Memorial(66)

That boy’s a fool, he said.

But you really should listen to him, he said.

Then Eiju burped, explosively, monstrously, shaking the living room.

He wore the most stoic look on his face. And then I started laughing, and then he started laughing, and then Kunihiko came sprinting out of the bathroom, asking what had happened, what the hell had gone wrong.



* * *





Later, Kunihiko and I sat across from Eiju on the floor when he asked the kid if he ever thought he’d get married.

Kunihiko looked at me. I shrugged.

Before he could answer, Eiju said, I didn’t.

But Mike’s mother changed my mind, he added.

I’m not saying you have to, or that you should, he said.

Both of you, said Eiju. There are people out there that’ll change your mind.



* * *





Eventually, Kunihiko fell asleep. Eiju and I watched his chest rise and fall beside us. The kid would shudder, every now and again, from his shoulders to his calves, but he never opened his eyes. His body settled right back into silence.



* * *





I was scared, said Eiju, a little later.

I thought he’d fallen asleep.

That’s why, he said.

Why what?

You know what, said Eiju.

I was scared, he said. So I ran. That’s why I came home.

I watched Eiju’s toes. I stared at his thighs.

You could’ve told me earlier, I said.

It would’ve been too hard to understand, said Eiju. I didn’t understand it. And you were a baby.

A teenager isn’t a baby.

You were a baby.

You could’ve tried.

No, said Eiju. We thought it’d be better that I didn’t.

We, I said.

It was Mitsuko’s idea.

Both of you.

And she was right, said Eiju. As usual.

We told ourselves we’d know when to tell you, said Eiju. We’d know when the moment was right.

But you never did, I said.

I’m telling you now, said Eiju, looking my way. The moment is now.



* * *




? ? ?

But then there was the night that the three of us stood on the pier in San Francisco. We’d finally made it. Ma, Eiju, and I couldn’t afford to do anything but walk around, so that’s what we did, and Eiju cobbled together the change in his pockets for three hot dogs. When it turned out that he was short, my father told us to wait while he walked back to the car. I paced beside my mother while she smiled at the seller, a white guy. He didn’t smile back.

When Eiju made it over, the white man told him that he was still short by a dime, and he tossed Eiju’s loose change back across the wooden counter.

I’m told that, in Japan, my father was a fighter. Here was a man who would box over nothing, raising his fists at anyone.

But that day, Eiju only smiled. He collected the rest of his change, taking his two hot dogs from the stand.

Ma and I walked behind him. She gave me a look, and that look said to shut the fuck up. So I did that, and we reached a bench by the pier, and my mother took a bite of one hot dog, and I took a bite of the other.

When Ma offered Eiju a bite of hers, he shook his head as if he couldn’t even imagine it.

When I lifted mine for my father, I expected the same result. He gave me a clear look.

But then he opened his jaws wide and took a huge chunk out of it, nearly downing the thing in one bite, and my knuckles, too.



* * *




? ? ?

And then, and then, and then.



* * *





One night, I woke up for a piss, and I heard the silence.



* * *





Of course we knew it would happen.

I knew it would happen.

And he knew it would happen.



* * *





So it happened.



* * *





Kunihiko wasn’t there when I found him, but he was the first person I called.



* * *





Then I called Taro.



* * *





Then I sat beside my father.



* * *





He wasn’t cold, exactly. He’d gone in his sleep. I hadn’t known that people actually did that, that this was something that actually happened to people.



* * *





Before Taro arrived, I called Ma. Stepped outside. The sun shone on the balcony. Some kids bounced a ball in the alley. It would’ve been late afternoon in Houston.

When my mother answered, almost smiling into the phone, I thought that things would be okay, they would probably work out, and I almost kept my father’s death to myself, I hadn’t heard hope in her voice for so long.

But I thought of Eiju.

The promise.



* * *





Ma didn’t scream. Her breathing caught for a moment. And then she was speaking regularly again, talking in measured tones.

She asked if I was all right, and I told her that I was.