For readers who are confused by these stories, there is now a post with the title “Bridge.” It explains what this is, gives context and more, not just orientation but a deeper glimpse into the main and supporting characters.
Sorry for the many typos and other proofreading errors.
*
Mitchell tried to fit in in Japan, participate. The first weekend, my older brother came home- we were staying at my family’s house- and got out of his car and we greeted him with my sister. He was friendly to Mitchell but not interested in foreigners and busy, just returned from work, and shy. I asked him if he’d had something to drink. It was hot, the grass so green in the sun, and he said, “Yes, I had juice.”
Mitchell tried to make a joke. As we all walked together toward the front door, he asked my brother, “Are you sure it was juice and not vodka?”
The problem was that in Japan pronunciation is different, not “vodka” but “uo-kka.” My brother finally got it but Mitchell’s attempt at humor was lost on him. He isn’t a very funny guy, and busy.
Anyway, Mitchell had understood the exchange in Japanese between my brother and me and that was something.
He got friendly with a woman who ran a concession stand at the local train station, would chat with her when he went to buy his English language newspaper.
He asked her how she was and she said, “Your English is very good.” She had a sense of humor and was friendly to Mitchell.
He asked how she knew English- she was speaking it, after all- and she said she’d spent time in the U.S., in Texas.
Mitchell said Texas had problems, was known for its American individualism carried to an extreme, a disproportionately large number of religious zealots, insularity, intolerance. The woman selling newspapers said she thought he was right.
The trouble Mitchell had was that Japanese are so busy, work so hard they really don’t have time to help strangers fit in. Outsiders tend to remain just that, outside. Yet of course we do have fun, as much as, probably more than Americans (who, unlike us, are puritanical). Tokyo is exciting at night and Mitchell found it enticing, was frustrated he could only watch, not get in, not really (if he spoke more Japanese he might have been able to, really!) He had me, of course, but it became clear he’s better off in his own country. And I can fit in here. I’ve felt welcomed by Americans, for the most part.
Mitchell said he had a vision yesterday of old age as something terrible, a real thing, like a monster waiting. I don’t know why he worries about that. He’s still young. Maybe he senses opportunity passing. We’d talked about Japan and he expressed regret at our not moving there as we first planned (his idea). He regrets his timidity. I said it wasn’t too late, we could still go in the future, anyway visit sometimes.
Jeff, by the way, seems very different from Mitchell. I don’t think he’s someone on the lookout for opportunities but if he sees one he won’t hesitate. I can tell by how he behaves with me. He thinks we can have something good together. He’s as much as said so.
—
Mitchell got a notice about his twenty-fifth college reunion. “That will be a big one,” he said.
There weren’t many students at the college he went to, he explained, so you knew almost everyone there and most up close and personal at least once over the course of the four years until graduation. “There just weren’t a lot to people to choose from.” He laughed. “If not bedding down, then a meeting of the minds, deep one at three o’clock in the morning, telling everything. Ha ha.”
He repeated this again and again, about having a close encounter with almost each student at one time or other because the college was so small, talking at three o’clock in the morning, high or drunk, and telling everything.
And he said he’d be meeting women he used to know. Would they flirt now, he wondered out loud. Maybe he’d flirt even with ones he didn’t like back when he was a student. He found that idea amusing also.
“Twenty-fifth reunion,” he said. “A big one.” He thought he shouldn’t miss it.
The talk about flirting didn’t bother me. Just talk. Actually, it made me think of Jeff. He’d find that silly. Just flirting. He’d want the real thing.
Mitchell talked about a former college classmate he’d met by chance while he was shopping. They hadn’t liked each other when students but found no problem getting along now. They were changed people, after all, no longer the twenty year olds they used to be.
She walked with him through the food market while he looked for a kind of organic cereal he liked. She pointed out a box she thought was the one he wanted. “No,” he said when he looked. It was the right brand and type, but a different version: almond and brown sugar. Too sweet. He wanted plain with no added sugar. There were three versions, he explained to me: almond and brown sugar, regular with white sugar, and plain without added sugar. He wanted the last.
As I listened I thought about Jeff and a day when Mitchell and I were in Japan and couldn’t go out because dangerous weather was predicted. Electrical storms. I wonder what Jeff would have done if he and I had stayed in all afternoon.
Mitchell had talked that day about what to wear. He’d had on the same jeans too many days in a row. We were traveling and it was time to do laundry soon. And he talked about the TV at my family’s place, how it was different from the ones he was accustomed to at home, how it worked, the functions it had. He talked a lot and meanwhile the unusual weather outside mesmerized me. The sky had begun to go dark, threatening, magical. You could see glints of lightening in the distance already, glimmering through the gloom that made everything feel close, like we were prisoners in the room (it was a summer day and we’d been hoping to go out).
Lightening flashes had begun, most nearly too far away to spot. They seemed to linger. Even after they were gone, a faint impression remained in the grey, like strands of tinsel. They teased the eye, the imagination. Mitchell seemed not to notice but the view excited me. The atmosphere did. View to the unimaginable. The destructive force nearing was scary and also wonderful. Have you ever felt that?
I thought of Jeff’s jeans when he drove Mitchell and me back from the college where they both work and I take classes, the afternoon I first really noticed him, we noticed each other. His jeans also looked they’d been worn too many days. That’s how men who live alone are. The denim looked a little grimy, tight on him as if affixed by oil soaked from his skin, lol. He should change from those, I thought. But I liked them.