If You Follow Me

by Malena Watrous

  “You’re such a player,” I tell him. “If Noriko wasn’t getting married, you wouldn’t even be thinking about her right now.”

  “What makes you such an expert on me?” he says.

  “Because you’re a typical guy,” I say. “You only want what you can’t have, and once you’ve got it you don’t want it anymore.”

  “What do I have?” he says.

  “Whatever you want,” I say.

  “You don’t know everything,” he says, suddenly dead serious in a way I’ve never heard him before. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “I know that when you sneeze, someone gets a Kleenex out to wipe your nose.” I have actually seen Sakura Ueno do this. Joe closed his eyes like a little child and let her wipe his face. “When you make a mess, it’s cute,” I say. “When you throw a bag of trash in the wrong can, the whole town doesn’t talk about it for months. You have no idea how easy you have it here, just because you’re a guy.”

  “Maybe,” he concedes. “But I didn’t always have it so easy.”

  “Well then,” I say, “if I were you then, I’d never leave Japan.”

  “I know,” he says. “I’m not planning to.”

  “Really?” Carolyn stops walking. “Never?”

  “Look,” he says, “I’ll spare you the sad story of my childhood, how when my parents split up, they fought over which one had to keep me, how most of the kids in the town where I grew up never make it to London for a weekend, let alone foreign shores. Let me just say that you don’t know how hard it was to get out of there, how many people said I never would, or what I’m willing to do so I don’t have to go back. I will go from school to school teaching English like a traveling salesman. I’ll dress like a banana in a pudding ad and say ‘yum yum’ a thousand times if that pays the rent. I haven’t got much, but I do want to keep what I’ve got. And I do know how good I have it here.”

  “Sorry,” I say sheepishly, looking at Carolyn. She picks up a huge strand of kelp, holds the bulbous end and whips it against the sand. Joe offers her the joint and she refuses. “Why did you say that Hiro knows he doesn’t stand a chance?” I ask Joe, at last, to change the subject and fill the silence.

  “Because of you and Carolyn, of course.”

  “But he doesn’t know about me and Carolyn.”

  “Well I’m sure he has his suspicions.”

  “Maybe, but the only way he could know for sure is if you told him.”

  “Roight…” Joe makes his sorry-looking face. “It’s somewhat possible that I might conceivably have let the information slip a while back.”

  “You asshole!” I say. “I can’t believe you did that!”

  “I was only trying to spare him the humiliation of asking you out.”

  “What?” I say. “When?”

  “Over the holidays. We went out for a cheery Christmas pint, and he asked, ever so casual like, whether you were available, if you had a ‘raba.’ The way he put it, ‘lover,’ not ‘boyfriend,’ I figured he knew. But he seemed quite shocked when I told him about you and Caro. Shocked and a bit dejected.”

  “I can’t believe you told him,” I say again. I feel the water suck back under my feet, the wet sand sliding beneath me.

  “I can’t believe you care so much,” Carolyn says. “Unless you like him and you’re pissed that Joe ruined your chances.”

  “That’s not the point,” I say.

  “Oh my God,” she says. “You do like him. Well what’s stopping you? You’re a free woman. You can do whatever you want.”

  “What?” Joe says. “What do you mean?”

  “There is no two of us anymore,” I say. “We broke up.”

  “Oh,” he says, after a moment. “I’m sorry.” He actually does sound sorry, which for some reason makes me angry. I don’t know why he gets to me, or why I always want to provoke him. It’s like an itch where the more you scratch it the worse it gets. It’s like he’s every guy who has ever let me down. I know this isn’t fair, but I can’t help it. Joe pulls a second joint from a tin and hands it to Carolyn, who shakes her head, so he passes it to me instead.

  “Do you want to go home?” I ask.

  “No,” she says.

  “Are you upset?”

  “No,” she says again. “Why should I be?”

  “Come on.” I try to give her the joint. “It’s my birthday. Let’s try to have fun.”

  “You two have fun,” she says. “I hate smoking pot. I never feel anything.”

  “You just have to hold it in,” I say.

  “You’re the expert,” she says drily.

  “I can show you how it’s done.”

  “Oh please,” she says. “May I have a lesson?”

  And suddenly I feel pissed at her too. I’m not the one who wanted an open relationship, the one who said that real desire shouldn’t be pinned down, attached to only one person. I want to prove something—I’m not sure what—so I take another drag, sucking as much smoke in as I can before I grab the back of her head, press my lips to hers and exhale into her mouth. When she tries to pull away I grip the whorl of hair at the nape of her neck and hold on tight, keeping my lips mashed to hers when she coughs. She struggles, her teeth banging against mine, her tongue muscular and sharp. It’s the dark side of our first kiss, fueled not by passion but resentment. But apparently we put on a good show because when we break apart Joe says, “I’ve never seen you two kiss before. That was lovely.” His voice sounds weird, choked and husky.

  “That wasn’t a kiss,” Carolyn says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have watched.”

  “I can show you a real kiss,” Carolyn says, reaching for his hand.

  There is an odd relief in seeing the thing you dreaded made real. Dread is almost always worse than the thing itself, and then it’s over. As I watch her kiss him, wedge her leg between his, bite his lower lip, then pull back to trace it with the tip of her tongue, I’m not sure what to do. She kisses me the same way—her signature move, apparently. I’m standing there frozen when she reaches for my hand and pulls me closer. She stops kissing Joe and begins kissing me. It’s the most ardent kiss we’ve exchanged in months, but it feels like acting. As she slides her hands inside my robe, over my waist and up the sides of my breasts, I feel like the girls in a porno, making out for the benefit of some guy. Joe’s expression is at once lusty and sheepish. He looks like he’s watching a porno. Adding to the effect, a wave crashes over us, soaking our kimono underclothes and sticking them to our bodies. We gasp and break apart, drenched and panting. Then Carolyn reaches for Joe’s hand, pulls him to me and backs away. It’s like musical chairs. Musical lips. There are so few ways to do this, so few combinations for just two pairs of lips, two tongues, two sets of hands. To keep it interesting, you have to keep switching partners I guess.

  He is willing to play. He places his hands on my shoulders, closes his eyes and parts his lips. I don’t know why I kiss him back. Curiosity maybe, or so that Carolyn doesn’t one-up me, or the urge that you feel, when holding something fragile, to squeeze. His lips are thinner than hers, edged with stubble, and his tongue feels cold and thick and gummy. At first I can’t stop feeling the separate components of the kiss, and then I get caught up in it. My breath snags and I want to push him down in the sand, climb on top of him and stub him out. But then another wave hits us, a big one, and as it sucks back into the ocean, we are toppled and dragged under by its force.

  Carolyn dives under and starts swimming and I follow. Joe falls backward, kicking his long legs behind him. The farther out we get from the shore, the smoother the surface of the water, so the stars reflect in its mirror and it’s almost like being in outer space. But it’s the ocean, and the thing about the ocean is that it’s never still, not for one second. It’s like a human body that way, moving, cycling, churning, changing. I think about how every movement we make we initiate by sending messages through our brains, but this ha
ppens so fast that we don’t even realize that what we think are involuntary actions are actually millions upon millions of choices. I choose to dive under and open my eyes, to feel the sting of the salt, to see the blackness stretching below. I choose to let antigravity or whatever force it is push me back to the surface, where I find Carolyn treading water, kissing Joe again. Then she stops and kisses me once more, and I swear I can taste him on her mouth. The ocean is still moving, of course, doing its own pulling and pushing, a fourth to round out our number. It pushes us into the sand and we stumble out in our waterlogged clothes, heavier and clumsier than before, like astronauts returning to earth. Carolyn stands behind Joe, wraps her arms around his waist and sucks on his earlobe. When she starts to slide her hand down the front of his pants, he groans and turns to face her. Watching them kiss again, the relief goes away. But I am not angry anymore either. I’m not even jealous, not really. It’s over. We can stop trying. I am free. I turn around and walk away.

  They don’t even notice I’m gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  omoshiroi: (ADJ.) interesting; funny

  In books, when a mystery is solved, it’s like a bow slipping off a present to reveal the gift inside: case cracked, case closed. But in life, when one piece of the puzzle fits, it often seems as if that piece had simply been lifted from somewhere else on the board, creating a new gap. I have no idea who would have stuff ed the technical boys’ high school uniforms into boxes in our storage area, where I was sure to find them. The first one I find is in the electric sukiyaki pot. There are yellow stains on the underarms of the shirt, and the balled up jacket and pants smell of mold. As I keep opening other boxes, I find more and more of these uniforms hidden in plain sight, a clue to a mystery I hadn’t even realized existed.

  I had just returned home from school when someone knocked on the door. I assumed it would be Carolyn, coming to collect the stuff she left behind. The last time I saw her was at the beach a week ago. She stayed out all night, and the next day, while I was at work, she packed up her suitcases and moved down to Hakui. When I came home that day, I thought we’d been robbed when I saw that half of the shoes were missing from the genkan. But since very few women here could fit into either of our big shoes, that didn’t make sense. Then I saw the note on the refrigerator.

  M: I’m sorry for leaving without saying good-bye, but this isn’t really good-bye. I’ll be back soon to get the rest of my things, and so that we can talk. I’d say that we should stay friends, but we’re not friends, are we? We’re more like family, in the ways that we drive each other crazy, can’t live together to save our lives, and love each other deeply. I don’t want to lose you. I hope you feel the same way.

  C.

  I had my speech ready. I was going to say that family doesn’t leave without saying good-bye. But when I opened the door, Carolyn wasn’t standing on the other side. Instead, I found myself drowning in a pair of gray eyes.

  Keiko was holding Koji in her arms. He was straddling her hip and she was holding him tight, the way she did after he jumped out of the window. Fumiya stood beside her, muttering something, his head jerking around like a bird.

  “Say ‘hello’ to Marina,” Keiko prompted Fumiya. The older boy didn’t respond, but Koji said, “Hello,” and then grinned at me.

  “You have a new tooth,” I said, pointing to his mouth, my hand shaking.

  “Big tooth,” Keiko added, kissing his cheek.

  “Big tooth,” Fumiya repeated. “Big, big, big tooth.”

  “I look like the rabbit,” Koji said in Japanese.

  “How is that rabbit?” I asked, my stomach lurching. The rabbit spent a night recovering from dental surgery in our bathtub before I brought it back to the elementary school, sneaking it into the hutch at dawn. It was bedraggled and wobbly, its fate far from secure, but I wanted it to be there when the kids arrived.

  “Futotta,” Koji declared happily. It got fat.

  “The children love this rabbit,” Keiko said. “So thank you.”

  “Thank your brother-in-law,” I said. “He saved its life.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “He needs new patients.” It took me a moment to realize that she’d cracked a joke. When I laughed, she grinned and I felt my eyes well up. Keiko looked alarmed. I lied and said that I’d been chopping onions before they arrived, but it was obviously just a story. “Maybe now is not a good time,” she said, explaining that she’d come to practice for the English speech contest.

  “It’s a fine time,” I said, stepping aside. I asked if they’d like to join me for dinner, explaining that I had all of the ingredients for sukiyaki and no idea how to cook it. Keiko said that they didn’t want to bother me. “I know you are so busy,” she said, and I assured her that I wasn’t busy at all. Finally she nodded and set Koji down. As I led them down the hall, he slid his hand into mine.

  The gloves were off.

  It was then that I ducked into the storage area to search for the electric sukiyaki pot, and discovered the boys’ school uniforms, stuff ed into every nook and cranny that could hold and hide them. Someone must have broken in when we weren’t here and left the uniforms behind as a message or a warning. But of what, I don’t know. It’s creepy, but nothing I can deal with at the moment.

  In the kitchen, Keiko has turned on the rice cooker and is chopping vegetables. When I tell her to stop and relax she says, “You don’t trust my cooking?”

  “You’re my guest,” I say. “I can chop while you practice your speech.”

  “Oh no,” she says. “I will not compete in English speech contest.”

  “You’re not?” I ask, confused. “I thought that was why you came over.”

  “No,” she says, looking at me head-on. “Fumiya will compete.”

  My stomach lurches again. From across the counter separating the kitchen and the living room I can see him bouncing on the couch. He is dressed in running shorts, his legs shockingly white. As the backs of his thighs smack the vinyl, he smacks his lips in an echo.

  “Fumiya-kun,” Keiko says, “Jyabauokki taimu!”

  Fumiya shoves his hands under his butt, sucks in a deep breath, and then rambles through a long phrase of gibberish: “Twasbrillig andtheslithytoves didgyreand gimbleinthewabe allmimsymimsymimsy…” Keiko claps her hands and he stops abruptly. She and Koji both look at me with twin expressions of pride.

  “That was…” I begin.

  “It’s Jyabauokki,” Koji says. “Don’t you know? From Arisu?”

  Of course. From Alice in Wonderland. “The Jabberwocky.” I vaguely remember having read this poem as a kid and seeing it inexplicably printed on a brochure at Shika’s museum of nuclear power. Keiko explains that this is how Fumiya learned it. After she took the two boys to the museum, she brought home the English brochure and read it to them for fun. Fumiya insisted on hearing it every night before bed, and soon he had learned the whole poem by heart, without trying.

  “Mimsymimsymimsymimsy,” Fumiya says again, grinning at me.

  Keiko brings the electric sukiyaki pot into the living room and sets it on the coffee table. The cutting board is arranged with slices of meat, squares of tofu, sugar snap peas and mushrooms. Using chopsticks, she dips a piece of raw meat into the hot broth, swirls it around for a minute until it turns from deep red to light pink, and then passes it to me.

  “It’s delicious,” I say, and it is, sweet and rich and soft, almost creamy.

  “More delicious than the steak I cook for you at my house?”

  “Your steak wasn’t bad,” I lie. “I just had a toothache.”

  “It’s very bad,” she says. “At that time I’m so stress. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you feel less stressed now?”

  “Not one hundred percent,” she says, “but better.” She dips another slice of meat into the pot and then holds it up to Koji, who opens his mouth like a baby bird. Fumiya opens his own mouth and chews in time with his brother. He’s sitting with his feet up on the couch and his
knees spread, hands cupping his groin. I’m afraid he’s going to start masturbating again, but Keiko asks in Japanese if he’s hungry and he considers the question, or at least the morsel caught between her chopsticks. She places it on a bowl of rice and waits for him to plant his feet on the ground before sliding the bowl to him.

  “Fumiya is artistic,” Keiko says. Then I realize that she actually said, “Fumiya is autistic.” I am not sure if I should act surprised, or what I should say, so I just keep quiet and listen. “Before, we don’t want to admit it. His teacher makes suggestions for treatment, but we resist, hoping he will improve. This does not happen. In fact he gets worse. So now we try new strategy. Goal is to reward appropriate behavior. For example, Fumiya has echo tendency. To repeat is so stimulating. We can’t make him stop this, so we must find appropriate context and reward. Maybe speech contest is appropriate context for repeating. And he loves a clap sound. If he recites this poem during Shika’s festival, maybe people will clap…” She trails off, dipping a mushroom into the broth, and then chewing slowly. “But probably California’s mayor expects to hear perfect speech by fluid English speaker, not recitation by autistic child.”

  “No one else is participating,” I say. “If Fumiya enjoys reciting this poem and you think it would be good for him, then I think he should do it. As long as you think he’s up for it, getting onstage with all those people watching him.”

  “All of those people,” she echoes. “Am I up for it? For so long I am hazukashii…”

  “Ashamed,” I translate, knowing she doesn’t mean shy or foolish.

  “But lately I just…don’t care so much. He is my son. Maybe I can’t make him perfect son like everyone else. But I can try to help him, ne? Little by little.”

  And so for the next hour I coach Fumiya. At first sounds cartwheel out of his mouth, but I can get him to break up the lines by clapping whenever he should stop, and before long he is slowing down, separating every phrase, pausing between words. As he anticipates my applause, he actually looks at me, picks up on my cues, mostly manages to follow them. It’s dark and Koji has fallen asleep on the couch, his head on his mother’s lap, when she glances at her watch.