“Do you get it now, onii-san? All this is at stake. That girl could destroy it.”
“You’re disgusting, all of you.”
“You know, she told me it’d be useless trying to reason with you.”
“Reason? If you grew a brain and thought before repeating everything you’re told, you’d see nothing you just said bears a remote connection to reason.”
“Well, look, I give up. Mochi, if you won’t do it ’cause it’s right, do it ’cause I’m your brother. No need to understand why, clearly you never will, but I need to know what happened to that girl. Just tell me, that’s all. ’Cause I need you to. Can you do that?”
“Because you need me to,” I said, as the same old wound hit me with the same old burn. “And what kind of claim do you think you have on me? What makes you think any of you are entitled to ask me anything?”
“I’m in a tight spot, Kenji.”
“Well, enjoy it!” I snapped. “How tight can it be anyway? It’s all flag-waving and golden confetti, isn’t it?”
“You make it sound so… Look, I need to know what I’ve gotten myself into. I mean what that girl could get all of us into.”
“All of us? I don’t think so.” I turned and headed for my car, knowing I’d smack him if I stayed another minute. Erik grabbed my shoulder, I pushed him and he staggered, but he grabbed my arm instead, hanging on like Lyme disease, and I realized he was trembling.
“Revenge,” he said. “Right? That’s all this is.”
Like it was such a measly thing. I pulled away and turned, but Erik grabbed me, started shouting, and with each word came more thwarted petulance, the tantrum of a pampered child. “You went looking for this, didn’t you! Some way to hurt us even if it was all lies! Where the hell did you find that girl? What the fuck did you think you had the right to promise her? You talked her into going public with this, this, whatever you think is going on—”
Absolute nonsense. “I didn’t need to, stupid. Aetna knew where she stood, she knew it was unacceptable. And she knew how to make you squirm, the whole fucking multinational retinue. You took away her freedom, her identity, her potential, and still you underestimated her. She had one thing left to use against you, and you couldn’t conceive it, you’re so fucking spineless—she gave her life—but you’re all over the place now, innit, you’re scrambling to the point where you want me of all people to cover your ass.”
And you know what? She did all that for me.
The realization fell on me and took my breath away, or I would have declared it right there in our clearing underneath all that sunshine. Till it careened into a wall of silence, my little speech reverberated with admiration and passion, and the more I spoke, the more vehement I became, the more convinced: their desperation now—that feeling, too familiar to me, of the earth falling away—Aetna arranged it, all of it, for me. For me, at the price of her own life. My liberation—the least of her accomplishments, accomplished without consciousness—how could I not love her for it?
It struck all at once, you see, so I even stumbled when I snatched my arm away from Erik: Did Aetna know me after all? Had Masami mentioned a worthless elder son? Or had Aetna done some research when she learned who pulled the strings? Did she ask why I wasn’t part of CAM? The chances were extremely low, but even if she’d never heard my name and whether she knew it or not, Aetna reached across the limits of time and awareness and secured the revenge I’d dreamed of all my life, never daring to believe it could become a reality. I knew then I had to finish it. On the far side of her sacrifice, it was up to me to cherish it, know it to the fullest, and make them feel the weight of her oppression.
I turned on Erik with all kinds of emotion. Love and anger. Loathing for my cowardice and the blood that ran in me, the name and the blood that had destroyed her. “It’s ironic, isn’t it,” I said. “Aetna was one of those rare minds who understands the only truth is death. You turned her into a lie because she understood that truth. So you could lie to everyone, even yourselves. So you could steal. Like that would somehow solidify your relevance. If it wasn’t fucking sick, it’d be brilliant.”
I don’t know why I bothered, it was all lost on him. I added, “Course when I say you, I mean them. The CEO and savior of our country. Not you personally. I know you don’t have it in you to pull off that kind of stuff. You never have a clue what’s going on.”
“Course I do, mochi. This is all about Harvard.”
Curving the Rs like an American. Biting the D like a snapping turtle. Erik’s torpedo.
Harvard.
“Am I right, or am I right, Dr. Okada-Caines?”
My car keys, recently retrieved, fell in my pocket.
“That’s what you call yourself these days, so I hear. Or at least you don’t correct people if they make that mistake. Not even Nabilah-chan. She thinks you’re some kind of genius.”
I don’t remember charging back into the clearing. But you will remember that I mentioned a tree. A tree becoming involved when I slammed Erik’s head into it.
“We kept your secret, onii-sama! Menboku o tamotsu!” he cried.
I slammed him again. Maybe again. Or maybe I just breathed. Every breath felt like slamming and being slammed, I remember that. And menboku o tamotsu. Save face, my brother said. Anata no meiyo o hozon. Save your honor.
We stood a little longer, me with Erik by the tie, him glaring with pity and contempt, until so much welled in me it was either knock him down or risk letting him see it all. I chose the former. He fell on his backside with a squeal.
“She’s brainwashed you completely, it’s incredible,” I grumbled. “If she told you Somerset was east, you’d believe it. If she told you to drive around the island in reverse, you’d go and do it.”
“You’re going to pay for that, Kenji! Momma’s gonna know you did that!”
“Course she is.”
“Well, I tried, you had your chance.” Brushing off his sleeves, his shorts, straightening his tie before even getting up. “It’s up to me to look after her as usual, and let me tell you, mochi, you’re going to tell me what I want to know one way or another, and it won’t be hard to make it happen because you know what? You’re just empty air wearing a bunch of colorful balloons. You’re a goddamn poser, an impostor, and that’s all.”
“If I am, that’s what she made me. Every time I found a chance, she murdered it, and you two dug the grave. You turned my whole stupid life into a waste.”
Trudging to the parking lot. Behind me, I could feel the family’s crown jewel smoothing out his hair, his shirt, straightening his golden tiepin as he called out to me. “Then why don’t you just disappear? Something really is wrong with you, you know. You’re like something in a haunted house, stuck in the past.”
I flipped him off over my shoulder.
“Get your ass back here, Kenji.”
Ignored him, made it to the car. And believe it or not, when I started my engine, that idiot was hurtling towards me and yelling. “No one’s gonna believe you! You call yourself a writer, but don’t think we don’t know you’ve never published anything! Ever in your life! Whatever you write, it’ll be worthless, understand? Just like everything you’ve ever done! It’ll be your word against hers, against Dad’s, the whole company’s! Soon other people’s too, people you can’t handle! Momma says there’s nothing more pathetic than a bored intellectual no one listens to. Let me help you, onii-sama…”
An entire fleet of dump trucks couldn’t carry all the shit my brother flung at me as I got the fuck out of there. And now to hell with him, I can’t wait any longer, it’s time for my medication.
How do you confess something that will dull and soil the colors of everything you’ve said and every word you might utter? I guess when I sat down to write, I took it for granted that I just wouldn’t mention it. After all, I make the same omission every day. Done it for years.
But writing is supposed to make emptiness its opposite or at least make it appear so: to explain.
If she won’t let me speak to her, perhaps she’ll let some words appear before her in silence. She need not take up their burdens as I have those of the Ten. To do so or not is a reader’s prerogative, and I suppose she’s had enough. But if she did look, she’d deserve to know the truth. As I deserve the agony of unmasking.
Some she knows. Some she could’ve guessed but hasn’t. That’s because she’s determined to think the best of me. She could’ve googled Harvard’s rules, found out the timing wasn’t right, but why would she? Nabi’s my best friend, she believed me, and I never wanted to lie to her. I’d already failed her, letting her walk away. This new failure just confirmed I’d never be other than a failure before her. Simple cowardice wouldn’t let me face her. Let me get this over with.
Six years in Harvard’s PhD program. That’s what everyone believes except those who turned the final year into a deception. Harvard guarantees five years of support in the form of scholarships and teaching fellowships. After that it’s up to you to win grants and loans and so on or work a full-time job while you write your dissertation. Manageable for Americans. But for those of us born elsewhere, who aren’t allowed to work full-time, who are rarely eligible for American grants, whose tuition fees are always higher than Americans’, and who have limits on our US visas ticking like time bombs? Try it sometime. See what the pressure does for you.
On top of that, I wasn’t doing well. Nabi got married, rending something in me. I broke my arm, lost my part-time gig at the Faculty Club, started working for the chemist. Building a clientele took forever. For the longest time I relied on Masami to survive.
That made everything worse. She and the Americans never missed a chance to remind me that I lived by their good graces and on borrowed time. Spasms in my arm and shoulders from stress and wimpy painkillers. Books and heady concepts ceased to make sense as rationales for hanging on. Instead they made me angry and vengefully began to look like gibberish. I tore up some of them, made a pathetic fire in a corner of my apartment. Other nights down in the subway, watching trains go back and forth. Five years. My dissertation came to twenty-six pages of junk, not enough to coax any money out of anyone.
You’ve had more than your share of time, said Masami.
We’ve discussed it as a family, said Erik-Katsuo.
In our magnanimity, we’ve decided to let you do penance at CAM, said Masami.
Pay back all that money you wasted, said Barrington.
Like a katana sword through the gut.
The only reason I didn’t lie down on the subway tracks: Nabi called me daily. Or I called her, and she answered, full of light. I didn’t want to taint our laughter with complaints. Nikkou had her own problems. But I couldn’t help confiding that my family had given up on me. Not the money. I lied and said it wouldn’t be a problem, let her think I’d retain the illustrious title of Harvard PhD Candidate till the time was right to dazzle my committee with my dissertation’s perspicacious resplendence. Every day I reached across the ocean to nourish the same lie while Nabi nursed me through the ordeal of my family’s betrayal. I broke off all contact with them.
I eked a year out of my visa, bummed around Boston as a ronin, brokering for the chemist and thus—too late, Harvard had withdrawn my candidacy—I came into my substantial fortune. The visa expired. I led Nabi to believe that despite my new diploma (which she thinks I’ve stowed in a safety-deposit box), my foreign passport and America’s economic recession barred my way to a professorship (which wasn’t altogether false). With no prospects but the chemist’s dreams of an exotic clientele, I bought a shredder. Nabi turned it into hope.
Years passed without any need for the ugly truth to show itself. No one asked about my history. They just assumed it. My countenance was a mask which eventually seemed not to enhance what lay beneath but to become it. I bought into the deception. The illusion gave me strength to go into crowded rooms and sunny days with my head up. So I let myself forget. No one said a word until that day at Fort Scaur. Erik had been saving it.
In 1620-ish, Francis Bacon wrote about a guy who tried to hang himself in curiosity. This certain Gentleman…fastened the Cord about his neck, raising himself upon a stool and then letting himself fall, thinking it should be in his power to recover the stool at his pleasure, which he failed in, but was helped by a friend then present. The idgit felt no pain, he said, but first he thought he saw before his eyes a great fire and burning; then he thought he saw all black and dark; lastly it turned to a pale blue, or Sea-water green… Clearly this person was disturbed, but he was also a prophet. An oracle of the Zohytin lull, which this writing business seems to require more and more. First the numbing of the pain; then if you’ve taken enough, everything is bright. That PhD I wear around doesn’t exist: fucking awesome. So awesome I’ll be sure to forget it when Zohytin slides me down into its uncluttered darkness. When I wake, I’ll see the ocean, the ambiguous blue-green of the Atlantic Ocean that from afar appears so calm and inviting. I’ll dissolve in that soft color and the warmth of the water and its voiceless sighs; and as my cells mingle with oceanic molecules, components of my thoughts will separate and drift apart, their coherence giving way to nothing whatsoever.
The truth is I have no truth. Like my Aetna, I am lies stacked upon lies. But the foundations of her lies were death and poetry. The basis of my masquerade is shame. Hers was a sacrifice: she doused herself in shadows for the shadows’ sake. My façade is flimsy, I maintain it out of cravenness. Her shadows are her creations, mine are stolen accidents.
If you haven’t seen enough, here’s proof. Once more, Aetna, I scrounge for traces of your tracks and strain to follow. Emulating you, I add a portrait of my ruin to its poor description. Not poetically as you did but as stark evidence of my indulgence and the beautiful, vivacious thing that I destroyed—all the hope I’ve ever known.
Erik was just the morning. Sometime in the afternoon, a photo arrived in Martin’s inbox.
Cloudy day in Hamilton. A lane tucked out of the way. One wouldn’t wander here, only descend upon the place with some specific purpose.
A truck stands at the curb. It wears a logo, but it’s fuzzy in this low-res photograph. If you know what you’re looking for, you’ll make out a bull with silver horns. In front of it and at the photo’s rightmost edge, there is a warehouse-like building, pale blue with a red awning at the entrance. Zoom in and you’d find the bull there too, glaring out of the red fabric.
Now the foreground subjects. It seems they’ve just stepped out from underneath the awning. The sidewalk is narrow. With a few backward steps they might have squeezed behind the truck and avoided the camera. But you see, their comfort zone is in each other’s close proximity. Decades of tender friendship make it instinctive for them to act only on their instincts and their hearts’ desires in one another’s company. And there’s a great deal that they can no longer disguise. It’s become impossible because they are frightened. Each of them tries to rise to the occasion, protect and reassure the other, but at the same time instinct makes them huddle together and retreat into the closed, secret circle of their love. They cannot mask any of this; attempting to resist it only makes them feel more desperate, so they can’t help but reach for each other as they’ve always done.
Our hands entwine, Nabi reaches up to touch my face. When the shutter snaps, our eyes are closed, our lips pressed together. Half a moment’s withdrawal from the unasked and unsaid into unconditional consolation that solves nothing, promises nothing but the resolve to try another breath.
Treacherous and furtive, the camera captures the ambivalence of the fleeing instant. The tension in the shoulders, the urgency of the grip that draws the veins in the hands to the surface of the skin. Simultaneously the sure bliss of an authentic truth. Love radiates from this damaging image.
That photo makes me look like a skank. Martin forwarded it to me, I said Bye-no-bye, no no no! I dived down to my secret cavern in the shadows: I’ll find you, I’ll hunt you down. It came from a scrambled address generated randomly by a disposable email site ([email protected]). With this kind of address, you can make it expire after 10 mins so when Martin tried to write back (right before dropping everything & bullying his way onto the next flight home!), the culprit had disappeared. I went deeper & found the IP address of the computer that signed up to disguise itself in throwaway masks. Turned out to originate from an account with a satellite ISP that gives global access to the account holder’s executive employees. The account belongs to Clocktower Insurance. The computer’s registered to someone named Char Richards, VP of Risk Mgt & Dir of Life Underwriting. Martin knows none of this. He told me to stop & doesn’t know I disobeyed. Kenji thinks it was Martin who unmasked this person.
Baby, I’m so sorry, what if you were right, I wouldn’t listen. That was my 1st thought. Lord what have I done? (My 2nd thought.) 3rd: Kenji Okada-Caines, I warned you about obsession getting the better of you, & if you got on the bad side of an overseas company, whether you were right or wrong, you should’ve hopped back off again like you were standing on a hot potato! If they had this person send this photo cuz you refused to let go, then my marriage is officially in trouble cuz of you & your obsession, & when you destroyed my marriage you destroyed my credibility. Did you even stop to think about that? People start believing my own family can’t trust me, how are clients supposed to trust me with their confidential security? Why should they?! Document destruction is a trust-based industry, you know that, & you know how Bermuda works: reputation, reputation, personal & professional, it’s all the same thing, & the photo went to Martin over the internet!!! Lord have mercy I mean how could you do something like this, Kenji? Any chance we might’ve had, you ruined it because of her. Maybe what we had wasn’t perfect, but it worked, it was better than nothing, & now we don’t have that, we may never get it back.
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 28