Mina went to the gynecologist’s office alone. She wondered what the woman would say that the internet hadn’t already explained. The gynecologist repeated the technician’s assurances about the unfatal nature of polycystic ovaries. Mina nodded—okay, okay.
They went over the notes. Her menstruation would be irregular, but it shouldn’t pose a health risk.
“So, basically, the answer is do nothing?” Mina asked.
“You’re thirty-two?” The gynecologist frowned.
“Yes,” Mina said, and thought, You’re seventy? Sixty-eight? How old is Anna Wintour?
“And you said you’re not trying for children? Is that a final decision?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Mina lied. The world would not let a woman ignore this question. What she meant was that she had come to no conclusions, other than that in the immediate future she couldn’t see herself taking care of a mouse, never mind a child.
The gynecologist’s perfectly plucked brows rebuked Mina’s wishy-washiness. “You may struggle to conceive, so we recommend you decide sooner rather than later.” Her fountain pen flew across her notebook. The nib flashed its golden arrow.
“When you do wish to conceive, we recommend you come to us straightaway.”
The arrogant pen swashed down the page.
“So, this condition makes a person depressed, hairy, overweight, and possibly diabetic, and you recommend I should have a baby soon?
“You aren’t overweight.”
The gynecologist had a trim, muscular figure that managed to imply she was one of those people who were capable of reading serious books while using an elliptical machine. Okay, fine, so Mina was average weight. But no gym would sweat off the whispery voice that kept suggesting the world would be a better place without her. And now they were saying this voice might be a twisted part of her reproductive organs. But, hey, at least so far, she wasn’t too heavy, which she should, apparently, now deem a medical blessing. Mina pinched the soft patch of her inner elbow.
“Some patients have concerns that are helped by speaking to a therapist. I can refer you to a therapist.”
“No, thank you,” Mina said. “I’m all right for now. I’ll call you if I decide I want to have babies.”
Standing on the street, she wondered if it was too late to call Oscar. She realized she could check. The stalking app worked both ways. She opened it to be told her husband was offline, which must mean he was in the air. It didn’t tell her if he hadn’t texted because security had been a bitch or because he was still upset with his weepy wife.
Mina texted Phoebe: Busy?
They made plans to meet the next day. The promise of Phoebe’s presence seemed to speed Mina’s step, like one of those airport walkways that boost each traveler along.
She took the bus home, sitting on the top deck. At each stop she peered down at the parted hair and bald patches of strangers. She decided to do something to make it up to Oscar. She could start repainting the flat now. He’d be pleased to see the work begun. Each room would be white and clean, ready for strangers to fling mortgages at. And then she and Oscar would leave this place and go back to New York. Their friends would ask what they had done, and she would describe how she’d painted the flats, how good the pain had felt in her muscles, how it had refreshed her to move away from academic life, and now she was ready again to begin work.
On her phone, she asked the internet how hard it was to remove wallpaper. The answer was that it was quite difficult, but the success rates seemed higher than suicide. Was it still gallows humor if you were trying not to die? A YouTube video of a man in blue rubber gloves explained how to remove wallpaper using a stainless-steel scraper, a perforating tool and fabric softener. The tools were puzzling to Mina, who had grown up in a rented flat, the white walls softening to grey over the years. But the man, smiling under his moustache, promised it could all be bought at your local hardware store. Where was hers? Google told her close by. She got off the bus a stop early.
The clerk guided her to the tools. As she walked home, implements clanking joyfully, it was almost possible to pretend she had gone out only for tools and not to be told of all the ways in which her body was wrong.
She pulled back the couch and stared at the expanse of wall. The birds clutched their strawberries, gazing back with mad indigo eyes. Two-thirds fabric softener, one-third water, the man had said, and Mina drenched the flock. She wedged the stainless-steel scraper under the seam of the wallpaper. It took a careful twist and flick of the wrist to prise it up. Then she ripped. The paper was sticky. The smell of gluey lavender filled her nose. Rip. Rip. The shreds made her think of pulling the skin from her own lip. Ripping and ripping. Her nail broke, bending under the force. She put the finger into her mouth—a mistake: bitter soap bloomed across her taste buds.
She pulled over a chair to reach the top of the wall. The chair wobbled as she jerked her arm. She tore birds in half. Beaks and wings scattered. Goodbye, birds. Goodbye. Paper coasted to the floor.
She’d once had a therapist who’d told her to imagine a perfectly peaceful place. The exercise sent her into despair. She couldn’t make such a place feel real. The therapist should have told her to imagine the joy of tearing a wall to shreds.
She should have started with 5B, not in the flat they lived in. It was too late now. Birds drifted under chair legs and onto the couch. She would show her husband that she was trying. Her arms ached from the effort.
By now, Oscar’s plane would’ve landed back home in America. Was America home? Mina thought of her grandmother, who’d never returned to Shanghai. Grandma said that during the Cultural Revolution her China died. Mina missed the spare ribs that Grandma used to get delivered, demanding that they be cut so that each big bone became three granddaughter-ready pieces. Mina ate those ribs even after she became vegetarian. She would’ve done worse to keep her grandmother happy.
She jumped off the chair. Her feet landed in the slurry of paper. She picked stray scraps off the couch. She’d need to buy something to cover the floor. She scrubbed the mugs she’d left to soak in the sink. She tossed the coffee grounds. She thought of the list of things that made her happy: hexagonal tiles, sharpening pencils, black jeans.
Mentally, she rewrote it: tearing off wallpaper, waking up late and realizing there was one less hour to live through, sharpening pencils. Phoebe’s mouth floated into her mind. Phoebe’s mouth made her happy. Perhaps it should be Oscar’s. But that mouth had so much history. It had been tasted too often to conjure any emotion as simple as happiness. Didn’t they say that if you eat the same food every day your taste buds numb to the flavor?
No, that wasn’t quite right. She loved that mouth. She loved the way it turned down at the corners when he smiled and the rigorous whiteness of the well-flossed teeth. But that mouth was part of the body that had left her in the street because she was crying. He’d apologized. It wasn’t a big deal. There was no need to start crying again.
Oscar plugged his phone into the socket next to the hotel bed. The room had twin beds, one shower, one TV, one telephone, and two Bibles. His father stood at the sideboard. His shoes were laid out on one of the free maps from the hotel lobby. A brogue obliterated all of Lower Manhattan. His father dabbed on black polish. Oscar had polished his own shoes before his flight and they made a neat pair by the door.
His father was tall. Six foot one. Taller than Oscar, actually. Perhaps it was the hamburgers that had supplemented his father’s California childhood. The height was easy to forget because, although they talked on the phone almost daily, he hardly saw the man. The longest they’d spent together was the trip to Tokyo they’d taken at the end of Oscar’s third year at Umeda Trading. In Tokyo, his father’s Californian switched into a jangle of Japanese. What did they call it? Perapera—the onomatopoeic word for fluency or chatter. Perapera perapera. Yes, that was what it had sounded like. Meanwhile, Oscar had been trying to wedge into his head phrases for It is good to meet you, I commend myself
to your care. I am sorry. I have made a mistake. I am sorry my Japanese is not very good. If he’d been the child of married people, his voice would have known the correct ways to lilt. They’d traveled to Tokyo so that Oscar could be added to the Umeda family register. The register was required for bank accounts, inheritance, every little thing. His father had suggested it would be easier if Oscar changed his name to Umeda worldwide.
He wasn’t a Shepard anymore. Shepard had been written on his school assignments, his passport, even his socks. His mother spent hours sewing in name-tapes, swearing under her breath as she pricked her fingers. The clothing had to be christened, because Oscar Shepard was all that would distinguish it from a thousand other boys’ sweaty cotton. At the time, he hadn’t wanted to go away to school. But Mum had said he was lucky to have a dad who could stump up the fees.
“Dad?”
“Mmm?”
“Thanks for letting us paint the flats ourselves.”
His father sighed and held the shoe to the light. “I don’t want to be hard on you. I was young once too. But you have to stay focused. Hungry?” his father asked.
“A little.”
His father removed a fat-bellied rice cooker from his suitcase. It bleeped jovially as it was plugged in. Next appeared a Ziploc bag of rice. The grains had the semi-transparency of seashells. His father placed a bottle of tamago furikake seasoning on the TV stand. Sesame seeds, deep green shreds of seaweed and crumbs of dried egg showed through the glass bottle.
“I brought these for breakfast, but I’ll put some on now.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Breakfast is so overpriced in hotels,” his father said. The many-dialed watch that spun on his wrist argued that they did not need to save eighteen dollars on breakfast. But while Kenichi Umeda dressed in silk and cashmere, he loved squeezing in a dollar or two more of profit.
His father dropped handfuls of rice into the rice cooker’s metal bowl. He carried it to the bathroom. Oscar heard the gush of water as his father rinsed the starch off the rice.
The phone lit to tell him the battery had returned. He logged onto the hotel WiFi. Mina had sent a photo of a blotchy beige rectangle. Modern art? A phone error? He scrolled up. De-wallpapering!! And a happy emoji. Before he could take in that this was a photo of the apartment’s wall, he saw the sentence above it. Gyno said having kids prob hard.
A kid. What would their life be like with a kid? He saw that cab-ride back from the bridge a second time, and in this version a small person perched between them. A child with curly hair and Mina’s dainty cat-like nose. A child he’d have to feed, clothe and shelter from the world and from its mother. They couldn’t have children. It was only logical so why did he feel like he was losing something? He couldn’t reply, Don’t worry, you’re obviously not fit to be a parent. He was so tired of coming up with the nicer way of phrasing things.
His father kneeled by the rice cooker, pressing buttons. Oscar had to invent something kind to say to Mina. But this was exhausting. He’d think of something tomorrow. On his phone’s to-do list, he made a note: Nice message to M.
Eventually a column of steam rose from the rice cooker’s vent and the pillowy smell of rice filled the room. From the roller suitcase his father extracted a rice paddle, two bowls and spoons.
“Eileen Johnson, what’s she like?” his father asked.
The head buyer was neither attractive nor unattractive. Her eyes were capped with what seemed to be green contact lenses. They were too bright to be natural. She maintained aggressive eye contact. His impression had been of a woman who knew what she wanted.
“She’s quite demanding,” Oscar said.
The rice cooker sang the “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” melody. His father got on his hands and knees to attend to it, filling the bowls with rice. Oscar wondered if he should have jumped to serve or whether that would have been rude. Neither the Japanese app nor the evening classes he took in NYC had instructed on the etiquette of touching another man’s rice cooker. His father handed him a bowl.
“Do you think she’s upset?” his father asked. “Have they tried to send anything back? Anything in their communications about a problem?” He chewed, and his lean jaw moved from left to right.
“No, no. I don’t think she can be unhappy. She would’ve just stopped future orders by email. Or made an underling call us.” Oscar took a bite of rice, which was soft and delicate. The sweet-salt of the furikake blended with the chubby grains.
His father sighed. “I guess we’ll find out in the morning.”
For a while they ate in silence and then his father said, “You know my friend Imada at the Nagata brewery?”
No, I don’t, Oscar thought, because you say my Japanese is too weak. “You’ve mentioned him,” he said.
“He retired. Wants to spend time with his granddaughter. And the kid who took over, just forty-two, would you believe it, says he can’t keep up our old deal. Little asshole.”
His father had special relationships with so many of the suppliers, drinking buddies who gave them the best price. Even passing the Japanese Language Placement Test wouldn’t teach Oscar how to replicate that. But he had to start somewhere.
“That’s the way things are going. All those online order forms. Nobody wants to have an actual telephone conversation anymore.”
Oscar’s body was on Greenwich Mean Time. He choked down a yawn.
“You can sleep,” his father said.
“I’m fine. It’s just jet lag. So, what’s the new guy’s name? Do you think we should keep working with them?”
“We’ll see.”
Oscar always stretched before bed. He tried not to feel self-conscious in his boxers as he dropped into a plank. Today he would try to hold it for five minutes. He liked the plank because it proved that sometimes staying in place is as hard as moving. Harder, even. It was the sort of strength he was training for. He had to be strong enough to hold his position. At the three-minute mark his abdominals quaked. At the four-minute mark, they seared. Without moving his feet, he adjusted his weight from left to right to left and back to center. It was the smallest of respites. At five, he dropped to his knees.
Phoebe suggested a pub lunch. Mina had never had a pub lunch. The last time she’d been in a pub had been in Providence for St. Patrick’s Day. Someone had ordered her a green beer.
The Moorhen was not Irish. The walls were the soft yellow of hollandaise. The bar was long and beaded with amber bottles, which caught the sun. The couples who sat drinking or nibbling roast carrots were young and as groomed as the dogs that lay in the shadows of their tables.
The waiter led her through glass to a terrace. Phoebe sat, Benson at her feet. Behind and below her was a stretch of canal. With his hind leg, the dog scratched himself. The paw flickered and blurred. His ears shook with the violence of it. His collar tinkled. The October day had a pinch in the air and she was jealous of his enormous fur coat.
“Benson, remember me?” Mina put out her hand to be sniffed. Knitting-needle teeth were visible behind the round lip. She reckoned he could bite down to her lifeline if he chose.
“I ordered us both Buck’s Fizz,” Phoebe said. “I know they’re uncool, but the ones here are great.”
“I don’t think I’ve had that before.”
“Orange juice and champagne. Or in this case, I suspect, sparkling wine.”
“Oh. Mimosas. Wonderful.” Mimosas were poured from pitchers every New York Saturday.
From the canal came a squall. Two geese writhed their necks, like beaky snakes.
“You live near here?” Mina asked.
“No. Well, kind of. Theo does.” Phoebe’s long fingers teased the dog’s caramel coat. “I suppose if I live anywhere I live here. But tonight I’m banned between seven and midnight or I’ll become a pumpkin.”
“A pumpkin?”
“Theo’s planning on bringing a girl over and doesn’t want me spoiling the mood.” Phoebe patted Benson. “Not you either, pop
pet. Theo doesn’t like you very much, does he?” The dog rolled over, mouth open, tongue hanging drunkenly to the side. “I don’t know if I would’ve adopted this handsome guy if I’d known I was getting divorced. It’s hard enough to find a place to crash when your husband got most of the couple-friends. And there are allergies, small children, smaller dogs . . . Benson wouldn’t hurt a fly but . . .”
“Do you want to talk about it? The divorce, I mean.”
“Not really. I’ve already paid my lawyer far too much to listen to that nonsense.” Phoebe turned away to look at the weed-veiled water. A barge’s prow pierced the sheet of green, pushing up black wavelets. The boat’s sides were painted with gigantic ferns. The artist had been more enthusiastic than skilled and the plants curved manically.
“Did you know ferns were originally sea-plants? They had to evolve their way ashore,” Mina said, and immediately felt dumb. Why was she telling Phoebe things she’d learnt in elementary school?
The mimosas came. Mina sipped to fill the silence. Phoebe knocked back half of the drink. The attractively typeset menu displayed only two vegetarian options. They talked about the news, which was gloomy. Politicians were terrible. Somehow that swerved to overpriced pet-sitters. Phoebe’s hands waltzed as she talked. Once in a while she’d stop, lean forwards, her eyes meeting Mina’s, and ask, “Right?” And Mina nodded. The simple conversation was delicious. Benson settled his chin on Mina’s foot.
After her second mimosa, Phoebe said, “Sorry, I’m in a strange place in my life. The short version is that my husband—ex-husband—fell in love with a pediatrician who runs marathons for leukemia research.”
“He’s an idiot,” Mina said, and waited for the long version.
Phoebe finished her drink, ran a finger around the rim of the champagne glass, and said, “It’s cold out here, isn’t it? What’s taking the food so long? Should we get another drink?” The waiter, when Phoebe waved him over, promised the food would be there in five minutes.
He left, and Phoebe leaned forwards as if telling Mina a secret that no one else in the pub deserved to hear. “For most of uni, I was dating this girl, Camilla. Milly—that’s what everyone called her. And my parents hated her. I mean they’d never say it was because she was a girl. We’re not that sort of family. But they were always asking about her nose ring, like if it meant anything? And then I started up with Brendan and they fucking loved him. So when he asked me to marry him, I thought why not? I wanted to get on with my life. I wanted the choices to be over and the real thing to start. Brendan snored. All he ever wanted to do was come home and watch Sky Sports. But I hate the idea of him slobbering all over that woman. Is that awful?” With each sentence, Phoebe gave an ashamed dip of her head.
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