Summer 1985
MIN PUNCHES THE TAPE OFF. “Thank God,” I say, trying to make it sound like a joke. I’m sick of David Bowie.
On every side of us, Utah’s flat terrain stretches out, dry and reddish brown. The road is laid down in the middle of it like a dark, shimmering ribbon. In the far distance, spots of green tease us. They’re the first hint of vegetation we’ve seen since leaving California, not counting the scrawny trees in the national park we spent last night in. I can feel the dust in my throat. I move my hand away from Min’s leg. I shift my feet, pushing candy wrappers, books, and a pair of sandals to the side, and find the water bottle. The hot air blows around us, making loose papers and open food bags flutter noisily. After a long swallow, I pass the water to Min. She smiles at me and reaches across for the bottle. I love her smile. I love everything about her.
“I’ll feed it to you,” I offer, moving the bottle to her lips.
Min shakes her head, and the plastic rim scrapes lightly against her cheek. “Just give it to me,” she says, frowning, grabbing the bottle away from me. What did I do? She swallows in large gulps, tipping the bottle back each time. I reach out to wipe a trickle of sweat from the back of her neck, then rub the same place, where I know she gets stiff from driving. Now that we’re finally lovers, I don’t want to stop touching her.
She returns the bottle. “Just hand it to me when I’m driving,” she says. I screw the cap back on. I was only trying to help. It wouldn’t kill her to appreciate me a little. I toss the bottle on top of the bag of gorp by my feet. I look out the window, but the landscape hasn’t changed. I’m still thirsty.
So far, we’ve avoided the cities, stopping in towns that are just one street and at truck stops. Min likes the sense of being alone in this empty countryside. She says that with no people around she can see that the deserts are full of life. She likes coming over a small hill and discovering new stretches of sagebrush or an occasional rock formation. She says even the cracks running through the parched earth are gorgeous. I think the land is flat and endless and dull. It doesn’t give anything back. I’m restless to see architecture. At night, the lights of a city reassure me far more than the thousand bright stars in the sky. But I’ve been happy to stay clear of the bigger towns because I want to have her all to myself.
Last night, using our single flashlight, we figured out how to spread our sleeping bags flat, one on top of the other, and zip them together. We got in and stayed on our separate sides. Inside the tent was completely dark. With Min only inches away, I was wide awake. Zipping together the sleeping bags had been her idea. Lying near her, I was afraid that something might happen, and I was terrified that it wouldn’t. All summer she had been ignoring my hints, but I thought there was an energy between us. I wasn’t sure. I’d been burned too often with guys, when it turned out that our mutual attraction was all in my head. With Min I was even more unsure. The boundaries of her relationships confused me. There seemed to be some kind of sexual attraction with everybody she knew.
Eventually I got up the nerve to reach out and touch her face. My hand fumbled a little before finding her cheek because I couldn’t see. “Are you asleep?” I asked.
“No,” she answered. “Are you?”
I smiled. “I can’t,” I said. I took my hand away. I could hear her body sliding around on the sleeping bag’s nylon shell as she tried to find a com fortable position. I couldn’t tell if she was restless and wide awake for the same reason I was. I thought, Why won’t she make the first move? She’s the lesbian.
Somewhere outside the tent, a bird called out. The hard ground beneath me dug into my side. As far as I knew, Min and I were in the only part of eastern Nevada that had lakes, full-grown trees, and birds. We were miles away from any other people. This thought both frightened me and gave me courage.
“I want to kiss you,” I whispered into the dark.
At first Min didn’t say anything, and I thought she might have fallen asleep after all. Then “Okay” came drifting back from the darkness on her side of the sleeping bag, sounding just as scared as I was.
“Well, where are you?” I asked, reaching out a tentative hand and making contact with her shoulder.
She caught my hand in hers and pulled me closer. We put our arms around each other. Because I couldn’t see her anyway, I closed my eyes. We brushed our faces together. I kissed her cheek. Then I kissed the corner of her mouth. The darkness made everything easier. She pressed her mouth against mine, hard, so that I could feel the bone of her jaw behind the flesh, and then she eased back. I felt her tongue against my lips, opening them. I remembered we had done this once before, in seventh grade. But that had been when we were boy-crazy and didn’t count. As we kissed last night, I felt I was in freefall, like I had walked off a cliff. I thought, amazed, How did this happen?
I was a little afraid of lying on top of her. I was used to men, who were bigger than me, and heftier, harder to reach around and hold with both my arms. On the hard ground, with only the tent floor and one of the sleeping bags to cushion us, we touched each other carefully. Now and then we asked permission. It only occurred to me after it was over and we were lying quietly together that this is what lovers do when they care about each other. The enjoyment is in pursuing the other’s pleasure, not only your own. The men I had been with had been oblivious, but I’d always assumed there was something wrong with me for wanting more.
Eventually, Min unzipped and pushed away the top sleeping bag, then lay on her stomach, her head between my legs. At first I felt self-conscious and wanted to pull her back up. I was surprised when I came. It made me feel even more exposed. I reached down for her and she held me, covering me. Her face was wet. I shuddered, clinging to her.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?” Min asked.
“What you just did. Nobody ever did that before.”
She lifted her head from my shoulder. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” I said, relieved that she couldn’t see my face. “Actually, you’re the first person I ever had an orgasm with.” I was ashamed to admit that, but I wanted her to know how much it mattered to me. Before Min, I had had sex with exactly three men. One of those relationships had lasted almost a year, but as much as I had loved him, it had never quite felt like making love. Not one of them had done what Min had just done for me. My first lover said he didn’t like the smell, and I never asked again. Min seemed to enjoy it. Maybe, some day in the far future, I would learn to receive that gift from her without such awed gratitude, like it was something everyday—even expected. I was in love with Min, I realized, holding her tight against me. I had always wondered why our friendship felt more like a long-term love affair to me than any relationship I had with a man. But I never could have put it into words. I understood too why Min had never fallen in love with even one of all the women she’s been with. In a way, we had been together all along. I didn’t want to ever let her go. I gripped her tighter, wanting to cry. Maybe after about ten years of being lovers I would start to take her for granted. But I doubted it.
As we approach it, Salt Lake City looks like any other American city. We drive past farms, a few factories. The land starts to get crowded with houses. Even the city is absolutely flat, like the rest of the state. There’s no obvious downtown, no hub of skyscrapers. There are no clear landmarks of any kind, no easy ways to get our bearings. Except for the lake. The sun looms over the horizon to our left, a big orange disk spreading rose and lilac across the sky. The lake mirrors the colors exactly.
For almost three days, driving through Nevada and Utah, we haven’t passed one lake or river. Earlier today we saw, way off in the distance, a long stretch of land that glittered a dull white. At first we guessed it was something left over from a nuclear testing site. I checked the map and read “Sevier Lake (Dry).” Until then, we hadn’t thought about the salt lakes at all. We tried to imagine the kind of desert heat and centuries of time it would have taken to evaporate that huge a body of water, leaving only the salt behind, like ashes after a fire. Now that we’re here in the city, Min wants to go down to the shore of the Great Salt Lake and watch the sun set over the water. I would love to see the sunset with Min. I would stand with my arms around her and watch her face change in as many ways as the sky. But I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s past six already, and Neil, my father’s friend, is expecting us to arrive at his house for dinner.
We get lost only once, turning right instead of left, but we figure it out after a few blocks. We pass a mall, restaurants, what we assume are office buildings. It’s Friday, and people are still leaving work. Otherwise, the streets are mostly empty. A few large families with young kids wander toward the mall, and a group of teenagers is hanging out together. The traffic is light too. We’re the only car I can see with the windows rolled down.
“It’s really deserted,” I say.
“It’s really white,” Min says.
She drives slowly, squinting at the street signs. At first I think she means the buildings, which are all gray and white and beige. Then I realize she means the people, and I almost say, surprised, “What did you expect?” but I don’t. Until she mentioned it, I hadn’t noticed. What I’m struck by is how Middle America everybody looks, how bland. I see only one boy wearing a baseball cap, and it’s not bright purple with yellow zigzags, the fabric hand-woven in Guatemala, like Min’s. The women all have long, styled hair. They wear dresses or pleated pants, even in the heat. Nobody is wearing Birkenstocks or baggy men’s boxers or labrys earrings like Min’s, much less four in one ear plus an earcuff. Even I, in khaki shorts and sneakers, look more like the teenaged boys than the women. We drive through, not saying a word.
As we head into the suburbs on the other side of town, Min sees a Dairy Queen and gets so excited that I can’t turn her down this time. I check my watch. We’ll only take fifteen minutes. Inside, a crew of children is having a birthday party at the front tables, blowing their noise-makers in each other’s faces and pulling down the streamers. I smile at them, remembering picnics and bowling parties back in Middlebury when I was little. A few of them crane their necks as we walk past, peering at us. One of them points. I tell myself he probably wants Min’s colorful baseball cap. We order and walk with our ice cream to a booth in the back. But it’s hard to ignore the father and son duo. The son, who is maybe eight or nine, is dressed in jeans, boots, a plaid shirt, and a Stetson, exactly like his father. I would be amused, or amazed, and gawk right back at them, but the hardness in their eyes as they check out Min, who is leading the way to our booth, scares me. They hate her without even knowing her. Even the little boy. I feel a shiver at the back of my neck.
When we sit down, Min is smirking. “What a trip. Like father, like son, huh?” She pulls off her purple cap. Her spiky hair is damp with sweat and a few clumps lie plastered to her skin. She rubs her temples, pushing the hair off her forehead, then starts in on her hot fudge sundae.
I push my dish of raspberry frozen yogurt away. “Didn’t you see how they were looking at you? How can you ignore that?”
Min sucks in her lower lip and slowly edges her spoon through her dessert. Then she holds the plastic spoon out to me. On it is the maraschino cherry, peeking out from a blanket of fudge sauce. I love maraschino cherries. I put my mouth over it and pull slowly away, savoring the mix of impossibly sweet flavors on my tongue. I don’t even realize I’ve closed my eyes until I open them and see Min’s face. The lust in her eyes is just as startling as the cowboy and his son’s bare loathing. I have never been sure of anybody’s attraction to me. I’ve never known for certain that I am desirable just from a look. I need to be told, or shown. But what I see when Min gazes at me over her white plastic spoon is unmistakable. I feel the muscles between my legs tighten. Behind me, I know they are still staring. I look down at the table.
After we’ve eaten for a while in silence, I say, “You didn’t answer me.”
“Shit.” Min jams her spoon into the mound of ice cream she is eating from and leaves it there. I can’t tell if she’s angry at me or something else. She leans back, stretching, her hands clasped above her head. Her t-shirt reads, “Love is Just a Four-Letter Word.” An ex-lover gave it to her. She has cut out the neck and the sleeves. She brings her arms down again. “What do you want me to do, Laura? What do you fucking expect me to do?” Her voice is louder than I’d like.
“Well,” I begin, knowing I am about to make her angrier, but feeling I have to say it. “Maybe you could wear regular earrings, and just one in each ear. Maybe you could dress a little differently.”
“You think that will change something?”
“I don’t know. It might. At least you wouldn’t be advertising yourself.”
“As what?”
“You know, as a lesbian.”
A muscle in her jaw twitches. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and lets it out. She opens her eyes. She says, “Look at me, Laura. Dress me in anything you want. What do you see?”
I look at her boy’s hair, at the salamander tattooed on her wrist. She’s got her arms stretched out along the top of the blue plastic seat like she owns it and she’s ready to fight anybody who says she doesn’t. She hasn’t done one thing to make herself look pretty. It’s like I’m seeing her for the first time. I love her more than anything. It shouldn’t matter what other people think.
When I don’t answer, she says, “What you see is a dyke. An Asian dyke.” I think she wants to hurt me with the blunt ugliness of the word.
My frozen yogurt is a raspberry puddle half filling the cup. I stir it around while I try to let what she has said sink in. My heart is beating hard. I know that what is happening right now is important. I can’t mess it up.
I take her hand and hold it resting on the table. I know everybody in the place must be watching. “You’re right. I know you’re right.” I look only at her, but it’s an effort not to glance around. “I’m sorry I asked you to hide who you are. You don’t want to. I understand that.”
“I can’t hide who I am,” she says, very quietly and very carefully.
I feel her start to pull her hand away. I grip it tighter. “You can’t hide that you’re Asian,” I offer. Personally, I doubt her race has anything to do with the hatred I saw coming from the father-son pair three booths behind me. They’ve probably never even seen any Asians before.
“I can’t hide that I’m a lesbian either,” Min says.
I think she can. Not that she necessarily should, but I think it is possible. She takes her hand from mine. I look into her deep, black eyes, and I don’t recognize her in them. I feel afraid.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get out of here.”
The sun has dipped below the houses across the street, throwing long shadows across the lawn, when Min and I pull into the semicircular driveway in front of Neil’s house. Two sprinklers whisper on the grass. I wish I could lie below their spray, the weight of the earth at my back.
We’re almost an hour later than I told Neil we’d be. Maybe we should have called. He’s probably pissed at us for keeping them waiting. I cut the engine, and we sit inside the car, staring up at the white stone house. The pink sky is reflected in the rows of black-shuttered windows. There are dormer windows on the third floor, and a porch around the side. Flower beds border the house. The front door looks like oak, with stained-glass panels flanking it. I remember my father saying that Neil and Olivia had their house built. It dwarfs the other ranch houses on the street, making them look shabby.
Despite our stop at the Dairy Queen, I can’t break the rhythm of the drive. We could still be on our two-lane highway, mile after mile of parched, empty land rushing by. I feel the road rolling away beneath the car’s tires.
“It’s so white,” I say, meaning the house, and I look over, expecting Min to smile. The car’s engine whirrs inside me, a low hum, a vibration.
“It’s so big,” she says, staring.
I reach out and take her hand. I know she’d rather stay in an anonymous motel or in our tent in the desert than spend an evening with unknown friends of my father. The promise of a real bed doesn’t lure her the way it does me. I grin at her. Looking at Min today, I feel like a totally new person. We’re meant to be together. How come we never figured that out before now?
She leans over to kiss me. I pretend I don’t know what she’s doing. I lean away, pulling my hand from hers, and start to open my door. I’m afraid we’ll be seen from one of the rose-tinted windows. We’re a couple now, but I don’t want Neil and his wife to know that.
“We should tell them we’re here,” I say. Then I realize Min doesn’t care if they find out about our relationship. She doesn’t know them and will probably never see them again. She has no reason to act like we’re still just friends. But after our scene at the Dairy Queen, I don’t dare ask anything else of her.
“Do we have to go up and knock?” Min asks. I don’t think she’s teasing me. She really doesn’t know.
“Let’s find out,” I answer. I push my car door all the way open and stand up, dizzy.
A man in shorts and an alligator shirt comes around the side of the house, striding barefoot over the lawn. He’s carrying a pair of steel brush cutters that dangle open, carelessly, in his left hand.
I hear Min say under her breath, “The upper classes play at being useful.” Frowning, I glance back at her over the car roof. Neil is our host. He’s my father’s friend. She should be grateful that he’s offered his home to us.
“Hello, hello!” he calls out. He has round wire-rimmed glasses and stormy-blue eyes. His wavy hair is reddish-brown and beginning to gray around the temples. He’s handsome, in a boyish way. I like him immediately.
He stops in front of me, smiling widely, and shakes my hand. He’s tall, over six feet, and both his height and the firm grip of his hand around mine steady me, bringing me off the road to solid ground. I grin back. He covers my hand with both of his, welcoming me to Salt Lake City. “Did you get lost downtown?” he asks, his eyes amused, already forgiving me for being late. His eyelashes are reddish too, almost gold.
“We took a few wrong turns,” I say. I can’t stop grinning at him. When he lets go of my hand I feel cast off. Behind me the passenger door slams. I turn toward Min and introduce them. They say hello in a muted way. I’m kind of glad he isn’t instantly into her. She doesn’t seem curious about him at all.
I’ve never met Neil before. But I feel I know him because of the stories my father used to tell about their college days. They would get into long debates at dinner in the cafeteria, arguing philosophy and political science long after their classmates had gone off to the libraries to study. They would go to dances at the women’s colleges and make a play for the same girls. All this seemed boring when my father told it, and I would wonder if all guys were that competitive. But as Neil asks Min what he can carry in for us, I can see how that rivalry would seem exciting to my father, seducing him.
Of all his stories, the one I remember best he told only once, after we moved to Mill Valley. Neil and my father were taking the final exam for a class on the British Romantic poets, a class my father was struggling in. As the time wound down, my father realized this would be the first exam he would fail. He saw that Neil was hunched over, working steadily away. When the two hours were up and the proctor started collecting blue books, Neil reached over and took my father’s exam, leaving his own on my father’s desk. My father watched Neil erase and write something in on the cover. He looked down at Neil’s blue book and saw his own name. He got an A on the exam, raising his average to a B. My father had never forgotten that. I was amazed nobody had seen, or if they had, that they hadn’t turned Neil in.
Min and I haul our knapsacks out of the car and follow Neil into his house. Dropping the brush cutters on the front hall carpet, he closes the heavy front door behind us. Min stares up at the chandelier, looking around her like she’s entered a cathedral. Putting a hand on each of our shoulders, Neil steers us past the polished mahogany staircase back through the dining room to the kitchen. I like the relaxed contact of his hand and my feeling that all the decisions will be taken care of by somebody else for a while. In the kitchen, everything is in its place or put away, the surfaces all wiped clean. In the center, a large butcher block table takes up half the room. A woman stands on the other side, cutting up tomatoes and yellow peppers. I can’t tell if she’s his wife or the cook.
“Our wayward travelers have arrived,” Neil announces as we come into the room. He strides over to the table and pops a tomato wedge into his mouth.
The woman’s bobbed hair is almost totally gray, and her face looks pinched, like she is constantly turning over something worrisome in her mind. She wipes her hands on her apron, comes around the table, and shakes our hands, first mine, then Min’s. I realize this is Olivia, Neil’s wife. She smiles like it doesn’t come easily to her. I feel sorry for Neil.
“We thought you’d ended up in the wrong state,” she says, looking over the top of her glasses at us.
“It just took us longer than we expected,” I reply.
“Did you have a good drive?”
I remember David Bowie’s weird wailing songs and the road that never seemed to get anywhere and Min’s moodiness. But I tell them about the evaporated lake we glimpsed earlier this morning. I look at Neil and describe the huge purple desert plains dotted with low clumps of brush that stretched across Nevada, broken only by occasional small mountain ranges. I make it all sound beautiful. When I finally run out of steam, Olivia asks if we came across from California on Route 50, and did we see Temple Square on our way through the city. I look around at Min. She’s standing behind me slightly. Why is she being so quiet?
Olivia moves closer to her husband and tucks her hands around his arm. “We were going to start dinner without you, so this is perfect timing, isn’t it, Neil?”
He’s smiling, like he’s proud of having produced us out of thin air. “I guess I should get the steaks on the grill,” he says, moving away from Olivia without looking at her. “It’s the cook’s night off.” He slips behind me, resting his hand on my back as he moves toward the door. I can’t help that I feel special, singled out.
After Neil leaves the room, the three of us are at a loss for words. It’s like the electricity’s been cut and all the lights and appliances have shut off. “Well,” Olivia says after an awkward silence, her face pinching in again, “I’m sure you two girls would like to put down those packs and freshen up a little. I’ll show you where you’ll be staying. It used to be my daughter Katie’s room. I mostly use it as a sewing room now.” She seems to be annoyed with us. I’m beginning to get the sense she’s that way all the time.
Olivia leads us up the carpeted stairs and to the back of the house. The room has two twin beds with matching white bedspreads. Arranged on top of the bookcase and the bureau is her daughter’s childhood collection of dolls. Beneath one window on a table, the sewing machine sits among swatches of fabric and spools of thread.
Min pulls her knapsack from her shoulder, dumps it on the nearest bed, and wanders over to the other window to look out. She has shown no sign of interest in either Neil or Olivia. I’m embarrassed that she isn’t even attempting to be polite, appreciative. “Thank you,” I say to Olivia, hoping to make up for Min’s obvious lack of manners. “It’s really nice of you to let us stay here tonight.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. Neil and your father go back a long way. Of course you’re welcome to stay with us any time.”
“Thank you,” I say again. I’m at the end of my own repertoire of social skills.
“Well, come down when you’re ready,” Olivia says, turning. She closes the door softly behind her.
Once I’m sure she’s gone back downstairs, I go to the window and put my arms around Min from behind, pressing my body against the back of hers. I rest my lips against the nape of her neck. She brings her arms up and closes her hands over mine. I feel the car’s idling whirr inside me finally slow and stop. When I’m with Min, I don’t have to look around for landmarks to know where I am.
I stretch forward and kiss her warm cheek. I say, “I love holding you. I want to hold you forever.” She doesn’t say anything. She hasn’t said much since we left the Dairy Queen. “Are you still mad at me?” I ask.
She smiles and squeezes my hands, then lets go and pulls me around to stand beside her at the window. “Look,” she says, pointing. The yard behind the house is immense, bordered by more beautifully laid-out flowerbeds. In the gray light of dusk, I can still see the vibrant pinks and reds and yellows. A swing set and a shed are half-hidden in a grove of trees. Below us, on the lawn, Neil is standing over the smoking grill, poking at a slab of steak with a long barbeque fork. Tongues of flame rise around it. I watch Neil, feeling a small, secret thrill because he doesn’t know I’m up here watching him. He’s put on loafers, and he’s humming to himself.
After a while I say, “The flowers are wonderful. Which one of them do you think is the gardener? I vote for Olivia.”
Min turns to me. “Come on, Laura. She doesn’t do the real work. They hire someone.”
“How do you know?”
“You think Olivia gets her fingernails dirty? She just snips them and arranges them in a vase. Anyway, it’s too professional-looking. Look at how the hedges are trimmed.”
For the first time since I’ve known her, I feel like Min thinks I’m stupid. I wonder why she became my lover in the first place if she thinks so little of me. I almost ask her, but I’m not feeling confident about what she might say.
“Anyway, I like them, don’t you?” I ask. “At least him. She’s pretty much a cold fish.”
“She’s lonely.”
I stare at Min. Where did she get that idea?
“Let’s take a shower,” I say. I’ve got to get out of my dusty clothes.
“Why don’t the two of you stay an extra day?” Neil asks at the dining room table. There is candlelight and engraved silverware, and after three days of fast food, the steak tastes so good I could cry. We’ve been talking about the founding of Salt Lake City. Mostly Neil has been talking. I’ve been watching his face in the glow of the candles, and for a split second I wonder how it would feel if he kissed me. “Tomorrow we could show you the sights,” he continues, “the Beehive House, the Mormon Temple, anything else you’re interested in. You can stay here tomorrow night and get an early start the next day.”
“I’d love to,” I say without thinking, and then I remember that it’s not my decision alone. I look over at Min. She’s busy eating her salad.
Olivia puts a hand on Neil’s where it lies on the table. “We have golf with Ted and Thelma tomorrow, remember?” Her voice has that hard, warning edge in it, just like my mother’s. I don’t like her.
Neil moves his hand, almost flicking hers off, and reaches for his glass of wine. “We can do that any time.”
I look at Min again, wishing she would look up, join the conversation, help me. The thing is, I’m interested in seeing the city. In the car, I’ve been reading about Brigham Young and the Mormons. The AAA guidebook says Utah didn’t become a state until 1896, less than a hundred years ago, when the Church of the Latter Day Saints abolished polygamy. I remember the dried-out lake we saw and realize how short a time a century really is. The division into states, even the presence of people, doesn’t affect the land itself. That’s why I think it’s boring. You can travel an entire day and be in a different state by nightfall, but the geography is still the same. Min is entranced by the vast landscapes that stay unchanged for centuries. The mountains and deserts are too big to go away. But it’s the people I want to hear about, how they managed to survive the harshness of the land and the weather.
“We’ll have to think about it,” I tell Neil. “Thank you.”
“I’m a very good tour guide,” he says, smiling at me. “You would enjoy it.”
“I’m sure I would,” I answer, smiling back. I really want to hang out for a day, take it easy. “I like historical stuff. Maybe I get it from my father.”
Olivia offers me more salad, saying there’s more of everything if we’re still hungry. I scoop a second helping of steak and pan-roasted potatoes onto my plate and then pass the serving dish to Min. When our eyes meet, I try to communicate my need for her help, but I don’t know if she gets it.
Neil leans forward and pours more wine into my half-full glass, then refills his own. “Did your father ever tell you about his visit to us in Japan?” he asks me, pushing his chair away from the table and hooking an arm around a chair post.
“No,” I say. The only thing I know about Neil from after college is that he went to law school and married Olivia. My father was an army officer in Japan in the early ’50s, before he went back to school and became a history professor, but he’s never mentioned that he saw Neil there.
“We saw him in ’51 or ’52, during the Korean War. ’52, wasn’t it, Olivia?” She nods, but he’s not paying attention to her. His eyes are squinting into the past. He’s like my father, feeling his way back there, searching for the memories that will trigger his story.
“It was after the peace treaty was signed, at the tail end of the Occupation,” Neil continues. “As I remember it, your father was stationed in Japan a year before I was, to replace somebody on his MG team.”
“Yeah, he was an education officer,” I say, remembering my father’s stories of visiting rural schools, where he set up their classes and made sure the children were fed. He would visit houses where the women washed the men’s clothes in separate washtubs from their own and dried them on separate bamboo poles. In the countryside where he was, the Japanese children were always clustering around the American soldiers begging for food and attention. And the adults stayed out of sight because they still were terrified of the enemy. I used to imagine those children racing up to my father’s Jeep while their parents hid inside their houses. I wondered what the parents and the children thought of each other. Of all the stories about his past my father used to tell, to me those were the saddest.
“What does MG stand for?” Min asks.
“Military Government,” Neil answers. “The MG teams moved in right after the war ended to help clean up, demilitarize the country, and steer the Japanese toward democracy.”
“Sounds like brainwashing to me,” Min says as if to herself and goes back to eating her steak. Why is she being so difficult? If she’s going to speak at all, I wish she’d say something helpful.
After a short silence, Neil goes on. “When I was there, I was involved in a number of court cases defending American soldiers. Your father took a short leave and stayed with us during one particular case. It was a big victory. I thought he might have told you about it.”
“No, he never did.”
“Well, the fellow was a private, stationed out in the Yamagata prefecture. Min, you’re not Japanese, are you?” From this angle I can’t see his eyes behind the reflecting surfaces of his glasses.
Min puts her fork down. “No, I’m American.”
“Of course you are,” Neil says, impatient. “I meant your country of origin.” All three of us are looking at Min expectantly.
She stares back at Neil, her mouth set in a hard, unyielding line.
I know Min hates being asked this question, in all its variations. But I can’t stand the silence hanging in the air. Why won’t she just answer him and get it over with? I open my mouth. “Min’s Korean,” I volunteer, my voice too loud.
“Ah. It was your people who pushed the Americans and the Japanese into an alliance by starting a civil war. Interesting turn of events.”
“It wasn’t a civil war, Neil,” Olivia says, gathering our dishes. “Korea was a formerly occupied country split in two by the Americans and the Soviets.” He doesn’t respond. When she stands up to take the dishes into the kitchen, I want to ask if I can help, but I think it would be rude to interrupt Neil.
“Anyway, the incident in question took place one night when my client was standing guard at his base. It was late at night and he’d been drinking. A young Japanese woman wandered in. Apparently this happened all the time. Many of their men had been killed in the war.” Olivia returns with a cut-glass bowl filled with something chocolaty-looking. I’m half-distracted wondering if it’s a pudding or a mousse. I hate pudding.
“So this woman spoke to him, but, of course, all she knew was Japanese and all he knew was English. He gestured that he didn’t understand, he gestured for her to leave. He was on sentry duty. It was against his orders to allow women on the base.”
I glance at Min, who is sitting back with her arms crossed. She’s staring at Neil like she despises him. I wish I could reach out and unfold her arms, hold her hand in mine, soften her. Olivia passes me a small bowl of dessert. It’s pudding. I take a bite. I smile at her. Then I realize I’ll have to eat it all.
“The woman wouldn’t go. She pulled at his uniform, repeating the same phrases, and of course he still didn’t understand. But he thought he knew what she wanted. It was what they all wanted. He walked with her down the road. When they got to a field he laid her down and had sexual intercourse with her. He was surprised as hell when he was charged with rape. Her family took it to court.”
“He was surprised?” I blurt out.
“Sure. The Japanese all knew that the Americans were girl-crazy. Those girls loved the attention. In any case, we won.”
“How?” Min asks flatly, challenging him. She’s still glaring. Then I realize she guessed the end of his story a while ago.
Neil moves his head to look at Min. His whole face is soft with fondness for his memory. He pulls his chair up close to the table.
“My winning argument was that a civilized society cannot convict a man of rape who had no idea he was raping anyone.” He says it gently, with finality, then sips from his wine glass. The candlelight from the table gives his face a sheen like sweat.
“Civilized, shit. You let a rapist walk,” Min says.
“It was my job,” he reminds her.
“Did you think he was innocent?”
He shrugs. “She did nothing to stop him.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“At no time did she make him feel that what he was doing was wrong.”
I can’t stand this. Their antagonism is making me really anxious. I want to help Min make him understand, but I don’t want to offend Neil. He’s been very generous to us. I don’t say anything.
Min takes a deep, slow breath, then says, “Think about it from the woman’s point of view. Her country had lost a war and was being basically ruled by the occupying army. She was in a deserted area with a man who was obviously stronger than her. She needed his help in some way. He didn’t speak her language, and he wasn’t trying to understand anymore what she was saying. You lived in Japan, you know the constraints of the culture. Particularly on women. If he didn’t mean to rape her, then why didn’t he make sure it was what she wanted?”
“The woman wasn’t unwilling,” Neil says. He says it extra patiently, like he’s getting tired of this conversation.
“She wasn’t willing,” Min counters. “That’s the point. Why would anyone want to fuck someone who isn’t interested?”
“You’re feisty,” Neil says, grinning like he’s delighted. He leans forward and rests his arms on the table. “Maybe he thought she’d like it.” His eyes never leave Min’s face. In the dim candlelight, I notice how the golden hue of her skin makes her look darker than him. I feel sick.
Min pushes her chair back with a scraping sound and stands up. “I don’t have to take this shit,” she tells him. “Excuse me,” she says to Olivia. I realize I’ve forgotten about Olivia. Without even glancing at me, Min walks out of the room.
I panic, watching her leave. Where is she going? Doesn’t she understand the position she’s putting me in? I would never walk out like this, if we were with her friends or whatever, leaving her to apologize. No matter how unhappy I was, I just wouldn’t.
I look back at Neil and Olivia, more alone than I ever could be out there in the empty desert. Olivia looks upset, which makes me feel terrible. Neil’s still watching the door Min left by, his mouth curling. “She’s something,” he says to me. “She’s got cheek.”
The front door slams shut. All of a sudden I hate Neil. I wish I had taken Min’s side. I want to say something withering, but I have no idea what it would be. I am still his guest. He’s still my father’s friend. I look down at my empty pudding bowl.
“So, Laura, what are your plans now that you’re out in the real world?” Neil asks. Olivia looks over at me like she’s also interested in hearing the answer.
At first I think he means this trip across the country, then realize he’s talking about after college. “Well, I’m thinking of teaching PE. Maybe at a girls’ high school, like a boarding school or something. I was on the varsity soccer and basketball teams at Kenyon. And I’ve taken a lot of classes.”
“Oh? What kinds of classes?” Olivia asks. I look at the two of them, sitting at the dinner table talking to me like they’re a normal married couple taking a healthy interest in their friend’s daughter’s future and her companion hasn’t just fled the house, offended. I can’t wait to get out of here.
“Physiology, education classes, motivational psychology, that kind of thing.”
“And do you have a boyfriend?” she asks.
I freeze. What do I say? The love of my life is wandering around outside, and I don’t even know how to find her. “No, no boyfriend. Not right now,” I answer. I can’t look at Neil at all.
“How are your parents?” he asks. His voice is concerned, fatherly.
“They’re fine,” I say, still not catching his eye. “Just the same.” My father still has affairs with his students, I silently add. It makes perfect sense to me that he and Neil are friends.
Neil stands up and stretches, pushing his chest forward and his raised arms back. In his law office he must be used to being the one to end the meeting, standing up and ushering his clients to the door. Olivia begins to clear the table. In the candlelight her face is less severe, just older, tired.
“I guess I’ll go upstairs now,” I say, rising. “We’re pretty beat from driving. Thanks for this great dinner.” Olivia nods, half-smiling, and disappears into the kitchen.
Neil takes my hand, covering it with both of his. “We’ve enjoyed having you,” he tells me. I look up at his boyish smile, his dark blue eyes behind his glasses. His gaze is riveting. I start to pull my hand away. Neil holds on. “I’ll leave the front door unlocked for your, ah . . . friend,” he says. Then he lets me go.
About an hour later I’m sitting hunched on one of the beds, still dressed, when I hear the door open. I jump up and meet her as she walks in. She looks exhausted.
“Where have you been?” I whisper, pissed off again. I’ve been watching the clock, worrying about her. She goes over to the closest bed and curls up on top of it. Immediately my anger is gone. I get on the bed with her, snuggling up against her back, my knees behind her knees. She turns over and lets me put my arms around her. A breeze comes in the screen window behind me.
It is still so new to be holding her, and I am very aware of her slight body and the way her hands feel resting on me. Thin strips of moonlight between the blinds reflect onto the wall. We look at each other. She’s so beautiful. I feel a little shock, like pain, near my heart.
“Where did you go?” I ask, gently this time.
“Just around. This town is dead. I felt like a freak.”
“We’ll leave in the morning,” I promise her. I realize part of me was afraid she might hitch a ride back to San Francisco. I touch the side of her neck, stroking just under her hairline.
“Laura,” Min says, but she doesn’t finish.
I stop caressing her. She’s never hesitant. “What?”
“Why did you flirt with him?”
“I wasn’t flirting with him!”
“You were. You were attracted to him.”
We are so close I can feel her breath on my face. I want to look away. I remember getting out of the car, how his hands around mine made me feel wanted. I couldn’t stop grinning up at him. “Well, yeah, so? He’s kind of cute for his age, so what? Nothing was going to happen.” Doesn’t she know I’m committed to her for the long haul?
She just looks at me. After a little while she says, “I knew you didn’t want them to know about us. I was trying to be the way you wanted me to be. He’s your family’s friend.”
I close my eyes, feeling horrible. I should have trusted Min more. But I did. I trusted her not to leave the table in the middle of dinner.
“He knew anyway,” I tell her.
“That was obvious.”
I open my eyes. It was? But I ask, “Do you think he saw us in the window when he was grilling the steak?” I felt so powerful, secretly watching him. Now I feel ashamed. I’ve been acting like a child, wanting all the attention. I say, “Min, you know, I don’t hate men now just because we’re together.”
“Are we together?” she asks, like she doesn’t know.
I look into her eyes, inches away. She’s not kidding. My heart clutches. I’m afraid I might cry. “Aren’t we?” I ask. “You were just upset that I liked Neil.”
“I would be upset anyway. He’s a creep. The fact is, you’ve got the world’s worst taste in men.” She smiles like it’s a joke, but I’m hurt. I stop myself from saying something mean about her love life.
Min turns over onto her back. “I’m not sure what we are, Laura. You’re my best friend. And now we’ve slept together. I don’t know what that makes us.”
“It makes us lovers. Doesn’t it?” I put my hand on her flat stomach, underneath her shirt. Her skin is very warm. Almost absently, she moves her hand onto my arm, rubbing it lightly.
“For now.”
“What do you mean, for now?” I’m getting angry again. “What do you think is going to happen?”
“We’ll get back to San Francisco. We’ll go back to our different lives.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“For one thing, you’ve never been in an open relationship. I’m still seeing Madeleine. And, by the way—”
“Well, isn’t Madeleine leaving for New York in a couple of weeks? You don’t even like her.” I can’t believe Min would want to be involved with anyone else now that she’s with me.
“We’ll see what happens, Laura. I haven’t been thinking about her.”
“You don’t miss her at all?”
“Why would I?”
Hearing that, I feel relieved. I decide it’s not important to define our relationship tonight. Lying next to her, I’m starting to feel like I did in our tent, overwhelmed with longing. If I can let what’s happening between us take its course, I know that everything will work out. It has to. I slide my palm up to her breast and rub her nipple gently, back and forth. The soft skin crinkles into a tight little ball. Min closes her eyes. She rolls toward me again to kiss me.
After we’ve taken off our clothes, I tell her, “I’d like to do for you what you did for me last night.” She is licking the side of my neck, long, slow strokes like a cat. They make me shiver. What I’m really doing is reminding her that I’ve never gone down on a woman before. I don’t know what to do.
“Laura-lee,” she whispers and lies back. I’m hoping that she’s already so excited that whatever I do will feel good to her. I’ve known Min for over ten years. I’m very aware that this is her body, and that makes it harder. Once I’m down between her bent legs, I part her pubic hair and close my eyes. Hearing her moan, I stay where I am and keep doing what I’m doing. Last night I was completely silent, when I had the entire empty state of Nevada to make noise in. Down the hall from Neil and Olivia, Min’s not afraid of being overheard. Listening to her, my fear starts to go too. I don’t realize she has come until she sits up, reaching down to pull me up against her.
Lying on top of her, I am smiling, my face pushing against the side of her head. I feel giddy with success. I kiss her cheek near her ear. My lips come away wet. Another tear lands on my nose. I pull my head back, bring my hand from around her to wipe her face. Her eyes are squeezed closed. Putting my head down again, I hold her as tightly as I can. Maybe she didn’t have an orgasm after all.
I wait as long as I can stand, then ask, “What’s wrong?” I’m afraid she’ll tell me I was doing it wrong. I know I can’t compare to her other lovers.
Min swallows. “I’m so tired of having to answer those questions, hear those fucking lectures about ‘my’ country. As though I should know Korea’s whole history, even take responsibility for it. I don’t care about Korea. I was only born there.”
“You’re thinking of Neil’s story,” I say. “And the father and son at the Dairy Queen?” I add, because they are on my mind.
I feel her swallow again. “You have no idea how exhausting it is to carry your race around with you all the time, like a banner that people feel free to comment on. Or use for their own twisted reasons. It never goes away. You just don’t know.”
I bring my head up so I can see her face. “No,” I say quietly, “I don’t.” I realize it is the first true thing I have said this evening. “I don’t know what it’s like, Min, but I want to. I wish there was something I could do to make it easier for you.”
“Just keep holding me.”
I tighten my arms around her. We lie on this stranger’s bed, our two damp bodies pressed together. I wish I could go ahead in the world and clear the way before her. I think of the drive ahead of us, the states we will cross. As we near the East Coast, they will become more familiar to me as they grow more alien to Min. I think of Neil, and my blurting out, “She’s Korean.” If I can’t make it easier for Min, at least I can try not to make it more difficult. I close my eyes. I inhale the clean scent of her hair.
“I love you so much, Min,” I whisper.
I can’t believe how much I love her.
Neither one of us sleeps very well. We get up early and decide to have breakfast on the road. The large house is silent as we carry our knapsacks down the carpeted stairs to the front door. Outside, the pale morning light is a little chilly. We throw our bags in the back of the car and look around us. Down the street, all the lawns are mowed. If there are children living here, their bicycles and toys have been brought inside. The houses are ugly, just because they are meant to look the same. A little regretful, I remember Brigham Young’s Beehive House, the Tabernacle. I doubt I will ever come here again.
Min and I half-smile at each other, then turn to go back in the house to write Neil and Olivia a note thanking them for our stay. Olivia is standing in front of the open door in a light blue bathrobe, a pair of slippers on her feet.
“We didn’t want to wake you,” I say, my voice hushed in the still morning air. “We decided to get a lot of driving done today.”
“Won’t you have a cup of coffee at least?” she asks. I can’t tell if she’s being polite or if she really wants us to stay. I actually think she’d like the company.
I look at Min, tempted. She shakes her head. “No, we can’t,” she tells Olivia. I immediately want to apologize or at least soften Min’s words with an explanation. But I step back. Min has said it. We’re leaving.
Olivia nods and holds out both her hands to Min, who takes and squeezes them a long time, then lets them go. Olivia turns to me. “Please give my love to both your parents when you talk to them next,” she says, hugging me. Smiling, I say I will. I don’t mention Neil. I want to ask her why she stays with him, but I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
I hand Min the car keys, and we get in. I roll down my window to let out the stale air. Pulling out of the semicircular driveway, we wave to Olivia standing in front of her massive white house and drive away.
Hours later, we reach Yellowstone National Park. Much of it has been ravaged by a recent forest fire. On either side, we pass acres of black tree trunks sticking up into the sky, burnt free of leaves and branches. We decide to park and get out to take a walking tour of the hot springs. There are boardwalks and a railing to keep people from getting too close. The pools of bubbling water are beautiful and eerie, like jewels and like scabs both. We get whiffs of sulfur with the breeze. Steam floats off the surfaces. The flat ground surrounding the springs is crusted with minerals and small rocks. This could be the surface of the moon. The crowds push us along.
We get back in the car and keep driving north. Further down the road, the traffic slows. We wait in our idling car, wondering if there’s been an accident up ahead. After a while, a man in a car going the other way tells us that a buffalo has gotten onto the road. As we drove in, I read to Min from the AAA guidebook about the bison. In this area, the national park is all that’s left of the plains that used to be their home. The book said usually they stay away from the roads that wind through it. We wait some more, sweating in the baking heat.
The traffic is stop and go. Finally we see the buffalo up ahead, between the two lanes of stopped cars. Once it lumbers into sight, neither Min nor I say anything. I’ve seen the buffaloes in the paddocks at Golden Gate Park, but they’ve been far away. I’m amazed at how big this one is. It has heavy matted fur and a massive head. I love the hump on its back and the brown fur tufting down to its ankles like pants. I’ve never seen such a strange animal up close before. People are getting out of their cars to take pictures. They stand in front of it. They follow it. It doesn’t stop walking. They touch its shaggy hide as though it is not huge and wild but something they own. It is approaching our car. I’m afraid to look into its black, tired eyes, of what mute helplessness I’ll see there.