I start to text Mike.
I type, We’re done.
I type, Fuck you.
I type, It’s over dickhead.
I type, How r u, and that’s what I send.
• • •
My mother told me about her new husband first. She trusted me, or at least that’s what she said. So I didn’t tell Lydia. Didn’t tell my father. I watched him walk in and out of his house, occasionally with a woman he was seeing and occasionally not.
Her name was Carlotta. Sometimes she’d stay over. When that happened, she’d crack eggs and slice queso fresco the next morning. She was from San Antonio, living with her brothers by the high school, always saying she wished I was straight because I’d be perfect for her daughter.
She only goes for bad boys, said Carlotta.
I’m no good either, I said.
And Carlotta considered me for a second, before she went back to chopping cilantro.
It’s different, she said, grinning.
* * *
I don’t know when my father found out about my mother, exactly, but eventually Carlotta stopped coming around. And then my father didn’t leave the house for a while.
He mostly sat on the porch.
He started saying please.
* * *
One morning, around that time, the doorbell woke me up. It couldn’t have been past four. These two guys were holding my father, in a tank top and briefs, slumped on their shoulders and looking uncertain.
Es tu papa? said one of the guys.
Sí, I said, lo siento.
Lo encontramos por allá, said the guy, pointing across the block and over some trees.
Es not safe, said the other guy.
Lo siento, I said again, and they handed him off.
Necesitas cuidarlo, said the first guy, scratching at his shoulder.
* * *
Afterward, my father laughed and hiccupped the entire morning, speaking all sorts of gibberish, before he suddenly, thoroughly, knocked out that afternoon.
The next day, he called me downstairs before breakfast. He said he had something to tell me. Something about my mother.
I tried to make the appropriate face of surprise.
3.
It’s still dark when I’m up the next morning, but Mitsuko’s mincing shrimp. She’s hunched over the cutting board, beside eggs, flour, and honey.
Do you eat, she says.
I tell her I do.
We don’t say shit while she’s working. Mitsuko blitzes everything in a food processor. Drops the mixture in a skillet, dabbing everything with soy sauce, folding the batter gradually. I take my pills, watching her do all this, and she ignores me the entire time, working at her own pace.
When I sit on the sofa, Mitsuko stops rolling. I stand to set the table, and she starts rolling again.
Once she’s finished, she fills a bowl with some pickled cucumbers, with a plate for the omelette, leaving another one out for me. We chew hunched over the counter, hip to hip.
So, Mitsuko says, how long have you been sleeping with my son?
Or is it casual, she says.
Not really, I say.
I don’t know how it works, says Mitsuko.
I think it’s the same for everyone.
It isn’t, says Mitsuko.
She says, I’m sure you can tell that Michael and I are very close.
We’ve been together for four years, I say. More or less.
More, Mitsuko asks, or less?
A little more, I say.
But just a little, she says.
Mike’s better with numbers, I say.
It occurs to me, out of nowhere, that my posture is entirely fucked up. Mitsuko’s is impeccable, even at a lean. So I straighten up, and then I stoop, and Mitsuko raises an eyebrow.
She snorts, and says, My son could not be worse with numbers.
After that, we eat in silence. Scattered Spanish filters in through the window. The kids next door kick a soccer ball against the wall, until their father steps outside screaming, asking which one of them has lost their minds.
While Mitsuko’s focused on her food, I really look at her. It’s clear that, at one point, she was a startlingly beautiful woman.
Then she meets my eyes. I blink like something’s in them.
She says, I realize that this must be strange for you, too.
No, I say, it’s fine.
So you’re a liar, says Mitsuko.
I’m being honest. Really.
I’m fluent in fine, says Mitsuko. Fine means fucked.
Did my son tell you how long he’d be gone, she says.
A month, I say. Maybe two. I don’t know. We didn’t talk too much about it.
Of course not.
But did he tell you?
Tell me what?
How long he’d be gone, I say. Or that he was leaving?
Mitsuko looks me in the eyes. She cracks her knuckles on the counter.
No, she says. My son neglected to give me that information. But this could be a good thing. I needed to get out of Japan for a while. No sense in rushing back to Tokyo to look at a dying man.
So, I ask, you’re staying here? Until Mike gets back?
My voice cracks, just a bit. But Mitsuko spots it. She grins.
Would that be a problem, she asks.
No, I say. That’s not what I meant.
Then what did you mean?
I’m sorry, I say. I really was just asking.
It’s enough for Mitsuko to cross her arms. She leans on the counter, and her hair slips down her shoulders. I make a point to slow my breathing, to let my shoulders droop just a bit.
Then I think staying here is exactly what I’ll do, says Mitsuko. I could use the time off. Your place is filthy, but it’ll work until Michael makes it back.
And that’s absolutely okay, I say. Totally perfect.
Remember, says Mitsuko, you’re the one who let him leave.
You’re right, I say. I’m the one who let him leave.
How generous, says Mitsuko, but then she doesn’t say anything else.
* * *
Once Mitsuko’s finished her bowl, she drops it in the sink. She turns on the faucet. Reaches for mine. The omelette was delicious, the sort of thing Mike would cook, because he did everything in the kitchen, and I think that this could have been the problem to begin with.
Nice chat, says Mitsuko, and I apologize, but I’m not sure why.
* * *
• • •
At some point, Lydia and I started talking about our mother’s new family. I never asked when my sister found out, or from who. But she never asked me either.
4.
The next day, Mitsuko’s cooking potatoes and okayu and a sliver of fish. She sets a bowl aside for me, with some scallions dashed over the porridge. Then she sips tea by the counter, and I drink water like a drowning man, and I never see her take a pill or check her blood pressure or anything else.
Once she’s finished, Mitsuko slips on a jacket and shoes. I don’t ask where she’s going. I won’t make the same mistakes twice.
* * *
• • •
At work, Ximena asks where I think Mitsuko heads during the day. We’re looking at photos of the reception venue. She’s opting to skip the actual wedding. A while back, Ximena told me that she’s already walked down the aisle, and it didn’t do much the first time around, so why the fuck would she try that again?
Mike’s mother goes wherever brokenhearted mothers go, I say.
The laundromat, says Ximena.
The mall, I say.
The dog park.
The spa.
The market.
The gym.
The bar.
No way.
What, says Ximena, you think you’re the only one who needs to fuck?
I try not to think of Mitsuko like that at all, I say.
And that’s why you’re stuck, says Ximena. She’s not human to you. Go figure.
As opposed to an angel, I say.
As opposed to anything else, says Ximena.
You’re really calling me a misogynist.
I’m calling you a man, Benson.
Before I can open my mouth, Barry sprints around the corner with Ahmad. He’s got the kid by his shoulders, and Ahmad’s hanging tight to Barry’s stomach.
Barry is actually married himself, to the woman he’s been with since high school. She’s a surgeon. And here he is, cleaning playpens with us. Whenever his wife drops by the building, she smiles at nearly everyone, but one day Ximena told me that she never actually touches anything. To just watch and see if she did.
And Ximena was right. It never happened.
When Ahmad tugs Barry’s neck, he nearly drops the kid.
Your son is having a day, says Barry.
He’s not my son, I say.
Benson’s son needs a haircut, says Ximena.
Stop, says Ahmad. I’m not his.
* * *
Here’s the running joke: as the most child-ambivalent employee in the building, the one who thought he’d only be flipping through paperwork, it turns out that they don’t much mind me at all. That most of the kids we take care of actually like me. And I’m the only one, really, that Ahmad tends to bother with. So whenever Ximena and Barry had an issue they couldn’t handle with our charges, I was their last resort. And then things usually worked out. I still don’t know how I feel about it. But one day I told Mike about this, and he said it made sense and that I just couldn’t see it myself, that this was a part of the appeal.
* * *
Eventually, I ask Ahmad what’s happened, what is the problem, and he tells me that Marcos slapped him.
You mean Marcos slapped you back, says Barry. You started it.
He started it, says Ahmad.
You hit him first, says Barry.
Yeah, says Ahmad, but he started it.
* * *
I could tell Ahmad that, in his own way, he’s right. You don’t have to hit first to start it. And I’d like to tell him that, as young as he is, it doesn’t get any easier.
But instead, I pick him up and flip him over my shoulder. And he looks around at me, a little suspicious. He lets out a grown man’s laugh.
* * *
• • •
At one point, Mike started staying out. Heading who knows where after his shifts. Or maybe he was still at work. Or maybe he sat in his parked car, biding his time, chewing his fingernails. But, in any case, I started camping out on the sofa, which is a thing I probably picked up from one telenovela or another.
* * *
One night Mike stumbled through the door, drunk. He set his phone on the counter. I leapt from my blankets and threw that shit against the wall.
The cell cracked clean in half. We watched it pop in silence. Then it started ringing, and before it stopped, Mike looked at me and asked if he should answer it or what.
* * *
When I told Ximena about it afterward, she wouldn’t stop shaking her head. We were at her place. Her mother was out. So we watched Ximena’s kid, Juan, sprint from wall to wall, giggling at nothing, waiting for the delivery guy. Her fiancé was out of town, at a conference for incisors, and we’d ordered pad thai with some cash he’d left behind.
It’s like we’re in some fucked-up rom-com, I said. It’s like we’re both fucked-up rom-com villains.
Juan ran into the coffee table, bounced off, and careened into a bookshelf. I thought Ximena might stand to check on him, but she just sat there until he jumped up.
Way back when she was still with Juan’s father, Ximena drove herself and the kid to me and Mike’s place. She was crying, a mess, with a half-stuffed backpack for Juan. Mike made her tea while I sat with her on the sofa. Ximena told me she wasn’t ever going back, that this was the last straw, but it was still another month before she finally broke up with the guy.
Now we watched her son attempt a crab-walk across her carpet.
Ximena said, Everybody’s somebody’s villain.
5.
Mitsuko and I form something like an evening routine: She cooks. I set the table. We both eat at the counter. Later, I wipe it down while Mitsuko hits the dishes.
Otherwise, we mostly keep to ourselves. It’s probably better that way.
But I’ve learned a few things. Little things.
Like how, back home, she works at a jewelry store in Shimokitazawa.
Or how she flies to LA three times a year, to meet a man, or to meet a friend, or to meet a man who is also a friend.
And she’s hardly flashy, but all of her clothes are nice. Every sock and skirt and earring is clearly part of a larger, varied whole.
Mike, meanwhile, wears the same three things seven days a week.
He has no patience for schedules, routines, or patterns of any kind.
Before me, he saw whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted, fucking them however he wanted, and then he’d leave when he got bored.
Living with Mitsuko is, in other words, entirely unlike living with her son, whose gayness she is comfortable with, or at least not entirely uncomfortable with, or at least less disagreeable toward than my own parents, probably.
* * *
When Mitsuko asks about laundry detergent, I tell her it’s in the cupboard under the sink.
When she asks where we do laundry, I point to the laundromat across the street.
When she asks where we buy groceries, I give her a few names, but she looks skeptical at all of them.
Will they have natto, she asks.
I say the H Mart just might.
You know what natto is, asks Mitsuko, frowning.
Soybeans, I say, right? Mike uses it.
And for the first time in our acquaintance, Mitsuko looks confused.
Here in Houston, she says. The city where you could hardly find daikon a few years ago?
Yeah, I say.
And you eat natto, she says.
I do, I say.
I don’t believe you.
Because you don’t think I could like it?
How the hell would I know what you like, says Mitsuko.
* * *
That night, I hear the television from the bedroom. Mitsuko’s scrolling through movies. She settles on War of the Worlds, and I listen as Tom Cruise chases after his son. The kid’s gone to join the resistance or some shit, although the viewer knows he’s a goner. But Tom doesn’t see that. He goes after the kid anyway.
* * *
So I’m dozing off when my phone dings. I’m thinking it’s Ximena, but it’s actually Mike.
He’s sent a picture of his face in front of what looks like a train station. He’s not quite smiling. The background is clogged with bodies.
And he’s texted: HOW ARE THINGS?
I type: How the fuck do you expect.
A few minutes later, Mike sends another selfie. There’s the backdrop of a neighborhood. It looks quiet, bookended by telephone poles.
If you adjust the brightness and squint hard enough, you can see up his nose.
looks cool, I say.
IT IS
found him yet?
YEAH
and?
HE’S DOING FINE
HE’S NOT REALLY DOING FINE
IDREK
Mike sends another photo of some trees. And then one of some other train station. There are plenty of things we should be talking about, but here we are, talking around exactly all of them.
So I text: where can you get natto here
Y?
Your mom says she wants to make some.
And Mike’s response is immediate, possibly the fastest he’s ever replied to me: WHAT THE FUCK?
6.
The next morning, for the very first time, Mike’s mother knocks on my door. She’s fully dressed, while I lean on the doorway in a tank top and boxers.
Take your time, she says.
Jesus Christ, she says.
* * *
We leave five minutes later. Our Black neighbors wave from their porch. There’s a question on the grandfather’s face, and I wonder if he’ll ask it.
But Mitsuko doesn’t look away. If anything, she walks slower. Staring him down.
* * *
Mike’s car is filthy with clothes: our hoodies and socks and a loose pair of shoes. The whole thing smells like him, and I know his mother smells it, too. When I toss a pair of shorts behind us, she grunts, and there’s a jock strap in the back seat, and I pray to no god in particular that Mitsuko doesn’t catch it.
We’ve pulled out of the neighborhood, and into town, when she says, You’re sure they’ll have what I need?
They should, I say. You and Mike make the same things.
Maybe similar, says Mitsuko. Not same.
We drive through the mix of locals beginning their day. Whole swathes of Houston look like chunks of other countries. There are potholes beside gourmet bakeries beside taquerías beside noodle bars, copied and pasted onto a graying landscape.
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