I feel a surge of resentment toward Rose. Rose all but forced me to come to Japan. I held out hope, even as she was saying goodbye to me at the airport, that she would say, Don’t go. Stay. Let’s make a baby.

Rose wants me to be angry with the world. But I’m not. The world feels like a big, messy mound of clay that’s impossible to shape. I feel merely incompetent, not angry.

I look at Yuka’s sleeping face. Yuka seems happy with minimalism. Working at the bank, taking care of her parents, and exiting and entering my life on a schedule. For Yuka, life seems like a cup of tea, warming her hands. She can read the tea leaves at the bottom, patterns of understanding that continually evade me.

The cab driver, a middle-aged guy with a worry line between his eyes, navigates the car through the narrow streets that are crammed with bicycles, buses, and cars. We cross a bridge spanning a shining river.

We wind our way down the streets passing house after tiny house. Then through streets lined with rice shops, beer and wine shops, and open-air vegetable markets. In the distance, green hills glow against the striking blue sky.

All this beauty, and we’re in Hiroshima. I try to shake away the overlay of an inconceivable blast, people, the buildings, the land in flames.

“America-jin desu ka?” The driver glances at me in the review mirror.

“Hai,” I say, grateful to be pulled away from my thoughts yet self-conscious, not sure if hai is the politest way to say “yes, I’m American.”

He says something else, quickly in Japanese.

“Welcome to Hiroshima, international city of peace and culture,” Yuka translates.

“Domo arigato.”

The driver’s eyes shift to Yuka as he speaks more.

“He want to know are you going to Peace Memorial and A-bomb Dome and Child Peace Monument.”

“Are we?”

“You want?”

“Do you?”

“I see before.”

As always, Yuka seems centered in her response, and I feel very unsettled, dizzy. Maybe I’m car sick. The taxi is moving fast.

“Tell him maybe.”

Yuka has an exchange with the driver while we’re stopped at a light. In the car next to us, a little girl in the back seat playfully smashes her face into her window. I smash mine. She smashes hers again. The light changes and we lose each other.