Starling Days

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  “Mina,” he said, “sorry. It’s just . . .” He didn’t want to shout at her, he didn’t, but volume would feel good right now. “You could’ve come home. We could’ve talked.” Oscar eyed the taxi driver. It was hard to see his face, though Oscar glimpsed a beard. It was impossible to tell if the man was listening. Surely he’d heard worse. This was New York, after all.

  “You were working.” She closed her eyes, as if she knew how ridiculous the excuse was.

  “How am I supposed to work when at any moment you could decide . . .” The things his wife might decide to do clamored, too many to choose from. “I love you, you can talk to me.”

  She didn’t reply and slumped further, rolling her shoulders. The rain ran ribbons of shadow on her face, and her eyes had a haze that implied she might be staring out of the window, or at the glass, or at a moving picture inside her head. He was reminded then that his wife was beautiful. Wild animals were beautiful in the same way. A sparrow or a fox carried an untranslatable energy in its eyes. She might’ve cracked that face against the Hudson River.

  “Mina, look at me,” he said. Oscar moved his hand gradually, careful not to startle her. He clasped her chin. Gently, he swiveled her face towards him. He felt the hard bone of her jaw through her skin. “Please, Mina, look at me.”

  She frowned. Her eyes scrunched shut. The tank top had shifted, revealing the lace-lichen of her bra. Above that was a handbreadth of her smooth skin. It revealed nothing of her inner workings. Her eyes stayed closed against him. His phone buzzed but he ignored it. In the street a dog began to bark, and her eyes opened. It was impossible to see the pupils in the low light. His hand rested under her chin.

  “Is this something to do with us?” he asked.

  “Us?”

  “Us, as in you and me, us.”

  “Us,” she said slowly, like she was teaching herself English. “No, not us. Nothing to do with you.” She gripped the hand that held her chin, forcing it away.

  The cab stopped in traffic. Behind his wife’s head, Oscar saw two pedestrians. They were kissing, their whole bodies pressing into each other. Both were so thin and shaggy-haired that their ages and gender were obscured. But the kiss was obvious. Oscar ran a thumb over the back of his wife’s hand. “Why, then?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t not know.”

  “I was reading about that actor who jumped off and I just wanted to see it. The bridge, I mean.”

  “You couldn’t have used Google Earth?”

  Mina shrugged. He let go of her hand.

  Rain spat at the window. At some point, she began to drum out a beat, smacking the flip-flop against her lap.

  Finally, she began to talk. She turned to the window and passing shadows stroked her flushed cheeks. “I was at Alfie’s this afternoon.”

  “Which one is he again?” Oscar could never keep straight the kids Mina tutored to supplement the measly salary the university paid her as an adjunct lecturer.

  “Sixteen, lives on the Upper West Side. Learning Latin because his mom thinks it’ll help him stand out at college-essay time. He’s good at it too. Most of the kids don’t want to be there. But Alfie just needs you to tell him he’s doing it right. Chews his pencils until the wood shows through. Likes Roman history—loves all that pontificating about tactics, even though he’s so skinny he’d probably fall over if you tossed a baseball at him.”

  “Okay, I think I remember.”

  “Well, anyway, Alfie, he’s no trouble. And I’d given him this passage to translate. It’s about geese. Basically, the story goes that the Romans are under attack by the Gauls. After several defeats they’re trapped on the Capitoline Hill. They plan to wait the siege out. The walls are steep and they feel safe. There are kids in the Capitoline, women and slaves. This isn’t a battleground, it’s home.” Mina made a circle with her hands in the shape of a protective wall.

  “Okay,” Oscar said. He stroked his wife’s palm. Whenever she spoke about those long-dead Romans, it was as if she were telling a family story. She’d pause at the good bits, savoring them. But the Romans and the Gauls would not pull his wife out of the river. They would not have to identify her body.

  “One of the Gauls finds a way to scale the walls. And by moonlight they climb. The Romans are asleep, lying on their hard pillows. Some are probably snoring and some are probably drinking, and others slipping out of lovers’ beds. None of them are expecting the Gauls. But the Gauls are climbing.” Mina’s voice was going faster now, having found a rhythm. “The Gauls have daggers and hunger and rage. They want gold and wine. They move quietly and quickly up the walls. But a goose hears the strangers. It shrieks, and soon all the geese of the Capitoline are shrieking and beating their wings. The Romans gather their swords and save the Capitoline. This is why geese are sacred. They saved the city.”

  Mina paused, staring into the window as if trying to read something written on the glass.

  “That’s nice,” Oscar said.

  “It happened thousands of years ago,” Mina said.

  “I know.”

  “And they all died anyway. The Romans and the Gauls and the geese.”

  Oscar pulled her against him, feeling the weight of her familiar body. The heat of her skin pressed against his shoulder. He pushed back an image of his wife cold in the river and said, “Okay, so you got Alfie to translate this story.”

  “Yeah, he did a pretty good job. And I think he liked it.”

  “But?”

  “But I just started crying. I don’t know why. I kept thinking about how straw in the mud then probably didn’t look that different from straw in the mud now. And about how geese have these hard pointed tongues, and about how it feels to scream. And also about how tired I was. Suddenly I was just tired right down to the knuckles in my toes. And the room was so hot, too hot. And I was thinking about the subway home and all the tired bodies. And I just started crying. I couldn’t stop. I told Alfie it was allergies, but I don’t think he believed me. And he’s just a kid and his nibbled pencil was just lying on the desk. He’s just a kid and he’s already so worried.” Mina pressed the heels of her hands into her face.

  Oscar touched her neck softly, stroking it up and down, up and down.

  “What am I supposed to do? I can’t be this person. I can’t keep crying. What will I do when the new semester starts?”

  “Keep crying?” he asked. “You said you were doing okay.”

  She shrugged and looked out of the window.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “We’ll get the right dosage.”

  “We’re just going to keep upping and upping and upping the number of fucking pills?” She pressed the hands harder into her face, so hard it seemed like she was trying to push her eyeballs back into her head.

  “Maybe you should take some time off teaching,” Oscar said. He kept his voice steady. They’d figure out the finances. He’d do the sums when they got home.

  “I can’t do that,” she said.

  “You can.”

  “What would I even do? Lie in the apartment and feel sorry for myself? I’d just get underfoot.”

  “Figure out that monograph proposal. Apply to conferences.”

  “I can’t go to a conference. Oscar, I burst into these stupid tears explaining to a kid that strepitus can mean confused noise, crash, clatter or din. There’s no single correct answer. He had to choose.” Mina began to pinch the skin on her arm, until he stopped her by lifting that hand and taking it in his own. “And I can’t just quit. It’s so fucking hard to get these stupid little adjunct jobs, while you hope that something more permanent will show up. You pray for the magic words—tenure track. I can’t piss the university admin off.”

  “Didn’t you say Crista took six months’ leave to have a baby? And she’s fine.”

  “She had a baby to show for it at the end.”

  “Just say you have some health issues.” Oscar kept his voice calm. Mentally, he scanned thei
r accounts. If Mina took time off, they should be fine. It would eat into their savings. But, he supposed, you saved for rainy days.

  “I guess I was also thinking about all the nights before the battle. The people had to sleep knowing that the Gauls were outside. All that waiting for the situation to improve.”

  The cab stopped. Oscar pressed a limp twenty and a crisper ten into the driver’s hand. “Keep the change.” Anyone who’d listened to this miserable conversation deserved a tip.

  Mina stared at the door and he reached over her to snap it open. She got out, moving stiffly. She tilted her head up at their building as if this was the first time she’d seen it. “I can’t do this.” She made a gesture with her hands to indicate a this that encompassed their building, the street, the whole city. “I just can’t keep doing this.”

  The flip-flop dangled from her hand. He snatched it. The foam sole was soft under his fingers, like flesh. The trash can was a few meters away and he overarmed it. The sandal landed neatly.

  “We’ll take a break. We’ll get you out of the city. Just try to relax. Can you do that for me? Try to be happy?”

  Oscar stood in front of his underwear drawer, realizing there were no boxers. Socks, yes. Underwear, no. He pushed aside sock-balls. Nothing. Laundry was Mina’s job. Cooking was his. Mina lay in bed, the sheets pulled up over her face.

  “Are there any clean . . .” he began to ask, but stopped. Mina’s hand dangled down the side of the bed, loose as a corpse’s. He pulled on yesterday’s underwear inside out. He’d drag the dirty clothes down to the laundry in the basement later. He walked over to Mina. Her hair had fallen over her eyes. “Do you want some tea?” he asked, crouching to her level.

  She mumbled and turned her face to the pillow.

  They’d moved into the studio apartment when they were young and new to the city. Their two desks stood side by side against the window. On hers, a cactus grew in a cracked mug. The air-conditioner ruffled her papers. On his was his laptop, and last night’s coffee. He wiggled the mouse and the unfinished July sales report appeared. Oscar worked for his father’s import business—Umeda Trading. The two-man operation sold sake and Japanese beer to bars and restaurants in the States. Oscar managed the East Coast sales. The report was almost done. He’d planned to finish it last night. But then Mina . . . He started a new document.

  How to Get Mina Out of New York

  Vacation. (Short. Expensive.)

  Stay with friends/family. (Awkward to impose. No privacy.)

  Work trip. (Possible.)

  Work trip. A work trip would be the thing. It was time he got to know their suppliers. In the past, his father had always said Oscar’s Japanese wasn’t up to scratch. But Oscar knew many more words now.

  He finished off the sales report, the numbers slightly lower than he’d anticipated. Not far off. It was the same fractional difference that existed between his friends’ Tinder profiles and their actual faces. Thank God he’d never had to do Tinder.

  The clock at the corner of his computer ticked to noon. So, nine Pacific Standard Time. He called his father. They ran through the sales report. Summers were tricky. Sometimes slow and sometimes not. It would have been nice to be in a stronger position to make his request.

  “Dad, I need to leave New York for a few weeks. I have some meetings set up in the next week. But after that I don’t think the clients will notice if I go remote.” He kept his voice low, not wanting to disturb Mina. Although at midday, could it be so bad if she woke up?

  “And where is it you’ll be?” His father’s voice was cautious, neutral.

  “I could go out to Japan, maybe Ibaraki, and get to know the supplier side of the business better.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Your Japanese is a bit . . . You have to understand these relationships are delicate. If you’re not fluent . . .”

  “I’ve been practicing my intonations.” The lilts of Japanese did not give meaning, as they did in Chinese. But mistakes conveyed inept foreignness.

  “It’s not the right time.” His father sounded irritated.

  Why not? Oscar wanted to ask. The old suspicion flared. His father didn’t want his contacts seeing Oscar’s bastard face, the evidence of the affair drawn in the wavy hair and beaky nose.

  “And what do you mean you need to get out of New York?”

  If he had grown up with his father, it would have been possible to run to him like a child with a cut knee and cry, “Daddy!” But, even after all these years working for Kenichi Umeda, the man was more like a boss than a dad.

  Oscar paused. He had to ask the sort of favor you couldn’t ask a boss. He should have rehearsed what to say, but his mind had felt disordered all morning, as if a burglar had come in the night and emptied all the drawers.

  “The heat in the city is making Mina ill,” he said. He looked over to his wife’s unmoving body. He would have expected her to at least look up at the sound of her name. Could she be sleeping that deeply?

  “Then Tokyo wouldn’t do you much good.” His father’s dead-pan California drawl was incredulous.

  “I thought a change of air might help.” It was illogical, but better than saying, My wife has gone mad. “Japan would be useful,” Oscar added. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked his father. Oscar worked from New York and his father from LA. The man might never have noticed he was missing. Maybe he should have just sublet their apartment and booked tickets to Hokkaido. Up in the mountains, he would have time to smooth out his syllables and Mina could relax.

  His father sighed. “So it’s anywhere but New York?”

  Oscar did a shoulder roll, concentrating on each shift of muscle. It would do his back no good to tense up.

  “If you really need to leave New York, there’s something in London you could help me with.”

  “England?” Oscar had lived in London until he was sent with tuck-box and rugby boots to boarding school. The city came to him in flashes—baked potato and beans, the tiger in the zoo that wouldn’t stop pacing, the sharp angles of a 50p coin in your pocket, Bacardi Breezers drunk on park benches, the rum and fruit syrup coating the back of his teeth.

  Oscar’s father had flown over from LA for Oscar’s birthdays. There was always a neatly wrapped gift and a card signed by his father and Ami, his father’s wife. Oscar, his mother and his father shared a cake in a restaurant. The waitresses sang “Happy Birthday” and strangers smiled at them as if they were a real family, not a one-night stand and its result.

  The man was nothing like the sturdy-bodied football-watching fathers of Oscar’s friends. When Oscar tried to describe his father, he’d settle on details that never quite became a picture. The watch with a little calendar spinning out the day. Or the phone with the keyboard, on which he let Oscar play a game where you shot six-pixel airplanes out of the sky. The way he’d often begin his sentences, “Well, in the States . . .” He’d ask about Oscar’s grades, and reply, “Well done, kid.” He only looked happy talking about the business. In those early years, it always seemed to be growing. Import, export, transport—Oscar had the sense of objects flying overhead, as his father gesticulated with fork and knife. It seemed as mysterious as selling moon rocks to Martians.

  Back then, Oscar had thought some day he’d be a businessman. He’d thought this before he knew what business was. He liked the way men in suits walked as if they knew where they were going. It seemed like they were all wearing the uniform of the same team.

  At the leafy campus in Rhode Island, Oscar enrolled in Economics. But in his final year the economy tanked and nobody wanted to take on an apprentice businessman. His father had sponsored his stay at the glorious institution so he was luckier than most. He had no debt. But all the newspapers were saying that a college diploma didn’t mean anything anymore. Along the halls, stories were muttered of graduates turned down from barista-ing, pool attending, dishwashing.

  Oscar wrote CV after CV, changing the fonts from serif to sans and back again. He applied for i
nternships, positions as the assistant’s assistant, shelf-stacking.

  Finally, his father suggested that Oscar work for him until the world found its footing. Oscar was surprised. Although his father always paid the bills, he’d never exactly been there. Oscar didn’t know if he could be all buddy-buddy with a man he barely knew. But there had been no other options.

  Oscar became the East Coast sales director of the two-man operation. He followed Mina, that sliver of a girl he’d met senior year, to New York. Columbia University had offered her a funded doctoral fellowship.

  He never became buddy-buddy with his father. When talking to his friends he described the man as Ken, or Kenichi. It seemed easier. The word Dad implied fishing trips, first-condom handing over, and being hoisted upon shoulders. Ken was simpler.

  “You’re thinking of expanding to the UK?”

  “Not quite,” his father said. “I have some apartments.”

  Oscar had never heard of any flats.

  “Bought them in the eighties. Dirt cheap. Ex-council. But a great location. Figured it would pay off. I think the market over there is peaking. They need sprucing up. You could go over there, handle that. The agencies that deal with this stuff always add on extra charges.”

  Had his father really not thought to mention that he owned property in the country of Oscar’s childhood? Another son might’ve raged that, even after all these years, his father had only just thought to mention it. Another son might’ve hung up with a prod of the touchscreen.

  “I’ll do my best,” Oscar said. Mina needed a break. And this would get her out of New York.

  SEPTEMBER

  London. Oscar tracked the cab’s progress on his phone. Neighborhoods he remembered as grubby had acquired a spit-shine gleam. Mina napped against his shoulder. Her hair was sleep-mussed. The oversized hoodie gave her the messy, optimistic look of a child on a camping trip.

  He squeezed her arm. “Wake up. We’re here.”

  She yawned and smiled up at him.

  The building’s entrance was on a side street. As he got out of the cab, Oscar stepped over a Heineken’s carcass, the bottle’s mouth shattered. “Watch out,” he told his wife.