Love & Marriage Across the Hate Barrier

I  have no daughter so you must marry a Japanese girl," my mother used to tell me. "I want someone to talk to when I get old."

     I was too young to question her assumptions or to point out that she herself had married a caucasian. My natural father had died in my infancy. My mother came from a noble family that had become impoverished after falling into disfavor with officials of the American Occupation Forces. But thanks to an expensive English education, my mother could support us by working for a translation service. A few years later she married an American businessman who had used the bachelor businessman ruse of having her assigned to all his translation jobs. My real father had died before I got to know him. At the age of five I had no trouble accepting the friendly American as my father.

     I wanted my mother to be spared loneliness in old age, but I was not given to making easy promises. Not even when my mother tickled my ribs mercilessly did I make a promise about the nationality of my future wife. In those days I expected to marry a kind and proper Japanese woman like my mother, but I felt it was premature to make such promises before I had received my primary school certificate.

     I attended a foreigner's school in Yokohama along with the kids of other American and English businessmen and diplomats. I had the odd experience of growing up a minority in my own native land. I came to understand that the caucasians in our land enjoyed a higher status than native Japanese due to the powerful hand of military, economic and political forces. Even I came to feel myself above the other Japanese. It was natural. I spent my days in a westernized world that was off limits to other Japanese. In those days Americans were nobles and Japanese were paupers.

     It's a remarkable blessing that adult-world social status and politics are not allowed to dictate interactions among school kids. I was made to feel accepted and my talents valued, so much so that I saw myself as enjoying a higher place than many of my western schoolmates. On some level I must have known that their acceptance was conditional, but I was either oblivious or secure enough to flirt with and date the white girls in school. I met Melissa in the tenth grade. I was taken with her delicate complexion, bright blue eyes, and most of all, her sweet Georgia drawl. She saw something special in me as well. To this day, I can only speculate that it may have had something to do with my strange artistic temperament.

     This is all just background. Flash forward fifteen years. Melissa and I had both left Japan before graduating high school and had kept in touch only sporadically over the years. By sheer coincidence we met while matriculating into the same medical school. It was an unexpectedly happy moment for me. Maybe because being close to her again meant so much, I made a heroic effort not to intrude into her space. I made a show of dating other women so she wouldn't feel any pressure about being in the same school with me. I am one of those strange people who insists on denying himself every normal pleasure just to have a shot at perfection in the big things. Despite all that, by our second year I could sense that she felt something for me as well. For lack of a better expression, you could say we let each other drift together.

     Before I continue with how Melissa and I came to be engaged, I should mention that by then I had fathered a child with a college girlfriend. Addy had become pregnant toward the middle of my senior year. She was not the girl I had expected to marry. I was not the guy she had expected to marry. These facts were established through a series of stormy scenes. I was both hurt and deeply relieved. I hadn't wanted to devastate my mother by announcing that I was marrying a Dutch American girl in her fourth month. I am sure that in the pretty picture my mother had painted in her mind, I was saving myself so that she could pick me out a nice Japanese girl after I finished med school and set up a lucrative practice. 

     But Addy had decided to keep the child -- a boy, it turned out -- and I was in no position to object. My offer to be there for his birth was emphatically declined. So were my offers of support. It was this independence that had initially attracted me to Addy and ultimately it saved us from marriage. I would have married her had she wanted me to, regardless of her reasons. I am sure many marriages are founded on much less than what I shared with Addy.

     I had told none of this to Melissa. The omission seemed especially deceitful because we had quickly come to share other details of the years since high school. As our feelings for each other deepened, this secret loomed ever larger in my conscience. Almost from the first night we spent together, I disliked myself for not having told her. I was afraid that my secret would repulse her. What kind of sleazebag went around fathering children before marriage? I even considered keeping it a permanent secret. What possible repurcussions could there be? In the end I had too much respect for Melissa to win her in deceit.

     Knowing that I would have to get the secret off my chest before we could pursue talk of marriage, I had just about made up my mind to tell her. We were soon to start our internships and I sensed that we both longed for a commitment before we were forced to spend long days away from each other.

     "What's the matter?" she asked one night as we sat down to dinner. "You look like you just killed someone."

     I knew the time had come and I couldn't wait any longer. But before I could start telling her about the child, Melissa blurted, "Before you say anything, there's something I have to tell you." She put her arms around me and squeezed tighter than I had ever felt. "It's about my father."

     "Did something happen to him?"

     "No. Well, yes. But not anything recent." She closed her eyes and shook her head as though she were trying to remember her lines. "It happened when he was a little boy. He doesn't even have any memory of it, directly. It's just that his father was killed by a Japanese torpedo, and..."

     "You told him about us?"

     She nodded. Her eyes were brimming with feelings she seemed to have trouble putting into words.

     "What did he say?"

     "Not a thing. He just listens politely and says nothing." It was obvious that the situation was troubling Melissa deeply. From our conversations I knew that she was unusually close to her father.

     "Your mother?"

     "She's happy for me but... She's mainly worried about him." Melissa took both my hands and squared off to gaze into my eyes. "But I want you to know that..."

     "No." I stopped her. "We can't say anything more until I've met him." Even as I spoke those words, I couldn't believe what I was saying. Meeting her father was what I feared more than anything. I felt that the old man had the power to make me vanish into thin air. Consequently, given my perverse psychology, I felt obliged to act as though I welcomed the meeting. For the next several weeks I lived in constant dread as I waited for Melissa to arrange a meeting.

     For the next several weeks we were bundles of nerves. Each time I saw Melissa and she failed to mention the meeting, I suspected her of having decided to back away from scheduling a confrontation, of having reconsidered her relationship with me. I picked fights over trivial things like the way she wore her hair or the way she phrased a remark, then stormed out muttering dark imprecations about her character. She accused me of trying to find an excuse to cop out of the relationship at the first hint of adversity. She stormed out yelling accusations about my gummy-worm backbone. We broke up several times only to rush back into each others' arms gushing apologies and vows. In the end we knew there was no way around that meeting with her father.

     At last the date was set. We were to go over to her parents' home for tennis and dinner. I was encouraged until ferreting out the fact that the event had been conceived entirely between Melissa and her mother. Her father's only participation had been a grudging agreement to being there. I died a thousand deaths anticipating the occasion. By the time we pulled into the driveway of the white two-story colonial, I was stiff with nerves. If someone would have said boo to me, I would have jumped out of my skin. "You look great," Melissa reassured me as I checked the rearview mirror for the hundredth time. "You, too," I said listlessly.

     Nothing went as I had imagined. I knew what her parents looked like from Melissa's photos, but their personalities threw me completely. Her mother was unexpectedly brittle and cool, almost suspicious in the way her bright green eyes followed my every movement. Her father, on the other hand, was genial and smiling. "Good to see you again, Ken," he said, giving me a firm but not overpowering handshake. "I see you don't remember. We met once when you came over for Melissa's birthday."

     He was right. I had completely forgotten, as had Melissa. How could I have known, at the age of sixteen, that a girlfriend's father would come to loom so large in my prospects for happiness? He laughed off my apology and guided me out through the patio door toward the court. By now I was sure there had been a misunderstanding. How could this friendly man harbor hatred toward an entire race of people? Nothing but good-humored pleasantries escaped his lips as the four of us got warmed up for a set of doubles, Melissa and I versus her parents. They were crafty club players and, despite our youthful advantages, took the first set easily. A few games into the second, Melissa's mother excused herself to go cook and Melissa went with her to help out. I suddenly saw that the afternoon had been carefully planned for the purpose of leaving the two of us alone to become acquainted.

     But no movie-style melodramatics followed, just a lot of no-holds-barred tennis. I had decided that I would rather have my future father-in-law see me as a hardnosed winner than a walkover. I put extra mustard on my serves and groundstrokes to give the old guy's legs and reflexes a real workout. Unfortunately, my first serves strayed and the old guy was spry and masterful at the net. Quickly and decisively, he put me back on my heels. My lobs and passing shots were tested and found sadly deficient. Our set would probably have ended 6-1 had he not eased up at the end and let me take another face-saving game.

     "Mind if I give you a bit of advice?" the old man said as we zipped up our rackets. Okay, here it comes, I thought, my heart skipping a beat. Here's where the old guy tells the ineligible young suitor to get out of his daughter's life.

     "Not at all," I said. My mouth suddenly felt like a dry streambed.

     "Work on that second serve." That was it. Not a word about Melissa and me. Dinner and the rest of the evening went the same way. The mother watched me as though I were a known kleptomaniac and the father treated me like a favorite nephew. As we were leaving I didn't know whether to pinch myself or be disappointed. 

     "I can see that Mama liked you a lot," Melissa confided as we left behind the crickets and jasmine. There was a long silence before she added, "I'm sure Papa liked you too. You just can't tell much by the way he acts. He's so corporate."

     My heart sank. So that was just the way the old man treated everyone. I had been nothing more than another social obligation to be handled in a businesslike manner. I could have been Jack the Ripper and would have gotten the same cordial reception. I didn't trust myself to breathe a word just then. I was suffering too much.

     "I mean, I'm sure he liked you," Melissa added a long time later. "How could he not?" Then, after another long while, "Did he say anything to you?"

     "He told me to work on my second serve." I tried to sound cavalier but the words came out like a death sentence.

     There never were any words of significance spoken by her father to me, ever. In the end I was more spooked by his "corporate" front than I would have been had he raged against me. And yet I found I lacked the courage to test that front to see what lay behind it. I think that's why I decided not to tell Melissa about the child before asking her to marry me. That would prove to be my big mistake. Rather than accepting right away, Melissa felt it would be better to seek her parents' blessing first. That evening she went alone to visit them. Late that night I was awakened by a call from her.

     "Is it true?" she sobbed.

     "Is what true?" I was barely awake, but shedding my sleepiness fast.

     "That you have a child?"

     "How did you find out?"

     "Never mind how I found out!" she screamed and hung up. She didn't wait five minutes before calling me back. "How could you do this to me?"

     "I was going to tell you..."

     "When, after we're married?" She hung up on me again.

     The conversation continued in this anguished fashion for another hour before I finally got dressed and drove over to her apartment, determined to resolve the impasse one way or the other. Before long we were both sobbing, alternately screaming at each other and clinging to each other. By dawn we were exhausted and confused, but agreed on one thing: her father had used investigators to dig up dirt on me, then sandbagged me in hopes I would make precisely the kind of misstep I did make. He had figured that would be the best way to kill off the relationship. Both of us were devastated by the degree of cold, calculating hatred behind her father's course of action. 

     As we lay a foot apart but side by side across Melissa's bed, tired but wide-awake, I told her about Addy's pregnancy, her refusal to have an abortion or to let me provide financial support. Melissa made no reply and nothing in her stony expression suggested she was hearing my words. We continued to lie there for another hour before she finally spoke.

     "Yes, I do want to marry you," she said.

     Her father's cold-blooded calculation had backfired. Melissa could neither fathom nor empathize with that kind of hatred and it alienated her. She became determined to marry me in direct opposition to his wishes. Only later would I learn the consequences that this mindset would produce for our marriage. I was uneasy but happy. I felt as though I had defeated a dragon to win Melissa. I just wasn't sure the dragon was dead.

     The one bright spot was Melissa's mother. Once she learned of her daughter's decision, she threw her wholehearted support behind us. "Norman is a good, decent man," she told me. "But he is stubborn. That's his strength and his weakness. I just hope you won't judge him by something he set his mind to as a boy. I am sure that when he comes to know you, he will change his mind."

     The news of my engagement was a visible disappointment to my mother. She bore it stoically. When she learned of the opposition of Melissa's father, her stoicism turned into active concern. "How can you marry a girl if her father doesn't want to give her to you? No matter what, she is his daughter. You cannot forget that." She went silent for a long time, as though trying to understand how such a thing could happen. "Please don't get angry," she said, "but I cannot help wondering what kind of girl would go against her father's wishes."

     At that I lost my temper and raged at my mother's old-fashioned thinking. "Her father is a racist!" I shouted. "What do you mean how can she go against his wishes?" My mother just sipped her tea quickly and said nothing. But her eyes did the talking. They seemed to say to me, "Still, he's her father, you know." My father just rolled his eyes and said, "Let's just be happy for Ken."

     I arranged a meeting between my parents and Melissa. My father seemed impressed by her. My mother's eyes studied Melissa with that same astonishment at the sheer idea of a girl who was defying his father's wishes. Her manner irked me all the more because it seemed fueled by her own disappointment at a son who had defied her wish for a Japanese daughter-in-law. My mother's attitude hadn't escaped Melissa. "She doesn't like me, does she?" she asked as soon as we were alone.

     I tried denying it but Melissa refused to believe me. "Does it have to do with my father?' she demanded. I ended up having to give her a long explanation of my mother's feelings. Melissa became angry that I had revealed her father's opposition. "You couldn't just save that for later? Do we have to show off all our dirty laundry at the first meeting?"

     I refrained from pointing out that her father's position would become all too apparent the first time the parents met. As though reading my mind, Melissa collapsed resignedly into her seat.

     "It just seems so hypocritical," she muttered. "She's married to a caucasian."

     "It's not the same thing," I said calmly. "She was alone and had a son."

     "You mean like you."

     "Are you going to throw that at me every time we have a disagreement?" I was surprised at my own flareup.

     The argument escalated until the engagement was called off. The next day it was back on and stayed on until the wedding. True to form, her father quietly but firmly refused to participate in the wedding. Melissa was given away by her maternal uncle. The resulting strain between Meslissa's parents lasted for the rest of their days together. Her father always arranged to be out of the house whenever we visited. After a while, we were all careful not to mention him in conversation. Considering this odd void, our marriage was happy. But privately I was nagged by a sense of dread of unfinished business. Was it really possible to be happily married without the blessings of a parent?

     It was only after our daughter was born that Melissa's mother told us that her husband had been diagnosed to be in the advanced stages of lung cancer. He had just been hospitalized and wasn't expected to live more than a few weeks. He had been healthy during the last checkup. The cancer had begun and spread like wildfire in the space of a few months. 

     Melissa jumped to her feet, let out a sob, then screamed at my mother for not having told her sooner.

     "I tried to tell you, Honey, but you were about to give birth and I didn't want to shock you." Her mother's eyes had welled up with tears and her mouth trembled.

     Before I had fully digested the news, Melissa and I were rushing to the hospital with our newborn. I insisted on waiting in the lobby while she went up to his room with the baby. More than anything I wanted father and daughter to be reconciled. It was for a selfish motive -- I wanted my daughter to know that she had been loved by all four grandparents. While I waited in the lobby, all I could think about was how I might get my hands on a camera and have it taken up to the room where I imagined the tearful reconciliation was taking place.

     Before I could do anything about it, Melissa was standing in front of me, holding the baby. Her face was red and contorted. She was sobbing. "He won't see us."

     "He doesn't want you to remember him that way," I said quickly. "He's very sick already."

     "It's all my fault," she said softly between sobs. "I killed him."

     Hearing those words took the heart right out of me. As long as Melissa blamed her father for the estrangement, there had remained the hope that he would someday find it within himself to relent. Then all could be forgiven. But once she started blaming herself, I knew it was only a matter of time before she would turn that blame on me. After all, I was the one who had come between father and daughter. I was the one who refused to honor her father's wishes. I was the one who had killed him.

     Hate is like water. It seeks out the low places unrelentingly. It doesn't stop until it has infiltrated every depression and crack. The hatred that Melissa's father had somehow carried a half century in his heart had seeped into our marriage. It lay stagnant until his death less than two weeks after our visit to the hospital. Then it found the depressions and cracks in our marriage and cut a canyon between us.

     Melissa's turning away from me began with the way she treated my mother. Somehow my gentle, gracious mother came to represent in her grieving mind the unreasoning hatred that had infected her father. At the funeral Melissa deliberately turned her back on my mother's heartfelt condolences. As the weeks passed I came to see that the aloofness she had begun to show toward me wasn't fading with her grief but had become a permanent part of our relationship. All the affection and thoughtfulness she had once shown me was bestowed on our daughter. At the end of each day all that remained for me was a cool shoulder and a few empty words. Our marriage had died with her father.

     These are not the kinds of concrete thoughts I was capable of forming in the weeks or months after her father's funeral. Mostly I lived minute by minute, wading blind through a fog of numbness and confusion and hope, telling myself that I had only to endure for another month, a year or two. My hope was kept alive by those rare moments when Melissa would give me a smile, a laugh, an invitation to share the joy of raising our daughter. It took me three years to understand that those moments were nothing more than the desire of a mother to share her baby with anyone who happened to be on hand.

     By the time I made up my mind to ask for a divorce, I was acting purely on survival instinct. I felt I was losing the ability to feel. I had come to understand that to Melissa I had become only a marker, someone who represented her idea of husband and her child's father. And, I suspected too, someone who represented the thing her father hated. That was the open wound that continued to give me pain. It was the only clear sensation I was still capable of feeling.

     Melissa's reaction caught me by surprise. Having concluded that I meant little to her, I expected her to understand, even be grateful. Instead she denounced me as a coward and a hypocrite who abandoned his wife and child when the going got tough. I was devastated by the force of her anger. It contrasted so spectacularly with the apathetic aloofness with which she had treated me the past three years. In a surge of wild hope I asked her, "Do you love me?" Her response killed off any remaining hope: "Love you?" she cried, shaking her head in disbelief. "I hate you!"

     In the end her father and his hatred had won. My mother's philosophical remark was more to the point: "You see, she is her father's daughter."