Three Loves Seven, Chapter 16, Part 4 - "A Failed Marriage"

Dear gentle readers,

In case you didn't notice, we have entered the backstory-exposition chapter (for at least one of the main characters).

I don't know about you, but whenever I get to meet a married person, at some point in our acquaintance I always like to ask how they got together with their spouse. I find it's somewhat rare to find a "conventional" meet-up. Their stories seem so random at times. It makes you wonder how the American variety of homo sapiens has managed to propagate for 13-15 generations. Some demographers would say that if it were not for immigration, we would be shrinking--so that is not a surprise.

What happens when two people who have an obsessive-compulsive sense of responsibility and reciprocity find themselves enmeshed into each other's life? For most of us, to find such a person with whom we had no compatibility would make us rush for the exit. In the right context, we might call such people heroes or white knights. Clete and Mariko in the 1980s have this tendency but they are very young and haven't figured out what causes they should care about yet. This kind of person needs to be really careful at that life stage whom they let recruit and exploit this primal impulse of theirs.

These are a couple of the things floating around in my brain as I have come to get know these two characters.  By the way, the young Johnson Lai in Part 3 of this chapter might sound like a jerk, but he's really not. He learned a lot during the dating process. Didn't we all? Most young men I have found are terribly obsessed with physically being with young women and they wind up saying stupid, boorish things as this drive manifests itself. And thank goodness for that sex drive in the young. It's the engine behind any society's economy, politics, and culture if you think about it.

Well, time to stop thinking about these things and let's see what happened to these two odd young people so long ago...

Love,
Pops

     “My, my,” said Feng. “And you say she eventually MARRIED you with such a beginning?”

     “I know,” I said. “Hard to believe.”

     “Thank you for shar...”

     “NO! Don’t stop!” Eve ordered. “How did you get back together?”

     “Were you even listening? I told you we just kept seeing each other. Whether we liked it or not.”

     “How did you decide to get married?” Eight added.

     “Girls,” said Feng. “I only asked him how he met his wife. He is not required to tell me anything else.”

     “Do you really want to know?” I asked.

I knew I’d get all their heads bobbing up and down. I had not visited this psychic territory in years, at least not in such depth. It felt nowhere near as bad as I thought it would. Perhaps I had moved on. 

     “There’s not too much more, unless you want to save it for another day?”

     “Don’t leave us in the middle,” said Faye, “I will never sleep if you stop there. Can you take us to … the end?”

The end? After a couple weeks she just showed up every weekday with lunch, and I showed up at the end of her shift weekdays and weekends and walked her home. I felt bad she was spending money on me for food. A Japanese American female friend of mine said it’s bad luck or rudeness to give back an empty container to someone who gave you something, and just throw something in. So I started giving her random useful items, like a bar of soap, or cotton balls, or a box of paper clips. The total number of reciprocations had gotten off, probably in her favor, but it didn’t matter at that point—the habit had set in. I like habits. They make me feel secure. I think we both took comfort in the regularity of duty to another, even if it were for someone we didn’t particularly like or appreciate. In fact, we said hardly a word to each other except thanks.

There was Laundromat nearby. I’d do my laundry once a week on Friday nights just before picking her up.  One evening she came over on her coffee break and handed me a bundle while I was correcting papers during drying cycles.

     “No more office supplies! I have no use for them. You probably steal them from the school.” She had me there. “Please wash these.” I nodded my assent, and it was fine with me, so I did her wash—sheets, towels, her other uniform. I must have done OK because I got the regular job. Never her underwear though.

After about three months, I was walking her home one night and she stopped. I was in the habit of following her as I have said about five to six steps behind her. She turned about and walked back to me and stood by my side.

     “Let us talk while we walk, if you do not mind?”

     “What about?”

     “I have been thinking.”

     “Yes?”

     “I think that any woman who would live a life with you would not have a very exciting life, but it would be a calm, peaceful, and … I think good one.”

     “I take that as a compliment. I very much admire my parents who almost do nothing but sit together at night and just enjoy one another’s presence, resting from the day’s work. I hope to do as well as they did.”

     “I think I would like to live such a life with you.” I had to stop right there.

     “Rico, what are you saying?” She became very thoughtful.

     “It would be so much easier. That way, I would not have to poison you, or push you off a bridge, or run you over with a car, or shoot a gun into your head or chest. I have been thinking about that a lot lately.” I had no idea how to respond to that. I decided to just match her naïve foreign earnestness.

     “Well I knew you didn’t like me all that much, but I can’t imagine that I’ve incited you to murder me. I mean, there are other choices in-between to consider, besides marriage or murder, to deal with someone you don’t like very much. Although I suspect in most cases, dislike tends to set in AFTER the wedding, not before.”

     “I cannot say that anymore. That I do not like you very much, I mean.”

     “I can’t say it either. Would you like to try going on another date?”

     “NO! Dates are meaningless. And a waste of money. We would not learn anything else that we don’t already know.”

     “But we don’t know anything about each other. Or each other’s families.”

     “That will come. Soon enough.”

     “So what? Are you proposing . . . marriage?”

     “Not really, no. Because we are already halfway married are we not?”

I thought about how my mother would make my dad’s lunches that he took to work to the print shop. And how he would drive to the store where she worked and he picked her up every night. We were damn near indistinguishable in that regard.

     “We are,” I said in surprised recognition. “So, you’re suggesting we just complete having the other half.”

     “Yes. And I think that is usually the other half that couples try out first is it not? We are just doing it in reverse order.”

     “How did you get to be so smart and observant of American culture?”

     “I am halfway married to a man who is halfway a college professor.”

It was the first time she ever smiled at me. I was not looking for a wife, and yet I found something about her compelling. Something inevitable. Something or some ONE that you cannot remember having been without once you have been introduced. I turned her around and we started walking arm-in-arm in the opposite direction.

     “Where are we going?” she asked.

     “OUR home. You have a roommate, I don’t. But first I need to drop by Thrifty and get you your first wedding presents.”

     “Oh?”

     “A toothbrush and a change of underwear.”

     “I think I am going to like living with such a practical man, even if he is NOT romantic.”

I told her later that we should go on her day off downtown to the courthouse and apply for a marriage license, and that there’d probably be some issues we’d need to deal with because of her alien status, but the international students office could probably give me some advice.

She insisted that she had her own ideas on that, that we would have a ceremony in the custom of her family’s religion, which was just as binding upon her and, she hoped, me.

So that very weekend, at her request, we went to the seaside. I borrowed a friend’s car and we found a beach that was fairly secluded and private. The water was calm and the weather was clear, sunny, and beautiful. We waded into the water up to our shoulders. We removed our clothes and gave them to our sole witness, the cousin with whom she had been staying. We joined hands and said something in a language that seemed to me like some kind of East Asian pidgin, but I’m told it was essentially something as simple as “In the name of the god of the oceans, I declare my love for you and pledge my devotion forever.” She found some kelp and we tied or wrists to each other.

We then knelt down under the water, fully submerged, came back up, repeated the procedure, and one more time. In the third immersion, we put our mouths together and passed our breath back and forth until it was so stale we had to rise together. That was it. I it was me who insisted we exchange rings. Very thin bands were all we could afford, but in my family’s tradition the only gold worth giving to one another had to be 24K. I never liked being in the ocean—it always made me anxious. But with her I was fine since she was so secure amid the waves.

I wanted to take her home to meet my parents, but she asked to give her some time. She knew she was not the right ethnicity to be fully accepted by my people. I suspect she was waiting until she was pregnant, the time-honored tactic of final resort in marriages where there is parental disapproval.

A few months later, on one Saturday morning, after we were done enjoying . . . let’s just say enjoying each other’s physical company and were having a hard time deciding to get out of bed. It was one of those very dry, cool autumn days, right before it snaps cold. It makes your skin highly sensitive, and very smooth, and yet textured. I don’t suppose it ever gets like that here. We just lay there endlessly rubbing our limbs against each other.”

     “Professor!” interrupted Feng. “Is such detail really appropriate for these children to hear?”

     “I have no idea what’s appropriate. I’m a foreigner! Remember? And aren’t they all adults by your custom anyway?”

     “Just don’t go any farther than that please.”

     “I get it. No rubbing. How about dry humping?”

     “I beg your pardon.”

     “Kidding. Where was I?”

 Anyway, I wished that moment could have lasted forever. But then she cuddled up to me asked me something.

     “Clete?”

     “Yes?”

     “Have I ever asked you for anything?”

     “You asked me to take out the trash just last night.”

     “I am serious.”

     “Are you ever not serious? But no, you never have. Nothing big. Are you about to ask me to buy you a car or something like that? Because if you are, next year I’m lined up for a contract position as an assistant geologist for this drilling company. It won’t interfere with my thesis work and it will pay pretty well and then . . .”

     She fingered my nose. “You always jump off into something like that. No. I do not want you to buy me a car. I have just one thing to ask of you, as your wife.”

     “We’re going to be together a long time. I’m sure there’s not going to be just one thing. I don’t want to make a liar out of you.”

     “It is important. If you do this one thing. I will not make a demand of you again, and you may ask me something equally hard.”

     “This has to do with another man, doesn’t it?”

     “No. You are SO insecure. There will never be another man for me than you.”

     “Darling, if I can give it to you, I will.”

     “Would you, . . . would you, . . . , this is so hard . . . would you please not go on that field survey to your Island E251?”

Let me stop at this point to say that E251 was the name of an island in a group of islands in the South Pacific that my advisor, Dr. Winston, was studying. That was the blind name of an uninhabited location that I was assigned to visit and survey.  Working under Winston is where I developed my interest in island geology which is what still drives me and why I am here on your island today. It was hard to get someone approved and had to be arranged a year in advance while they ran a thorough background check on you. I was set to depart later that year to begin that survey. The anonymity of the place was important because I was also supposed to be a psychological test subject, recording my feelings of expected discomfort and unease as I charted totally uncharted territory.

     “That’s right! You’re not on the approval list! Damn! I’d better call Dr. Winston immediately …  Baby, I know what you’re thinking, but surely they’ll let me bring my spouse.”

     “But we don’t have an American marriage paper.”

     “Don’t worry about that. I wonder if my department head can do something in that regard. We can go to City Hall on Monday.”

     “But, that’s not it. I just don’t want you to go.”

     “Why not? This has been in the works for years. If I don’t go who knows when they’ll approve another researcher, if ever? Dr. Winston has been counting on me for this. Why shouldn’t I go? I mean, there’s no way I’m going without you. I’ll find a way. I promise. The congressman for this district is an alum, he’ll get the strings pulled. . .”

     “I do not care about that. Just promise me you will not go. That is the only thing I will ever ask of you.”

     “Why?”

     “I have a reason, but I cannot tell you.”

     “Cannot tell me? Rico! You have no idea how crucial this is to my graduate career. My career in this field? It’s a very small world. If I get a reputation as a flaky guy it’ll be way hard to recover. I may have to get another advisor cause he’ll drop me like a hot potato. Then I have to start all over. What is this? So this is the test, right? My loyalty test? AFTER THE FACT?” I looked at Rico and she was so broken. She looked worse than I felt. I had evidently decided. “Aw man, Winston is going to kill me.”

     “So you will not go?”

     “You’re really serious about this request then? And you want I should just trust you?”

     “I don’t have the right to ask this. But I will never ask such a thing again.”

     I sat up, but then fell back in resignation onto our pile of cheap pillows. “A wife is bigger than any dream … ”

     “What?”

     “A faculty advisor told me that, prior to starting down the road to my doctorate. I didn’t know what he meant at the time. Now I do. He was telling me not to get married until after I got my doctorate.”

     “So that means?”

     “I will not go.”

     “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you, my darling! I LOVE you! I will do anything for you.”

I didn’t know it then, but it was both one of the highest and the lowest points in my entire life. That would have been my first international trip and a project that I REALLY wanted to do. I was so disappointed. And yet there had been nothing I had ever said or done in my life that had made any person so happy or joyous.

The E251 project was scrapped. Departure date came and went. Winston assured me it was not a problem. He said there were other islands and atolls in his long-range project that had years to run and that he understood the needs of a young newlywed couple.

I ran into him at a symposium years later. After the project lost me as an approved researcher and a test subject, it basically halted. The sponsor backed out, and Dr. Winston accepted a position at a more prestigious school with secure underwriting for better projects, so it had been for the best, in retrospect.

Unfortunately, the same thing cannot be said for my marriage. My wedded bliss only lasted another three months. I returned home from work to our apartment to find a letter from Rico:

Dearest Clete:

I don’t really know how to say this. You are so much better at words than me I feel really bad about it, and sad.

My father asked me to return to home. He will not allow me to bring a husband of my own choice. He is a very powerful man where we come from and he will kill you if you come to find me. That is all I can say.

You did that one thing for me at great cost and I will be always grateful. And I will always be faithful to you until the end. I so wanted to be with you always. It was the happiest time of my life. I am sorry if I have ruined your life. So very, very, very sorry. My heart is hurting so much to write this and not see your face anymore.

Rico

That short existence of knowing and loving Rico was like a dream come and gone to me. I had gone someplace else, picked up by a tornado that took me to Oz, stayed there for a time, and then it dropped me back in Kansas. From color to black and white. I went looking, of course, for years. I made several trips to Hawaii, talked to endless numbers of hotel domestic staff, showing her picture. All paths came to nothing. I realized I had never collected much background information about her. Her employer, the diner, discovered her ID was not terribly accurate, but that was pretty typical in their business I was told. My wedding band was demoted from left ring-finger status down to being a mere separator keeping work keys separate from personal keys on the ring in my pocket.

My friends and students told me I was like a black cloud that rolled in wherever I went at that time, but that eventually passed. I mean, I knew guys who had relationships with girls whom they moved in with, for longer periods of time. They had their laughs, and sex, and more sex, and then broke up. And then moved on to the next one. I seemed to have had the exact same experience as they did. But mine seemed different. I never moved on. Why? We weren’t really married. Not in the eyes of California. Because we held our breath underwater naked together for a few minutes?  As time passed, it was harder and harder to put my finger on what we shared and why it hurt so much when it ended.

One of my advisors recommended me for some geology work for an oil and mining exploration partnership which I took on. It turned out I had a knack for applied geology rather than research—so my doctoral work then shifted away from geology to petroleum engineering. That was a move that finally made my father happy. He was afraid I was going to become some poor academic that he would have to support until he died. I had finally taken up where my brothers had left off, and moved into something useful. Maybe it was for the best. I was free to go to far-off, distant and dangerous places that no constant wife would ever approve of. And I never looked back. I guess I’m looking back now.

     “By the way. What happened to your brothers that you talk about?” It was Feng asking that.

     “I had two older brothers, Franklin, one year older than me. And Dolan, two years older than me. They were brilliant those two guys. Ran circles around me academically. BUT, I’m a good teacher. They couldn’t explain anything to save their lives. Frank was like my best friend. They were both studying engineering at Stanford. The year I was a senior in high school they were home for spring break. When they drove back up to Palo Alto a drunk driver hit them on the highway and they were both killed. My mother went into a kind of depression after that. She sort of stopped talking, to anybody. When she did, it was very short phrases with no emotion. She had become a living ghost. She lived to see me get my first doctorate, but she did not survive long after that. Dad passed too before a year went by.”

I just sat there quietly for a time. I forgot anyone was there when I heard a shudder. I looked over.

     “Xiao Mei. Mary. You’re crying. Please don’t. I went over to her and held her.” She put her head into my chest.

     “I’m so  . . . so . . . rry . . . Dr. Wong.”

     “Why should you be sorry?”

    “That I asked you to tell that story. I didn’t want it be that sad. You’re all alone.”

     “Hush. This happened a very long time ago. I’ve grown older and wiser because of it. I’ve shed my tears already. I’m glad it happened while I was young and resilient.” More shudders. “Look at all of you! Stop it! I’m fine now!”

     “But young Clete is not,” said Ling.

     “He’s long gone. Don’t worry about him.”

     “Do you think Rico is still out there somewhere?” asked Qin Qin.

     “I stopped caring a long time ago. But yes, I know she’s someplace. I think I’m very gifted at finding hidden things. But she hid herself very well. If she wanted to find me I’ve been in plain view my whole life. I hope she’s happy though, wherever she is. Now look what you’ve done. My eyes are wet now. Ling you should give your mother the signal to shut down the power.”

© Copyright 2012 by Vincent Way, all rights reserved.