The Other Woman (3 page)

“
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 nature 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.”

The women all thanked Mme Kudo for
her generous hospitality, then bowed respectfully to one another as
they said their goodbyes. Walking back down the hill alone, Hikari
thought about all that she’d heard. While she didn’t feel better
about her predicament, she’d at least had the opportunity to gain
some perspective. In Japan, and particularly Okinawa, women are so
reluctant to share their true feelings the way she and the others
had that day, and because of that reluctance, they tend to suffer
in silence. What the foreigner had said was so true.
Tonari no shiba wa aoi
.
Hikari really had harboured the impression that her friends lives
were so much better than hers, but having gained insight into the
personal lives of other women not so different from those she’d
grown up with - and constantly compared herself to - she was in a
position to know better. The Facebook facades Greg referred to were
just that, facades. While she knew a great deal more about her
close friends lives than what she read on Facebook, she’d drifted
farther apart from many of them since she left for Tokyo. When she
did get together, she always had the feeling that they were wearing
their “tatamae” faces, hiding their true feelings. What lay beneath
the surface was anyone’s guess, but what she’d heard from Mme
Kudo’s other guests was consistent with the possibility that, even
thought they were all “happily” married with children, her friends
didn’t live in rainbow-unicorn-candyland any more than she
did.