Memorial(79)

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.