have it, Hiroshi,” Daidai called to her husband’s back. “It belongs to Satsuki. Can’t you see she was using it?” Daidai surprised herself with her harsh response, but she’d felt left out of the repartee between Hiroshi and his student, and of the secret knowledge of pickling stones apparently known to everyone but her.
“It’s okay, really.” Satsuki reached across the table and touched Daidai’s arm to keep her from following Hiroshi. “Hiroshi can borrow it. I don’t need it right now.”
In mid-October, halfway into the semester, Satsuki brought a gift of tea. She’d just arrived and was standing with Daidai in the foyer, explaining how she’d had the tea sent from Japan, when Hiroshi came bounding up the stairwell. Satsuki’s visit had not been well timed, the purpose of Hiroshi’s lunchtime appearance being sex, prescribed by the fertility specialist at six-hour intervals when Daidai was ovulating.
“Hiroshi and I are late for an appointment,” Daidai lied, struggling to avert an awkward moment in case Satsuki should wonder over Hiroshi’s arrival home in the middle of the day. “Could you come back tomorrow for a pot of tea?”
Satsuki clasped her hands in front of her, barely waiting for the invitation to be made before responding. “Would two o’clock be good?”
Daidai was not in the mood for sex that afternoon, nor was Hiroshi. Neither bothered to undress fully. He slid his pants down perfunctorily while she pulled her T-shirt over her head and released the clasp on her brassiere, lifting her heavy breasts to give him a good look before letting them drop. She pinched his flaccid cock, flipping it from one side to the other, deliberating on the task at hand before resigning to take him in her mouth. Alternating long strokes with light, teasing whispers, she began a private conversation with his cock, shutting him out when he writhed beneath her, issuing orders. She didn’t need his help to get what she needed from him. Let him rant about being late for class. She’d take her time, make him return with an ache and a still-fluttering heart. Besides, it would be over soon enough. No use for him to go on to someone who’d waited him out before. With the crisis inevitable, she shifted herself onto him and bore down, riding him hard until his load poured into her.
The doctor had suggested twenty minutes on her back postcoitus, which she timed while cycling her legs in the air for exercise. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Hiroshi rush to tidy himself up, wondering whether he’d run into Satsuki when he returned to campus that afternoon.
True to her word, Satsuki returned the following afternoon at two straight up to prepare a pot of the very fine tea she’d brought over the day before.
“What’s the occasion?” Daidai asked, waiting for the tea water to boil.
“No occasion,” she said. “Just an excuse to spend more time with you.”
Pouring water over a measure of leaves, Daidai breathed in the distinctly foreign, woody aroma, considering it an irony that her job at the museum had taken her all over Asia but never to Japan. “Haven’t you made friends in the program?” she asked, shaking herself from her reverie.
“I don’t find any of my fellow students particularly interesting,” Satsuki said, after appearing to give the question some thought. “I’m far more interested in what you do. Hiroshi says you’re an art curator.”
Daidai smiled her assent, volunteering nothing more, wondering what had prompted Hiroshi to discuss her work with his student.
“What is your area of specialty?”
“Postwar art made by Japanese living on the West Coast. You’re familiar with wartime internment, I assume?”
“Of course.” Satsuki narrowed her eyes, as if homing in on an object in the distance. “This subject is very interesting to me. Were your parents imprisoned during the war?”
“No. My mother’s family still lived in Japan at the time. And my father is Irish,” Daidai explained. Having tried to avoid the subject of her work, she was irritated by Satsuki’s probing.
“But this was Hiroshi’s parents’ experience?”
“Yes,” Daidai said, believing she’d hit upon the underlying reason for Satsuki’s interest. “Hiroshi’s parents were both interned. They were children at the time. I’m interested in the generation that was born after the war. Not enough is known about the experience of people like Hiroshi. But I believe the trauma is as pervasive as lung damage caused by secondhand smoke, damage that began decades ago. It needs to be studied.”
“Japan is so different.” Satsuki shook her head. “We are an almost entirely homogenous society.”
“What about Japan’s treatment of non-Japanese?”
Satsuki shrugged. “I’ve never had non-Japanese friends.”
This position, of never going out of one’s social milieu, seemed to Daidai to sum up the life experience of so many Japanese, a primness that she’d found stultifying. “I was a curator—for the Asian American Art Museum downtown,” Daidai clarified. “I’m not anymore.”
“You were laid off, then? Or did you quit your job?”
“I left to start a family,” she said, aching to change the subject.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Not yet. I hope to be soon.”
“I see,” Satsuki said, taking up again with her imperious nodding.
“Hiroshi and I have had some trouble conceiving, so we’re trying to increase our chances by following my monthly cycle.” Having tried to avoid the subject of her personal life, at last Daidai relented. “I went on leave because the fertility specialist recommended slowing my schedule down. That’s what I’m doing at home—trying to have a baby.”
Satsuki stared back, wide-eyed and unblinking. It took her a minute to respond. “Thank you for trusting me with that information,” she said, though the way she looked then, like someone who’d just been slapped, filled Daidai with regret. “I’m glad to know something of your life. I didn’t want to breach your privacy by asking, but like I said, I’m curious about you.”
“In that case, I’m sorry for responding so tersely,” Daidai said, feeling the relief of having spoken the truth.
“Don’t be sorry.” Satsuki smiled. “I hope your baby will call me Auntie, since there’s no possibility of a baby in my future.”
“Why not?” Was it that she didn’t want a baby or could she not have one? Daidai felt suddenly foolish for being so preoccupied by her own life circumstances that she’d not considered Satsuki’s.
“My upbringing warned me against bringing children into the world,” Satsuki said, giving nothing away.
“How so?” This new line of questioning only pointed out to Daidai that she knew nothing about Satsuki’s childhood. But rather than show embarrassment, Satsuki reached across the table and patted Daidai’s hand, the muscles around her mouth relaxing into a smile. “You want to know about me?”
Daidai nodded politely, but withdrew her hand, unable to explain the anxiety with which she felt suddenly stricken.
“You might already know that my father is
