In Plain View. Julie Shigekuni
secret pleasures, and she tried to visualize his experience. Something new was happening. Watching the structure of his face shift beneath the creases of his cheekbones and the crinkles of his tightly shut lids, Daidai felt his movements slow. He seemed to be straining to feel inside her, or just to feel, drifting away and then needing to locate her as he shifted his position like an explorer lost somewhere inside her body.
The new students had been introduced, including one in particular who seemed intent on pleasing him. She felt him trying something out, which she rather resented, though she wondered if she judged him too harshly. What if she was the person of interest? What if it had been her all along? Lying beneath Hiroshi, whose body she knew so well, she shut her eyes and tried to relax, to feel the pleasure of his guttural bellows and the quickened pace of his breathing.
Connecting instead with the place inside herself that had lain for so long vacant, she wondered if it would ever be filled. Wasn’t sex, after all, about the creation of a life?
When Daidai awoke the next morning she found Hiroshi next to her, his hand draped across her back while he scanned the newspaper. He was glad to feel her stirring, which meant he could start reading to her about the events that had amused him while she slept. Reaching over her when she failed to adequately respond, he handed her a coffee mug, which she set back on the nightstand, finding its contents distastefully cold.
She was only vaguely aware of when he’d traded the newspaper for student work, and the next thing she knew he was urging her up. Bounding from the bed and returning with a fresh cup of coffee, he clapped his hands with excitement. This was the Hiroshi she loved, ready and waiting for whatever came next, wanting to know whether she’d prefer a walk along the shore or a stroll through the Santa Monica promenade. They could sit outside at their favorite café or catch a matinee. Her brain hadn’t yet begun to function, but his seemed not to have lost its high from the night before, and she doubted he’d accept her being too tired as an excuse.
“How about we drive out to Gardena for dinner?” he said, having apparently noted her failure to move in response to his suggestions. “We’ll pick your mother up and have an early dinner.”
Daidai smiled, holding her arms up and pulling him off his feet when he leaned over her, planting kisses along his hairline and on both his cheeks. Despite her qualms with him, he could be incredibly sweet. It had been her habit since her father’s death the year before to visit her mother on Sundays. Hiroshi went along when he wasn’t too busy prepping for the upcoming week, but he hadn’t gone in months, and Daidai knew how happy it would make Mako to see him. While Mako loved her daughter, Daidai suspected she preferred spending time with her son-in-law, who fit so naturally with her idea of a good man. It was one of the things that had drawn Daidai to him.
Hiroshi went out of his way to indulge Mako, stopping at Marukai without being asked, then pushing the cart down the congested aisles with the old woman hanging on his arm, smiling at her idle chatter over the high price of Japanese imports that could be gotten only at this Marukai, not the other one downtown, which reminded him of meals his mother had made him before she passed. Daidai didn’t believe in fate, but she remembered the evening she’d driven with Hiroshi to meet her parents, how afterward it had seemed her destiny that he should be part of her family. Seeing Mako’s face light up now, she wondered why he’d stayed away so long.
Mako ordered tempura udon, her favorite, and insisted that Hiroshi take the shrimp off the top. To Daidai she gave a Japanese sweet potato, saying how good satsumaimo was for the immune system as well as digestion, and maybe fertility, too.
She praised Hiroshi lavishly for his promotion, referencing her late husband with a sigh, how pleased he would have been to see Hiroshi rising up through the ranks of academia, dispelling any vestige of doubt that Daidai might not be doing the right thing in giving up her career to plan a family, because without family there was no future, and without a future what did they have to look forward to?
It was late in the evening when they dropped Mako off. Daidai watched from the backseat as Hiroshi rushed around from the driver’s side to open the passenger door, holding his elbow out to escort Mako up the driveway to the front door, and inserted her house key into the lock, knowing Mako had trouble with her eyesight at night. Seeing the interior light flash on as she reseated herself in her mother’s place, Daidai nodded in approval at her husband’s flawless performance.
“Do you know how much I appreciate you?” she said as he belted himself in for the drive home.
“I appreciate you, too,” he said, reaching across the gearshift to kiss her.
The drive back to the Valley took twice as long as it normally did, with everyone returning home from their weekend pleasures. Worried about the toll all the activity might take on her husband, Daidai was surprised on Monday morning when Hiroshi hopped out of bed and left the apartment singing. He returned at the end of the day with flowers in hand: three burnt-orange gerberas collected in a Ball jar, tied with a purple bow, attached to which was a thankyou, addressed to her, that read, I thought these would look good with your name.
Clever Satsuki—though she didn’t know Daidai had chosen her name randomly at the age of three. Carolyn Ann had been her given name. Her mother had decided on that one, which she’d later been told she’d rejected in full and even abbreviated versions. She would not respond to Carolyn, or to Carrie or Ann, or to Lynn or Annie. For no apparent reason, she’d answer only to Daidai. It wasn’t until much later that she learned that the name she’d chosen for herself translated in Japanese to mean “bitter orange.” But perhaps she’d been predisposed to liking the nickname Daidai because orange turned out to be her favorite color. And then along came vibrant Satsuki and her gift of the flowers.
“I guess she wants to be friends with you,” Hiroshi teased.
“She wants to use me to get closer to you,” Daidai teased back.
“Can’t you just accept the gesture without prejudice, as an offer of friendship? Besides, aren’t gerberas your favorite?”
Hiroshi was right about her fondness for gerberas, but these looked like the antennae of some gigantic species of insect, reaching into the air for purchase, as if they’d come looking for something, or signifying something. Daidai felt certain of that and was perturbed by Hiroshi’s insistence that they and their bearer be viewed as innocent. “If Satsuki wanted to be my friend, she could have delivered the flowers to me herself. She knew where to find me.”
Hiroshi shrugged, a sign Daidai construed as his tacit acceptance of what she’d said—that, of course, she’d been right. Satsuki hadn’t brought the flowers to her, she’d brought them to him. Imagining the scenario one step further, Daidai saw the grad student showing up at her husband’s office, half hidden behind the doorframe, flattering him with her stated desire not to interrupt, even though she’d shown up precisely to do just that.
As if to confirm that she’d imagined correctly, Hiroshi sat across the kitchen dog-faced, suggesting that of the three he might be the only innocent one: Hiroshi, steadfast and trustworthy in his affections, his brand of linearity a big part of why she’d married him. But after five years of marriage, he was no longer the person he’d been. Her groin still ached from his roughness with her two nights earlier, and the ache should have informed her new understanding of him.
But instead of feeling that she’d been wronged, she felt remorse. Her husband’s passing interest in one of his students didn’t justify her scrutiny, and she well realized that the problem could be hers alone. Without her own work to occupy her thoughts, she’d grown anxious. She needed to relax. Turning her attention back to the flowers, she admired them anew, each stem arching upward to show off its own personality.
For nearly a week, the burnt-orange gerberas added a splash of color to the windowsill. Daidai changed their water daily until the morning she woke to find the last blossom overturned. That same day, in the produce section of Whole Foods, while she bagged Persian cucumbers for a recipe Hiroshi wanted to try, a hand with slender fingers