How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [50]
The nurse beeped the intercom. “What do you need?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Mike came back and poured me a cup, handing it to me. Then he sat down and opened the fantasy novel he’d brought, like the ones I’d been shocked at when he was a teenager, with a huge-breasted lady on the cover, bursting out of her metal bustier and riding a dragon. Through the night he read, as I slept.
Forgiveness is a skill that, like cleanliness, should be learned early and practiced often. Whether it be forgiving the war, or forgiving your husband when he neglects to show up for dinner, you should bend like a willow tree in a fierce storm.
—from the chapter “Culture for Women,”
How to Be an American Housewife
Sixteen
Charlie came to see me in the morning, wiping tears out of his eyes.
“What happened to the big, tough Marine I marry?” I said. Charlie used to refer to himself that way, when he was in the war and attached to Marine units. It was a point of pride I wanted him to remember. Now if my husband cried, I had to be strong, and I wanted to be weak.
He didn’t answer, just picked up my cup of ice chips and offered a spoon to me. I opened my mouth. My lips peeled dry and my mouth wrinkled like a prune. He applied Vaseline to them.
“I want Japanese food. Can go get some?”
“No sushi. The raw fish could make you sick,” he said. “And nothing too salty. You’re restricted.”
“I know, I know,” I said, picking at the white thermal blanket. “Get just noodles, then. Hate hospital food. Taste like paper.” All I ate were ice chips and Ensure. I did not even take soup. I lifted my hip up and grimaced.
He sort of laughed. “You need to shi-shi?”
“No.” I said. I felt sorry to be so cranky to Charlie, especially when he was being helpful, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be home, where I wouldn’t get woken up by a blood pressure cuff at three a.m. I had to be nice to everyone in the hospital, polite and meek, when I really wanted to shoot them all between the eyes.
“Did they talk Taro?” I asked Charlie.
“I don’t know. Mike talked to Sue, not me.”
Of course Mike would never think to ask. Had Taro told them anything? Everything?
I didn’t know if I wanted Taro to tell my story or not. In one way, it would be easier on me if he did. Then I wouldn’t have to.
Telling Charlie about Mike had not been easy. Mike had been born a month and a half earlier than he should have been, by Charlie’s calculations. This would have been all right had he not weighed nine pounds, four ounces, with the fully developed lungs of a baby born at term.
“I didn’t know he would look so Japanese,” Charlie marveled often the first month, sending me into guilty spasms. He wanted to believe Mike was his.
Finally, when Mike was six weeks, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Charlie had a right to know. One evening, when Mike was asleep, I told Charlie everything in my poor English. I began crying as I did so, remembering it all, the stress of having this secret for months. I was the only one who knew. Not even Ronin knew.
Charlie simply sat and stared into the corner. I waited for him to storm out, shout at me. Then Mike woke and wailed.
“It’s time for his feeding.” Charlie prepared Mike’s bottle.
I picked up Mike and changed him, still waiting for a reaction.
Instead, Charlie took Mike from me and sat down, holding the milk bottle to Mike’s lips, cooing at him as Mike stared up, his black eyes watching Charlie’s face intensely. The only sound was Mike’s greedy eating, slurping in too much air.
Finally Charlie spoke without taking his eyes off the baby. “What’s past is past, Shoko. All right?” He put Mike on his shoulder to burp him. “My name is on the birth certificate. He is my son.” Charlie’s eyes turned a brilliant sapphire and he glared at me with something like defiance.
I was shocked. I knew Charlie forgave and forgot more easily than