The Good Shufu by Tracy Slater

Author:Tracy Slater
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

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FOUR MONTHS LATER, we were on a sidewalk in Osaka, layered in heavy coats and hats. It was December 2006, and a wet winter wind stung our faces as we peered at the door of the U.S. Consulate. Toru and I needed to retrieve a form claiming I was of sound mind and acting under free will, certifying that when we filed our Japanese marriage papers a few hours later, even though I couldn’t read them, I’d understand their meaning.

In the cold, Toru and I looked at each other for a moment. Our hands were clasped, but neither one of us spoke.

We’d been preparing for this day for months, although I’d gone home to Boston in the interim after Kei’s wedding. I’d found another subletter to rent my apartment for part of the semester, but he only needed it for two months, and I planned to be in Osaka for four. I was beginning to feel more frazzled by both the financial and practical burdens of the Boston studio, in part because my rental agreement forbade me from subletting.

I guessed my landlords knew and didn’t care as long as I paid my rent on time every month and fixed anything that broke, but I couldn’t be sure. “We love you,” they always told me when we talked. They were both male flight attendants, now based on the West Coast. “Never leave us. Never.” They’d been crestfallen when they heard I was marrying a man from Japan, then delighted by my plan to keep living in Boston half the year. Once, when I got stuck in the apartment because the aging lock had broken from the inside, they responded as if I’d called with news of a three-alarm blaze. “I have a mani/pedi appointment in forty-five minutes,” I’d told Stu, “so if you can get the locksmith here in thirty, that would be great.”

“Oh, girlfriend, no, not a mani/pedi,” he’d said, his voice hushed. “We’ll have you out of there as soon as possible.” Ten minutes later, a locksmith was dismantling my door.

Wow, they must have had really bad luck with tenants in the past, I thought, having been unaware that simply paying your rent on time made you a hot commodity. Still, I tried to keep the subletters secret in case my landlords balked—or kept my last month’s rent and security deposit after kicking me out.

In the weeks in Boston before I returned to Japan to get married, my chest felt tight and my skin a little wrong, like what should be a seamless layer threatened to gap or slip. I tried not to wonder what those feelings meant. I’d lie awake and listen to the sound of late-fall traffic on the South End streets outside my apartment, the drunken laughter spilling from the bar across the road, boys with high voices shouting into the night. In addition to all the work of finding and vetting subletters, the task of preparing to leave home for four months was

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