Memorial

by Bryan Washington

  The lyrics are easy, says Ahmad. You’ll learn.

  I start to say something, but Omar catches my eye in the rearview mirror—and I, again, keep my words to myself.

  * * *

  When we spot him, Mike’s already sipping on a water bottle. He’s got on shades and shorts. It’s fucking hot, the beginning of the Southwest’s hellish season, and the patio’s fans strain toward the cluster of bodies beneath them. Omar tiptoes toward the table, and when he stutters a greeting, I touch the small of his back, which, somehow, inadvertently, turns into something like a caress. Ahmad doesn’t even blink at us, thumbing the cash Omar handed him for our burgers.

  Mike pats the bench beside him. When I start to sit, he waves me away.

  This one’s for our new friend, says Mike.

  You don’t even know each other, I say.

  Hence this little meeting, says Mike. Come on.

  Omar takes the bait. I slide beside Ahmad, who’s returned with a tray holding four cuts of beef.

  Facing these two men, they could be the A- and B-sides of my life.

  What I say to Mike is, No beer?

  No beer, he says, shaking his head.

  So, says Omar, how’d your day go?

  You know, says Mike. Making moves. Settling accounts.

  Benson told me you’re leaving town soon.

  Go figure. Ben’s doing his best to get rid of me.

  I’m not, I say.

  Okay, he’s not, says Mike.

  I ask Mike how work went, and he gives a quick nod. There’s a shadow on his face. It passes just that quickly.

  All’s well that ends well, says Mike.

  I start to say something, but then Ahmad tugs my sleeve. He shows me something on his phone. A note that he’s typed out.

  It says: r u ok

  I give the kid a look. Take his phone.

  I type: yes

  When I look up again, Omar and Mike are talking at each other.

  I watch them do that.

  I turn back to Ahmad.

  So, I say, how are you?

  Without even turning from his fries, Ahmad flashes his teeth at me.

  * * *

  Eventually, we settle into something like a comfortable silence. The white folks around us chat into the air, and an old Astros game drones across the screens behind us. If you really strain your ears, the traffic on Montrose dies down, but the surroundings all blend into one thing, a vacuum that swallows us whole.

  Ahmad looks at his brother and asks how much longer they’re going to stay. When Omar tells him not to be rude, the kid makes a face.

  But we’re not doing anything, says Ahmad.

  Everything doesn’t have to be an action movie, says Omar.

  We’re enjoying each other’s company, says Mike, with his hands on his stomach. It’s nice outside. I’m getting a little fatter.

  You’re not fat, I say.

  You’re beautiful, says Omar, and we all turn to him, and he looks completely earnest.

  For the second time in two days, Mike looks genuinely baffled.

  Omar says that about everyone, says Ahmad, tapping at his brother’s phone.

  Honestly, it was exhilarating to hear, says Mike.

  He’s just trying to get on your good side, I say.

  No, says Omar, sternly, looking at me. It’s true.

  He leans back into the bench, crossing his arms.

  I mean look at us, says Omar, spreading his arms. Isn’t this amazing? How we ended up here?

  And, a little delirious from the words, the three of us look up at the wooden awning above us.

  I mean it, says Ahmad, he tells everyone.

  * * *

  Not one of us finishes our food. We’re stranded with stray ounces of burger. Ahmad packs his to go, along with Omar’s leftover fries. Everyone stands, not really knowing where to put our hands, until Omar finally opens his arms, and Mike finally embraces him.

  Then I hug Omar.

  Then Mike hugs me.

  In between, each of us squeezes Ahmad’s hand, and he shakes his head at all of us.

  To Omar, he says, Can we please go?

  * * *

  I tell Omar I’ll see him soon, and he nods, grinning. Despite myself, a smile rips across my face. And I realize I’m still wearing it in the car when Mike points it out.

  It’s nothing, I say.

  Nothing’s nothing, says Mike. You look happy. I’m happy for you.

  And he likes you, says Mike.

  Shut up.

  No. That matters. And you like him, yes?

  I look at the road in front of us. We’re only just entering March, but the concrete’s starting to shimmer. One day, we’ll look up, and it’ll be summer again. None of us will see it coming.

  I don’t know yet, I say.

  That’s fair, says Mike.

  But you could like him, he says.

  Well, I say.

  Yes, I say. Yes. I think I could.

  Then that’s the most you can ask for, says Mike, turning left, and I don’t look at his face, and I don’t want to think about what’s probably there.

  * * *

  On our way inside the apartment, we’re ambushed: a skateboard, from across the street, makes its way over to Mike, nearly colliding with his ankle. He isn’t paying attention, isn’t even on this planet, it seems like. But he catches it with his heel nonetheless, smirking at the kids who kicked it.

  There’s a slight delay, and then they appear all at once. They’re our neighbors. They are sorry. They ask Mike if he’s all right, and in the same breath implore us not to say anything to their dad.

  He’ll break the skateboard, says the oldest one, matter-of-factly.

  Please please please please por favor por favor please please, says the youngest.

  Mike purses his lips like he’s considering it. Then he hops onto the board, gently, tenderly. He leans on one end, and then the other, before he pops a little wheelie. As the kids realize what’s happening, they start smiling, and then laughing, and then they’re clapping and whooping alongside him, and I am crying, and clapping, too.

  8.

  My father says, Isn’t that what they say? You lose them the way you get them?

  I ask him who they are, and he asks me to pass the syrup. We’re eating at a diner just outside the loop. There are cops at every other table, and all of them ignore us. I’ve left Mike and his mother to each other for the rest of the afternoon. She flies out tomorrow, and her son will follow a few weeks later, and we still haven’t figured out what that looks like yet, but Mike’s told me, more than once, that his dad left some money for that, too.

  My father’s therapist told him to try new places, to put himself back in the world, and my dad grumbles about that in between bites of pancake, but I know it’s the news he’s been waiting to hear. He’s started tutoring again, in a limited capacity. He’ll do a little more in the fall, once school starts up again.

  Now he sits in our booth, with his legs crossed and a mug of orange juice in his hand. A stack of student papers stands stilted beside him. They’re riddled with green ink and a scattering of blue.

  I ask my father about Lydia, and he grunts.

  Your sister thinks I’m a drag.

  She just likes to do her own thing.

  Everyone likes to do their own thing, says my father. Doesn’t mean you can’t share your time.

  She moved in with you, Dad, I say, and from the way he sips his juice I know he appreciates it, and he wants me to know that he appreciates it.

  He and my mother have pledged to meet for coffee every once in a while. When I tell him that Once in a While is pretty vague, my father says my mother told him that was the point.

  She’s convinced it puts the pressure on me to
plan something, he says.

  It does.

  You’re your mother’s child.

  I am, I say. But I’m yours, too.

  The pancakes aren’t bad. We ask our waitress, an older Black lady, for another jug of syrup. My father’s convinced that he’ll take his therapist up on trying every last diner surrounding 610.

  He’s a nice guy, says my father. Young. Mexican, I think. The flag’s on his desk. I was worried he’d be full of shit at first, because, you know, they don’t teach you about old niggas in any school I’ve ever heard of.

  I actually don’t know.

  Yeah, you do.

  You’re being a bigot.

  You’re the most optimistic pessimist I know.

  I worry about your students, I say.

  They’ll be fine, says my father. You turned out fine.

  But my doctor, says my father, he might be, you know. Like you.

  Like me.

  You know.

  Say it.

  Gay, says my dad.

  I blink at my father. He only shrugs.

  When he stands from our booth, slapping a twenty on the table, what he’s saying clicks between my ears like a car alarm.

  I don’t need you setting me up with anyone, I say.

  You never know, says my father.

  Don’t.

  I told him you’d be perfect for him.

  I’m good at the moment.

  Sure. But sometimes the moment passes.

  * * *

  We step outside with our hands in our pockets. My father nods, dipping toward his truck without a word. The highway stands behind us, catapulting toward an assembly of bridges, and the air smells a little like oil, and a little like biscuits, and a little like Houston.

  My father adjusts his mirror, clips his seat belt, and I watch as he pulls through the parking lot. Before he slips onto the feeder, he turns to me and waves.

  * * *

  On my way back to the apartment, I get a haircut. Nothing too wild. Just enough to make me feel like something about me has changed, concretely. I just cut off the usual shit.

  And then I’m on my porch.

  And then I’m in the doorway.

  And Mike is hunched over his mother’s suitcase, really leaning into it, working to get the zipper down.

  I tell him he looks like a cartoon.

  How about you shut the fuck up and help me, he says, grunting.

  I ask where Mitsuko is, and Mike nods toward our bedroom.

  The door’s locked, and the sink’s running in the bathroom, but muffled sobbing overlays it. I look at Mike, but he’s focused on the suitcase. Sweating, willing himself away from his mother’s tears.

  So I get down on my knees. I lean next to him, pushing at the bag. It really won’t budge, and I’m just about to quit when I feel Mike shift, hunching over me, wrapping his arms around my belly. I keep my palms on the suitcase—because it’ll burst if I don’t—and Mike doesn’t say anything about that. All he gives me is a squeeze.

  There’s still something there. It’s not hot enough to scald. But it could be, if I wanted it to, and I am surprised that I have to wonder.

  In my ear, he says, You could still change your mind.

  I kneel there for a moment.

  And then I say, I could.

  Okay, says Mike. That’s all. As long as you know. And as long as I know that you know.

  I do, I say.

  And at that, the bathroom door unlocks, and Mike folds across my body to seal the rest of the bag, and it shuts.

  Mitsuko’s face is flushed. Her hair is all over the place. She’s wearing a sweat suit, wiping at her cheeks, and I can’t help but think that, even in despair, she looks entirely too beautiful.

  She says that if we’re done fucking around, she’s ready to go.

  I ask Mike what she means, but all he does is shrug. He says they’ve got to run an errand. If I really insist, I can tag along.

  * * *

  It’s possible to drive from one hub of Houston to another, only to end up feeling like you’re in a whole different country. Bellaire to Sugar Land to Katy to midtown to downtown to River Oaks to Montrose to the Heights to East End to the Third Ward to the Warehouse District and back.

  But, sometimes, you don’t have to go very far at all, and that’s where we drive, over a bridge and onto Wheeler. We take that until it turns into Elgin, which turns into Studemont, which bends into Memorial. Mike stops his car in front of the park, just over the bayou, and he and his mother emerge simultaneously, as if this whole thing’s been rehearsed.

  We walk along the path leading into the park. It’s the middle of the workweek, so there aren’t too many people out. A couple of homeless guys lie with their legs crossed in the grass. A young white couple suns beside them on a blanket, with a baby and a bottle of wine.

  We stop in front of an overpass by the bayou. Mitsuko slips on some shades. Mike glances at me, and then he pulls something from his backpack: the urn. He looks at the top for a moment, and I flinch when he kisses it, because it’s the kiss you give something you know you won’t be seeing again, something you’ve been conflicted about for decades, your whole fucking life, and then Mike passes the urn to Mitsuko, and she doesn’t even think about it, she takes the urn and she opens it and the ashes fly right out of there.

  * * *

  We watch them dissolve in the air. They move through the sky, all at once. And bits of them sift, until they melt away so small that the eye can’t see, caught in the bridge’s wooden slats or in the river or into nothingness altogether, until we’re the only ones who’ll take the fact of their ever existing at all on with us, until we end up losing those memories, too, although even then they’ll still probably be around somewhere. It isn’t very beautiful.

  Mitsuko takes off her shades. I turn to Mike, and he shuts his eyes. His mother grasps the bridge’s railing, standing on her toes, and then she says, with her entire body, FUCK.

  * * *

  Mitsuko tells us she isn’t cooking on her last night in the country, so we drive to a profoundly nondescript Tex-Mex restaurant around the block.

  The atmosphere is entirely too festive for our mood. Salsa plays over the din of white folks cashing in on happy hour. A young guy in a tuxedo shepherds us toward our table, giving us a once-over, and then a twice-over. After that, he hands us off to a waitress who can’t be older than fifteen.

  But she doesn’t miss a beat. She notes everyone’s orders, and all of Mike’s addendums, and asks questions, and makes suggestions, and after repeating it all back to us she disappears.

  Mike ends up with a water to start. I finagle a beer. Mitsuko sits across from a margarita the size of her head, and none of us says anything while dining party after dining party screams around us.

  In the booth across from ours, I catch a kid peeking over his mother’s shoulder. When I try squinting him away, the little boy doesn’t even blink.

  After two long pulls, Mitsuko reduces her margarita by half.

  So, she says, what are our plans?

  Your flight’s at six, says Mike. We’ll have you there by five.

  No, says Mitsuko, waving him away, and turning to me.

  What do you plan to do about each other? she says.

  Benson, says Mitsuko, has my son told you what he wants?

  I turn to Mike. He’s looking at his mother, with yet another face I can’t read.

  We aren’t talking about this right now, he says.

  Of course we are, says Mitsuko. Benson?

  Mike’s leaving, I say. To Osaka. And I’m gonna stay here.

  And that’s it? says Mitsuko.

  I think so, I say.

  Mm, says Mitsuko, and she downs the rest of her margarita.

  When our waitress flies by the table for
refills, Mitsuko asks her for another round.

  Ma, says Mike.

  Beloved, says Mitsuko.

  Look, she says, once the drink is across from her. Did I ever tell you about my first date with Eiju?

  I was living in Osaka for a bit, says Mitsuko. He suggested a bar. Which is entirely original. No one’s ever done that before. And in my head, I’m not thinking, I’m better than this. I’m not thinking that he’s just out here for a good time. I’m not even thinking about what he’s really after, because I had a boyfriend at the time, a good one. Stable. He was Eiju’s cousin, actually. And I didn’t know shit then, but Eiju told me where to meet him, and I told him that was okay. And when I made it to our spot a little early, I scoped out the place. It seemed perfectly normal. I got my little drink and I waited.

  Three hours passed before I left. One hundred and eighty minutes. He never came. Never showed. I was mad and I was relieved because this was exactly the sort of thing I should’ve expected to happen, but it eliminated any choice I would’ve had to make. I saw my boyfriend the next afternoon, and I didn’t even tell him about it, and I thought to myself that this was just an act of God. This was Him course-correcting my life.

  Our waitress returns with another guy in tow. They set three platters of fried fish and stewed pinto beans and yellow rice on the table. The new guy ladles tortillas into a bowl, and he lingers a moment to stare at Mike, but Mitsuko’s son doesn’t even look up, he’s just watching his mother.

  Mitsuko picks up a fork, slicing at her food, not really eating any of it.

  I don’t see Eiju again until the next week, she says. He knocks on my door until I open it. And when I do, he’s all beat up. He’s got bandages on his knuckles. Bruises all over his face. He’s so tarnished that I have to ask what happened, and do you know what he tells me? None of your business. And just like that, I’m only someone to him. Or no one. Just this girl who’s dating his cousin. I shut the door in his face.