The Other Woman (2 page)

The women looked around nervously. Mme Kudo
had asked them all in advance to prepare a brief presentation about
their individual situations and all of them had, but Japan’s
“tatamae” culture was not amenable to the expression of strong
emotions and the prospect of having to spill their guts in front of
a room full of strangers was daunting to say the least. When Mme
Kudo asked for volunteers, to no one’s surprise, not a single hand
went up.

“
Aki, why don’t you
begin?”

Aki pointed to her nose the way Japanese do
when they aren’t sure if they’re the one’s being spoken to. Mme
Kudo nodded encouragingly and Aki looked self-consciously down at
the table. After rounds of encouragement from all present, she
finally worked up the nerve to begin. In a series of disjointed
vignettes, she pieced together the story of a husband who continued
to maintain an affair with a woman he’d been dating on the side
before they were married.

“
He told me he’d broken off the
relationship,” she whispered, her cheeks quivering as she strained
to contain the sobs she knew would spill out of her like a mighty
river through a ruptured dam.

“
This went on for the whole time
you were married?” confirmed Mme Kudo.

Aki nodded yes.

“
How many years have you been
married?” asked Keiko.

“
Four.”

“
Who pursued who before you got
married?” asked Greg after a silence. “I mean, did he try to
convince you to marry him, or the other way around?”

“
Maybe, I chased him,” Aki
admitted contritely.

“
It’s important because it appears
that you were a bit more enthusiastic about the relationship than
he was.”

“
Yes, I think so.”

“
It’s unfortunate we don’t get to
choose who we feel sexually attracted to,” Greg lamented. “If he
could have, I’m sure your husband would have chosen to love you and
only you. But the reality is, we sometimes have strong feelings for
people even when society says we shouldn’t.”

Mme Kudo’s translation elicited nods of rueful
agreement from all present.

“
Most of us are brought up with
the expectation that we’ll find one special person who’ll be all
things to us, but the truth is, human relationships rarely work
that way. The kind of person we want to raise our children with is
not always a person we can feel romantic love for or enjoy
satisfying sex with.”

Hikari’s body tensed up at Greg’s words. She
felt great sympathy for Aki, who must feel so alone even with the
two lovely daughters whose pictures she’d shown everyone before
Greg arrived. What Aki was going though must must be incredibly
painful, but at least she had a family and a husband who, even if
he hadn’t been entirely faithful, didn’t seem like he was planning
to leave her. For this, Hikari couldn’t help but envy
her.

Mme Kudo signalled it was Keiko’s turn. Since
Aki had already broken the ice, it seemed more natural for Keiko to
share her story, which was that of a husband who’d admitted to
repeated trysts with prostitutes in Tsuji, the low-key red-light
district in Naha, Okinawa’s largest city. This had come to light
after she found out by accident that her husband had been working a
side job for cash. When she’d asked what he’d done with the money,
his answers hadn’t sounded plausible, so she’d hired an
investigator and had him followed. When she confronted him with
photos of him visiting one of Naha’s “Soapland” establishments,
there was little he could do but admit the truth.

“
It’s like he had this whole
separate life,” complained Keiko. “I can’t take being lied to like
that.”

“
It makes you wonder what other
lies he’s told you,” added Aki.

“
Maybe other women, not in Tsuji,”
said Hiromi.

“
That’s what I’m afraid of,” said
Keiko. “Paying for sex at Soapland I sort of understand, but I
don’t know who else might be out there. Maybe someone he desires
more than me.”

“
For what it’s worth,” Greg piped
up, “a lot of western women would’ve already left him.”

“
What about their children?” Keiko
asked.

“
They’d be the subject of court
battles which would drag on over number of years. The mother would
almost certainly be awarded custody and the father, if he was
lucky, would have certain visitation rights.”

“
They’d have to pay for two
houses,” reasoned Keiko. “Unless he was rich, everybody’s lives
would get harder.”

“
Is that why you’re still with
him?” asked Greg. “For economic reasons?”

“
I still love him. I just wish he
could love me, physically, the same way he loves those other
women.”

“
The expectation that we’re
supposed to be with only one person all our married lives isn’t
realistic for everyone. Not everybody feels the need to have other
partners, but it’s pretty clear your husband does.”

“
So what should I do?” asked
Keiko.

“
Treat yourself to something you
want,” said Greg. “Go have a massage, a facial, something sensual,
and ask him to pay for it out of the money he earns at his other
job. If you ask him the right way, I bet he’ll agree.”

The other women looked at each other,
perplexed.

“
A massage and a facial will
hardly make up for the pain Keiko’s husband caused her,” protested
Aki, to the agreement of all the women.

“
Very few species are truly
monogamous,” said Greg, “and humans are not on that list. Genetic
research has turned everything we used to believe about nature on
its head. Offspring of females we previously thought mated with
only one partner are not uncommonly fathered by other males. The
same genetic tests have shown that up to a third of kids born to
mothers in stable married relationships are fathered by men other
than their mother’s husbands. One third. Think about
it.”

Aki crossed her arms as Mme Kudo translated.
Keiko nodded her understanding. Hikari silently wondered what she’d
do in Keiko’s situation. If the man she loved with all her heart
admitted to seeing prostitutes, apparently lots of them, would she
contemplate leaving him, like the legendarily strong-willed western
women Greg spoke of? Perhaps. But even if he agreed to pay for her
house and all her expenses, she couldn’t imagine life as a single
mother. Even if she couldn’t have him all to herself, at least she
could still be with him, be held by him, at least sometimes. Having
to share was a second rate option, but it was better than what she
had now.

“
Keiko, I know you don’t want your
husband to be with other women,” continued Greg, “but the reality
is, he’s going to regardless of what you want. My advice to you,
hate me though you may, is that you either leave him, or you
tolerate his infidelity and demand he make it up to you in ways in
which he’s capable.”

“
Like paying for a massage?”
agreed Keiko, before Mme Kudo was finished.

“
Or even giving you a massage,”
added Greg. “Surely that’s not too much to ask.”

“
If my husband cheats on me, I’ll
leave him,” declared Hiromi in Japanese.

“
Why don’t you talk about your
boyfriend?” suggested Mme Kudo.

“
There’s nothing to talk about,”
laughed Hiromi. “I feel sad about what happened to Aki and Keiko,
but if that happened to me, I’d send him packing.”

Mme Kudo had to translate Hiromi’s thick
Okinawa dialect for Greg, who shrugged in
acknowledgement.

“In that case,” countered Greg,
“I’d say you’d better either prepare for divorce, or be
very
careful about who
you marry.”

“
Everyone should be careful about
who they marry,” rejoined Hiromi.

“
What I’m saying is, if you won’t
accept infidelity and you don’t want a divorce, about your only
option is to choose a man nobody else wants.”

“
That can’t be true,” balked
Hiromi.

“
Do the math. If you think your
man looks good, other women think he looks good to. If you find his
scent irresistible, so do other women. It doesn’t matter if you
like his voice, or the way he speaks to you, or the way he moves.
Whatever you find attractive about him also attracts other women.
For the first couple of years, when your marriage is new, that
won’t matter. But when things get a little stale, when he starts to
hunger for variety, all bets are off. The more appealing he is, the
more opportunities he’ll have and the harder it will be for him not
to cheat.”

As Hiromi digested Mme Kudo’s translation of
the foreign man’s words, Hikari fought back tears. Years ago, she’d
felt exactly the way Hiromi did. She wanted a good man all to
herself and she’d been prepared to give herself entirely to him.
That was how it had almost worked out, or so it had seemed for a
while. She’d had a good man, a perfect man, and everything in her
life was wonderful, until it all went off the rails. Hearing the
foreigner talk about how easily men stray cut her close enough to
the bone that she didn’t know if she could bear it.

“
The worst part, I’m sorry to say,
is that your husbands, your fiancees and your boyfriends are not
with you because they find you more attractive than other women,”
continued Greg. “They’re with you because you’re the one who didn’t
brush them off. In almost every case, they’d have been with other
women if they could’ve and that reality doesn’t change just ‘cause
there’s a ring on your finger.”

The looks exchanged by the women in the room
suggested they’d never thought of that before. Certainly Hikari
hadn’t, until recently. There had never been a ring on her finger,
mind you, but she’d been sure the man she loved had wanted to marry
her and it was only a matter of time before he proposed. But that
was before.

“I don’t mean to suggest an
undesirable man is less likely to cheat on you. Even if absolutely
no other woman wants him, there’s nothing to stop him from heading
to Soapland and dropping a hundred and fifty bucks on - what do
they call them - a
bath
attendant
.”

“
He’d better not,” huffed Hiromi,
“or he knows what’s gonna happen.”

“
In your case,” mused Greg, “I
wouldn’t be surprised if you were the one to cheat on
him.”

“
I don’t do that sort of thing,”
declared Hiromi, “and if you knew anything about women, you’d know
that most women don’t either.”

“
If you only knew how many married
women I’ve slept with,” Greg laughed. “Maybe you’re not tempted
now, but wait ’til you have a kid or two and sit home all day and
night while your husband’s out working and drinking with his
colleagues. Wait ’til he stops seeing you as the woman he loves and
starts to think of as the mother of his children. It’s only a
matter of time.”

Sensing Hiromi’s ire rising, Mme Kudo jumped
in. “I think it’s time we heard from Hikari.”

Hikari’s body went cold. She
wasn’t ready yet, and she could sense the tension in the room
risking as Hiromi and the foreign man sparred. Excusing herself,
she went to the toilet as the conversation in the living room
became more heated. Closing the door behind her, she looked at her
phone. Seeing that a new email had arrived, she felt the same
anticipation as always. This time, it
was
from the American. Written in
surprisingly clear Japanese, the email asked her why she hadn’t
responded to the message he’d sent more than a week ago.

“Mou kekkon shiteru kara!” she
hissed out loud.
Because you’re already
married
!

Hikari cursed herself for letting things go as
far as they had with him. She never should have invited him out for
drinks the first time, much less agreed to a second date. But what
was she supposed to do? She was hopelessly drawn to him and, not to
put too fine a point on it, she was beyond desperate for male
affection. Not so much sex, though it had been a while since she’d
enjoyed that, but affection - kisses and hugs - from a man who
truly desired her and wasn’t just after a bit of action on the
side. Harrison wanted from her exactly what she wanted from him and
that, in part, was what made him so irresistible to her. But resist
she must, for as difficult as things were in his marriage, he’d
told her point-blank that he wasn’t going to leave his wife. If she
went any further, let herself fall for him any more deeply, where
would that leave her in the long run?

She put away the phone, finished washing up
and reluctantly headed back to the tatami room where the others
waited. Mme Kudo was translating more comments by Greg as Aki,
Keiko, Hiromi and the others listened. When Mme Kudo was finished,
Hikari’s mouth went dry as she prepared to tell her painful
story.

“
I met my boyfriend at University
in Tokyo,” she began. “We started dating in the first year and
everything was amazing. We went everywhere together. After we
graduated, we talked about living together and even getting
married.”

After Mme Kudo finished the translation for
Greg, the women encouraged her to continue, but she
hesitated.