Starling Days

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  Oscar’s flight back to England was on a flexible ticket. They hadn’t been certain what exactly Eileen Johnson needed or how long it would take. He could move the flight back. Could Ami really want to see him? Oscar’s father’s wife had always been polite. At his wedding, she’d kissed him on both cheeks. She’d signed his birthday cards. But she couldn’t like being reminded of her husband’s bastard son.

  “I should probably get back to Mina,” he said. “She’s already started stripping the wallpaper.”

  “She can manage without you for a few days.” His father frowned.

  Oscar had a sense that just as you might use up your sick days, he was using up his son-days.

  When he’d hated his father, it had been less complicated. By Oscar’s fourteenth birthday, he was away at school. His father had arranged to pick him up and take him into the village for a meal. Oscar had already seen his mum for the exeat and she’d given him an envelope with twenty pounds inside because he was “too old for toys.” He couldn’t remember what he’d spent it on. But holding the envelope, he’d been struck by how light adulthood felt.

  As Oscar had waited for his father, he’d played Snake on his Nokia. The pixelated serpent had grown so long it almost filled the screen. Baush, from the year below, stuck his head in the door and said, “Your dad’s with the housemaster.” Oscar looked up and lost the game. Not a good start.

  The country fathers drove down in Range Rovers. The city fathers had their sons come to stay in London, and the sons bought uppers from their friends in day school and came back with tales of neon nights. Oscar’s father was neither of these. His father stood under the halogen lighting looking foreign. He stared like a tourist, his skull rolling around on a skinny neck.

  In the taxi, his father asked about his classes. They were fine. Oscar mentioned he’d made the D team for football. And his father, a man Oscar was sure didn’t know the difference between a penalty and a goal-mouth scramble, frowned.

  “The D team?” he asked. “As in A, B, C, D?”

  Oscar nodded.

  “Okay, then,” said his father. “The D team.”

  Oscar didn’t bother explaining that many boys didn’t make any team. The D team had matches at other schools. Afterwards they sheltered from the rain eating the Mars Bar minis that the games teacher gave out only on match days.

  The lunch had been booked at the place that the school recommended parents take their sons. The menu written in chalk on the wall suggested chicken and potatoes or roast beef and potatoes or pork chops and potatoes, all with the obligatory carrots and peas. It must have been Sunday. Some details of the day had got lost. Probably there were some other boys there—no one Oscar cared about. Then Theo’s family clattered in, mother, father, Theo and the redheaded sister, gnome-like with goggling eyes too large for her face. Theo shouted, “Shepard!” and Theo’s mother came over. Oscar’s father had stuck out his hand, awkward and too formal. Oscar could still remember the sweat of wrongness that came over him as their hands touched. Theo started on how he’d been away for the weekend and he’d left his notes for Geography at home and could he copy Oscar’s? They were doing something about river-systems and oxbow lakes, or perhaps that was the year after. Oscar’s father asked about Gloucester. But he kept saying it weird. Even when Theo’s dad said it right, Oscar’s father continued with his “Glow-sester.”

  Theo’s family went for their own meal. Although Oscar had his back to their table, every ten minutes he heard Theo’s father snort into laughter. Oscar’s father did not eat the potatoes and that struck Oscar as effeminate. He ate all of his own in thick sweeps of gravy, even though his stomach hurt. Very quickly they ran out of things to say to each other. In the cab on the way back Oscar had asked, “Why do you bother coming?”

  “It’s your birthday.”

  “Well, don’t bother,” Oscar said.

  And the next year his father hadn’t shown up. Or the one after that. It was the end of birthdays. Though the cards still came, signed Dad & Ami.

  Oscar thought of his tasks. He visualized a crane carefully placing the long iron joists of a skyscraper in position.

  I. Make this sale. His father had a cellar: in peace and quiet he could work quickly.

  II. Sell the flats. He could handle some of that long distance surely.

  III. Get Mina sorted. Would Mina be okay? By herself? She’d been fine while he was at his mother’s. She herself had said it was impossible for him to watch her forever.

  Triage. He had to triage. The term, borrowed from French military hospitals, had always appealed to him. Let the healthy soldiers take care of themselves. The flats would be fine. Abandon the soldiers too wounded to save: Mina. And tend to those you can: this job. Of course he wouldn’t abandon Mina. He’d be home soon. By then he’d have figured out what to say about the baby issue.

  His father sighed. “Look, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to get into it here.” His father looked around at the teenagers slurping taro smoothies. Oscar was so tired of deciphering the crinkled foreheads of everyone around him. What message was he supposed to read in these scrawls?

  “Let me check with Mina,” he said.

  “Great. I’ll tell Ami you’re coming.”

  *

  Mina had somehow forgotten the apartment’s disarray, until they walked through the door. Wallpaper hung like an open wound. Everything smelled of fabric softener.

  “Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess. We’ve been redecorating.”

  Phoebe walked up to the gap Mina had torn in the wallpaper. Her hand followed the rip until she was crouching on the floor. Leaves of paper curled, abandoned, by the gash. Mina rushed to collect them. They’d dried out in the hours she’d been away. Phoebe caught one as it escaped Mina’s grip.

  “Relax. You’re a guest,” Mina said.

  “I want to.”

  “You don’t have to. I didn’t invite you over to clean up. Please. I’ll vacuum tomorrow. It’ll be easier.”

  The dog charged into this standoff. He rolled over. His tail knocked more paper into the air.

  Phoebe rubbed an indulgent hand on his belly. “Who’s a useless boy? You are, yes, you are.”

  They ordered Chinese, which came in steam-clouded plastic. She ate Buddha’s Delight. The deep-fried tofu was greasy. But the oil was delicious and the tofu seared gold. She wondered what Grandma would’ve made of the English girl sitting beside her, noodle dangling over her lip onto pointed chin. She probably would’ve shrugged and rolled her eyes as she did at cell phones, video games, the president, and everything else the last decades had spat up.

  As they ate, they watched an animated kids’ movie full of adult jokes. Mina had missed it in cinemas. The idea of seats roiling with toddlers had felt like too much. It was probably for the best that she was officially not good mother material. The light from the screen made Phoebe look ghostly. The edge of her hair flickered, like a burning thing. As they sat knee-to-knee on the couch, Mina realized that it was far too small for Phoebe to sleep on. It was more a loveseat than a proper couch. Phoebe would have to take the bed. Mina would sleep better in this small space than she could alone on a big mattress thinking of Phoebe crammed on these stiff cushions. As the drama of the movie wound tighter, Phoebe leaned forwards as if trying to dive into the laptop. It worked out okay, as Mina knew it would.

  “No, you can’t do that,” Phoebe said, when Mina offered the bed.

  “I can’t?”

  “I’m not kicking you out of your own bed.”

  It became obvious that they’d share the bed. This was the sensible solution.

  Mina said, “I’ll brush my teeth while you change.”

  The electric toothbrush pulsed against her molars. Mina rolled it over her tongue. She made a second circuit of her teeth. Her face felt greasy. She scrubbed the cleanser across her cheeks and chin. Her mouth, too, was hot. Women shared b
eds all the time. It wasn’t scandalous. It was the stuff of commercials and chick flicks. Women became sisters after only a few good jokes. This was nothing.

  Her phone buzzed—Oscar. She looked at his name for a second before picking it up.

  “Why didn’t you text me when you landed?” she asked, keeping her voice low. There was no need for Phoebe to hear this.

  “I was working, Mina. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t message you sooner.”

  “You’re upset. You’re using my name.”

  “It’s your name,” Oscar said. “Look, this is stupid. I’m just calling to ask if you’ll be okay if I go to Dad’s for a few days to work on the pitch for Eileen Johnson and the stuff for next year.”

  “How long is a few days?”

  “I don’t know. Just a few days.”

  Part of her wanted to scream. He wasn’t supposed to just leave. London was supposed to be a trip they took together. “But I thought we were going to paint the apartment together?”

  “I’ll be back in a few days to help you finish it. I just need to concentrate on work for a little bit. I just need a little space. This contract is really important.”

  How could she scream with Phoebe right outside? Anyway, Dr. Helene said it was important not to create a crisis just because you felt like you were already in one.

  “Okay,” Mina said. “Go.” Her face in the mirror was pale, the eyelashes stubby. She looked too boring to be crazy.

  “And you’ll be okay?”

  “Mmm,” Mina said.

  “I might not call as much because I’ll be trying to focus. Will you be okay?”

  “It’s fine,” Mina said. It wasn’t. But there didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Beyond the bathroom wall Phoebe was waiting.

  “Mina, I just want you to be happy. Try to be happy for me?”

  “Okay.” Wasn’t that what she was already doing?

  He hung up and Mina rinsed her toothbrush. Happy. She smiled at the Mina in the mirror. It didn’t look convincing.

  Phoebe would be wondering where she was.

  Mina called, “Are you decent?”

  Phoebe was wearing blue pajamas with white trim and pearlescent buttons. Across the pocket, white thread wrote the initials PW. Her feet poked out from satiny folds. The feet were covered in freckles, as if she had been dancing in copper sands. This white-faced girl had perfect freckled feet. Mina felt like she’d seen a secret. She must’ve been staring because Phoebe laughed and said, “Oh, these. I know the PJs are a bit much. I got sent them as promotional material by a company that wanted me to feature them on the blog. They’re silly, but feel. They’re silk.” She held out a sleeve to Mina, who grasped it between thumb and forefinger. The fabric felt almost indecently smooth. The back of her hand skimmed Phoebe’s knuckles.

  Phoebe got into bed on Oscar’s side. There was no print of his body except in Mina’s memory. She hit the light.

  In the dark, Mina tweaked her pillow and flopped onto her back. In the side of her vision, she could see the contours of Phoebe. Be happy, Oscar kept saying. And Mina let herself dwell on what might make her happy. Rolling Phoebe over and pressing herself against the other woman. Tasting the goodness of her, sucking the freckled toes. A devouring hunger rolled in her belly. Stupid, Mina thought. She would never kiss Phoebe. Such a thing was impossible. Mina could imagine configurations of hands, mouths, breasts, buttocks. But she couldn’t think how to bridge the small gap of space between two faces. Mina had never initiated. It was Oscar who had put his mouth over hers as they’d sat on the school steps, watching groups of drunk kids flap past. Before that, other boys had put their mouths on hers. Some approached with puckers and some swooped forward open-mouthed, like whales trawling the ocean. For all the girls she’d watched over the years, she had never been able to take the simple step of leaning forwards.

  Then all at once, lying next to this beautiful woman, Mina missed her husband. She missed him in her ribcage. She checked her phone again and there was nothing. Nothing at all. Not a Goodnight, I love you or I miss you. Mina had fallen in love with Oscar because he made grocery lists. In college, no one she knew made grocery lists. They ate cheap pizza or wandered the aisles of the store, leaving with grapes, Brie and baguette, aiming at sophistication and ending up with stomachaches. His handwriting had been so neat and even, listing exactly what he wanted. And then he’d collect exactly what they needed. But she supposed he didn’t need her anymore.

  Phoebe squirmed in her sleep and the wiggle took the bedding. A breeze gnawed the left side of Mina’s body from her neck to her calf. She rolled closer to the heat. Phoebe’s back was to her. In the shadowed room, Phoebe’s hair was not red. It was only undulation. Very slowly, Mina moved towards Phoebe, until her face met a curl of hair. Silently, Mina tensed her lips and pressed them against the strand, feeling the lovely dead cells against her mouth.

  Oscar strapped into the plane seat. It was the middle one because the ticket had been booked last minute. They hadn’t been able to get seats together so his father was a few rows ahead. What did his father want to talk to him about? Were they selling the flats to expand the business? Perhaps they could hire Oscar a translator so that he could handle more of the Japanese work. Or maybe his father would finally listen to his suggestion and set up a sales team to do online orders. Mina could recover at her own rate without worrying about the academic job market.

  “PLEASE PLACE YOUR MOBILE DEVICES IN AIRPLANE MODE. PLEASE STORE LARGER ELECTRICALS IN THE SEAT IN FRONT OF YOU AS WE PREPARE FOR TAKEOFF.”

  Once larger electricals were permitted again, he opened his laptop and wrote:

  Possibilities

  SWEET POTATO BREW

  Pros

  Seems to be playing well in bars

  Not challenging

  Halo effect from perceived health benefits of sweet potatoes?

  Cons

  Too similar to already stocked product?

  Autumnal associations

  Appeal to female shoppers uncertain

  Conclusion

  Maybe

  Oscar had majored in Econ. He’d learnt statistical modeling and utility curves. Neither was particularly useful for his father’s business. He’d known nothing about the alcoholic beverage industry or Japan. In college there were kids who joined the Asian frat or the Japan club. They had karaoke nights and watched anime. They wrote essays about feeling not quite at home in Asia or America. Useless. He’d grown up on green beans, not green tea, and he was fine with that. Only after his father hired him did he hit the books.

  There were lessons to be learned from history. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the type of sake you drank indicated your social class. What you drank declared who you were. Oscar was pretty sure Americans weren’t so different. Americans who drank sake thought they were sophisticated. In the nineteenth century, sake culture encountered beer. Beer became the way to say you were modern and Western. A Tokyo housewife recorded with great pride in her diary that she’d served München beer and bananas at her dinner party. In other words, you don’t have to give people an authentic experience. They just have to feel like they’re getting it. He had to make people feel special.

  “Excuse me, could I get through?” The window seat’s occupant had returned from the toilet. Oscar folded away his notebook and stood. “Sorry, sorry,” the man said. Oscar allowed him to squeeze back into his window seat.

  “It’s fine.”

  The man viewed this nicety as a segue into telling Oscar that he was going to visit his son, who was creative. The other son was a doctor. Did Oscar know that the man had married his wife after two months? They’d been together forty years. They’d come to America from Athens. Had Oscar been to Athens? No? It was very crowded. On and on.

  Oscar and his father drove from the airport onto a ferry, off the ferry, and down curving wooded roads to a clapboard building. Timber boards stacked up, like the white spaces on lined paper. Oscar pulled both their cases from the
car. If a neighbor peeked out of their window, they would have seen a dutiful son entering his father’s house. Oscar wished he could watch his own life from the window of another’s house. It would look so orderly.

  Ami padded into the front hall to meet them. Every time he saw her, she was wearing a pastel cardigan. This one had seashells embroidered in peach thread. Added to this were pink suede slippers with a roll of sheepskin emerging from the ankles.

  “Sorry for arriving at such short notice,” he said.

  “We’re delighted to have you,” Ami said. Ami’s California drawl matched her husband’s. She pronounced Ami like Amy. She, like his father, was nisei, second generation, a child of immigrants. Technically Oscar was sansei, the third generation to live outside Japan. But the word felt inapplicable. The language didn’t belong to him. He was learning it from cartoon rabbits.

  She suggested that she show him his bedroom, beckoning the way. As Oscar walked past the open door to the kitchen, he saw a large rice cooker presiding over the countertop. His father must keep the other for travel. Ami turned, as if hearing the pause in his steps.

  “I was admiring your rice cooker.”

  “We got it cheap. Your dad knows a guy who orders them wholesale. It makes cakes too. Do you like sponge?” she asked. “I should totally do you the sponge. It’s so fluffy.” Ami was pretty. She was certainly prettier than his mother. Ami was pretty the way a vase or a flower is pretty. Her face looked as if it had been designed with appeal in mind. When she was younger, she must have been cute. He shook away the thought. This was a weird thing to observe about your not-quite-stepmother. There was no word for the woman whose husband your mother had borrowed.

  The guest room had windows on three walls. Through two he could see the green embrace of pine trees. Their shadows rippled across the floor. The third looked over a garden into a field. Beyond that was a strip of silver water, and beyond that, mountains. It struck him then that this airy house and his mother’s cottage had strangely similar views, as if his parents were following the same dance steps at great distance.