plastic tray. A straw for the smoothie, deep purple in its tall frosted-plastic smoothie glass, lay right next to it. The counterman looked tired, and his white apron was stained with Thai coffee, one of Happy Donuts’ specialties, and berries and chocolate and other crud.
“Thank you,” Jack said to the counterman.
“Yeah, thanks,” said Kevin.
Then they both looked down at the food. Jack’s was a gooey glazed panini.
“That looks sickening,” said Kevin.
“I think it looks good,” said Jack. He picked it up with a napkin, the grease instantly blooming out. He held it up to Kevin’s mouth. “I triple-dog dare you,” Jack said.
“Naw,” said Kevin. “My body’s my temple.” He put his straw in his smoothie and took a big gulp and burped.
“Ha,” said Jack.
Then Kevin took the whole chocolate-covered doughnut with rainbow sprinkles and shoved it into his mouth.
“You really are my brother,” Jack said, laughing as the chocolate and sprinkles squirted out of Kevin’s mouth. Kevin could feel it on his lips and chin. He used his fingers to push the rest of it back in. He hated himself right then.
Jack took a bite of his doughnut sandwich. “Mmm,” said Jack. In three more bites, it was finished. Then he started in on his apple fritter.
Kevin drained his smoothie, vacuuming up the blueberry dregs. Then he belched again even louder. Even the geek at the end of the table looked up.
“Let’s drive around,” Jack said.
“Sure,” said Kevin.
They drove around and around Palo Alto, through the Stanford campus, all those mission-style buildings with tan walls and red tile roofs, the globe lights punctuating the darkness, the emergency blue light telephones glowing like fake stars stuck on the walls at a high school dance, down Palm Drive, where a couple of crazy people were jogging wearing headlamps, and out onto University Avenue. The streets were empty. Then up Alma, past the Caltrain station, and then back up El Camino.
Once the sun started to rise, Jack said he better drive home. “My mom will have a heart attack if I’m not there when she gets up,” he said.
“Okay,” said Kevin. “Just, you know, drop me off at school first. I can hang out on the field and finish studying. I brought my books,” he said, and he picked up his backpack like it was Exhibit A.
“Okay,” said Jack, looking over at his backpack. There was a GO VIKINGS bumper sticker on it, same as Jack’s. “But you know you’re weird. I don’t know how you can go day after day without sleeping, I really don’t.” He yawned, big-time.
Jack drove him the half mile to Paly. Ahead, across the field, the sky was beginning to get gray and then pinked from underneath as the sun rose. It kind of looked like a half-cooked shrimp. It was five thirty. Kevin knew because he checked his phone and sent
a message. He had just enough time.
Jack parked by the baseball field.
“You okay?” asked Kevin.
“I got a lot on my mind,” said Jack.
“I see that,” said Kevin.
They were both quiet.
“I love Lily,” Jack said. “I’m going to marry her.”
Kevin looked at the rising sun. There was a weird hollowness in his chest where his heart should have been. He would never have what they had. He would always be lonely.
“You’re lucky, dude,” said Kevin.
“Thanks, man,” said Jack. “Thanks for everything.”
Then Kevin got out of the car and started to walk toward the field. He could hear Jack pull out behind him and drive away.
Kevin turned east and walked across the bike trail.
He wondered if Jack could hear the incoming 5:37 northbound Caltrain. He probably had just driven over the road that crossed the railway and was heading home. Kevin looked up at the sign in front of him next to the rails. THERE IS HELP it said, and there was a picture of two white hands clasping and a hotline number.
“I need help,” Kevin said.
He stepped forward and lay down across the tracks with the backpack in his arms.
* * *
They made their way down Highway 6 behind a truck carrying radioactive topsoil. As Maryam had promised, the excavated earth was covered with a blue plastic tarp. Not exactly a bolstering sight. She drove, and Dan finally had a chance to ask her some questions; the more they talked, the more relaxed he became. Also, paradoxically, the more anxious and excited—it was hard to hold so many conflicting emotional truths in his hands at once. And yet that complexity appeared to be life with Maryam.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “You only met the guy once, but you love him?”
He thought, You’ve known me now for months.
He thought it, but he dared not say it.
“It is true that I met with Yoshi only briefly,” Maryam admitted. “Some reporters I knew from Vice were producing a short video about his life, and I’d stopped by to visit the shoot on my way back from photographing my own project.”
“Vice already shot him? So, what are we doing here?” Dan asked. He felt like such an idiot. She’d beckoned with her finger, come with me, and like a puppy, Dan obediently had followed.
His tone pissed her off. “It is now time for a follow-up photo essay, this is essential,” said Maryam. “Yoshi’s story and his life continue, the crisis is not over. Just because it’s not been thrust in your face during the last five minutes doesn’t mean it has lost its relevance.”
“I know all that, but what’s so great about him?” Dan persisted. He was getting antsy—shpilkes, his mother had called it. He stretched out his legs and arms. Maryam looked over at his elongated torso, then back at the road. Dan pulled down his polo shirt.
“Talk about resistance. He has been living all alone in the Red Zone since 2011. That’s half a decade.”
Dan knew what five years was. Five years ago, he was an editor and a writer with a job. Five years ago, his curly hair was brown. Five years ago, three kids, work, stress, whatever, he’d been overwhelmed, sure, but he had not hated his life. He had considered himself a fairly happy man. He’d been in love with his wife.
“Every six months Yoshi is tested by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and he has seventeen times the legal limit of radiation in his body. They are gobsmacked! Tell me why? Day in and day out, he eats the food he has grown; he drinks milk produced by the cattle he tends. He is the most radioactive person in Japan. Probably the world. He’s been bathed in it.”
Dan rolled up his window. For all Maryam’s outrage, she, too, sounded surprised. Why? Why did any of this surprise her? Yoshi had stayed put. He kept living in Tomioka. His choice. He drank the milk; he ate the eggs. He was ordered to evacuate and he’d returned. He broke the law. Dan felt for him, sure. Most people don’t want to leave their native soil. The world was full of refugees. Sixty-seven million was the last figure to register in Dan’s head. This past year saw the highest number of displaced persons worldwide ever, including after the Second World War. The costs were enormous. His grandmother’s four brothers and sisters paid a different kind of price when they’d refused to leave Vienna and ended up gassed in the camps during the Second World War. They could not have imagined the fate that awaited them. At the time, the Final Solution was an evil most people in their worst moments could not imagine.
Now torture, cruelty, and destruction were daily fare on Dan’s Twitter feed. If Dan had learned one thing, evil was not rarefied, it was an equal-opportunity employer, it did not believe in exceptionalism and neither did Dan. But any way you sliced it, this guy, this guy Maryam loved, it was his decision to remain in Fukushima. Yoshi had not caused the ongoing nuclear accident, nor the shitty protective measures set in place to mitigate it. He had not lied to the people of his prefecture about the contamination following the tsunami like the Tepco guys. So he could not be blamed for his own initial exposure. But he’d returned to Tomioka knowingly, in frustration after evacuating, for his own reasons, saturating himself in radiation, causing harm to his internal organs, his cell structure, his DNA. Shouldn’t that kind of stubbornness be what surprised Maryam? Or did she see kinship in the obduracy? Dan toyed with the idea of injecting some of this observation into their discussion, but then thought better of it.
He stole a sidelong glance at Maryam. Even in a momentary bit of repose, eyes on the road, mouth closed, her profile carried a look of intensity. Maryam had been alone most of her life, so perhaps this was how she kept herself company, getting worked up about the lives of others. When Dan thought about how forlorn she must have been as a child—a completely misunderstood little girl trapped in a boy’s body, later without a mother, with a father fatally flawed, a man built without charity or insight—his heart broke. But it was hard to imagine adult Maryam lonely when almost everyone they encountered seemed to take a liking to her. Her life force was so strong; she was so full of enthusiasm; her face often glowed with exhilaration. Even those who merely stared, and there were many, weren’t quite sure what they were staring at. She was a sizable woman, and she was gorgeous. Maybe the people who were riveted by her looks didn’t totally understand her beauty—it was a strong masculine beauty, the broad shoulders, narrow hips—but evidently she was arresting to more than just him. Because everywhere they went together, people took notice.
Dan held some misbegotten macho pride in this, pride without association. It had been a long time since other men had stared at Amy in such a full-throated, hungry way. Not that she wasn’t appealing: Amy was good-looking and in great shape; and when animated, charming and delightful! But these days she was always tired, and that diminishing combo of motherhood and work had somewhat erased her, the way it erased most women. Maryam’s beauty commanded attention, even right now, driving their rent-a-car. Her black hair was loose and flowing, and in the moment, he imagined what it might feel like brushing against his face and chest. As he stared at her, in what was now undeniably a state of desire, it kind of freaked him out, how into her he was—when just five years prior she had still been male.
Dan tried to picture Maryam as a guy, in guy’s clothes, with short hair, a beard, maybe. Knowing her now as he knew her, would he desire her then? He, she, were the same person. But the mind game he was playing with himself got Dan nowhere. One of the reasons Maryam was so attractive to him was that she was female, and because she was essentially female, she had necessitated this transition.
He looked at her hands curled around the wheel. She had managed to paint her nails red between last night and this morning, even though she had been so knackered. She wore jeans that fit her just right—she had great thighs, he noted they didn’t spread when she sat, like Amy’s did, no matter how much or how fast Amy ran—and a plain, white, close-fitting, scoop-necked T-shirt and a dusky rose-pink cashmere sweater that softened her breas
ts. Closed-toed shoes, ankle boots. Today, she’d left her jewelry back at the hotel. They were driving to a farm outside Tomioka City, so he guessed this was her farming attire. Her lipstick was as red as her nails. She’d lined her eyes with her trademark kohl. He wasn’t used to women who wore a lot of makeup—Amy didn’t, they lived in Northern Cal, and most of the women there had a fresh-faced look. Marilyn, Kevin’s mom, sometimes wore eye shadow and had an understated elegance . . . The mothers at school wore lipstick to the various recitals or out to dinner. He wondered if Maryam had had the same physical grace when she’d been trapped in a male body. He liked to think she’d been a prisoner under a spell and had been set free not by a fairy godmother but by a series of brilliant physicians and therapists.
Right this moment, Maryam was who she was meant to be. Dan decided then and there that he would never know her pain and he would withstand the impulse to judge it. Perhaps he should practice the same resolve with her loverboy, Yoshi.
There was a lot of commuter traffic on Highway 6 that Thursday morning. It had increased when they left the Green Zone for the Orange Zone, when the cars and trucks began to pile up. This was a single-lane highway, and as they neared the coastline the assemblage of vehicles slowed down to a laborious crawl. It was one thing to be exposed to radiation for a story, it was another to be soaked in the stuff because of a traffic jam. Out his window Dan could see boats still stranded by the tsunami in the abandoned rice paddies. One boat, upon closer surveillance, turned out to be an upright piano lying on its side. What’s wrong with this picture, Dan said to himself, remembering on autopilot the banal puzzles in the collection of ancient Highlights magazines in his childhood dentist’s waiting room. How had the piano ended up here? What had happened to the house or school or temple or church it had been housed in? Where was the musician or student or teacher or child who hated learning to play it? At least sixteen thousand people had died in the tsunami alone. Five years out. Half a decade. The piano still stuck where it landed. Might this detritus be sitting out in these fields and paddies forever? The emotional consequences of all this upheaval seemed so vast. After Chernobyl, the average life expectancy of the survivors went down from age sixty-five to fifty-eight, not because of cancer, but stress, alcoholism, and suicide.
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