It was past one o’clock. I remembered that it was the use-by date for the ground meat in the fridge, so I decided to fry it up with sweet chili miso and eggplant. My mind kept going back to the couple Kitae had talked about earlier. Was it all true? What happened to them after that? I couldn’t get them out of my head. I tried to tell my husband the story when he came back from work, but somehow it didn’t seem as mysterious or resonant as when Kitae told it.
“What is that, some kind of horror story?” My husband was picking pieces out of his miso soup, like a bird pecking at birdseed. I’d repeatedly asked him not to, but he claimed a doctor had told him to watch his salt intake, and since then he’d made a point of leaving the broth almost untouched every night.
I reached for the dish of green onions and cuttlefish tentacles in vinegar and miso dressing, and took the opportunity to look at my husband’s profile as he sat at the table. Because he preferred to watch TV during dinner, my customary seat was on his right, side-on rather than across from him.
My husband was engrossed in some variety show, highball tumbler happily in hand. It was a habit he’d kept completely secret while we were dating. Soon after our wedding, he’d sat me down and said, “San, you should know that I’m a man who likes to watch at least three hours of TV a day.”
I’d never been married before, but my husband had previously had a failed marriage. He said he’d hidden his bad habits from his first wife, trying to keep up appearances, and that had become too much of a burden. “That’s why I want to show you the real me,” he said. He’d sounded so sincere that I unthinkingly welcomed it as a good thing.
I discovered that night that “TV” meant variety shows. Nor was “three hours” an exaggeration—each night, for at least the time it took to have a drink and eat dinner, his attention was glued to the screen as though he were suckling it with his eyes. Having successfully exposed me to the “real” him, my husband eventually worked up to making it clear, every chance he got, that he was a man who liked to not think about anything when he got home.
I examined his features more closely. My husband’s eyes were piercing, to put it nicely. To put it another way, they constantly looked suspicious, even reptilian. Because of his bad posture, he always looked as though he were peering up at the world, and eight or nine times out of ten, he gave people an unpleasant first impression. His nose was long, as though it had been pushed down from above, and his lips were thin.
My face, on the other hand, was pretty average. I had a round, low nose that took after my grandfather’s. My lips, which were like my grandmother’s, were plump, but thanks in part to the paleness of my skin, the overall impression was bland, so that sometimes even I looked in the mirror and was reminded of a blank postcard. What was more, my face lacked cohesion, because the right eyelid had one fold and the left had two. I’d had a boyfriend or two who’d told me they liked the way I looked, so I wasn’t unhappy with my face, but now that I was married and had fewer reasons to put on makeup, my likeness to a blank postcard was perhaps more noticeable.
I couldn’t imagine anyone thinking we resembled each other. So why had I felt that we did?
Out of nowhere, my husband said he wanted to go on a short vacation.
That day, my brother, Senta, had come around after work to repair the refrigerator he was going to post on an online auction for us. I had been watching him as he put down some sheets of newspaper, laid out the tools he’d brought, and tackled the task.
I turned toward my husband in the living room, surprised. “Where’s this coming from?”
“I mean, we haven’t gotten away in a while.” My husband looked totally relaxed, highball in hand. We’d talked about ordering in some pizzas once there was some progress on the repair, but he’d gone ahead and started drinking “to tide him over.” He had no compunction about proclaiming that he had no interest in doing anything as tedious as rewiring household appliances. I guess he’d embraced his nature as the youngest of his siblings, because he showed no hesitation in taking advantage of kindness, even if it came from his younger brother-in-law.
Senta didn’t help matters. He could have stood up for himself more, but there was something about him that almost volunteered for the position of junior partner. It went so far that, because my husband would call on him for every little thing, my brother and I saw a lot more of each other now than we had before I was married.
“San,” my husband said from the couch, “do you remember Uwano? I brought him here once.”
“The one who looks like a monkey? He put up that bookcase for us.”
A few months after we’d been married, my husband had gotten it into his head that he wanted rows of shelves that went all the way up to the ceiling, and he had roped in his coworker to help. I guess he hadn’t yet felt comfortable enough then to ask Senta.
“That’s the one. Well, he says he just bought himself a brand-new camper van.”
“He went for it, huh?”
“Yeah. But he’s too busy to take it out.”
“Right.”
“So, you know, he says it’s a pity to leave it lying around, and he just wants someone to enjoy it.”
“Who’s going to do that?”
“Me.”
“Uwano doesn’t want to drive it himself?”
“He’s too busy. That’s why we decided I should take it out instead. Weren’t you listening to a word I said?”
“Can just anyone drive a camper van?”
“I guess so,” my husband said.
“Senta, do you know if that’s true?” I asked.
“I think all you need is a regular driver’s license,” he answered, working a fine brush that looked like a nail polish applicator. After multiple coats, the specialized adhesive would build up so that the repair would be undetectable to the untrained eye.
Last week, when I’d checked over the refrigerator to see whether we’d be able to sell it, I’d discovered two cracks in the seal around the door. Senta had told me they were fixable, so I’d asked him to do it. Now, seeing the way he knowledgeably laid out the professional-looking tools for the job, I couldn’t help but think, as his older sister, that he should be training as some kind of craftsman instead of trying to make it as a film director.
“How many people can it take?”
“It’s a six-seater. It even has a toilet and a shower,” my husband said proudly, as though the van were his own. “So I was thinking, if you like, Senta, why don’t you and Hakone come along too? There’s enough space.”
“Wow—really? I’ll just check with Hakone,” Senta said.
It was obvious he was trying to rope in Senta to take care of the parts of camping he didn’t want to bother with.
“Great! I think we should head for the mountains, you know?”
“Are you thinking you’d bring the grill?”
“Of course. We’ll put up hammocks, take it easy. Have some beers.”
Once they’d enthusiastically painted this manly picture, Senta said he’d finished covering the cracks in white paint and was going to wait for it to dry. We ordered pizza.
“I don’t know why, but I’ve been feeling drawn to the mountains lately. To nature,” said my husband, who’d been rooted to the couch the entire time. “Just all of a sudden. I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
I recalled that the last time we’d been in a bookstore, he had in fact glanced through a field guide to wild plants.
“Sounds like you’ve been working too hard,” Senta said.
“Right. Could be.”
“Have you been putting in overtime?”
“Overtime? Yeah, I have.” My husband was licking cheese off his fingers while nodding.
“What is it you want to do in the mountains?” Senta asked, sipping his cola.
“I really don’t want to do anything. Just relax, zone out.”
“Isn’t it something?” I said, reaching for a slice of the
quattro formaggi. “No one would guess this was the same guy who couldn’t make enough fun of outdoorsy people just a little while ago.”
“Maybe it’s a midlife thing. Remind me how old you are now?”
“How old am I now again?” My husband turned his bulging eyes toward me.
“Why don’t you know your own age?”
“I can’t be bothered to work it out every time. This is why you need to remember things like this for me.” Having said everything he wanted to say, and apparently eaten his fill, my husband went off to take a bath.
Senta polished off the remaining pizza, including what my husband had left, and went back to work on the refrigerator. I halfheartedly started moving the plates to the dishwasher.
It was the beginning of July.
I’d thought this would finally mean the end of the rainy season, but the humidity only rose, joining forces with the heat, and the weather became even more uncomfortable.
Unusually, my husband, who’d planned to go in to work over the weekend, said he had canceled and invited me to go out for food.
We were on our way back from a local lunch place, where we’d eaten a plate of soba noodles with grated daikon and yam, and a chicken-omelette rice bowl. Three things happened more or less at the same time. My husband, who’d been walking swiftly ahead, said, “Oh,” and stopped short; a woman who’d been crouched down by a utility pole said, “Why!” and stood up; and, from my vantage point behind the two of them, I had a nasty premonition. I suspected my husband had been caught trying to spit out phlegm by the side of the road, as he had a habit of doing. I nervously approached them, and saw the woman was holding a dustpan and a brush. Her expression was thunderous, beyond what I’d expected, and I was considering walking past as though I had nothing to do with the situation when my husband, turning around, appealed to me for help. “San, can’t you do something?”
“What happened?”
“Just get over here.”
Hesitantly, I joined him and the woman, who was watching him sharply from behind her glasses. She looked about halfway between me and my mother in age.
“This woman,” said my husband helplessly, still standing right in front of her, “even though I’ve explained that I didn’t, she insists that I looked right at her and spat on the ground. You can set her straight, right? Tell her I’d never do something like that?”
“You think I couldn’t see from this close?” the woman said. “Knock it off.”
My husband had apparently decided to keep talking to me instead of her. “This is exactly the kind of thing I can’t handle.” He massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingers, looking genuinely pained. “Look, just tell her I feel bad about the spitting, okay?”
“Um,” I started, before the woman could open her mouth. I chose my words carefully to sound as polite as possible. “People often misunderstand him—because of the way he looks—but he’s not the kind of person to spit at someone deliberately.”
“How should I know?” The woman’s expression had grown even more ominous, as though she were trying to squash my husband’s reptile eyes through the power of her gaze. “I assume you’re married. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, acting like this, and at your age.” She looked at us closely from head to toe.
My husband was staring off over the woman’s head. I looked down at my feet, unable to meet her eyes.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
I told her it was nearby, and the woman grimaced even more. “Give me the address,” she said.
“Our address?” I raised my head in surprise. I didn’t understand how that was relevant.
“Of course. It’s only fair, since you know where I live. There’s no telling what people like you will stoop to otherwise,” she said loudly.
“Really,” I said, entreating, “I assure you, it won’t happen again.” I bowed my head, desperately trying to bring a peaceful end to the situation. But when I looked to my husband, he’d quietly moved himself over to the shade of the boundary wall and was decidedly in spectator mode, as though he were watching TV.
“What do you think you’re doing, trying to sneak away over there?” The woman’s anger seemed to have reached a climax. She put her dustpan and brush down on the ground. “I’ve had enough,” she said, and took her phone out of her pocket. “I’m calling the police.”
“Wait, please. Let me clean it up,” I said, pulling a handkerchief out of my bag and crouching down to the ground. Under the searing sun, the asphalt was as hot as a frying pan over low heat. I found the remains of a gob of phlegm to the side of the utility pole, and wiped it off carefully, collecting it in my handkerchief, then rubbed at the spot repeatedly.
I got up and bowed my head deeply again, asking her to accept my apology. When I raised my head, the woman was staring at me with a blank expression. Flustered by the change in the quality of her gaze, I bowed and apologized yet again. But the woman still wouldn’t respond.
Wasn’t this enough? I was considering getting back down and scouring the area again when the woman quietly said, “Look at yourself. It wasn’t even yours.”
I still wasn’t sure what she meant. She picked up the dustpan and brush. “I’m done with this. Leave it. But don’t come past my house again,” the woman commanded, and then shooed us as if she were chasing away some animal.
My husband had started to walk away. I rushed around the corner after him.
“What a disaster,” my husband said, as though he’d had nothing to do with it. “The old cow had it in for you. Bad luck.”
I looked down at the handkerchief I was still holding in my hand. I had the strange sensation that my body was tangled with my husband’s, or maybe cleaved to it. Until the woman had pointed it out, I had been feeling that the phlegm wrapped in the handkerchief belonged to me.
I looked over at my dawdling husband.
“Oh!” I exclaimed before I could stop myself.
My husband’s features seemed to have slipped down his face toward his chin.
Then, as though reacting to my voice, they hurriedly moved back to their original position.
“What’s the matter, San?” Surprised at my surprise, my husband peered at me. His face was his usual, somehow fishlike face. “What just happened?”
For a long moment I was speechless. Eventually my husband seemed to get bored, and said, “You know, you’re starting to show your age, San.” Then he ambled around the corner and disappeared.
When I paid careful attention, I could see that my husband’s face changed nimbly in response to whatever situation he was in. When we were with people, it stayed looking the way it always looked, keeping up appearances, but once it was just the two of us, the position of his eyes and nose would take on a slightly haphazard placement. The difference was a millimeter or two, an indeterminate change, like the outline of a caricature dissolving and spreading in water.
I started finding excuses to make him look in the mirror when his face was slacking. Hey, you missed a spot shaving, I’d say, or, You should check out that thing by your nose. The moment he faced the mirror, his features, which had been sitting in approximate positions, would snap back into their original arrangement, as if they were lining up for inspection. At first I thought it was creepy, but seeing it every day, I started getting used to it, even finding it impressive.
The only time it still threw me off was when my husband’s features would imitate mine. I assumed it did this because it saved effort to draw on a face that was close at hand. Either way, I noticed a clear pattern in that his features were most likely to become careless while he was watching a variety show with his nightly highball.
I was on my laptop at the dinner table, fresh from a bath, when my husband started talking about how his ex-wife was acting strange.
I finished my nightly survey of potential rival refrigerators up for auction, and closed the laptop.
“How do you mean, strange?”
“She keeps sending me weird emails,” my husband said, during the next ad break. Over the back of the couch I could see his upper back, which was starting to get fleshy, and the short hair covering the back of his head. This was the one he’d split up with after only two years because he’d gotten tired of not being able to be himself with her. That was definitely different, I thought, than leaving someone because you stopped being attracted to them.
“How are they weird?” I stood up and went to the kitchen to get the barley tea I’d brewed during the day.
“I don’t even know how to describe them.”
“But you said strange. What makes you say that?”
“They’re kind of garbled, I guess.”
“Are you going to reply?” I said.
“I already did.” He was doing something with the TV remote. He said he’d written her back with vague generalities, and she’d responded with an even more incomprehensible message.
“Do you think she wants to get back together with you?” I asked blandly.
My husband said nothing.
Was his face staying in line just now, when he was thinking about his ex-wife? I wondered vaguely as I drank the cold barley tea. Another variety show came on.
I left the apartment to go to the dry cleaner’s and spotted Kitae sitting on the bench in the dog run. She was sitting with her spine straight, neck long as usual, but her back seemed to be missing some of its usual vitality.
I leaned against the fire door and pushed it open to enter the dog run, and she waved at me quietly.
The Lonesome Bodybuilder Page 5