Memorial(64)

In either case, said Eiju, I don’t want a burial. Blow me into the ocean, all over Kansai. I don’t care. Won’t care. And neither will Mitsuko.

Don’t say that.

It’s true.

But you don’t have to say it.

Now you’re the one who’s being unrealistic.

She won’t give a shit, said Eiju. And she shouldn’t.

Just promise me that you won’t wait to tell her, he said. Let Mitsuko know as soon as I’m gone. Have you been talking to her?

Don’t worry about that, I said.

Fine, said Eiju.

Promise me, said Eiju.

All right.

Say it.

I promise.

Good, said Eiju.

I’ve only got so many things to worry about now, said Eiju. Try not to give me too many more.



* * *





I’d watch Eiju to see if he’d crack. When it would happen. He never did.



* * *





I’d sit down on the wood floor beside him. I let myself lean on his legs, and when he didn’t stiffen, I closed my eyes.



* * *





I waited to hear his breathing soften. When it didn’t, I let myself drift to sleep.



* * *





But maybe that’s the point, said Eiju, once he thought I’d dozed off.

Maybe everything comes back around, I heard him say, halfway asleep.



* * *




? ? ?

A memory: Eiju and me at home in Houston. We’re waiting for Ma. She’s flown back to Tokyo, briefly, where her parents will formally disown her. It’ll be decades before she returns again.

But now, in her absence, Eiju and I make faces at each other. We’re piled under a bedsheet. Our neighbors are fighting or fucking next door—doing something noisy through the apartment walls.

First, Eiju’s a ghost.

Then, he’s trumpeter.

Next, he’s a dog.

I am six or seven.

At one point, Eiju crawls around me in a circle, pawing at my shoulder, on his hands and knees, while I try to grab at his hair, the happiest I’ve ever been.



* * *





Another memory: Ma’s still gone. Eiju and I are eating in the Chinese restaurant. He’s brought me to work, because of course he can’t afford a babysitter, or even have the first idea about where to find one. But his shift is over, and I’m sitting on the counter as he ladles noodles into my mouth. When they slip off my face, or out of my teeth, he catches them, tangling them in his fingers to eat them himself.

Slowly, he says, dangling them from his lips.



* * *





A memory: Eiju and I drive downtown, drifting through Houston in the evening. He has no one to go home to, and I’m the only person he needs to see. We’ve rented a car with that week’s earnings, a flashy thing Ma would never approve of. I’m sitting next to my father as he names the streets, sounding them out, enunciating everything. His English is fine, but he stumbles on the Spanish and Vietnamese avenues.

When we stop at the lights, he points my fingers toward the streetlights above us.

That’s where you’ll live, he says, after every glossy building we pass, with their lights shining down on the two of us.



* * *




? ? ?

And then one afternoon, Kunihiko showed up to Eiju’s door, without preamble or explanation or rationale.

He wore sweats and a sleeveless tee. The most casual I’d ever seen him. He carried a tote full of groceries on one arm and a paper sack full of vegetables in the other.

He stepped past me, unspeaking, and set them on the counter. Eiju caught his eye, and then mine, but he didn’t say anything about it.

Wordlessly, Kunihiko fished around for pans in the kitchen cupboard. He felt around for chopsticks, a spoon, and a measuring cup. I leaned on the counter beside him, watching, and every now and again he glanced my way.

Eventually I said, How do you know where everything is?

All Japanese stock their kitchens the same way, said Kunihiko.

I didn’t know that.

No one expected you to. Where’s the spatula?

Where the real Japanese keep theirs.

You really aren’t funny, said Kunihiko.

I know. But listen, what the fuck is going on?

Kunihiko only frowned at me. He shook his head.

Nothing, he said. I’m just here to help.

Really?

Really. Same as always.

No. It’s not that simple.

But it can be, said Kunihiko, sighing, looking at his feet. If you let it, then it really can be that simple. I can just be here. Helping.

That’s the easy way out, I said.

You’re not wrong, said Kunihiko.

He nodded. Then he extended his hand.

Truce? he asked.

He really was just like a kid.

Shouldn’t I be asking you that, I said.

I was an asshole, said Kunihiko. It wasn’t right.

You were.

I’m serious.

So am I.

Can you both please shut the fuck up, said Eiju. I thought you already had a goddamn boyfriend, Mike.

Kunihiko started back in on the eggs, slicing tomatoes and onions and tofu, spooning in a little potato starch, and whipping it all into something like a frittata, before we slipped it in the oven. We flopped down and zoned out by the television. Eiju groaned at a shitty dub of Rush Hour 2. Twenty minutes later, we forgot about the casserole, burning the whole fucking thing, and we ate all of it anyways.