The idea kept reoccurring to her that children were temporary objects in her domain but experiences of this kind were transformational. For so long she had wistful thoughts of departing from America in a more permanent way than one could do as a mere tourist. She yearned to abscond from this country of sensationalized serial killers, child abductors, murderers in school yards, random shooters, Al Queida and Timothy McVeigh car bombers, and America's obsession with those of fame and power who lusted for more and more until plunging so fully in their passionate energies fell into jealous fits, white color crimes, or murder related to that above. Already the enemies were gathered outside the American gates and at any moment they would storm the Bastille. A war with such poor masses would siphon away the coffers of the US treasury to the point where the superpower status would be gone. There would just be mountainous rubble of debt on the great debtor country.
There came a day somewhere in the middle part of January when she called the man with the unmemorable name from Arkansas. She did not tell him of her marriage but she did tell him that Michael had asked her to go to Japan with him. He told her to go. He said that one should always use any opportunity that came along to be exposed to a new culture although both of them knew that there was little else in the world but America's capitalistic shadow and that little enlightenment could be gained from any other source than stagnant words and pages of the books written by the dead masters. He said this with such conviction that she almost loved him for not holding onto her.
Tijuana, Mexico September 17, 2001
It would be 90 degrees later that day and she had come to do her laundry earlier than usual. Her mind swished like her frothy socks that foamed and compressed, were locked in and were often lost. Somewhere, on one continent or another, something severed within her. She told herself that she would not blame Atsushi Kato, and especially at this late date. She tried not to think of this matter by watching the diving dances of her laundry, but it was not at all helpful. She imagined two men's socks of different colors and sizes intertwining within the fast movements of her wash. No, she again reminded herself as if needing to reiterate a truth so that feelings did not overtake her with their mendacities, Kato was not the source of her disconnection. He had merely been a stock boy for the foreign food store that was partially owned by her husband. Perhaps he was that still. Certainly he was more than that role.
His face always smiled widely when he saw her or her husband. He had an affinity for foreigners and she, in particular, needed his friendship. His English was excellent; and he finally brought life to their stagnation by getting them involved in an understanding of Oriental antiquities.
The weather was inordinately cold, and the city was so large and congested; but they nonetheless needed their outings, and he took them to museums and Japanese theatres within the inner city of Sapporo. He was so eager to use his English. He translated the signs under the artifacts and became aware of the styles of Japanese calligraphy. When they pelted snow from the soles of their shoes before entering the theaters, he seemed grateful that such experiences were resuscitating him from the continual repetition of counting and stocking inventory. From these invitations to escort the couple he began to see a newness within his ancient and isolated people on this one of myriad islands. He said that he studied the English language and had kept it within himself for so long; but it was really perceiving his race and culture anew that seemed to revive him with a real personality. Michael was not inclined to befriend a Buddhist this lifelessly innocuous and bereft of money and status so she pushed on her husband's association with him, this "subordinate. " She asked Kato to accompany her husband in the barroom business meetings. He would just be a human speck in these overcrowded places. His shyness with those of his own race made them not pay attention to him. He would understand the implications to the meetings that her husband found opaque. She would not blame Kato. He might even be doing Michael's laundry right now as she pursued her own, but he was not her disconnection — not really.
What did her disconnection matter at all in the scheme of things, anyway? When she asked this question she was not able to concoct a truthful answer that was at all savory. In the scheme of things her disconnection was just more worthless tripe as insignificant as a gum wrapper blowing on a sidewalk. As intangible as a "state of mind" was, she knew that for all its intricate and fascinating complexity it was less significant to the outside world than a gum wrapper.
Thousands had lost their lives in the World Trade Center towers in New York City just days earlier. No one could ever know the panic and hopelessness that they felt at the travail of being cognizant and on fire or seeing someone else who was ablaze and being unable to do anything. If there were any continual evidence of those who had become a gas it would be the sounds of their panicked utterances of love and farewell or the light that made visible those horrified countenances leaning their ears as hard as they could into their cellular telephones. By this time, she supposed, those sights and sounds would be at the edges of the Milky Way before moving further into deeper space, the gray matter of this black god. She still thought about September Eleventh every few minutes: those repeating images of the two jets flying into the skyscrapers and people jumping from the upper stories. What did her disconnection matter to the gods, who if they existed at all, despised life?
She remembered: on the Eleventh (9-11) she sat on the bed in her little room. A bowl of vegetable soup from her crockpot was on an end table and a tofu taco was on a plate that was on her lap. She was just about ready to put some food in her mouth when she used the remote control to turn on the television. For a few moments she was incredulous and just stared motionlessly aghast. Then she suddenly stood up from the precipice of the mattress and rushed to the telephone to call Michael's sister. The line was disconnected as it had been the past few times she tried to call. She tried email but again her letters to her son came back to her. Nathaniel ("Adagio") still had too much email clogged into his Yahoo account—no doubt all the unopened letters she had emailed to him from Sapporo.
Somewhere something had severed. Was it here in Tijuana, in Tokyo or Hong Kong, Seoul or Sapporo, or a mezcla (mixture)? It was a gradual harvest of disconnection invisibly sewn and its fulfillment placed in her hands. She had accepted her divorce stunned and numb, but not disbelieving. She had been there throughout his travels. Her mind had been scrambled in different languages and her environment splintered like Kanji, Hirigana, and Katakana.