I work with another guy, named Barry, who’s big and white and scruffy. And then there’s Ximena, who is none of those things. We’re something like a team. Our boss comes by in the evenings, but she mostly just handles the money and our schedules, and unless she’s handing us checks, she’s generally MIA.
When I stumble through the doors, Ximena waves. She’s watching Ethan and Xu on the swings. As Ahmad runs from the sandbox, pointing at nothing behind him, I pick him up by the elbows. He laughs. It’s our Thing.
I tell Ximena about Mike.
You’re joking, she says.
Nah.
Well, says Ximena, have you talked to the mother yet?
She’s talked at me, I say.
At, says Ximena.
Around.
And?
I don’t know, I say.
She’s Mike’s mom, I say.
No, says Ximena. There’s mothers, and then there’s moms. Then you’ve got mamas.
Ximena lives with her mother, and they’re co-parenting her kid. That’s what she likes to say: that she’s raising a six-year-old with her mother. She used to go to med school, but then she stopped doing that, and whenever the aftercare dads come around, they linger with her by the counter.
A while back, I asked Ximena why she entertained them at all. She asked if I’d ever seen a cadaver.
Doesn’t matter if it’s fifty years older or twenty, she said, a body’s a body’s a body.
* * *
But Ximena’s getting married, again, in a few weeks. To some whiteboy who cleans teeth for a living. I’ve met him exactly once.
Before I take my lunch, Ximena touches my elbow.
At least there’s a bright side, she says. It could’ve been Mike’s father.
Mike could’ve left you with some man, she says.
* * *
• • •
On the seventh or eighth or ninth date, I asked Mike about his parents. I’d started spending some nights at his place. We ordered single-topping pizzas and drank gas station wine.
He looked at me a long time before he finally answered.
Ma grew up in Tokyo, said Mike. Got knocked up in the city. Had me there, moved here, and eventually she went back home.
To Japan?
Sure.
But you didn’t want to go back with her, I said, and Mike made this face.
No, he said. This is where I live.
But Ma’s adaptable, said Mike. That’s where I get it from.
And your father, I said.
What about him, said Mike.
You didn’t mention him.
I didn’t mention him, said Mike.
* * *
• • •
One night, Mike told me that his father hit Mitsuko. We were at the Warehouse, watching his friends strum guitars in some band. They slumped onstage, a little fucked up, tinkering at amps already way too drenched in reverb. Some kid in a mariachi suit blew into a trumpet. A sleepy crowd nodded behind us, bouncing around on the 1 and the 3.
I didn’t know whether I liked this scene. Mike had told me his ex was playing. I’d tried picturing what the guy might look like, wondered which one he was up onstage, but eventually Mike yawned and asked if I was ready to leave.
Already? I said.
He saw us, said Mike. Or I think he did. He had opportunities.
So we were vaping outside by the entrance when he told me about his father. This couple walked their pit bull to the intersection behind us. When it growled at the two of us, Mike bared his teeth, and the dog shut up and looked at his owners, who looked at Mike, who looked at me.
Ma hit him back with this pan, said Mike. We were in the States by then.
Shit, I said.
Knocked him over and everything, said Mike. I thought she’d killed him. Then she shouted at me for not helping her. But she was yelling too fast, in Japanese, and I couldn’t understand.
It was like something out of a movie, said Mike, vaping. I still don’t think she forgives me.
When the streetlight turned, the couple kept walking. The pit bull nipped at a biker, who almost busted his ass.
Movies are based on life, I said.
Not always, said Mike.
* * *
• • •
Mitsuko’s flipping through a magazine when I make it back from work. She stares at my shoes when I step inside, so I turn around and slip them off at the door.
I figure I have to try.
So, I say, how was your day?
How was my day, says Mitsuko.
My son leaves the country the morning after I arrive, she says.
He leaves me with I don’t know who for I don’t know how long, she says.
I haven’t seen him in years, she says, and he’s off looking for my ex-husband, who is rotting from cancer as we speak.
My day was fucking phenomenal, says Mitsuko.
* * *
I shake a little and smile. Tell her I’m only stepping into the bedroom for a minute. But then I lay down, and I fall under a blanket, and I don’t get up again for hours.
* * *
Around midnight, I’m awake. The lights are out in the living room.
I start to text Mike.
I type, We’re done.
I type, Fuck you.
I type, It’s over dickhead.
I type, How r u, and that’s what I send.
• • •
My mother told me about her new husband first. She trusted me, or at least that’s what she said. So I didn’t tell Lydia. Didn’t tell my father. I watched him walk in and out of his house, occasionally with a woman he was seeing and occasionally not.
Her name was Carlotta. Sometimes she’d stay over. When that happened, she’d crack eggs and slice queso fresco the next morning. She was from San Antonio, living with her brothers by the high school, always saying she wished I was straight because I’d be perfect for her daughter.
She only goes for bad boys, said Carlotta.
I’m no good either, I said.
And Carlotta considered me for a second, before she went back to chopping cilantro.
It’s different, she said, grinning.