Black Fish: Memoir of a Bad Luck Girl

She and Shane had been living in Cork almost three years when I finally visited them that August.  Shane had been transferred from Portland, and soon his company would be moving him again, this time to Los Angeles.

They had thought Joe would be joining me, and when they learned he wasn’t, kept mentioning him.  “Joe’s going to have a high credit card bill,” Shane commented when we shopped in Galway.  “Joe would have liked the whiskey tour,” he said on our drive home.  “It would have been better if Joe were here too,” Huang Lei said.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.  That second morning, I told her.

Her hands rinsing the press pot stilled.  “Oh, Little Gem,” she said.  As she hugged me, I saw that her eyes were wet.  “I’m so sorry.”

Then I told her why, and she hardened.  “Forget him,” she said, and began vigorously rinsing the press pot again.

She didn’t ask me why I never told her. Instead, she said, “You know, Guochen did the same thing.”

My mouth fell open.  “Guochen?” I said now, as though there must be some mistake.  “Guochen?”

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Joe and I separated in April 2005, a year after his affair, four months after his child was born. He moved out bit by bit. One day he found in a drawer an envelope I had marked “Single Asian Female,” and that was filled with personals ads I had clipped out, all from white men in search of Asian women.

Grinning, he held it up. “What’s this?” he asked.

The clippings were so old they were yellowing. “It was for a book idea,” I said.

He kept smiling. “Sure.”

“It was.” I didn’t know why he didn’t believe me, or why he was amused rather than upset.

The next thing I knew he was grabbing me around the waist, pressing against me from behind. Horrified I shoved him away.

“You can’t do that anymore,” I told him. “It’s not like that anymore.”

He looked stricken, but I was tired of trying to make him feel better.

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Regina was there teaching English to corporate executives, and we thought we’d take the opportunity to visit.

I assumed Joe wouldn’t go with me.  He didn’t like the trips that I did, full of aimless walking, hours in museums, and eating strange food.  He liked to play golf and to gamble.  But what had he done in Japan?  What else was there to do but walk and eat and drink?  It wasn’t about the trip but being alone, and being with, I realized then, with Kimiko.

Right before I left, I found out Joe had brought the baby to his parents’ house.

“Your parents haven’t seen Aiden, have they?” I asked out of nowhere.  The thought had occurred to me suddenly, as when you suddenly remember where you’ve left your keys.

He looked at me guiltily.  “They just wanted to make sure he was okay,” he said.  Then, seeing my despair: “They didn’t hold him.  They just looked at him.  My mother didn’t even smile.”

That didn’t make me feel better.  I was picturing it: Joe pulling up in our car and opening the back door, emerging with a tiny bundle in his arms, cradling him against his chest.  Then the thing in his parents’ house, my house too, I was told over and over.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.  “You have to tell me everything.”

“You were really mad at me that weekend,” he said.  “I mean really mad.”

I remembered: calling from my parents’ house, hissing on the phone, “I’m the only one who’s suffering in this.  You and Kimiko did this bad thing and you have a kid.  I did nothing and I have nothing.”  But it didn’t matter, it was an excuse, and would always be.  And suddenly it occurred to me that he had waited till I went to my parents’ house, for that specific opportunity, and something in me broke then, which turned out to be the last thing, the last withered bone holding together a damaged leg.

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It was Monday when my boss sat me down to tell me the good news.  For a long time, Joe had been pushing me to move up from my secretarial position.  We needed the money, and I knew he was embarrassed when I told people what I did.  I was reluctant at first to take on more projects, but when I found that I liked the independence and that it didn’t interfere with my writing, I was enthusiastic about moving up.  I just didn’t expect it so soon.

For a few days I was so happy I didn’t think about Kimiko or the baby.  I’d be getting my own office and making $20,000 more a year.  But soon those same miserable thoughts came creeping back.

Then on Thursday Joe said, “I have to tell you something.”  The next day Kimiko would be going in to have the baby.

I turned away.  I knew it was coming but didn’t know when.  The longer I didn’t know when, the longer I could pretend it would never happen.

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I imagined gutting her like a fish, shooting her in the stomach before turning the gun on myself. I prayed for her to get cancer, to get in a car accident and be instantly killed. Joe and I had begun watching The Sopranos, and I wished I knew someone who could bump her off.

I was angry at Joe but I was even angrier at Kimiko, which I knew wasn’t fair. They were both guilty, she less so, one could argue, because she wasn’t married, and as far as she knew, Joe and I could have been on our way out. But while clearly Joe was sorry, I didn’t think she was, no matter what he said. She never called to apologize nor did she send me a note. I was of no consequence to her. Who cared if Joe had a wife? She liked him and he must have liked her to have gone all the way to Japan to help her. There must be something wrong if his wife allowed that. Why would he have come over that day, why would he have made that first move?

Till our conversation that September, my calls to her disappeared into oblivion. I was a fly she ignored, and in her refusal to acknowledge me, she had power.

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