Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  “I’d remember,” Ramada Ann said with a toothy smile. “And we like to call it the ol’ I-71 Ramada. Much homier. Do you want some-thing to eat while you wait?”

  “No. I’ll hold off a few minutes.”

  She freshened up the coffee and sauntered off, leaving Hollis to his thoughts. Suki Takada was either quite late herself or had already come and gone.

  Akahito Takada had sounded delighted to hear from Hollis and this pleased him immensely. Akahito was not an effusive person; nor given to careless expressions of emotion or improvident gestures. But Hollis could tell that he had been pleased and almost instantly Hollis had regretted the trepidation that had preceded the call.

  It was not nervousness so much as a hesitation born of awkward-ness. He really had had no reason for calling Akahito Takada. He had been thinking of him lately, for reasons that were not entirely clear. Maybe there was something in the great and bittersweet summing up of retirement that had prompted the impulse. Akahito had, after all, marked a professional triumph of sorts.

  Or perhaps it was simply because they were so much alike. Hollis sensed they shared a natural kinship that, for reasons of distance and culture, he had neglected. Not like he had ever had much of an opportunity. It had really been just those few evenings at the house with Akahito and Izume. Not nearly enough time. That was just an icebreaker. But in the past three years – with no contact between them – the ice was reforming. The more he thought of Akahito, the more he longed to speak with him; just to keep the ice from thickening. But that was not something one could come out and say on the phone.

  And that had been the trepidation.

  He had played it out in his mind – the whole Mr. Akahito do you remember me, Hollis Johns from Ohio, I spent a lovely evening with you and your wife about three years ago during the Pacific Rim conference and I just wanted to call and see how you were doing and wanted to say hello and wanted to speak of our unacknowledged kinship in our unenlightened world – and could imagine only a look of pained consternation on Akahito’s face. He had fumbled with a dozen business related pretensions – clients needing joint financing on Japanese real estate, or Ohio First Securities and Credit needing to update the officer contact list for the Hyakugo Bank, or trying to set up some sort of conference between their two banks – but none of them felt right.

  For one thing, Hyakugo Bank had a branch in New York, staffed with officers Hollis knew on a first name basis. Any information Hollis really needed would have been far more easily and appropriately obtained through those channels than calling up the home of the bank president, Akahito Takada, a man who may not even remember him.

  Years ago, OFSC had been a guest, not a member, of the Pacific Rim Banking Conference. There had been a few big Japanese investors looking at targets in Ohio and farther east and that had been enough to justify sending an OFSC contingent to the conference. Perhaps, went the convenient surmise, OFSC could make some valuable foreign contacts that would stimulate investment interest. There had been a lot of board-level excitement and some infighting on the subject of just who should comprise the delegation. But, in the end, the Japan trip had been a boondoggle, plain and simple.

  Hollis certainly had no reason to imagine that, two years later, the bank had any greater interest in Japan. Even if there were such interest, there was nothing to suggest much of a role for retirees. And now yet another year had passed.

  So, calling Akahito under some banking pretext did not seem promising.

  But more than the implausibility of the business excuses for calling, Hollis simply didn’t like the idea of lying to Akahito Takada. That was not the right way to reestablish contact. He owed him the truth, or at least some culturally palatable version of the truth. Their kinship was based on common understanding. On temperament. On wisdom. Lies, even lies of convenience, were beneath them both.

  So, Hollis had simply picked up the telephone and placed the call. Nothing planned, nothing rehearsed. When Izume answered he did not waste his time reintroducing himself to her or refreshing her memory. He simply asked for Akahito.

  A couple of women entered the restaurant and stopped in front of the brown octagonal “Please wait to be seated” sign. They were both in their early to mid-forties, a little old for either of them to be Suki Takada. Besides, neither of them was Japanese. Their faces held looks of inquiry, of scrutiny, of intense searching which caused more uncertainty in Hollis about these women than would have otherwise been warranted. They were looking for someone. The hostess, Ramada Beverly, put an end to all further searching and uncertainty, seating the women in the middle of the restaurant between the lone-reader and the illicit whispering lovers.

  He considered them. They were lesbians, these women. Lunching lesbians. At least that was his best guess, judging from the hair and the clothes and the way they were just so … so out there for inspection.

  Not that he minded particularly. Homosexuality was not for Hollis what it was for so many of his socially conservative colleagues at OFSC; namely, a threat to the social order; a challenge to the hetero-hegemony that ensured everything from the sanctity of “Christian values” to the economic viability of an insurance-driven economy that was literally banking on the limitation of employment benefits to the other-sexed spouses.

  For Hollis, these arguments were all over-blown and, frankly, a little on the hysterical side. If there was anything about homosexuals that he resented, it was simply their strident accusations of injustice. Hollis was tired of being accused. Accused by the black and his other non-white brethren, and by the woman, and now by the homosexual, all now in a frothing, gadarene rush to affix blame for their unequal status, real or perceived. Hollis was as white and as male and as hetero-sexual as they came and that gave him three automatic strikes in the politics of progressivism. He – because in politics there is no distinction between he and his kind – was always the enemy.

  Of course, the way out was always there for him if he wished. He could always prove that he was not the enemy by taking up arms against the establishment; by joining his wife splashing around in the shallow end of the political pool making signs and writing papers and making a lot of noise about the poor disadvantaged homosexuals; by decrying the sins of his kind while standing shoulder to shoulder with the dykes and the queens and those of indeterminate gender; by renouncing his social-sexual brotherhood as expiation for the cultural dominance of his own biological urges. Marry or don’t marry. Hollis really didn’t care. Just don’t make him the whipping boy and don’t expect him to fight the good fight at his own expense.

  The women started laughing at something and one reached out to grab the other’s hand in excited agreement. Dessert, Hollis suspected, would be up in somebody’s room.

  What had happened to the proverbial closet, anyway? The closet door had long since been ripped off its hinges. Again, not that he minded. Particularly with the lesbians. And not even with gay men as long as they were polite about it. But the lesbians were somehow a little easier to take. Because, as a general rule, lesbians seemed to be …

  Two men entered the restaurant and, striding past the “Please wait to be seated” sign, joined the two women at the table. Kisses were exchanged and arms were draped over the backs of chairs and menus were shared.

  Oh.

  Hollis took another sip of his coffee and looked at his watch. Still no Suki. He would give her another ten minutes and then it was fair to assume they had missed each other. He wasn’t going to waste his whole day. Akahito Takada would understand.

  After all, it was Hollis who was doing Akahito a favor. Akahito had actually laughed with delight. An actual laugh, not one of those ambiguous expulsions of air through the nostrils that, particularly from the Japanese, can mean anything from How ironic, to I can’t believe you just said that. Akahito’s reaction was a genuine, albeit rare expression of jollity.

  In fact, when Akahito learned that it was Hollis Johns from Ohio calling, it was as though the call had been Akahi
to’s idea in the first place. There was no ice to break; no awkwardness; no need for reintroduction; no need to justify the call. It was natural and right. It was almost as though they were back out in the lotus garden beneath the lanterns drinking sake. Almost. Akahito had sounded a far more effusive and enthusiastic conversationalist than Hollis had remembered.

  The economy of expression and the quiet precision with which Akahito Takada had, three years earlier, plucked both thought and word from sweetly scented air was missing. He was a torrent of words this time, sometimes hard to understand. Twice Hollis had to ask Akahito to repeat himself.

  But beneath the torrent of words lay the same riverbed of wisdom; the same kinship with truth; the same unyielding allegiance with the self that the world acknowledged and accepted as Akahito Takada. It was something in the voice – the timbre or some ineffable resonance – that carried a pure and uncompromised sense of the man; a quality utterly uncorrupted by the needs of others. The demands of others. The expectations of others. Akahito Takada still spoke the sound of freedom.

  A tall, thin Oriental woman with silky, shoulder-length black hair entered the restaurant and, table by table, began taking stock of its patrons. She was expensively dressed in slacks, patent leather boots and a jacket of well-tailored suede. A nubby, chocolate-colored hand-bag kept slipping from her shoulder.

  Hollis half-stood and waved. The woman pointed to her own chest questioningly and, when Hollis nodded, made her way toward him in great, loping strides. Hollis could see at once that she had all of the confidence and self-possession of her father.

  “Hello, Suki,” Hollis said extending his hand. “I’d recognize you anywhere. You’re the spitting image of your father.”

  She shook his hand and smiled quizzically.

  “Thanks … I think. My name is Saundra, not Suki. Are you Michael?”

  “No. I’m … Hollis. You’re not Suki Takada?”

  “No. I’m Saundra Davis.”

  “Oh.” Hollis slid slowly back down into the booth. “I’m sorry. I’m mistook you for someone else. I’m sorry. And I called you all the way over here.”

  “If I look that much like Suki’s father, then my mom has got some real explaining to do.” She smiled again. Huge, white teeth. No laughing.

  “Again. I’m real sorry. I just thought . . .”

  “Hey,” said Saundra Davis, waving dismissively as she turned to leave, “don’t sweat it. You all look alike to us too.”

  Hollis watched the giant Asian woman stretch herself back across the restaurant to the sign. Ramada Ann intercepted her, pointing back over at Hollis. They both looked at him in his booth. He waived back at them meekly. Saundra Davis shook her head.

  A curly blonde stepped flexuously from nowhere, cutting off his view of the entrance. Upon refocusing his depth of field, Hollis recognized her at once as the lone reader. He glanced around her at the table she had quietly occupied since before he had arrived. Sure enough, it was empty. Book in hand, backpack over one shoulder, she stood and stared at him with cerulean eyes and fine pale skin and naked pink lips.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t help overhearing that you’re looking for Suki Takada?”

  “Yes,” said Hollis, still not comprehending.

  CHAPTER 9 – David

  I wait patiently for the game to end.

  One by one they pass the textbooks over their heads and under their chairs and through their armpits to the person behind them. There are sputters and giggles as each attempts to improve upon the method of delivery.

  This, they fear, is the last gasp of levity before I start saying things at them. Facts and dates. The agonizing tedium of history. The torture of listening and sitting still.

  So they milk these first free moments for all they are worth.

  I watch from behind my desk, a model of impassivity. They steal glances my direction, looking for boundaries, waiting to be told they have gone too far. The class is too full for effective teaching. Wilson High is as overcrowded as any high school in the district and has become the unwilling poster child for the annual hew and cry to redraw the boundaries. There is now twice the enrollment as when I was trudging these halls two decades ago.

  And yet, while my third period class is busting its brick and mortar seams, it is a particular absence that bothers me most.

  Brittany Kline is not present.

  Alicia Ramirez (last seat, second column) loses her grip. Her book slaps loudly against the floor. Bound to happen and everyone knows it. It is a unifying moment and my class laughs raucously together. Todd (last seat, left column) is instantly inspired, believing that he can harness this attention for himself. He pretends to fumble his book. It slips off the seatback of the desk next to him and slams into the radiator with a crash.

  Todd’s instincts serve him well. The clanging rattle of sheet meta is enough to evoke a sharp squeal of surprise from Melanie (back seat, middle column) and the classroom erupts in laughter and finger pointing. Todd is frozen in the precise contorted position at which the book left his hands, as though he is so shocked at the blunder he has been unable to move. Melanie – think young Martha Stewart dressed like a Brittany Spears understudy – is laughing and gasping as she clutches her nearly exposed heart, appearing as though she has barely escaped some gruesome death. Her laughter, we are to believe, is born of hysterical relief at being alive. Alive!

  The darkness in me wants to tell Melanie that her relief may be premature.

  But it is too early for that. Only third period. I am an optimistic person. Fresh, young minds. Little sponges. Little sponges.

  The hi-jinx threatens to take on fresh force and so I stand up.

  “Okay, okay. Let’s get started. Brand new books. Never been used. Except for Todd’s, which has already gotten into a fight with the radiator.”

  A good hearty laugh and we are now one.

  “Your textbook this semester is The New American History, by Alvin Werner, Marcus Ralston and the College of Educational Studies. It starts with Christopher Columbus and the New World and ends with the war in Iraq and the re-election of George W. Bush. Next semester, the title of your book will be The New World History, which will teach us, I hope, that there is more to the world than what we see here in the United States of America. Like, oh, I don’t know … Canada.”

  My improvident swipe at the quality of our textbooks goes unnoticed. Instead, there is a general fidgeting at the idea of yet another book in their future. Or perhaps it is the idea of having to consider the existence of other cultures that unnerves them. Either way, their failure to appreciate the comedic irony in the suggestion that Canada offers a radically different culture than our own is disappointing.

  “Yes. Sorry, but we will actually cover this entire book this semester and an entirely different book next semester.”

  The despair thickens with a chorus of heavy, hissing sighs that comes from everywhere and nowhere; as though their initial book-passing levity was a life raft that I have now cruelly knifed with the serrated promise of learning.

  “I know. I know. Poor you. It sucks to be you, doesn’t it? Pull it together. You’ll all live through it, I promise. Hey, has anyone seen Brittany Kline today? Ashley?”

  Ashley shrugs, making a point of examining a chip in her nail rather than looking me in the face. The snub is obvious; confirmation that Brittany’s misadventure last night at Billy Rocks has led to a principled boycott of my class.

  “Everything okay there, Ashley?” Even I find my voice annoyingly chipper. She gives me another shrug and pops her gum. Bright green today. I let it go.

  “Okay then, let’s get this show on the road. Let’s talk about history.”

  I begin the lesson where I had intended: an open, Socratic discussion about history. Not history as a museum tour or as the examination of a collection of irrefutable facts locked behind glass, but history as the dynamic interpretation of perception and opinion.

  What we believe about the past
depends on the lens through which we examine it. Human perception being what it is, there is no such thing as an objective lens.

  That kind of thing.

  My goal is less to clog their tender neural pathways with interlocking dates and names than to encourage them to develop an independent curiosity about the world and an urge to question everything. Just because someone writes something down, I say, does not make that something true.

  They all seem to get the concept easily enough. But then I ask for an example of something, anything, that history says happened that maybe did not happen. I am aiming for Christopher Columbus. I point.

  “Yes, Karen.”

  “Taren.”

  “Sorry. Taren. I’ll have it right by the end of the week, I promise.” “Like maybe Lincoln was murdered.”

  “Abraham Lincoln was murdered.”

  “He was?”

  “Yes.”

  Taren, with her sassily short hair and the face of a rouged squirrel looks disappointed at the news of Mr. Lincoln’s assassination, albeit for all the wrong reasons. “Well, maybe he wasn’t.”

  “No, seriously Karen …”

  “Taren.”

  “Taren. Sorry. Lincoln was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865 at Ford’s Theater in Washington.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Leaping onto the stage shouting ‘Sic semper tyrannis!’”

  Roughly half the class now looks slightly frightened. I have quoted Mr. Booth with a lunging thespian exuberance. It was not my intention to shout at them in Latin on their second day of school. Some look at me in worried confusion, like I suffer from an especially refined variety of Tourettes. Taren, brave little squirrel, is one of these.

  “Sic semper tyrannis. That’s a Latin phrase meaning ‘Thus always to tyrants.’ But, okay. Let me ask you this. What if there are no eye-witnesses to a historical event? Does that mean the event never happened? No history? If no one saw Mr. Lincoln get shot, does that mean he wasn’t shot? Rebecca.”