Em's Awful Good Fortune

by Marcie Maxfield

  “Why don’t you just stop someone and ask for directions?” Andra asked.

  It was cherry blossom season, and Andra was visiting us in Tokyo, sweating, blisters forming on her pampered toes. She was wearing the wrong shoes, her purse the size of a gym bag, way too heavy for traipsing around the city—the kind of purse you throw in the passenger seat of your car when you only have to carry it from there to the office. It was full too. She was prepared for anything but being lost. She was packing a phone, a travel guide, a notebook and pens, a wallet, makeup, tissues. Eye drops. Hand cream. Aspirin. Gum. Hand sanitizer. She was a mobile drugstore. And now her shoulder and her feet were killing her, but she looked great.

  “Brazilian blowout,” she told me. “Best beauty treatment ever—wash and go.”

  I kinda missed her big hair; it was statement hair. It said, She wild; she up all night dancing. Now it said slick and corporate.

  I was trying to find this ramen restaurant I went to once with my friend Mebae. The thing is, I didn’t know the name of the restaurant or exactly where it was. Usually I could find it on foot, which eventually we would have. Usually I had nothing better to do than wander up and down back streets in Shibuya until I spotted this particular noodle shop, with the indigo curtains flapping in the doorway. But Andra and I were out of sync. She was jet-lagged, starting to look at me sideways, like she was about to lose her shit. She was not impressed with my basic survival skills, my ability to experience being lost as an opportunity to explore the city, and I could tell she didn’t like Shibuya, which admittedly can be overwhelming. The first time Gee brought me to Shibuya Crossing, I burst into tears. No way can I live here, I thought. Too many people. The largest, craziest intersection in the world; it split in five directions. Huge video screens mounted on every building, advertisements everywhere I looked, lights flashing, and enough people to fill a stadium. So congested, I felt like I could lift my feet and the smash of human bodies would carry me across the street without my toes ever touching the ground. After a while, I got used to it and just went with the flow. But now I deferred to Andra’s sore feet and we stopped to eat at the next noodle shop we happened upon. It had laminated menus with pictures of ramen bowls.

  “How do you live like this?” Andra wanted to know—meaning, perpetually lost. “You have a favorite restaurant,” she said, “and you don’t even know the name of it or what street it’s on. We just spent an hour and a half walking in circles, and it doesn’t faze you. Nothing does. You don’t even care what shows up on your plate.”

  It was true. I pointed to the veggies and Andra pointed to the pork, but when our bowls came, mine was loaded with shrimp and all I did was shrug.

  “That’s not what you ordered,” Andra said accusingly, like it was my fault that the waitress messed up my order, but really what she meant was, Send it back!

  While she was pointing out how I’d become a spineless, aimless shell of my former self, the waitress returned and swapped my soup bowl. Presumably the other person, the customer who could speak Japanese, got my ramen dish and complained, Hey, where’s my shrimp?

  “See? It all works out.” I shrugged.

  “Can you ask for hot sauce?”

  “Nope. I know maybe twenty words in Japanese, and hot sauce isn’t one of them.”

  Andra flagged down the waitress and did some wacky pantomime fanning her mouth whilst pointing to the soup bowl, and damn if the waitress didn’t nod and smile and even bow a tiny bit before bringing her a bottle of spicy stuff. Andra is used to getting and doing exactly what she wants. She doesn’t just like her routine—she’s married to it. But let’s face it: “Routine” is a soft word for “high-maintenance, ironclad, willful diva set in her ways like my grandma.” Andra is single. She skips breakfast, walks slow, talks loud, spoils her dog, pampers herself, works late, takes long baths at night, and sleeps in on weekends, and when she goes to bed, she crashes—lights out, eye mask, earplugs, day over. She does not have to pick up after anyone or answer the phone in the middle of the night, in case it’s a kid stranded in Roppongi. She never has to go a movie she doesn’t want to see, let alone move overseas.

  A: Seriously, Em, how can you live like this?

  E: Like what?

  A: Never getting what you want.

  E: Maybe what I want isn’t as good as what I got; maybe the soup with the shrimp would have been better.

  A: Are you okay? This iteration of Em, this go-with-the-flow girl, it scares me.

  E: Turns out I’m good at adapting. It’s the thing I excel at, like how some people are good managers and others are computer geeks. I’m a great mover. Sure, I’m a pretty good marketer—I can develop creative campaigns, plan events, sell sponsorships, woo clients, and close deals—but you know what I’m really amazing at? Moving. Yep. Thought I was a mover and a shaker, but it turns out I’m just a mover. Not a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on. No heavy lifting, but labeling boxes—what to take, what to leave—that’s my wheelhouse. I write an excellent resignation letter. And you can throw me in the middle of any city anywhere in the world and I can remake our lives in less than a month. I am especially good at friend selection; it’s like speed dating. Show me a welcome coffee, and I will make five new best friends. Don’t be jealous, Andra—they’re just temporary, like human placeholders. And when my new best friend leaves (because repatriation is inevitable; it’s the flip side of being a tagalong), I’m really good at saying goodbye. Not so good at keeping in touch, though. Hanging on, that’s sort of the opposite of adapting, but letting go, I’m fucking great at that. I can let go of almost everything. Not you, or Gee and the kids, my inner circle, but to anyone or anything outside it, I’m waving and smiling like the queen. Sayonara.

  So there you have it—my surprise life skill is being adaptable. Like right now, I just don’t give a shit that the waitress brought me shrimp instead of veggies, because it doesn’t matter, and if it does, if it’s something I don’t like, like bean paste, I’ll learn how to avoid it. Take onigiri, for example, those rice triangles wrapped in seaweed—they’re tasty and convenient, you can get them everywhere, but sometimes they’re filled with weird stuff, so I learned how to read two words in katakana—“tuna” and “chicken.” Et voilà—no more surprises, no pickled plum. It’s quite a talent, when you think about it: adaptability. It’s like shape-shifting: Where once I was a career woman, now I’m functionally illiterate. I’ve gotten real good at simplifying conversations, asking questions that have only a yes or no answer, and as long as I don’t have to use the telephone—as long as I can point or touch, make faces, sketch cave drawings, smell food in the market, squeeze generic packaging to see if it’s sugar or flour—I can get by. But you want to know why I really succeed where so many tagalong wives get derailed? It’s because I’m okay being by myself. All day. Ruby and Rio are in high school now, and they can get there by themselves. So I’m pretty much on my own, almost every day, except once a week when I wash my hair and teach English to rich Japanese kids whose parents want them to go to Stanford. That’s me smiling through pronunciation drills, even though my brain is leaking potential. Yeah. Adaptability. It’s totally my strong suit.

  A: Oh, honey. You’re breaking my heart.

  Andra reached over our ramen bowls and grabbed my hand, her eyes wet with emotion. She does like a good cry. “Why don’t you move back home?”

  That right there is why it’s so much easier to make friends with other trailing spouses than trying to explain your life to people who really know you, or think they know the real you. Tagalongs bond fast, and not just over a shared language or home country, and for sure not over politics or religion, which are totally taboo in Tagalong. It’s one simple thing, one question tagalongs never ask each other: Why do you do it? Tagalong wives accept each other’s choices at face value because we understand, in the marrow, how those decisions were made.

  A: Are you okay, Em?

  E: I’m okay, Andra. I keep busy. I’m writing a lot.r />
  A: You should blog about living in Japan.

  Everyone assumes you’re some sort of travel writer if you say you’re writing when you live overseas. Mostly I wrote about growing up girl in America. The things that happen to girls, how all girls are at risk, how as Americans we like to see ourselves as the leaders of the free world but in reality we are prisoners of fear, looking over our shoulders, double-chain-locking our doors, worried about stranger danger and not letting our kids go to a park by themselves. I felt safer overseas than I ever did in the States. It was kooky and crowded in Tokyo, I wouldn’t want to live there forever, but I liked being there as an expat.

  A: Remember when we worked at the radio station and you came to Tokyo with the Romantics? Did you ever think you’d be living here?

  E: No, not in a million years.

  There’s a picture of me backstage at the Romantics in Tokyo, my own personal Cheap Trick at Budokan. I’m wearing pink glasses and this super-cute dress I bought at the 109 building in Shibuya, boutique heaven; it’s flowy, with tulips. I’m the only girl in the photo, surrounded by the band, the president of Sony Music, and our DJ, Arthur P. We were taking press photos with the listeners, six contest winners and their plus-ones: moms, best friends, and one couple who’d gotten married the day before.

  “Do I have to go to the wedding?” I whined to Andra during our nightly update phone call.

  “Fuck yeah, you do,” she said. “With flowers and cake. And take pictures. This is our Valentine’s promo. You’re not on vacation, girl—this is work.”

  And it was—a lot of work. I put together the whole promotion. It took months of planning, cooking it up with the band’s manager. After the press photos, he came up to me and said, “We’re going out to dinner.”

  “Cool.” I smiled. This was the payoff for all that work. Dinner with the band.

  “The thing is, Em,” he added meekly, “you can’t come. Sony is entertaining the band at a hostess bar in Shinjuku. No girls allowed. I’m sorry,” he said.

  I’m sorry? Gomen nasai.

  That’s what I said at the bar with my winners later that night as I threw down my corporate credit card and got righteously trashed. We all did.

  “Gomen nasai,” I said—“I’m sorry”—every time I stepped on some guy’s foot, plowed through him, bumped into him rudely, knocked him out of my way, and it happened a lot. The dance floor was small. Bars are small in Japan. People are small. Japanese girls are delicate. Not like American girls. American girls are tough. I’m sorry I body-slammed you just then. Did it hurt?

  Gomen nasai.

  I AM NOT A GEISHA

  My last job before moving to Tokyo was with that trendy, hipster design publication where Andra worked. It was a glorified assistant position that didn’t do much for my self-esteem, but it did fill the gap between Paris and Tokyo. That’s pretty much where my career had landed—a string of downward-spiraling, in-between jobs. Mostly I answered phones and proofed advertising proposals. They threw me a bone and let me manage their one-off, less prestigious resource guide. A few months later, we moved to Tokyo and I had to grovel, beg, demand, pester them like a harpy for my piddly little commission check, which arrived, at last, a year after I worked for them. Too late for Christmas, too late for Valentine’s Day, too late for spring break in Vietnam. Too late to enjoy, the check sat in my Japanese inbox, tainted money, reeking of my puny insignificance and bruised ego. I concocted elaborate schemes in my head over what to do with it, now that I had too much pride to cash it. Donate the money to charity? Build a house in Nepal via Habitat for Humanity in the name of the publisher who tried to stiff me?

  This debate was still brewing in my head as I dressed for the Tokyo American Club charity gala. Black on black on black: flats, slacks, and jacket. The only thing that separated me from the waiters was a string of pearls. It had been my job to solicit donations for the gala auction. Director of sales, annual fundraiser. That’s what I put on my résumé to bridge the gap when I got back to Los Angeles. I did not explain that it was volunteer work. Or mention my coffee klatches with Veda, another tagalong wife, who was my partner on the sales committee. Or elaborate that really all I did was secure in-kind donations for the auction. Art and antiques, travel and hotel accommodations in exotic locales.

  It’s a strange thing, calling on businesses in Asia. Phnom Penh. Saigon. Laos. Guam. The names alone are loaded. I know them because they used to be either army bases, or the United States was bombing the shit out of their villages. They evoke girls in hip-hugger, bell-bottom blue jeans with the sun embroidered on their pockets. Peace signs. My aunt had a copper bracelet, the name of some MIA soldier who never came home engraved across it. Her wrist turned a greenish black from the cheap metal reminder that some Americans were dressed in real camouflage. Things were different now. At least in Southeast Asia. The United States was doing big capitalist business with the same countries it carpet-bombed in the ’60s. And everyone was playing together real sweet-like—a kindergarten teacher’s fantasy.

  Konichiwa from Tokyo!

  Greetings from the Kingdom of Cambodia!

  Join us for nine holes in Laolao Bay.

  Enjoy a cruise on the Mekong Delta.

  Thank God for short-term memory loss and long-term financial gain. The hotels in Nha Trang did look fabulous. They served chocolate martinis in swanky restaurant bars. And the beaches in Nam were to die for, although I’m not sure that’s a good use of metaphor.

  Also, I was thinking how nice it was that these people didn’t hold a grudge against Americans. They took my calls; they returned my emails with warm greetings. Everything was blue skies and clear waters, palm trees and seventy degrees. They all wanted to do business with the lady from the Tokyo American Club.

  And they gave.

  Ocean-view hotel suites with continental breakfast and cultural performances, airport transfer included. The donations were pouring in, and the tourism dollars were spreading like jam on toast. I was thinking Vietnam looked pretty damn inviting. Maybe someday we’d be invited back to Kabul, sit in rooftop cafés and watch the sunset while sipping mint tea or some Kabulian concoction. Maybe we’d cruise the Tigris, stop for lunch in Mosul, enjoy ethnic dancing in Baghdad; we’d throw dollars around, play desert golf, shoot toy rifles at dummies in burkas for a few dinars. We’d drink and laugh, and they’d let us pay them to forget.

  I was thinking there were worse things than fudging the truth on your résumé. We raised a bunch of yen—that’s what I’d say if anyone asked me in an interview. And the money was used to fund social programs in support of underserved women and children—which, honestly, I felt pretty good about. And I padded my CV with global brands like Hilton, Four Seasons, and American Airlines. It made me sound legit, and it wasn’t a lie, more like a half-truth. My résumé is filled with little deceits like this. Some women fret about dates, about whether anyone will do the math and figure out how old they are. But since Gee started traveling, pretty much everything on my résumé is just this side of a fairy tale, as if I could get a real job in a foreign country, with no working papers, language skills, or connections; as if I had been paid in yen, instead of coffee, croissants, and tickets to charity balls. Technically speaking, I wasn’t even a guest at that black-tie dinner, didn’t get to choose between prime rib and pan-seared salmon. In the back room, they fed the volunteers chicken roll-ups, potato chips, and bottled water. But they gave me a paddle for the live auction, and that’s where the painting I secured from an artist in Kyoto named Daniel Kelly showed up. Official description: I Am Not a Geisha, multimedia print on washi paper.

  It’s big, an oversize blowup of a Japanese girl with a tattoo sleeve, staring straight into the lens. The photo is black and white, washed out and fuzzy, flowers vividly hand-painted in an intricate tangle of color that snakes up her arm like a vine. It’s edgy and modern, with a small vintage geisha postcard glued on as a reminder of how things used to be. To be clear, geisha are not working girls
; they are considered female companions, paid performers, decorative objects in whiteface on stilt-like platform shoes, hobbled, swaddled in fabric, inching along, their eyes shaded from sunlight or direct gaze by a parasol. But this girl, this young woman with the almond eyes, the one in the photo, her head is not bowed; she’s looking straight into the camera, chewing the lens.

  You know how art speaks to you? Well, this piece screamed at me. My arm flew up with the opening bid. There was a flurry of activity. A fat man with a bald head, a chunky gold wedding ring, and diamond cuff links raised his paddle. He gave me a look that said back off, like I was the help, and for a moment I vacillated, standing against the wall in my working-girl blackout wardrobe meant to make me invisible. Normally, this type of purchase would be a joint decision in my family. Gee and I acquire art as a team. And this piece is substantial. We’re talking a big chunk of art. Bold. Out of my league. The stakes were rising faster than I could do the math: twenty thousand yen, fifty thousand yen, a hundred thousand yen … How much is two hundred thousand yen in dollars? Veda stood next to me, egging me on.

  “Don’t let him win,” she whispered. Back home in Atlanta, Veda was an executive for a high-profile nonprofit. She had her own ax to grind. My paddle kept flying in the face of this businessman as he sat at the head of the table, pasty and bloated, his wife at his side, expat package bulging in his pants pocket. I stood my ground. Literally. I had to—I didn’t have a seat. I could hardly afford the dinner, let alone the art. There was, however, that commission check, that two thousand dollars spoiling my inbox. A surge of adrenaline pumped through my body, and before I had time to breathe, let alone think, I raised my paddle one more time and stared him down. You don’t know me, old man, but I’m a dog with a bone to pick, and that girl is mine.