The Other Woman Read online

  “Keiko, I know you don’t want your husband to be with other women,” continued Greg, “but the reality is, he’s going to regardless of what you want. My advice to you, hate me though you may, is that you either leave him, or you tolerate his infidelity and demand he make it up to you in ways in which he’s capable.”

  “Like paying for a massage?” agreed Keiko, before Mme Kudo was finished.

  “Or even giving you a massage,” added Greg. “Surely that’s not too much to ask.”

  “If my husband cheats on me, I’ll leave him,” declared Hiromi in Japanese.

  “Why don’t you talk about your boyfriend?” suggested Mme Kudo.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” laughed Hiromi. “I feel sad about what happened to Aki and Keiko, but if that happened to me, I’d send him packing.”

  Mme Kudo had to translate Hiromi’s thick Okinawa dialect for Greg, who shrugged in acknowledgement.

  “In that case,” countered Greg, “I’d say you’d better either prepare for divorce, or be very careful about who you marry.”

  “Everyone should be careful about who they marry,” rejoined Hiromi.

  “What I’m saying is, if you won’t accept infidelity and you don’t want a divorce, about your only option is to choose a man nobody else wants.”

  “That can’t be true,” balked Hiromi.

  “Do the math. If you think your man looks good, other women think he looks good to. If you find his scent irresistible, so do other women. It doesn’t matter if you like his voice, or the way he speaks to you, or the way he moves. Whatever you find attractive about him also attracts other women. For the first couple of years, when your marriage is new, that won’t matter. But when things get a little stale, when he starts to hunger for variety, all bets are off. The more appealing he is, the more opportunities he’ll have and the harder it will be for him not to cheat.”

  As Hiromi digested Mme Kudo’s translation of the foreign man’s words, Hikari fought back tears. Years ago, she’d felt exactly the way Hiromi did. She wanted a good man all to herself and she’d been prepared to give herself entirely to him. That was how it had almost worked out, or so it had seemed for a while. She’d had a good man, a perfect man, and everything in her life was wonderful, until it all went off the rails. Hearing the foreigner talk about how easily men stray cut her close enough to the bone that she didn’t know if she could bear it.

  “The worst part, I’m sorry to say, is that your husbands, your fiancees and your boyfriends are not with you because they find you more attractive than other women,” continued Greg. “They’re with you because you’re the one who didn’t brush them off. In almost every case, they’d have been with other women if they could’ve and that reality doesn’t change just ‘cause there’s a ring on your finger.”

  The looks exchanged by the women in the room suggested they’d never thought of that before. Certainly Hikari hadn’t, until recently. There had never been a ring on her finger, mind you, but she’d been sure the man she loved had wanted to marry her and it was only a matter of time before he proposed. But that was before.

  “I don’t mean to suggest an undesirable man is less likely to cheat on you. Even if absolutely no other woman wants him, there’s nothing to stop him from heading to Soapland and dropping a hundred and fifty bucks on - what do they call them - a bath attendant.”

  “He’d better not,” huffed Hiromi, “or he knows what’s gonna happen.”

  “In your case,” mused Greg, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the one to cheat on him.”

  “I don’t do that sort of thing,” declared Hiromi, “and if you knew anything about women, you’d know that most women don’t either.”

  “If you only knew how many married women I’ve slept with,” Greg laughed. “Maybe you’re not tempted now, but wait ’til you have a kid or two and sit home all day and night while your husband’s out working and drinking with his colleagues. Wait ’til he stops seeing you as the woman he loves and starts to think of as the mother of his children. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Sensing Hiromi’s ire rising, Mme Kudo jumped in. “I think it’s time we heard from Hikari.”

  Hikari’s body went cold. She wasn’t ready yet, and she could sense the tension in the room risking as Hiromi and the foreign man sparred. Excusing herself, she went to the toilet as the conversation in the living room became more heated. Closing the door behind her, she looked at her phone. Seeing that a new email had arrived, she felt the same anticipation as always. This time, it was from the American. Written in surprisingly clear Japanese, the email asked her why she hadn’t responded to the message he’d sent more than a week ago.

  “Mou kekkon shiteru kara!” she hissed out loud. Because you’re already married!

  Hikari cursed herself for letting things go as far as they had with him. She never should have invited him out for drinks the first time, much less agreed to a second date. But what was she supposed to do? She was hopelessly drawn to him and, not to put too fine a point on it, she was beyond desperate for male affection. Not so much sex, though it had been a while since she’d enjoyed that, but affection - kisses and hugs - from a man who truly desired her and wasn’t just after a bit of action on the side. Harrison wanted from her exactly what she wanted from him and that, in part, was what made him so irresistible to her. But resist she must, for as difficult as things were in his marriage, he’d told her point-blank that he wasn’t going to leave his wife. If she went any further, let herself fall for him any more deeply, where would that leave her in the long run?

  She put away the phone, finished washing up and reluctantly headed back to the tatami room where the others waited. Mme Kudo was translating more comments by Greg as Aki, Keiko, Hiromi and the others listened. When Mme Kudo was finished, Hikari’s mouth went dry as she prepared to tell her painful story.

  “I met my boyfriend at University in Tokyo,” she began. “We started dating in the first year and everything was amazing. We went everywhere together. After we graduated, we talked about living together and even getting married.”

  After Mme Kudo finished the translation for Greg, the women encouraged her to continue, but she hesitated.

  “In April, he told me he wanted to break up,” she said, her voice wavering. “Then in August, he married another woman.”

  Everyone looked on in shocked silence.

  “How long were you together?” asked Greg in Japanese.

  Hikari hesitated. What would the women think of her if she told them the truth?

  “We’re not here to judge you,” Mme Kudo assured her.

  But judge her they would, as surely and as harshly as she judged herself for having allowed herself to be fooled for so long. None the less, she’d come this far. There was no backing down now.

  “Seven years,” Hikari whispered.

  All the women in the room gasped in horror.

  “If it’s okay to ask,” ventured Keiko, “how old are you now?”

  “27,” replied Hikari.

  Again, the room went silent. In mainland Japan, it wasn’t uncommon at all for a woman to be unmarried at 27, but in Okinawa, even in modern times, it was quite rare. All of Hikari’s high school friends were married and most of the women had already delivered their first and even second children. It wasn’t lost on anyone present that if she desired to marry and raise a family in Okinawa with a man her age or older, the pickings were slim.

  It wasn’t that there were no available men. The percentage of unmarried men all across Japan was higher than at any time in recorded history. The problem was, those available men were mostly “grass-eaters,” as uninterested in Hikari and women like her as she was in them. Not that these “grass eaters” eschewed relationships entirely. They might have casual sex when it was offered, but any kind of serious relationship, let alone marriage, was “mendokusai” - too much trouble. It was hard to blame them. The clash between rigid social traditions on one hand and the changing natur
e of the relationships between men and women on the other made it difficult for males to understand their place in society. Rather than suffer the quiet desperation of married lives that promised to be as unhappy and unfulfilling as their parents’, they’d chosen instead to revel in the simple freedoms of life unattached.

  “Let me understand something,” Greg piped up. “You said you were considering living together in Tokyo, but you never actually took the plunge?”

  “No.”

  “May I ask why not?”

  “He said it wasn’t right for a couple to live together before they’re married.”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t seeing anyone else?”

  “I thought I was.” Even as she said the words, Hikari knew they weren’t completely true. He’d always been a very independent man, often preferring to do his own thing or be with his male friends than to be with Hikari. Hikari had put this down to his very social character, but if she were to be completely honest with herself, she had to admit she’d had some lingering doubts, even from the beginning.

  “How handsome is he?” asked Greg.

  “He’s so handsome,” Hikari sighed.

  “Tall?”

  Hikari nodded yes.

  “Strong?”

  “He’s an athlete,” she replied.

  “Smart?”

  “Near the top of his class.”

  “Wealthy?”

  “His father is a prominent business man in Osaka.”

  Greg mulled Hikari’s answers. “As I told Hiromi, the age old paradox is that the more attractive you find a man, the greater the odds that some other woman out there wants him as much as you do. As you seem to have found out the hard way, the other woman sometimes wins.”

  “At least he had the decency to break it off with you before he married his wife,” remarked Aki. “My husband kept seeing his mistress the whole time.”

  “He was mine!” spat Hikari, on the edge of tears. “I wanted him to be my husband more than anything. I loved him enough that I wouldn’t complain if he had a mistress.”

  “It looks to me like you were the mistress,” quipped Aki.

  Glaring at Aki, Hikari felt her blood start to boil. What right did this woman have to insult her like that! It was understandable she was upset about her husband’s ongoing affair, but at least she had a husband. Even if Aki had to share, her husband would still come home to her, and that was more than Hikari could say.

  “What precipitated the breakup?” asked Greg sensing even without translation that the exchange with Aki had been tense.

  “A year earlier, my mother became sick so I returned from Tokyo to look after her,” she said. “My older brother lives in America and my younger sister has a family in Sapporo. There was no one else who could do it.”

  “So you carried on the relationship long-distance?”

  Hikari nodded yes. “He promised to call me often and he did at first, but before long his calls became less and less frequent. When I called him he often wouldn’t answer and when he did, we didn’t speak for long.”

  “So the breakup didn’t come out of the blue,” observed Greg.

  “We’d agreed to get married!” protested Hikari.

  “Are you sure?” asked Greg.

  “Yes!” replied Hikari.

  “I’m not.”

  The room remained silent as everyone waited for Greg to continue.

  “When a man and a woman talk about marriage, a man discusses possibilities and a woman hears promises.”

  “He did promise!” insisted Hikari.

  “Did you set a date?”

  “No,” huffed Hikari.

  “Did he give you a ring?”

  “No.”

  “And he wouldn’t let you move in?”

  Hikari fought back tears.

  “It’s almost always the case that one partner loves more than the other,” stated Greg. “It seems pretty clear that you loved him more than he loved you back, maybe even right from the beginning. When you left Tokyo, it was his chance to extricate himself.”

  “If my mother hadn’t gotten sick, we might be together now.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Aki. “I think he met the other woman even before you even left.”

  “I know he loved me!”

  “I’m sure he did,” Greg assured her, “but sometimes lighting strikes. My guess is he felt a jolt when he met her and his feelings grew over time. At first, he probably denied it, then he admitted it but resigned himself to being with you and not her. When you left, he had the freedom to explore his feelings in your absence.”

  Lightning? Hikari thought about her feelings for Harrison, the American. Was that what it had been like for her fiancee when lighting struck? Though it was mild at first, she’d felt the pull toward Harrison as soon as he walked in the room. As she got to know him, saw how confident he was in the classroom and realized how much interest he took in her culture and language, her attraction deepened. The moment he first mentioned his wife, she prayed she hadn’t heard properly and when she found out for sure he was married, she became so sick with disappointment she felt like throwing up.

  She remembered going home that night and taking her dog for a long walk up the hill by Sefa-Utaki and along the cliff overlooking the ocean. She’d sat on a rock, looked up at the starry night sky and swore to herself that she wouldn’t act on her feelings. Knowing what she’d gone through - was still going through over the loss of her fiancee to another woman - she refused to be that other woman, no matter what she felt for Harrison. But before the next day was through, she found herself fantasizing, imagining him walking with her on the beach, holding her in her arms as the surf rolled up on the sand. When she started to sense that he liked her too, she couldn’t help herself. As enthusiastically as he spoke to her alone when she stayed after class, she he knew he wouldn’t make the first move, so she took the initiative. She asked him out for a drink and, almost to her surprise, he accepted.

  The days leading up to the date were tense, not because she feared the date would go badly and everything could unravel, but because she feared it wouldn’t. As it turned out, her fears were confirmed. After she’d exhausted her elementary English, they switched to Japanese and Hikari was blown away by the American’s command of the language. But when she asked him about his wife, his sullen look suggested he’d rather she hadn’t brought it up. He didn’t have to say a word for her to glean that all wasn’t well in their relationship. When the evening came to an end and she rode back to her mother’s home in a taxi, she cursed herself for wondering how she might convince him to leave his wife for her. Attempts to banish the thought were futile. As she worked, cleaned the house or walked her dog, images of her and Harrison together played like a Hollywood romance on the movie-screen of her mind. When he texted her about a second date, she was putty in his hands.

  When the day arrived, they dined at an izakaya on a hill overlooking the eastern coast of the island, and everything was amazing. Even as he smiled at her from across the table, she imagined him stroking her hair as they lay on a blanket under the sun. If he’d asked her to join him that night at one of the countless love-hotels nestled in among the restaurants and bars that lined the winding road along the cliff, she wasn’t sure how she could have refused. But he didn’t, and as they parted on the street, it took every bit of self-control she possessed not to reach out and squeeze his athletic body with all her might. Laying on her futon in the grey moonlight, her dog curled contentedly on the tatami floor beside her, she allowed herself the luxury of imagining Harrison laying beside her, holding her gently from behind as she drifted peacefully off to sleep. It was the first night since the breakup that memories of her ex-fiancee didn’t cause her to lay awake.

  Then a thought occurred to her. What if she’d met Harrison before her boyfriend had broken up with her? Would she have felt the same spark? Would she have let her feelings grow the way they had, or would she have at least tried to reign them in? Would she
have gone to speak to him after class every day? Would she have dared ask him to share a drink with her, even just as a friend? Was this the way things had started between her fiancee and the other woman? Her attention went back to Greg.

  “The important thing is that you don’t blame yourself for what happened,” he went on. “Unless you made it impossible for him to want to marry you, the way some women insist on doing, chances are that your relationship had just run its course.”

  Mme Kudo had trouble translating the idiom ‘run it’s course.’ Greg explained another way and Hikari understood. The idea highlighted some possibilities. Had Harrison’s relationship with his wife run it’s course? If so, was it really so wrong for Hikari to step in and pick up the pieces? The visceral pangs of guilt she felt merely asking the question suggested she believed it wasn’t right. But this foreign man’s conjecture stirred up some demons even uglier than guilt. If her own engagement had simply run its course, as had Harrison’s marriage, what did that say about her odds of having a lasting relationship with anyone?

  “I know, it hurts,” said Greg, reading her expression. “Especially when you go on Facebook and it looks like everyone else in the world but you lives in rainbow-unicorn-candyland. But that’s an illusion. What do you say in in Japanese? Tonari no shibafu wa aoi. The neighbour’s lawn looks greener. But regardless of how it seems, there’s no rainbow-unicorn-candyland for anyone. Relationships are tough. Marriages are tough. That’s the truth we all have to live with.”

  At Mme Kudo’s behest, the other women told their stories, the first complaining about a husband who, though financially responsible, now all but ignored her and their children, the second telling of the lifestyle complications arising from her recent divorce. When it came time to part, the mood in the room was decidedly downcast.

  “I didn’t invite you all here to raise your spirits,” Mme Kudo reminded them. “Today was about helping you recalibrate your expectations of romantic relationships. Women in disappointing marriages might take comfort in knowing that so many others are in the same boat and women not yet married might benefit from understanding that, as our honoured guest put it, the lawn next door is not necessarily greener.”