Counterparts

Her husband's girlfriend is on the phone from Paris. Mrs. Higashi, who lives in Kobe's Suma Ward, informs her that it is nearly midnight in Japan. They have never communicated before.

"He's too devastated to talk to you," the girlfriend says.

"Please go on," Mrs. Higashi says.

"We were watching an erotic film in our hotel." She hesitates. "There was this scene. Your daughter was making love to two white men. Hello?"

"I'm listening. I'm sure he's mistaken."

"The film was done when she was much younger. Before she got fat."

"It's a mistake. Tell him that."

"He thinks you should reflect on yourself," the girlfriend says and hangs up.

Mrs. Higashi feels like screaming: "You reflect on yourself, slut! You are living with a married man in Los Angeles and dividing his family!" But she does not scream. Mrs. Higashi does not like emotional outbursts, not even in private. A slight woman with abundant black hair, Mrs. Higashi is in her mid-fifties but looks younger because of the unperplexed softness of her round pretty face. People who know her often comment on the grace and good humor with which she comports herself though she must live apart from her husband. At the university, where she teaches English, she is known as someone who is liked by everyone and who gets special favors thanks to her ready supply of cakes and coffee.

Mrs. Higashi was drinking her usual glass of white wine before bedtime when her husband's girlfriend telephoned. She drinks another glass and a half. Then she goes for a drive.

This is not the first time she is driving after drinking. She never did it before she and her husband separated. Her daughter scolds her about this, saying that she has a death wish or that she wants punishment. Then her daughter tells her that she should not blame herself for the separation. No one's to blame her daughter says: "Men are men and women are women." She often repeats this phrase, sometimes as if speaking to no one in particular.

At a red light Mrs. Higashi takes the Listerine from the glove compartment and, swishing it in her mouth, opens the door slightly and spits. This will disguise her breath if the police pull her over.

She drives up Mount Rokko, up the twisting highway that takes her away from the spectacular vistas of Kobe and into the primordial forested darkness where the city buries its dead in neat, sequestered cemeteries.

Mrs. Higashi remembers her daughter's catch phrase about men and women and tries not to blame herself for her daughter's indiscretion. She deduces that it occurred when she was eighteen – ten years ago – during her summer study at UCLA. She returned in the sunniest state of happiness, as if she were in love. They were still a normal family then.

The headlights freeze two people crossing the road. Mrs. Higashi hits the brakes and nearly collides with a young man and woman who briefly show her their frightened faces before disappearing into the darkness. Lovers, she figures. Then she realizes she was speeding.

If you drive in the mountains of California, her daughter once said, you will inevitably come upon a bar or a truck stop where you can have coffee. There is nothing like this within the darkness of Mount Rokko. She pulls off onto a long narrow and unlighted road leading to one of the mountain's cemeteries. The gate to the cemetery is closed. She parks on the side of the road, quenches the headlines and rests her forehead on the cool steering wheel. She wishes she could cry.

Reflect on herself. Since her husband was transferred, at his request, to Los Angeles – he is president of a subsidiary trading company that imports specialty foods for the area's large Japanese community – she has never stopped reflecting on herself. She reflects again on the nature of sexuality and wonders if the dark side of her own sexuality has been transmitted genetically to her daughter.

As an MA student at the private university she lost...