I never intended to marry Mary.
I figured I was just playing along with the whims of a rich heiress for a while. I never once took the initiative to ask her on a date.
Then again, even if I had, she likely wouldn’t have had a single second of free time in her schedule. She operated, in the literal sense, by the second. It was always her who called me, claiming a sudden gap in her schedule and asking if we could meet. If it was a weekend or evening, that was fine, but during weekday afternoons, I was obviously at work.
However, since my boss had explicitly told me to make Mary my top priority, I would cancel every other task and wait for her to pick me up from my office.
She arrived in a different car every time. I suspected she might be replacing her vehicle every month. Perhaps it was simply cheaper to buy a new one than to source and refurbish parts for a vintage car. I would climb into the passenger seat, and she would drive. It was a set routine. Meals were always drive-thru takeout. Since she was still a minor at the time, there was no alcohol. My favorite thing was to drink beer and watch sci-fi movies at a bleak, nighttime drive-in theater in the middle of the desert, but she seemed to find that boring. She only indulged me once.
Her preferences were always consistent. We would head to a motel—the kind of place that looked like a Western saloon or inn updated for the modern era, run by a mixed-race Hispanic and Indigenous woman, where big-bottomed white women and white-haired black men on pensions lingered. It was a surreal amalgam of a dive bar, a petrol station, and a pharmacy. We would lose ourselves in each other regardless of whether it was noon or midnight, leave a generous tip under the pillow,
and depart. Then she would drive me to the front of my apartment in downtown. She never stepped inside; after a parting kiss, she would leave me on the curb. I imagine she went straight back to work. She was a tough one. As for me, since I had nothing left to do and was exhausted, I would just space out at home.
Then, once in a while, we did something unusual: we went to an Italian restaurant on a hill on the outskirts of town.
Until then, we had never stepped foot in a “proper” establishment; we had spent our entire relationship devouring burgers and fries in the car.
The restaurant had an open terrace swept by the Pacific breeze, shaded by a massive Benjamin tree that cast a cool, inviting shadow. Those rubber plants are native to the South Seas and are usually kept in pots as houseplants in temperate zones. To grow one to such a scale in this semi-desert climate must have required an immense amount of time and effort.
Children had turned the garden into a playground, tearing pieces of bread and potatoes to throw at the pigeons.
Consequently, the birds were swarming in a chaotic frenzy. No one bothered to stop them. Feral pigeons carry all sorts of bacteria and pathogens, and feeding them only encourages them to breed and leave droppings, which can trigger asthma in some people. But as a passerby with no connection to the restaurant or the local government, I wasn’t in a position to complain. Among the children was a local elderly woman in plain clothes, acting quite un-adult-like as she scattered
feed.
Mary approached the woman, then turned back to me.
“I’d like you to meet someone. This is my mother.”
And just like that, I was introduced to Mary’s mother—Mary—without a moment’s mental preparation.
“Hello, Hiroshi.”
“Nice to meet you.”
I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to shake hands with an older woman in this context, but she extended her hand first, so I tentatively and gently took her small hand in mine.
She wore a simple red dress. Of course, I already knew who she was. She was the head of the Schmidt conglomerate.
The Schmidt family had run a pharmaceutical company for generations. She herself was a celebrity in this country—appearing in commercials for health and organic foods, publishing management books, delivering speeches at presidential elections, and performing flashy stunts in the media. No one in the country was unaware of her face, yet her attire was so modest that the other patrons seemed not to recognize her. Or perhaps they were all regulars who were deliberately pretending not to notice. She looked to be just under fifty. Still young. Come to think of it, the daughter, Mary, was also dressed unusually formally today, wearing a white dress.
“I’m sorry for the suddenness. My daughter insisted she wanted me to meet her boyfriend, so I just happened to come along.”
Boyfriend. Right. Since she was only eighteen, “boyfriend” was the correct term. I wasn’t even thirty yet. This was a scene of a teenage daughter introducing her boyfriend to her mother over afternoon tea.
A single pigeon strayed toward my feet. Mary Senior tore a piece of cracker and tossed it. A fragment landed on my black leather shoes. The swarming pigeons trampled over my footwear.
“Oh, my apologies.”
“No problem at all.”
I looked up to see scores of pigeons perched in the Benjamin tree, busily pecking at the small berries.
“Tell me, dear. What do you think of my daughter?”
Here it comes, I thought.
“I think she is a very beautiful young lady with a beautiful heart.”
“And have you ever been married?”
“No, of course not. Not once.”
“If my daughter is to your liking, would you consider taking her as your wife? She is very fond of you, and she says she won’t marry anyone else. Despite how she seems, she tells me she’s never been with any man other than you.”
So that’s the play.
Before me was the smile of the familiar Aunt Mary Schmidt, the kind you see in advertisements for organic, cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil.
A cold sweat broke out on my back.
I see. This wasn’t a game.
It had been predicated on marriage from the very beginning.
From the moment I stepped into that office and met Chairwoman Mary—no, likely long before that—everything had been engineered.
In Europe, it’s common for couples to live together for years without registering their marriage. I’d heard they often remain in domestic partnerships. But this country was different, especially among the elite.
We had already spent six months in our “trysts.”
She had been waiting for me to suggest an engagement. In this country, the cliché is that the man gives the woman an engagement ring. A woman might subtly hint at it, but a pattern where the woman explicitly proposes simply doesn’t exist.
I showed no sign of proposing, and her pride prevented her from saying anything.
That’s where the mother stepped in. Take responsibility and marry her already, she was effectively saying.
I couldn’t see it any other way.
“I have fully received the sentiments of both you and your daughter.”
“I’m glad. I’ll be waiting for a favorable answer.”
The young Miss Mary looked mature, but she was still eighteen. Moreover, she had spent the most sensitive years of her adolescence hospitalized due to illness. And apparently, she truly had no prior romantic experience. Then how on earth was she capable of such boldness? To invite me for a drive, kiss me, and take me to bed on the very day we met… no matter how liberal the customs of this country were, was that even possible? Perhaps she really was mentally unstable.
And if so, wouldn’t that make her mother, Mary, even more unstable? To not reprimand her daughter’s eccentric behavior, not to push away the partner, but instead to validate the relationship and push for a marriage at eighteen. I wondered if I should be getting this deeply involved with this family.
This is a wealthy nation. They belong to the upper class, living without want. I am a mere intruder here. But then again, they aren’t indigenous either; they settled here hundreds of years ago.
Beyond the hill lay the Pacific Ocean, and beyond that, the country of my birth. Looking at the profiles of the two Marys, gilded in gold by the sunset sinking in the western sky, the phrase “time to pay the piper” echoed in my mind.
That day, after parting with them, I called my parents for the first time to tell them about Mary. They were shocked, of course. But as usual, they didn’t oppose it. I made a special trip back to the East Coast, called Michael, and went to buy a diamond ring. It was such an expensive purchase that I felt anxious buying it without consulting someone.
I stepped into a Tiffany & Co. for the first time in my life. I thought, this is insane. Why do people pay so much for what looks like a piece of glass? My annual income was modest. If I bought according to the market price of Mary’s world, I would go bankrupt. In reality, the tiny diamond perched precariously on that platinum band must have looked like a piece of scrap to her.
I watched several videos online and practiced how to propose. Then, when Mary invited me on another date, I climbed into her car as usual. Before she could start the engine, I pulled the ring box from my pocket, opened the lid, handed it from the passenger seat to her in the driver’s seat, and asked her to marry me.
“I wanna marry you.”
I felt like Bruce Springsteen for a moment.
I think that was the first time I saw Mary look truly, deeply happy. Her smile was incredibly sweet and charming. There were even tears in her eyes. She couldn’t bring herself to drive the car until those tears had stopped falling.
