Love always and forever,
Kyoko
I had not written her back after the first letter and I didn’t this time, either. But a week later, another missive arrived, this one even more explicit. In it, she said that her fantasy was to have me tie her up and rape her. Hard. In the ass. She also said that she was planning to move to the United States. She had a job lined up with a multinational corporation, and maybe we could get together?
This time, I did write back. I told her in no uncertain terms that I was married, that I had a son, that I loved my wife and would never cheat on her. We might have been pen pals when we were kids, I said, but we did not know each other now, we both had separate lives, and we should not write to each other anymore. It would be better if our correspondence remained a pleasant memory from childhood.
I sent off the envelope the next day, feeling virtuous, feeling strong, feeling good.
But I saved the letters.
And the ones that came after.
I don’t know why.
3
It was summer, and Eric was spending the week at Vicki’s parents’ house in Phoenix. Due to our busy schedules, we didn’t get a chance to visit them as often as Vicki would have liked, and she made sure that each summer he spent at least some time alone with his grandparents. We took the opportunity to reinvigorate our own relationship, to have the sort of freeform spontaneous sex we used to have before our son was born.
And the sex was great.
I missed Eric, though. I was the one who worked at home, I was the one who took care of him all day, who watched him while Vicki went to her office, and it seemed strange not having him around. I’d vowed that I would be a better husband and father than my father had been—and I was. Not only did I spend more time with Eric than my dad had spent with me, but I liked being with him.
Although I occasionally wrote letters in longhand while he ran around, or typed letters on my computer while he took a nap, I did most of my work at night and spent my days with Eric, reading to him, playing with him, taking him for walks. We got to be a familiar sight in the used-record stores and thrift shops of Orange County, and he grew up listening not to Walt Disney or Sesame Street albums but the Beatles and the Pogues and Miles Davis and Meredith Monk and, of course, Daniel Lentz. We also listened to Hank Williams Jr. together. Yes, Hank Junior. I had, belatedly, caught Robert’s country-western bug, and was rapidly filling in those gaps in my record collection by picking up Charlie Daniels, Dolly Parton and Moe and Joe albums from Salvation Army and Goodwill stores.
I often wondered what had happened to Robert and Edson. Frank, too. And Paul. I thought about searching the Internet for their whereabouts, then sending them e-mails, but something kept me from it. My past was past, and it was easier somehow to remain in the present.
There is a point, I think, where life starts to seem sad, when a person adopts one of those live-in-the-moment philosophies because looking back on all of the missed opportunities is too painful, and looking forward, there does not seem to be the time to create a new future with a different outcome. I wasn’t there yet, but I missed my twenties, missed the sense of freedom and possibility. I loved my family and was happy with my life, but I could see where it was going, the road was mapped out ahead of me, and I didn’t like that. Things seemed better when I had no idea what the future had in store. Maybe that’s why I continued to read Kyoko’s letters.
And then…
I got caught.
And it all blew up in my face.
I had to meet in person with a programmer from the software company for one of my infrequent face-to-face demos. So I drove to the corporate office in L.A. and spent the day trying to decipher the technojargon that was thrown at me as I made my way through the various screens of the new package. As luck would have it, Vicki was scheduled to work only a half day. Our original plan was to have lunch together at a Cuban restaurant near the Orange antique circle. She’d go to antiques stores; I’d check out the used-record and thrift shops. But when—the day before—I found out about my meeting, I told her to go on without me; I’d meet her there if I could, see her back at home if I couldn’t.
The damn demo didn’t end until after three, and by then the flextime traffic had created gridlock all the way back to Orange County. So it was nearly six by the time I pulled into the driveway.
Something was wrong.
I could feel it, though there were no visible indications that anything was amiss. I was reminded, for some reason, of the time when Vicki had discovered my stash of old letters back in our little apartment in college, and heart pounding, I hurried into the house.
As before, Vicki was on the floor, surrounded by my letters, reading. I could not tell if she had found my secret compartment and taken them from there or if she had found my special diskette and printed them out herself on the PC. But there was a look of revulsion on her face this time. Something about the letters disgusted her. It might have been the content—at least in some cases—but I had the feeling that this ran deeper. She was objecting not to the subjects of the letters but to the letters themselves, to their very existence. I felt like an exposed Dorian Gray, my terrible secrets on view.
Vicki looked up, saw me and reconfigured her face, involuntary revulsion changing to righteous anger. She stood to confront me. “What is this?” she demanded, shaking the sheaf of papers in her hand. “What are all these?”
“Letters,” I said glibly, trying to make a joke out of it.
“What about all this right-wing bullshit, all these anti-Clinton diatribes, all these Gingrich apologies?”
“It’s not political,” I said.
“Not political?” she yelled. “What you’ve done here is the exact opposite of everything you’ve ever said, everything we’ve fought for!” She threw the papers at me. “I don’t even know you!”
She was right. She didn’t know me, although I wasn’t sure whose fault that was. I felt obligated to defend myself, and I was desperate for her to understand, to know that I didn’t really mean any of it. But how could I explain to her that it wasn’t the specific policies I cared about. Hell, I didn’t even consider them when writing my letters. It was the power, the fact that I could change and influence the nation’s movers and shakers, the idea that others were dancing to my tune. It was the act of writing, creating the letters themselves, that got me off.
“I’m still the same person I always was,” I told her.
“Who is that?” she shot back.
“Remember my nuclear-freeze letters? My disarmament letters?”
“Then what are these?” She gestured to the scattered pages.
Who the fuck was I kidding? I had no real political convictions. My only loyalty was to my letters, my only obligation to my art. I had started on this path with a single altruistic step, wanting to save Acacia’s Eastside from redevelopment, but that was the first and last time that my motives had been pure. For me, letter writing was like a drug, and once I was hooked, I needed a fix—and didn’t care how I got one.
“You’re a liar. You told me you weren’t going to write letters anymore,” she said accusingly. “You lied to me.”
“How do you think you got those promotions?” I said quietly.
She stared at me.
I looked away, immediately sorry I’d said it.
“No,” she whispered.
I wanted to deny it, but I knew it was too late for that, and I shut my mouth before I said something else and made things even worse.
That wasn’t possible.
She stormed out of the room, stomping on my letters as she did so, grinding papers beneath her heel, kicking others out of the way. My instinctive reaction was to save them, to push her aside and gather my babies to me. But I restrained myself and stood there, trying to come up with an apology or entreaty that would make her stay and make everything okay.
Down the hall, the bedroom door slammed shut.
As I gathered up my papers, I reflec
ted on my letter writing. I’d used it for both good and evil. I was responsible for Principal Poole’s losing his job, for the deaths of my father and the witch of Acacia. But I’d also helped my wife and son, used my talent to create a better life for them. Didn’t that balance out the harm I had caused?
No. Because just as I had no real political convictions, I had no moral compass, either. I cared only about the letters. It didn’t matter to me what the result of my words was—only that there was a result. It was the thrill of the conquest that I lived for, the adrenaline rush I got when one of my letters was published or received a defensive response or caused a panicked change of heart in its recipient.
Was that more important to me than Vicki?
Than our marriage?
Than our son?
Of course not. And there was no reason for me to even be considering such a drastic scenario. I didn’t have to choose one or the other. Vicki might be upset right now, but she’d be all right by morning, and then we’d talk it out the way we always did.
I heard loud noises from the other end of the hall: doors and cupboards slamming. She was mad and wanted me to know that she was mad, but there was something more than that in it. I had the feeling that she was going through her dresser and closet, packing.
Her reaction was all out of proportion to the objective content of the letters. It wasn’t the politics that bothered her so much. Not really. It wasn’t even my lying and sneakiness. It was… something else. Could it be the letters themselves? On some gut level, did she understand what they really were? Did she sense the dark power that surged behind them? Or—
I looked down at the letter in my hands.
It was from Kyoko.
—I dream that you mount me from behind. You hurt me when you shove it in, but I like the way it hurts. You grab my breasts with your hands and pinch nipples. I scream and you—
I had no ready response. This was not something I could combat. When Vicki stormed out of the bedroom with her suitcase and told me that she was going to her parents’ house, I had no ready reply. I stammered and stuttered and tried to come up with a legitimate reason why she should stay, but my words stumbled over themselves.
“I’m not coming back!” she announced as she opened the car door and threw the suitcase in the backseat.
“Vicki…”
“I’m not coming back!” She glared at me with a face full of rage and pain and hate.
And fear.
It wasn’t just Kyoko.
“I’m sorry!” I called out lamely.
“I don’t know what you are! But I don’t want to be around you, and I don’t want you to be around my son!”
“He’s my son, too!” I shouted as she got in the car and slammed the door. “I’m the one who’s with him all day! I’m the one who takes care of him!”
I was still screaming at her as she backed out of the driveway, swung the car around in the street and sped away.
TEN
1
I dreamed of the tent again, the circus tent in the desert. Once more, I was walking alone down the dusty road toward the tent. There was no movement of the hot still air, not even a breeze, but the dirty white-and-red-striped canvas flap flipped open as though propelled by a sentient wind. Within the exposed triangular breach lay darkness.
I reached the tent and did not even pause. I walked straight inside.
There were no white-haired children within the canvas confines, no prehistoric skeleton. In the center of the ring was the crucified Christ, his body dead and stinking on the cross, blood dried and skin turned to leather. From somewhere unseen came the tinny sound of old-time music. Two old men sat in the shadowed bleachers, scribbling on notepads or clipboards.
I awoke.
And I was alone in my bed. I rolled over and buried my face in Vicki’s pillow. I could still smell her on it: her perfume, her shampoo, her moisturizer, her soap. “Vicki,” I said.
And cried myself to sleep.
In the mail the next day was a letter with no return address. Just in case, I ripped open the envelope:
Dear Jason,
You are walking down a dusty desert road toward the red-and-white striped circus tent. It is hot and you are sweating, but inside you feel cold—
I tore up the letter and the envelope, threw them away.
2
The end of our marriage was conducted through a series of letters. From her lawyer to me, from my lawyer to her. I tried writing to Vicki directly, pouring my heart and soul into a series of personal entreaties designed to win her back, giving those letters everything I had. She returned every one of them—unopened. Either she knew what I was trying to do, or on some subliminal level, she sensed it.
I don’t know what you are.
Eric called me on the phone every few days, and each time he was polite but distant. I could tell he was sad, and I wondered what Vicki had told him about me. I didn’t want to ask him, and I couldn’t ask her, because she wouldn’t speak to me. I knew from her lawyer that she was asking for full custody and that she wanted to deny me visitation rights, but my lawyer said there was no way that would happen. She’d probably get custody, he admitted—the mother usually did—but I was such an involved father that it was likely I would have a pretty open visitation schedule.
That wouldn’t do me much good, though, if they remained in Arizona.
Unless I moved to Arizona.
What would be best for Eric? I wondered. I wasn’t so selfish that I would gratify my own emotional needs at the expense of his, but I found it hard to believe that he’d be better off without a father in his life.
I remembered that when I was a little boy, my friends never liked to come over to my house and I never liked to invite them. My dad was often drunk, and my mom was always mean. So mean that my friends were afraid of her and would rather meet anyplace in town other than my house.
Vicki and I had been good parents to Eric—at least until this point—and we needed to continue putting him first. But this was not an ordinary separation. We were playing it as though it were, and that’s how it appeared from the outside—the Kyoko letters assured at least that much—but the truth was that Vicki was afraid of me. I’d known it that night, and I sensed it even now. She obviously couldn’t prove anything—any assertion that I was an unusually successful letter writer would seem like irrelevant lunacy—but we both knew the truth of the situation, and I could understand her point of view. Hell, my letter writing scared me. I knew why she wanted to keep Eric away from me.
She was letting him call, though. At least that was something.
Maybe all wasn’t lost.
I thought at some point we would have to meet in a room: her and her lawyers, me and mine. But apparently not. The haggling over details continued through faxes and phone calls, through e-mails and couriers and registered letters. I still loved her, and I had an unfounded gut feeling that underneath all of the fear and suspicion and sense of betrayal, she still loved me, too. But all of this… process… kept us away from each other, pushed us further and further apart until we were little more than cogs in a machine. I did some of my best work writing letters to her lawyers, hitting heights of persuasiveness that I’d never hit before, pushing my abilities to their extremes in a desperate effort to get back my wife and son. If I’d been this on fire when writing about Reagan or Bush or Clinton, world events would have changed; the society we lived in would have shifted direction. But these letters, too, were returned unopened. I was allowed to communicate to Vicki’s legal team only through my own attorneys.
I tore the letters up each time they were returned, and whether or not it was my imagination, I thought I sensed their power in my fingertips as I ripped up the paper on which they were printed. It was stupid and superstitious, but just in case, in a primitive homegrown attempt to ward off any repercussions, I dumped some of the torn pieces in the wastepaper basket in my office, dumped some more in the garbage sack under the kitchen sink and flush
ed the rest down the toilet. The ritual may not have had any real-world effects, but it made me feel better.
The summer dragged on, hot and lonely. I still said hello to my neighbors when I saw them, but I saw them less and less, hid out in my office more and more often, not doing my work, not even writing really, just obsessing over my situation and reading editorial pages, advice columns and epistolary novels. Letters real and fictional. For the first time since we’d moved into the neighborhood, I avoided the Fourth of July block party, not wanting to face my neighbors alone without my family, too embarrassed to answer questions.
I soon came to realize that most of “our” friends were actually Vicki’s friends. I didn’t really know most of them all that well and didn’t really want to know them. My own friends from the past had fallen by the wayside; I’d drifted away from my college buddies just as I had earlier with Robert and Edson and Frank.
Where was I going? I wondered. What was to become of me?
I had no idea.
And the summer continued on.
3
In a portent of the bursting tech bubble to come, my job disappeared along with my stock options, my pension plan and the software company itself. I had no other income and virtually no savings, so I should have been more concerned about it, should have at least cared a little, but the truth was that my mind was wrapped up in the pending divorce and custody battle, and I was glad to be shed of the position. I’d hated it anyway, and the assignments that had been piling up had been an albatross around my neck.
As it happened, I was offered a new job almost immediately.
DISPATCH Page 16
