An Uncommon Education (33 page)

I didn’t want him to continue. “Good luck,” I said, walking toward the door. I turned around right before I opened it. “I’ll be dropping your class, of course.” He nodded. I felt a new wave of shame and lust, seeing his head bent forward over his long body. I walked back and put my hands on his shoulders to kiss his cheek, gently inhaling the savory musk of his warmth, trying to memorize the sensation, wondering how long it would be until I felt something as sweet and immediate. I turned my face away, though, afraid of what it might show.

“Do you know,” he said into my hair, “what it was about you?” I didn’t answer, not sure I cared to hear what he wanted to say. “Every word,” he went on, “every word was perfect. I knew you’d really taken the time to pay attention to what was written on the page, to savor it. Most actors, they’re careless, showy. You were so faithful. It just charmed me, so completely.” He pulled back, trying to see my face. I wouldn’t look up at him. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and you.”

“You came looking for me, didn’t you?” He had asked Phyllis about me. He had come to the door knowing what he wanted, or at least not denying it.

I heard his smile in his voice. “Don’t sound so shocked.”

I looked up. “I’m not,” I said, though I was. The sense that I had cheated us both threatened to overwhelm me. “I didn’t give my lines that much attention,” I said. “I
was
being showy.”

He gave me a wry grin. “There’s no need to put me off,” he said, tucking a piece of my hair behind my ear. “I’m prepared to do that on my own.” He paused for a minute before speaking again. “I read once that men are the only ones who ever really fall in love. That women don’t. That they only love to be loved.”

I pulled back. “You’re not in love with me,” I said.

“No,” he said, dropping his hands, “but that’s why I would never dare to try.”

“You think I can’t fall in love?”

He looked weary again, as he had on that day in class when Jun’s argument had become unreasonable. “I don’t know you, Naomi. I only wish I did, and that circumstances were different. But I do know that you need to fall before you fall in love. And it doesn’t look like you’ll be doing that anytime soon, does it?” He laughed, long and low, at my look of skepticism. Then he sat down, resting his head in his hands as he did once before in the hollow between my ribs. His voice was suddenly hoarse. “Please go. Please. I’m afraid I’ll ask you to stay.” I did as he said. When I was outside again I found myself walking hurriedly, like someone being pursued, but before long I broke into a run, as though trying to catch something just out of sight.

Twenty-Four

J
un finally asked me what happened a few days later. “You’ll feel better if you tell me,” she said, making us both laugh at what we weren’t sure was true. Neither Jun nor I shared confidences easily. But I did tell her, about the dean, and then about Weingarten. “So it seems,” she nodded sagely, “that I am not the only one given to sexual indiscretions.” She perched the glasses she wore only for reading on the tip of her nose and looked down on me. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “Nothing at all, in fact.” I nodded, testing the truth of it. “For once.” She laughed, and I did, too, the shame and anxiety I’d been flirting with dissipating, if only momentarily.

It was the week before Thanksgiving break, and the school was beginning the process of slowing down for the long weekend. Josephine Miller, a member who had recently returned from a year abroad in Tel Aviv, had been elected director for the spring production. Julie would take over for Mara as president that semester, and with her at the helm, a staid, formal semester seemed to be on the horizon for the second half of our junior year. Adding to Julie’s evenhanded leadership, Josephine made her announcement of the spring play just before we left: the classical and arguably dull play of the Trojan War,
Troilus and Cressida.
The beloved
Macbeth
was about to go up, and as was often the case when an obscure play was proposed to follow a sure hit, grumbling was heard throughout the society.

“Why the hell did she choose that?” Tiney wondered out loud after the meeting that brought her announcement.

“Because it’s begging to be staged,” Josephine answered sharply, just behind us. “It’s a play about war, ladies. Wars aren’t supposed to read well on the page.” She scoffed, though we hadn’t rebutted her. “I can’t explain it if you can’t imagine it. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

The idea of going home for Thanksgiving was an awkward one; my mother needed her rest and my father didn’t want to leave her, even for a moment. He was frequently exhausted, eagerly enacting the few wishes she imparted, quick to return to her side. And she looked for him if he didn’t come. Occasionally, when I visited them, I felt like an intruder. They had developed some secret, private intimacy over the course of the illness, one that made them reluctant to speak with me about anything that might be of the smallest importance until checking with the other. My father still doted on me when I was home, but I could tell he never stopped thinking of my mother.

Three days before the break, Jun looked up suddenly from her studies and stared at me. “What are your parents doing for Thanksgiving?” she asked. Her face was pale in the light from her desk, which brought out the blue circles under her eyes. She turned it off, stood up, stopped short of shaking herself free of her work. I didn’t want to tell her I didn’t think I had any. My father had made a halfhearted offer to make dinner, and I’d told him not to go to any trouble.

She threw herself onto my bed. “Come to New York. My uncle’s there with my grandmother, but I’ve just heard from my dad and they’ll all be there for the holiday. My whole family.” She pounded the quilt with her fists, like a dog asking to play. “Come, Noms, your parents don’t want to do Thanksgiving, do they?” I shook my head. “Oh perfect.” She began hopping around the room. “You’ll come, you’ll come, you’ll come.” I was laughing too hard to stop her. “Don’t be an idiot,” she finally said, stopping herself in the middle of the room, the beginnings of disappointment threatening to overtake her expression before she stopped herself in that, too, and insisted, “You’ll come, right?” I nodded. “And let my dad pay?” I shook my head. She picked up a pillow and whipped it at me. “Yes!” she said, then returned to her desk.

I got my own things out and tried to make sense of my notes for a test the next day. I looked up a minute later because she was grinning again. “Stop being so happy,” I told her.

“Yes, Dr. Feinstein,” she replied.

J
un’s grandmother was very ill at the time, and I soon learned that Jun’s uncle was in New York as her medical guardian, though it was unclear to me how long this situation had been in effect. Jun explained that her uncle was her father’s younger brother, and I guessed that he had been appointed to his current role by some larger Oko-family dictum. She told me that the apartment in Manhattan was big enough for plenty, though I had a hard time envisioning anything grand or impressive, most likely because of Jun and her extensive wardrobe of jeans and flannel shirts.

As we were packing, though, she pulled a box down from the top of her closet. It had a skirt and sweater set in it. When she took it out we both stared at it a moment. I was the first to start laughing. She punched me in the arm. “My mother will take me shopping again if I don’t wear it,” she said, fingering the silk. She returned from the bathroom fully dressed in her mother’s costume, and I was surprised to see that it suited her as well as her usual attire. I looked at my own jeans and sweater, and began to feel doubtful. “Don’t worry,” Jun said without looking at me, “she won’t care what you’re wearing.” And I knew even before we’d left the room that it would be the first in a series of weak lies, a hopeless effort at trying to seam together who she was at college with what her parents would want to see. It was attentive and careful work, but it couldn’t be woven into anything fine.

We flew from Logan to JFK, though when I commented on the luxury Jun told me it was a compromise: she had wanted to take a bus and her father had wanted to send a private plane. “Really, it’s amazing the things he thinks of to spend money on,” she told me. We were standing in the queue to board, the crowd around us all having their hushed, last-minute conversations.

“When I’m seated, I wonder if we’ll still fight over it,” she added ruminatively. It took me a minute to guess that by “seated” she meant working at her father’s company; I wondered if her choice of words was a reflection of how the British or Japanese spoke of business, or an unconscious reflection of how working with her father would be much like having a position of authority that extended beyond the business world, a way to come into inherited responsibilities.

We were picked up in a private car—I guess Jun lost that fight, too, or chose to avoid it. Once the doors closed she immediately dropped her things around her, the way I might have spread out in my bedroom at home.

“Keigo’s going to be there,” she reminded me when I commented on her slovenliness when clearly the driver had put some effort into keeping the car pristine.

“Don’t try to distract me,” I said, blushing so hard I had to crack open the window for some air to cool me down.

She laughed generously at me, making a big show of creating an even bigger mess in the car. We chatted, excited, for a while, but then I knew we were near our destination because Jun started to collect her things and get quiet and look out the window more frequently.

We finally stopped when we reached a particularly imposing high-rise on the Upper East Side. The driver delivered our bags directly to a doorman, who carried them to the elevators and pressed the button for us. The driver followed us in, speaking to a second doorman at a reception desk who picked up the phone. Jun acknowledged none of this. She was grinning at me as I took it all in, though I think she was also nervous, hopping back and forth to make me laugh and jutting her thumbs through the straps in her backpack.

When the elevator arrived, the driver bent down to pick our bags up, but when the doors slid open, Keigo popped out, hugging first Jun, then, after a moment’s hesitation, me, grabbing a bag from the driver, tangling us all up as we arranged ourselves inside. The driver had to reach over from the back corner to press the button.

Jun and Keigo talked busily, interrupting each other. I watched the dial as we ascended, wondering when we would stop. The top floor. I looked at Jun, as if to say I should have guessed, but she was still chatting with her cousin. He’d cut his hair since I’d last seen him, and it made the strong lines of his face stand out even more. He caught me looking at him and smiled. In spite of myself, I blushed again. Would everything have been different if I had gone for Keigo that first weekend, instead of Weingarten on the second? Would I still be navigating that underlying current of shame? Jun was looking at me now, and I forced a smile at both of them. When the elevator doors opened, we walked out onto the marble floor of a massive room with an unobstructed, wall-to-wall view of the Manhattan skyline.

“It’s a rental,” Jun said, qualifying the splendor; she seemed embarrassed by the impact it had on me. There were two older women at the door as soon as we walked in, chattering in Japanese with each other. Keigo dashed off, presumably to fetch someone. Jun introduced them as her aunties, never giving me their names, but they smiled and bowed and took my hand, more of a holding than a handshake, until a man and a woman appeared on the far side of the living room: Jun’s father and mother. We all stopped as they approached, like actors interrupted in a scene. Jun’s father led the way, her mother, just as I remembered, following behind him. He frowned, walked toward Jun, then stood before her, silent, appraising. He said something, ruffled her hair, then grinned. Jun threw her arms around him, and her mother broke into a smile too big, I thought, for her exceptionally small face.

There was a great deal of chaotic reunion and introduction from then on; that afternoon I met countless members of the Oko family, never fully clear on who was staying in the enormous penthouse and who was simply visiting, particularly since the door continued to open and close as people I was sure were staying for a while exited and others entered. The table setting alone must have taken hours, mostly done by Jun’s aunties and other female relations, with the peripheral support of what I believe was a hired caterer and maid. Just before dinner, Jun’s brother and sister arrived.

They had been on a cultural outing, Jun whispered to me, and I understood they had visited the Museum of Natural History and one wing of the Met, according to their father’s directions. Jun’s older brother, Hiroshi, was amiable and heavyset. It was difficult to tell his age, but he exuded warmth and ease. Jun hadn’t mentioned he had Down’s syndrome, and in the right light he looked like a placid deity, pleasantly satisfied with the mortals surrounding him.

Her younger sister, Ayame, was delicate and petite like their mother, and hung on every word Jun and Keigo spoke. They alternately teased and taught her, laughter the only constant. Ayame had applied to Wellesley that fall and studied me with a mix of shyness and lack of subtlety that made me think she was very young.

As Jun’s guest, I was unable to walk from one spot to another without an affectionate pat on my shoulder or back and a stream of kind Japanese from whomever I passed. Keigo volunteered to be the one to give me the grand tour but Jun waved him off, effectively leaving us to our own devices. Keigo grinned, then took my hand in his, very briefly, before remembering where he was and dropping it. I found myself wishing he hadn’t, a crush developing faster than I could stop it.

Jun’s grandmother was being treated at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Although Jun did not speak to me of the details of her cancer, I was left with the impression that she would not recover from the state in which I saw her. She was a tiny woman, wrapped tightly in a blanket and seated in a wheelchair, her head perpetually leaning back on a cushion secured behind her neck, her eyes covered in large sunglasses placed, I guessed, over her eyes so that, in her immobility, she would not be blinded by the overhead lights. Jun’s aunts attended to her at all times, cooing to her and laughing over her, leaning in to her to speak, pulling back to smile, patting her on her arms and legs enthusiastically, joking with one another as they did so. It was the sort of behavior I would have expected to see around a baby worth celebrating. Hiroshi preferred to sit by her, holding her arm in his hand. She responded to no one.