If You Follow Me (17 page)

“Are you okay?” she asks, standing over me. “You don't look good.”

“I've been better,” I say.

“How was dinner with your new friend?”

“She's not. She only asked me over to tutor her kids.” I feel embarrassed admitting this to Carolyn, after the big deal I made over my dinner invitation. “One of them is autistic. At least I think he is. His mom wanted to pretend that he was normal, but he kept repeating every word I said and then he started masturbating. It was awful.”

“Really? Sounds like a model pupil, if you can overlook the masturbation part.”

I laugh in spite of myself, and when I do my teeth accidentally come together and the pain is so bad that I feel dizzy. I curl into a tighter ball. “I had no idea that teeth could hurt this bad,” I whimper. “I'm afraid they're like Christmas lights. One blows out and the whole strand dies.” As if on cue, the heater wheezes to a stop. Carolyn asks if I remembered to stop for kerosene on my way home, and I shake my head, looking up at her. There are freckles on the underside of her chin, and her hair is turning a darker shade of red, her winter coat, flipping up at the ends where it now brushes the tops of her shoulders. She doesn't say a single word, and as she heads downstairs I think that maybe this is it, it's over, I've pushed her too far and she's leaving me here and now, alone in the cold. But she returns a minute later carrying the television set and a bottle of Suntory whiskey. She pops a bootleg
ER
video into the TV, and says, “I thought watching some serious trauma victims would put
your toothache into perspective, or at least distract you from the pain. And this should help you sleep.” She pours whiskey into a mug, hands it to me, and then turns her back, stepping into the red fleece sack before taking off her clothes.

“You don't have to do that,” I say.

“What?” she says.

“Change with your back to me. I know you want more privacy. I'm not watching.”

I close my eyes and press my hands between my knees. A moment later I feel the warmth of her body behind mine, filling my hollows, her breath against the back of my neck.

“Hurry up,” she says. “Get in.”

“What?” I say. “Where?”

“Get in the sack,” she says, and I twist around to see that she has left the front of the garment unzipped and she's naked.

“There's no room,” I protest.

“Of course there is,” she says. “I'll make room.”

And there is, and she does, and I lie with my back to her chest, skin on skin, no gaps between us, both of us warm for once, nothing to discuss. I listen to her breathing grow regular as she falls asleep, curled around me, while I watch four episodes of
ER
until the credits roll and static fills the screen. My dad and I used to watch
ER
together. He loved pointing out the mistakes the doctors made in surgery. “Dead,” he'd say gleefully. “That maneuver would've killed him, if he wasn't going to die already!” I don't know how long I've been staring at the swarm of blue and white dots on the TV screen before they rearrange themselves into my father's face, only that I'm not surprised when it happens. It's like I've been waiting for this. “How did you find me?” I whisper, and the image flickers, disappears, then reappears. “What are you doing here?” I try. “Why did you come back?” But he doesn't answer any of these questions. “How
are you?” I finally ask, and at last he speaks. “I'm fine,” he says. “That's what I came here to tell you. I'm fine now.”
Fine. Fine
. I can tell that this word is supposed to have a magical effect, lifting the fog of my guilt, absolving me or him or both of us. “Well I'm not,” I say, angrier because he didn't even ask. “I'm not fine all. Do you even care? Did you even think about me once before you jumped?” Again he doesn't answer, which makes me want to throw the remote control at the screen. But I don't want to wake Carolyn, so instead I press the power button and the blue light shrinks to a point. As he disappears, I'm seized with regret. He came all this way to find me, and once again I shut him out? But no matter how many times I turn the TV off and on, switching from channel to channel, he doesn't reappear. I'm still pushing buttons, trying desperately to get him to come back, when Vivaldi's
The Four Seasons
, wakes me up, the music so familiar by now that I can't even hear it anymore.

kawaisou:
(
ADJ
.)
poor; pitiable; pathetic

T
he dentist's office is inside the Jade Plaza shopping center, tucked between the 100-Yen store and a kiosk that sells cell phone cozies and charms. I don't know how I missed the door, painted with a cartoon tooth face, the paint chipping so that one eye seems to be winking at me. At seven on the dot, a hygienist wearing a pale pink uniform that fits her like couture unlocks this door. I'm wearing an old pair of gray sweats, my hair is corralled in a greasy ponytail, and I can smell the whiskey on my breath. She backs away, justifiably alarmed by the half-drunk
gaijin
moaning at the door.

“Kinkyu desu
,” I declare. It's an emergency.

“The dentist will be with you in just a moment,” she chirps, showing me to a small room with a chair covered in a narrow band of paper that rips when I take a seat. There are posters on the ceiling, photos of the Japanese countryside in every season, and one of a kitten up a tree. I wonder if the Japanese characters spell, “Hang in there.”

“Hello,” says a man upon entering the room. “I am dentist.”

“Hello,” I reply as he looms over me. He's wearing a white plastic face mask with a perforated mouthpiece and his eyes are hidden
behind dark goggles. Standing beside him, the hygienist is also wearing a face mask.

“I am dentist,” he says again. “You are…”

“I am Marina,” I say, and because he seems to be waiting for me to introduce myself in greater detail I add, “I teach English at Shika
Koko
.”

“Miss Marina English teacher,” he repeats. “Nice to meet you. How are you?”

“Not so hot,” I say. “My teeth are killing me.”

“Killing me,” he echoes. “Like…murder?”

“Exactly.”

He asks me which tooth hurts, and when I explain that I can't tell anymore, that they all hurt, he says something in Japanese to his hygienist, and she hands him a delicate metal hammer. He snaps on a pair of rubber gloves, layering a second pair over the first. I wonder if all patients require this much protection, or if they are taking extra precautions with me. Prying open my jaw, he hammers on one of my front teeth and my head clangs like a bell.

“Howdy?” he says.

“What?” I whimper.

“When you feel pain, please say ‘howdy.' I like Western movie.”

“Howdy!” I say as he hammers the next tooth.
Clink.
“Howdy!”
Clink.
“Howdy!”
Clink.
“Howdy!” As he plays my mouth like a xylophone, tears slide down my face, soaking the paper beneath me. I ask for a painkiller, but he says that if I can't feel any pain, he won't be able to catch the bad guy. He asks me where I'm from and I tell him San Francisco. It's hard to squeeze out the word with my mouth open, his fingers all bunched up in it.

“I thought New York.” I can hear the frown in his voice. I explain that this is where I went to college. “I don't like big city,” he says. “I like…how do I say…
inaka
?”

“Nature,” I translate.

“No,” he says, banging the next tooth harder as if to punish me for a wrong answer. “A small town. Like Shika. Do you like Shika?” I can't nod because he is prying my jaw open, reaching deep inside my mouth to hammer on my molars.

“Ow!” I shriek.

“Howdy?” he says.

“Howdy!” I repeat after him, bawling in public for the second time in as many days.

For once I welcome the pinch of the needle that slides into my gums, followed by the sweet spread of numbness, blessed paralysis. As the drill whirs and the bit burrows into my tooth and enamel shrapnel fills my mouth, I close my eyes and visualize not a dentist but a locksmith, letting me back into my home. When I open them again the dentist is holding his tweezers close to my face. Something bloody dangles from their tips.

“The loot,” he says. “Root. Loot. Which is correct?”

“Root.”

“Root,” he repeats. “Root. Root.” It's like he's cheering on a sports team.

I explore my molar with the tip of my fat, numb tongue, and find that it has been hollowed out like a drinking straw, excavated to my gums.

“Pain gone?” the dentist asks me.

“Pain gone,” I say. “Thank you.”

“Please come back
mo ichi do
at five o'clock,” he says, “so I can fill it.”

 

I was in too much pain and too tipsy to drive to the dentist this morning, so I walked. Now I have to walk home again, to get the car to drive to the elementary school. The pain in my tooth is gone, but its
absence feels like the stillness following an earthquake. Something has shifted. Things aren't what they were. Plus, I'm headed for a bad hangover. In front of the trash bin outside Mister Donuts—patrolled, as usual, by a pair of aproned old women—I bend over and gag. The alcohol burns the back of my throat, and I spit out the tiny cotton ball that was plugging the hole in my tooth. The bright red dot, stark against the white snow, reminds me of the Japanese flag. I feel the eyes of the
gomi
police bore into me. I pick up the bloody cotton ball, squeezing it in my fist as I carry on.

I walk back home on the side of the highway, just inches from the rocky overhang, planting one foot in front of the other, soaking my sweatpants' cuff s in the deep slush. The sun is out this morning and the snow is melting quickly, falling in wet clumps from the boughs of the trees, dripping down the cliff, trickling into the swollen sea. The huge waves crash against the rocks, sending up a salty mist. I kick pebbles from the path ahead of me, listening to each one tumble over the edge, followed by silence as they sail through the air. The cliff s are so high that I can't hear them hit.

At home I call the high school. The secretary transfers me to the faculty room, and Miyoshi-sensei picks up after just one ring.

“Mari-chan,” he says. “Are you in trouble?”

“I'm fine,” I say, wishing he didn't assume the worst. “Well, not fine. I need to take a sick day and I was hoping you could call the elementary school to let them know.”

“Sick day?” he repeats as if he'd never heard of such a thing.

“I think I just had a root canal,” I explain.

“Nani
?” he asks. “What's that?”

“A dental procedure. You know, for tooth pain?”

“Miss Marina,” he says, “here in Japan, most teachers don't use a rare and kind of precious sick day for tooth pain. We have no substitute teachers here.”

“I'm exhausted,” I tell him, clutching the phone. “I couldn't sleep at all last night, my head is pounding and I just threw up.”

“You should stay home,” he says quickly, no doubt worried that I'm going to fall apart on him again. “I will tell Ooka-sensei that you are not well. But tomorrow you had better return
mo ichi do
to give your special English lesson.”

“What special English lesson?” I ask.

“I don't know,” he says, “but Ooka-sensei told me you started something new, and now you should give it to every class in the school. It's Japanese way.”

“But it's not really an English lesson,” I protest.

“Not really an English lesson?”

“I think the vice-principal is trying to keep me there for English conversation.” I hold my breath, wait for him to say that I've crossed yet another line with this accusation, but instead he laughs heartily.

“Probably so,” he says. “Ooka-sensei loves speaking English too much. He tries to practice with me too, but he only wants to talk about the weather. It's kind of boring.”

“More than kind of,” I say, laughing too.

“So, Mari-chan, what is lesson that is not really an English lesson?”

“I go to the art class and lie on a table while the kids draw my portrait and talk about how tall my nose is.”

“I like your tall nose,” he says. “It's charm point.”

“Charm point?”

“Like…ears that stick out, or chubby cheeks, or interesting scar.”

“You mean a flaw.”

“It fits you.”

“Because I'm so huge?”

“Because you are strong,” he says.

“Hiro,” I say, “I miss our classes. I miss teaching with you. I miss—”

“I will call Ooka-sensei,” he cuts me off. “Today you could stay home, but tomorrow you had better go back to the elementary school
mo ichi do
.”

“Fine,” I say.

“Then you can come back here.”

“What?” I say. “Really? When?”

“Monday,” he says. “You belong here,
ne
?”

“Thank you so much,” I say. “I've missed—”

“Fine,” he says. “Fine.”

 

I am almost never home alone in the daytime, and it feels strange, like I'm getting away with something illicit. I lie on our bedroom floor in a patch of sunlight, bundled in covers, listening to the dripping patter of melting icicles, the slide and thump of snow sliding off roof shingles, the crack of the ice that coated the river in a thin skin now breaking apart, drifting like continents. I fall asleep for a while, waking up to another, closer thump—the sound of a package hitting the
genkan
floor. We only lock our front door at night. Miyoshi-sensei told us that there was no reason to, that theft is virtually unheard of in rural Japan. We never even made a copy of the key.

At the sight of my mom's handwriting, printed on the side of a large box, I feel a pang of homesickness, sharper because I'm actually home sick. I sit on the brown vinyl couch in the living room and tear open the box flaps, expecting to find the usual assortment of books, treats, and stickers.

Instead, my mom has sent a pile of things that belonged to my dad.

On top of the pile is his old suede jacket, the one he had since college, caramel colored and lined with fleece. On our family road trips every summer, driving across desert states in the middle of the
night to beat the daytime heat, he used to spread it across my lap like a blanket. Now I put it on and bury my hands in the pockets. One holds a book of matches and the chewed cap of a pen, the other a smashed peppermint, still in its wrapper. These seem like clues, but to what?

Next I pull out his orange velour sweatshirt. It's the one he's wearing in most of the pictures from when I was a brand new baby. My mom says that he went out and bought it right after I was born, the softest thing he could find. She says that for months, every evening when he came home from work, he'd put on this velour sweatshirt, lie down on the couch, and place me on his chest, dressed only in a diaper, so I could luxuriate in the softness. In every picture, his big hand is always spanning my tiny back, holding me close, making sure that I don't roll off. The shirt is twenty-two years old, the exact same age as me. The orange velour is worn thin in patches that let the light through when I hold it up to my face, breathe it in. It doesn't smell like him, it just smells like the detergent my mom uses. I guess this makes sense. He has been dead for over a year now. His smell should be gone.

Under the shirt is his old camera, a manual Nikon surrounded by lenses of various lengths, each encased in a tube sock with orange and blue rings around the ankles. These are the only socks he ever wore, hiked up over his muscular shins, with cutoff jean shorts when he was working outside in the yard, even with the suits he wore only when he absolutely had to. The orange and blue rings would peek out from beneath the black cuff s of his suit pants and he'd joke, “It's my own personal fashion statement. It says, ‘I don't care what other people think.'” He used to take my picture with this camera. He'd take shot after shot of me doing ordinary things: eating strawberries in a high chair, reading a book on the grass, drifting in an inner tube on a lake, my hair fanning behind me. My mom liked the posed pic
tures better—the ones where I was smiling—but I loved his candid shots. He managed to capture what I really looked like, or at least how I saw myself, the way that no one else ever has.

Next I pull out his big dictionary, its black leather binding cracked, the thin pages edged with gold. He had this dictionary since he was a little boy. Whenever I asked him the definition of a word, instead of telling me the answer, he'd send me to the dictionary to look it up. Then, for the rest of the day, we'd both keep using that word in sentences. The margin beside every word that either of us ever looked up is starred.

 

imponderable:
(
ADJ
.) incapable of being weighed or evaluated with exactness.

 

One by one, I pull the rest of the things out of the box: his titanium diver's watch; that fiberglass Cheshire cat mask we made when I was in elementary school; a Ziploc bag full of tawny silt that clings to the inside of the plastic, fogging it like breath.

I know what this is, but not what it's doing here, or what I'm supposed to do with it.

 

Just a few weeks before moving to Japan, I went to San Francisco to visit my mom. I hadn't been back since the memorial ser vice, and I was shocked to find this visit unexpectedly harder than the one before. My father's absence rang through the whole city, the neighborhood, through my body. There was no street corner where we hadn't stood together, no little restaurant where we hadn't grabbed a bite, no used bookstore where we hadn't stopped to scan the stacks, no ice
cream shop where we hadn't sampled too many flavors before making our selections. I expected him to pop out from behind every corner and yell, “Surprise!” his darkest joke ever. I kept thinking that I saw him—holding hands with a little boy in a monkey backpack; sitting on a park bench eating a peach; riding the bus, his face half hidden behind a newspaper—and it almost seemed possible that he'd staged the whole thing, that he wanted to get out of
his
life, sure, but not out of life altogether. But of course this wasn't the case. The men looked nothing like him up close.