Memorial

by Bryan Washington

We haven’t been good at apologizing lately. Now would be a nice time.

I still hadn’t learned that there is a finite number of people who will ever be interested in you.

Everybody’s somebody’s villain.

I was less worried, at the time, about what Mike would do than how I’d handle it: If I opened the door, even just a crack, would I still have a reason to step back inside?

Nobody has to do anything, says Ahmad. Not even you.

The screen’s like fentanyl, he says. Shuts them right off.

It’s hard to head home without succumbing to nostalgia, standing where so many versions of yourself once stood,

Lydia figures our household’s lack of intimacy is why I have trouble connecting.

You know what, says my father, I never cared who you fucked. I know you think I do, he says. But I don’t. Your mother cares, says my father. A lot. But not as much as you think.

Mike’s never promised me anything. Only delivered or didn’t. He always said that promises were only words, and words only meant what you made them.

That’s the thing, said Mike. Most ideas are good at the time. We don’t find out that they’ve gone wrong until they actually do,

Ma could stay stone-faced through anything. Which was a sign, I think. Even then.

You’ve already made it, she said. But you’re still lost, she said.

You don’t get to parachute over here and do this, he said. Not now. Not in this life. You don’t get to do that.

Here was a new situation. A new body in my bed. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I wanted him to pack his shit and leave. I wanted him to dissolve. I didn’t want him anywhere near me.

That loving a person means letting them change when they need to. And letting them go when they need to. And that doesn’t make them any less of a home. Just maybe not one for you. Or only for a season or two. But that doesn’t diminish the love. It just changes forms.

Whatever happened, happened. That was the same attitude Eiju had carried around. It’s what he’d told my mother, so I knew exactly what it got you.

And then there was something I noticed about Ben, a small thing, a nothing thing: he never acknowledged our neighbors.

For the longest time, our family could barely afford two meals a day. And a little while later, eventually, we could. But only if my mother purchased it, which meant that all of a sudden Eiju wasn’t so hungry anymore. It was rare for him to eat something he hadn’t made himself.

Things I’ve cooked for my father, who insists on never eating out anywhere besides his own bar: okonomiyaki, yakisoba, oyakodon, katsudon, mabo don, mori soba, kake soba, kitsune udon, nabeyaki udon, bulgogi, soondubu jjigae, doenjang jjigae, ika-age, takoyaki, lamb curry, chicken curry, creamed salt cod, a Dungeness crab soufflé, poached flounder in tomato sauce, steamed black cabbage, Romano beans sautéed in oregano, salmon, salmon carpaccio, shrimp bisque, garlic-baked squid, grilled tuna in a red onion salad, tempura, grilled asparagus braised in garlic butter, carrot and red pepper soup, soy-braised pork, fried rice, huevos rancheros, huevos divorciados, carne asada, migas, simmered radishes, tatsuta-age, spicy tuna on toasted bread, okayu, fried rice, steamed rice.

Is he like you, said Eiju, and I turned to look him in the face. Japanese, he added. He’s Black, I said. Oof, said my father.

It wasn’t like I didn’t know what was happening, or that I wanted us to be over, but it just felt like gravity—like I was slowly sinking into something that would eventually happen anyway and I didn’t know how to stop it or turn it around or what.

I left. Figured he’d be there when I got back.

The only thing surprising about the end was how quickly it had arrived.

There’s this phenomenon that you’ll get sometimes—but not too often, if you’re lucky—where someone you think you know says something about your gayness that you weren’t expecting at all. Ben called it a tiny earthquake. I don’t think he was wrong. You’re

destabilized, is the point. How much just depends on where the quake originates, the fault lines.

Eventually I said, How do you know where everything is? All Japanese stock their kitchens the same way, said Kunihiko. I didn’t know that.

One day, Eiju asked me to walk him to the Shinto shrine a few blocks from the apartment. Not to be a dick, I said, but it’s a little late for religion. Shinto is for everyone, said Eiju. You dick.

we take our memories wherever we go, and what’s left are the ones that stick around, and that’s how we make a life.

Everything changes, she says. Change isn’t good or bad. It’s just change.

Everyone’s doing the best they can, says my mother. It’s what we have to tell ourselves.

I watched him sweep in silence, with the moon against his back, and I knew, right then, I think, clear as day, that eventually our moment would end. I also realized I didn’t want it to. And it was okay for me not to want it to. And maybe okay for it not to end right now. But it had to.

I’m saying that if you leave Michael to his own devices, he’ll come around eventually. He will. But that might be too late for you. My son likes you. I love him, too. Exactly, says Mitsuko. So tell him that. Those exact words.

Isn’t that what they say? You lose them the way you get them?